Nelson Au
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Mar 16, 1999
- Messages
- 19,130
The Who Mourns for Adonais chapter was quite interesting. As Lee has mentioned, many rewrites to improve all the characters. I hadn't any idea of the writer's original idea of Carolyn's having just lost a boyfriend and then having Scotty jump while she's on the rebound.And the sprucing up the idea of Apollo's real past of an ancient astronaut so the story is truly more bound in science then fantasy. One of the surprises was Roddenberry's push to make Kirk more proactive and combatant with Apollo. That really is there when you watch the episode. Kirk is not buying the whole thing at all! Plus Roddenberry's effort to make Kirk bigger to allow Shatner to play him bigger and hopes that it would benefit him at Emmy time in holes it would sooth Shatner's ego from Nimoy's popularity and Emmy nomination for the work from the year before. I had no idea the stunt man was hurt from Apollo zapping Scotty. And then Doohan trying it himself the next day only to find that they decide to use the stuntman's shot. And interesting how Coon changed the set up to leave Spock on the ship, to the detriment of Sulu being in Command and to Chekov's benefit of getting Spock's lines. It does seem to work better having Chekov offer to help Kirk to talk to Carolyn and Kirk saying he better handle it. Oh yeah, and it was amazing that the surprise ending made it all the way to final draft script, but it was NBC who nixed it at the lee nth hour. You wouldn't have that happen today. But the part I really found great was the recollections of Michael Forest and Leslie Parrish. It's really amazing they remember it so fondly for the story and the emotional side their characters went through. Perhaps for me, the limitations of the stage bound set of Mt. Olympus sort of degraded the episode for me. But I can put that aside and really focus on the story and the ideas and I can really appreciate the episode on that level. The emotional stuff is quite strong too, but because it not with one of the main characters, it's harder to invest in it. But I can see how Parrish can have those strong feelings for the episode herself. So far, this second book is really better then the first in some ways because of the added input from the actors.