#robert sabaroff

[t0ast-ghost]

S2 episode 18 (The Immunity Syndrome) okay, so I’m posting again in one day, but I loved this episode.

Onwards:

- I feel like every other episode now is “it’s time for the crew to rest.” And McCoy looks so pleased with himself

- Oh poor Spock

- OMG KYLE!!

- Spock is not playing around

- So this thing is eating up all the stars and shit and they wanna stay close to it??

- No one can give Kirk a goddamn answer but it’s not their fault

- Bones has the best idea. Just leave. Kirk then roasts Bones’ idea over the comms

- ITS BEEN TEN MINUTES AND YOUR ALREADY DYING. Leave.

- “Centre of the Zone of Darkness” would be an awesome band name, Spock

- McCoy’s hair is peak rn

- “It would only prolong our wait for death.” woah Spock. dark.

- FALLING

- What the fuck. I thought that was a fish at first

- McCoy’s turn to be self sacrificial

- “You have a martyr complex, Doctor. I submit that it disqualifies you.” So do you, you’re a hypocrite, Spock

- They’re all self sacrificial. And in love with each other

- McCoy does a little bounce when he thinks he’s been picked to go

- They’re fucking arguing right now. Spock is asking for McCoy to wish him luck. Just kiss each other goodbye already.

- Hey Spones deniers. Explain this.

- “Oh, and Dr. McCoy… you would not have survived it.” “You want to bet?” It’s so soft and teasing how they say this to one another.

- McCoy looks so damn worried

- “He’s alive.” Bones smiles, an honest, bright fucking smile

- Bones and Kirk listening to their boyfriend dying :(((

- “Tell Doctor McCoy. He should have wished me luck.” Kirk looks over to him like ‘you didn’t fucking wish him luck?!?’ And McCoy’s just like ‘right now, Spock? You’re gonna be bitter about that?’

- “What’s on your mind?” “Spock.” Me too doctor. Me too

- “An-ti-bod-ies”

- FALLING! A blue shirt flew over the railing that time

- Is Kyle in a yellow shirt? Wait where’s Sulu

- God I wanna touch McCoy’s hair. It’s marvellous. Who said that.

- Awww Spock’s so sentimental about the enterprise and its crew :)))

- Kirk also cares so much. He wants them remembered. Kirk can’t say Kyle normally tho, he’s saying ‘cowl’

- “Shut up, Spock! We’re rescuing you!” McCoy is NOT taking this shit. Also Kirk and McCoy’s nods

- “Why thank you, Captain McCoy.” Jim is enjoying their banter right now so much, he’s got a little smirk

- MORE FALLING!

- McCoy is pissed at Spock but loves him so much and both him and Jim are just happy he’s alive

Wow okay. Wow. Thanks Robert for your great Spock and Bones interactions. I don’t think I’m gonna be okay after that one…

Masterpost

Episode written by Robert Sabaroff

#star trek #star trek tos #star trek the original series #spock #s'chn t'gai spock #tos spock #leonard bones mccoy #tos mccoy #tos bones #captain james kirk #tos kirk

[episodicnostalgia]

Star Trek: The Next Generation, 117 (Feb. 22, 1988) - “Home Soil”

Teleplay by: Robert Sabaroff Story by: Karl Guers, Ralph Sanchez & Robert Sabaroff Directed by: Corey Allen

The Breakdown

The Federation has asked Picard to check in on a terraforming outpost, since the team that was stationed there has gone radio silent.  With the Enterprise’s arrival at the outpost, the project director (Kurt Mandl) reluctantly picks up to explain that nothing suspicious is going on, and that Picard is welcome to politely fuck off (I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist).  Counsellor Troi confirms that Mandl is indeed as shifty as his unmistakably shifty behaviour would suggest; so, Picard sends Riker down to check it out.  While there, Riker and his team are introduced to the other Terraformers (Arthur, Bjorn, and Luisa), who kindly provide the audience/away team with a useful exposition dump about how the terraforming process works.  They impress upon Riker and co. that every planet designated for terraforming undergoes rigorous vetting to first determine that there are NO LIFEFORMS WHATSOEVER, before they begin the decades long process.  Geordi starts to nerd out with Arthur about some of the unique challenges this planet has presented, but Mandl sends Arthur away to ‘go work on the drilling lasers’, because they have a tight schedule to keep.  Predictably, the drilling lasers go bonkers and kill Arthur, so now we have a mystery on our hands.

Since it does KIND OF seem like Mandl had his guy killed in a cover up attempt, Picard brings the terraforming team to stay on the Enterprise while his people try to find out what caused the malfunction.  During that time, Data has his own run-in with the killer-laser (which he destroys) and is able to determine that something was indeed controlling it, but it wasn’t Mandl.  Further inspection of the drilled bedrock leads Geordi and Data to discover some glowing matter that exhibits strange properties, so they have it beamed up to Crusher’s lab.  There, it’s determined that they’ve discovered the first known non-carbon life form, and that it’s not only attempting to communicate, but also capable of reproducing.  What initially looks like a Christmas light on a petri dish, begins to grow until it eventually forms into an exotic looking plastic crystal, roughly the size of a baseball.  While this is all initially very exciting for the Enterprise crew, things get a bit more concerning when the non carbon lifeform reveals that it plans to wage war on the gross ‘water bags’ that attacked it (aka humans).  To make matters even more dire, the life form starts taking over the ship’s computer functions, as it grows exponentially more powerful.

So what’s going on?  Well, it turns out that the terraformers did indeed notice some exotic energy deposits on their planet, but they didn’t think much of it at the time.  Little did they know that their terraforming was endangering the saline water deposits beneath the planet’s crust, which apparently serve as a sort of networking system for the micro crystalline life forms living there.  So why was Mandl’s team behaving so secretively?  Because they’re workaholics and they don’t like distractions, and that’s… apparently the actual reason for their behaviour.  With that out of the way, team-Enterprise figures out they can stop ol’ Crystal (I’m calling it crystal now) by dimming the lights, which were evidently the source of it’s power.  Crystal agrees to a peaceful surrender, on the condition that no more Water-Bags return for at least 300 years (which is fair enough), and Riker has it beamed back to the planet.  Mandl won’t be able to finish his project, but at least it’s led to an exciting new discovery, and all it cost was Arthur’s life.  WORTH IT.

The Verdict.

Considering how many aliens look like humans with forehead prosthetics (Yes, I realize there’s an episode that addresses this), it’s kind of refreshing to see a Starfleet crew discover non-carbon life that isn’t just an abandoned supercomputer, or some other kind of artificial intelligence.  Realistically, if humans ever did discover extra-terrestrial life, it seems reasonable to expect that it would be almost wholly unrecognizable to us.  To that end, I found myself enjoying the story when it focussed on the mystery of a truly ‘new life’, something alien in every sense of the word.

Where the episode loses me is in the red herring that kicks off the episode, which suggests that Mandl’s team are up to no good.  We spend much of first couple acts as Picard and Mandl play cat and mouse with the truth, but the answers we’re given don’t really justify the investment we put into them.  Mandl WAS acting very suspicious, and Deanna supposedly could sense he was hiding something, so what exactly was he trying to hide?  He didn’t murder Arthur, and apparently neither he nor his team were aware that they were harming an unidentified species.  Mandl doesn’t even really give any kind of satisfactory explanation for his lack of decorum when Picard first arrived, leaving us to chalk it up to professional tunnel-vision. So, I guess he was trying to cover up… scheduling delays?  I don’t buy it.  I love a good red herring as much as the next guy (and trust me, the next guy won’t fucking shut up about them), but a red herring still needs an explanation that holds up to scrutiny. 

It would have been a stronger choice to have Mandl (or one of his team) acting with malicious intent, leaving a conflict that would be a little more complicated, and more interesting, to resolve.  Star Trek doesn’t always need to be a morality play, but that is the foundation upon which the franchise was built, and there was a decent opportunity to weigh the balance of scientific ambition with ethical restraint.  As it stands, ‘Home Soil’ narratively amounts to little more than “Woops.  Our bad.  Sorry about that.”  Perhaps that doesn’t classify the episode as an outright failure, but at it’s best this was a missed opportunity.

2.5 stars (out of 5)

Additional Ovservations

The electronic voice given to the NCL (aka “Crystal”) sounds kind of like a slightly less annoying Dalek.  Couldn’t the computer have provided it/them with something that sounds a little more dignified?

Troi-spiracy: I think it would be so funny if it turned out that Deanna Troi was just lying about her empathic abilities.  I’m just imagining that she never actually inherited any of her mum’s telepathy, but always felt too awkward to admit it (Lwaxana is kind of the worst, and you know she would never let it go), so whenever someone acts obviously sketchy she’s like “Yeah, I can totally sense they’re hiding something with my abilities that I absolutely have.”  Maybe Mandl wasn’t acting sus after all.  Maybe he’s just a tense fella, and Picard caught him at a bad time, but then he SEEMED off, so Deanna had to pretend that she sensed something.  Lucky it all worked out. This time.

Bad Counselling: Riker asks Deanna for the terraform team’s psychological profile.  Troi offers that Luisa is basically talented and imaginative, but otherwise an intellectual scatterbrain, and indicates that Riker’s charms might work on her (to get information), presumably because Riker is irresistible to a grieving airhead woman.  Yikes.

Riker enters a darkened lab, and approaches the Crystal in a way that I found hilariously, unintentionally, sultry.  But you just know Riker would if he’d had more time.

#star trek the next generation #tng season 1 #home soil #retro review #star trek review #troispiracy #bad counselling #deanna troi #william t riker #terraform #terraforming #star trek #star trek tng #sci fi #sci fi tv #80s tv #80s television #80s tv shows #80s tv series #classic television #episodic nostalgia #robert sabaroff #karl guers #ralph sanchez #corey allen

[duanecbrooks]

Black Being Beautiful      It's another old-time flick, having been made an entire year before The Grasshopper, specifically in--hold on to your hat--1968.                Its female lead is a woman who has long, long, long since devolved to Trivial Pursuit-question status, namely Diahann Carroll (Its male lead, Jim Brown again, has, as has been pointed out before, a very successful career as an entrepreneur, not to mention considerable visibility as a rather simplistic, indeed, flat-out shrill Black Spokesperson).                Having been made in 1968, its cinematic style and sensibility, not to mention the makeup of most, if not all, of its characters would likely be considered mightily passé, even, considering the fact that these days, political correctness is running rampant, prehistoric.                Yet be that as it may...      The fact is, The Split, which, thanks as usual to my greatly-cherished DVD player I've seen several times, is a quite gripping, very well-paced heist flick, easily carrying you along on its wavelength, easily causing you to accept its reality. And not once, not once, while watching it does your attention flag or you lose interest in its characters.                Let's specify...            Split kicks off with a wide-angle shot of a dirt road. Before long, it hones in on this car conking out, carrying this majorly hunky black dude, who, as we'll come to discover, is said picture's central character, McClain (Brown). He tries for a while to fix the car but eventually opts to riding a bus, which we see stopping in front of this rather ramshackle motel. McClain gets off and goes inside and is (in time) joyously greeted by its proprietor, Gladys (Julie Harris). He first asks about his ex, Ellie--whom we'll soon meet--and is bluntly told: "She moved. I haven't seen her." When asked about his future plans, McClain gives an answer that in sum tells the point of the entire picture: "Just one big job. That's all I want." We then see the aforementioned Ellie (Carroll) on the phone, enveloped in shock, obviously being told that her ex is back. Next we see the former couple in bed, lying warmly up against each other, obviously having Done The Deed. We quickly get the message that their history being together was far from happy (Ellie: "I kept on dreaming. And one morning I woke up and you weren't there. That was one morning too many." McClain: "If I'm not here, what the hell were you just doing [in having sex with me]?" This causes Ellie to angrily slap McClain's face). There's further dialogue between them (Ellie: "I'm weak with you...That's my problem...You want to see me crawl. You want to see me so weak I can't stand any more"; interestingly, given that, as has been mentioned, this was 1968, Ellie in time calls McClain: "You black son of a bitch!"), and then we cut to McClain casing the place the latter intends to hit, namely a football stadium where there's scheduled to be a face-off involving the Rams and the Packers (Gladys: "There's 80 thousand seats in the place." McClain: "And that's a lot of money").                 Let's continue. Following are scenes wherein McClain "tests" the fellows he wants to include in the upcoming heist, namely Clinger, Kifka, Marty, and Negil (Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Warren Oates, and Donald Sutherland, respectively) by putting them through various paces--dropping in on Clinger and initiating a fight, initiating an open-road car chase with Kifka, et al. When the team McClain wants and Gladys are gathered together, we discover that there's  certainly, definitely no love lost between McClain and the guys (Negil: "[McClain is] a big black idiot." Marty: "If there's one thing I don't have time for, it's a smart-ass nigger!"). Yet when our hero at last finally shows up they all fall into line and it's agreed that the money will be stashed at Ellie's place (Gladys: "Ellie's clean. And the cops have nothing on McClain"). Next up is a rather engaging montage wherein McClain and Ellie are walking side-by-side along different places, including the beach with Ellie carrying her heels (McClain: "I'll be with you [after the heist] because that's where I want to be"). At last finally the day of the heist arrives, with McClain and Co. seizing the take while holding several guards and several stadium employees--among them the longtime comedic actor Jackie Joseph--at gunpoint and getting away with the help of McClain and Kifka masquerading as ambulance drivers. Then, as Ellie is lying on top of her bed reading, she, and we, hear a knock upon her door. Upon opening it, in comes McClain with the stolen gains, making it clear his intent to stash them at Ellie's. After her expressing understandable consternation ("You're using me, Mac"), we see McClain seduce Ellie by first taking her up in his arms, then throwing her upon the bed and having his way with her, with her (lovingly?) caressing the money that McClain has thrown upon her bed. Following are McClain and Ellie (obviously) fully under the covers and the phone ringing. Ellie gets it and hands it to her ex, as it's for him. Next we see McClain and Clinger, while playing pool, making plans to get together later with the rest of the gang and divvy up the cash.             Next: We see Ellie's ever-horny landlord Sutro (James Whitmore) sneak into her apartment and, while our girl is combing her hair in front of the mirror, approach her, supposedly about the rent. Yet, as time goes on, it becomes abundantly clear that what Sutro really and truly wants is not rent money but Ellie herself--as evidenced by the frequent close-ups of her bosom area and her upper-thighs area. Before long Sutro gives in to his lust and grabs Ellie. There's a struggle, she manages to knee him and she opens the lower shelf of her drawer, where, we find, there's weaponry stashed. Yet Sutro catches her, throws her upon the bed, and himself gets hold of a machine gun lying inside the drawer. Sutro winds up fatally machine-gunning Ellie, seizing all the money, and throwing a sheet over her dead body.                      Split goes on. When McClain arrives at Ellie's apartment and discovers her corpse, he is of course devastated. Then he opens the drawer and sees that the money, all of it, has been taken, which also knocks him for a loop. The police--having been called by Sutro, who has alerted them to Ellie's murder--show up, McClain manages to get away and, upon re-uniting with the gang, discovers, along with us, that they are in no sense happy campers (Gladys: "You've humiliated me, McClain." Marty: "As you can see, you're on the spot, boy"). We then see that the police detective Walter Brill (Gene Hackman) has been assigned to investigate Ellie's murder (and also see a newspaper headline that fully reflects the fact that this was 1968: "LANDLORD SLAYS NEGRO BEAUTY"), McClain is for a while tortured by the rest of the gang--while his arms are being held down, Clinger smacks his exposed stomach with a soaking-wet rope--McClain manages to escape--with Gladys getting accidentally and fatally shot in the process--and winds up cornering Brill in his home. At first Brill resists McClain's pressure ("the former to the latter: "There isn't a man in the force who will rest if anything happens to one of their own"), yet comes to bend under McClain's prodding (McClain to Brill: "You curl up pretty fast for a cop, don't you?"). Brill comes to throw in with McClain, the latter assuring him that he's the best bet to getting the dough ("There are three others [in the gang], but if you deal with me, you might live to spend that money"), there's a shootout in a deserted area between McClain/Brill and the other gang members, said team winds up killing them all, and the ending of the picture is genuinely unusual. It's comprised of McClain being about to board a plane and stopping upon hearing...Ellie's voice.                So there's The Split, in all a marvelously taut, marvelously absorbing crime flick. Whitmore chillingly embodies the ever-lustful, ever-creepy Sutro. Hackman lends his monumental presence and his monumental acting skill to the role of Brill. The two white chicks of Split--Joyce Jameson as Girl-Girl, a jolie laide whom Oates's character hooks up with early on and Joseph--are, respectively, enticingly sexy and enticingly charming. All the backup gang members come through magnificently in the acting department; there's never, ever a false note concerning any of them. As scenarist, Robert Sabaroff comes up with many meaty, pithy exchanges for McClain and the principals in his life to engage in. And director Gordon Flemyng consistently keeps the action moving, never allowing anything to flag (Said scene between Sutro and Ellie deserves special mention, being an entirely blood-curdling combination of adroit camera placement and adroit editing. Also: Apparently Brown and Flemyng didn't exactly click as work colleagues. In his through-the-roof-selling personal/professional memoir, Borgnine reported that the latter, on the final day of shooting, went up to the former and--according to Borgnine, echoing his own feelings--told him: "If you were the last actor on Earth, I would never work with you again").               And now we come to Brown and Carroll. While their acting in The Split, frankly, leaves much to be desired, their stylish good looks, their forceful sexiness, and their awe-inspiring physiques save the day. Their scenes together are aflame with their physical spice and their physical grace. The fact is, The Split is further proof of a point I (I hope) have made before: that theatrical films were at their best when they were a visual medium, when they wholly put aside aesthetic considerations and simply presented gorgeous, muscular/shapely performers whose physical beauty and unyielding sexiness majorly turned us on (To make another point I hope I've made in the past: While television is up to its neck in intellectual and creative barrenness, it shines as a visual medium. There's no blah about the director or about any of its products' Importance. All that's needed is to get whatever Baywatch Babe on-camera showing skin or get Kerry Washington on-camera, period and the winning score is made).                    It was a 1970s writer who asserted that Carroll and her then-Julia-co-star Fred Williamson (remember him?; I didn't think so) "embody perfection." With regard to The Split, it is Carroll and Brown who are the real and the true embodiment of perfection. And are added proof, assuming any more is needed, of the sanctimonious guilt-bingeing and the complete meaningless of the "issue" of "looksism."

#the grasshopper #1968 #Diahann Carroll #Jim Brown #enterpreneur #the split #dvd player #julie harris #football stadium #james whitmore #gene hackman #joyce jameson #gordon flemyng #visual medium #television #julia #fred williamson #perfection

[ds4design]

LIGHTS! CAMERA! NORTON! Three films about the Emperor of the United States

On March 23rd, at San Francisco's historic Roxie theater, three films about the self-proclaimed Norton I, Emperor of the United States, will be screened!

Get your tickets now!

The Emperor’s Bridge Campaign — the San Francisco nonprofit that works to research and document the life and legacy of the San Francisco eccentric and visionary, Emperor Norton — presents a special Emperor-focused film night.

In the middle of the twentieth century, several popular Western-themed American television shows aired full episodes interpreting the story of the San Francisco eccentric and visionary, Emperor Norton.

These included the show Death Valley Days, which aired a Norton episode in 1956, and the more-famous Bonanza, whose Norton episode ran ten years later, in 1966.

Three decades earlier, Columbia Pictures created a series of theatrically released film shorts based on stories highlighted in the syndicated Strange As It Seems comic by John Hix (1907-1944). Hix was the main rival to Robert Ripley, of Believe It or Not! fame.

One of these Columbia shorts, from December 1936, appears to be the earliest dramatic film portrayal of Emperor Norton. (For much more on this film, see the Campaign’s article here.)

Film nerds, take note! The copies of this 1936 film short held in institutional and private archives — including the Library of Congress and the Pacific Film Archive, in Berkeley — are of the Academic Film Company’s 16mm reissue of the film in 1947 for the non-theatrical rental market. This reissue, retitled Emperor Norton, does not include the original Columbia titles.

The Campaign will be showing its own 16mm print of the original 1936 short, including original titles, as it was shown in theaters in early 1937.

All three films are rarely seen on the big screen. Here’s the full roundup:

Emperor Norton the 1st (1956, b/w) — Season 4, Episode 21, of Death Valley Days — 30 mins.

Directed by Stuart E. McGowan. Written by Ruth Woodman. Produced by McCann-Erickson, Inc., for the Pacific Coast Borax Co.

Before George Takei was Sulu and Cesar Romero was the Joker, both actors — and many others who went on to greater fame in other roles — played in episodes of Death Valley Days. This episode, originally aired on 15 June 1956, features Parker Garvie as the Emperor in one of the more historically accurate “teevee Western” renderings of the Norton tale.

Bonus: Includes the fabulously canned and over-earnest commercials for 20 Mule Team Borax detergent and soap that aired with the original.

The Story of Norton I: Emperor of the United States (Columbia Pictures, 1936, b/w) — Part of the Strange As It Seems series created by John Hix — 9 minutes

Produced by Richard C. Kahn. Adapted and written by Sherman Rogers.

A “modern-day” stock trader giving his co-workers an impromptu history lesson is the framing device for a charming series of imagined vignettes from the life of the Emperor.

Includes a comical scene with a character in blackface — unusual for a film of this era.

Among the production credits: The editor of this film, Robert Newman, is the uncle of the singer, songwriter and composer Randy Newman.

The Emperor Norton (1966, color) — Season 7, Episode 23, of Bonanza — 60 minutes

Directed by William F. Claxton. Written by Robert Sabaroff.

As played by Sam Jaffe, the Emperor Norton who is an emergency guest at the Cartwright ranch takes on a vaguely Germanic air in this episode that originally aired on 27 February 1966.

When the Emperor urges Chinese workers to stand up for their rights, a wealthy business owner — played by Parley Baer, familiar to many as the curmudgeonly Mayor on the Andy Griffith Show — brings him up on insanity charges. Ben stands as the Emperor’s lawyer, and Mark Twain shows up as a character witness — but the outcome depends on whether the Emperor’s design for a suspension bridge will actually work.

50% of all proceeds from this screening will benefit The Emperor’s Bridge Campaign.

Members of The Emperor’s Bridge Campaign (Emissaries of the Empire) can get free tickets at the box office on the day of the show. This event is also free or discounted for Roxie members.

LIGHTS! CAMERA! NORTON! at The Roxie