How to celebrate three years of Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner? It’s a no-brainer.
We’ll discuss the third season opener of “Star Trek,” the original series: Captain Kirk and crew scramble to recover their unflappable first officer’s noodle in “Spock’s Brain” (1968).
Widely reviled as one of the worst “Star Trek” episodes ever made, the subject is guaranteed to spark a lively conversation, with plenty of digressions and not a few laughs.
Get ready for another year of mindless chatter, as Roy and I put our heads together for “Spock’s Brain.” Your gray matter is required in the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., at a special time, THIS MONDAY EVENING AT 7:00 EDT!
I am very sorry to learn that Gerald Fried has died.
Fried was the composer of nearly 300 film and television scores.
A schoolmate of Stanley Kubrick, he provided the music for the director’s earliest projects (up until “Spartacus”). The best known of these are “The Killing,” with Sterling Hayden, and “Paths of Glory,” with Kirk Douglas.
His fruitful collaborations with producer David L. Wolper yielded “Birds Do It, Bees Do It,” which earned Fried an Academy Award nomination, and the landmark miniseries “Roots,” which won him an Emmy.
He composed original music for five episodes of “Star Trek, in its original series incarnation, including those for fan favorites “Shore Leave” and “Amok Time” (source of the much-parodied “Star Trek fight music”). Selections from these scores were recycled in subsequent installments of the series.
He also contributed to “Riverboat,” “Shotgun Slade,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” “Mission: Impossible,” and many others.
Between 1948 to 1956, Fried was principal oboist of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the New York Little Orchestra.
His final film project was the science fiction parody “Unbelievable!!!!” in 2020. In his later years, he also wrote screenplays.
In 2021, we were very lucky to have him as a guest on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Roy characterizes his appearance as a very special interview. I concur. He impressed me as a kind and generous man.
At the time of his death, Fried was 95-years-old. R.I.P.
Fried performs music from three of his classic “Star Trek” scores – including the iconic fight music from “Amok Time”:
Finnegan
Ruth
Spock vs. Kirk
“Paths of Glory”
“Birds Do It, Bees Do It”
Fried and family perform music from “Roots”
Gerald Fried conversing with us on “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner”
In 2016, Pacific Opera Project boldly went where no opera company went before. But since I’ve been caught in a wormhole, I guess, I am only just now catching up with POP’s bridge-rocking spin on Mozart’s comic singspiel “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” presented “Star Trek” style.
In Mozart’s original, Belmonte, a Spanish nobleman, attempts to rescue his beloved from the seraglio of Pasha Selim, a scenario that would have capitalized on the 18th century European fascination with orientalism, with the added savor of salaciousness in setting the piece in a harem.
Now, Belmonte is reimagined as Captain Kirk (replete with Shatnerisms), his servant Pedrillo is Mr. Spock, Constanze is Lt. Uhura, and Blonde is the iconic Star Trek “green girl.” The Ottomans? They’re all Klingons. There’s even an appearance by the Gorn!
Mozart is given an assist on a couple of occasions by Alexander Courage, whose music was featured prominently in the original television series (along with that of Fred Steiner, Gerald Fried, and George Duning, among others).
Unusually for opera, the singers are all miked, but I assume it’s more for documentary purposes than for amplification, since there’s another performance posted on YouTube with the same cast without the mikes, and it’s very difficult to make out the dialogue.
I imagine this would have been a gas to see live. On video, you have to make the extra leap of imagining yourself in the house.
Mozart and “Star Trek?” Salieri would have been so envious.
We regret to announce that Patrick Read Johnson (pictured left) has had to postpone his visit on tonight’s Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. The program has been rescheduled for two weeks from today, Friday, February 10, at 7:30 p.m. EST. So mark your calendars. We’ll be talking ‘70s, “Star Wars,” Super-8 filmmaking, and Johnson’s subsequent experiences in Hollywood, including his new film, 18 years in the making, 5-25-77. There are also rumblings that we may get a virtual glimpse into the “Pat Cave.”
Next week, Jeffrey Morris (pictured right), of FutureDude Entertainment, will return to talk about his new project, “The Eagle Has Landed,” a documentary about the iconic “Space: 1999” spacecraft. We’ll also hear more about his upcoming film “Persephone.” That will be next Friday, February 3, also at 7:30 p.m.
And don’t forget: Roy will be joined by Rachel Hasenauer-Thrower, Edwin Thrower, and Stefanie Gangone this Sunday, for a preview of Trek Long Island, a “Star Trek” event scheduled for May 20 & 21 at the Hyatt Regency in Hauppauge, NY. That conversation will take place on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. EST.
All shows will be livestreamed on Facebook, YouTube, etc.
For tonight, enjoy your “found time.” Have a great evening, and keep on sighing for “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.”
I don’t claim to be an authority on the matter, but it seems like in the original “Star Trek” series, the Starship Enterprise went back to Earth like every other week. But mostly it was the crew encountering worlds that, for whatever reasons, developed into parallels of different periods of Earth’s history. So we got replica-Earths populated by plague-resistant children, Kirk and Spock battling Nazis, and Vic Tayback as a gangster in pinstripes.
But the first time the Enterprise went back to 20th century Earth for REAL (don’t worry, I know it’s fiction) was in the first season episode “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” (1967). Not to spoil anything, but this is the episode that introduces the “slingshot effect,” a convenient physics loophole later exploited in the movies.
Roy and I will attempt to perform the maneuver, in order to erase your memory of our original plan to cover “The Day After Tomorrow” (1975) – Gerry Anderson’s TV pilot that went nowhere – and to give the illusion that we are thorough, thoughtful programmers. Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be a lot easier just to employ a Jedi mind trick?
Be that as it may, we’re changing the program and moving it to a different night this week. I hope you’ll join us in the comments section for a discussion of “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. We’ll still be screwed up from the time-change, when we livestream on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, this SUNDAY EVENING AT 7:00 EST!
