Marc Cushman > Quotes

“It’s easy to underestimate how profound and holistic Roddenberry’s vision of the techscape of the future was. By today’s standards, the available technology of 1964 was downright primitive. Doors did not open automatically when we approached them. The first handheld calculator was still in the future, as were microwave ovens and cell phones. 1964 was a year before most Americans had even heard of a place called Vietnam, five years before man walked on the moon, 25 years before anyone ever surfed the Internet. Your phone had a curly cord, and the new innovation of “touchtone” dialing was merely a year old. Even the television sets that viewers watched would be considered positively prehistoric today. Most TVs were black-and-white models, and the majority of those sets had no remote control. There was no cable or satellite; rabbit ears and roof-top antennas were the norm. The world looked, and was, different.”
― Marc Cushman, These are the Voyages: TOS Season One

“Bruce Mars said, “It’s been 45 years ago and I still get 5-to-10 fan letters every single month from people who were born only 20 to 30 years ago. Just the other day I got an envelope in the mail with a couple photos of Finnegan, and the fellow asked me to sign them. And get this, he’s 17! He says he and his friends watch the show on DVD and he says, ‘We say the lines along with you.’ But everything is connected. When something is meaningful, it just stays alive.” (113a)”
― Marc Cushman, These are the Voyages - TOS: Season Two

“I am pleased to note on Page 72 that Captain Kirk finally prevails because he is a good kisser. Physical prowess, intellect, will-power -- all these are of no avail when compared with the strength of Captain Kirk’s bee-stung lips. With lips such as his, one could win the universe. And lose a series.”
― Marc Cushman, These are the Voyages - TOS: Season Two

“In 1991, while talking with writer Ed Gross, Fred Freiberger summed up his agony over Star Trek with a joke, saying, “I thought the worst experience of my life was when I was shot down over Nazi Germany. A Jewish boy from the Bronx parachuted in to the middle of 80 million Nazis. Then I joined Star Trek. I was only in a prison camp for two years, but my travail with Star Trek has lasted 25 years ... and still counting.”
― Marc Cushman, These Are the Voyages - TOS: Season Three (These Are The Voyages: The Original Series

“Regarding the identifying imprint of NCC, Jefferies had very specific reasons for his choices. The letter “N,” under international aviation agreements, designated registration within the United States. “CC” (or “CCCC”) identified aircraft from the Soviet Union. Jefferies, believing that a venture of this magnitude would have to be the result of a United Earth, wanted the letters combined. Roddenberry agreed. As for “1701,” Jefferies didn’t want to use any numerals on the spaceship that would be hard to read at a distance and therefore eliminated threes, fours, sixes, eights and nines.”
― Marc Cushman, These are the Voyages: TOS Season One

“He later said, “I remember there was some chicken -- some killer fowl -- being locked in some cell somewhere, and I’m talking to this stuntman -- it’s crazy, me talking to this Janos Prohaska, [who was] Hungarian or something... [saying], ‘Janos, okay that’s good, baby, now try this.’ And there’s this big chicken -- this killer chicken -- or some equivalent. I mean, it was nuts.” (26-3)”
― Marc Cushman, These are the Voyages: TOS Season One

“The reason a shuttlecraft was not available to retrieve the landing party is that Desilu decided to defer construction of the life-size prop and its corresponding miniature until it was known if the series would be picked up for the balance of the season.”
― Marc Cushman, These are the Voyages: TOS Season One