We're not sure what Sulu was talking about, but ... OOPS!! The telecine operator clearly got very excited about it! Subscribe to us on RU-vid and follow us on twitter @thetvmuseum for more goodies.
For those who don't know the cause, as the US and UK systems were different, the US had to transport film copies that can snap or wear down, in order for it to be compatible. What happened at that part, is that the film snapped in two, therefore the Temporary Fault occurred, as the film went out of control, so they had to align it and keep it stable.
Holy bantha, that was a really disturbing error, imagine you're watching Star Trek on BBC 1 in early '85, and all of a sudden the show abruptly stops in the middle and you see pitch blackness with occasional parts of the film strip in dead silence! Even at 20, I still feel uneasy whenever I watch this error, especially in the dark, it makes you feel like a jumpscare might happen. And this is coming from someone whose father recently started binge-watching episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation!
The BBC used to show a re-edited version for the BBC or by the BBC where the credits started the show, rather than the opening scene. The original US prints have the opening scene or prelude scene then the credits ;-) It was the BBC's own edit that came undone! LOL
I believe this is known as a 'cold opening' and was popular in American shows. The BBC didn't like that for some reason and frequently edited shows to have the opening titles first!
@@matthewlittledyke6494 I wish we had more of those little messages nowadays. Now it's just music and a picture here in the US. We need stuff like the UK has sometimes.
For those of you who don't know the episode, it's "Return of the Archons". Sulu and a crewmember beamed down to a planet, and Sulu got zapped by a law-enforcer, turning him into a docile slave of the planet's population.
They probably used tape. Splicing films with tape was easier than cement, though they probably just ran the film a bit on the take-up leader so they can take care of it later.
16th January - my birthday... as an avid Star Trek fan I would have tuned in to watch it for sure... but as I can't remember this incident, I must have been out and about. To tell you the truth, I would rather have stayed in to watch this on the telly!
Back in this era, imported US TV shows to Britain had to be provided usually on film copies, as the US television system was different to the UK system. In the US they used 525 line NTSC colour whereas Britain used the 625 line Pal colour. This meant that every US TV import to the BBC & ITV had to be usually on 35mm/16mm film or transferred to 625 line which was more expensive. So these cheap film prints easily wore down over the years & could snap, which is what happened here
Also, didn't the BBC edit the episodes to move the opening titles to before the 'cold open' as was standard in the UK? Seems like the tape holding the splice probably came away 😅
@@watmun I never understood why the BBC edited American shows that way (even Miami Vice got the same treatment, plus numerous MV episodes were either edited down or not shown at all).
@@martoto77 BBC started airing Star Trek in 1969 and they had to use film copies then, as the US colour TV system is incompatible with the UK system, so 35mm film was the only way US shows could be aired on UK TV at the time.
@@johnking5174 Yeah I know. But even if there wasn’t a tv standards difference, film was still far more cost effective at that time. It was more likely 16mm in most cases too.
Weird looking at older technical faults compared to modern day. Not screen freezing, no audio buffering. Just a tape roll malfunction and a distorted audio.
They telecined film live? I thought it was all transferred to tape prior to broadcasting! It's crazy, you can actually see more than a few of the film perforations but the cells were black, nothing printed on them. What happened? Was that the end of a reel?
It was because they would edit the title sequence to before the cold open to fit with normal UK shows. I think the edit they made, with extra black screen just came undone 😂😂
Wow. That’s amazing. I’d never have guessed it hadn’t been transferred first (always just assumed I guess) but with VT equipment not as sophisticated as these days (as well as not exactly having dozens in the BBC to do the transfers) it makes sense. Just adds another level of respect
The Return of the Archons is the episode and I taped it on timer .... the tape ended before the episode ended because of the delay! So double whammy for me lol!
As originally made and supplied to the BBC, Star Trek opened with a teaser scene before the title sequence. Originally, after Sulu says "Paradise!", it would have been the title sequence - so scene A, then titles, then scenes B, C, D and so on. The BBC chose to edit every episode to swap around the teaser scene and title sequence, to make it more a conventional British TV structure - titles, scene A, scene B, scene C and so on. That meant physically cutting the 35mm film and then sticking it back together, and in this instance, the join between scene A and scene B broke as it went through the telecine.
Basically before TV channels used to store the shows on PC’s because they weren’t powerful enough. They used to use Betamax tapes and the Betamax tape snapped in half when putting the Betamax tape into the player. Thankfully they had a backup of the show on another tape or the episode would have been lost
@@KezKaz 😆 Good try but not quite! In the 1980s TV shows that weren't live were transmitted one of four ways - from 2-inch videotape, 1-inch videotape, 35mm film or 16mm film. Programmes made entirely on film were almost always transmitted direct from the film rather than making a videotape copy, because (a) it meant keeping within union rules for minimum hours of employing film-based technicians and electronic video-based technicians (and them not crossing into each others' domains), and (b) the picture quality was believed to be better not introducing a generation of copy loss. PC-based programme servers were still about 15 years away at this point. Even in the 90s and into the mid-late 2000s, programmes were still regularly transmitted from tape, either from an analogue component format like Betacam SP, or a digital format like D-1, 2, 3 or 5 - or Digital Betacam (DigiBeta for short). Those tape formats were cassette-based, the smaller cassettes actually being physically identical to a domestic Betamax cassette but using a different tape formulation and recording format, but there were also larger cassettes that could be inserted into the same machines which gave longer playing times.
0:23 "Paradise!" BBC: Sorry, no paradise for you! (Film breaks down) And that's how they never got the paradise (Note i don't know what they do onto start trek so don't ask me about start trek because I know zero, this was a made-up thing with the no one meme template)
Why would they? Transmitting direct from film had been around longer than tape, and open reel tape was every bit as fragile film. Breakdowns were commonplace.
TV was still quite heavily unionised at the time, and union rules stipulated that programmes delivered on film had to be transmitted from film. And at the time, it was simply more convenient to do it that way anyway - why tie up TK and VTR channels transferring shows from film to tape when they can just as easily be broadcast direct from film?
The BBC reedited the program. In America the prelude (the end of which we saw here) came first, then the opening credits. In Britain they reversed it to have the credits first, then the prelude, then directly into act 1. That edit required cutting and taping the film. The film broke right at the end of the prelude where the film had been rearranged and taped into place. Everything was done manually in those days with little to no automation - far less than in the U.S., anyway, because of the greater power of the labor unions. Film splices occasionally break in the telecine and get broadcast nationwide. As for the other part of your comment, NBC and Paramount aren't just two-bit players in the television industry. They know what quality film is and have the means to use it. International sales are also extremely important to the American television industry, so the idea that cheap film would be used by major corporations doesn't make sense. I'm afraid your jibe against NBC is, to coin a phrase, fake news.
The film snapped. US imports to the UK back then were provided on 35mm film, as the US had a different colour TV system which was incompatible with the UK system.
