Assignment Earth

Tie into computer and further working our way into the Gary Seven vaults.

Along with extra music there were many extra unused images we simply couldn’t fit.   Of the many manipulations we did there wasn’t really a place in some instances or we had plans of using it later on.   We had images of Roberta in front of the Kremlin.  (Images my brother Michael’s still mad at me for not using.)….Gary Seven in Paris at the Louvre (with, as a joke, Michael placing himself in the background)

I had plans of Gary Seven doing many things we never got around to – or let’s face it, don’t have the time or maybe resources to do.  Having him jump off scaffolds in a “Mannix” type of way, putting him in casinos, at prize fights,…whatever. Explosions and scenes of dessert forts blowing up (evidently from a Peter Sellars movie that some guy in England recognizes and keeps writing me about), and fire balls coming from cave entrances.   All manner of things.

To do all this we had many background images that my friend, “Clifford’s got it” Hale, snatched for me to give us a believable setting to work in.   My eyes to this day scour the back ground sets of old shows such as “Wild, Wild West”, “Hogan’s Heroes”, “Combat”, “Time Tunnel”, Batman” and “The Monkees” to name a few, envisioning  new scenarios to put our hero in, and enlisting the help of my image pick pocketing partner once again.

I really wanted, and always believed we could, manipulate the images from Gary Seven’s sole appearance (as brief as they are) to make more situations and scenes for him to operate in.  I wanted to see him as much as possible.  Kind of like he was doing his own stunts.  Cliff was able to do some nice manipulation of images for us but he suggested we’d need ILM to do all I asked for.

“What you ask for is impossible”.   “No!  There is no try.   Do, or do not”. That’s where my brother Michael came in.

Michael, a musician, and aspiring full time artist (check out some of his stuff – http://www.supervisor194.com/michaelindex.html) set out to make a few fight scenes for us. There was a classic fight scene in the Assignment: Earth episode where Mr. Seven took on a room full of five guys, including Spock and Scotty, and beats the devil out of all of them.   I thought it crucial we use this material that was already there for us.  Long story short, after a lot of thought, I just had a feeling, “You Only Live Twice” (my all time favorite Bond film) might work. The fight moves in the movie match up almost identically to the fight choreography the Star Trek guys had done.   Or close enough.   He had to reconstruct parts of Lansing’s body that were never there – obscured by the transporter console the whole time.  It goes by quickly.  It works well, I think.

Just for kicks I think we used a dungeon scene from a Monkees episode and a torch from a Star Trek episode.   Or maybe it’s the other way around.  One scene’s torch made a better flickering effect than the other…I can’t remember.   Either way, geeky stuff and fun for us.

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The only shot I really didn’t get was my Orson Wells-ian approach to one scene I saw as I was writing the music.

Near the end of the second theme I saw a shot of Gary Seven in my head…

<- close up Gary Seven – he looks up into camera -hair blowing in wind- you realize as camera pulls back he’s on top of a sky scraper holding Isis – camera pulls back farther and farther, out of New York city, up through the sky, pulling back to reveal image of Earth, and even further back into space.>  We cheated a bit.  Still think it can be done my way.   Again, maybe some day.

On a side note I found a film editor through a friend who helped us put it all together and ended up doing the above mentioned shot in a clever way and much easier than what I had envisioned.   But the interesting thing about this guy – Bill Davies is his name – is that he is probably the world’s leading authority, and runs a website about, the only live action movie Dr. Seuss was involved in.   A movie called “The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T”.  I had no knowledge of this crazy, way out there, movie at the time and was surprised I didn’t because it really is a musician’s film.  Lotta music. Some of them jazz standards today. It’s very typical Dr. Seuss and, in my opinion, probably the truest transfer of any of his works, or maybe I should say, the look and feel of the man’s mind, to film.   Kind of a cult film and now I’m a fan.   If you don’t know it visit Bills’ site at Bill\’s Tribute to \”The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T\”