Quote:
Originally Posted by timun
There's a silly sort of irony that the transporter as a narrative device was created in the first place to save money on otherwise having to create props/sets for shuttlepods that would bring our intrepid "away teams" to the surfaces of exotic planets.
Then they went ahead and created shuttlecraft anyway, because it served a narrative purpose in the TOS episode "The Galileo Seven".
Then the writers started finding other excuses to use shuttles, which made no narrative sense whatsoever.  |
The thing is...at some point they were a Sunk-cost. You made shuttles already, may as well use them, they're a neat prop and, to a degree, it gets your characters alone and off the ship but not on an expensive 'planetary' set.
Star Trek has been a budgetary cluster-fata since Day 1. When they thought it was going to be a pokey little 'Wagon-Train Through Space' show and threw them a few bucks here and there and somehow they just kept getting more and more budget.
Still not a lot! But more than they were supposed to.
And the Trek team just kept on finding ways to do more with less and then get more but maintain that ethos.
"Well dammit Jim! I'm a Director not a Producer! We built some Shuttles we'd better goddamn use them!"
