For Trekgeezer: How did this wind up in the SA Film Archives?

[Trevor]

 

Checking through our catalogue cards the other day, I came across a card marked "Star Trek". I requested the reel and it was a 16mm copy of the Star Trek episode The Immunity Syndrome, in good condition.

It's great to have but I wonder (1) How did it get here (2)What Trekgeezer would think about it and (3) what's it worth?

 

[trekgeezer]

I'd be hard pressed to tell you what it's worth, most of my dealings with memorabilia are with action figures, toys, and Hallmark Ornaments.

It's quite interesting to find in the South African archives though.  I wonder if it was used for broadcast television?

It is one of the goofier episodes (the galaxy is invaded by a giant energy sucking amoeba), not to say it is bad, just has a goofy premise. Some good Spock and Bones interaction in it.

I'll ask around and see if I can come up with a figure on what it would be worth.

[trekgeezer]

From a little research I think I found out that the film print probably isn't worth much monetarily. I couldn't find any info about Star Trek prints, but there were lots of othere 60's shows with prints on eBay.  Most running from $19 -$49 .

I did learn where those prints came from. That's how they distributed syndicated shows back in the 70's. I got this little excerpt off a film and processing board.

The shows were delivered to the TV stations on 16mm film and after splicing in commercials, also on 16mm, the TV station would broadcast the show through something called a film chain, which was basically a live TV camera that looked through the lens of a 16mm projector and converted the frames of film it saw into television signals which were then broadcast from the station antenna. So TV viewers probably saw these shows in grainy, scratched, 16mm with added fuzz from the antennas that one needed to watch television in those days.

Another thing that happened to these films was that they got edited to fit in more commercials.  A full episode of Star Trek ran for 51 minutes in it's original run. After they went into syndication as much as 9 minutes has been edited out of them for the addition of commercials.  A typical episode of an American "hour long" drama is really only 42 minutes of show and 18 minutes of commercial.  In it's last two seasons Star Trek: Enterprise was cut down to 38 minutes by UPN.

[Killer Bees]

Trevor,

When you said "SA" Film Archives, I thought you meant South Australia, not South Africa  *lol*

[Trevor]

  Thanks for all that, Trek: karma for you.

The print we have doesn't appear to be longer than the time you stated so it probably has been cut in some way and I have a funny feeling that it came from the Chamber of Mines material which we have a lot of here. TV was banned in South Africa up until 1975 so they must have bought up 16mm reels of just about anything to keep their workers entertained.

Thanks again, my friend. 

Killer Bees: