Star Trek Humor

STAR TREK - : The Comedy, The Parodies in the '70s

Star Trek Bloopers were compiled from slips-ups, flubs and tossed footage during filming of TOS. Some of this was calculated: Shatner in particular was like the class clown on the set and liked to pull jokes. Some of the mistakes made during a 'take' were saved (printed) and later put together with some jokey narration, usually of a sarcastic nature, so it could be shown for the amusement of cast & crew during their X-Mas parties back then in the sixties. It was never intended to go beyond that but, of course, the footage eventually made its way to the public, via conventions and so on. I even remember someone bringing some of this footage to my high school one day in the late seventies. There was just under 10 minutes of footage per season - at least, that's what has survived to this point.

The mistakes usually involved the sliding doors not opening at the proper moment or one of the actors flubbing his line. The most famous slip up was probably during filming of Bread and Circuses: one of the Roman cops has a bad slip & fall as he's running into a scene. Oh, yeah, and then Ted Cassidy (Ruk in What Are Little Girls Made Of?), dressed for his role in the film MacKenna's Gold, shows up and carries off Capt. Kirk. There was also some sneaky editing involved, combining shots from 2 different episodes, for instance. The quality of this footage is noticeably bad, but these bloopers were really popular in the seventies, partly because fans could only get to see them at conventions; in the eighties, some footage was released on various cheap VHS tapes.



Nowadays, one can view these on YouTube. Bloopers from season one:



Bloopers from season two:


additional season one bloopers:

rare 3rd season Bloopers: Star Trek BLOOPERS #3




Also, nowadays, fans on YouTube basically copy these old Blooper reels with their own funny creations.