Wednesday, April 15, 2009

image from the original STAR TREK

This creepy image was at the end of every STAR TREK episode as the credits rolled. As a little kid, it always scared me.

14 comments:

Quanta said...

Another connecting threat, if a stretched one, between you and me ... as part of this web of connectivity with others that "we" seem to be building daily.

Funny how the end of TV shows from our childhood stand out in our memory. I always cried when Lassie lifted her/his paw at the end of the show.

Stranger yet, though, is that when I was a (really) little girl my dreams frequently ended with the lion that roared and shook his head at the end of the Metro Goldwyn Mayer films. Not too scary, I must say - but a vivid memory nonetheless:

(www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVEflECtfBM).

Stace

Mac said...

I remember you mentioning this once. I looks a little familiar; I'm sure I saw it during "Trek" credits at some point, even though I never watched the show with any regularity. Good find -- I'm interested in "Gray"-like beings cropping up in pop culture.

Quanta said...

Your post brought back a vivid memory from my childhood that I hadn't thought about for a long time. When I was little, and I mean maybe preschool age, my dreams concluded with the Metro Goldwyn Mayer film ending - you know, the lion tossing his head and roaring a couple of times:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVEflECtfBM

Stace

PS - The MGM ending didn't scare me, but I post this to your musing because it's just another little link (file it under "childhood television images we vividly remember") that connects us.

dudivie said...

I feel strongly that something is going on. But what that might be, seems beyond my ability to solve..men always think unknown is a threat? Just talked to mi little girl of a threat she had, an black animal

THe familiarity is the Skull?

Michael R. MacDonald said...

I always waited for that pic to come up. Loved it. Thought the guy might be quite smart. Big brain and all - hehe

Mike Clelland! said...

In the actual episode where this image came from, this creature is only seen by the Enterprise crew on the big screen on the bridge. And everyone is frightened by the face.

Later, it turns out to be a puppet controlled by a very young Clint Howard (brother of Ron Howard). He plays a sort of harmless cute dwarf, and he used the puppet face to intimidate, because (as he says): "Surely you wouldn't have been frightened by the likes of me."

Michael R. MacDonald said...

A great scene, Mike! I was always amused by that little guy, and even as a kid seemed to think of him as sort of a side-show human being who ended up far from home.

Mac said...

The idea of the Gray being an animatronic device isn't exactly unknown in abductee/UFO lore either.

Jonah said...

"Surely you wouldn't have been frightened by the likes of me."

I'm reminded of one of the closing scenes in the film "Communion", the "Chinese Box" dialog and the removing of the mask revealing um, something else. I suspect that the reality is that the "something else" uses many masks (of the telepathic variety) and that the descriptions of interaction with Nordic type entities may simply be an example of one of them.

I've personally come face to face with one of the "Blue Doctors" my ownself and only for a split second. Even that was too long. It's been 40+ years since and I can still see that face vividly in my minds eye. The Travis Walton case comes to mind as well. Travis's classic "fight or flight" response described in his first encounter with what was probably reality and subsequent interaction with Nordics from then on is a prime example of telepathic "Mask" use.

"Frightening" doesn't really begin to describe the appearance of some of them and if so, mask use -and- the use of surrogates would be logically understandable.

I imagine Spock would approve.

Red Pill Junkie said...

"Later, it turns out to be a puppet controlled by a very young Clint Howard (brother of Ron Howard). He plays a sort of harmless cute dwarf, and he used the puppet face to intimidate, because (as he says): "Surely you wouldn't have been frightened by the likes of me."Considering what Whitely Strieber has written on several occasions, that he felt that during interaction with abductees the Visitors were as afraid as the humans (maybe even more), that idea might not be that far-fetched after all.

Anyway, I've often considered the possibility that the Aliens are some sort of 'avatars' (projections) designed to help the "other" behind these phenomena to interact with us in our level of reality—just as the avatars used by the people who like to hang around in Second Life. That could explain why they act with such 'robotic' manners, or why witnesses describe the entities not being able to bend the knees, etc.

Nick Redfern said...

I think it's LAM...

dbdonlon said...

I don't think it's just grays who are not exactly what they seem to be. I think most anomalous experiences have something hidden within them. The thing I find myself wondering about is this: in each of the paranormal mysteries, once you become interested, there's just enough evidence to keep you interested, but there's never enough to convince a skeptic.

Like some kind of paranormal Godel's theorem, there are those things that exist, but that cannot be proved to exist..

Not that the anomalies aren't proactive to a point. Events keep happening, though for the most part it doesn't amount to more than what you might call in another context "preaching to the choir." The idea of "holding the audience" runs through my head.

Staying with that metaphor: who increases the audience? If it isn't the anomalies themselves, then it must be those who popularize the anomalies. (And glancing at the names posting here, that would include most of us in this thread.) In my own case, I was interested in science fiction and ghost stories long before I experienced anything strange. So it wasn't the strange that built the change in my world view necessary to see the strange.

In moments of paranoia I wonder, have we somehow been recruited for this work? I know that Mike and several others have spoken about a "need" to get the material out there. I can remember when I was pretty young feeling that I had a purpose to fulfill, but I didn't know what it was. I've thought about that a bit recently. Before I could read, I took my parents books and pretended to read them. When it came time to actually learn to read, I learned very quickly and always sought books that were too hard for me so I could learn faster. I did not apply myself to any other subject in that way, and, except for my reading (and later, writing) skills, was a pretty mediocre student. When my grandmother asked me at the age of nine what I wanted to do when I grew up, I said, "be a writer." And the only thing I have ever written about? Anomalies.

I'm going to bet I'm not the only one in this thread with a story like that one.

I started a blog somewhat like this one at one point, but I pulled it down after I had a dream where I was instructed to "run the movie projector faster." I know it might seem silly to make a decision based on a dream, but it felt like someone was making a demand of me without spelling out what the implications were. So I thought, well, I'll just blog about bigfoot, there's no harm in that. Except it turns out bigfoot is weird too..

My question is, do we know what it is that we are doing? Does anyone else feel like they've been given a task without a clear idea of the implications?

Mike Clelland! said...

REPLY to Blogsqatcher:

You have summed up a lot of the strangeness in a few short paragraphs. "Seek and ye shall find" seems relevant.
REPLY to Blogsquatcher:

Thank you.

Unknown said...

Okay... maybe not Exactly the same... but i have always remembered -what i now know to have been a Twilight Zone episode -as being the Very First (?) thing i ever saw on tv. Not entire episode only that a man has been hurt somehow, runs for cover and opens a rectangular patch of skin to reveal that he has GEARS running under it. He is of course shocked and confused. Profound for me. -? I do believe that i understand it now, tho sure am open to thoughts...