10 Other Times Star Trek Used The Vasquez Rocks

8. Friday’s Child - Star Trek: The Original Series

Friday's Child Star Trek
CBS Media Ventures

After a threefer in Season 1 (and a round of budget cuts for Season 2), The Original Series would make one more visit out to Vasquez Rocks and stage it all from a totally different angle. Friday’s Child remains my favorite undervalued and overlooked The Original Series episodes for so many reasons, so much McCoy, McCoy fully taking his place structurally in the Trek Trinity, McCoy actually gives the landing party briefing (we actually SEE a landing party briefing!), Scotty in command and to the rescue, a laughing Flintstones ha-ha ending for the ages, “Leonard James Aka-ar”, and, of course, two words: Julie Freakin’ Newmar. 

Thank you, Dorothy DC Fontana!

On the downs, though, those tall walking tassle-carpets as alien warriors look like they are burning up in that heat, but hey, you can’t have everything! 

That’s WHY, despite those tent camp scenes obviously filmed on a stage, shooting the overland pursuit and Our Heroes’ strategy banter over two long days at Vasquez Rocks adds so much scope to this one, and there was even a high-tech avalanche! 

These Capella IV scenes are actually across the main park road, opposite the main rocks and their backside, which are all carefully kept out of frame. Get to the site yourself with some guidance, and you realize just how compact all that location work was done: so much done with opposite angles, and close-ups on a rock wall and faux-cave entrance that all look far bigger onscreen— the magic of Hollywood, on a budget! 

But still, it’s another case where you too can bring along your own flip-top communicators, and imagine you’re hyper-frequency stopping some rebel alien pursuers right in their tracks!

Contributor
Contributor

Back when nerds and geeks were just called "hobbyists," Larry's ninth-grade science teacher ended a bewildering conversations with him about Halkans by finally saying, "Oh Larry — don't tell me you don't know Star Trek!"— along with a commandment to go home and begins watching the daily after-school rerun. The rest is history — well, future history, anyway. Larry had always been a NASA kid and a history fan (not so much sci-fi), so Star Trek fit right in: for the phenomenon that was worldbuilding before the term was invented, Larry felt passion-called to take up "backgrounding" and gap-filling before the term "retcon" was invented. Star Trek is fun and inspiring, but it doesn't pay the bills —at least in those days— but after college and work in theatre and print news, Larry somehow managed to combine both fields with his non-fiction Trek fandom and created the monster that today is Dr. Trek. His self-published, pre-Internet star charts and TNG Concordance were precursors to the official Stellar Cartography map set and the bestseller TNG Companion, after a move to Hollywood /SoCal in the 1990s boom years. Add in a stint as managing editor of official ST Communicator magazine, the first editor and later content producer of the original startrek.com, and the franchise consultant for everything from the Star Trek World Tour to the storied Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas. When Star Trek went wandering in the wilderness for the first time in 18 years amid the "Paramount divorce" of 2005-06, so did Larry — until, finally, the entrepreneur web world eventually found a path and a way to stay afloat. Since then, Larry's "Trekland" has come to mean more media projects and podcast/streaming alongside the old standbys like convention guest speaking and even text writing. Sure, there's The Trek Files for Roddenberry, his own Trekland Tuesdays Live, and Dr. Trek;s Second Opinion reaction shows — but that passion for spotlighting and archiving the creatives of Trek across all arenas and eras still drives him to pioneer experiences like the monthly backstage Portal 47 features, and the Trekland Treks day tours of Trek location sights. And now ... in-depth Dr. Trek turns for TrekCulture, too!