According to Fontana, the pink coloration of the Kzinti uniforms and ship in the episode was a result of Director Hal Sutherland being color blind, and thus unable to discern them as anything but shades of gray. [3] However, storyboard artist/character designer Bob Kline laid the blame on color director Irvin Kaplan. “Pink equals Irv Kaplan,” shared Kline… “Irv was in charge of ink and paint, coloring the various characters and props (and he would do it himself in his office, he would sit down with a cel and paint it). He was also referred to by many people there as the purple and green guy. You’ll see it in a lot of scenes, purple and green used together – that was one of his preferences. He made dragons red, the Kzintis’ costumes pink. It was all Irv Kaplan’s call. He wasn’t listening to anyone else when he picked colors or anything.”
As a young person watching TAS in first run the colours never bothered me, they were actually very on trend at the time.
It was the early 70s (The Slaver Weapon first ran in December 1973) and the mod colours had progressed to the bright Panetone red, blue, gold and orange of mid 60s colour television to a broader mix that included ‘hot’ and fluorescent colours, especially ‘hot pink’.
The episode with the Kzinti in it was called “The Soft Weapon”, and was based on a short story by Larry Niven. If the ST producers had any guts, they wouldn’t have replaced Nessus (a Pierson’s Puppeteer) with Spock.
While I would have been curious to see a Puppeteer, given the role of the Kzinti aggression in motivating Dr. Keniclius 5 to create the giant Spock (TAS ‘The Infinite Vulcan’), it was important for TAS to show us a direct interaction between Spock and the Kzinti in ‘The Slaver Weapon.’
Not to mention that Niven may have needed to make some changes for his adaptation of his story “The Soft Weapon” to get the original story credit.
I’m just glad that the Kzinti are acknowledged as canon in the franchise again.
Edited: just recalled that the reproductive imperatives of Pierson’s Puppeteer’s are enough to make the biological imperatives of the SNW Gorn seem less monstrous. What was Niven thinking?
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