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Description
Scanned and inked, but I left this one panel out where a character is explaining the original show's premise. Dunno if this crossed my mind at the time when I nixed it, but that's weak parody, to simply mock the premise. The best of Mel Brooks rolls with the premise. If you parody the Flintstones, the worst thing you could do is have them say "look at us, we're dressed like we're cavemen but we have modern appliances! Ain't that silly?"

Instead, push the premise into new territory. For example, the first Star Wars film hooked the audience with the huge enemy ship that drops into view. The shot was a masterpiece in scale and proportion. Mel Brooks' Spaceballs opens with an enemy ship so huge that it keeps going and going and going, and going some more, until we reach the end and see a license plate that says "We Brake For Nobody".

Spaceballs doesn't denigrate the original concept, which is rebels on the run from a powerful empire, but rather its agents of the empire hatch their own ridiculous scheme which is then thoroughly ridiculed (stealing all the air from Druidia. Got that?)

Simply goofing on the source is more typical for a lazy old Mad magazine parody. Some talented artist like Mort Drucker would draw fantastic likenesses of the Star Trek crew, and then copy would be pasted over them saying something like "look, we're spacemen! Ain't that silly?"

Description
Scanned and inked, but I left this one panel out where a character is explaining the original show's premise. Dunno if this crossed my mind at the time when I nixed it, but that's weak parody, to simply mock the premise. The best of Mel Brooks rolls with the premise. If you parody the Flintstones, the worst thing you could do is have them say "look at us, we're dressed like we're cavemen but we have modern appliances! Ain't that silly?"

Instead, push the premise into new territory. For example, the first Star Wars film hooked the audience with the huge enemy ship that drops into view. The shot was a masterpiece in scale and proportion. Mel Brooks' Spaceballs opens with an enemy ship so huge that it keeps going and going and going, and going some more, until we reach the end and see a license plate that says "We Brake For Nobody".

Spaceballs doesn't denigrate the original concept, which is rebels on the run from a powerful empire, but rather its agents of the empire hatch their own ridiculous scheme which is then thoroughly ridiculed (stealing all the air from Druidia. Got that?)

Simply goofing on the source is more typical for a lazy old Mad magazine parody. Some talented artist like Mort Drucker would draw fantastic likenesses of the Star Trek crew, and then copy would be pasted over them saying something like "look, we're spacemen! Ain't that silly?"