Star Trek (The Original Series)

[FedoraFan112390]

For those of you with Golden Era aged parents - say, people who either were in their 40s or 50s by 1969 -
Did your parents watch Star Trek? What did they make of it's vision of the future back then? Star Trek was very ahead of its time in some ways, with a crew which included a black woman, an Asian man, and a Russian man - this during the height of Segregation and the Cold War. What did your folks make of Star Trek, if they watched it?

 

[Fading Fast]

My parents didn't watch it as my Dad was not Science Fiction fan, but I discovered them on re-runs in the early '70s and was blown away. Even as a young kid, the social commentary - mixed race crew, the famous half-black / half-white face one, the society where the rich and successful live in the clouds supported by the mining work done in terrible conditions on the planet below, and others - wasn't lost on me, but what really captured my attention then was the "philosophy."

In one episode the crew goes somewhere where all their wishes and dreams are fulfilled but they end up fighting amongst themselves and aren't happy - a great commentary on if man needs challenges to be satisfied. Other episode - like the one where a former captain tries to recreate the "good" economic results of nazi Germany without the horrible police state, but fails - with the message being absolute power corrupts absolutely - were all mind opening to me as I wasn't being challenged that way from "The Brady Bunch" or "Mary Tyler Moore."

Yes the social commentary, but it was the philosophy - a way of looking at our values, or our dreams or our fears - and using a fictional space society to highlight an aspect of those or an aspect of our value system that was, for me, incredible. And it was a good action adventure yarn for a young boy.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I saw the last few episodes of the network run, which were not the show at its finest, and although I was very interested in space at the time, I was probably too young to grasp the implications of the program. My mother was very sick at the time, and paid very little attention to television. The only thing my grandparents were interested in watching were variety shows and ball games.

I got interested again in Star Trek around 1971 when the reruns showed up locally. I enjoyed Spock the most, and remember being annoyed that the only woman on the bridge, Lt. Uhura, did little more than answer the telephone. My mother still wasn't interested in it, but she would remind me when my "Dr. Spock show" was about to come on.

I rewatched the series on DVD a couple years back and was impressed by how well the first two seasons hold up -- they have their moments of corn and bad acting, but they still stack up better than most sixties TV. The third season, however, is still as bad as I remember it being when I was six.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I watched Star Trek from the very first broadcast - 9/8/66 - when I was 11-1/2. I loved it, and it remains a personal favorite and seminal influence.

My parents watched that first show with me, but they didn't care for it, and I was banished to the upstairs TV for the remainder of the series. They weren't really interested in science fiction, though they'd always watched Twilight Zone. But that was more because to them, it carried on Rod Serling's great writing from the fifties dramatic anthologies they'd loved. They preferred the Irwin Allen SF-lite shows, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost In Space. And they did watch some of the better sixties fantasy series, like Bewitched, and they generally liked war shows, doctor shows, lawyer shows, variety shows, and especially spy shows. We watched all of these: Secret Agent, The Saint, The Avengers, Mission: Impossible, The Prisoner... but they thought The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was dumb, and I watched that one on my own. They'd already burnt out on TV westerns, so while we occasionally watched Gunsmoke, we never watched Bonanza or the others.

So it's kind of unfortunate that they didn't appreciate Star Trek. Both my parents had served in WWII, and they were liberal Democrats who were caught up in the civil rights movement and many of the other progressive causes of the time... so they probably would have loved it if they'd stuck with it.

For what it's worth: Many years later, I showed my dad some of my favorite Next Generation episodes on VHS, and he definitely recognized that they were first-class TV drama with a strong social conscience. But we never went back to watch the original series.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The reruns only lasted two years here, and I was heartbroken one day when I turned on the TV at 5 pm and saw Ron Ely's "Tarzan" instead of Star Trek. I would fool around with the TV and try to pull in Channel 4 from St. John New Brunswick, which showed Trek for quite a long time, and would occasionally be able to watch an episode, but other than that I never saw it again until the 1990s.

I did, however, discover the James Blish tie-in paperback series, and read that entire series during my last years of elementary school and on into junior high. I actually found that I enjoyed them in this format even more than I had the TV series, because there weren't any styrofoam boulders or rubber monsters in the books. I also discovered the behind-the-scenes books about the series, which I really found fascinating -- they were the first insight I had into how television was actually produced, and since I was at the age where you start to seriously question the world around you, they were quite important in the development of my worldview at that age.

I remember particularly reading David Gerrold's book on how he wrote "The Trouble With Tribbles" -- it was the first book I'd ever read *about the process of writing* and it taught me a lot. The point that most caught my attention was how, in Gerrold's first drafts of the script, the Klingons weren't the villians -- a big agribusiness corporation was, poisoning the grain in an effort to destroy a competitor. Gerrold related how he got a memo from the production office advising him that this would have to be changed because "In American television, big business is never the villian." I think reading that was the first moment when I realized that even the entertainment we saw was being used to manipulate us, both commercially and ideologically.

 

[Fading Fast]

Fortunately, the re-runs ran here almost consistently throughout the '70s and early '80s, so I absorbed the show as a kid.

Lizzie's comment, "Your Doctor Spock show" made me think about how many things take on a name of their own inside your family. When we first had fresh mozzarella cheese (which was a big deal for us in the '70s), it became known as "the white cheese" and, as a kid, was known that way in my family from then on. There might even be a new thread idea here?

And to the "can American big business be the villain" comment, American TV today has no such qualms about making big business the villain - I'd say it is almost always the villain now. I joke with my girlfriend that I can normally figure out "who did it" on the TV show "Elementary" (or most mystery shows) by thinking about what big company or business they introduced tangentially early in the episode. I have no problem with this, but like when they would never show big business doing something wrong, now it is almost a nervous tick where big business is the evil doer in almost all TV plots.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Lizzie, I had the same experience with Stephen Whitfield's "The Making of Star Trek", the very first book about Trek, and the first in-depth backstage look at television writing/production that came my way. It was just as the show began syndicated reruns in 1970 that a friend lent me his copy.

It was very influential in my ongoing fascination with film/TV, and absolutely fascinating in how it showed TV production to be a process constantly pitting creativity and vision against budget/studio/network/censors. While some aspects of it rankled in later revisits - all of Gene Roddenberry's quotes being in all-caps like the Word of God in a Bible - it remains a fascinating document of the show's genesis and early production. I still have both my original falling-apart sixties edition and a later reprint.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep, I remember buying a copy of that from a drugstore spinner rack when I was in the seventh grade, and I read it until it fell apart. I think it might have been the very first mass-market book on television writing.

Another one that impressed me was called "Star Trek Lives!," which came out in the mid-seventies, and dealt with the whole phenomenon of "fandom" around the program. It made the point that the fan movement -- "fanzines," conventions, fan fiction, and such things -- were largely driven by young women, which was the very first time this had been true for a science fiction movement. In the Era, science fiction fandom had been overwhelmingly the province of young white men, but "Star Trek" really opened it for the first time to women in large numbers. That may have been its most revolutionary accomplishment.

 

[Fading Fast]

Yep, I remember buying a copy of that from a drugstore spinner rack when I was in the seventh grade, and I read it until it fell apart. I think it might have been the very first mass-market book on television writing.

Another one that impressed me was called "Star Trek Lives!," which came out in the mid-seventies, and dealt with the whole phenomenon of "fandom" around the program. It made the point that the fan movement -- "fanzines," conventions, fan fiction, and such things -- were largely driven by young women, which was the very first time this had been true for a science fiction movement. In the Era, science fiction fandom had been overwhelmingly the province of young white men, but "Star Trek" really opened it for the first time to women in large numbers. That may have been its most revolutionary accomplishment.

I'm am surprised but encouraged by this. While I'm a fan of the show, I don't got to conventions or buy any of the stuff, etc., and just assumed that, as with most Sci-Fy things, it was male dominated. That is great - is it still that way - do women drive all these conventions I hear about? My girlfriend is at least as big a fan of the original Star Trek as I am, but she's lamented to me how none of her girlfriends could care less; whereas, I could chat for hours about it with at least half of my friends.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I was aware that the show had female fans while it was still airing - there were actually a couple of girls in my junior high school who were into it. And there's no question that Trek fandom was more female-driven than other SF properties before it. I attended the second Trek convention in NYC in 1972 - to sell a fanzine that some friends and I put out! - and it was obvious on the convention floor that the show had a strong female fan contingent.

And Lizzie, I believe "The Making of Star Trek" included the blurb "The First Book On How To Write For TV!" on at least one of the covers of the editions I have. A few years later, for a college media course, I wrote a paper called something like "The Profit Motive vs. Creativity in Television Production" using that book as my primary source!

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm am surprised but encouraged by this. While I'm a fan of the show, I don't got to conventions or buy any of the stuff, etc., and just assumed that, as with most Sci-Fy things, it was male dominated. That is great - is it still that way - do women drive all these conventions I hear about? My girlfriend is at least as big a fan of the original Star Trek as I am, but she's lamented to me how none of her girlfriends could care less; whereas, I could chat for hours about it with at least half of my friends.

I've never been to a sci-fi convention, but from what I understand young women are still very well represented. While "Star Trek" is passe among the kids at work, all of them are avid "Doctor Who" fans, another program which since the seventies has had a very strong female fanbase.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Around a decade ago I took my kids to a Stargate SG-1 convention at a NJ hotel. (My son was very into the show at the time, and his sister and I liked it too. I wanted them to have a taste of the SF convention experience, and it didn't disappoint.) There was a roughly a 60/40 M/F split to the attendees.

Of course, today's media landscape is COMPLETLY different from the male-dominated SF ghetto of the fifties and sixties. Now that comics/SF/fantasy are THE mainstream entertainment form, everybody's into it. Those of us who were old-school geeks (reading SF, making Super 8 movies, playing chess, publishing fanzines, etc.) in the pre-home computer era were just a bit ahead of the curve.

 

[Edward]

I know a lot of sci-fi folks; in my experience, the fandom is about evenly split between the genders, though when it comes to the real hardcore, the most full-on are often female. Fandom is a fascinating thing, whether it's sci-fi in general, or a specific series, or Rocky Horror or what have you. I think the best comment on fandom I've ever seen was probably the Galaxy Quest film. There's an early sequence in that which features Sigorney Weaver at a fan convention, surrounded by young ladies dressed as her character. Their costumes vary in quality, in colour, they vary in body shape... the whole thing is beautifully observed.

 

[cm289]

I doubt my golden age grandparents ever watched the show- they were more about Lawrence Welk, Hee Haw, Johnny Carson, etc.

My baby boomer parents weren't into any shows like that either.

My siblings and I grew up watching re-runs (and the cartoons) in the early 70s. While they watched the shows back then, I'm the only one who grew up with a lifelong love of Trek, especially TOS. And I've passed that down that love to my 5yr old son. I started watching reruns with him when he was 2, bought him a Kirk costume, phaser, communicator, model of the Enterprise, you name it, and he loves it (although he calls Spock 'Mr Spot' [emoji23]).

Although occasionally violent, I think TOS is filled with great role models and examples of problem solving through logic, outside-the-box thinking, believing in oneself, command presence, etc. The 'what would Kirk do' philosophy has served me well throughout my life in general, and in competition for job promotions in particular, and I hope it serves him as well.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Fading Fast]

... The 'what would Kirk do' philosophy has served me well throughout my life in general, and in competition for job promotions in particular, and I hope it serves him as well....

Kirk was an incredible bluffer. He used the bluff (the "Corbomite Maneuver" was one of his best) better than anyone and it was always great to watch Spock react as the bluff completely befuddled his super, logic-driven brain. A timely bluff is definitely a "Kirk lesson."

But the one that has served me well is from one of the movies where we learn about the Kobayashi Maru - basically that Kirk as a cadet faced a no-win test and went outside the rules to reprogramed the computer so that he could win it. What I have taken out of it - and can say have used and seen it work - is to try to think about a problem that seems insolvable from a different angle or, more specifically, to challenge the parameters that make it insolvable. Basically, question every parameter, every assumption, every "this can't be changed" and push back on each one - more often than not, something can change and you can solve the problem. Plus you look smart as heck when, in truth, in my small brain, I'm just appling a Kirk Kobayashi Maru lesson.

I hope your son has as much success in his life as I have had in mine applying some "Kirk lessons."

 

[Benzadmiral]

My mother and father were born in 1916 and 1907 (I think) respectively. They liked action shows on TV in the mid-Sixties. We watched The Twilight Zone when I was small, and we tried Outer Limits, etc. U.N.C.L.E. was a big hit with Dad, my younger brother, and me -- but not Mom, who ironically was a James Bond (Ian Fleming's novels) reader. Star Trek we watched in its second season, and a few episodes in the first, enjoying the adventure aspect primarily. Mom's reaction to Trek, though, when I became a bigger fan during its early reruns, was, "All the characters do is talk!"

I pointed out the same thing was true of her drama favorite The Fugitive. "Yes, they talk, but it's what they talk about that's important!"

Lizzie, like you I discovered the James Blish short-story collection adaptations, and still enjoy them. Hard core Trek fans whine that he didn't get the details right, etc. But Blish makes Kirk, from whose viewpoint the adaptations are told, a believable, approachable person with a sense of humor. Blish condenses the stories to their essence and makes them move on the page, especially the adaptations of "Balance of Terror" and "Space Seed." Reading them led me to become a big fan of the series.

And yes, at least in the '70s and '80s, SF and Star Trek conventions had lots of female fans, many quite attractive. I married two of 'em. (Not at the same time, of course.)

 

[FedoraFan112390]

The reason I asked is because I was doing some reading and apparently, at least in some circles, the show (or at least Kirk and Spock) was thought to be "middle aged", a show of the establishment, by the younger audience. That's why Chekov was created, a young Russian guy to attract Liberal young Baby Boomers - they even gave him a haircut just like The Monkees to widen the audience. So, after hearing that, I figured I'd see what the middle aged audiences of that era thought of it.

 

[cm289]

Speaking as someone born in 1970 and who watched it in the 1970s, I liked all the characters, but the show was always about Kirk and his relationship with Spock and McCoy. I liked the gravitas of the senior officers.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Doctor Strange]

FedoraFan, you're forgetting that Star Trek was not a remotely popular show during its original airing. It never got good ratings, and never got the play in the press that (at least short-term) big hits like Batman or U.N.C.L.E. did. The show only had a cult following (a term that didn't exist back then) during its original run. It didn't make a big impression on mainstream culture until it became ubiquitous in rerun syndication in the seventies.

It's true that Chekov was added to "bring in the youth audience", but the show already had a fascinating, offbeat character in Mr. Spock. Who - like Ilya on U.N.C.L.E. - quickly overshadowed the designated lead for a significant chunk of the audience... especially the young and female segments. Of course, one of the major genius aspects of the show was the relationship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy... whose very different aspects reflected multiple (correct) POVs, providing more complexity than the simple duality of cop shows and westerns.

While Starfleet's semi-military aspects might have seemed a turn-off to the young audience, the show's overall creativity, bold ability to tackle real issues via SF disguise, "fascinating" co-lead, and way-better-that-what-came-before effects work and production design made it irresistible to teens. It wasn't until things got ugly in 1968 and 1969 that Kirk began to appear to be an Establishment rep. And the show tackled that head on in the infamous, terrible-but-well-intentioned space hippies episode.

It's also worth recalling that before the later sixties, young folks had been steeped in the WWII experiences of their parents, and it was entirely possible to still be impressed with that war while thinking that Vietnam was a disastrous mistake. (My own parents, both of whom had been sergeants in the military during WWII, were against Vietnam right from the beginning.) And "baby boomers" ran the gamut, with the leading ones born in the forties having had different experiences than those born in the late fifties and early sixties. There were vast differences in experience depending on where you lived. It was far from the monolithic single entity that it may appear to be looking back from today, where everyone interested in the same thing can be surrounded by like-minded "friends" all the time. (We original Trek fans had to invent that with fan clubs, fanzines, pen pals, conventions, etc.)

Anyway, my main point is that you're overthinking this. Trek just wasn't popular enough in its original run to have made the impression on much of the WWII generation that you're asking about.

 

[Big J]

The thing I always liked most about Star Trek was that the senior officers were always the ones taking the risks, and beaming down themselves.

Some one wrote a really good Ph.D paper about how Star Trek presents a utopian earth civilization free from racism and class divisions on a mission of peace created at a time when the US had race riots and was into Vietnam and the Cold War, as compared to Japan's Space Battleship Yamato anime of the same era- an era of peace in Japan, but a Japanese cartoon about unrelenting race war in space. Inversions, I guess.