Star Trek

[scottyrocks]

I like the theme song and opening graphics from Enterprise.

The montage begins with the earliest days of travel and exploration, works its way through the recent past and present day, and then moves into the future, shows the first matter/anti-matter engined craft launched from a space station, and culminating with the first pre-Kirk 'real-time' version chronological Enterprise used in this show.

I actually have the full version of the song on my flash drive. I chose it for our father/daughter dance at her Sweet-16 eight years ago.

 

[Edward]

I think you must be the only person who liked the song!

I didn't see much of Enterprise due to its awkward timeslot when it was shown in the UK. I must go back to it, though - I did enjoy what I saw of it.

 

[Blowtorch]

I love the original tv series, don't care for much else with the franchise name slapped on it, although the most recent couple of movies have been good I thought

 

[LizzieMaine]

I lost track of "Enterprise" after the third season -- I got sick that year and pretty much lost track of everything -- but from what I've read, the fourth season was actually quite a bit better than the first three. With the exception of the series finale, which I did see, and which was uniquely awful. Let's commemorate the end of the series by turning into an episode of TNG.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Say, what you want. John de Lancies "Q" is one of the most kicking roles ever beeing on screen. He didn't play "Q", He WAS "Q".

Protoype of acting:

That's real acting, german actors were never able to do!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Q: You hit me! Picard never hit me!
Sisko: I'm not Picard.

 

[Zombie_61]

I like the theme song and opening graphics from Enterprise...

Opening graphics, yes. Theme song, not so much. The song itself isn't bad and would have been suitable for a nighttime family drama, but I felt it was wrong for a Star Trek series.

 

[scottyrocks]

Not many people like the song. I liked it in combination with the visuals and think it tells a great (back) story. I also like it all by itself.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Say, what you want. John de Lancies "Q" is one of the most kicking roles ever beeing on screen. He didn't play "Q", He WAS "Q".

I agree. At first I didn't like the "Q" episodes, but the character was so well done that I eventually couldn't help but enjoy them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The episode where Q gives Picard his life to live over again and he ends up a boring little grey man in a boring little grey job was really quite good, and funny just in the right spots. "Flowers for John Luke Pickerd!"

 

[CBI]

The original series hands down for its camp. I dont really like Sci-Fi that takes itself too seriously. I began watching the original as a young kid at the time of it's first syndication/re-run phase. I laughed at the styrofoam boulders and rubber monsters from the very beginning - LOVE IT!!!!!!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Q-Borg, doubled-harmful...

 

[Bushman]

Say, what you want. John de Lancies "Q" is one of the most kicking roles ever beeing on screen. He didn't play "Q", He WAS "Q".

John de Lancie has made a very good career out of essentially playing the same character across various media for the last 30 years.

 

[Frunobulax]

John de Lancie has made a very good career out of essentially playing the same character across various media for the last 30 years.

His role in Breaking Bad as the sympathetic father of a drug addict was a departure.


Sent directly from my mind to yours.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I want to put in a word here for the most interesting Trek book I've ever come across, David Gerrold's "The World of Star Trek," published in paperback in 1973. I remember reading this book as a teenager but it was a borrowed copy and I'd never found another one for myself until last week, when I picked one up and reread it in an afternoon.

It's the most honest look at the phenomenon of TOS ever written -- not from a fanboy backstage-trivia/continuity geek perspective, but from the perspective of what worked and what didn't in the series *as a television show.* Gerrold wrote "The Trouble With Tribbles," and the original story for "The Cloud Minders," and had some very strong opinions on why the series took a decline from the second half of the second season thru the entire third season, and the facts he offers back them up. It wasn't budget, it wasn't scheduling, it was plain and simple laziness and disinterest on the part of the production and writing teams -- a willingness to discard established characterization in favor of whatever the immediate demands of the plot were. By the third season, Gerrold contends the characters called "Kirk," "Spock," "McCoy," and "Scotty" were cardboard caricatures sleepwalking thru formual scripts, and writers felt free to disregard any attempts at maintaining consistency in how they were portrayed.

Even more interesting, though, is Gerrold's analysis of "the Star Trek Phenomenon" as it stood in the early 1970s. The show was the most popular syndicated rerun on the air in the US during 1971-73, and it was during these years that the whole "Trekkie" image coalesced in the public mind. Gerrold knew, personally, all of the major figures in early Trek fandom, and one of his most interesting observations is that nearly all of the leaders in that fandom were women -- not teenage girls, women in their twenties or thirties. And, he notes, this seemed to be a major reason why both the media and many in the established science-fiction fandom disregarded and dismissed "Trekkies," an attitude which seems to endure right down to our own time.

This is a book well worth reading. It doesn't put Trek on any kind of a pedestal, and is extremely critical of many aspects of the show. But that criticism comes out of a deep, strong respect for the *potential* of the show and what it could have been -- and what, in 1973, its fans still hoped it might be again some day.

 

[HanauMan]

I too read that book (The World of Star Trek) as a teenager. I had totally forgotten about that book but I recall that it was a good read about the show. I first saw the original Star Trek as reruns in the early 1970s on AFN TV and, when living in Germany, on Bavarian TV (dubbed into German - a good way for a kid to start learning a new language). Now, forty years later, I still catch the original show and, in fact, watched it on TV just a couple of hours ago. I have watched the other Star Trek shows and spin offs, on and off, but never got as interested in them as I have with the original show. Guess they became too serious and 'real' for their own good and I never cared as much for the characters as I did for the original cast. However, oddly enough, I never cared much for the early Star Trek movies either. I remember the first one, back in 1979 or '80, it gave me such a headache due to the overdone light effects, and the story was pretty awful. You can keep Sisko, Q, the Borg, Picard et al. I will always have a place in my heart for Spock, Kirk, Sulu, Uhura and all the others, along with the wooden acting and wobbly sets. I'll often sit on the sofa, my replica phaser pistol in hand, and vocally encourage my heroes on as they fight off the dastardly (original) Klingons. Beam me up, Scotty..........to fun and adventure where No Man Has Gone Before!

 

[Fading Fast]

My girlfriend is a big ST fan, but in my experience - whom do I know in my small world, whom do I see at the theaters when I used to go to the movies - its audience skews heavily male, so that the original early '70s hard-core fan base was female surprises me based on that. However, I've never, ever understood why ST, Sci-fy or history (the History Channel's audience skews heavily male) had any gender bias in its fan base. Any ideas on why the early ST fan base skewed female?

 

[Zombie_61]

My girlfriend is a big ST fan, but in my experience - whom do I know in my small world, whom do I see at the theaters when I used to go to the movies - its audience skews heavily male, so that the original early '70s hard-core fan base was female surprises me based on that. However, I've never, ever understood why ST, Sci-fy or history (the History Channel's audience skews heavily male) had any gender bias in its fan base. Any ideas on why the early ST fan base skewed female?

In a word: Spock. Okay, that's an oversimplification, and there are probably any number of reasons. But Leonard Nimoy received more fan mail than the rest of the cast combined (much to the chagrin of his egotistical friend and "official" star of the show William Shatner). And I remember reading articles at the time that speculated Spock's popularity among women was probably due the the fact that he (the character) was completely without gender bias and treated female and male characters equally; this was important in an era when real-world women were fighting for the right to be treated as equals among their male peers.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's pretty much it. Almost all of the "fan fiction" that's been documented from the early years of the Trek fandom revolves around Spock, or the Spock-Kirk relationship, and the overwhelming majority of it was written by women. A book written in the mid-seventies called "Star Trek Lives" by several of the leading women in fandom discussed this phenomenon at great length, and I wish I still had my copy, because I remember that it was very pointed in discussing exactly what it was about Spock that appealed to the women who followed the show. Because I don't have the book anymore, I can't directly quote, but as I recall the gist of it, these women especially identified with the conflict between the outer stoic Spock and the inner emotional Spock.

This makes a *lot* of sense, especially in the context of that time. Western culture idealizes the "rational, logical" elements of a personality, and disparages or dismisses the emotional, and this is often used as an argument thrown at women: "You're being *emotional!*" "Don't get all *emotional!*" "You're an emotional wreck!" And on and on and on. The genius of Nimoy's portrayal of Spock is that he, himself, understood this very early on in playing the part, and kept in mind while playing the role. Spock, himself, idealized the rational and logical, but he could not eliminate his own emotional base, and the most memorable, dramatic moments in the entire original series are those where he acknowledged its power over his actions and its importance to making him the being that he was. Women, who have to deal with this same conflict every day of our lives, knew that Spock knew what was going on, and immediately latched on to him.

As a side note, early woman-written Trek fan fiction also created the current slang term "slash," referring to erotic stories featuring couplings of popular male characters. A disproportionate amount of early Trek fan-fic featured Kirk and Spock turning to each other for physical and emotional gratification, and these stories were described as "Kirk/Spock," or "K/S" stories. Kirk Slash Spock was eventually streamlined to "slash."

 

[Benzadmiral]

I'm pretty sure I still have my copies of The World of Star Trek and Gerrold's earlier The Making of The Trouble With Tribbles. As I recall, both came out at the time of the first ST conventions, and I purchased my copies at the first one held in New Orleans in 1973. Yes; Gerrold's analysis of the potential of ST, and the what he called (I think) Hardening of the Formula Arteries, is good useful reading for any writer or ST fan.

I can't recall whether he takes 3rd-season producer Fred Freiberger to task as being part of the problem with ST in its last year. Freiberger was an experienced producer and scriptwriter -- I've seen some of his good work in the half-hour Westerns of the 1957-1962 period. He wasn't brand-new to Hollywood. But ST was considerably different from producing shows like Ben Casey. ST at its best required imagination, and writers who could deliver entertaining stories within its unusual format -- something hard to do for some producers trained by Westerns, cop shows, and doctor shows.

(A similar thing happened in Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s 4th season. From being too campy, it got a little too serious, as helmed by Anthony Spinner. One writer on the show described Spinner as "being from the Quinn Martin school of melodrama," which was literally true. He'd produced QM show The Invaders, and later would helm Dan August and Cannon.)

Oh, and I remember Star Trek Lives. Some of the best things in it were the authors' synopses of the high-quality stories they'd seen in ST fan fiction.