Star Trek

[Trenchfriend]

I'm 32, so damn old and don't want to see ST 11 and 12.

 

[Fading Fast]

The second one (Into Darkness) had some things to say in regard to the geopolitical scene of the last couple decades. But I think that we are just so used to such themes now that we tend not to notice them anymore.

I've heard it said that Star Trek works better thematically on television than in motion pictures. I would tend to agree, as the movies have been geared more toward spectacle. I find the original series to be much more thoughtful and nuanced than The Wrath of Khan, for example, even though that film is pretty much a universal fan favorite.

It's a fair point that generic social commentary is still in them - and in a way, "Star Trek" today is a victim of its own original success as what it did that was groundbreaking is now normal - but that's also the opportunity. For it to be "Star Trek," it can't have the same generic pieties that all movies (especially most action adventure ones) have now, it needs to push the envelope, bring a different perspective, go deeper, what have you - so the the action adventure is in pursuit of some broader social / philosophical meaning.

It's also a good point about TV maybe being a better format, as, today, the more challenging and thought-provoking stories - "The Man in the High Castle" or "Taboo" for example - are on TV. The last movie I saw that was philosophically challenging and original in an action adventure format was the second Nolan Batman movie, "The Dark Night." But that is the exception, most of the intellectually interesting stuff is on TV today.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm 32, so damn old and don't want to see ST 11 and 12.

Had the Bond franchise taken that view, we'd never have had Craig's "Casino Royale."

And 32, by almost any definition, is not "so damn old."

 

[scottyrocks]

I've only seen the first two of the new movies (I'll see the third, just don't care that much, so it will happen when it happens) and thought the first one was okay, but by the second one, it had become a generic action adventure movie (you could see the marketing behind "the franchise value") that had none of the heart, none of the philosophy and none of the social perspective that the original series had.

Yes, the original TV series was (I agree with you) "swashbuckling, fun and high adventure," but it also had a philosophy, a social commentary and view of man's place in the universe that made it intellectually special, but by the second one of the new movies, I felt all that was gone and it was just like every other big-budget, mindless, cookie-cutter action movie.

Watching the third one was akin to getting hit in the head with a 2x4 every six seconds. Just too much, but hey, I'm a contributing member of the 'You Know You Are Getting Old Thread.'

 

[scottyrocks]

32 is spring-chickenness.

 

[Kirk H.]

or whipper snapperness

 

[Tiki Tom]

Say it loud, say it proud: I'm a "Next Generation" fan.
Jean-Luc Picard has the gravitas required of a Star Fleet captain.
In the original series, Spock should have been the Captain and Kirk should have been his lovable but problematic first lieutenant who was always causing trouble.

In the Next Generation, the plots were often thoughtful. In that sense, it was true to the original Star Trek which could also be a little moralizing at times (Remember the episode with the two guys fighting who were each half black and half white, but on opposite sides of their bodies? Sheesh. Hit me with a baseball bat, why don't ya?) That earnestness --or smug preachiness, if you prefer-- is part of the Star Trek tradition. I regret that the newest movie venture has decided that the best way to sell tickets is to vacuum out any and all thoughtfulness. Bigger explosions do not make bigger movies. Anyway, in Next Generation, Data was a good Spock substitute, always asking us to explore the human condition in an often funny way. Will Riker was, in a way, the Kirk stand-in; an ambitious officer with a big libido (I seem to recall that Riker once had a fling with a female Klingon officer and lived to love again.)

When we saw the newest movies I told my daughter "I just can't believe in an Enterprise where all the senior officers look like they are barely 20 years old."
To which she replied: "Dad, Chris Pine is almost 40." Ugh.

Okay, fire away. Phasers on "stun", please.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Just one thing:

"The measure of a man".

!!

 

[Tiki Tom]

Just one thing:

"The measure of a man".

!!

At this rate, in about 10 years we might see that exact plot taking place in real life.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've been watching the original Trek in cable reruns lately, and have been struck at just how profoundly 1960s its sexual politics were, and I don't mean that in a good way. The episode "The Enemy Within" was on recently, the one where the transporter splits Kirk into Good Kirk and Evil Kirk, and Evil Kirk proceeds to sexually assault the hapless Yeoman Rand in her quarters. This is handled with little delicacy, but the most appalling moment comes at the tag end of the show when Rand is on the bridge, still shaken by her experience, and Spock, of all people, makes the leering observation that "The other Kirk had -- interesting qualities, wouldn't you say so Yeoman?" You can talk "well that was the times" all you want -- and it was, the sixties were the zenith of grotesquely sexist popular culture -- but whether it was Roddenberry or Coon or somebody else, whoever allowed that bit to go thru was a pig.

It's especially distasteful when you realize that Grace Lee Whitney, who played Rand, was fired from the show the day after being raped on the studio grounds by a man she went to her grave identifying only as "The Executive." The only person she ever told his true identity was Nimoy, and with him now gone as well, the truth will never be known. But there is a great deal of speculation among Trek fans as to exactly who "the Executive" was, and there is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence pointing to one individual in particular.

I loved TOS growing up, but the older I get the more obvious its flaws become. On the other hand, every time I watch DS9, I find more to admire in it, not the least of which is the fact that Major Kira would have beaten the snot out of Evil Kirk before tossing him out the nearest airlock. Ask Damar about what happens when you cross her.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Badass-Spock with the sexistic face reminds me of evil "Ash" on the Nostromo.

 

[Steve27752]

I grew up with the original Star Trek and loved it, I also enjoyed STNG, Voyager and Enterprise (Seasons 1 and four were the best) and still watch them now. The only version that I did not like was DS9, it just was not about exploration in a spacecraft.

 

[Trenchfriend]

"Wooow is right."

Colm Meaney, one of the most legendary SciFi-"working-class actors", always fantastic playing himself.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Say it loud, say it proud: I'm a "Next Generation" fan.
Jean-Luc Picard has the gravitas required of a Star Fleet captain.
In the original series, Spock should have been the Captain and Kirk should have been his lovable but problematic first lieutenant who was always causing trouble.

In the Next Generation, the plots were often thoughtful. In that sense, it was true to the original Star Trek which could also be a little moralizing at times (Remember the episode with the two guys fighting who were each half black and half white, but on opposite sides of their bodies? Sheesh. Hit me with a baseball bat, why don't ya?) That earnestness --or smug preachiness, if you prefer-- is part of the Star Trek tradition. I regret that the newest movie venture has decided that the best way to sell tickets is to vacuum out any and all thoughtfulness. Bigger explosions do not make bigger movies. Anyway, in Next Generation, Data was a good Spock substitute, always asking us to explore the human condition in an often funny way. Will Riker was, in a way, the Kirk stand-in; an ambitious officer with a big libido (I seem to recall that Riker once had a fling with a female Klingon officer and lived to love again.) . . .

View attachment 75664

Riker and a Klingon woman . . .? Can't say I recall that! He did serve as exec on a Klingon ship in an exchange program, and handled the hazing and potential hazards of officer status on a ship where it's perfectly all right for your underling to try to kill you. There were a couple of female officers aboard. One male Klingon asks if Riker can handle a Klingon woman. Riker looks him in the eye and says, "Both of them?"

Next Generation was more the "Wagon Train to the Stars," as Roddenberry described his original concept. Picard and his officers often had to make tough, unpleasant choices, and not everything worked out well for everyone in every episode. Here is my list of top 5 to start exploring the series:

"11001001," which features a holodeck version of a 1950s New Orleans jazz club, and the Bynars, a race who travel only in pairs.

"The Measure of a Man," in which android Data must undergo a hearing to prove he has the right not to be disassembled.

"Q Who?" in which the terrifying alien (and I mean terrifying, and alien) race, the Borg, first appear.

"Darmok": To save their lives, Picard must learn to communicate with an alien captain -- a member of a race considered incomprehensible. (Watch this one back to back with TOS's "Arena" to see how differently the two series handled the setup.)

"Inner Light": Picard lives an alien's lifetime in the space of 45 minutes. Hugo Award winner, 1993.

And I would add the late story "The Outcast," which features a race of folk who have attempted to completely erase gender in their society. One of them, however, secretly has leanings toward the female . . . and she and Riker find each other attractive. A tragic story of a kind the original show could never have done, and the sort the new movies have no time for.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Riker and a Klingon woman . . .? Can't say I recall that! He did serve as exec on a Klingon ship in an exchange program, and handled the hazing and potential hazards of officer status on a ship where it's perfectly all right for your underling to try to kill you.

That was the episode! A Klingon woman was more than a little interested in him. I thought that one of the thread-tying-up one-liners at the end of the show strongly implied that Riker had not been able to resist the challenge/offer. It has been a long time since I saw the episode, so I won't stake my puny human life on it.

One quick story: so, when my daughter was looking at which university to attend, one option that she seriously considered was to pursue Classical Shakespearean acting at (I believe) Ashland University in southern Oregon. I think I got that right. Anyway, we were talking about filling out the app, and I asked her "when they ask you why you want to pursue Shakespearean acting, what are you going to say?"

Without missing a beat she answered: "Because I want to be a star ship captain one day!"

(No, in the end she didn't go to that school.)

 

[scottyrocks]

One of my favorite, if not favorite, TNG episodes is 'Yesterday's Enterprise.'

The basic premise is that current reality changes when an Enterprise from the past ('C') emerges from a rift. The ship was supposedly destroyed in a battle in its time and is badly damaged.

The moral play is what to do with the ship and its remaining crew. Allow them to stay in the present and remain safe, or send them back to certain death. The other side of the see-saw here is that, through its actions in that battle, the Enterprise C was indirectly responsible for peace between the Federation and the Klingons, whom they were helping to defend against a Romulan attack.

Since reality had been changed, Tasha Yar is still chief of security, and Worf is not there, as the Federation and the Klingons are mortal enemies. Yar and the acting Captain of the 'C' form a bond, and she decides to go back into the rift with the ship, in part because Guinan tells her this reality is not right, she is not supposed to be here because she dies a meaningless death in the other (regular series) timeline. Yar decides that she would rather die a meaningful death, so she goes back to the past with the 'C'. All this occurs under threat of, and then attack by Klingon ships.

The instant it goes back, all returns to normal, and no one is aware that anything out of the ordinary has happened, except Guinan, who has a feeling about it, and wants to know more about Yar, whom she has never met.

 

[Benzadmiral]

One of my favorite, if not favorite, TNG episodes is 'Yesterday's Enterprise.'

The basic premise is that current reality changes when an Enterprise from the past ('C') emerges from a rift. The ship was supposedly destroyed in a battle in its time and is badly damaged.

The moral play is what to do with the ship and its remaining crew. Allow them to stay in the present and remain safe, or send them back to certain death. The other side of the see-saw here is that, through its actions in that battle, the Enterprise C was indirectly responsible for peace between the Federation and the Klingons, whom they were helping to defend against a Romulan attack.

Since reality had been changed, Tasha Yar is still chief of security, and Worf is not there, as the Federation and the Klingons are mortal enemies. Yar and the acting Captain of the 'C' form a bond, and she decides to go back into the rift with the ship, in part because Guinan tells her this reality is not right, she is not supposed to be here because she dies a meaningless death in the other (regular series) timeline. Yar decides that she would rather die a meaningful death, so she goes back to the past with the 'C'. All this occurs under threat of, and then attack by Klingon ships.

The instant it goes back, all returns to normal, and no one is aware that anything out of the ordinary has happened, except Guinan, who has a feeling about it, and wants to know more about Yar, whom she has never met.

Yes; a complex and startling story. The alteration in the appearance of the Enterprise D and its crew at the moment of the initial change -- darker, more military-looking uniforms, a dimmer bridge with a more "wartime" regimen, et al. -- is disturbing.

 

[scottyrocks]

Yes, the lighting after the change is definitely more like that of a Klingon warbird.

Although there the Federation/Klingon alliance, the Klingons still value their warlike culture and make a point of intimidating everyone at any turn. Their bridge carries that low-light, warlike theme.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What I find so fascinating about DS9 is precisely the fact that it *isn't* about exploring the universe. It's about exploring exactly what the Federation is and what makes it tick. If the Enterprise-D shows "the best and brightest" of the Federation in action in all their glory, DS9 is basically the Federation equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys. Commander/Captain Sisko is a psychologically broken man given an assignment he doesn't want, only to be considered a religious icon by a society he doesn't understand. Chief O'Brien takes a promotion to an assignment his wife hates. Doctor Bashir is a cocky know-it-all with a disturbing secret he's trying to hide. Quark the Ferengi is considered a failure by his people for his lack of wealth, scratching out a living running a cheap bar on a junk heap of a space station. Garak the Cardassian is a political exile forbidden to return to his home world on pain of death. Odo the security chief, at the start of the series, doesn't even know what he is -- and is horrified when he learns the truth of his origins. Worf, when he transfers aboard, is an outcast wherever he goes. And Kira is an unapologetic terrorist -- plain and simple, they don't hedge -- who doesn't know where she fits in now that the revolution is over, and who sees the Federation as just another imperialistic power out to oppress her planet.

This is the Federation you don't see on TNG -- flawed, damaged people who don't always make the right decisions and sometimes don't even know if a right decision exists. And we eventually learn that the Federation is just as flawed as they are -- full of incompetent politicians and corrupt military officers, willing to sell out its own citizens for the sake of political treaties, to subvert other powers thru espionage and cold-blooded murder, and even to commit genocide "in order to save the lives of billions." It may not be the most "trekkish" of the various series, but I find it by far the most complex, most nuanced, and most realistic. I don't just consider it the best of the Treks, I think it's one of the best and most provocative series American television has ever produced.

 

[PeterGunnLives]

To me, Star Trek is more about metaphorically exploring various aspects of the human condition than literally exploring different areas of space. The latter is just a narrative tool to portray the former. So I think DS9 was very much in keeping with the meaning of Star Trek.

I still prefer the original series, warts and all, over all the rest, because it's vintage.