Spock and the Legacy of Star Trek 233
StartsWithABang writes While the nerd/geek world mourns the death of Leonard Nimoy in its own way, it's important to remember the legacy that Star Trek — and that Spock and alien characters like him — left on our world. Unlike any other series, Star Trek used a futuristic, nearly utopian world to explore our own moral battles and failings, and yet somehow always managed to weave in an optimism about humanity and our future. This is something, the author argues, that is sorely missing from the new J.J. Abrams movies.
Live (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Live (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Live (Score:5, Funny)
He's not dead. Just resting. Pining for the Fjords.
He had a blue shirt. Not a red one.
Re:Live (Score:5, Interesting)
I enjoyed the FIRST of the new Star Trek movies, it was a good popcorn flick and I was satisfied how they handled the trek universe for the most part, regardless of the lack of utopian optomism. The second movie though, not so good most of the way through, but when they re-did "that scene" - wow.
WOW Holy shit, they brought out an inner Trek Nerd I didn't even know existed in me. That was insulting as fuck. The most touching scene in the history of Star Trek, re-hashed as an homage? Fuck off.
Ultimately though the article summary is correct, there's this innocent wonder, optomism and good in the vast majority of Star Trek, particularly ToS and TNG which is just doesn't exist in most other movies or TV shows. It's sorely lacking in the world.
I've always been a cynical bastard who loves to hate on things, loves a dark theme but it's so over done now, SO over done. It's sad that it's refreshing to see people with clear, honest, straight up good values.
I'm not a big fan of the Marvel movies (they aren't terrible) but I really like Captain America. If you told me 15 years ago, I'd like Captain America, I wouldn't believe you. I'd say "that's lame" "he's a dork" "who cares". But now? In the society we're all living in? Captain America is refreshingly good and nice, it's great. (This is also why the original 1977 Superman is a masterpiece, it's an archive of a time long gone where good was good because it's right)
I fear that with the death of Gene Roddenberry and the worlds ever intense focus on money, which while always existing, has become sharpened the last decade or two, you're just not going to see a classic return to original, cheesy, fun Star Trek. It has to have an edge to appeal to the mainstream. Maybe some tits or a fistfight or someone lying or cheating or bullshit drama. /the norm/ someone is going to be a piece of shit with all these complexities in a TV show, cheating / lying / playing games / one upping people is normal behaviour on standard television :/
In TnG when someone cheated or did something bad, it was addressed, it was weird, they investigated, found why the person was sad / angry / hateful and they fixed it because it's not productive, it's not good to be like that. Nowadays as per
ToS and TnG might be utopian and cheesy but it's in a good way. I laugh with them and I laugh at them and when I laugh at them, I don't dislike it. I just go "oh Star Trek" and keep on watching. Unfortunately for most people, that shit won't play anymore. The people who respect that kind of television are few and far between now.
As for Nimoy, RIP indeed :( RIP - if I can give you all one piece of advice, go read his timeline of tweets for the last couple of years, he'll tell you one critical thing. STOP.SMOKING.NOW
RIP Spock and RIP good values in television and movies, arguably, RIP Star Trek
Re:Live (Score:4, Insightful)
Rest in peace, Mr Nimoy.
Re:Live (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed the second movie sucked balls. The homage was pure hollywood crap. Shows how JJ Abrams is utterly over-rated. After creating their Star Trek universe they had an opportunity to create new story lines. Instead they punted and decided to destroy a classic movie.
My thought on the reboot is not that they punted and rehashed old story lines; rather, it is meant to demonstrate that even with an alternate future from the original movies -- a smart way to retell a story with the same characters and not be beholden to an old story arc -- they couldn't escape their shared fate, or their shared destiny.
Regardless, I'm just going to enjoy the reboot. That is, unless the next one involves whales and time travel.
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You REALLY think these movies are interested in exploring pre-destination, determinism, destiny, fate, etc? (If you are interested in such topics, go watch Predestination [imdb.com], it's based on a Heinlein short and is great)
Bullshit. They rebooted it with a fairly conventional time-travel plot device, then brought Kahn back to sell tickets. That's it. No deep
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My impression of both films was a mindless action film with a Star Trek pastiche shoved on top. Just a lot of incredibly short shots, pointless dialog that served only to push the ponderous plots on, and very little beyond a skim of "Trekiness" that would suggest I was watching Star Trek.
My wife and I finally got down to watching fanfic Star Trek Continues series. Now THAT'S Star Trek. I wish someone would give these guys the tens of millions of dollars it took to make Abram's abortions. They could bring in
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Ignoring inflation, Wrath of Kahn was up against ET:
http://www.the-numbers.com/mov... [the-numbers.com]
Star Trek Into Darkness was up against Well, not much:
http://www.the-numbers.com/mov... [the-numbers.com]
And Abrams' Trek movies are more “tent pole” films than the old ones ever were. It’s well known that Harve Bennett had to beg Paramont for the money after the lackluster performance of the first film. I doubt it had the marketing and promotion of the reboots.
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Exactly. Also, the Kardashians are superior people because they have lots of money, and that's why the rest of us need to spend our time watching their family drama on their TV show, because with all that money, their lives are obviously much more interesting and important than ours.
Re:Live (Score:5, Insightful)
The newer Trek creators have forgotten that Star Trek is about exploring the nature and folly of humanity. Futuristic space exploration just happens to be an excellent container to ship it in.
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I enjoyed the first season as a kid, it certainly kept me tuning in, but looking back on it, it was a mess.
That said, I've always found the Roddenberry utopia to be a forced one. It was like "we're a peaceful utopia", but I saw none of the actual implications or consequences of that from a societal or cultural perspective. It was all right as the backdrop for what the Enterprise was doing, but the Federation, especially in TNG, felt like they were running around being superior all the time, and given thei
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The 1st season of TNG was a mess; it got better afterwards when Gene became less involved and Rick Berman took over. He's really the guy we can thank for TNG being the classic it was. He took Gene's great vision, and made a great show out of it. It also helped when Gene's drinking buddy Maurice Hurley left the show, as he was a writer and had a lot of sway over the scripts. He's the reason Gates McFadden left during the 2nd season.
As for the Federation not being superior, how do you figure? They weren'
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I just recently watched the three Star Trek Continues episodes and It made me want to re-watch the episodes of TOS that related to them and then I started watching TOS from the beginning. It's been a while since I watched those and I was actually surprised by the outfits the women wore. They showed a lot more skin than any of the modern series. He's a peek [listal.com] if you don't believe me.
Hell, even the women's uniforms on the enterprise were shorter skirts than I remembered. While they occasionally failed, it's am
Both those Jar Jar movie sucked. (Score:4, Insightful)
They had Star Trek brand... and you could say that the cast was nicely picked.
Aaaand that's it.
They failed in everything else.
From basic Star Trek technology (imagine the next Star Wars movie where Jedi prefer blasters), basic science, logic, story structure... Even characters.
E.g. Spock is not logical and detached - he is passive-aggressive to full on aggressive hostile. Constantly.
He's half-Klingon, barely managing not to rip everyone's heads off and feast on their insides, not a calm, logical Vulcan.
They made a sly Scotty into a bumbling nerdy idiot.
Sulu and Chekov... they have no character.
McCoy was boiled down to a frowny face.
They made Uhura into a love interest bimbo.
And Kirk... He's simply a fratboy dickhead now.
Shatner's Kirk did used to get his shirt off a lot, but he was still a cerebral character.
All of them were. Star Trek was always ultimately about the triumph of the mind - not brute force.
The old scenes of Spock saving the Enterprise in Wrath of Khan vs. Kirk doing the same in Jar Jar's Trek 2: Trek Darker illustrate that very well.
Spock is clearly out of strength and running on will power to complete the task.
Kirk is jumping up and down and kicking the core to make it work.
Brute, mindless force replaced determination and will power.
And then they shit on the entire universe by curing death with magic blood.
And they have portable teleporters that can beam people across the galaxy from Earth all the way to Qo'noS.
Why bother with ships then? In a movie whose big plot point is a secret MegaBig spaceship.
You know... Like the last time on Jar Jar Trek.
Which copied that last Trek movie. About the TNG crew and Romulans. And their big world destroying ship.
Remember how that movie had the captain of the Enterprise driving around in the desert... which is how Jar Jar Trek starts.
And how the captain gets captured... and then someone has to jump through space to the MegaBig ship to save him.
Jar Jar is that kid who comes out of the theater after watching Wrath of Khan all excited about how it was awesome when they "killed those bad guys".
He lacks the capacity to grasp what the show is about - but he likes explosions and shiny.
He's Michael Bay without the looks and confidence to be a complete over the top dick.
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I fear that with the death of Gene Roddenberry and the worlds ever intense focus on money, which while always existing, has become sharpened the last decade or two, you're just not going to see a classic return to original, cheesy, fun Star Trek. It has to have an edge to appeal to the mainstream. Maybe some tits or a fistfight or someone lying or cheating or bullshit drama. /the norm/ someone is going to be a piece of shit with all these complexities in a TV show, cheating / lying / playing games / one upping people is normal behaviour on standard television :/
In TnG when someone cheated or did something bad, it was addressed, it was weird, they investigated, found why the person was sad / angry / hateful and they fixed it because it's not productive, it's not good to be like that. Nowadays as per
The sad thing is that Star Trek had far more edge than almost anything on currently, they just put the edge in the ideas rather than the personal relationships.
Modern SF is either dramas or action set in space, original Star Trek was short stories set in space, I don't know if TV is ready to try that again.
Re:Live (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure his shirt was white and gold.
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The AC was making an ignorant reference to the fact that Zachary Quinto, the new Spock, is gay.
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Trek is Outdated. (Score:2)
The Utopian future where technology solves our issues, is so 1960's and not modern anymore. Thus Treks vision is outdated. Can we get past racism? and we can probably get past a few of our artificially imposed issues. But to get this Utopian future (Or any Utopian Future) You need a massive buy in from a huge majority (I say over 90%), who are willing to have the same goal.
A common problem that we have, we think, if everyone thinks about the issues the same way that I have then we will be so much better o
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See my point. You are blaming capitalism on all our problems, however as of right now, increase trade and free market shows a reduction of war. When countries get isolated from free trade, they get more and more radicalized, as their exposure to other people become limited.
The human condition is to stick with the people you know the best. Trade, is what brings us out of our little world, to talk to other who are not like us. What would happen if we solve world hunger and the scarcity of supplies across
Spock is not dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only the vessel for him carried by Leonard Nimoy has passed on, but as long as he's remembered he's not truly dead.
The Original Series did a lot within the frame of that series to actually poke at contemporary issues about racism and other things. It was not so much about the science as it was about studies on humanitarian issues.
Make it DARKER dammit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Make it DARKER dammit. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that you need to look at the generation of authors that created Star Trek TOS, they (like Roddenberry) were military veterans from WW2 and seemed to believe that good could overcome evil, bridges could be built across cultures and the idea of service to the betterment of their society wasn't an alien idea.
Harlan Ellison wrote one of the darkest original episodes, City on the Edge of Forever, and maybe the popular acclaim that it received allowed younger authors to take the series into different directions. When TNG was produced the authors were largely younger than the original group, with Roddenberry providing oversight through the the later series that were almost playing a neo-classical hand with references to past episodes and different riffs on themes.
Now Roddenberry is gone and the ownership of Star Trek has been taken over by generations of authors that never knew life before there was a Star Trek...
At least that is my long-winded summation of how we got to where we are now. What would it take to get it back in line with TOS? Maybe a dose of optimism and belief in conquering great evils and striving for a greater society. Maybe it just isn't a widely held set of beliefs anymore
It is that sort of spine that Spock brought to the new productions when he was brought into the story line. I think that is what we will miss most about both Nimoy and Spock
Re:Make it DARKER dammit. (Score:5, Interesting)
What would it take to get it back in line with TOS? Maybe a dose of optimism and belief in conquering great evils and striving for a greater society. Maybe it just isn't a widely held set of beliefs anymore
I like to think that the decline of Trek is a combination of various factors. If we disregard TOS, the series that is most in line with that line of thought is TNG. Picard (in the series at least) holds those ideas in high regard and acts in nearly all episodes as a strong moral compass. The hand of Roddenberry is strong in that series, but Gene Roddenberry died during the making of TNG yet somehow Picard hasn't made a complete 180 and the show retained much of its popularity.
The change in the Trek universe is much more visible in the series of DS9, which sets an overall darker tone with the Dominion war. The point has been brought up before that DS9 battled for viewers with B5 where the tone in general about the future is far less resembling the Trek utopia, although comparing it to most modern scifi it's not all that "grimdark". To be honest, one of my favourite episodes in all of Trek is "In the Pale Moonlight", where Sisko basically goes against everything he stands for because it was necessary to get the Romulans on their side.
Once you get to Voyager, the change is irreversable. Voyager pretty much throws nearly continuity and Trek philosophy out of the airlock as Captain Janeway happily trods her way through the delta quadrant making alliances with the Borg, violating the prime directive in an almost action-hero kind of style, using warp 9 at an almost daily basis (despite it being forbidden in TNG by starfleet), contemplating genocide with the Borg, oh and in the series finale violates the temporal prime directive... It did make for good TV though. Compare Janeway to Picard (in the series) and you'll notice that they embody totally different ideologies. You could argue that over 70 years away from the federation they had little choice but to go with the flow, but just imagine Picard in that position.
A lot of Trek fans attribute the change in Trek to Rick Berman, but I think it's more complex. The audience has changed, and above all science fiction (or rather special effects) became relatively cheap to make. Trek suddenly had to compete with a lot more shows, and instead of focusing on storytelling the choice was made to focus on things like action and effects. Voyager is the best example of having a lot of characters they could build incredible stories about, but opted not to. They take on a Maquis crew, but aside from a few episodes it hardly gets mentioned what kind of problems this causes. Bellana as a half-human, half-klingon could have had so much more character development but barely got any aside from 2 episodes in 7 years. The only character to really get any character development was 7 of 9, and even there the plot always felt so underwhelming.
By the time Enterprise came out, I think most Trek fans were giving up on the franchise. I remember at the time that few people had something good to say about the show, so I skipped out on it.
As for the Trek movies. Picard in the TNG movies is no longer the Picard from the series. A complex man who upholds his principles and beliefs above all else was written into the role of an action hero,and in some movies even has a one-liner to finish off the villain. The TNG trek movies are action movies in line with the Trek universe, and I think the Trek reboot just makes the gap between the Trek ideas even bigger. I don't think they are bad movies, as long as you watch them as action movies and not as TNG Trek.
The problem with Trek, I think, is that the franchise is overused. The only way it can continue on and attract an audience is in a way that derivates from the original work but strays as far from it as possible. The traditional Trek audience won't be happy unless Picard 2.0 comes along, and the traditional Trek audience simply isn't as big as the generic-action-movie audience. With how
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Re:Make it DARKER dammit. (Score:4, Insightful)
using warp 9 at an almost daily basis (despite it being forbidden in TNG by starfleet)
In the spirit of Spock, let me make the pedantic point that the USS Voyager was not subject to the warp speed limit because it had what we would call today a "green" propulsion system. Those movable nacelles were part of it.
From http://www.startrek.com/databa... [startrek.com]:
Voyager's folding wing-and-nacelle warp drive system allows the starship to exceed the warp 5 "speed limit" without polluting the space continuum.
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True. And let's be honest, they forgot about the warp speed limit very soon after it was introduced even in TNG.
That Voyager even tried to sort of deal with it was one of the few pluses for that series.
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It did make for good TV though.
.... it did? Most of us in my group of friends in college thought Voyager stunk on ice. That's as people who were, after all, in college when it came out - I know that I wasn't an expert on the original series, enjoyed TNG and DS9. (DS9 is my favorite these days, I would say.)
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The only TNG movie I ever thought that was worth a damn was Insurrection, which really played more like a two-parter from the series. I agree with the others, in particular Nemesis.
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With regards to Voyager, you can view it as Janeway's slow descent into desperation. Starts out all do-goody then as time goes by, deals are made, morals are readjusted and by the end it's just, "The hell with this".
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The Trek franchise reads like a novice writer grappling with current issues and mistakes from previous ideas.
TOS - WW2 submarine warfare. The good guys were good guys, the bad guys were bad guys. Parallel's America's involvement in WW2. Color enhanced to show off capabilities of color TV. Lots of sexy 60s stuff, but a wildly diverse crew. Hard to appreciate now because aside from the skirts, cultural makeup looks like a typical office.
TNG - cold war superpowers. Lots of neutral zone talk and deal
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TNG is very different to TOS. TNG is soporific by comparison, its characters are too sanitized, and its universe is too disinfected.
Yeah, it's fine once you learn to avoid the rape gangs.
Wake up, that's a bunch of bullshit, we just happen to be following the shiniest crew in the fleet. Hell, they intended to make the Ferengi sophont-eaters originally.
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You make a good point about following the shiniest crew in the fleet. On the other hand, from a storytelling perspective, that's kind of boring.
And the whole "rape gangs" comment was almost like someone was again telling, but not showing, how there were flawed characters onboard. The characterization was like "I'm a survivor, so I am going to act a little gruff and stiff sometimes, because that's what happens when you've survived after avoiding rape gangs." I mean I literally recall that as a trivia foot
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I don't exactly see the original movies having the same optimism or moral lessons as the series, so why pick out the Abrams movies in particular for this failing?
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because the piece of shit director thought that would make people distracted from that he was unable to keep even the little bit of SCI (or consistency, or logic) that was in start trek in star trek.
into the darkness.. like, all kinds of stupid shit and plot makes no sense at all.
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Without darkness, there can be no lens flares!
But on a more serious note, darkness is often mistaken for depth. Nonstop action for pacing. Fan service hat tips for reverence to the material.
What I feel was lost from Star Trek as it got older was the vast scale of the universe, the sense that these ships were billions of kilometres from the nearest home base, that any message sent would take weeks, and more weeks would pass before any help could arrive. What J.J. Abrams latched onto was the idea of the Starf
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DS9 got pretty dark (e.g. Homefront/Paradise Lost, In the Pale Moonlight), but it was good. Abrams alleged-'trek' sucked for (many, many) other reasons.
Re: Make it DARKER dammit. (Score:4, Insightful)
Any form of fiction must portray human characters as realistically as possible. Star trek does not. Even "Twilight" makes for a better portrayal of human nature. Of course, angry childish nerds cannot understand this because they don't experience any form of human interaction except for rejection.
Or MAYBE the idea was that the human race had evolved???
Captain Archer in "Enterprise" was a pretty aggressive angry person, not afraid to get violent in ways that more reflect pre-1960 films than what we allow in today's lawyer-cowed world.
Captain Kirk wasn't afraid to get in a knock-down rip-your-shirt-off fight, but he was also famous for his ability to achieve a solution via rational argument (often in the same episode).
Picard is more intellectual and less physical.
Perhaps one of the most obvious cases in Science Fiction where the premise was that the human race wasn't the same was in Frank Hebert's "Dune" where whole planets specialized in some sort of intense mental/physical discipline and people's plots and motivations could make the Byzantines' jaws drop.
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Yes, but in Dune, Herbert really made it clear how much humanity was different via training, yes, but also very, very long term breeding programs. That's almost the opposite of Trek, where there is this almost quaint ban on genetically engineering humans. Understandable, given Trek history, but humans would not have "evolved" much in that time. Not in a way that would have removed our basic drives which have encouraged much of our bad behavior in the past and certainly our aggression.
I don't fault Trek t
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Emphasis mine. I don't think you understand the meaning of fiction.
STO (Score:5, Informative)
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My proposal for voice overs would be Christopher Judge [youtube.com].
I indeed think he has a good voice.
The Optimistic viewpoint hade a source (Score:5, Informative)
The reason TOS had such an optimistic viewpoint is because it's creator, Gene Roddenberry believed firmly that in the future, Mankind would get beyond the childish violence. You youngsters also need to remember that the TOS was shot at the height of the Hippy/Flower Power movement.
Gene was still around for TNG but passed in 1991 before DS9 (1993) & it shows in the subject matter & tone. DS9 becoming much darker than the previous series for example.
Re:The Optimistic viewpoint hade a source (Score:5, Insightful)
The new Star Trek says violence is the way. That the violent people win. And brings a new level of suspension of rational thought. That the Earth would have no defenses against a rougue star ship. That a meeting would have no defenses against a rough droid. That we would be running across the city chasing a suspect. That civilization could build a starship, but could not protect the citizenship. It is not so much a dark world, but a world that reflects the fears of technologically illiterate audience.
Life is pretty bad when your star trek movie makes less sense than the Fifth Element, which at least had good actors.
Re:The Optimistic viewpoint hade a source (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as we agree that The Fifth Element was a great movie in and of itself, we shall never be enemies.
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Feel free to submit to a gentle, peaceful decapitation. Be sure to let us know how that works out for you.
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Feel free to submit to a gentle, peaceful decapitation. Be sure to let us know how that works out for you.
I see what you did there.
Actually, decapitation historically was considered about the most humane and dignified means of execution there was. Commoners were hanged, royalty was decapitated. The guillotine was invented to make the process even more humane by making decapitation less likely to be botched.
Your dear friends at ISIS, and the like are deliberately perverting the process, just like they pervert their religion and everything else they touch. They saw someone's head off with a rusty knife and call i
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If only you had the maturity to see the wonderful irony in your statement. Everything would be perfect if only it weren't for "those other people", right? Think about that for a moment, then see if you can figure out why there is violence in the world. Here is a hint: it has nothing to do with "oldsters".
Thank you! (Score:3)
That's exactly why I don't like the new version!
It's a fucking shame, really... The US has very few optimistic shows that actually dare deal with hard questions and then they go and butcher one of the few they have.
I do recognize the point that most Star Trek movies had more action than philosophy because a series lends itself better for such things... So my question is basically: Where is this decade's Star Trek series?
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It's a fucking shame, really... The US has very few optimistic shows that actually dare deal with hard questions and then they go and butcher one of the few they have.
I wouldn't call it optimistic but the Battlestar Galactica reboot dealt with a lot of "hard questions". It's the only reboot series I thought was far better than the original. The original was a lot more "optimistic" but was a bit corny.
I really like the first new Star Trek movie. The second one was pretty lame. The space battle scenes were cool but it was all explosions and a real weak plot. Now JJ gets a chance to murder Star Wars. Should be interesting.
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Better movie (Score:3)
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False dichotomy. The original Star Trek did both, and both optimism and conflict were better.
Big Bang Theory? (Score:2)
Star Trek gave us a future to shoot for. (Score:5, Interesting)
Star Trek gave us a future to shoot for. Lenoard Nimoy just acted in the TV Show. Gene Roddenberry had an optimistic future about Humanity, that really, we could all get along with each other, and use science, reason, and education to solve our problems. There are a few notable flaws with this way of thinking.
Where are the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindu, Sikhs, Jains, etc etc. The answer is: They don't exist. In the universe of Star Trek, there are no gods, only creatures we don't understand. Some friendly, some hostile we must overcome by intellect or force. All Humans in Star Trek are a kind of Secular Agnostic Deist. Nobody fights wars over the stuff we fight over because we are seen of one of Billions of Species spread all over this universe in a vast cosmos. This would result in social upheaval, mass hysteria, and suicides, and homicides at first as there are people so indoctrinated in these cults, that the shattering shift in reality would be unreal.
Another thing that makes the Star Trek Universe "Possible" we don't have is Matter Replication and Transmutation. We know enough to take any given source atoms and convert them to any given destination atoms with minimal effort. All thats needed is electricity to power the machines. This would result in the collapse of Capitalism as we know it. A kind of Socialism would take its place.
The last thing that would make Roddenberry's Future possible is Anti-matter Fusion and Fission. This would provide us with nearly limitless power generation capabilities. Its also extremely dangerous and can lead to a large scale ka-boom
Earth's Government in Star Trek is a unified secular government with a guaranteed Charter of rights. All three Abrahamic religions would flip their shit. As a government like this is described as being despised by the religions as a sign of the Apocalypse. The reason is with with a "Government of Planet Earth and all Terran Colonies" all laws would need to be based in reason and have a rational justification for existing and secular purpose. Equality and Egalitarianism would be necessary for this to work, and the Majority of religions are completely contrary to this concept. So, basically, for a Future like Star Trek to work, the heritage of our ancestors has to die.
Re:Star Trek gave us a future to shoot for. (Score:5, Informative)
Where are the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindu, Sikhs, Jains, etc etc. The answer is: They don't exist.
Sorry, you're attributing your own wishful thinking to Star Trek here. Kirk, McCoy, and Uhura have spoken of Christ. Khan Singh is a Sikh. Worf's parents are Jewish. And the Vulcan salute is a traditional Jewish benediction, intended as such by Nimoy himself.
Worf was a jewish klingon? (Score:2)
So thats why he was so pissed off. His parents wanted him to be a good klingon lawyer but he ended up wearing cheap clothes and being the foil for a bunch of ungrateful mensch!
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I found DS9 to be unwatchable nonsense, Sisko as a predestined mystic saviour of the Bajorans. I mean come on.
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What Leonard Nimoy brought into Star Trek was his interpretation of Spock, as someone who will always be different, an alien, a misfit, but at the same time respected, a part of the gang, a good friend. From interviews and histories, the picture emerges of Nimoy having a pretty large say in Spock's characterisation and backstory.
As for cultural differences, the classic Trek Line was always "oh, we used to discriminate based on religion, but we got over that." It was a little heavy-handed, thus the recogniti
Re:Star Trek gave us a future to shoot for. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually Star Trek *does* touch upon the subject of religion multiple times. Religion does indeed exist - but since Star Fleet regulations does not allow religion to influence it's operations, we rarely see it manifested in the series, other than as a convenient plot device. It's just simply not a big factor of the daily life on the Enterprise.
Matter Replication and Transmutation, and by extension nearly unlimited energy, is indeed essential for a Star Trek society. When nearly everything* can be provided on an when-I-need-it basis, capitalism does not work, since capitalism require scarcity.
As for how Earth could be united in a unified secular government, well, the official explanation is that thanks to Cochrane inventing the warp drive reactor in the mid 21st century, Vulcans appeared and helped the Earth gradually prepare for their new space age. It is not unthinkable that Earth itself will be run by a single government when you have humans on around 20 000 other planets, owned by the federation coalition. And while one shouldn't underestimate humanity's ability to quarrel with each other, one should neither ignore the xenophobic effect created when outsiders show up - especially if those outsiders are far more technologicly advanced than us.
* The only thing lacking would be living matter such as pets and humans.
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Nobody fights wars over the stuff we fight over because we are seen of one of Billions of Species spread all over this universe in a vast cosmos
This bit is wrong as well. In TOS the Federation was involved in sort of a "Cold War" with the Klingon Empire (mirroring the extant real-world political situation), and indications were that it wasn't always so cold, and likely wouldn't always stay that way. Even as an exploration vessel, the Enterprise was liberally equipped with weapons, and regularly needed to use them.
And truly there's nothing shocking about a group of independent polities banding together in the face of an external threat (the Klingon
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Didn't read article, did read summary. (Score:3, Interesting)
I enjoyed the FIRST of the new Star Trek movies, it was a good popcorn flick and I was satisfied how they handled the trek universe for the most part, regardless of the lack of utopian optomism. The second movie though, not so good most of the way through, but when they re-did "that scene" - wow.
WOW Holy shit, they brought out an inner Trek Nerd I didn't even know existed in me. That was insulting as fuck. The most touching scene in the history of Star Trek, re-hashed as an homage? Fuck off.
Ultimately though the article summary is correct, there's this innocent wonder, optomism and good in the vast majority of Star Trek, particularly ToS and TNG which is just doesn't exist in most other movies or TV shows. It's sorely lacking in the world.
I've always been a cynical bastard who loves to hate on things, loves a dark theme but it's so over done now, SO over done. It's sad that it's refreshing to see people with clear, honest, straight up good values.
I'm not a big fan of the Marvel movies (they aren't terrible) but I really like Captain America. If you told me 15 years ago, I'd like Captain America, I wouldn't believe you. I'd say "that's lame" "he's a dork" "who cares". But now? In the society we're all living in? Captain America is refreshingly good and nice, it's great. (This is also why the original 1977 Superman is a masterpiece, it's an archive of a time long gone where good was good because it's right)
I fear that with the death of Gene Roddenberry and the worlds ever intense focus on money, which while always existing, has become sharpened the last decade or two, you're just not going to see a classic return to original, cheesy, fun Star Trek. It has to have an edge to appeal to the mainstream. Maybe some tits or a fistfight or someone lying or cheating or bullshit drama. /the norm/ someone is going to be a piece of shit with all these complexities in a TV show, cheating / lying / playing games / one upping people is normal behaviour on standard television :/
In TnG when someone cheated or did something bad, it was addressed, it was weird, they investigated, found why the person was sad / angry / hateful and they fixed it because it's not productive, it's not good to be like that. Nowadays as per
ToS and TnG might be utopian and cheesy but it's in a good way. I laugh with them and I laugh at them and when I laugh at them, I don't dislike it. I just go "oh Star Trek" and keep on watching. Unfortunately for most people, that shit won't play anymore. The people who respect that kind of television are few and far between now.
As for Nimoy, RIP indeed :( RIP - if I can give you all one piece of advice, go read his timeline of tweets for the last couple of years, he'll tell you one critical thing. STOP.SMOKING.NOW
RIP Spock and RIP good values in television and movies, arguably, RIP Star Trek
Sign of the times (Score:2)
I think the optimism is sorely lacking in AbramsTrek because of several reasons. Most people have already touched on his deficiencies in storytelling, but I think there might be another reason that gets comparatively little attention.
We must remember that by the standards of today a lot of nerds would sneer at Gene Roddenberry for being an "SJW". Since Abrams has already thrown out the old nerds with his take on Khan, he cannot afford to rile up the very vocal minority that might take umbrage at Roddenberry
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No, Roddenberry was not a SJW. Roddenberry cherished equality and mutual respect. SJWs are about self-aggrandizement and professional victimhood. Roddenberry would skewer SJWs for their arrogance and intolerance.
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This. While Roddenberry continually pushed boundaries, TOS never felt as if he was trying to enforce diversity to protect tender sensibilities. In fact, he was enforcing diversity DESPITE tender sensibilities.
The problem with the Abrams Star Trek .. (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with the Abrams Star Trek movies, is they're not really Star Trek movies. They do contain a Starship called Enterprise and the crew are called Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Bones, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov. But the core has been excised and they've been rendered for a generic audience. You can tell Abrams doesn't trust his audience to engage with the characters, hence the reason the plot races at breakneck speed from one spectular effects/action sequence to the next. Take 'Star Trek Into Darkness' for instance. This just from the opening sequence, Enterprise underwater, volcano exploding, natives attacking and so on.
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Well, we certainly can't expect to go to Star Trek to see something deep anymore. But really, it is a generic action flick.
What's lacking is a plot and characters (Score:4, Insightful)
The Abrams movies are action movie fluff. Nothing more, nothing less. The characters are "Star Trek" in name only, and an insult to every single Star Trek series or movie that came before them.
The first of Abrams movies, I thought "Well, it's just a start. They've got to get their legs under them."
But when Kirk lost the Enterprise and then gained it back in less than 10 minutes in the second movie, I shut it off. I've never watched it. I refuse to watch such an insulting piece of drek that thinks someone is going to be given a trillion dollar starship just because they asked after having had it taken away for breaking the law.
I presume there is going to be another Abrams movie soon enough. I won't bother watching that, either.
Watching the Abrams movies is like watching the first three "Star Wars" movies after having seen the original trilogy. It's painful. It's insulting. It's degrading. And it feels like it's marketed to pre-teens, not people who think.
Re:What's lacking is a plot and characters (Score:4, Informative)
I agree that it is Trek-in-name-only, and lacks the heavy social questions and moral compass that TOS and TNG had, but that doesn't mean it's lacking in good plot and characters. It has those, they're just dealing with acts of war and terror instead of philosophy.
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You've got to be joking. Abrams' Kirk is criminally incompetent (even in the first movie, before your "Khan wanted him to screw up" rationalization could apply). The plots of both movies have holes big enough to drive a planet through, let alone a starship. (For example, WTF is the point of starships anymore, since they can apparently just beam across the galaxy now?!)
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The super-duper Transporter is definitely the reboot franchise's midichloreans.
Frankly, I can't even be sure what the plot of the first movie was. There was this big fucking ship that screwed up the space-time continuum, so Kirk was a mean brat who turned out alright, except for cheating on the Kobiashi Maru test, which now earns him a big spanking, as opposed to the commendation in the other time line. And then blowing up Vulcan, Nimoy's Spock telling Kirk that the pointy-eared prick who has been trying to
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lets not over praise TOS and TNG.
they had their share of cheese and bad plotting too.
I hope ... (Score:2)
... they buried him in a photon torpedo-shaped casket, wearing a black robe.
It's a little unseemly. (Score:2)
The sad loss of a beloved actor shouldn't be a springboard for fanboy hate of J.J. Abrams.
For what it's worth, I think the writers and the actors in the Abrams' movies really get Star Trek. Maybe not so much the director, whose lack of affection for the franchise shows. But even though the aesthetics may not be very Trek, the fundamental Trek ethos that Leonard Nimoy was so essential to establishing was there in the scripts and performances. And that ethos is still something worth studying.
We have managed
Life has caught up to our dreams. (Score:2)
The problem with new Trek isn't JJ Abrams. It's us. The future painted by Star Trek in the 1960's isn't quite so distant any more. It's actually a little quaint. The "ethnic crewmen" are no longer awkward stereotypes. They are real people viewed much more as equals and just plain mundane.
The Scottish engineer is actually a real geeky Scot.
The Asian is more than a smiling cheerful guy.
The Russian is actually from Leningrad and actually sounds like someone who could be Spock's protoge.
The black girl comes off
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Which doesn't explain why there is little or no chemistry between the actors, why an Englishman was cast as a character of Indian descent, why the cinematography makes it look like they were filmed by a twelve year old with a ten year old digital camera, and why, in general, the plots of both movies, where they are comprehensible at all, are daft and simplistic.
I watched all three completed Star Trek Continues series, and have to say, despite what are considerably smaller budgets, and by and large unknown a
Re:Optimists is for fools (Score:5, Insightful)
"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?" -- Terry Pratchett
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Murphy was an optimist.
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Well if you're going to try argue that then actually so far we're pretty much following exactly the path that Roddenberry predicted. He believed that we would have several terrible wars first, including more than one world war before reaching that point.
That, in fact, before we could be our best - we would have to learn the hard way what happens at our worst.
So things being bad now, and getting worse - is, in fact, exactly what he predicted. If you watch the trial scene in the pilot for TNG it gets spelled
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Just as long as my kids don't have to go to Zefram Cochrane highschool.
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We already have intercontinental audiovisual communication in real time, machine translation, and handheld computers with near-instant access to many libraries worth of knowledge. With a couple of centuries to go. I'd say we're doing pretty well so far.
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"Beam me up, Scotty'
We have a ways to go yet.
Re:Optimists is for fools (Score:4, Insightful)
humanity doesn't adapt to the world, we adapt the world to us. we don't grow fur in cold weather, we kill animals and drape their skins on us. we don't forage for berries, we plant berry seeds and grow them when and where we want them. we don't lie outside in the rain and sun, we build our own caves out of peat, mud, thatch
point is: we are emergent phenomenon, not static reflectors. we believe something, then we make it happen for real. and if we believe in unreal things, don't laugh, because maybe someday we really will fly like birds and walk on the moon
that also means fatalism and pessimism is what is really for losers. a child's crazy dream today is our reality in a few years
lust like our group beliefs and efforts become our reality, individual lives are reflections of individual attitudes. so if you believe things will never get better, you're right, they won't... but only in your life
don't mistake your stunted imagination and your ignorant empty cynicism for our reality. your defeatist attitude is a self fulfilling prophecy only for you, not all of us
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we believe something, then we make it happen for real
So... how many people do believe in "1984" or "Brave New World"? Or "Neuromancer"? Don't laugh, because maybe someday we really will be drinking Soma in cyberspace, under the ever-watching eye of the Big Brother - forever. Or do you think that only good dreams may come true, and nightmares can't? Why your attitude is valid "for all of us", and cynicism is not? I am really curious about the difference.
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all those who complain about that and do nothing. they believe in slavery. then they act like a slave
all of the cynics who call reality today just like 1984, they believe in it. and make it true, by defining an oppressive reality, then doing nothing about it and agreeing to be oppressed. "today is just like 1984!" (goes back to playing video games)
there's always vile people at work in the world. you can almost excuse them, for
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don't mistake your stunted imagination and your ignorant empty cynicism for our reality. your defeatist attitude is a self fulfilling prophecy only for you, not all of us
All those are great examples of how we change our environment so we can avoid changing ourselves. There's an important implication there. As long as its a problem you can invent your way around without changing human nature, you are right that history shows there are no limits.
OTOH: it would be unwise in the extreme to dismiss history as an indication of human behavior. eg: If no society in history has been able to live peacefully with its neighbors when it perceived itself to be more powerful than them, t
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warring european states leapfrogged india, middle east, china technologically and started the colonial era instead of india, middle east, and china, exactly because they were warring states
if india or china or the middle east's internal make up was fierce rivalries lasting many centuries between small proud states, then india, china, or the middle east would have been colonizing europe with more advanced technology
now, europe is united under one political umbrella
and before the warring states period, it was
Jews In Spaaaaaaace! (Score:2)