TV Nostalgia: Star Trek (60's series)

[Lantyssa]

Well, that's because Brent Spiner is awesome.

Totally!  He is one of my favorite character actors.  And we share the same birthday!

[Jain Zar]

^^ Im afraid I have to disagree.  Battlestar Galactica might be one of the best Scifi series ever on television including Trek.

You are right about BSG, of course, but I'd say it is very different from original Star Trek.  The first series was pulpy and adventurous, the crew against the galaxy.  The core was smaller, leaner, and less time was spent on developing sixty characters to various degrees.  I'd use the word "bloat" to describe TNG and later series; fine show or not, they took a different tack than the original.  More politcal, bureaucratic, whiny, etc.  More character driven stories, more things about Troi or Worf or Data rather than OH SHIT ALIEN MENACE, TIME FOR SPACE GAMBLING!  Less is more, or something.

BSG, that's not really about the Cylons.  It's about people, and while it does have some great social puzzles, it's really about the extended cast of characters.  It's Dallas in Space.  I'm OK with that, because it's incredibly entertaining.  Just not for the same reasons I liked original Star Trek.

Its absolutely different from Trek.  Trek is generally positive, idealistic, and optimistic.  BSG is more realistic.  And being realistic, people in general kind of suck, and even heroes fuck up.
Its sort of why I will miss BSG switching nights.

It was PERFECT with the new Dr Who series.  Dr Who even when its sad is generally positive, funny, and uplifting.  BSG is grim and depressing.  You got both ends of the spectrum.

But I like a wide variety of stuff.

Of course I have limits which is why I avoid most fantasy and scifi novels.  Its all stuff like Stephen Colbert's parody, or Anne Rice styled world building ruined by the author(ess) being too horny and uninterested in playing in their own world.

Oh yeah.  I picked up a cool Trek book today.  Star Trek MANGA.  The art looks kinda cool but I haven't had a chance to read it.  Even if its a trainwreck it ought to be a lot of fun.  Itll tide me over till they start showing more Trek Remastered.  The giant space cornucopia episode is due sometime this Winter!

[WindupAtheist]

The Doomsday Machine.  The episode that leaves you wondering why, if the Enterprise is supposedly capable of planet-wide destruction and a megaton-scale blast down the throat was enough to kill the flying Horn of Plenty, they didn't just shoot a couple photon torpedoes down it's gullet and call it a day.

EDIT:

Going back to DS9, I loved that episode where Quark had to rescue his mother from the Dominion.  They need to trade a prisoner of theirs to get her back, but their prisoner comes down with a sudden case of death.  They clamp a "neural stimulator" or something to his forehead as they're trying to revive him, but all they get is a twitch of his arm.  So they're like "Wait, if one will make his arm move, then a whole lot of them might..."

Next thing you know, this guy's corpse is covered in stimulators, and they're making him clumsily walk down the corridor as a remote controlled zombie.  They totally pwn the big bad Dominion with a Weekend at Bernie's routine.  Fucking classic, and NOT the sort of shit you would ever see on TNG.

[Stormwaltz]

Regards Deep Space Nine, one of my vivid memories was an episode in which Quark and some random Delta Quadrant alien were sealed in some room of the Defiant, with a live torpedo stuck through the hull. The two hated each other, but in true Star Trek style they worked together to defuse the weapon, and came to grudging accord.

The same week in Babylon 5, Londo and G'Kar were stuck in an elevator, with a fire burning outside. Londo suggested they work together to escape. G'Kar, whose people had recently been conquered by Londo's, chuckled and said, "No."

Then G'Kar settled back, content, and waited for the fire to roast them alive.

[jpark]

The Doomsday Machine.  The episode that leaves you wondering why, if the Enterprise is supposedly capable of planet-wide destruction and a megaton-scale blast down the throat was enough to kill the flying Horn of Plenty, they didn't just shoot a couple photon torpedoes down it's

The numbers were given in the episode - which I don't have handy.  It seemed that detonating a starship at point blank range inside the Doomsday machine would have produced far greater destructive power then what could have been achieved with their weapons.  That at least was my interpretation of why they gave the numbers behind the number of megatons starship destruction represented.

We are arguing about numbers here - not ideas.  When the shuttle was seized by the other starship captain - and detonated inside the mouth of the Doomsday machine - that compelled Kirk et al to suspect the strategy worked - they just needed more firepower.  In that context - starship self destruction was evoked.

[Furiously]

We are arguing about numbers here - not ideas.  When the shuttle was seized by the other starship captain - and detonated inside the mouth of the Doomsday machine - that compelled Kirk et al to suspect the strategy worked - they just needed more firepower.  In that context - starship self destruction was evoked.

I'm pretty sure, based on all the movies that self-destruction was supposed to be used by the captains as a weapon. That and as a, "Don't try to take over our ship - we'll self-destruct and take out is and you." type of thing.

[Simond]

TOS was pretty good for its time. I still watch it for the characters. The special effects are pretty painful though.

That reminds me, how's that remastered TOS (with the digital effects) working out?

[WindupAtheist]

The numbers were given in the episode - which I don't have handy.

It was 97.835 megatons.  Google for the win.  For the record, the Russians had a 100 megaton bomb back in 1961, although they replaced some of the uranium with lead to keep it down to a "mere" 50 when they tested it.

It seemed that detonating a starship at point blank range inside the Doomsday machine would have produced far greater destructive power then what could have been achieved with their weapons.  That at least was my interpretation of why they gave the numbers behind the number of megatons starship destruction represented.

We are arguing about numbers here - not ideas.  When the shuttle was seized by the other starship captain - and detonated inside the mouth of the Doomsday machine - that compelled Kirk et al to suspect the strategy worked - they just needed more firepower.  In that context - starship self destruction was evoked.

It was a good concept and a very good episode.  I know talking about the firepower seems nitpicky, but they didn't need to tell me the exact yield of the explosion down to the third bloody decimal place if they didn't want me putting that number into context.

I mean Star Wars doesn't have a scrap of scientific validity to it's name, but that doesn't bother me because it doesn't pretend otherwise.  Like I'm not going to nitpick over the reason a lightsaber works, because they never give a reason.  It just works, so on with the show.

[Lantyssa]

Did people have ready access to what the numbers meant back then?  Google wasn't exactly around at the time.

It was simply technospeak (which I do hate) to give Spock another chance to show his alien mindset.

[Evangolis]

I saw TOS in it's original run, and in reruns for the next 10 years or so.  It wore a bit with time, but the characters held up pretty well.

One advantage it had was the character of the times.  Vietnam, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, there were a lot of issues out there, and TV dealt with a lot of them.  Just saw an old Gunsmoke episode, 'Jesse', that had some clear things to say by implication about race and justice.  Festus as a spokesman for racial equality.

Later incarnations all had their moments.  The TNG episode where they get caught in a time loop and keep rerunning the same scenes for the first half of the show, starting with a poker game and ending with the Enterprise blowing up as they go to commercial was pretty neat to me.  Quark outhinking a greedy Klingon in a test of honor was good.  And I had to laugh at the Voyager episode where a rogue member of a future Federation time police force tries to destroy the ship because they keep screwing up the time lines.  Enterprise was uneven, but had it's moments; I liked the undercurrent of Human-Vulcan conflict.

B5 gets a nod for the AIDS-themed episode where the good guys don't save the day, and the entire alien species dies, with the final scene being the barman telling a dead alien joke.  And G'Kar and Londo.  And Bester.  Heroic villians.

BSG is a wonderful re-imagining of the schlocky original.  Farscape and Firefly, and, yeah, the X-files beautiful job of keeping the monster in the shadows, so it was hard to be certain what was reality.  Hell, even throw Buffy in there.

Come a long way from Forbidden Planet.

[WindupAtheist]

Did people have ready access to what the numbers meant back then?  Google wasn't exactly around at the time.

Well there was no Google, but it wasn't exactly the Stone Age.  For someone writing a television script, the effort of cracking open a book or giving someone in the military a phone call for the purposes of fact-checking isn't unreasonable.

I mean, don't get me wrong.  A hundred megatons is a giant motherfucking explosion, six or seven thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb and twice as powerful as the largest explosion humans have actually bothered to create.  But it's still something achievable with sixties technology, and you'd think an interstellar warship would be able to raise more hell than that.

It was simply technospeak (which I do hate) to give Spock another chance to show his alien mindset.

Totally, and it was a good episode.  It just annoys me when writers toss in lines without thinking about the repercussions.  Like that episode with Nomad, where it shoots the Enterprise and Spock announces that the blast was equivalent to ninety of their photon torpedoes.  And yet they're not dead, and in every battle ever portrayed it takes a hell of a lot fewer than ninety torpedoes to blow a ship to hell.  Huh?

[Merusk]

That's just a reflection of the refinement and and sohistication of the audiences.  People today have more knowledge at their disposal and expect Tv shows to 'get it right'.  It wasn't so much the case 'back then.'

Also, in the midst of the Cold-War a phone call to the military asking 'hey how big is a nuke' might get you a nice visit the same way calling an airline and asking 'hey, do you do cavity searches for explosives still?' might today.

[Evangolis]

Also, back then nobody had ever met a Trekkie.  Or a Furry.  It was a more innocent time.

[stray]

There was this history of comics show on the History channel awhile back that pointed out an old 60's magazine coverstory with Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Che Guevara as "counter-culture icons of the year". Don't remember the magazine though, but it was a major publication.

Anyways, the segment went into how the Batman TV series ruined whatever cool rep these things had in the mainstream, even for the more relevant Marvel characters. I suppose Star Trek and the like suffered a similar sort of fate.

[WindupAtheist]

Star Trek is like roleplaying.  It's good nerdy fun, but you're reluctant to tell anyone you enjoy it for fear of being associated with the fat hunchback degenerates that have turned it into an entire lifestyle.

[Roac]

It just annoys me when writers toss in lines without thinking about the repercussions.

What, that someone would nit-pick a fictional TV series to death fourty years later on the internet?  Shame on them for not considering that.  FOR SHAME, SIR!   


(hint: the show was not meant to be taken anywhere near that seriously.  seriously.)

[jpark]

Star Trek is like roleplaying.  It's good nerdy fun, but you're reluctant to tell anyone you enjoy it for fear of being associated with the fat hunchback degenerates that have turned it into an entire lifestyle.

A "guilty pleasure".  Hell, in a social/professional setting I would feel more comfortable saying I watched porn the day before rather than confess my viewing of a Trek episode ;)