Just rewatched Star Trek the original series

[AdamWho]

Besides the usual stuff that drives people nuts such as

1. Kirk making moves on EVERY SINGLE woman except Uhura

2. Kirk completely destroying civilizations every other episode

3. The ridiculous "glamorous" lighting and accompanying music

4. The heavy handed moralizing about current social issues

5. The lazy episodes which where everything is just like earth or on a flimsy sound stage

6. The fact that nearly every civilization they meet is completely humanoid but they still pretend that they are aliens.

and on and on and on...


No the things that really bother me are

1. McCoy's racism against Spock. He goes on and on with Spock and how terrible Vulcans are compared to humans. Whether it is about how he looks, his green blood, or how he is inferior because Vulcans are not emotional

2. The fact that McCoy is constantly on the bridge, offering his ignorant opinion in the most hostile way. Doesn't this guy have a regular job? He needs to get the hell off the bridge.

3. The fact they are always taking McCoy on away missions that have nothing to do with medicine.


Other things I noticed,

1. Red shirts are not dying all over the place.

2. The new remastered series on NetFlix is really well done.

3. Several characters including Kirk and Spock seem to lower their voices and talk deeper than they normally do.

4. Kirk is dumb as a rock

 

[Under the Rose]

Yet you have to consider the time and place that this series was created in.

The majority of your concerns are 'just how it was back then.'

There was a lot of the science (communication devices, voice computers) that has actually come to pass since then so it was rather prophetic in a technological manner and there was quite a complicated relationship between the four major male characters that developed over the span of the series, so not all as one-dimensional as it may have seemed when viewing single episodes.

'Live long and prosper'...(Makes the Vulcan salute at her computer screen)

 

[Bronzeage]

It was the 60's.

It's not really fair to view the show through the lens of 50 years and say, "Those people were so dumb." You might go watch a few of the other shows from that time period before harshly judging the one that survived and still has a viewership today.

 

[fast]

I've recently watched every episode of every series. Well, it took almost a year.

Kirk is (and by far) the stuff that television hero's are made of, and let's not think for a moment that McCoy wouldn't have (if needed be) given his life to save Spock, and that's despite whatever prejudices there may have been. See, things are not always as they appear on the surface. Relationships can be kinda weird that way. You can have a general attitude towards a group of people and even espouse some very negative views, but in many of us, there's still a caring side fostered by time together that will come out to prevail in action that'll trump what may have been generally perceived as negative by others. I've watched the series (in its entirety) and seen what you have seen, but don't allow the observation of individual moments to be digested in absence of the obvious bond that had been created between them over the cumulation of the experiences they shared. Prejudice? Sure, but a true friendship that couldn't be severed by it.

 

[Underseer]

It was the 60's.

It's not really fair to view the show through the lens of 50 years and say, "Those people were so dumb." You might go watch a few of the other shows from that time period before harshly judging the one that survived and still has a viewership today.

And therein lies my problem.

I was born near the end of the original series run, and was out of the country while the show was on endless rerun status on American TV. By the time I moved to my own country, it was the early 1980s and the show simply looked terrible to me. I've been told over and over that it was very good compared to what was on American television at the time, and I even believe this, but unfortunately I cannot base my opinion on that.

All my nerd friends were really into it, so I learned to mostly keep my mouth shut when the topic came up. Then Star Trek: the Next Generation came out, and I was hooked. So my nostalgia for the series is mostly directed at tNG and DS9. I cannot feel nostalgia for the original series and would rather not watch it if I don't have to.

 

[+or-1]

A couple of observations:

1. DeForest Kelley was a well known TV actor and one of the stars of the show. Of course he was going to be on camera a lot.
2. McCoy's casual racism against Spock was the point. Such attitudes still exist and are still stupid but at least Roddenberry made an effort to bring attention to it and to other social issues of the day. sometimes, heavy handedness is what it takes.
3. Re redshirts, while they didn't die in each episode, if a crew member was going to die in an episode, he or she would be wearing a red shirt.

When the series was new I had special permission to stay up past my bedtime and watch it and I never missed an episode. The special effects were pretty up to date given the low budget. Before Kubrick's 2001, if you couldn't really see the strings that was about the best you could hope for. When TNG first came out the local station in Tucson used to run a TOS episode immediately before the latest TNG episode. Monumentally bad idea. Still, it laid the groundwork for everything that came after. It was the first show that didn't treat nerds as if they were sub-human as a matter of course.

 

[Ford]

I was born near the end of the original series run, and was out of the country while the show was on endless rerun status on American TV. By the time I moved to my own country, it was the early 1980s and the show simply looked terrible to me. I've been told over and over that it was very good compared to what was on American television at the time, and I even believe this, but unfortunately I cannot base my opinion on that.

All my nerd friends were really into it, so I learned to mostly keep my mouth shut when the topic came up. Then Star Trek: the Next Generation came out, and I was hooked. So my nostalgia for the series is mostly directed at tNG and DS9. I cannot feel nostalgia for the original series and would rather not watch it if I don't have to.

Interesting. I was born just before the original series aired, and got into it a few years later during the endless reruns. Compared to all the other first run science fiction shows on American television at the time? It was stellar. Probably because there weren't any. Compared to what was available (reruns of Lost in Space or other Irwin Allen shows) it was pretty good.

In between then and the Next Generation, there were a few shows of note - Space 1999, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, etc. - but nothing quite at the level of Star Trek.

As far as Next Generation is concerned, I think that if anything it has held up less well than the original series. Both are clearly a product of their times, but TNG lacks the kitsch factor that (IMO) makes the original series still entertaining.

 

[Thomas II]

 

[Underseer]

[...]

As far as Next Generation is concerned, I think that if anything it has held up less well than the original series.

[...]

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on that one. I can still watch and enjoy tNG when I catch it on re-runs, but no amount of kitsch can make the original series watchable for me.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

[...]

As far as Next Generation is concerned, I think that if anything it has held up less well than the original series.

[...]

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on that one. I can still watch and enjoy tNG when I catch it on re-runs, but no amount of kitsch can make the original series watchable for me.

The one problem I have with tNG is that it is pretty old and was (continues to be) in syndication for so long. I've probably seen so the series four or more times through over the years. And unlike DS9 or B5 (I did not include BSG because they ended that show in such a way to make Season 5 of B5 look perfect), there is no arc to the story for tNG, so my attention to it isn't much at all.

The original series is seriously dated and suffers from that. At the time it was impressive for what it was trying to accomplish, but the show to me just isn't that interesting.

 

[dystopian]

I've never actually watched the original series, just like Underseer, it just looks too old and camp for me to enjoy.

I will say, that watching this dub makes it seem somehow more awesome:

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4HMCCspbUE&list=PLF809EF594BA50BED[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Arctish]

When the series was new I had special permission to stay up past my bedtime and watch it and I never missed an episode. The special effects were pretty up to date given the low budget. Before Kubrick's 2001, if you couldn't really see the strings that was about the best you could hope for. When TNG first came out the local station in Tucson used to run a TOS episode immediately before the latest TNG episode. Monumentally bad idea. Still, it laid the groundwork for everything that came after. It was the first show that didn't treat nerds as if they were sub-human as a matter of course.

Same here. I begged my parents to let me stay up and watch it. They allowed it, but in return I had to keep my grades up.

Anyway, there's a few things about Star Trek TOS that aren't as obvious to younger generations as they are to us *ahem* more mature fans.

!. The role of women on the Enterprise. Sure, there was Yeoman Rand, the cute secretary-type, and Nurse Chapel, the lovely nurturing-type. But then there was Uhura. Before her, women in science fiction shows were there to be (chaste) girlfriends for the male characters and to scream when monsters showed up. But Uhura was a respected member of the Bridge crew, an officer who could repair her own equipment and perform an essential task requiring uncommon skill and talent, and a calm presence no matter how dire the situation. She was glorious.

2. Star Trek tackled the biggest issue of it's day - racism - and most of the time it did so gracefully and convincingly. One episode was pretty heavy handed, but most of the time Star Trek simply presented stories in which a character's race was not relevant. A mad scientist might be black, but that had nothing to do with why he went mad. He simply was black, and that was that. It was a pretty bold statement for the times, especially for a show on network TV, so credit where credit is due: Star Trek had something very positive to say about the future of race relations.

3. The cultural chauvinism McCoy displayed towards Spock, and Spock's struggles with his human heritage, were part of the larger question Gene Roddenberry wanted to explore about human nature and what challenges humanity will face when it becomes part of a larger interstellar community. Star Trek's future was one in which we humans had to overcome our violent impulses just as the Vulcans did in order to embrace the wonderful diversity of life and experiences waiting us, but without sacrificing everything we cherished: love, passion, ambition, enthusiasm, tenderness, etc. So McCoy berated Spock for being cold and emotionless, and Spock chastised McCoy for being irrational and prone to impulsiveness. It was a yin-yang of competing philosophies seeking and sometimes finding balance. When McCoy, Spock, and Kirk were in harmony, you knew they had found the right path.