Star Trek

[Jimmy Higgins]

When I first saw the Star Trek reboot movie, it was a bit too pulp for me. My wife liked it. That should be enough evidence for that.

But the more I watch it, the more and more blatant the JJ Abrams "science" issues pop up. I mean, yes, it is just a movie and Star Trek at that, but the finale of the film involves using every drop of red matter to destroy Nero's ship. One drop was enough to create a massive hole in spacetime. They used the entire thing, RIGHT NEXT TO EARTH!!!, which should have been enough to I suppose destroy the galaxy.

 

[marc]

Think I only saw the first Abrams movie. Thought it was a decent action movie, but not Star Trek.

As for the actual series, I also put Voyager at the bottom, and is the only series that I didn't watch all of it. Enterprise was ok the first couple seasons, then they lost me. Picard was meh the first two, the third season was good.

 

[Politesse]

Never did like the character of Picard. Aloof, snooty, condescending, and arrogant. A pompous ass.

Why doesn't that surprise me?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The one thing I'd say about TNG is that while I think DS9 was notably better, at the time, TNG was really good stuff!

 

[ZiprHead]

Star Trek is Horatio Hornblower, only set in the future rather than the past. Men on ships, exploring new horizons and having swashbuckling adventures.

I've heard it said TOS was  Wagon Train in the future.

 

[bilby]

Star Trek is Horatio Hornblower, only set in the future rather than the past. Men on ships, exploring new horizons and having swashbuckling adventures.

I've heard it said TOS was  Wagon Train in the future.

Indeed.

All these stories are only distinguishable in the set dressing.

 

[ZiprHead]

Star Trek is Horatio Hornblower, only set in the future rather than the past. Men on ships, exploring new horizons and having swashbuckling adventures.

I've heard it said TOS was  Wagon Train in the future.

Indeed.

All these stories are only distinguishable in the set dressing.

The Wagon Train analogy was said before any of the other series happened.

Frankly, I've never seen any of the other series except TNG. I wasn't watching any TV at the time those series aired and I've only seen TNG because it's airing now.

 

[crazyfingers]

Star Trek is Horatio Hornblower, only set in the future rather than the past. Men on ships, exploring new horizons and having swashbuckling adventures.

I've heard it said TOS was  Wagon Train in the future.

That's how Roddenberry pitched TOS to the network except he it called Wagon Train to the Stars.

 

[bilby]

Star Trek is Horatio Hornblower, only set in the future rather than the past. Men on ships, exploring new horizons and having swashbuckling adventures.

I've heard it said TOS was  Wagon Train in the future.

That's how Roddenberry pitched TOS to the network except he it called Wagon Train to the Stars.

The mid-'60s was a good time to pitch anything as "... to the stars", with the excitement around the space race and particularly the Apollo program.

 

[ZiprHead]

Star Trek is Horatio Hornblower, only set in the future rather than the past. Men on ships, exploring new horizons and having swashbuckling adventures.

I've heard it said TOS was  Wagon Train in the future.

That's how Roddenberry pitched TOS to the network except he it called Wagon Train to the Stars.

That's probably how I heard it. I was a big TOS fan when I was a kid. Took a lot of crap from my friends for that. Read all the books and anything related.

 

[Jarhyn]

One thing I could never figure out is so far into the future why didn't thy have fireproof materials and allowed venting of gases into the air every time something went wrong.

Scifi in general is predicable. Most of the possibilities gave been used over and over.

You're missing the entire point.

SciFi isn't about the future; It's about the present, and it's set in the future in order to get away with stuff that would cause trouble if you did it today - like Kirk kissing Uhura.

All of the ST variants explore current issues, in the safe space (pun intended) provided by SciFi.

The stories get told over and over because there are, fundamentally, very few stories people can tell, or want to hear. Whether the setting is the future, the present, or the past, is just colour, though setting stories in the present has some serious risks, as good stories typically highlight the failings of powerful people, institutions, or traditions.

The original series ST stories weren't particularly different from stories told by Shakespeare. Shakespeare himself set many of his stories in fantastical worlds, or in the past, in order to get away with saying stuff the authorities wouldn't tolerate if he were explicit about their relevance to contemporary events.

Star Trek is Horatio Hornblower, only set in the future rather than the past. Men on ships, exploring new horizons and having swashbuckling adventures.

The fundamentals are always the same no matter which genre you prefer; It's up to the viewer to decide whether they find the eighteenth century, or the twenty-first, or the twenty-fifth, more to their taste, but it's the same basic stew whether you prefer to eat it with potatoes, or with rice, or on its own.

Storytelling has always been this way.

To be fair some sci-fi is about the future as relates the present, cautionary tales of where we ought not let ourselves get carried to on any wave of desire.

Altered Carbon, for example, is a discussion about contemplating the value of human life in a transhumanist society, and examining technological immortality from a variety of perspectives.

it is a fantastic piece of work.

Star Trek has moments like this too, in The Measure of a Man, and I think this has stood the test of time in ascertaining that humanity is not the same as personhood. It was a look at the future, taken in my childhood, made not for the far future but for the near future.

One thing about the genre, whether set in fantasy or science fiction, is that the writer.makes a conscious decision of what the ethics of the times are, and how rough the world is and how widely that roughness spreads.

In science fiction, the flavor of how the world is hard and cynical changes from one where someone attacks you on the road with a sword and takes your money for entering school, or whether it is a lender with a financial leash on the character, or whether financial leverage is even a thing widely seen.

It does often speak to the present, but it also often attempts to discuss the future and in cases even accomplishes putting a hand on the wheel.

So many authors have spoken about their fears for the future even in settings of their present and our past, in ways that speak to a future we have not yet stepped into.

The best works in any genre continue speaking useful words to the future for a very long time.

 

[Jarhyn]

Star Trek is Horatio Hornblower, only set in the future rather than the past. Men on ships, exploring new horizons and having swashbuckling adventures.

I've heard it said TOS was  Wagon Train in the future.

That's how Roddenberry pitched TOS to the network except he it called Wagon Train to the Stars.

That's probably how I heard it. I was a big TOS fan when I was a kid. Took a lot of crap from my friends for that. Read all the books and anything related.

My dad had some of the better books, and I read most of those when I was bored. I read so much, and enjoyed at least some of what I read.

I'm worse verbally than I am with the written word. I have a much harder time expressing myself as an adult outside of a text prompt or command line.

I never talked about the books I read or the things I did because I didn't do those things to talk about them, I just read because I liked reading, and I liked even the schlocky books back then.

I didn't like the boring teen serial bullshit my sister was into, and my brother was always more into A/V and games.

I recall reading the book about the Kobyashi Maru stories. I'm not sure if it was the same book as "Tears of the Singers"?

Gosh, it's been forever since I thought about those books.

Those books are some of the first ones I read where I really started thinking about things outside of the human experience.

Enemy Mine also comes to mind, though I saw that as a movie.

 

[James Brown]

I recall reading the book about the Kobyashi Maru stories. I'm not sure if it was the same book as "Tears of the Singers"?

Might be this one?

 

[ZiprHead]

^^^ I guess I didn't read all the books.

 

[crazyfingers]

That's probably how I heard it. I was a big TOS fan when I was a kid. Took a lot of crap from my friends for that. Read all the books and anything related.

I probably have around 500 Star Trek books including all of the 4 main series. Back in the late 1980's and through the 1990's when I had to travel for business a lot and I was on an airplane at least once a week I got them all the time.

Since then my youngest son has read all of the ones I can still access. Maybe half of them. Years ago a couple hundred got put in the back of the garage and then my wife piled a shit ton of stuff in front of them. So day she promises to get me access to them.

 

[crazyfingers]

I recall reading the book about the Kobyashi Maru stories. I'm not sure if it was the same book as "Tears of the Singers"?

Might be this one?
View attachment 44333

One I recall most vividly was based on the idea that the Doomsday Machine was only a prototype and that a larger and much more powerful one was crewed by an alien bent on destroying everything. It's one of the ones in the back of the garage.

 

[Jarhyn]

I recall reading the book about the Kobyashi Maru stories. I'm not sure if it was the same book as "Tears of the Singers"?

Might be this one?
View attachment 44333

That would be it.

God that was such a long time ago.

They all had interesting ways of cheating.

 

[steve_bank]

Never did like the character of Picard. Aloof, snooty, condescending, and arrogant. A pompous ass.

Why doesn't that surprise me?

I have no clue, why?

You know what they say, 'Hell hath no fury like a Star Trek fan scorned.'

 

[Politesse]

I have no clue, why?

He's my favorite Star Trek captain, precisely because he tends to reason his way through crises rather than blasting through them.

 

[thebeave]

Oddly enough, I watched the Mirror, Mirror episode of TOS on the H & I channel last night. I love that episode, especially the way Uhura takes care of Bad Sulu. Definitely in my top 5. There was a lot of hand-to-hand combat in that episode, as there is in (seemingly) most of the episodes. I guess that must have been a '60's thing.