JJverse converts

I think the only remedy is probably going to be a new Trek series that is relevant to the world they're living in now.

 

Pretty much.

 

Wouldn't explain the continued relevancy of others that have withstood the test of time.

I also think that the changes in our world are largely cosmetic. We don't have to go downtown to the library to do our research, but we still have governments discrediting do-gooders or those who think outside proscribed boxes, and crimes predicated on race and so many other damn things that are the same that it isn't funny.

 

The first two seasons of TNG scream 1980s to me, but as the series went on I think it presented a view/tone that still holds up well today.

 

I grew up in the 70's and 80's and I think the world is a far different place.

I can easily see where some stories simply wouldn't work for newer audiences, even though I love them. One that I would point to right off the bat is The Conscience of the King (an episode I love). My daughter asked a very straight forward question when she was a bit younger: why don't they simply do a DNA test? I know and you know that wasn't even on the radar in 1960's storytelling. But I could easily see it being a stumbling block to someone who has known about DNA almost their entire lives.

 

And this of course is where you explain that DNA testing for criminal investigations wasn't even on the radar in the 1960's.

I think it is hard for a lot of people (not just kids) to accept that Sci-fi about the future doesn't show you the future but a reflection of the present of the time period it was made.

I think to help kids appreciate something classic you have to give them a little historical context. And you can say while they didn't predict the DNA thing here are a few things that the series did predict.

 

Being a father of three, I can tell you it simply isn't that easy.

I will make concessions for TOS that I simply won't make for most other things I watch. Society is different and so is technology. We're expecting today's kids to make the leaps we do and then say they have ADD when they can't or don't want to do it. Which simply isn't fair to them (some do make the leap which is cool).

Would TOS make the same impact on me today if I was an adolescent? I honestly don't know as there is much more competition in the world today.

 

I understand kids shouldn't be expected to make the leap on their own that is why it needs to be explained to them.

And I am not saying once explained kids will suddenly appreciate it. It depends on the kid, but I think trying to give them some context does help.

 

I've watched Star Trek with all three of my kids and it has stuck to varying degrees. My daughter likes the original, unaltered episodes even though she has questioned the science, my oldest son pokes holes in the plot logic/science of every single episode he's watched and my youngest son has trouble staying engaged with episodes of TOS, but watched Into Darkness straight through without budging and I even caught him rubbing tears out of his eyes when a certain scene happened.

I'm honestly just tired of people saying that kids today have ADD if they don't somehow enjoy a very sexist, scientifically inaccurate TV show that is fifty-years old.

When I read TOS novels, I actually imagine the technology with more of a modern interpretation.

 

All I can say is, it's a good thing TOS was filmed in color, or some people would refuse to watch it just because of that. It saddens me that there are those who ignore some of the greatest films in history because they're in black and white.

 

The whole "all kids have ADD" thing is a bunch of bullshit anyway. That's just another version of the older generation crabbing about how "kids don't understand nothing good" that they're parents said about them. It's what every single older generation says about the younger. "They don't like it unless it's got 'splosions, quick cuts, loud rock music and shaky cam." Just because they're used to what the standard for blockbuster entertainment is doesn't make them closed to other things. What many people don't enjoy, though (and this ain't just kids), is dated TV and movies. Lots of us like what we grew up with and what we're used to. In 40 years, they'll be nostalgic for what they like today. But their kids will mock how cheesy it all seems. "They can't see past the old effects!" Well for some people, even the best effects from 50 years earlier are simply "bad" today.

Some people don't care about effects and are fine with watching an outdated style of acting. But you won't find them in the majority. I'm 45, I grew up with Star Trek and enjoy old movies and TV. But even I couldn't watch the James Cagney movie "The Public Enemy" without laughing at some of it. Or rolling my eyes at how the sublte, real acting by Burgess Meredeth and Lon Chaney Jr in "Of Mice and Men" was countered by over the top mugging by a few who couldn't adjust to "talkies."

Oh, I also have ADD. Only those who live with it can tell you what fresh hell it is. Yet, I still can sit through an old movie or TV show if I find it interesting. Tastes change with every generation. To old people, every new is crap. I got news for ya, the generation before ours thought the stuff we revere was crap, too.

Younger people will like or dislike 60's Star Trek based on their tastes.

 

For some people, watching something in black & white will simply never "feel right". It is what it is.

I watched TOS in both color and black & white. I had a small 13" b&w TV in my bedroom and we had a color TV in the living room growing up, so it was never an issue for me.

 

I'm a little troubled by the inclusion of real-world science trends in TOS novels ... Diane Duane kept referencing a shipboard BBS in one and I'm thinking each time that this is like calling subspace radio a telegraph system.

Back on an earlier point, with CONSCIENCE you have a show failing on its own terms, w/o the issue of science that isn't included or wasn't even conceived of. You have them saying they will KNOW when his voice is recorded ... and instead, they don't know. They make it sound like the science issue a done deal, but it is arbitrarily dispensed with.

Back when I had time to waste on such, I used to rank it at #78 (right before AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD), but the 'phaser on overload' music brings it up several notches ... not a whole lot else I liked about CONSCIENCE, though it does give good backstory for Kirk.

There were fairly with-it teen folks in the 70s who were my age & didn't appreciate CITIZEN KANE, which is something I didn't understand then or now. In fact, at least a couple of them didn't like DR STRANGELOVE, which really confused me. I think it was an early manifestation of 'hate B&W.'

 

I understand but I am not saying kids have ADD today.

As for the show being sexist well that I do agree with. But it is not like sexism is gone from today's TV and movies, not at all. I felt JJ Abrams movies were sexist to. That bothers me more than the sexism of a 1960's show.

As for scientifically inaccurate, I don't think it was for that time period.

It's unfair to judge things from the past by today's standards, but of course I admit a lot of people have trouble with this and it is not just kids.

 

I hate to admit it but I have a daughter that is like this. She is 25 and refuses to watch any movie or TV show that is in black and white. I have tried to convert he with little success.

 

The Conscience of the King isn't really a murder mystery, although obviously it is literally a murder mystery at the superficial plot level.

It's about how the responsibilities of leadership sometimes cause people to do horrible things--to commit genocide--yet think they are doing it for the greater good.

It's about how the sins of the fathers can send shockwaves down through the generations.

 

The "sexist" scientifically inaccurate TOS is of course, the source material for the JJ movies. The JJ movies are almost entirely derivative of their source material--sure, the source material is tarted up in the JJ movies quite a bit, but the JJ movies are pure pop-culture kitsch, forgettable and disposable, as compared to the source material.

TOS, whatever its flaws, at least from time to time actually tried to tackle some important ideas in the context of weekly serial space opera.

 

Tastes may change, but taste doesn't.

 

That's called a red herring. Very common plot device in murder mysteries. I don't see how the episode fails "on its own terms"?

On its own terms, it's superficially a murder mystery plot-wise, but thematically, it's about blood being on the hands of a powerful man and even though he tried to escape judgment, that blood washed off on his own child. He couldn't escape the consequences of what he did 20 years before. He couldn't escape his fate, the direct consequences of his own evil acts--his own personal destruction and much worse yet, the consequences of what he did being visited on his own daughter who became an insane killer herself.

What you get out of it might be a function of what you are looking for. If you are just looking at these things as silly police procedural murder mysteries in outer space then it's just pretty much disposable fluff and there's not much point in watching it more than once or thinking about what the author is trying to say.

The problem with the JJ movies is that they are just spectacles, surface fluff, based on the TOS source material and don't really have very much weight to them because they aren't trying to express any big ideas. The JJ movies are pretty much the equivalent to Die Hard V or Transformers III. They do not say anything "new" and they don't even come close to trying to say anything "new." Nor anything "old" that's significant in a new or different way.

TWOK was interesting because of the battle of wills between the two lead characters. Not really because of the special effects.

Into Darkness was pretty much all about "Now how do we plot this thing so we have an excuse to crash a giant star ship into Star Fleet Command Headquarters"? No different really then the climactic battle of "Man of Steel," let's blow up a city, gee whiz that will "look cool on the screen"!!!! (And that's all that counts!!!)

Anyone watching these movies has to understand that the end of Man of Steel is exactly the same as Into Darkness. The whole movie is an excuse to blow up a city, in both cases. Does it mean anything? Does it have any greater significance? NO. Both are almost totally nihilistic in that respect. Destruction for its own sake, for the sheer spectacle of it. The expression of sheer power by ubermensch battling each other.

That's because most people are of mediocre intelligence or below and they don't look at movies like Siskel & Ebert.

Look at all the ugly tattoos young people (and even older people) get nowadays. Look at this Sydney Leathers person, her back is covered with perhaps one of the ugliest tattoos I've ever seen. You would at least think if she was going to have that done to herself she would have gotten something more artistic/classy. It looks like a chipanzee with a sharpee scrawled all over her.

 

Always a good way to win an argument. Insult those who have a differing viewpoint.

I have no idea what this has to do with anything?

You sound like a grumpy old man screaming at kids to get off his lawn.