Name your imponderables for Star Trek

Discussion in 'General Trek Discussion' started by Robbiesan, Jan 16, 2014.

  1. Green Shirt

    Green Shirt Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    What might have been thought of as a useless tidbit, such as the 300 year old NASA code signal for Voyager to transmit its information sure became important in TMP. Its amazing that such data survived the both the Eugenics War and WWIII. :)
     
  2. milojthatch

    milojthatch Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    I was actually not a fan of Marvel casting a Norse "god" as a black man. I have not been a fan of a lot of the re-casting of white characters into black characters in modern comic book films, and that one may be the dumbest. That is like taking a figure from an African myth that is very clearly black and re-casting him/her as white. Oh you know if that happend there would be all manner of complaining!

    I have no issues with black actors playing roles of authority. I LOVE Captain Sisko, I though Danny Glover playing the US President in 2012 was fun and I'm really excited about the idea of seeing a Black Panther movie finally in the next few years. But retconning established characters to be more PC is the high of stupidity!

    You want Spider-Man or Superman to have more black characters? Fine, make new ones! I don't understand why that seems to be such a hard concept for some in Hollywood?
     
  3. urbandefault

    urbandefault Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Actors portray characters very different from themselves all the time. That's why it's called "acting."

    Maybe someone should ask Ms. Park if she had a problem being cast as a Japanese character.
     
  4. Jonas Grumby

    Jonas Grumby Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I just wanna be able to watch the reactions when they start trying to tell actors they can only play what they actually are. :D
     
  5. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    I think Khan self-identified more as a "superhuman" than as a traditional Sikh. In my books, I addressed this by establishing that Khan felt that, as a "superior" being, he was not bound by merely human customs and traditions.

    As I recall, there's even a big, dramatic scene where he cuts off his beard as a declaration of the fact that he represents a new breed of human who were going to create a brave new world, transcending the primitive taboos and superstitions of the past.

    Or at least that's how I rationalized it. Khan's background may have been Sikh, but he was hardly devout. Certainly, he never says a word about being a Sikh in either "Space Seed" or the movie, but is instead constantly talking about how physically and mentally superior he is to baseline humans. There's absolutely no indication that his cultural heritage is a big deal to him.

    He was an Augment (to use the later term) first and foremost.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2014
  6. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    ^Yes and that is where all his loyalties lie.
     
  7. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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  8. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    The Heimdall thing would perhaps be an issue if the THOR comics (and movies) were ever supposed to a historically accurate, faithful adaptation of the original Norse myths. But they aren't and they never were.

    This isn't the Asgard of the actual myths. This is the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby sci-fi comic-book version of Asgard, so I couldn't care less how culturally authentic it is. The way I see it, complaining that Heimdall doesn't look Norwegian enough is like complaining that XENA was not an historically accurate portrait of ancient Greece. Or that MERLIN wasn't a faithful adaptation of the original Arthurian legends.

    You're kinda missing the point . . . :)
     
  9. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    People, people..

    [​IMG]
     
  10. JirinPanthosa

    JirinPanthosa Admiral Admiral

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    This is why political correctness needs to die. This weird conception that everybody's subcultural identity is so holy that it is an act of aggression for any member of it to be played by anybody who is not a member of it. It's especially ironic in the context of Star Trek, a show about how we are all really just people.

    Nobody bats an eyelash at gay actors portraying straight characters, it's gay activists who give gay actors a hard time for that. Or at straight actors playing gay characters, or Christians playing atheists, or just about anyone with brownish skin being cast as Muslim. Or Irish or Scottish people being cast as James Bond, or a woman being cast as Bob Dylan. It shouldn't be a question of who the actor is in real life, it should be a question of how accurately they can act their character.

    Did you know the woman who plays Denerys Targarian isn't a real Dragonborn?! HERESY!
     
  11. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    I see your STARGATE and raise you THE WITCHES OF EAST END--which has its own take on "Asgardians."
     
  12. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    That's true for most "ethnic" casting. A European can play just about any European. An African can play just about any African. A Native American can play just about any Native American.

    We see non Italian, but European, Marlon Brando play Italian Vito Corleone

    We see non Hutu/Tutsi, but African, Don Cheadle play Hutu/Tutsi Paul Rusesabagina.

    We see non Lakota, but Native American, Graham Greene play Lakota Ziŋtká Nagwáka
     
  13. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    To be fair, the whole color-blind casting thing resists glib, one-size-fits all answers. There are legitimate historical reasons to object to "white-washing" non-white characters and to blackface and yellowface and a host of past abuses. Some sensitivity is required here, as well as a willingness to approach matters on a case by case basis.

    But, yeah, people can take things too literally sometimes. Taken to an extreme, only Scots could play Macbeth, only Danes could play Hamlet, and only Austrians can play Maria Von Trapp . . . .

    Don't laugh! I've seen fans argue in all seriousness that Wonder Woman has to be played by an actress of Greek descent and that Sherlock Holmes has to be played by a Brit and so on, which is being a bit too literal-minded for my tastes.

    Actors pretend to be what they aren't. That's basically the job description.
     
  14. JiNX-01

    JiNX-01 Admiral Admiral

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    There were ladders in Star Trek.

    The Naked Time

    [​IMG]



    In Wrath of Kahn, Kirk used ladders to get to engineering.
     
  15. USS Triumphant

    USS Triumphant Vice Admiral Admiral

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    How did NONE of the cast of Voyager read the script for "Threshold" and immediately decide they could be doing better things with their lives, like factory or farm work?

    (Just rewatched it this evening, with my daughter seeing it for the first time. She was... less than happy. ;) )
     
  16. JirinPanthosa

    JirinPanthosa Admiral Admiral

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    Also, it was established in The Chase that a small vessel manned by one person can destroy the entire biosphere of a planet, and in By Inferno's Light that a small vessel manned by one person can supernova a star.

    So why don't all wars last about five minutes?
     
  17. urbandefault

    urbandefault Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    And ...

    Yeah, yeah, dude looks like a lady. ;)

    [​IMG]
     
  18. Elder Knight

    Elder Knight Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Laurence Olivier did play Othello in a 1965 film (i.e., quite close to Trek TOS time). He didn't just rely on burnt cork, but had an elaborate facial with body makeup as well. He indulged in some bodybuilding, and adopted a unique voice for the roll.

    This was "the greatest actor of his generation" choosing to add one of the greatest theatrical roles to his resume. This would have gotten by without a peep in earlier decades.

    However, by then, sensibilities had changed, and there was a lot of controversy. I doubt that any Caucasian performer has assayed that role since. (One studio did use Peter Ustinov as Charlie Chan in 1981, and regretted it!)

    Had Star Trek debuted a year or two later, they probably would have had to make accommodations.
     
  19. BigJake

    BigJake Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Break me a give. It was momentous when the Trek franchise finally put a non-white in the big chair a quarter-century later.

    White actors playing nonwhite roles became controversial because it was an expression of racism. Specifically the racist assumption that good God-fearing Americans didn't want dirty Indians and Negroes and what-have-you on their film and television screens. Therefore nonwhite actors were denied work in roles actually portraying their own cultures or were forced to work in ghettoes of largely negative and stereotypical roles. Those barriers began to collapse in the Sixties, but even now we're far from at the end of that process.

    White actors do not suffer from any corresponding lack of representation or roles (except to the extent that there is still a paucity of good roles for women). Black actors are not being hired to portray negative stereotypes of whites. White actors are not being confined to portraying witless, expendable sidekicks or criminals or savages. It damages no-one that Idris Elba gets to play Heimdall; this is just another case of certain persons of pallor falsely imagining themselves to be victims of "racism" because other people are finally getting access to privileges they've always tacitly assumed to be rightfully theirs alone.

    The idiotic babbling about "political correctness" always has to ignore extremely obvious, simple, plain facts like this.
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2014
  20. BobtheGunslinge

    BobtheGunslinge Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Galaxy Quest had a pretty funny take on this. Tony Shaloub played an actor portraying a character named Chen. Later on he says his real name (the actor's) is Kwan.

    Also, Moragan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption: "They call me Red. I guess it's on account of I'm Irish."