Misconceptions about TOS

[scotpens]

What's implausible isn't that its effects were impermanent, it was that they were possible in the first place. For one thing, the torpedo being so damn tiny. I read the book before I saw the movie, and I imagined the Genesis torpedo as some enormous missile, for it would have to be in order to have the kind of power to affect a whole planet, right? Then I saw the movie and it was this dinky little thing barely five feet high and with largely hollow innards, and I found that downright risible.

An electronics engineer from the 1930s would find it risible that someday there'd be a gadget that's a combination wireless telephone, still camera, movie camera, teletype and game board (with a few other functions) -- and it would be small enough to put in your pocket. Or that the equivalent of millions of pages of text could be stored on a device the size of your pinky finger.

 

[Christopher]

^Those are matters of sophistication. This is more about raw energy. It would take an immense amount of power to transform an entire planet in minutes -- at least comparable to the power required for a starship to warp space and travel faster than light. And doing that requires enormous antimatter engines, in-universe. In context, the torpedo is implausibly tiny.

 

[uniderth]

- That there is such a thing as "TOS" or "The Original Series." The phrase "The Original Series" is not in the title of the show. The title of the series is "Star Trek."

 

[Christopher]

^I wouldn't call that a misconception, just a convenience. Anyone with any intelligence can deduce that it wouldn't have been called "The Original Series" until there were other series to compare it to. (I'm sure the compilers of the Old Testament never called it that either.)

 

[telerites]

Similar also to A New Hope, no?

 

[Armored Saint]

- That there is such a thing as "TOS" or "The Original Series." The phrase "The Original Series" is not in the title of the show. The title of the series is "Star Trek."

So what? Should we stop to use our contemporary calendar to designate periods that happened before it's creation?

TOS is simply an easy way to situate the series called Star Trek into this big franchise called Star Trek.

 

[BillJ]

Similar also to A New Hope, no?

Except A New Hope is now part of the official name of the film and shows up in the opening crawl. The Original Series is essentially the catalog name for the show now, to differentiate it from its offspring.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

Kirk was womanizing even in Season 1 (Conscience of the King). He may have invested more of his emotions in each affair than a typical hookup-artist of today, but he still knew going into these things that they would be short-lived ship-in-every-port deals.

Hmmm, I've always thought it was Lenore who was doing all the seduction. She knew how to keep his attention, and carry out her murders without anyone suspecting her.

 

[BillJ]

Kirk was womanizing even in Season 1 (Conscience of the King). He may have invested more of his emotions in each affair than a typical hookup-artist of today, but he still knew going into these things that they would be short-lived ship-in-every-port deals.

Hmmm, I've always thought it was Lenore who was doing all the seduction. She knew how to keep his attention, and carry out her murders without anyone suspecting her.

Pretty much how I always saw the situation.

 

[Melakon]

Kirk was womanizing even in Season 1 (Conscience of the King). He may have invested more of his emotions in each affair than a typical hookup-artist of today, but he still knew going into these things that they would be short-lived ship-in-every-port deals.

Hmmm, I've always thought it was Lenore who was doing all the seduction. She knew how to keep his attention, and carry out her murders without anyone suspecting her.

Pretty much how I always saw the situation.

Indeed. Kirk unwittingly played right into her hands by diverting their arranged transport, giving her an opportunity at the last two survivors.

 

[Lance]

But this idea that he was a rule breaker is flat-out false (I think that really only started getting perpetrated after TWOK)

Hmm, I guess it's the Kobayashi Maru story that started it, since Kirk didn't really do any rule-breaking in TWOK per se. Starfleet ordered the Enterprise to investigate the anomalies at Regula One, and Kirk followed that order, plain and simple. But it was TSFS that solidified it, with Kirk and the crew going rogue and stealing the ship.

Oh definitely. TSFS codified it. I guess the Kobyashi Maru scenario was inspired by Kirk's penchant for coming up with outside-the-box solutions on TOS, but moving forward it led to this general representation that Kirk was always some kind of a maverick officer, which has of course become further canonized in the alternative universe films (granted, this is an alternate Kirk...)

In TOS he seldom actually disobeyed orders (I can think of maybe only once, "Amok Time", and even then he's just trying to stretch them rather than break them per se). Even in TSFS, he in fact tries to get the Enterprise back through the proper channels first, and his ultimate decision to steal the ship is played as if it was his last resort scenario (but one that he was absolutely willing to make).

 

[BeatleJWOL]

Kirk was womanizing even in Season 1 (Conscience of the King).

Hmmm, I've always thought it was Lenore who was doing all the seduction. She knew how to keep his attention, and carry out her murders without anyone suspecting her.

Pretty much how I always saw the situation.

That's how it ended up, but Kirk was clearly interested to begin with and was trying his hand. She just was able to use that to keep reeling him in.

 

[Christopher]

That's how it ended up, but Kirk was clearly interested to begin with and was trying his hand. She just was able to use that to keep reeling him in.

Rather, Kirk was clearly using the pretense of romantic interest as an excuse to invite her troupe aboard so that he'd have the opportunity to investigate Anton Karidian and determine whether he was Kodos. And Lenore was able to use that to gain access to the last two witnesses.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

Hmmm, I've always thought it was Lenore who was doing all the seduction. She knew how to keep his attention, and carry out her murders without anyone suspecting her.

Pretty much how I always saw the situation.

That's how it ended up, but Kirk was clearly interested to begin with and was trying his hand. She just was able to use that to keep reeling him in.

Exactly.

However - and this may be me talking as a Barbara Anderson fan - Lenore held all the cards. She had Kirk, well, 'whipped.'

 

[Blamo]

I think the whole "Kirk is a renegade rule-breaker" thing only really started with TNG, where in comparison to Picard he can seem like that (even though he isn't). Both Kirk and Picard respected the rules and laws, but they go about that respect in different ways. Picard will sit in his ready room, calmly debating a law/mission/rule with one of the cast. Kirk reaction is generally a bit more passionate, but he never oversteps his bounds.

Also there's how GR's view of Star Trek changed over time. A good example is how the prime directive changed. In TOS it was basically "don't interfere with a civilizations development", whereas in TNG-era it was far more stringent "if they don't have warp drive, they're on their own".



A misconception I had about the show was that it was progressive. And to be fair, it was in terms of racial politics. But when it came to women... it really didn't do a good job there. In fact it did a blindingly terrible job with women.

I mean The Cage isn't stellar when it came to women either, but it seemed to do a far far better job of it. Especially in the case of Number One and the fact women wore the same uniform.

 

[Avro Arrow]

TOS is simply an easy way to situate the series called Star Trek into this big franchise called Star Trek.

Indeed. Much like with TAS, whose actual title is, I believe, simply Star Trek.

 

[Commishsleer]

I think the whole "Kirk is a renegade rule-breaker" thing only really started with TNG, where in comparison to Picard he can seem like that (even though he isn't). Both Kirk and Picard respected the rules and laws, but they go about that respect in different ways. Picard will sit in his ready room, calmly debating a law/mission/rule with one of the cast. Kirk reaction is generally a bit more passionate, but he never oversteps his bounds.

Also there's how GR's view of Star Trek changed over time. A good example is how the prime directive changed. In TOS it was basically "don't interfere with a civilizations development", whereas in TNG-era it was far more stringent "if they don't have warp drive, they're on their own".



A misconception I had about the show was that it was progressive. And to be fair, it was in terms of racial politics. But when it came to women... it really didn't do a good job there. In fact it did a blindingly terrible job with women.

I mean The Cage isn't stellar when it came to women either, but it seemed to do a far far better job of it. Especially in the case of Number One and the fact women wore the same uniform.

I'm not keen on the sexism in TOS but it was the 60s.
I don't think it did a terrible job though. You had plenty of (enemy) women leaders, an enemy Female Fleet Captain, the odd female command or science staff.

I agree now it looks a bit pathetic but at least you had women in traditional 'male' jobs. Not many other TV shows at the time showed professional women who weren't in traditional female roles such as nurses, teaches, secretaries.

 

[Christopher]

I think the whole "Kirk is a renegade rule-breaker" thing only really started with TNG, where in comparison to Picard he can seem like that (even though he isn't). Both Kirk and Picard respected the rules and laws, but they go about that respect in different ways. Picard will sit in his ready room, calmly debating a law/mission/rule with one of the cast. Kirk reaction is generally a bit more passionate, but he never oversteps his bounds.

I think that difference is overstated. Remember "The Drumhead," when Admiral Satie called attention to how many times Picard had violated the Prime Directive? The two captains may have had different styles, but they weren't that different in substance. Sure, "Unification" had that line about Kirk's "cowboy diplomacy," but that was in the fifth season. By that point, the movie version of Kirk as a renegade was pretty well established.

And now that I think about it, Picard became something of a renegade in the TNG movies too. In First Contact he defied Starfleet's orders to stay out of the battle, and in Insurrection -- well, the title speaks for itself. Maybe it's just that heroes defying their authority figures are such a common trope in movies, e.g. all the Tough Cops Who Don't Play By the Rules. I wonder if there's something about that format and length of story that lends itself to that trope.

A misconception I had about the show was that it was progressive. And to be fair, it was in terms of racial politics. But when it came to women... it really didn't do a good job there. In fact it did a blindingly terrible job with women.

In retrospect, certainly. But for its time, it was relatively progressive, though backward compared to several of its contemporaries. TOS's fan base consisted predominantly of women, and the first generation of fanfic writers were overwhelmingly female. True, to some extent what motivated them to write fanfic was the desire to correct ST's shortcomings in its portrayal of female characters. The reason the Mary Sue trope came into being was because so many authors felt compelled to add new, capable, important female characters to make up for the lack of same in the show's ensemble, and naturally some of them took it too far or did so hamfistedly. But still, there was something that drew them to the show in the first place, that made them feel it offered inspiration for female fans even if it fell short of its potential.

 

[F. King Daniel]

That Vulcans have sex once every seven years. IIRC, ENT: "Fusion" canonized this bit of silliness, but it most definitely was not the intent of "Amok Time", as D.C. Fonatana explains in her intro to Vulcan's Glory (which features a Pike-era Spock having a casual affair with a Vulcan crewmember)

I read once, probably here, that Spock being the first Vulcan in Starfleet originated in a Lincoln Enterprises catalogue. I don't know how accurate that is. It could be from fanfiction before that, or maybe something James Blish or Alan Dean Foster embellished in one of their TOS/TAS adaptations?

 

[TheSubCommander]

- That there is such a thing as "TOS" or "The Original Series." The phrase "The Original Series" is not in the title of the show. The title of the series is "Star Trek."

^I wouldn't call that a misconception, just a convenience. Anyone with any intelligence can deduce that it wouldn't have been called "The Original Series" until there were other series to compare it to. (I'm sure the compilers of the Old Testament never called it that either.)

But the term The Original Series is on official release of the DVD sets, both the original versions and remastered versions. So its not a misconception, it is an official title, at least when it comes to the DVD release. It also just happens to be convenient to refer to it as TOS, on boards like this or in conversations.