What happened to Pike/Kirk and the age of peaceful exploration?
- Thread starter deckard1
- Start date
Couldn't figure out the pattern so I just went with the last one to finish the set:
The Sex Machine
A Private Sexy War
Sex in the Fold
The Sexy Curtain
What is an opinion? Note that I did not refer to the substantive content but to the OP modus operandi. The picture shows it well. Two posts and two controversial threads including one reviewed and closed by a moderator.
My post is public and is one of the answers in the thread that is followed by OP by default. So less drama on your part, especially since you are not a moderator, so your accusations apply to you as well.
Still bad form and frowned upon to accuse another member of trolling, even with evidence. Accusations of trolling should be made to the mods, not directly or publicly via post. I think. 
This pretty much sums it up for me. Star Trek is always compared to some standard that is imagined to be perfection and recent productions fail to live up to it. Only to discover that Star Trek has actually been messy all along. It is both wonderful and messy.
It is bad form and that's what the Report button is for.Still bad form and frowned upon to accuse another member of trolling, even with evidence. Accusations of trolling should be made to the mods, not directly or publicly via post. I think.
I suspect they were going with a "power corrupts" scenario, that Adams started out with good intentions, to cure the incurable by "fixing" their minds and memories, but the temptation to abuse the power got the best of him, especially when he started encountering resistance from the likes of Van Gelder and others. People don't see things his way? Well, clearly their thinking needs adjusted . . . .
Once again, a Star Trek episode remains relevant.
While I agree with a lot of what you're saying / trying to communicate here...I'm not so sure I agree with your first paragraph. Kirk and the Enterprise were repeatedly referred to in TOS dialogue as being exceptional. Episodes that come to mind are "Court Martial" and "Bread and Circuses" where there is definitely indication of the prestige of "starships" and "starship captains" in the overall scheme of the fleet.
But, I agree that Star Trek is sometime better served when the stories are a little less overblown.
It's kind of like the parent who constantly yells. After a while, the kids just tune the yelling out and it becomes the norm. If you only yell a few times a year, though...that has a much different impact.
I'd say it's the same with the "galactic-level" threats. You just get numb to it after a while, but even worse, it leaves you nowhere special to go "big" if you want to do that occasionally.
This is actually a really well-put argument, with which I don't wuite agree, but it's so good I want to go deeper to the details of that:
I don't think that that is what's actually happening. Let's face it - NONE of the other Trek production are as "Utopian" as TNG. Even the ones set at the same time (DS9 & VOY) clearly try to "naturalize" the universe.
With that being said: The world of TOS clearly was an Utopian, optimistic future. And that's not because of rose-colored glasses or old production styles. It was outright stated. This is a show, with a unified Earth, where war and poverty are gone, and the vastness of space isn't filled with wars against aliens or for humans survival - instead the best use for humanities ressources is to go out there and turn some rocks.
Yes, it's not the Eden-like, unrealistic suburban fantasy that TNG is. But it's damn well one of the few future universe where anyone would truly want to live in.
And this is also part of the reason why: Yes, TOS is filled with violence, carnage and space horror. But it's out there. It's essentially the same as with Indiana Jones, who goes out there, has thrills, violence and horror, but once he gets back home, he got his students, a perfect job and lives in a pretty great reality. It's not that this stuff doesn't exist. It's that we left it behind at home. The world out there? Of course still dangerous and mysterious and unknown. Otherwise what would be the point in exploring it?
And here is the thing: Literally NOBODY would say such a Gorn crisis would be "out of touch" with Star Trek. Quite the opposite in fact. It's the perfect Trek conflict - something from out there, and yes, people die to protect paradise, but overall, this is not a giant space war where we have to save every human being or the multiverse - the goal is to defeat violence itself.
Even in the dark part pf the plot where we hunt down the Gorn, the obvious goal is not to wipe out the Gorn race. But to end that violence, mutually, and if it has to be through "superiour firepower".
I don't think so. It speaks volumes that DIS' Klingon war was widely divisive and outright hated. Wheras the red angel mystery didn't cause such a reaction. Yes, some got annoyed how the arc developed. But otherwise - this was a perfectly modern television arc, that fit with the general tone and theme of what people expect from Star Trek.
I don't think that that is what's actually happening. Let's face it - NONE of the other Trek production are as "Utopian" as TNG. Even the ones set at the same time (DS9 & VOY) clearly try to "naturalize" the universe.
With that being said: The world of TOS clearly was an Utopian, optimistic future. And that's not because of rose-colored glasses or old production styles. It was outright stated. This is a show, with a unified Earth, where war and poverty are gone, and the vastness of space isn't filled with wars against aliens or for humans survival - instead the best use for humanities ressources is to go out there and turn some rocks.
Yes, it's not the Eden-like, unrealistic suburban fantasy that TNG is. But it's damn well one of the few future universe where anyone would truly want to live in.
And this is also part of the reason why: Yes, TOS is filled with violence, carnage and space horror. But it's out there. It's essentially the same as with Indiana Jones, who goes out there, has thrills, violence and horror, but once he gets back home, he got his students, a perfect job and lives in a pretty great reality. It's not that this stuff doesn't exist. It's that we left it behind at home. The world out there? Of course still dangerous and mysterious and unknown. Otherwise what would be the point in exploring it?
And here is the thing: Literally NOBODY would say such a Gorn crisis would be "out of touch" with Star Trek. Quite the opposite in fact. It's the perfect Trek conflict - something from out there, and yes, people die to protect paradise, but overall, this is not a giant space war where we have to save every human being or the multiverse - the goal is to defeat violence itself.
Even in the dark part pf the plot where we hunt down the Gorn, the obvious goal is not to wipe out the Gorn race. But to end that violence, mutually, and if it has to be through "superiour firepower".
I don't think so. It speaks volumes that DIS' Klingon war was widely divisive and outright hated. Wheras the red angel mystery didn't cause such a reaction. Yes, some got annoyed how the arc developed. But otherwise - this was a perfectly modern television arc, that fit with the general tone and theme of what people expect from Star Trek.
One of the things I've always liked best about TOS was that the conditions were always dangerous, the federation was on the cusp of being in multiple wars, and (what was then known as) the fleet was suffering terrible attrition, but bravery was at the heart of it. They kept on going. They hardly even paused.Can't resist pointing out that this show about "peaceful exploration" boasted episodes titled "Operation--Annihilate!", "Dagger of the Mind," "Balance of Terror," "Arena," "A Taste of Armageddon," "Amok Time," "The Doomsday Machine," "A Private Little War," "Patterns of Force," "Wolf in the Fold," "Spectre of the Gun," "The Savage Curtain," etc.
Granted, there was also "Day of the Dove," in which the Klingons and the Enterprise crew spend the entire ep trying to kill each other.
Might not have been exactly healthy but in fairness that devil-may-care life did finally catch up with the crew in the long run. I still take the TOS era as this wild swashbuckling period in federation history, and it fits in to a sort of post-Klingon War euphoria for me, so it works with Disco.
I think if it had been resolved differently it would not have been hated.
In Tribbles, it's clear the Klingons on the station believed there would be a war which they would win.
There are good points being made about TOS's optimism, even in the face of bleakness and horror. To take some of the examples above: the outpost is slaughtered in Arena, but Kirk ultimately refuses to kill, and there don't appear to be any further Gorn attacks, so the Gorn captain learns that the Federation aren't the enemy.
In A Taste of Armageddon, Kirk ends the culture that demands people step into disintegration chambers. The two warring sides are forced to meet, and there's every indication that peace will ensue, at last.
In The Doomsday Machine, the entire crew of the Constellation are lost, and the planet killer could have genocided countless civilisations on its journey. But Decker's sacrifice reveals the way to stop it, and the Enterprise crew rescue the Rigel systems from certain destruction - and Decker is presumably remembered as a hero, given Kirk's log entry.
In Day of the Dove, nobody actually dies (as far as I remember?) and the two sides ultimately manage to work together to realise that they're being manipulated.
Discovery doesn't exactly contradict this sort of tone - there have been a upbeat, positive endings to several plot arcs, such as the tardigrade (kind of) and the encounter with the spore people (kind of), but the show somehow just doesn't feel as relentlessly hopeful and optimistic, and I don't really know why. I mean, we're technically saving the universe and making first contact with a bunch of new species, so it should feel a lot more joyous than it does.
In A Taste of Armageddon, Kirk ends the culture that demands people step into disintegration chambers. The two warring sides are forced to meet, and there's every indication that peace will ensue, at last.
In The Doomsday Machine, the entire crew of the Constellation are lost, and the planet killer could have genocided countless civilisations on its journey. But Decker's sacrifice reveals the way to stop it, and the Enterprise crew rescue the Rigel systems from certain destruction - and Decker is presumably remembered as a hero, given Kirk's log entry.
In Day of the Dove, nobody actually dies (as far as I remember?) and the two sides ultimately manage to work together to realise that they're being manipulated.
Discovery doesn't exactly contradict this sort of tone - there have been a upbeat, positive endings to several plot arcs, such as the tardigrade (kind of) and the encounter with the spore people (kind of), but the show somehow just doesn't feel as relentlessly hopeful and optimistic, and I don't really know why. I mean, we're technically saving the universe and making first contact with a bunch of new species, so it should feel a lot more joyous than it does.
I always look on "Dagger Of The Mind" as a vehicle to extol the virtues of Helen Noel's wonderful chassis.
They weren't subtle about it.
Have you met Gene Roddenberry?????
No, but I'm fully aware of Gene's, ahem reputation
So, just like TOS. Think back at the episodes where they did save the universe and tell me those endings were joyous. Where No Man Has Gone Before? The Alternative Factor? Immunity Syndrome? City On The Edge of Forever? The one common theme of saving the universe in Star Trek is that it rarely comes without great sacrifice.
Plenty of TOS eps end on somber, even tragic notes. See also "Mantrap," "Balance of Terror," "Charlie X," "Conscience of the King," "A Private Little War," "Mark of Gideon," "All Our Yesterdays," etc.
Yeah. I suppose the issue is that extending what would once have been a one-or-two episode story out into fourteen episodes means that the tone has to stay relatively consistent for the whole season, and in Discovery's case so far, that means consistently downcast and - I'd go as far as to say - melodramatic. It hasn't had as many of the usual chances to relax or remind us that, no matter how terrifying and grim space might get, we're out there because we want to be, and there are plenty of amazing things and people to meet. Aside from the Kelpiens and New Eden, there haven't really been many moments that echo the kind of successful diplomatic/exploratory missions that Kirk and Picard had on the reg.
Pike injected some of that feeling back into the show, which I reckon is the reason he seems to have been received so warmly by virtually everyone. Season two has obviously been much better at offering counterpoints to the darkness than season one, which was just relentless, so I'm hopeful that season three will continue the trend. My main issues with this season have all arisen in pretty much the last four episodes or so, for what that's worth.
Pike injected some of that feeling back into the show, which I reckon is the reason he seems to have been received so warmly by virtually everyone. Season two has obviously been much better at offering counterpoints to the darkness than season one, which was just relentless, so I'm hopeful that season three will continue the trend. My main issues with this season have all arisen in pretty much the last four episodes or so, for what that's worth.
