Swearing in Star Trek - Steve Shives
- Thread starter Tuskin38
- Start date
Steve Shives hits the nail on the head as always.
Honestly, I always thought ENTERPRISE got a bum rap there. Go back and watch the original series. In "Amok Time," which is the very first episode to feature full Vulcans, T'Pring plots to get Spock or Kirk killed just to get out of an arranged marriage, while T'Pau doesn't seem pleased to have humans visiting their sacred ceremony and is perfectly willing to allow Kirk to get killed in ritual combat. And, again, that's our very first look at the Vulcans.
Which was followed by "Journey to Babel," in which we discover that Sarek has barely spoken to his son for eighteen years simply because they disagreed over his career choices, that Sarek has concealed a serious heart condition from his wife, and where even Spock admits that his father is perfectly capable of killing in cold blood if he has a "logical" reason to do so.
And yet ENTERPRISE and DISCO portray Vulcans in a negative light? They've been sneaky and duplicitous and high-handed since Day One, and not nearly as logical as they pretend to be. Spock may be admirable as an individual, but the Vulcans were hardly role models on the original series.
Season 2 of Picard. Q shows up:
Picard: Oh for fuck’s sake. This omnipotent cunt again?
On a side note, if there’s a character who really seems like she should be dropping F-Bombs in Discovery, it’s Reno.
Picard: Oh for fuck’s sake. This omnipotent cunt again?
On a side note, if there’s a character who really seems like she should be dropping F-Bombs in Discovery, it’s Reno.
And we have episodes like The Galileo Seven, where Spock's Vulcan approach comes up short.
I'm a huge fan of Reno. She reminds me of the kind of mechanic you can trust implicitly but feel bad about visiting because she'll make you feel guilty for not taking better care of your bike or car. Her character works whether they use that style of dialogue or not.
I balk at the idea of equating war and poverty with profanity. The way I see it, profanity is not some sort of ghastly social evil we need to evolve beyond; it's just a harmless means of expression. Heck, in parts of New York and Brooklyn, not to mention any bar where a bunch of Trek writers are hanging out, it's just punctuation. No out-of-control emotional outbursts required.
To some degree, I suppose, this is matter of a taste. Personally, I like Trek best when the idealism and optimism remains grounded in the realities of human nature, warts and all, as in TOS, DS9, and DISCO. And I frankly love that Trek characters can actually talk like real people these days. People in the future are not going to just quote Shakespeare and Dickens; they're also going to use ordinary colloquial language as well, as they did on TOS.
It's just that nowadays they can say "fuck" instead of "In a pig's eye!"
Again, you seem to be making assumptions.
First off, I wasn't equating war and poverty with profanity... I was merely providing examples that historically speaking, humans have been doing a LOT of things that didn't necessarily agree with us and after discarding those things, it didn't make us 'dull' or 'sterile'. We simply changed. That's all.
Using profanity may be a harmless means of expression to some, but not to others. To me, profanity is a useless means of expressing oneself.
I grew up in an environment where profanity was rampant and as I became more knowledgeable about how the world works, I discovered that its yet another outdated method of communication that can easily result in more problems down the line.
'War and all' are not 'realities of human nature'. Just stop with that and go study works of dr. Robert Sapolsky and Gabor Mate to gain a better idea of what I'm referring to.
Also, from this, one could easily think that you WANT humanity to continue having useless wars and destroy the environment for fear that if we stop with those permanently, it will end up making us 'dull' or would make for 'bad TV'?
Seriously, THAT would be dull and rather unimaginative.
Creative individuals would find ways to make things interesting using different routes as opposed to regular hangups (which are quite frankly boring and tiresome).
Also, whoever said I want Trek humans or humans in reality to quote Shakespear or Dickens? There's really no need for that.
'Ordinary language' probably won't survive 50 years down the line... it will change over time just like it did in the past.
You think people spoke English the same way 100 to 200 years ago?
Several languages DIED OUT recently.
Stewart should go full Yorkshire with that line.
And 'fuck" persists. Assuming it will evolve out is rather odd to me.
"But the passage of several hundred years and a nuclear war will change things."
Yeah, clearly not in Trek. Nokia still exists in Trek in the Kelvin Timeline and OVER 200 YEARS AFTER WORLD WAR III.
Yeah, clearly not in Trek. Nokia still exists in Trek in the Kelvin Timeline and OVER 200 YEARS AFTER WORLD WAR III.
You might have to go a little further back. I think the Declaration of Independence is perfectly understandable in 2021, as is the novel Frankenstein.
Moby-Dick is about 160 years old and I understand it just fine.
You speak Cetacean?
Here's the thing about the language changing. Yes, in theory, people in the 23rd or 24th century might well speak differently than we do today, but that applies to all STAR TREK dialogue, not just the cusswords. But STAR TREK has never been scripted in some sort of exotic or impenetrable future dialect, simply because it's being written and performed for us primitive 20th/21st-century viewers. That's just something we've accepted as an audience since 1966.
So why balk at "fuck" or "shit" on those grounds, but not raise the same objection to all the other contemporary words and phrases STAR TREK uses all the time? Like "paycheck" or "toaster" or "get the hell out of here" or whatever? Seems like a double standard to me.
Granted, some slang expressions may age faster than others, but "fuck" and "shit" and "damn" are hardly flash-in-the-pans like "groovy" or "twenty-three skiddoo." They're pretty durable parts of modern colloquial English, which is what STAR TREK has always employed for dialogue.
So why balk at "fuck" or "shit" on those grounds, but not raise the same objection to all the other contemporary words and phrases STAR TREK uses all the time? Like "paycheck" or "toaster" or "get the hell out of here" or whatever? Seems like a double standard to me.
Granted, some slang expressions may age faster than others, but "fuck" and "shit" and "damn" are hardly flash-in-the-pans like "groovy" or "twenty-three skiddoo." They're pretty durable parts of modern colloquial English, which is what STAR TREK has always employed for dialogue.
You speak Cetacean?
You krill me.
Stewart should go full Yorkshire with that line.
Are thee a fellow Yorkshire-person? Where’s tha from? I’m a Sheffield lad originally!
It rolls off the tongue, sounds like it feels and feels satisfying to exclaim. It’s going nowhere.
You'd have to go back to the 1600s to get my ancestors to Yorkshire.
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