I wasn't insulted, at least. I know I'm an old fuddy duddy (ask my kids.)
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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In many ways I’m the same.
But I mean what I said. You’re a friend. I’d never knowingly attempt to hurt you.
You're good, man.In many ways I’m the same.
But I mean what I said. You’re a friend. I’d never knowingly attempt to hurt you.
Thank you. Means a lot.
Aaawww
SNW has too many human personnel
There’s Spock, Number One, Pelia, Henmer, arguably La’an and loads of variety in the background?
I’d say it does pretty well.
I’d say it does pretty well.
At least that’s one thing that’s consistent with TOS, which only seemed to have one non-human officer: Spock.
The thing with background aliens, though, is that, since they are in the background, they need to look alien. If they look human, then the crew looks mostly human.
Granted, your list is primary and secondary characters, but some still look human. I know it's a budget saving measure to have human looking aliens, but that comes at the expense of losing the visual perception of a diverse, multi-species crew
Maybe there is something that contradicted this that I'm not thinking of (in TOS), but aren't there a few references in TOS that Spock is the only non-human on board? I'm thinking of McCoy complaining about having to have special medical setups for one person. (As opposed to McCoy just complaining.)
This was due partly at least to time and budget, I realize. But it also lent to the feel in TOS that humanity (and the other planets as well) was still kinda new at this. You know, "frontier"?
This has gone by the wayside in later Trek and because that's what we're used to the bulk of Trek looking like it has seeped back into present day 23rd century shows. Even TAS promptly added Arex and M'Ress.
This was due partly at least to time and budget, I realize. But it also lent to the feel in TOS that humanity (and the other planets as well) was still kinda new at this. You know, "frontier"?
This has gone by the wayside in later Trek and because that's what we're used to the bulk of Trek looking like it has seeped back into present day 23rd century shows. Even TAS promptly added Arex and M'Ress.
We see Andorians and Tellarites.
Well okay then.
It's just that I've been on the receiving end of much less affectionate jabs for daring to mention I still buy DVDs and BDs, and still have the same land line we've used for 40 years. I react.... poorly.
Au contraire, Discovery had too many non-human personnel, for the pre-TOS time period in which it was set.
Apart from Linus and Saru, who were the non human characters in speaking roles?
That's a big (controversial?) opinion of mine:
I think a human ship with one or two alien crew members is way more interesting than a ship full of aliens and half aliens.
The former "feels" much more sci-fi, and the aliens more unique and actually "alien".
In the latter, the aliens feel more like, I don't know, minority stand-ins, which is all types of problematic and IMO doing no one a favour.
Though that change had happened already on TMP in live action, and has been the norm ever since, so (for once) I don't really blame ST09 or DIS here.
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^So in universe Starfleet has an official policy of species segregation for their starships?
I guess due to real life production budget constraints every single admiral in the TNG/DS9 era was a human character.
It was good to see DISC not go down that road.
A human ship with one of two alien crew in the Trek universe makes as much sense as a human ship in the Trek universe where everyone looks like James Kirk but one or two crew members look like M'Benga in the background. But they claim to represent United Earth.
I guess due to real life production budget constraints every single admiral in the TNG/DS9 era was a human character.
It was good to see DISC not go down that road.
A human ship with one of two alien crew in the Trek universe makes as much sense as a human ship in the Trek universe where everyone looks like James Kirk but one or two crew members look like M'Benga in the background. But they claim to represent United Earth.
That's.... not what I said?
Old TOS presented a universe where the different species lived much further apart. There weren't any aliens on earth, any of the Earth colonies, starbases or other ships. The Federation did exist, but was a lot "looser" connection between different species, who all preferred collaboration, but still lived very far apart and visited each other only with a handful of fancy starships.
Then by TMP Trek became more like the Star Wars universe - with many aliens living among the humans, on Earth, the Federation, being Co-workers, regular, easy travel between different species' homeworlds and so on. At that point it totally makes sense & was necessary to represent them also in the background as regulars on ships.
I guess I prefer the second approach to worldbuilding & storytelling more - the first one feels more like 50s sci-fi by now. But at times I think they kinda' "overdo" it a bit, and it weakens the excitement of actual aliens a bit.
^ Yeah TMP showed a diverse set up but the other TOS movies sadly went back to its humancentric roots (probably due to a tight budget) and TNG continued with it. This is why I prefer the novelverse, the diversity was only limited by the imagination of the writers. (And one of them wrote an explaination why Kirk had a human dominated crew)
I remember in William Rotsler's Star Trek II Biographies he put a ship in Kirk's backstory that was an experiment in more integrated crews. It didn't end up working because of things like differences in sleep cycles, optimum room temperature, and atmospheric mixes. It put everyone on edge and made them less effective as a crew, so after that Starfleet began a practice of the majority of a Starship crew (say 75-80%) being from one species only.
I think the only reason Spock made it to the Enterprise instead of something like the Intrepid was because he was half-human.
Since 23rd century Earth was never depicted on-screen until TMP, we really cannot say there weren't any aliens living on Earth.
Not as Enterprise crew members, at least in TOS. The Tellarites were ambassadors and so was the Andorian (who actually wasn't even Andorian).
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