Okay, so he blusters.
Question about ESP and telepaths in TOS
- Thread starter Alencar1990
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Hey! Thanks for the tip! This is a much better way to reply, for sure! And thanks for the welcome to! I was looking foward to debate Trek the way I debate my other favorite franchises. This place seems nice to do It.
Yeah, he had no choice with Charlie, anyways. I likedthe change of tone. Coming from Star Trek Enterprise, Archer seemed to win almost all the time. TOS can certainly use this to create even deeper narratives.. Already noticed the series is not shy of killing some secondary characters, at least to make space feel like a more dangerous place..
Yeah! It's a great tool for allegory. Just wondered If there were more connected lore regarding this, but I got the point of an episodic "alien of the day" kind of vibe. I'm amazed by the amount of lore this franchise seems to have! It's like a historian/science nerd paradise! hahah
Sure, psi powers can be good for allegory, but I think the real reason TOS went to that well so often is that it was inexpensive. Showing telepathy doesn't require visual effects, just acting, and telekinetic powers can be depicted with pantomime to show people's bodies being psionically moved around, simple wire work for levitation, or basic jump-cut and dissolve effects to make things appear or disappear.
The Twilight Zone and TOS, at least TOS s1 have a lot in common. Charlie X could be considered an expanded (and better done, imho) version of "It's a Good Life", for example. Many other examples there, as I'm sure has been covered many times before here.
Mostly, only guest stars and red shirts are killed.
We analyze each and every one to "death" on this site. 
Great to have you aboard.
Although the majority of crew fatalities in season 1 were in gold shirts, and red and blue were tied for second. The "redshirts are doomed" trope is largely a consequence of just three second-season episodes with high security-guard death tolls: "The Changeling," "The Apple," and "Obsession." Those episodes alone account for roughly half of TOS's "redshirt" death total.
Ex Astris Scientia - Redshirt Deaths in TOS
The complete statistics about all Enterprise crew members who died during TOS
www.ex-astris-scientia.org
True only for season one. By the end of TOS, red shirts (27, Gary Mitchell was a pseudo-red shirt) dominated the crewmen death toll.
Kirk lost ~56 people under his watch (not to mention the many non-crewmen), so, yes, this shows how dangerous space exploration can be even on the best Starship.
Which is exactly what I said.
Only because of those three episodes, which account for nearly half the total redshirt tally. Without the excessive body counts of those three episodes, the annoying, overhyped redshirt meme would probably never have emerged.
Rather, it shows how action-adventure TV shows rely on supporting-character deaths to generate pathos or suspense, particularly in the 1960s. Any profession is dangerous if it's practiced by the protagonists of an adventure show.
I mean, look at Star Trek: Enterprise. You'd expect the more novice explorers of that era to make more fatal mistakes and lose an even higher percentage of their crew. Yet the writers made a choice not to treat crew fatalities as cavalierly as earlier shows had done, and to hold off on killing any crew members until the story gave them room to address the emotional impact of the loss. Thus, for the first two seasons of the series, NX-01 had a death toll of zero, in contrast to the 46 fatalities in TOS's first two seasons. The level of danger -- or rather, the characters' ability to survive danger -- is only as high or as low as the storytellers wish to make it.
That’s almost as many wives and girlfriends the Cartwrights lost on Bonanza.
I did not know that. Thank youAlthough the majority of crew fatalities in season 1 were in gold shirts, and red and blue were tied for second. The "redshirts are doomed" trope is largely a consequence of just three second-season episodes with high security-guard death tolls: "The Changeling," "The Apple," and "Obsession." Those episodes alone account for roughly half of TOS's "redshirt" death total.
Ex Astris Scientia - Redshirt Deaths in TOS
The complete statistics about all Enterprise crew members who died during TOSwww.ex-astris-scientia.org
It appears Kirk lost a crewman more times than Mannix was knocked unconscious— 56 to 55 in a nail-biter.That’s almost as many wives and girlfriends the Cartwrights lost on Bonanza.
If you look at other ships and not just Kirk, does Star Trek even have competition? The Intrepid, Constellation, Exeter, Excalibur, and Defiant lost everybody, The Farragut lost nearly half its crew, and the Lexington lost 53. The Valiant, Antares, and Beagle lost everybody.
And then of course, the Gamma 7A system and Malurian system both lost everybody, meaning billions each. And it's implied pretty strongly that the government on Gideon is about to kill quite a few billion people, but that's okay and it's a happy ending.
Mr. Flint says he's seen a hundred billion fall, but that was big talk. Maybe he's just a blowhard. We don't have to count him for the show to rack up a body count.
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I believe Flint spoke accurately, as he has no reason to lie about that.
Eh, people often make hyperbolic claims to illustrate a point. Flint is still people and not immune from that.
Unfortunately, all the series (and some of the movies) since TOS have tried to elaborate on things we saw in TOS so that it became impossible to keep everything straight, imho. Example: In SNW, they’ve got Uhura and M’Benga on Pike’s ship, but there’s nothing in ‘The Cage’/TOS to support that. Spock was very young at the time of ‘The Cage,’ and he’s at least 5 years older than Uhura, so there’s no way she would be there, but this is what happens when people who aren’t really diehard TOS fans are put in charge of things or are hired to write scripts. Gene Roddenberry never wanted any of the characters from TOS brought forward into TNG or any future Trek (wish I could find the reference). I didn’t understand why in the beginning, but I certainly did later when Rick Berman and others got their hands on things.
You're overlooking the fact that SNW is explicitly set five years after "The Cage," plenty of time for crewmembers to come and go. You're also forgetting that Uhura is explicitly a newcomer to the ship in the series premiere, and a cadet throughout the first season.
Officially, Spock is seven years older than Uhura. At the time of SNW's first season in 2259, Spock is 29 and Uhura is 22.
Why would Cage reference something that hasn't happened yet ?
Nothing in TOS contradicts M'Benga or Uhura being on the Enterprise between the Cage and TOS, either. If there is, I'd like like to see it.
Very young? I doubt he's fresh out of the academy. He's a lieutenant and is probably third officer. (based on the original pitch). Average age of a US Navy Lieutenant is 29-36. A Lieutenant JG is 25-29. I image it's similar for Starfleet.
Spock's birth year has been established as 2230, so he would've been 24 in "The Cage." It's likely he was precocious by human standards. But then, so was Kirk.
"Journey to Babel" said that Spock and Sarek hadn't spoken as father and son in 18 years, i.e. since 2250, implying that's when he entered the Academy; but apparently there's a graphic in SNW citing that as his graduation year, which seems erroneous, since he would've been 20. Short Treks: "Q&A" has Spock join the Enterprise crew in 2253 as an ensign.
I've been catching reruns of Mannix on MeTV and he seemingly got curbstomped in every episode, way more than Rockford.
That is not the foundation of or associated traits of the person Mitchell would become once transformed by the barrier. Being evolved far beyond human comprehension and ability was the effect of the barrier on human perception of what to do with such power, hence the reason Elizabeth--in no way like Mitchell--initially adopted the same kind of (false)God-like mentality, as seen when Kirk is pleading with her to help stop Gary.
True. It was the frontier / Cold War of the future, and as Kirk so eloquently stated in "Return to Tomorrow", "Risk is our business"--the inherent danger of their missions in an environment where, as Spock stated in "The Naked Tiime", "Space still contains infinite unknowns".
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