Just like there are black Romulans ("The Pegasus(TNG)", Star Trek 2009, Season 1 of PIC).
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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and if they did casting like that, you'd have almost the exact problem people have with Code Of Honor
Honestly, if we’re talking actual scientific antmoshpheric and environmental applications, most Vulcans (and their Romulan cousins) should theoretically have generally darker-toned skin due to the brightness of the Vulcan sun. I mean, they evolved the extra eyelid for the exact same reason. Why not take it all the way?
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Yep. Most of Vulcan is arid and contains desert environments. Someone with pasty white skin in surroundings like that becomes more and more curious after a few generations of offspring.
I didn't like it: the look interfered with the acting. But to borrow from My Fair Lady, I would have grown accustomed to their faces
I was referring to the armor, ships and weapons.
There are episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea that are more TOS than TOS.
That's not what gives Code of Honor its sour note
He seems to have found them quite tasty. But blondes were hard to come by around there.
SNW Spock is a bit on the pale pink side, must take after his mother.
Out of all the DSC Klingon vessels, the only one I feel looks somewhat decent is the shuttle. And even that looks more like a Dune type design than a traditional Trekkian design.
I'm honestly not sure about the rest of the Klingon fleet though - for me the designs are pretty terrible and not helped by a lack of color and having very similar shapes, so it's easy to confuse different designs in a battle.
I remember Tim Russ answered something like this when VOY first premiered & some folks were questioning a black Vulcan. He simply responded that Vulcan was a very hot planet and it wasn't the unlikeliest thing in the world for there to be darker-skinned Vulcans.
Code of Honor's problem was how unabashedly it leaned into stereotypes of a haremic, 'foreign' culture in baggy desert attire and misogyny just front and center. Smooth Klingons coming up in their uniforms and acting all militarist shouldn't really set off an audience, not with the right casting. Like, it [CoH] could had been pulled off in a sort of Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon/John Carter/Gor/Conan culture, and its not like those go unbashed either - actually, Gor's worse than Code of Honor actually - but if it was a lot less 'serious' with its stakes and presentation. CoH just throws it at you, unapologetically. At the end Lutan* gets his comeuppance, sure, for underestimating two women, but like, nothing else changes, nothing will change with that society, and they literally talk on screen how they feel so much better than the Federation even if their technology is less, it all mashes together.
While some may say Trek is about the Federation tolerating and respecting everybody, I don't feel that's quite true - while I'm the first to talk about an arrogant Federation, there are limits, stuff that goes against Federation values being in conflict with the Federation (and even losing to it) isn't bad off the cuff. Nothing wrong with the Federation saying, 'hey, we don't do this, we don't like this, don't do it to us,' etc, etc. Its just, it's another one of those episodes where the crew comes by, gets into a tangle, undoes the tangle, leaves. What was the point, ya know? Just showing off a darker corner of the universe? I guess that's okay but not really narratively satisfying. Picard doesn't even get the last word in, the Ligonians do. Subconciously, that's part of the 'cues' for an audience to get.
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seems to be the main one, most people who have a problem with it, at least that i have seen on these boards, seem to think it would have been mostly fine if not for the casting
my recollection (which admittedly may be bad) is that sking pigmentation in humans is mostly about UV protection. vulcan being hot and bright doesn't necessarily mean it's high in UV... and even if it is, may not be how aliens' skin works
i suppose if we're looking for a quasiscientific explanantion, maybe vulcan pigmentation is to blend into different kinds of geology so as not to get eaten by wild sehlats
or perhaps best not to think about it too deeply and get into some... weird areas
Not really. What most people mean when they say that is that the same story would have been less bad with more diverse casting so that the episode doesn't come across like black people are somehow naturally savages.
But that doesn't mean the same story with different casting would've actually been good, only less bad. Meanwhile, the same casting with a different story could've been even worse or genuinely fantastic or anything in between, depending on the story.
It is primarily the combination of story and casting that's the problem. And to the extent that you even can separate the two, you'd stand a far better chance of making a good episode by replacing the story than you would by replacing the cast.
i mean, people want it banned or taken out of streaming and syndication rotations because the casting combined with the story has Unfortunate Implications, but most other people seem to say it isn't *quite* that bad, but there are still Unfortunate Implications that would have been mitigated if they were lizard aliens like the script apparently originally called for. and removed the troi and yar thing especially because of yar's background.
That's not at all what I've seen.
Yes, people all agree it has unfortunate implications and yes, many agree, those unfortunate implications would be far less bad with different casting.
But almost everyone I've seen also agrees it's just a bad episode regardless of the casting. They're not arguing that it's a good episode ruined by casting, they're arguing it's a bad episode that could've at least been spared the racist connotations by having different casting. That it didn't have to be as terrible as it is. That it could've been just a bad episode instead of being an infamous episode.
And I have to agree with Richard that I've never once seen anyone demand it be removed from rotation anywhere.
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