"I can't even."
"But you can odd?"
"But you can odd?"
Odd Squad!
This is what I always thought the intent was when people say "I can't..." or "I can't even..." I am so overcome with an emotion, I can't finish verbalizing my feelings. That's how I've used it when I say it, anyway.
I thought it was like, you name it, I can't do it - fill in the blank with whatever.
Maybe that was the initial intention - maybe - but, now, it has become simply imitative, and a poor substitute for proper communication; this is especially true when there is no preceding sentence that provides context. Occasionally, there is no preceding sentence whatsoever.
The hilarious thing about Rick Berman's gripe over "gimme five" is that it's not even new slang. It's 50 years old, and it's only ever utter one time, in a post-credit, with Spock informing another Vulcan about human customs and behaviors. I think that just speaks more of Rick Berman being an 80 year old fuddy duddy.
When it comes to slang, nothing in modern Trek has really ever felt that egregious. It's definitely a lot more lax about slang than the Rick Berman era. But someone saying "cool" doesn't really pin the language down to the 2020s because that's a phrase that's already existed for a century. It's been more timeless than saying "rad" or "groovy", which are phrases that feel very specific to their decades.
Until we suddenly have Pike telling Klingons over the viewscreen "we haven't crossed the Neutral Zone, no cap, skibidi boi", I'm not really griping about the use of slang.
When it comes to slang, nothing in modern Trek has really ever felt that egregious. It's definitely a lot more lax about slang than the Rick Berman era. But someone saying "cool" doesn't really pin the language down to the 2020s because that's a phrase that's already existed for a century. It's been more timeless than saying "rad" or "groovy", which are phrases that feel very specific to their decades.
Until we suddenly have Pike telling Klingons over the viewscreen "we haven't crossed the Neutral Zone, no cap, skibidi boi", I'm not really griping about the use of slang.
To be fair, it would be funny for a Klingon to claim Pike is very "Ohio" and Pike objecting because he is from California.
The language in modern Star Trek has never bothered me or taken me out of the story. Other franchises have taking me out of the story when they've done things like having characters with posters of Daffy Duck on their quarters wall or having Dolly Parton guest star as herself.
I totally get that! TNG famously had Steven Hawking cameo as himself. Which, given what we now know about his alleged company IRL, I find the cameo to be very irksome.
"Its been around forever" only proves his point as you didn't see that sort of slang on TNG. There is a certain formality and decorum expected from officers in a work environment, which Star Trek always adhered too until recently. Even on TOS you never saw that sort of lax behavior from officers unless a virus or something hit the ship and the show made it a point to say that it was abnormal behavior for them.
It is a different generation with different expectations.
TOS could be more easy going then TNG. But the strict formality all the time in TNG and the shocked look at times from those members made them unrelatable, and closer to Shakespeare style actors who are divorced from the common man and the fragility of mortals.
The reason why TNG doesn't appeal to me is because these characters are unapproachable. They don't inspire me, they don't encourage me to be better. They look down on me. Truly Plato's Stepchildren.
The whole conceit that officers in the military only interact in strict and rigid formality and decorum doesn't even reflect the reality. That's more of a byproduct of mid-20th century propaganda that tried to depict all officers as being robot toy soldiers that fell in line. That kind of depiction of the military pretty much got dropped post-Vietnam.
As far as Trek goes, TNG was definitely the most formal and professional of all the shows, which is why one of the big criticisms of that show is how stuffy the show feels. It wasn't always the case, I can think of exceptions like Geordi trying to tell Data a sex joke on the bridge, but those were only exceptions. DS9 kinda drops that formality as almost every other scene set in Ops has Dax gossiping about dating to Kira.
Anyway, this is about SFA, where I expect cadets to be even more informal than actual officers.
As far as Trek goes, TNG was definitely the most formal and professional of all the shows, which is why one of the big criticisms of that show is how stuffy the show feels. It wasn't always the case, I can think of exceptions like Geordi trying to tell Data a sex joke on the bridge, but those were only exceptions. DS9 kinda drops that formality as almost every other scene set in Ops has Dax gossiping about dating to Kira.
Anyway, this is about SFA, where I expect cadets to be even more informal than actual officers.
Ironically, despite being the show which became the poster child for the whole "Starfleet isn't a military" argument, TNG's depiction of Starfleet comes off as even stricter than actual militaries. Captains who lose their ships get an automatic court-martial as opposed to an inquiry first like in the real world. Or then there was the episode where Riker walks in on a young officer still getting dressed who has to immediately jump and stand at attention in his presence. If that happened in an actual military, the superior officer would say "finish getting dressed, you son of a bitch."
Again, I think that Star Trek is not valued as a study in humanity but god like beings who laugh at us mere 21st century mortals. The appeal is to a sense of superiority of their growth.
Last edited:
Or having the bridge crew watching the Junior Mints episode of Seinfeld.
On the bridge viewscreen.
Spoiler: the Pigman that Kramer saw was actually a Tellarite.
The point of Star Trek is that people in general (especially Starfleet material) are...wait for it...better. If bureaucracy, behavior and morality are all the same (ref. Deep Dish Nine), then what is the point? Fancy ray guns, food machines and green space chicks? Hey, if you like the spectacle, great; for some of us, we look to these shows for an improved humanity.
He pointed out TOS' professionalism, so you can't meaningfully frame this as a chiefly TNG matter (a post-Vietnam War era show, by the way). Either way, neither crew acted as man- or woman-children during crunch time, nor did they hold mini-psych sessions.
