NAZIs and STAR TREK

[RobertScorpio]

Today I was watching TOS. My wife and I watched Patterns of Force. Though the message is pretty in-your-face, the story is actually very frightening in what it was saying. As we watched Kirk and Spock in Nazi uniforms my wife asked me how many episodes, of all TREKs, actually mention Hitler/and or the Nazis. I could only come up with two. Patterns of Force and City on the Edge of Forever. Do any of the other show TREK shows actually mention Hitler or Nazis? Or was this just a TOS thing...

Robert
Scorpio

 

[Michael]

What would we do without Memory Alpha?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Oh come on, you didn't see ENT's Space Nazis? Trek's finest moment!

Also, the Hirogen stuff from VOY. And the Cardassians were pretty much just Nazis too, right?

 

[RobertScorpio]

Oh come on, you didn't see ENT's Space Nazis? Trek's finest moment!

Also, the Hirogen stuff from VOY. And the Cardassians were pretty much just Nazis too, right?

I didn't see ENTERPRISE's Space Nazi you refer too...but yes, I do remember the Hirogen crap episode from Voyager. I totally had forgotten about that one!!! That was not only a bad episode, it ruined what could have been a great nemesis for Voyager...Hirogen!!

Rob

 

[RobertScorpio]

i had never noticed your avatar...is this some kind of subtle message to Sulu??

Rob

 

[Temis the Vorta]

i had never noticed your avatar...is this some kind of subtle message to Sulu??

Rob

...Sulu?

So I guess not.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Ummm..never mind. Not even sure who's it is..

Rob

 

[Gov Kodos]

They made their Anti-nazi messages to an audience for whom that was recent history. Patterns of Force being a particularly good episode for today, even more than then as Gil was certainly working from a severe dose of revisionist history.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Kirk mentiones Hitler in Star Trek 6 during the dinner with the Klingons.

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Patterns of Force is a good episode in my opinion, ENT's Space Nazis are clichéd and not worth your time. So if you haven't been exposed to that crap, don't bother.

 

[A beaker full of death]

They made their Anti-nazi messages to an audience for whom that was recent history.

It was 30 years later.

 

[flandry84]

I've always been uncomfortable with the use of the nazi uniform in movies/tv.Our heroes playing nazi "dress-up" is mostly unwarrented.
Whatever about the viewer's discomfort,imagine that of Nimoy& Shatner.

 

[MarianLH]

They made their Anti-nazi messages to an audience for whom that was recent history.

It was 30 years later.

1945-1966 = 21 years. And the Nuremburg trials and other postwar cleanup details kept Nazis in the news for at least a couple more years.

Didn't happen the night before, but I still remember the 80s.


Marian

 

[STIntergalactic]

I always figured Nazi episodes were written mainly so they could use the various Nazi props and costumes that most studios have lying around from WWII movies. Great way to save money.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

They made their Anti-nazi messages to an audience for whom that was recent history.

It was 30 years later.

1945-1966 = 21 years. And the Nuremburg trials and other postwar cleanup details kept Nazis in the news for at least a couple more years.

And they were in the news again in the early 60s with Eichmann's capture in 1960 and his trial and execution in 61-2.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I always figured Nazi episodes were written mainly so they could use the various Nazi props and costumes that most studios have lying around from WWII movies. Great way to save money.

They could have at least tried to get the uniforms *accurate*.

And I think it would have been more eerie if the Ekosians and Zeons had been more obviously alien.

 

[Kegek]

I always figured Nazi episodes were written mainly so they could use the various Nazi props and costumes that most studios have lying around from WWII movies. Great way to save money.

They could have at least tried to get the uniforms *accurate*.

If you're writing something to reuse props on the cheap; presumably getting the cash to improve on those props is out of the question.

And I think it would have been more eerie if the Ekosians and Zeons had been more obviously alien.

Eh. It was an obvious allegory episode either way. 'Orderly societies aren't necessarily good, take fascism as an example.' Making them look more alien wouldn't have obscured this - take 'Let That Be Your Last Battlefield', for example.

Anyway, another reason they used the Nazis is essentially the same as the numerous internet references to the Nazis that resulted in Godwin's Law. The Nazis are one group which it is almost universally acknowledged were a bad thing; they're an enemy that people of almost every shade and stripe can identify as an enemy and be comfortable with it. Few groups could claim to have similar notoriety; but the Nazis also had numerous striking symbols and acts of astonishing savagery that have engrained them in popular memory and culture.

Even still, I think Star Trek used the Nazis a little too often. Allegorical Nazis like the Cardassians were better ideas.

 

[A beaker full of death]

They made their Anti-nazi messages to an audience for whom that was recent history.

It was 30 years later.

1945-1966 = 21 years.

I was thinking of the 30s - back when the world knew and did nothing.

 

[A beaker full of death]

I always figured Nazi episodes were written mainly so they could use the various Nazi props and costumes that most studios have lying around from WWII movies. Great way to save money.

Likely. Though the absolute evil they represented is a writer's wet dream.

 

[Brannigan]

Bernd Schneider makes several good points at Ex Astris Scientia about the nazis and Star Trek. He makes the argument that every time we see Alien Nazis they are terrible people. This also seems to be the only time Germans/Germany is represented in Star Trek is as Nazis. Bernd makes a point about the episode Killing Game in VOY. He states: [FONT=Arial]"the Nazis are shown as still worse than the Hirogen here, since it's a Holonazi telling the Hirogen to carry on fighting with a racist speech that is probably more sophisticated trash than everything even Hitler said"[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]I think Mr. Schneider is correct about all of his points about the Nazis in Space (check out his episode reviews for "patterns of force", Killing Game, and Storm Front). Patterns of Force, as others have said, was written when WW2 was still fresh in peoples minds, but I dont think star trek needs to revist the Nazis in Space. Lets see some of the many positive contributions that Germany has given the world instead (Space Program?) [/FONT]