Why didn't anyone smoke?

[Kegg]

Morale. It made them look cool.

More infantile than cool, to my eyes.

Yup - I despise the notion that smoking makes ANYBODY look cool.

Humour. It is a difficult concept.

That said:

It was a marketing ploy

Of course it is. It's also a very successful one, and I think it'd be fair to say what is and is not cool is frequently dictated by marketing.

Nobody smoked in LA Confidential - a movie set in an era when everybody smoked and it didn't harm the movie's story in any way.

It's an awkward call that was probably there just because people would complain about smoking - America is very tetchy on the subject, I understand, but I definitely draw the line there. You know they thought about having Gandalf not smoke in Fellowship of the Ring? I think even gum was suggested instead. Imagine that!

Battlestar Galactica needn't have featured any smokers then people wouldn't have had to worry about going cold turkey.

It needn't have featured so many alcoholics or divorced people and so on. Happy happy gumdrops.

 

[Christopher]

It's weird that the extreme violence and depravity in LA Confidential would get through but smoking would be prohibited. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think smoking is a horrible thing, but murder and organized crime and all the other stuff in that movie are horrible too. It's not as if the characters in that movie were being held up as role models for children to emulate; heck, it wasn't a movie that any children should've been allowed into anyway. Plus it was a period piece set in a time when smoking was ubiquitous. So it seems a strange film to subject to a smoking ban. If the studio insisted on "cleaning up" the story in that respect, why not require toning down the violence and the immorality of the lead characters?

But then, Hollywood does tend to be bizarrely tolerant of violence even as it cracks down excessively on nudity and sexuality. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised by a double standard.

 

[Pauln6]

Yup. American censors are REALLY wierd.

If smoking forms part of the plot I'm fine. The alcoholism and divorce of BSG added dimensions to the characters. Smoking cigars was a cheap way to make Starbuck look 'cooler' and a nod to the original that was frankly unnecessary. Doc Cottle's smoking was a throwaway joke. He smoked while operating on patients! It was daft but got dafter as their journey wore on over 3+ years. Work out roughly 40 fags a day for 3 years is over 40,000 cigarettes - and that's just one man...

Smoking 'pipeweed' in LotR was part of the lore and a nice in-joke. I'm glad they left it in but ultimately if they's left it out the films wouldn't have suffered much.

Basically smoking would have added nothing to Trek and, given the shows influence, who knows how it could have affected young fans if Kirk had been puffing away while chatting up the laydeeez. I'm so grateful Gene stuck to his guns.

 

[Red Ranger]

Because it's bad for you. 'Nuff said.

 

[Kegg]

If smoking forms part of the plot I'm fine. The alcoholism and divorce of BSG added dimensions to the characters. Smoking cigars was a cheap way to make Starbuck look 'cooler' and a nod to the original that was frankly unnecessary.

Oh come on. In all seriousness, characters like Tigh and Starbuck were self destructive powderkegs with enough personal issues to fill a second battlestar, so it'd make sense they drink and smoke. Maybe we're not ready for smoking presented as something other than a sign of deep character flaws, I dunno.

Smoking 'pipeweed' in LotR was part of the lore and a nice in-joke. I'm glad they left it in but ultimately if they's left it out the films wouldn't have suffered much.

No, that would have been a big flaw. Gandalf's pipe is an iconic part of the character. Visually it tells us so much about the guy. Gum or any other jokes about him no longer smoking would have been tremendously stupid.

 

[Pauln6]

If smoking forms part of the plot I'm fine. The alcoholism and divorce of BSG added dimensions to the characters. Smoking cigars was a cheap way to make Starbuck look 'cooler' and a nod to the original that was frankly unnecessary.

If the smoking had been used as part of that self-destructive bent e.g. if they had hacking coughs and were told to quit but wouldn't then maybe. The alcohol made them behave irrationally, stim use affected judgment, one-night stands indicated their state of mind towards relationships etc. I can think of nothing that smoking added into the mix. It was a pointless visual cue.

 

[Kegg]

I can think of nothing that smoking added into the mix. It was a pointless visual cue.

I don't understand how the visual cue is pointless. It'd be like having two school students, say, one wearing his uniform properly, the other not heaving having a tie, sweater, and with a loosely affixed TV shirt: That wouldn't have to come up in conversation but I think we can make (or would make) assumptions about the first student we wouldn't about the latter.

So too the smoking. BSG was a series with a mostly grim view of humanity, it'd make sense it'd show people smoking.

 

[Pauln6]

Why? It's sci fi. People don't have to smoke on other planets. I object because tv and films are known to influence the young and encourage them to smoke. If the smoking isn't adding an important dimension to the character (addiction, illness etc) and particularly if it is there to make the character look rebellious and cool then I don't think we should show it at all. Star Trek proves that it can work.

 

[Kegg]

Why? It's sci fi. People don't have to smoke on other planets.

It's Battlestar Galactica, which plainly was never about other planets, since its future interplanetary society bore a suspicious resemblance to the present day generally and America in particular. The whole show sort of emphasized that attitude. Leave it to Star Trek to remove smoking from the equation and have people eat coloured food cubes.

 

[Pauln6]

LOL - yeah gotta love those food cubes. I dread to think what Janice might have done with a cigar though...

 

[scotpens]

It's weird that the extreme violence and depravity in LA Confidential would get through but smoking would be prohibited.

Weird, perhaps, but a sign of the PC times we're living in. This anti-smoking zealotry has gotten to the point of ridiculousness. Postage stamps with images of celebrities like Bette Davis, bluesman Robert Johnson and artist Jackson Pollack have had cigarettes Photoshopped out. Nowadays, if Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler were in a custody dispute over the same child (just go with it), the judge would probably award custody to Hitler because he was a non-smoker.

 

[Pauln6]

It's weird that the extreme violence and depravity in LA Confidential would get through but smoking would be prohibited.

Weird, perhaps, but a sign of the PC times we're living in. This anti-smoking zealotry has gotten to the point of ridiculousness. Postage stamps with images of celebrities like Bette Davis, bluesman Robert Johnson and artist Jackson Pollack have had cigarettes Photoshopped out. Nowadays, if Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler were in a custody dispute over the same child (just go with it), the judge would probably award custody to Hitler because he was a non-smoker.

LOL. Yeah I don't agree with that but we know smoking is bad and we know screen characters influence the young. I do think 'positive' uses of smoking have no place in modern tv and film unless part of the plot. Harold & Kumar have to smoke. Teen movies where teenagers are experimenting maybe. But cop movies where the cops are smoking around crime scenes? Sci fi where people smoke in a sealed environement? Ludicrous!

 

[RoJoHen]

If smoking forms part of the plot I'm fine. The alcoholism and divorce of BSG added dimensions to the characters. Smoking cigars was a cheap way to make Starbuck look 'cooler' and a nod to the original that was frankly unnecessary.

If the smoking had been used as part of that self-destructive bent e.g. if they had hacking coughs and were told to quit but wouldn't then maybe. The alcohol made them behave irrationally, stim use affected judgment, one-night stands indicated their state of mind towards relationships etc. I can think of nothing that smoking added into the mix. It was a pointless visual cue.

Pointless, perhaps, but also realistic. It helped the characters relax. It was one of the few simple pleasures they had left. Hell, on New Caprica, you even had Adama and Roslin getting stoned!

I'm not an advocate for smoking. Frankly, I think it's gross. However, I know a lot of people who DO smoke, and I can tell you right now that if they found themselves faced with the circumstances that Galactica was in, they'd be smoking a whole lot more just to cope with the stress!

 

[snakespeare]

Do they allow smoking on board ships in the Navy? Or specifically, inside the ships? Could be a point of realism for crewmen to be forbade smoking due to unnecessary strain on the life support system (wouldn't be much, but it would be a logical reason to ban smoking on board starships).

I don't know about now, but I can tell you about the 70s, which is probably the same as the 60s for our purposes. We were permitted to smoke above deck, but not below decks.

But a better question might be submarine duty, of which I know nothing. I doubt they permitted smoking on subs, for the same reason as on the Enterprise. It would shorten the oxygen supply.

 

[Christopher]

Let's face it, the main reason Moore filled BSG with so much smoking was precisely because there was none in Trek. A great deal of what he did in that show was basically rebellion against the rules he had to follow as a Trek writer.

 

[ToddPence]

As noted before on other threads, the Iotians of "A Piece of the Action" appear to be the only race in the Star Trek universe to practice the habit.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Keep in mind that the US Suregon General issued a report in 1964 linking lung cancer and chronic bronchitis to cigarette smoking. The following year, Congress passed the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act which required cigarette packages to carry health warnings. Some shows started cutting back on the smoking habits of their characters. Even the usually socially irrelevant Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea put a damper on casual smoking starting in its second season (1965-1966). In the first season, characters smoked like chimneys. From the second season on, actual smoking was barely shown, represented mostly by the ubiquitous pack in Richard Basehart's shirt pocket.

So, I can absolutely see the Trek producers, in 1966, predicting cigarettes would not become less unhealthy over time and figured that, in the future, addictions to stimulants would not be the norm. You didn’t see anyone smoking joints either. Drinking, however, was never taboo.

 

[Christopher]

^On the other hand, in ST's sister production Mission: Impossible, which debuted in the same year from the same studio, smoking was downright ubiquitous. Every member of the original cast save for Peter Lupus smoked constantly on the show (making it rather surprising that all but one of them are still alive today), and cigarettes and matchbooks were often used as plot points -- Cinnamon Carter would hold out a cigarette and give a man an expectant look so he'd come over to light it and she could start a conversation, or a character would pass information to another in a matchbook, or a character would use lighting a cigarette as cover for activating a gizmo disguised as a lighter, or what-have-you.

 

[scotpens]

. . . I doubt they permitted smoking on subs, for the same reason as on the Enterprise. It would shorten the oxygen supply.

This thread covers that very issue (starting at post #7):

http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=238340

 

[ToddPence]

Hey, in Gerry Anderson's "UFO", people chain-smoked on the freakin' moonbase.