Debunking TOS exceptionalism

[A beaker full of death]

I'm just working through this, so please contribute everything you have to say...

I've been listening to a lot of old radio shows, and watching a good number of older tv shows that haven't achieved the longevity of Star Trek as a pop culture icon.

And the thing that strikes me most is how absolutely absurd it is when talking heads or acolytes of the church of All Things Roddenberry talk about how groundbreaking the show was.
Now, TOS is probably my favorite tv show, and has been for decades. It was good, quality television. But the mythology that's grown up around it is a bunch of bunk (something Melinda Snodgrass pointed out in an issue of Omni in the early '90s what she called Roddenberry on believing his own BS at that point).

All the technology (faster-than-light speed, teleporters, starships, shields, video communication...) had been envisioned decades earlier.

Showing Russians and Americans working together? Man From UNCLE featured Russian and American spies working together during the cold war.

Different races working together? I Spy featured a black leading character who was the brains of the team (the other guy was the jock).

First interracial kiss? Lucy, you got some 'splainin to do (yeah, this one might be arguable).

All the major creative talent involved in Trek were featured prominently in other shows first, and did top work there. Including GR.

Please share your thoughts on this.

 

[BillJ]

Yeah, the Holy Church of the Rodd now claims pretty much all social and technological progress from the 1960's on. It's a joke to me.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The Twilight Zone episode "Valley of the Shadow" depicted a lot of very Trekkian technology in 1963. And James Doohan was in the episode! Scotty stole it all.

 

[Warped9]

TOS gets the nod a lot because it's the one that is remembered and has endured. It did accomplish some things, but not the things and in the way many erroneously remember.

Roddenberry was not a great humanist visionary. The show came along at the right time and a lot of viewers reflected a lot of their own perceptions onto the show, and in extent onto Roddenberry who intern began to actually believe and perpetuate those projected perceptions.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Its something strange I see in Trek fandom.. that it isn't enough that Star Trek is an entertaining series of TV shows/movies, it has to be "important" and "more than just a TV show"

And I have loved Trek since I was 5, but--to me--its always been simply because its entertaining.

 

[Redfern]

Valid points all. Here's a lil' personal irony, between my cousin and me, I'm the far more "passionate" Trek fan. For her, it's a pleasant nostalgic diversion. (She was twenty when Trek debuted in '66.) But I have to chuckle as she is the one who will occasionally say how Trek "predicted" the various technologies we take for granted today. I shake my head and politely tell her, sorry, no, many other properties preceding Trek by decades first presented these ideas. I once showed her a turn of the century illustration depicting a video "phone booth" to emphasize my point. Here it was presenting the idea of interactive audio/visual 'real time" communications, decades before the first television was invented. That drawing was made some 60 years before Trek surfaced.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[T'Girl]

I once showed her a turn of the century illustration depicting a video "phone booth" to emphasize my point. Here it was presenting the idea of interactive audio/visual 'real time" communications, decades before the first television was invented.

And when did Dick Tracy and his "boys" start wearing that wrist communicator with the video screen?

Mid 1940's?

 

[Maurice]

I once showed her a turn of the century illustration depicting a video "phone booth" to emphasize my point. Here it was presenting the idea of interactive audio/visual 'real time" communications, decades before the first television was invented.

And when did Dick Tracy and his "boys" start wearing that wrist communicator with the video screen?

Mid 1940's?

On January 13, 1946 Dick Tracy introduced the 2-Way Wrist Radio. It became a 2-way wrist TV in 1964.

 

[Bob Karo]

Not to mention the Nazis had an actual working video phone network in the 1930s.

 

[RandyS]

Didn't FORBIDDEN PLANET have a Transporter ten years before Star Trek?

 

[Redfern]

Its purpose was to protect the crew when the ship dropped from hyper-drive into normal space (and presumably vise versa), but visually, the design MGM created was repeated a decade later with Trek, yes.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Maurice]

Not to mention the Nazis had an actual working video phone network in the 1930s.

It was in Nazi Germany, yes, dunno if I'd go as far as saying "the Nazi's had".

Blog post (with pix) of the “Gegenseh-Fernsprechanlagen” here (link).

 

[Warped9]

So many ideas in TOS had existed before in film, television and literature. But TOS did effectively convey those ideas to perhaps an even broader audience than before. TOS really helped in making a lot of those ideas more common in the broader public.

 

[dayxday1000]

But TOS did effectively convey those ideas to perhaps an even broader audience than before. TOS really helped in making a lot of those ideas more common in the broader public.

Yes, perhaps. But the point Beaker is making "is how absolutely absurd it is when talking heads or acolytes of the church of All Things Roddenberry talk about how groundbreaking the show was."

Making ideas more common to the broader public doesn't = groundbreaking.

 

[Knight Templar]

Well, IIRC Star Trek was one of the first programs to actually refer to "antimatter" (I'm not sure in 1966 it was even a common scientific term) and was in fact the first to suggests its use as a power source.

and while other science fiction films and television had things like "beams that handle matter" and "invisibility screens", Star Trek was the one that made the terms "tractor beams" and "cloaking device" common.

and while "teleportation" had been around for some time prior to Star Trek, I believe David Gerrold or someone said flat out that "teleportation without a receiving booth on the other end" was strictly a Star Trek innovation.

 

[Knight Templar]

But TOS did effectively convey those ideas to perhaps an even broader audience than before. TOS really helped in making a lot of those ideas more common in the broader public.

Yes, perhaps. But the point Beaker is making "is how absolutely absurd it is when talking heads or acolytes of the church of All Things Roddenberry talk about how groundbreaking the show was."

Making ideas more common to the broader public doesn't = groundbreaking.

I disagree. Making new concepts marketable, acceptable and popular is a key part of such things.

Steven Jobs had not worked on an actual computer in decades yet he still gets massive credit for his work.

 

[Tribble Herder]

Think about it this way: Christopher Columbus didn't really discover America. There are about a half dozen other folks dating back centuries before that day in 1492 who can say, "been there, done that." But it wasn't until after Columbus that the real fun and games in the New World began. Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, and I'm not so sure he invented the assembly line, but once he put 'em together, buh-bye horse and buggy.

By the same token, there was very little to Star Trek that was original unto itself. But after Star Trek brought all those elements together, and presented them in a manner that wasn't aimed solely at the typical seven year old, you started seeing more shows, both sci-fi and other genres, that started to aim a little higher than the stereotypical couch potato slob with the eighth grade education and actually try and say something about the world around us, and not just be satisfied with selling soap. Yes, other shows managed to make commentaries here and there, but few stuck their necks out as far and as frequently as Star Trek did.

It might be more accurate to say that Star Trek was as much a product of its time as it was a product of Gene Roddenberry, as other shows, with producers who were dying to say something just as much as Roddenberry was, came out around the same time ("I Spy" being a biggie), but not many of those shows have quite the fan following, or the legacy, that Star Trek does.

Star Trek didn't invent a lot of stuff that it's credited for, and it wasn't the first television series to push the boundaries of what you could do on network television, but then the 1988 LA Dodgers didn't have any business even being IN the World Series, let alone winning it.

It's not a matter of who was first, or who was best, it's who took advantage of the opportunity they were given. And few producers were more opportunistic as Gene Roddenberry. Thus, Star Trek is remembered as a groundbreaking show, while all those other groundbreaking shows are footnotes.

 

[Maurice]

^^^None of which makes the show groundbreaking. It just makes it seem it did work it didn't actually do.

A few facts:

• Antimatter was mentioned in narration in the April 20, 1964 The Outer Limits episode "Production And Decay of Strange Particles", predating Star Trek.
• An energy beam with no receiving device delivers and retrieves devices and aliens to/from the Robinson's planet in the November 17, 1965 Lost In Space episode "The Sky is Falling", again predating any aired Trek episode.

The oldest known references to many common science fiction terms can be seen at this website (link).

 

[ROBE]

The 1950 comic Eagle had a story called Dan Dare Pilot of the Future, who was chief pilot for Space Fleet, which had covered a lot of ground before Trek.
The symbol of Interplanetary Space Fleet was a rocket with two stars surrounded by laurel leaves, this was replaced by a delta/arrow head shape in 1960.

 

[Warped9]

But TOS did effectively convey those ideas to perhaps an even broader audience than before. TOS really helped in making a lot of those ideas more common in the broader public.

Yes, perhaps. But the point Beaker is making "is how absolutely absurd it is when talking heads or acolytes of the church of All Things Roddenberry talk about how groundbreaking the show was."

Making ideas more common to the broader public doesn't = groundbreaking.

No, but it does offer some insight into how so many people can give TOS credit for some things that actually began before and somewhere else.