Debunking TOS exceptionalism

[TerraNovan]

Being popular does not make a show groundbraking or anything. It was a great show, but even the twilight zone goes above and beyond.

It's these statements that really ruined trek. They've become dependent on quasi religious status to get by. If they realize they were just a show, the later series may have stayed on the air.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Knight Templar wrote:

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.

The Giant Claw (1957 Columbia Pictures) did mention antimatter well before TOS. I'm sure you could find a number of other shows and movies that did as well.

This is an awesome film. It has almost everything that a b-movie should contain: a completely ridiculous monster, incredibly bad (but delivered with complete sincerity) dialog, mishmashed stock footage and special effects work, creative science, and a plot that is devoid of rational thought. If that did not get your attention, how about this: any movie bold enough to feature a GIANT ANTIMATTER SPACE BUZZARD is a movie worth watching.

http://www.badmovies.org/movies/giantclaw/

 

[C.E. Evans]

Nothing is exceptional if you look at it closely enough. For a long time now, all stories are a reuse and/or expansion of earlier ideas with a different spin. If you want something truly original, you'd have to look back before the invention of television when someone first conceived the idea of a vehicle that could travel through space and encounter beings from another world (and even that is a twist of an even earlier idea of balloons/airships carrying explorers to strange new lands).

But TOS was exceptional in that it presented this idea in a way that resonated with the right audience at the right time.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

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

Buck Rogers had it in 1939.


What I believe is that TOS was fun and exciting and reasonably intelligent and damn good entertainment, and the reruns viewed in the early 70's offered an optimistic view of our future when most science fiction was downbeat and apocalyptic, and that's what accounts for its success.

 

[Warped9]

Apple didn't invent computers per se or a lot of things associated with them, but they are seen as innovators. UB40 made Red, Red Wine a hit song even though Neil Diamond released it in the early '70s. Same with Phil Collins' version of You Can't Hurry Love in the '80s originally released by The Supremes in 1966. Star Trek popularized a lot of ideas that could be found in film (ie: Forbidden Planet) years earlier.

But Forbidden Planet was a one off film not followed up. And SF literature could be widely read yet not credited for much beyond a certain demographic.

Now along comes Star Trek that makes an effort to appeal to a broader audience beyond the core SF devotees. It depicts high science and tech in a casual commonplace manner that doesn't really draw attention to itself. The characters are presented in a (mostly) realistic way as identifiable and accessible people. Many of the stories are thought provoking and often spiced with contextual humour. It's premise and style cover a lot of bases in a readily accesible manner at a time when a lot of conventions were being challenged and addressed.

Star Trek's achievement isn't in the ideas in presented, but in how it presented them. It was someting of the pop culture version of Carl Sagan and Michio Kaku who can easily communicate grand ideas with passion and a sense of wonder yet in terms the layman can easily understand.

The rocketship/spaceship idea existed long before Star Trek, but Star Trek made the term "starship" popular and personalized a spaceship called the U.S.S. Enterprise in such a way that really caught people's imagination.

Star Trek's achievement isn't in terms of what the ideas were but in how those ideas were communicated. It was like the politician who has the gift of communicating ideas to people.

 

[MacLeod]

Perhaps it would be more fair to say that ST brought some concepts and ideas more into the mainstream.

 

[Greg Cox]

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..

With all due respect to Star Trek, I would argue that Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits were doing that doing that way before Star Trek.

And that's not even counting ambitious mainstream dramas such as Playhouse 90. It's not like TV was nothing but a vast wasteland before Star Trek debuted . . . .

 

[Timo]

With all due respect to Star Trek, I would argue that Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits were doing that doing that way before Star Trek.

A possibly noteworthy thing here is that before Star Trek, television didn't exist.

For a large part of the western civilization, that is. Household television sets only became commonplace in large parts of Europe, western Asia or South America in the early sixties, making the shows of that era the true forerunners of many a televised idea for this demographic group.

This may be biasing the sentiments of part of the Trek audience - although another, more obvious bias would come from the audiences of the earlier shows being thinned out by the Grim Reaper already, while Trek (with the appealing production values of color TV) has enjoyed rerun after rerun and keeps new audience groups "informed". Twilight Zone nowadays has significant rerun audiences as well, but the relevant older episodes in B&W don't...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Greg Cox]

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

And, of course, THE FLY based its plot on a transporter beam as far back as 1958. And that was a hit film (with two sequels) so it certainly helped popularize the notion.

(True confession: As a kid, I used to worry about a fly getting into the transporter room of the Enterprise--which means that I was already familiar with the concept before I watched Star Trek back in the sixties.)

 

[J.T.B.]

I think the "conflict" may arise out of age-old issues of between art and the marketplace. I would say that finding a way to interpret existing ideas and present them in a new, entertaining and accessible form is creative in its own way. But it is a creativity that is generally more associated with "business" than "art," and some people attach a lesser value to the former. Roddenberry, for whatever reason, seemed to prefer to present himself as of more of a visionary artist than a savvy businessman and producer, and a lot of people like to think of him that way.

Justin

 

[anh165]

the original star trek was a good show for its time.

But lets face facts, it took an idea or concept about space and other stuff and came up with a novel approach.
Being the first show of what would latter spawn spin offs they had limitless ideas to ponder with, unlike the following shows that had to follow the set limits which TOS set.

I personally never saw TOS growing up and I am in my 40s now.TNG was the first trek series I saw after the movies.
It was only after watching TNG, DS9, Voyager and EnterpriseI decided to watch the original series,,,and even with its upgrades, new improved color etc it is basically woeful acting, camp as fuck, and dated to the hilt.I expect it to be dated, but some other issues have no excuse and this myth that the show is getting as the years go by is typical of the type of bullshit that hysteria breeds and how sheep will follow each other.

Was the original a good show at the time...I suspect yes, did it set the bar...yes but is it the greatest show ever....absolutely not.

I rather take dated 'camp-as-fuck', paper-mache rock throwing along with the interesting storywriting, the questions and concepts that TOS raised to viewers over the crappy bland acting, bland mid-90's TV visual effects that you'd find in all the episodes of DS9, a TV series that had nothing important to say.

 

[A beaker full of death]

...
But lets face facts, it took an idea or concept about space and other stuff and came up with a novel approach.
Being the first show of what would latter spawn spin offs they had limitless ideas to ponder with, unlike the following shows that had to follow the set limits which TOS set.
...I decided to watch the original series,,,and even with its upgrades, new improved color etc it is basically woeful acting, camp as fuck, and dated to the hilt.I expect it to be dated, but some other issues have no excuse...

I don't understand a single word of this.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

This is certainly the first and probably the last time that I'll post something like this, but everything that A beaker full of death says in his first post is true and well-observed.

 

[Greg Cox]

I rather take dated 'camp-as-fuck', paper-mache rock throwing along with the interesting storywriting, the questions and concepts that TOS raised to viewers over the crappy bland acting, bland mid-90's TV visual effects that you'd find in all the episodes of DS9, a TV series that had nothing important to say.

I gotta disagree here. I love TOS, and just finished watching all three seasons again, but DS9 was a great show, too.

Let's not turn this into some sort of intergenerational war, which is not really what the thread is about.

 

[GSchnitzer]

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.

I'm confused about whether we are discussing whether Star Trek was groundbreaking or whether we are discussing whether Star Trek was exceptional. (Those are two different things and aren't reliant on one another.)

I think there's probably not much that was seminal about Star Trek. (Do people really assert that? Or do people just assert that people assert that?) But I do think that much of what Star Trek has done has now become definitive. My sense is that different francises really have to get clever (and sometimes do so in an almost reaction formation way) simply to avoid comparisions with Star Trek.

What some people seem to be saying in this thread is something like "America isn't exceptional because Rome had the idea of a Republic first."

So groundbreakingness or exceptionalism: which one are we discussing?

 

[A beaker full of death]

I'm confused about whether we are discussing whether Star Trek was groundbreaking or whether we are discussing whether Star Trek was exceptional. (Those are two different things and aren't reliant on one another.)

I think there's probably not much that was seminal about Star Trek. (Do people really assert that? Or do people just assert that people assert that?) But I do think that much of what Star Trek has done has now become definitive. My sense is that different francises really have to get clever (and sometimes do so in an almost reaction formation way) simply to avoid comparisions with Star Trek.

What some people seem to be saying in this thread is something like "America isn't exceptional because Rome had the idea of a Republic first."

So groundbreakingness or exceptionalism: which one are we discussing?

Open-ended discussion, but I was using "exceptional" pretty much synonymously with "ground-breaking," not in its perhaps more common usage as another term for "excellent." I mean was it an exception to what came before. Did it break any molds? Introduce anything new? Pave new paths? What was really new about Star Trek? What is it credited with that perhaps it shouldn't be? And.... why?

 

[anh165]

Let's not turn this into some sort of intergenerational war, which is not really what the thread is about.

Dont worry, there isn't really any comparison, TOS is the definative Trek and regarded by many one of the greatest sci-fi shows of all time regardless of what trek fans in this forum think - the same cannot be said about DS9.

 

[anh165]

oh dear....did I hurt your feelings.

Yes the morality is good as is the premise and what it started,but its all to easy to let nostalgia and power of persuasion brainwash people into believing it was something more than it was.

I dont care if you do not agree, and if that dont make me a trekkie, trekker or whatever so be it.I like DS9, as I do voyager, TNG enterprise and even TOS to a certain point, but lets not kid ourselves and blindly go along with this rubbish of it being the greatest show ever.

This is of course my opinion and therefore for me it cannot be wrong, just as you believe yours to be correct, so i suggest you grasp the notion that people not agreeing with you are automatically wrong.

.

TOS 'greatness' as a show is evident because it left a long lasting legacy in Sci fi and in the mainstream. It is because of this there is commerical viability for shitty spin-offs like DS9 and VOY to exist.

People can express their own opinions, but opinions are based on judgement, and considering someone who photoshops DS9 actresses heads over other poeple's bodies shouldn't really go round calling TOS camp-as-fuck - there is no value in opinions based on bad judgement.

 

[Greg Cox]

Let's not turn this into some sort of intergenerational war, which is not really what the thread is about.

Dont worry, there isn't really any comparison, TOS is the definative Trek and regarded by many one of the greatest sci-fi shows of all time regardless of what trek fans in this forum think - the same cannot be said about DS9.

I don't know. I still think you're selling DS9 short, and I say that as a lifelong Trekkie who grew on the original series. There was nothing "shitty" about it.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

There's no teleportation in Forbidden Planet, but there is a "D/C" platform aboard C-57D that looks a good deal like the Enterprise's transporter room. It does something to the crew that protects them during deceleration from FTL, but exactly what isn't explained - it looks like it's converting them to energy beams.

Yep looks like i really did your your feelings.

Its people like you that give trek fans the bad image that they sometimes get.

Pot meet kettle.