What? Star Trek was chock full of violence, in every episode. The Original Series was essentially Horatio Hornblower, and Wagon Train in space. It was, for all intents and purposes, a space western. While TNG was more known for it's diplomatic Captain, it too had it's fair share of violence. DS9 was filled with violence, VOY was violent, and ENT was violent. The Star Trek movies are action films, save for TMP. The most popular Trek movie, TWOK is wall to wall violence and vengeance. The idea is that Star Trek isn't known for violence, but the reality is that Trek is an action franchise.
Off the top of my head, in TOS we saw Kirk get the crap beat out of him by Finnegan, McCoy strung up and tortured by the Vians, Kirk and Spock tortured by Space Nazis, a crewman tossed down a ravine by Ruk, a crewman blown up by an exploding rock, Kirk killed by Spock (twice!) and crewman speared by giant alien.
I'm still amazed they decided to film that. Good episode. Anyway, this shows the difference between reality and some fan's idealised view of the show.
Into Darkness was amazing clean, considering it's violence - Khan's hands were perfectly clean after he dealt with you-know-who, and Carol's leg, when we next saw it looked fine, with none of the extra corners and bone sticking out I envisioned. Then again, if you think about it, Picard and Riker should have been splattered in Remmick brains in "Conspiracy"!
Well to be fair, he stomped on her thigh, likely just snapping the bone cleanly inside, no compounding. Just making sure she stayed put.
Just because Star Trek has violence doesn't mean it's known for it, well at least for Prime Trek. It's more known for braking racial barriers, broadening the imagination, and it's moral base, but I covered that already in this thread.
It not exactly an hour long meeting of the debate club either. I don't think anyone was saying the violence in the show was a defining feature, but it did exist, as the show was an action adventure series. The breaking racial barriers thing is partially myth, since networks, advertisers and studios were encouraging producers to cast non-white actors. So Star Trek was part of a trend not bucking the system. It's moral base could be found in many dramas of the day. Again, not so much bucking the system as following the trends of the day.
BillJ sure sound like he was contradicting Captain_Q in this Quote. TV's first interracial kiss was on Star Trek.
I guess you mean this quote? The implication is that Trek down played violence, which it didn't. It was as violent as its contemporaries. The fight theme from "Amok Time" and Kirk fu are constantly referenced, even by non fans. Or it could be Sammy Davis jr kissing Nancy Sinatra. Or any time a white actor kissed an Asian or Hispanic actor. (Lucy and Desi?) "Race" can be a nebulous term.
If you go by production order of the episodes, Plato's Stepchildren isn't even Star Trek's first interracial kiss. I believe that honor goes to Elaan of Troyius.
If you take a close look, wouldn't the total death count in TOS be in the hundreds of millions at least? No violence there...
Nomad slaughtered 4 billion people across three planets with it's superplasma warp 15 torpedoes in a matter of hours. And that's typical of TOS where entire systems were wiped out, billions of lives destroyed just to setup one story, and promptly forgotten about or paid little attention to throughout. The death toll in TOS is in the 10s of billions of people, dozens of planets, several stars etc Abramsverse, 6 billion Vulcans, a few thousand Humans at most, less than 100 ships and a Tribble. And the Tribble got better.
Yeah, the "first interracial kiss" thing is largely a myth--or at the very least comes with a lot of asterisks. More like "first interracial kiss between an African-American and a Caucasian on a scripted, prime-time, American TV drama." Excluding British shows, soap operas, variety shows, etc. Still a milestone, no doubt, but it's "historic" status has been a bit inflated over the years--and everybody tends to downplay the fact that Kirk and Uhura were being forced to kiss each other, while struggling mightily to avoid doing so!