The racist legacy of Star Trek

Her name is Nichols.

--Sran

 

I read it somewhere in the mid 70s, don't know which book.

MLK's niece, Dr. Alveda King, still tells the story that her uncle encouraged Nichelle to stay with the show.

 

Sort of like the "game of telephone"..

 

I like my fish analogy better.

 

I also don't think it's in The World of Star Trek, but someone will have to check. Does anyone have Letters to Star Trek or Star Trek Lives! or other books where this might've come up?

 

Nothing in Star Trek Lives.

 

PoTAToes.

 

I think Ms Nichols knows the proper way to spell her own name.

 

Let's call the whole thing off.

 

Yes^^^ Though Trek's "Book" was in its infancy, I would surmise that McCoy was not displaying overt racism towards Vulcans but rather challenging the ability, and perhaps efficacy, of someone of Spock's dual nature to be so fully invested in the Vulcan mode of personality reconcilement.


Wouldn't it seem unlikely that Roddenberry would countenance a major character so expressing himself if it would be widely interpreted as being racially based disdain or the like? Aside from which, it would fly in the face of the message of acceptance and understanding that humans putatively hold for a race that is so integral to this brave new culture.


As mentioned earlier in the thread, Stiles certainly was upfront with his distaste for Spock at a racial level, but that was totally tied up with his personal familial history and the Romulan-Vulcan reveal ( I don't know if that is the case in his book protrayal). McCoy may also have looked askance at certain Vulcan traditions, but I would read that as being more the representation of the character as the skeptical romantic than as an indication of ignorance or prejudice, willful or otherwise.

 

McCoy was always completely respectful toward other Vulcans he encountered on the show, so he wasn't prejudiced or racist towards Vulcans as a race/species.

His "teasing" of Spock therefor wasn't racist, it was aimed solely at Spock as a individual.

 

I guess that's a fair point. My father had a friend before I was born that he used to mutually joke around with about race. I've personally never found any kind of ethnically insensitive jokes humorous, but if mutually it's kept between two parties with no malice behind it, I guess it's not a big deal.

Though, I can't really say for certain that Spock was a consenting party.

 

Exactly. Spock displayed a somewhat hypocritical attitude concerning his claims to be Vulcan and his actual Human reactions in contrast.

Like any good doctor, McCoy realized that Spock was a patient trapped in some kind of "denial" and constantly tried to help Spock to realize that. Spock usually came up with excuses

KIRK: Now we all know, and I'm sure the doctor will agree with me, that desperation is a highly emotional state of mind. How does your well-known logic explain that?
SPOCK: Quite simply, Captain. I examined the problem from all angles, and it was plainly hopeless. Logic informed me that under the circumstances, the only possible action would have to be one of desperation. Logical decision, logically arrived at.

MCCOY: There's just one thing, Mister Spock. You can't tell me that when you first saw Jim alive that you weren't on the verge of giving us an emotional scene that would have brought the house down.
SPOCK: Merely my quite logical relief that Starfleet had not lost a highly proficient captain.

MCCOY: Do you know why you're not afraid to die, Spock? You're more afraid of living. Each day you stay alive is just one more day you might slip and let your human half peek out. That's it, isn't it? Insecurity. Why, you wouldn't know what to do with a genuine, warm, decent feeling.
SPOCK: Really, Doctor?

but deep inside he probably admitted that the good doctor was right about a thing or two.

Bob

 

Spock gave as good as he got, he hardly sat on his hands when it came to the exchange of insults.

 

Well, we never heard about him going to Starfleet H.R. to report harassment.

 

So, is your Spockypoucky is racist? No? So, Bonesy isn't racist toward your Spockypoucky.

 

"Spockypoucky"

 

I miss Samuel T. Cogley - he could tell the Nichols/King story like nobody's business.

 

Maybe yes, maybe no?...note "intended" and footnote 2

How far we have come, in either case...

To Set It Right
"To Set It Right"
The Lieutenant episode
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 21
Directed by Vincent McEveety
Written by Lee Erwin
Produced by Norman Felton
Del Reisman
Gene Roddenberry
Original air date February 22, 1964 (intended)
Episode chronology
← Previous
"Green Water Green Flag" Next →
"In the Highest Tradition"
To Set It Right is an episode of the television series The Lieutenant[1] produced by Gene Roddenberry. Written by Lee Erwin, and featuring Nichelle Nichols in the cast, it was about racial prejudice. [2] The network declined to air a television program with that subject matter. A videotape of the episode is in the collection of the Paley Center for Media in New York, contributed to the center by Gene Roddenberrry.

Contents
References
ReferencesEdit

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/58297/lieutenant-the-complete-series-part-2-the/
"LIEUTENANT, THE: TO SET IT RIGHT (TV)". The Paley Center for Media. Retrieved 1 September 2013.

 

True . People (myself included) often forget how many times Spock would actually instigate things. For instance, from Let That Be Your Last Battlefield:

MCCOY: Yes, I would agree. That's the case here.
KIRK: Your prognosis, Doctor?
MCCOY: Well, I can't give you one, Jim. I've never worked on anyone like him or anything like him.
SPOCK: Yet you are pumping him full of your noxious potions as if he were a human.