A good reason to hate Trek?

[Eric Cheung]

...and the uber proper grammar they use. Who talks like that?

Well, grammar in Modern English has gone through an interesting evolution. In the Elizabethan Era, grammar was a more subjective affair, growing more and more standardized through the 19th Century in a shrinking world. Conversely people like Mark Twain started writing literature that incorporated regional dialects and deliberately incorrect grammar to develop his characters and narrators.

If these trends continue 23rd and 24th Century literature will still surely feature artistic license, but written and spoken language may go in a more formally correct direction, or perhaps a more homogenized direction. In my view, language is first a tool for clarity in communication and a signature of cultural heritage first, an example of form following function.

Anyway, one of Harlan Ellison's concepts in "The City on the Edge of Forever" was that language is in a constant state of evolution, so for Kirk, Spock, and McCoy to travel back to the 1930s, they'd surely encounter a language that seemed at least a little foreign to them.

Not to mention the fact that most of the characters we encounter are the elite minds of their respective Academy classes, or at the very least, intelligent enough to operate starships. Surely this would increase the likelihood they'd speak at least their native tongues, or the predominate tongues of their ships properly.

Or maybe the Universal Translator simply edits everyone for clarity's sake?

 

[Maurice]

It's a socialist utopia.
I mean, we have come so far that we are actually trying to do something about the bad things on Earth. 200 years ago, no one bothered about wars, genoscide, slavery, starvation and such. Today we at least care. We are developing, even if it is in a slow pace.

Just to be fair, here, it's untrue that "no one bothered" about those matters. For instance, Benjamin Franklin was an abolitionist before the Declaration of Independence was signed 222 year ago, and joined the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage in 1785, and wrote on the subject.

I agree that in many ways the world we live in today is much more "utopian" than it was for common people hundreds of years ago. But, while it's very comforting--and Trekian--to think we're more evolved than our ancestors, but there have always been people opposed to war, servitude, and issues of the poor. It does a disservice to our ancestors who did care about these issues to paint them in such a light. We now have the ability to educate and disseminate those views and rally people in ways and by means not previously available.

...and the uber proper grammar they use. Who talks like that?

I'm curious what you'd have them talk like? Having them speak the current vernacular would be as anachronistic as having them using early 20th century slang like "23 Skidoo" and engaging in flapper talk.

 

[Lindley]

...and the uber proper grammar they use. Who talks like that?

I'm curious what you'd have them talk like? Having them speak the current vernacular would be as anachronistic as having them using early 20th century slang like "23 Skidoo" and engaging in flapper talk.

Well, most SF shows invent their own swear words, but Firefly went all the way and pretty much invented entirely new speech patterns for its characters based on a mishmash of historical patterns. Now, Trek may not be right for that, but it *can* be done, and done well.

 

[I am not Spock]

One thing that bothers me about the modern Trek shows is the occassional indulgence of the writers in what I call 'soap opera' style writing. It can get very formulaic and tiresome. I guess that's what you get when you hire Baywatch writers instead of SF ones like Harlan Ellison.

Also, aliens of the week, with humanlike faces, but little lumps of rubber stuck on their heads, can get very boring, too. And even if these species happen to be encountered in the Delta Quadrant, they still act just like humans, and speak with Southern Californian accents.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I would NOT say that I hate Star Trek...but as I have gotten older, I have become more able to see the weaknesses of TNG for many of the reasons outlined by the original poster.

One thing I liked DS9 for, in addition to being grittier in general, was the introduction of Section 31...in some ways it helped make the whole thing make better sense. Yes, Earth is a paradise--and how did it become so against human nature? Perhaps some of that paradise was an ill-gotten gain through their actions. In THAT context I can accept the other shows a little better, even though I still have my definite favorites.

(I would say DS9, and in the case of TOS and Enterprise, the potential they had that was not always capitalized on for various reasons.)

 

[Lynx]

One thing that bothers me about the modern Trek shows is the occassional indulgence of the writers in what I call 'soap opera' style writing. It can get very formulaic and tiresome. I guess that's what you get when you hire Baywatch writers instead of SF ones like Harlan Ellison.

Also, aliens of the week, with humanlike faces, but little lumps of rubber stuck on their heads, can get very boring, too. And even if these species happen to be encountered in the Delta Quadrant, they still act just like humans, and speak with Southern Californian accents.

I can give you some points here. Sometimes it's too glossy with all problems solved and everything's OK at the end of an episode. I don't want that "darker scenario", I have enough of it in my daily life but sometimes I would like to see some more tension and drama between the characters. I also get a feeling that the producers and writers of TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT did have some problems in decribing love relationships between characters.

I can also agree on the "aliens of the week, with humanlike faces, but little lumps of rubber stuck on their heads". Sometimes I wish the main charcters would run into more non-humanlike aliens.

 

[Captain Leslie]

The body count? for a supposedly Utopian vision of the future , there an awful lot of horrible deaths and mutilations. why the hell anyone would join Starfleet when it has such a high mortality rate....no thanks mate!

 

[tom]

I think that the "utopian" aspect of Star Trek is in fact the most realistic one. I mean come on, warp travel, transporters, replicators, instant communication over vast distances, energy shields, force fields, almost every alien looking like humans with slightly altered faces, universal translators, subspace, tachyon impulses, time travel, holo decks, dampening fields, aritificial gravity,...

And I could go on forever. These things totally defy the laws of physics and logic. That's what's unrealistic.

But you know what? Who cares. It's fun to watch and that's all that matters. When I watch Star Trek, I don't see any future we should aspire to, but some high class entertainment.

To me, sci-fi usually is just a backdrop to tell a story, much like fantasy. LOTR for example is utopian in it's own way. But nobody would say that the way Elves live is unrealistic. Dragons, Elves and Wizards are unrealistic, not Elve society.

 

[drasche]

And even if these species happen to be encountered in the Delta Quadrant, they still act just like humans, and speak with Southern Californian accents.

I'm sure we can explain that with the universal translator stuck on Southern Californian accent

 

[Star Treks]

I always considered the accent more northern california. They all sound like me, and everyone I know, and I live in NorCal.

Maybe it's because we pronounce things correctly and everyone else on earth has a dumb accent.

 

[Triskelion]

Give me latex foreheads any day over CGI characters. No thanks! I'd rather see a kid wearing a disassembled vacuum cleaner, at least it's alive!

 

[Eric Cheung]

One thing that bothers me about the modern Trek shows is the occassional indulgence of the writers in what I call 'soap opera' style writing. It can get very formulaic and tiresome. I guess that's what you get when you hire Baywatch writers instead of SF ones like Harlan Ellison.

Harlan Ellison wrote a great sci-fi episode for Trek to be sure, but it was a freelance script on a show that hadn't even aired when he wrote it. When you have a show that's been on longer, you need to have writers that are commited to the show, that know the characters, that know where the show is going, that know the format, etc.

To have every episode be an extremely exotic sci-fi concept each week when you're following the same set of characters in the same universe strains credibility. Hard sci-fi works best in an anthology format like a Twilight Zone or an Outer Limits. On those shows the characters are deliberately archetypes because the shows are more about the concepts they bring up than about how those concepts affect the characters.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

The only people who hate Trek whose opinions I give a rat's ass for are people like the late Thomas Disch, who see it as naive and simplistic science fiction.

Actually, I'm reading "The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of" at the moment, and he was critical of others who saw ST as naive and simplistic, and quotes at least one critic, Peter Nicholls - and calls his opinions about ST "bile"!

I didn't get that Disch shared that opinion.

Have you gotten to the part where he compares the Trek pajama uniforms to superhero leotards (a stretch), the Trek ethos to office buildiong propaganda nad Trek's use of science as mere iconography? The man seriously hated Trek, just for different reasons than the sci-fi haters in general do.

 

[Balthier the Great]

Well, I would critisize trek for two big things and leave the rest as nit picking.

First off, whether Trek created it or not, they've sort of popularized the notion of scifi meaning collectables and conventions and obsessing over plot details. This doesn't happen very much in other genres of fiction, but because of Trek, it's fairly common in the comic/scifi/fantasy genre of film and TV. It makes people who like that genre seem much more nerdish than the ones who won't miss an episode of House.

Secondly, I think it did stunt the growth of American scifi to a large extent. There was a gap of about 15 years between the end of Original Battlestar to Babylon 5 in which no space opera TV shows were made. You had Trek on TV or you watched Wars on VHS, that was it. So I think it held back the development of space opera in the US quite a bit. I won't say it's exactly their fault, but it is a negative to trek. Actually the other negative is that so much trek convention was concidered the "right way" to do scifi that it seemed that either you got the paranormal X-files knockoff or it took ideas straight from Trek.

But since I like TOS trek, I don't give a crap.

 

[Therin of Andor]

There was a gap of about 15 years between the end of Original Battlestar to Babylon 5 in which no space opera TV shows were made.

"V", "V: The Final Battle" and "V: The Series"?

"Alien Nation"?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Harlan Ellison wrote a great sci-fi episode for Trek to be sure, but it was a freelance script on a show that hadn't even aired when he wrote it.

Actually, he was writing and rewriting it as TOS Season One aired. Gene R and Robert Justman eventually got him into the studio and gave him an office/broom closet to keep an eye on his progress, IIRC.

 

[CaptainStoner]

As I think about this, I feel I'm getting a better, broader image of the concept of Star Trek to begin with.
The realism of GR's Utopian projection is probably the most common criticism of Star Trek, especially of course TOS and early TNG.
I haven't heard much about GR being a Utopian himself, certainly not a communist, although Gene and Majel's Farm does have a certain ring to it.
But, I think this is indeed a poor reason to hate on Trek, and this is why: the Utopian element, although intrinsic to Star Trek, is not so much a focal point as it is a balancing point.
What I mean by this is, the Trek universe is an equation, and in that equation, certain questions are balanced first - and this is where some of the genius of the Trek concept as a whole can be seen. It was designed to be a vehicle for telling stories about humanity, through archetypal characters. You have to have that Utopian balance in there for it to work right. The realism of that Utopia is a secondary consideration, much like the realism of the science. All of it is a vehicle for the stories.
Without that presumed Utopian balance, the wind comes out of the sails as it were. The Utopian element is like this powerful magnet at one end of the equation - Trek isn't necessarily about Utopia itself - but you need it in there to give the stories the right kind of pull.

 

[Timewalker]

And the cuddly playing nice and making friends bullshit and the uber proper grammar they use. Who talks like that?

What's wrong with using proper grammar?

 

[Rabid Trekkie]

Yes, a GOOD reason.

I used to be a huge Star Trek fan until 2001, I think. I spent the first 3 years in Silicon Valley after I migrated to the state. Trek is huge there, you know. Being a fan of sci-fi I quickly became a fan of Trek. One major reason why I became a fan of Trek was that there has been absolutely no large-budget drama (in any genre) in my home country and the total lack of sci-fi shows over there. I loved Trek. I learned my English from watching TNG.

I used to be an idealist and a optimist. Not anymore. I became a generally negative person through a lot of life experiences.

I think the moment I stopped liking Trek is almost the same time period when I stopped being an optimist. Recently, I got interested in UFO phenomenon. Don't get me wrong. I am neither a believer nor a skeptic.

One conclusion I made from studying various UFO and alien lore is that there is absolutely no reason to feel idealistic or optimistic about them. It seems like survival of the fittest still applies in space, too.

In our history, the encounter between civilizations with vastly different technological level always ends up being catastrophic. I wonder if Roddenberry actually looked into world history before coming up with Trek. I just can't figure out why Roddenberry came up with rosy-colored view on alien contact.

Now, I simply can't swallow the idea of optimistic future. And I really hate the deus ex machina-type plot elements in TNG. So technology wins. Not my cup of tea ANYMORE. (I used to like the premise of TNG, though...)

But the optimism is the thing with Star Trek. It always seemed to me that Trek isn't actually a proper mirror of today but instead an ideal. Like in the episode "Let that be your last battlefield" when the aliens describe the reason for their hatred of each other, skin coloring, the crew of the Enterprise react with shock. They show how ridiculous hatred based on skin coloring is. And of course this was done in the 60's where racism and discremination and segregation based on the color of skin were real problems. Kirk and Co. showed us the ideal that we should live up to, heck just by the multicultural crew, the show was telling its viewers "Guess what? We're all humans and can get along." back in a time where I'm sure it looked like that was unrealistic.

That's the thing about ideals, whether in religion or Trek or whatever, reaching that ideal may never be possible within the span of our life time or the life span of our species, but that's not the point. The point is that we try to reach that ideal and when Trek in any of its incarnations really works it shows us the ideal and says, "Come on, you can reach this if you try." and there's a chance that if we all pay a little bit of attention and actually try the slightest bit to work toward that ideal in our daily lives, that we may make a small step into that right direction.