Appreciating the uniquely 1960s genres/tropes in TOS

There are a whole plethora of sixties sci-fi novels dealing with ESP and humans with advanced mind powers! Even my Father had one or two and he wasn't really a sci-fi fan at all!
JB

 

Isn't the Salt Monster and the Gorn basically connected to 50's Sci-Fi B Movies? Also I wasn't around back then but their must have been a great deal of fear about technology. Everything from all the Computers Kirk destroyed to Samuel Cogley liking real books instead of reading on a computer screen to Kirk being insecure about the M-5 machine running his ship.

Jason

 

People who grew up in "Willoughby" were now in the go-go, punch card, Dupont, NASA, Jiffy Pop '60s. Better living through chemistry.

OR IS IT?!?!

 

Apparently, they fed the actual equations for black holes they got from physicists into their software. The physicists were quite eager to see what it looked liked because the quality of the output was far higher than anything they had access to at the time.

 

I really liked Interstellar's approach of mixing physical models with CGI effects. I wish more sci-fi movies would do this, instead of using pure CGI in space scenes or other settings where miniatures could be put to good use.

But anyway, how about Star Trek?

Kor

 

According to IMDB he was in a lot of westerns. In fact some sources describe him basically an actor in westerns before Star Trek.

 

I watched "The Devil Girl/Woman from Mars' the other day. Basically to sum up a 60 year old movie - it was about a woman from Mars who came to Earth to get men to repopulate the planet after they had disposed of all their good Martian men in a battle of the sexes war. That was sort of seen in "The Cage", "Wink of an Eye" and "Spock's Brain"

 

And I Married A Monster From Outer Space (1958), but that was male aliens after human females! Plus a couple of British films made in the sixties too!
JB

 

I took "Return of the Archons" to be more a post-western, not yet-to very early 20th century era, such as seen in "Pollyanna" or "The Music Man". As both of those films were recent at the time, the look would be familiar, but then the story would grab the viewer and shake them, Twilight Zone style.

 

Regarding referring to women as "girls". There are instances in TOS where young men are called boys.Such as Obsession, where young Garrovick is referred to as a boy. Tomlinson is referred to as "The boy who was getting married this morning". Most of the "boy" references to grown men are when the characters are not in their right mind.

 

Hippies.

Forever hippies.

With addictions.

Like my latest one, I just listened to this unusual remix literally two dozen times and won't be bored for a fortnight cubed...



Until early-1980s new wave, the late-1960s had such a unique sound and iconic and style that, if even for no other reason, one would want to live it in a bubble.

 

And the anti-computer sentiment. Kirk would cause computers to short-circuit everywhere. Even nagged them until they blew up because they all made the Bertans, The Feeders of Vaal, and something like 77 or so other species into indolent, ignorant cabbages. You'd never see any of that in 90s, 00s, or 10s (aka "00s part two") Trek.

 

And strangely prophetic too. We now have a plethora of information, with myriad levels of accuracy, and no one having to prove or justify what they are claiming to be true, on the Net.
And no need to memorise or "own" information cos you can just find it on the Net. And no you just talk at and it gives you the answers (or at least the unchecked answer thats on the Net).
If you dont use it you lose it, as they say!

 

I see that as more of a pro-freedom sentiment, definitely in the case of Landru.

With Val there was also responding to a enemy who was actively attacking.

Nomad was solely a enemy who was attacking.

With Yonada, the computer wasn't shut down, apparent only the heat units. The aim there was a course correction. It's unclear if the Oracle would have continued to operate.

 

They were fighting tyrannical oppressors, whether AI or humanoid.

 

Yeah, but the AIs pretty much always seemed to fall into the "oppressor" category, never a more benevolent category. There definitely was a level of technophobia in TOS that had subsided by the time TNG came along. In TOS, androids were usually villains to be defeated; in TNG, an android was one of the main heroes. In TOS, a computer running the ship (as with the M5) was seen as a threat to human achievement, but in the TNG writers' bible (though not so much the actual show), the idea was that the computer being able to operate most ship functions autonomously had freed the crew from needless toil so that they could achieve greater things. There was definitely an evolution in Trek's attitude toward AI between the two series.

 

in the 24th century voyager had the most "bad" AI's.

 

I have to disagree here hard.
There was NO "technophobia" in TOS, and especially not towards computers: They used them EVERYWHERE. In fact, normal functioning computers are such an icon of TOS - it's only really noticable when compared to other SF franchises of the time, that have more sticks and wheels and windows in their cockpits - how computerized the TOS bridge really is.

What TOS always did, is treat A.I. as tools. They never went so far as TNG with Data to accept A.I. as a person, or as a living being. In TOS, a computer simply had no soul, no self agency. It was just a machine, doing what it was originally programmed to. And then the machine often took it's original rules ad absurdum, because it specifically lacked the ability to think for itself and adapt to new circumstances.

The conflict often was about human freedom. Against the suppression of machines, and the cold rationale logic of laws and rules without compassionate elements. But that wasn't anti-technology, not in the slightest. TOS even deified technology most of the time - it was about human control over technolgy. Every piece of technolgy the crew used - their own computers, Tricorders, shuttles, space ships, were things to be admired by the audience. As long as there was a compassionate human controlling it. The one recurring fear was always technology controlling humans, where it should be the other way 'round: Superweapons going off because they're built for it, despite no-one wanting it. A simulated war determining real-life deaths. Society living by the cold, logical rules of an oppressive tool. Note the A.I. in Trek was never intelligent, nor compassionate, nor contained a "soul". It wasn't a "true" intelligence, but a complex illusion, like Isaac Asimov's robots simply determined to do what it was originally programmed to do.

The message was a humanistic one. WITH tecchnology. But that the freedom of the human spirit has to control the tools, and not be controlled by it. And computers simply were that in the show - tools. Not sentient beings. Not capable of compassion.

In this regard, an absolutely current theme - with our real lifes being more and more controlled by algorithms every day, from Google to Facebook, compassionate-less machines that now define our social interactions.

I'd wish a new Trek series would actually handle that topic the way TOS did...

 

You're misunderstanding the premise here. It's not about the existence or use of computers; it's about the fear of computers dominating or replacing people. This was made quite explicit in "The Ultimate Computer" -- "Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them." That's the key difference -- whether machines are our servants or our masters/replacements. This was very, very much a recurring theme in science fiction for decades, by no means limited to Star Trek. See Jack Williamson's The Humanoids or Colossus: The Forbin Project or The Terminator. Indeed, it goes back much farther. The reason Isaac Asimov invented the Three Laws of Robotics in the 1940s was because there was already an extensive body of SF literature about robots and computers rebelling and threatening humanity, and Asimov wanted to counter what was already a cliche by pointing out that, as human-built industrial devices, robots would surely be designed with built-in safeguards.

Yes, that's basically what we're talking about. TOS portrayed AI as something that was rightfully subordinate and was a threat when it got uppity. That was the widespread SF trope that it was perpetuating, because it was a product of its era and did not exist in a cultural vacuum. The fear of automation replacing human labor and human worth has existed for generations and has informed a great deal of fiction. It's been a theme in film as far back as Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. And the fear of machines replacing humans is made quite literal in TOS episodes like "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "The Ultimate Computer," while the fear of machines enslaving humans is seen in episodes like "Return of the Archons" and "I, Mudd" (which is very, very much a riff on The Humanoids).

I'm not sure why Roddenberry's thinking on this changed in The Questor Tapes and TNG. Maybe it's that AI research had become more advanced and he (and society) had become more aware of the possibility of AIs having genuine consciousness rather than just the rigid programming of TOS's AIs. But the same decade that brought us TNG also brought The Terminator, the ultimate in the "AI is an existential threat to humanity" subgenre.

Maybe it's just that, with Questor, Roddenberry was trying to create another logical superman like Spock or Gary Seven (the concept was basically his third stab at Assignment: Earth), and since he'd already done an alien and a genetically enhanced human, he decided he'd make it an android this time. And then he folded that android protagonist into TNG because he liked to recycle concepts, and that naturally required that TNG take a more positive approach to AI. (Although The Questor Tapes plays with the evil-AI trope in a clever way, because in the first act, Questor comes off as menacing and it only gradually becomes apparent that he isn't the villain of the piece.)

Again, yes, that's what we've been saying all along. You're too fixated on a literal interpretation of "anti-technology" and are thus missing the point.

 

Well, first of all thank you for putting what I said in much more elegant words. This is basically exactly what I said. Not sure where you're getting the "misunderstand the premise" from, though.

THIS (highlight mine) though is where you clearly are in the wrong though: TOS didn't HAVE "true" A.I. that got "uppity". Not in the modern sense. There was no "intelligence" behind it. Just self-organising, complex machines. They are not intelligent beings that one day decided to live their own way and defeat their masters. They're doing exactly what they were programmed to do so in the first place. It's the humans that build their own cages.

Prime example would be "For the world is hollow and I have touched the Sky" - where the super computer Yonada for thousands of years cared for the survival of the people on the asteroid spaceship. Yet - because the people gave up the control, and Yonada wasn't capable of expanding his original programming - the situation became dangerous. And yet - the computer was necessary to preserve that species in the first place, as intended, and did a pretty good job at it, too, as long as there was no need for creative thinking. They just needed to have intelligent beings be in control of it to be capable to adapt to the new situation. Which the rigid machines of TOS weren't.

This is not A.I. taking control though. This is humans loosing control. Just not to authoritarians, Kings or gods like in so many other Trek instances, but to their own tools. But not to revolting intelligence. It's the same humanitarian message.

Well, that's super easy: What changed his mind was that for the first time people thought that artifical intelligence could, theoretically, one day become truly intelligent. As soon as the possibility of "true" intelligence entered the scene, not just the fakery of it, Roddenberry immedialy switched back to his humanitarian, liberal-minded side. That if said true intelligence was possible, if it is a real intelligence and not a pre-programmed one, it deserves the same rights as every other intelligent being - whether it's something like humanoid Data, or the weird looking Exocomps from TNGs "Quality of Life".

Well, that's what you said, that TOS was "anti-technology", which simply isn't true. I think we already agree for most of what was written. It's just that I don't share your assertion that TOS was, in any way, against technology as a tool itself. Only that it differentiated between technology working for humans, and humans working for technology.