I seem to recall that there was a similar set-up in This Island Earth (1955), also designed to protect the crew.
Debunking TOS exceptionalism
- Thread starter A beaker full of death
- Start date
I seem to recall that there was a similar set-up in This Island Earth (1955), also designed to protect the crew.
Was Star Trek first with a lot of its portrayal of science and society? No. Did it do it well? Usually. Did it reach a broader audience than most of the forerunners? Yes. Does this make it ground-breaking or exceptional? Generally, yes.
(I will no longer be speaking in annoying rhetorical questions.) Buck Rodgers, The Twilight Zone, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, and so on may all have done or shown the things Star Trek did, but Star Trek did most of them together and well. Star Trek also tried to make sure that each of its stories was about something and had something intelligent to say. It did not always succeed (what "Spock's Brain" was trying to say is beyond me), but when it did, the results were exceptional and ground-breaking. Star Trek also - and most significantly for me on a personal level - unabashedly looked ahead and predicated that, as a human race, we were going to be okay. It assured us that we would solve the problems plaguing us today and that the future was a bright and prosperous one for Earth and mankind. To me, this was the most exceptional and ground-breaking thing it did.
Star Trek is not a show without flaws, to be sure. Roddenberry is not a man without flaws. But, the general result of the overall effort is positive, exceptional, resonating, ground-breaking, and enduring. I don't think Star Trek is the best show ever to cross the airwaves, but it's a darn good one.
At the risk of repeating myself, that would certainly apply to The Twilight Zone as well, not to mention The Outer Limits.
None of which is intended as a slam on Star Trek. Certainly, when you compare TOS to stuff like The Green Slime, which came out around the same time, you can see how sophisticated Star Trek was by comparison.
But it was hardly the first sf show to be about something or having something intelligent to say. Rod Serling, among others, was there earlier--and doubt that any sf fan would dismiss the Twilight Zone as some obscure, forgotten footnote in tv history!
...and doing it first does not always mean doing it best--nor does not doing it first mean not doing it best. Whether or not Trek (or anything, I suppose) is "groundbreaking" probably is not what will determine whether it has a legacy that will be passed down to later generations.
"In truth, methinks the plays of William Shakespeare
shall not for long withstand the test of time.
His works deriveth from others' and through the ages
shall only amount to naught with little legacy.
What ground doth this man break with his play Hamlet
that has not been broken by Thomas Kyd?
Since Thomas Kyd had already written a play upon which much of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark was based, I guess some might think that Shakespeare's Hamlet must not be exceptional and should never really amount to much--in the same way that Star Trek had its roots in so many other works and should itself never really amount to much. My hunch, however, is that Star Trek will "only" be as well known to the masses 500 years after its creation as Shakespeare's works are known 500 years after their creation--which is to say that I think Star Trek will be around for a long time--like Shakespeare's plays or Greek tragedies before them.
The acting ran the same gamut as any TV show. Some wonderful performances some horribly bad. They even managed a few Emmy nominations for Nimoy. Something no other Trek has managed in the acting category. Camp? It was about as campy as any hour long drama produced around the same time. In time folks might find Stewart or Brook's performances to be campy. The styles seen in the sets and costumes of DS9 might also drift into "camp" eventually. I think TNG aready has.
Dated? Yeah, its a reflection of its times visually and culturally. Storywise, I don't think so. The stories are standard tropes used before and after TOS. ( and by other Treks). Presentation-wise. Until episodic TV comes back into vogue it will seem dated.Tribble Herder
Lieutenant Commander
I'll second that. In fact, I consider DS9 to be the real successor to TOS as far as thought-provoking storylines (and in a post-9/11 world, the Dominion War plotline takes on a whole new level of relevance).
Tribble Herder
Lieutenant Commander
Query: When you attempted to watch TOS, was it on DVD, so you could see the episodes uncut, or were these the hack-and-slash versions on either a local station or on Sci-Fi?
Tribble Herder
Lieutenant Commander
So, you were basically at the mercy of whoever uploaded the thing...
Replace it in what way? Star Trek's impact is really about being in the right place at the right time.Whats really exceptional is that it spawned a movie franchise and five TV shows. A different show produced by different people would not have had the same result. A show produce later, even by a year or two would not have the same impact.
Right: for how many decades will we have to keep discussing Star Trek before we are able to decide whether it will ever have any lasting impact?
Right: for how many decades will we have to keep discussing Star Trek before we are able to decide whether it will ever have any lasting impact?
Trek's impact is obvious. I don't think anybody's questioning it. That's not the topic here.
Other contemporary and earlier shows did many of the same things as Trek. Many did them just as well. Some better. Yet they're practically forgotten.
Untold scores, scripts, performances, concepts lie utterly ignored, while thousands of people parse the exact shade of magenta used in France Nuyen's eye shadow.
My question is.... why?
Broken record here. Again, I wouldn't say that Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits are virtually forgotten. Heck, they're probably rerunning TZ on Syfy tonight!
For that matter, Dark Shadows debuted the same year as TOS and it's back again . . . for at least the third time.
Last edited:
Well, it's not like I have a burning desire to keep hyping TZ. It just seems weird to keep reading these sweeping statements that everything before TOS is "forgotten," "a footnote," or had nothing intelligent to say.
Forget The Outer Limits for a moment. In what universe is The Twilight Zone "practically forgotten"?
Not to mention Forbidden Planet, The Fly, etc.
Forget The Outer Limits for a moment. In what universe is The Twilight Zone "practically forgotten"?
Not to mention Forbidden Planet, The Fly, etc.
But did they have the same cultural impact that TOS had is the question. Are they the same touchstones as TOS. Did they have the franchise success?
Not sure who/what you think you're debating here.
beaker is saying that Trek wasn't all that "exceptional" and is wondering why it has lasted while other shows, better shows are mostly forgotten. Do the shows Greg mentioned have the same cache ( especially in the "outside world") that trek does? Thirty years ago a show like SNL could do a TZ riff and people would get it. Can the same be said today? Yet a riff on Star Trek would probably be understood by most of the audience watching SNL today, including those who never saw Trek in any form.
Looking back at TOS, it probably stands out because it made space adventure and old sci fi concepts popular during the dawning of the space age. In reality, except for a few cheap 50s shows, and one campy Irwin Allen show, there were no continuing shows in space...none! No wonder it held sway even through the 70s and early 80s, when it finally had some contenders.
I think there are a lot of erroneous beliefs about Gene Roddenberry: he did want to write about messages, but he wanted to make money too, those two things are not mutually exclusive. Secondly, after many years of thought, exploration, soul searching, brought upon by people's reaction to the show, I think Gene really believed he found positive views to convey, and wanted STTMP and STNG to be worthwhile. In other words, he grew and changed..so to assume he still had the same thought process in 1987 as he did in 1966 is ludicrous.
I think there are a lot of erroneous beliefs about Gene Roddenberry: he did want to write about messages, but he wanted to make money too, those two things are not mutually exclusive. Secondly, after many years of thought, exploration, soul searching, brought upon by people's reaction to the show, I think Gene really believed he found positive views to convey, and wanted STTMP and STNG to be worthwhile. In other words, he grew and changed..so to assume he still had the same thought process in 1987 as he did in 1966 is ludicrous.
First of all, shame on several of you for sniping at each other instead of merely arguing your points. When you make it personal instead of about the subject, you've de facto lost the argument.
re exeptionalism
Star Trek (fuck this "TOS" noise) was exceptional as a package in that it was arguably one of the early [American] science fiction dramatic series that (mostly) tried to play it straight, where other shows in the genre may have started serious enough but quickly ended up in silly-town. The 1959 CBS series Men Into Space depicted future efforts by the USAF to explore and develop outer space. It was not silly or campy. If anything, it was dry. So Star Trek wasn't first in that territory.
In other words, Star Trek was exceptionally well-made for a science fiction TV series.
On the other hand, as a series—minus subcategory—it was not so exceptional.
re exeptionalism
Star Trek (fuck this "TOS" noise) was exceptional as a package in that it was arguably one of the early [American] science fiction dramatic series that (mostly) tried to play it straight, where other shows in the genre may have started serious enough but quickly ended up in silly-town. The 1959 CBS series Men Into Space depicted future efforts by the USAF to explore and develop outer space. It was not silly or campy. If anything, it was dry. So Star Trek wasn't first in that territory.
In other words, Star Trek was exceptionally well-made for a science fiction TV series.
On the other hand, as a series—minus subcategory—it was not so exceptional.
Production Value. Watch I Spy or Mission: Impossible or Gunsmoke or Have Gun Will Travel and you'll quickly see that the acting, production, music, and even the writing is pretty average for a dramatic series of the time.
Topicality. Other shows had plenty to say on the subjects Roddenberry and Co. put in scifi drag without the need to disguise it. I Spy's episode "The Loser" dealt head-on with drugs and featured Eartha Kitt as a heroin addicted jazz signer without the need to hide it in a coy metaphor. In one single skit ("Bonanzarosa") The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour poked fun at more topical issues than any 10 Trek episodes put together.
Race & Nationality
Other shows had non-whites and non-Americans in significant roles: I-Spy, Mission: Impossible and Julia all had black lead characters, not as background players. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. had a Russian character as co-star. Sure, they weren't enough by a long shot, but Star Trek was merely on the curve, not on the leading edge. In this regard, Star Trek was not at the top of the heap, whereas I-Spy and Mission: Impossible were.
Even Spock's not a new character. As pointed out in other threads, he's basically a pointy-eared version of the character Mingo from Daniel Boone: a well educated "half-breed" who lives amongst us. Nimoy's performance is what makes Spock exceptional, and why he was nominated for three Emmys.
Visual Effects. Now here Star Trek is mostly at the top. No sci-fi show prior to it had as convincingly depicted a spacecraft moving through space, and—with come exceptions—many of the effects on the show were state-of-the-art for TV.
Camp. By the standards some people here apply, most everything from 60s TV would be camp, so this is an argument not even worth having.
Topicality. Other shows had plenty to say on the subjects Roddenberry and Co. put in scifi drag without the need to disguise it. I Spy's episode "The Loser" dealt head-on with drugs and featured Eartha Kitt as a heroin addicted jazz signer without the need to hide it in a coy metaphor. In one single skit ("Bonanzarosa") The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour poked fun at more topical issues than any 10 Trek episodes put together.
Race & Nationality
Other shows had non-whites and non-Americans in significant roles: I-Spy, Mission: Impossible and Julia all had black lead characters, not as background players. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. had a Russian character as co-star. Sure, they weren't enough by a long shot, but Star Trek was merely on the curve, not on the leading edge. In this regard, Star Trek was not at the top of the heap, whereas I-Spy and Mission: Impossible were.
Even Spock's not a new character. As pointed out in other threads, he's basically a pointy-eared version of the character Mingo from Daniel Boone: a well educated "half-breed" who lives amongst us. Nimoy's performance is what makes Spock exceptional, and why he was nominated for three Emmys.
Visual Effects. Now here Star Trek is mostly at the top. No sci-fi show prior to it had as convincingly depicted a spacecraft moving through space, and—with come exceptions—many of the effects on the show were state-of-the-art for TV.
Camp. By the standards some people here apply, most everything from 60s TV would be camp, so this is an argument not even worth having.
Last edited:
JSYK, Dan Dare was a big deal in the UK, and still sort of is. Basically the quintessential British space hero. Arthur C. Clarke advised to the series. ROBE, I'm not sure if you know this or not or are simply presenting it in a condensed format for the general public. Dan Dare was more or less continuously published until 1967, when Star Trek was already on the air.
