Did the 24th century shows get too insulting/condescending about TOS?
- Thread starter JonnyQuest037
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Crossover - Spoken by an arrogant leader who interprets history through her own lens of "we won, so clearly they were weak and outmatched". And truthfully, there will always be enemies we underestimate, incidents that blindside us, consequences we can;t foresee. Whether it can be chalked up to our stupidity or simply our not being God is a matter of opinion.
Tribble-ations-Spoken by a guy whose job involves cleaning up the mess left behind by people who mess with time, pure motives or no. It's his job, and you'll recall that later Dulmer admits that he would've said hi to Kirk too. It's only in front of his less-flexible partner that he calls Kirk a menace, and he probably believes it to a certain extent - when somebody develops a reputation for it, 100 years later it becomes inflated, frowned upon by those who think they're superior -"by now, we know better/are more evolved".
Flashback - Says more about today than yesterday.
Q2 - I think it's nice that they expanded the Kirk lore rather than called back to something we already knew about.
Relics - What about this exchange?
SCOTT: Look at the momentum distribution of the ions. It would take an impulse engine at full reverse to put out a signature like that.
LAFORGE: So they didn't go in willingly. This looks like some kind of communications array.
SCOTT: Aye. We found hundreds of them when we did our initial survey seventy five years ago.
LAFORGE: Did you try hailing them?
SCOTT: Aye. That was standard procedure at the time. We did it right before we crashed.
LAFORGE: Hailing is standard procedure today, too.
Scotty, upon learning that nearly everything else has changed, wonders if maybe something other than hailing first is now the new normal.
Unification - Picard's personal position on the subject, as well as that of 24th century Starfleet. Perhaps after Spock's brand of negotiating failed miserably with newly encountered races, causing extensive damage.
Tribble-ations-Spoken by a guy whose job involves cleaning up the mess left behind by people who mess with time, pure motives or no. It's his job, and you'll recall that later Dulmer admits that he would've said hi to Kirk too. It's only in front of his less-flexible partner that he calls Kirk a menace, and he probably believes it to a certain extent - when somebody develops a reputation for it, 100 years later it becomes inflated, frowned upon by those who think they're superior -"by now, we know better/are more evolved".
Flashback - Says more about today than yesterday.
Q2 - I think it's nice that they expanded the Kirk lore rather than called back to something we already knew about.
Relics - What about this exchange?
SCOTT: Look at the momentum distribution of the ions. It would take an impulse engine at full reverse to put out a signature like that.
LAFORGE: So they didn't go in willingly. This looks like some kind of communications array.
SCOTT: Aye. We found hundreds of them when we did our initial survey seventy five years ago.
LAFORGE: Did you try hailing them?
SCOTT: Aye. That was standard procedure at the time. We did it right before we crashed.
LAFORGE: Hailing is standard procedure today, too.
Scotty, upon learning that nearly everything else has changed, wonders if maybe something other than hailing first is now the new normal.
Unification - Picard's personal position on the subject, as well as that of 24th century Starfleet. Perhaps after Spock's brand of negotiating failed miserably with newly encountered races, causing extensive damage.
You might be right. It's the only one where someone is actually kind of mad at "TOS" people or stuff. LaForge was getting annoyed at Scotty which I can kind of understand. He is has a job to do and he doesn't really want to sort of deal with someone getting in the way at that time. Scotty was actually out of line in those scene's in that he should know better to not be going around causing a disturbence in someone else's engineering while their busy doing work. I don't think he would have put up with Trip Tucker mucking about his engineering room either on his Enterprise if he had work to be done. Granted it's also understandable. If I found myself in the future I might also end up being a nuisance to people simple because every future thing they take for granted would be brand new to me.
Jason
I don't know why Scotty was so amazed. The Enterprise-D interiors looks just like the Enterprise-A interiors.
The ships are barely faster, the Klingons are still mostly enemies, the Romulans are back, now there's the Borg, Admirals are even more evil, they can't even drink anymore and they never cracked transwarp drive.
Scotty should have been bitch slapping them left, right and center for slacking.
Scotty should have been bitch slapping them left, right and center for slacking.
I don't really see any big problem with any of these. As has been said, people will sometimes look back on the past as being backwards and uncivilized, and sometimes long for the good old days. I personally love "Relics", and saw Scotty's annoying Geordi as a symptom of his love of engineering paired with his desire to show he's worth something in the present time. The "you didn't tell him how long it would really take" line doesn't imply the ridiculous tripling of estimates Scotty joked about with Kirk. It's actually good advice: If you think it will take two hours, say it will take two and a half. That way in the unlikely event something goes off kilter you have some wiggle room. It's a lot better than underestimating,
Wasn't being a quick thinker and coming up with solutions on the fly something expected of starship captains in Kirk's day, especially on a primarily exploratory assignment like the Enterprise's? Wouldn't Kirk, being so famous, be especially thought of in those terms by future generations who might exaggerate him into being a maverick?
Different character traits stick out to different people, based on their personal biases. I've noticed this in my own life; when I make jokes about fictional characters, I often wind up fixating on something they've done that stands out to me and exaggerated it.
Honestly, none of these really offended me. If anything, some of them are actually complimenting TOS by recalling what a colorful, freewheeling time it was. The only one that made me wince was the idea that Mirror Spock's revolution actually made things worse in the Mirror Universe, thus subverting the optimism of "Mirror, Mirror." But I can live with it.
One more example: Janeway, talking about Da Vinci, mentions that "Kirk claimed to have met him." The implication being that Janeway kinda regards this as a tall tale--or wildly exaggerated at least.
I actually liked that line, since it was a cute callback to "Requiem for Methuselah," and I'm amused by the idea that some of Kirk's more far-fetched adventures are now regarded with some skepticism.
One more example: Janeway, talking about Da Vinci, mentions that "Kirk claimed to have met him." The implication being that Janeway kinda regards this as a tall tale--or wildly exaggerated at least.
I actually liked that line, since it was a cute callback to "Requiem for Methuselah," and I'm amused by the idea that some of Kirk's more far-fetched adventures are now regarded with some skepticism.
Yeah, I can just imagine some Starfleet Commodore or Admiral reading Kirk's report and thinking, "He met who? Okay. Sure. Must've been some entity impersonating him. Or Jim's yanking our chain again. I told him not to do that in official logs... "
Not to mention the fact that, by the 24th century, some of those "books" were written by Scotty. (If I remember "Relics" correctly.
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Exactly. In fact, I now remember that's where I got the impression. Geordi quotes the manual about something and Scotty tells him that he knows that rule can be disregarded because he wrote it, and he was being conservative on paper.Not to mention the fact that, by the 24th century, some of those "books" were written by Scotty. (If I remember "Relics" correctly.
I always found Janeway's line to be a little patronizing. Kirk's actual official Captain's log would have had a lot more information on Flint than just "Today I met Leonardo Da Vinci. End log."
Perhaps over the years all the details got lost in the public consciousness.
Kor
The whole comparison device TV shows use where instead of just presenting the star as being cool and doing cool things ... somehow, it's just not enough. They've got to go that one extra, just to make sure the dumbest idiot in the audience gets it that this guy rocks. So, they compare him by bringing out some fool he has to suffer who can't find his arse with both hands -- often a superior of his -- and NOW we know that EVERYBODY understands: Our Hero is, indeed, The Cock of the Walk. Point is, I feel that TNG kind of used this with TOS and I really wish it had stood on its own, instead. And, remember, yes ... STAR TREK had fans of TOS working on TNG, but that doesn't mean they see it the way you or I do. They're in that Hollywood mindset, they're thinking in terms of the current project and this is what they feel they really need ... to trot out TOS, sometimes, just to say, "hey, you idiots out there who haven't picked this up, already: things sure have advanced in the 24th Century!" It's not so much a knock against what TOS has or is or can be credited for. And if this ever crossed their minds that it could be construed as such, "hey ... you know what? TOS can TAKE it! The show's iconic! It's fine, don't worry about it ..."
It would've said even more if that sentence hadn't directly followed her saying they'd all be thrown out of Starfleet today.
Thinking about it more, I think some of my problem with that scene stems from Kate Mulgrew's performance as well. She came off a lot more smug than nostalgic or enamored with the past.
Very interesting thoughts!
Peter David once made the case that the shows produced after TNG reflected the caution America had post-Vietnam. On TOS, we were right, because we were always right. We remade alien cultures in our image because we knew best. The Prime Directive was that thing that they quoted right before they violated it in some way or another. It was, as Nicholas Meyer once said, about gunboat diplomacy. On TNG, they took the Prime Directive a lot more seriously and it seemed to be a much more rigid rule. Because who knows, we might be wrong again, the way we were wrong with Vietnam. Heck, the episode "First Contact" even said that the Prime Directive came about because our first contact with the Klingons was such a disaster!
Yeah. I can understand why they did that, though. The MU pretty much had to still be a bad place, because otherwise there's no story. I just think that too many TOS sequels go to the "Kirk was wrong" well a little too easily.
Yeah, agreed. I wish Picard could've fought some telekinetic aliens in togas once in a while. Just for variety's sake.
Yeah, agreed. I wish Picard could've fought some telekinetic aliens in togas once in a while. Just for variety's sake.
At least it might have taught him some basic humility!
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“The Apple”, “Spock’s Brain”; subverted in “Errand of Mercy”.
”A Taste of Armageddon”
I think David Gerrold wrote about TOS as a representation of Manifest Destiny on the galactic stage. The post-Vietnam landscape of that dark dream was a stark contrast, and the franchise reflected that.
Exactly. Yes Kirk gains that reputation 'in universe' too, but in actuality it's not true. He doesn't *really* disobey orders in a massive way until he steals the Enterprise in The Search For Spock, and even then has co-conspirators.
The number of times he does it in TOS is debatable. 'Amok Time' definitely sees him disobey an order (again like TSFS he does it for Spock), but the open question is how many of his decisions to interfere with events on other worlds were examples of bending the rules? If the Prime Directive is a rule then yes he does it a few times, but if it's more of a guideline that Kirk is simply interpreting then I'd suggest his promotion to Admiral upon returning to Earth was not prefigured by any kind of court martial...
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