"Forbidden Planet" as TOS prequel?
- Thread starter TOS Purist
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Do we really need to have the birds and the bees talk? Let's just say that mixed-sex crews living for prolonged periods in cramped and stressful environments don't always live in harmony with one another...
^I'm sure that any crews living for prolonged periods in cramped and stressful environments don't always live in harmony with one another. I know I'd find it far more stressful and disharmonious to be stuck in an all-male setting than a coed setting, certainly for more than a year. Even aside from the fact that sex and physical affection are invaluable forms of stress relief, simply the company of women is soothing to me. So this isn't an absolute. Gender segregation is a practice based on the beliefs, biases, and behavioral norms of a given culture, not an innate human need.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Not trying to trigger a battle o' sexes thing, just pointing out that FP was maybe a bit ahead of time in even including the word 'women' in that backstory, especially for a pioneering event like the moon ... and yet for the actual story in the film, there is no forward-looking view of women in the slightest, it is quintessential 50s movie cliche in design and execution.
I think the Navy has quite a bit of data to indicate that no matter how professional and well disciplined your crew is, with a mixed gender crew, sooner or later someone's gonna get bored and horny enough, especially on an extended voyage, that a very special episode of Enterprise is gonna unfold and now your chief surgeon is faced with the possibility of having to open up a maternity ward.
3D Master
Rear Admiral
Do we really need to have the birds and the bees talk? Let's just say that mixed-sex crews living for prolonged periods in cramped and stressful environments don't always live in harmony with one another...
That would be because they're living for prolonged periods in cramped and stressful environments, not because they're a mixed sex crew, or anything to do with "the birds and the bees". A same sex crew will have the exact same problems.
For that you make sure there are condoms available. And the pill. And the morning-after pill. And a whole slew of contraceptives that are available. Quite frankly, nobody who doesn't want a baby in this day and age, has to have one, not only through abstinence.
In fact, I'd say sex is a perfect stress relief that make prolonged stays in a cramped quarters better to deal with.
And the emotional fallout? Maintaining crew morale can be a matter of life and death for a naval vessel, and the last thing a captain needs is a morale problem springing from a failed romance between two of his crew, followed by the assorted friends of the two starcrossed lovebirds taking sides. That's why fraternization regs border on the Draconian, they have to! Otherwise, you wind up with "Animal House Joins the Navy",
I suggest the PBS miniseries Carrier for all those interested in seeing what it's like to serve on a coed navy ship.
3D Master
Rear Admiral
The only reason fraternization regs are Draconian is because it has got nothing to do with morale or the two people getting together and breaking up some negatively impacting the functioning of a crew. They're all about keeping enlisted personnel away from officers. They're nothing but leftovers, and possibly worse, sickly still so, of keeping the proper, high-class, of good-family, well-educating, good Christian boys boys and girls, away from the low-class, uneducated crass scum and sluts.
It has got nothing to do with anything else.
Whether or not people break up has got nothing to do with morale either. It has no impact upon the rest of the crew but the two people involved. So two people broke up, who gives a fuck?
Hell, someone becoming single again may even BOOST morale.
The whole concept that sex and mixing genders suddenly makes people incapable of functioning is ridiculous and directly related to a Christian bullshit about sex being a sin.
If breaking up of a couple causes a break down in morale, than a break up of friendship can have equally bad results, and probably much worse. I see however no regulations against making friends amongst any of the militaries.
This is insulting and a gross generalization. My father was an enlisted man in the U.S. Navy who became a commissioned warrant officer. He is a self-educated man, a voracious reader, and highly intelligent. Hardly, a low-class, uneducated crass scum.
I find it laughable that people 'round here can pontificate with absolute expertise about this thing and that thing when it comes to the military. Most of it, however, is pure twaddle. More so bullshit than anything else.
But hey if there's one thing the internet is good at, it's creating self-deluded experts.
As I said, if you really want to see what it's like to be on a coed navy ship, the kinds of problems it creates and how it is handled, then I suggest again the PBS documentary mini-series Carrier.
Well, this makes a whole lot of sense.
Instead of trying to figure out what would have to be discarded or reinterpreted about FP to make it fit the Trek "universe," we probably ought to look at what would be necessary to make Trek fit as a sequel to FP. Forbidden Planet came first, and is the source of much of Star Trek.
It still doesn't work at all, if one accepts that nothing may be simply discarded (and if one gets quickly bored by the ridiculous stretching of logic and word definitions that always accompany attempts to make Trek consistent even with itself).
First, most of Trek's "historical backstory" must go. Certainly there is no room at all for the existence of Khan - if men and women won't reach the Moon for another seventy or eighty years from now, there's no way that a vessel such as the DY-100 series could have existed in the 1990s.
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3D Master
Rear Admiral
Why are you talking as if I believe that bullshit?
It doesn't appear clear in your original post, even with what followed it.
^I found it to be quite clear from context that 3D Master wasn't stating that as his own belief, but was criticizing those that, in his view, thought of enlisted personnel in that way.
I did not read carefully, so I apologize to 3D Master for my "knee-jerk" response.
It sure as hell did! Wow...this is WAAAY off topic - although it did go off on a pretty interesting tangent.
I always wonder about all of those "physically perfect specimens" Adams told Altaira he was in command of...how did the cook's liver pass the physical? 
Because no ORDINARY human liver could have survived that level of abuse! Only a physically perfect liver could.I always wonder about all of those "physically perfect specimens" Adams told Altaira he was in command of...how did the cook's liver pass the physical?
Okay, you've got me there.
OTOH, there's evidently no IQ test involved...
You know what one of my favorite lines in this movie is - despite the fact that it's a bit clumsy - is Morbius explaining that "id" is "an obsolete term...once used to describe the elementary basis
of the subconscious mind." The writer's adopting that very removed, old-fashioned sf mannerism of looking at modernity as a distant, antique era. When you see that done these days it's usually ironic and played for humor (in movie terms, Woody Allen killed it pretty dead with Sleeper).
OTOH, there's evidently no IQ test involved...
You know what one of my favorite lines in this movie is - despite the fact that it's a bit clumsy - is Morbius explaining that "id" is "an obsolete term...once used to describe the elementary basis
of the subconscious mind." The writer's adopting that very removed, old-fashioned sf mannerism of looking at modernity as a distant, antique era. When you see that done these days it's usually ironic and played for humor (in movie terms, Woody Allen killed it pretty dead with Sleeper).
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