Oh yeah, definitely. When I say I love the theme, I'm referring to the season one and two opening. They butchered it with the latter two seasons.
Have you ever given up on a Trek series? If so, what was the last straw for you?
- Thread starter JonnyQuest037
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It comes across as writing how people speak *today*, and even then how *some* people speak in some situations.
People today do not speak the same as people did 500 years ago and it is ridiculous to think people 500 years in the future will speak the same as people do today.
The "Treklish" that you deride was one of the ways Trek made it seem like you were actually watching people in a different time. And most definitely is a higher bar for writers than writing contemporary speech.
Moreso than one might think…
20 Phrases that Originated in the Middle Ages - Medievalists.net
Discover 20 common phrases with roots in the Middle Ages, from “no man’s land” to “red-letter day,” and explore their fascinating medieval origins.
www.medievalists.net
William Shakespeare is credited with 1,700 words and phrases we still use today.
TOS was pretty contemporary in its speech. Language has not changed so much that I cannot read items from 500 years ago and understood the broader themes and wishes. I've studied translated Greek letters which reflect very human desires for success, promotion at work, and well wishes. Shakespeare plays are still utilized because of their relatability.
Trek often uses these contemporary languages because it's written for a audience of this day and age.
Janeway's while obsession with coffee alone could easily be placed in to Gilmore Girls without much issue. Star Trek speech varies as writing often does.
TNG is the most successful show in the Trek franchise. It is ludicrous to suggest that its dialogue was "unrecognizable for contemporary viewers." Simply because they weren't dropping f-bombs doesn't mean that they were using language that contemporary audiences could not decipher.
I think the bigger part is that the hype around TOS/TNG as having no contemporary language is completely overblown. The language was perhaps more formal, but often times it was contemporary in its pacing, and a bit theatrical at times with blocking. Some of it hinged upon dramatic reveals. My attempted rewatch of TNG started with "Ensigns of Command" was stymied by the stupidity of the lack of sense by the captain dealing with a treaty and negotiations until dramatically appropriate.
Yup, agreed. You can't levy the argument of "well, people talked differently 500 years ago, so why should people in the future talk like us today" when that's exactly what the franchise has always done. Television is written for contemporary audiences. If you tried to extrapolate what future English might sound like, it would be so incomprehensible that the first note from the network would be to "lose the archaic language and make it so people can understand."
When I watched the latest episode of Starfleet Academy yesterday, I was surprised the phrase "Buns of Steel" popped up during a training sequence. I have a hard time believing that particular bit of slang is going to survive to the 32nd Century.
I don't mind the dialogue in a Trek show being relatively contemporary, but when it's SO contemporary it throws you out of the show, that's a problem.
I'm at work, so I don't have the book handy, but I know that in The Outer Limits Companion, when Harlan Ellison submitted his script for the second season episode 'Soldier', he wrote that 1800 years in the future, Qarlo spoke phonetically, which, on paper, was okay, but in practice, the producers had to rewrite in order for Michael Ansara to be understood.
Nope. At no point has "Treklish" ever even remotely felt like "people in a different time". What it felt like is "writers who don't understand that things like slang, fictional or otherwise, are never going to go away " It always felt lazy. Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Babylon 5 all felt like people in a different time and all felt more believable than any of the "office administrators in space" of the Berman Era all while feeling like people who also stepped out of the times their shows were being produced in.
As for "giving up on a Trek series" everything post TNG. I still watched, but by VOY's second or third season, Trek stopped being "appointment" tv as it was largely dull and predictable.
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Hard disagree. Streaming era Trek shows sound like lazy writing far more than Berman era ever did. The writers of the Berman era were also far more talented than anyone writing for Trek today. All IMHO, of course. None of this is scientific fact, just opinion. Speaking of which, I think I've probably beaten the horse of this argument to death by now, and the point of this thread was supposed to be when people gave up on a Trek series, so let me go back to that.
Despite the Berman era being "my era" of Trek, I will agree that they stayed at the party too long. And you're identifying of the point in Voyager where you felt it stopped being appointment TV lines up pretty closely with me. I would say about the fourth season of Voyager is where it kinda fell off a cliff as far as I am concerned. By the fifth season, I definitely was not watching the first run episodes regularly. And that remained true for just about everything since. I've watched a smattering of stuff since then, but nothing since has ever really captured me again the way TOS and the early- to mid-Berman era did.
"Buns of Programmable Matter" doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
Buns of Transparent Aluminum?
Getting back to the original topic, it dawns on me that I have still never watched TAS in its entirety.
Not because I "gave up on it," but just because, as a teenager, I was no longer in the habit of watching Saturday morning cartoons back when the show debuted.
I keep meaning to go back and fill in this gap in my Trek knowledge, but have yet to get around to it.
(In my defense, at the point I started writing Trek novels professionally, back in the eighties, TAS was not considered "canon" and we weren't supposed to reference it in the books anyway.)
Not because I "gave up on it," but just because, as a teenager, I was no longer in the habit of watching Saturday morning cartoons back when the show debuted.
I keep meaning to go back and fill in this gap in my Trek knowledge, but have yet to get around to it.
(In my defense, at the point I started writing Trek novels professionally, back in the eighties, TAS was not considered "canon" and we weren't supposed to reference it in the books anyway.)
That's interesting. Since novels are considered non-canon also, what harm would there be in referencing another non-canon source?
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