How was Spock viewed by the original audience.

[UnknownSample]

More of a TV unreality thing than racism. Look at Friends. No way those people afforded that swank apartment on their meager salaries.

Watched Julia first run. I liked it.

Well, it was at least a popular view expressed at the time that it was TV bending over backwards to say "We're not racist, see?" I'm not saying that was a real motive. In general, the 60s mass-media approach to going against racism was to ignore inequalities or avoid the subject.

 

[T'Bonz]

I was a kid so don't remember the adult views, but I did know as a kid that it was rather unusual to have a show about a black family.

Which was odd to me as I had spent the first 6 of those 11 years of my life to date in a black neighborhood and another of those years in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood. To me, everyone from white to a dark brown was the normal and it was a bit odd that TV didn't reflect my reality/experience.

 

[Nyotarules]

A liberal guilt show that was joked about at the time was the sitcom "Julia", which starred a black nurse who was shown raising her kids in a fancy upscale apartment that was obviously beyond a nurse's income. Fighting racism by ignoring it?

Well Julia could be a trust fund baby, but wanted to be part of a noble profession???

 

[Nyotarules]

Then All In the Family in 1971 sent things reeling in the other direction, as Norman Lear and others dealt with racism more head-on.

They copied the format of a British tv show called Till death do us part

 

[kwisecar]

I was sixteen when Star Trek first aired and let me tell you, from the second I saw him, I was in looove. lol
Perhaps the best explanation I have seen as to why he was a hit, esp. with teens is that many of us ourselves feel alienated. Especially teenagers, who also feel they don't quite fit in. So some of us identified with him for that reason. And of course, we females fantasized that we could be the ones to crack that Vulcan logic and make him go wild. lol
But seriously, I think a number of us also felt the Vulcan embrace of non-violence and logic might save us from future wars if we could only learn to emulate that part of him. Remember, Vietnam was raging all around us on TV and in many cases, in our own lives if we had family members or friends who were over there.
Plus, Leonard Nimoy with those expressive brown eyes and that sexy slender yet fit body. Grrrrr-owlllll lol

 

[Greg Cox]

I watched the show as a kid during its original run on NBC and I never remember being confused by Spock or his presence on the show. He was the cool, super-smart alien guy with pointed ears and green blood, who was all about logic. All of that was explained on the show, and by my dad, so I just took it at face value.

It was a sci-fi show, set in the future, so, of course, there was an alien on the show. And it's not like good-guy aliens (or robots) were all that shocking a concept. Remember, most of us sixties kids were also watching reruns of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, My Favorite Martian, and The Adventures of Superman ("strange visitor from another planet . . . "), not to mention movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, It Came from Outer Space, and so on, all of which were airing regularly on our local TV stations around the same time STAR TREK debuted. And those shows and movies were not obscure cult items known only by hardcore sci-fi fans; they were popular entertainments enjoyed by general audiences.

Having an alien on the bridge of the Enterprise was no more jarring than having Robby the Robot on the bridge of the starship in Forbidden Planet, or Flash Gordon teaming up with Prince Barin on the planet Mongo.

And that's not even counting all the sf books and comics many of us were reading back then. Trust me, Mr. Spock was not more jarring than the Martian Manhunter or Aquaman or the Legion of Super-Heroes.

(And comic-books were not a niche thing back then. You didn't buy them at specialty comic shops, catering to hardcore fans. You picked them up at drug stores and news stands and flea markets.)

 

[UnknownSample]

(And comic-books were not a niche thing back then. You didn't buy them at specialty comic shops, catering to hardcore fans. You picked them up at drug stores and news stands and flea markets.)

Kids did. And maybe Ed Norton...
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People are making an issue out of this, when all I said was that it was possible a momentary question mark might appear in someone's head over the alien on the humans' bridge. I never thought of this until Shatner and Nimoy were on with Regis, and he asked them "what was Spock doing there on the Bridge, I never understood that!" I wasn't confused, my mother wasn't. Still, very few people thought in SF terms, so... maybe. It was a very different world. I remember.
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who said it was an issue of unfamiliarity with the very idea of space aliens? My Favorite Martian doesn't apply. Some military organization including humans AND some aliens while other aliens are attacking... maybe surprising.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Still, very few people thought in SF terms,

What does "thinking in SF terms" even mean? The idea the SF operates with a different set of "rules" than other fiction or you need "experience" to understand it is absurd. Star Trek is pretty "safe" when it comes to it's ideas, setting and concepts. The military setting and idea of a "foreigner" operating with our human heroes shouldn't be so far out to the Greatest Generation and their offspring.