Honestly, I always felt the woo-wee was a bit fake and what they’d today call cringe; but different strokes and all.
Honestly, I always felt the woo-wee was a bit fake and what they’d today call cringe; but different strokes and all.
The bad language thing is a bit different as I've explained that it's exclusionary. But on general language I think hopefully it's also coming across in my Picard watch that I am trying to adapt and give it a fair shot.
And I think it's acclimating that's a huge part of that. It jars hard when first switching. But after a while it just feels more normal. A bit like going back to a low def show and going "argh my eyes" but then not noticing after a while.
If high fives are you form of fun then go out with me for a night out in New York. You'll never long for a high five again!
A good high five is very satisfying.
People in the military swear. Full stop. I honestly don't see that ever changing. And I've always felt that any attempt to deliberately make language sound futuristic ultimately sounds artificial.
Language changes, to be sure, but it will evolve in ways that will be unrecognizabe. We have no way of knowing how language will change going into the future, but it certainly won't be anything that sounds like contemporary English in any regard. However, we do know how much language has changed in the past. Using English as a base for Star Trek (given that it is filmed in English and acknowledging that most the characters need translators), see how much "English" has changed over a thousand years and apply that moving forward to the TNG-ENT era and onward to the 32nd century era.
Ultimately, it's all translation of mythology anyway. Rick Berman decided to translate the mythology one way and Alex Kurtzman translated it another. Both are valid and have their pluses and minuses. And as with the mythology of old, neither translation is more or less valid than the other.
Language changes, to be sure, but it will evolve in ways that will be unrecognizabe. We have no way of knowing how language will change going into the future, but it certainly won't be anything that sounds like contemporary English in any regard. However, we do know how much language has changed in the past. Using English as a base for Star Trek (given that it is filmed in English and acknowledging that most the characters need translators), see how much "English" has changed over a thousand years and apply that moving forward to the TNG-ENT era and onward to the 32nd century era.
Ultimately, it's all translation of mythology anyway. Rick Berman decided to translate the mythology one way and Alex Kurtzman translated it another. Both are valid and have their pluses and minuses. And as with the mythology of old, neither translation is more or less valid than the other.
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If that's what you want, every other word should be "fuck" with a side order of "son of a bitch."
Agreed, that was one of the most visually striking Trek trailers I've ever seen. I'm now officially psyched (except maybe for the puppet episode).
And sleep deprivation.
Folks who think members of the military never curse up a blue streak have completely forgotten about the axiom "swears like a sailor."
I'm reminded of this scene from No Time For Sergeants with a new recruit feeling like he has to report everything.
Military life has structure for certain situations. But it isn't a crisp clean prudent environment.
I think it's unrealistic to assume the PG language pre-Enterprise was out of professionalism and not because of the significantly more sensitive censorship of the time.
Lower Decks, Discovery, Picard and SNW are all only rated a 15 which is the same as DS9 thanks exclusively to The Quickening. VOY, TNG and ENT are all 12s.
So really nothing in the streaming era, not the violence or swearing people seem to get flustered about has made any real difference to the considered age appropriateness since the Berman era.
Lower Decks, Discovery, Picard and SNW are all only rated a 15 which is the same as DS9 thanks exclusively to The Quickening. VOY, TNG and ENT are all 12s.
So really nothing in the streaming era, not the violence or swearing people seem to get flustered about has made any real difference to the considered age appropriateness since the Berman era.
Massive difference between a 12 and a 15, but even so with TNG very few episodes were even 12s in the UK (and thats before the cuts made for TV)
Indeed Conspiracy is the only *episode* rating more than a PG, although a couple of others have commentary tracks which led to 12s
Not many 12s in DS9 either
(Sadly I suspect "Rejoined" was a 12 because of the kiss)
Less than 10 episodes of Voyager merited a 12
Berman era trek was far more family friendly. SNW has just two episodes which are PG, and thats despite a reduction in ratings impact that language brings Picard and the famous "Sheer Fucking Hubris" was a 12
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Setting aside arguments about starfleet and military, I don't recall any swearing from SG1 - a show set in contemporary times with the US airforce front and center
For people complaining that "no swearing isn't realistic" and also accepting things like warp drive, transporters and universal translators I wonder where the line is drawn
For people complaining that "no swearing isn't realistic" and also accepting things like warp drive, transporters and universal translators I wonder where the line is drawn
Between warp drive and swearing I guess!
It's going to differ for everyone, but clearly Star Trek is trying to be a more realistic in general than a lot of other space opera series are. Does this include the use of language? Probably not, though I don't know what Federation members will talk like in 200-300 years time. All I know that the 90s style feels better to me than the overly modern use of language in SFA.
I think Star Trek 4 was the movie that really drew attention to how they talked and said 'no, this is deliberate, they're from the future so they don't use modern slang' and made it a virtue. After that point whenever there's a line like "I'm done running from these bastards!" it feels a bit cringey to me. That said, O'Brien can get away with saying what he likes.
I agree, I wonder how much was the influence of Patrick Stewart
I for one prefer shakesperian influenced scripts
O'Brien got away with it on DS9 (not on TNG) because he wasn't an officer. Data saying "ooohh shit" in Generations was down to his new emotion chip. These were unusual deviations from the norm
Yes, the line
> SPOCK: Your use of language has altered since our arrival. It is currently laced with, ...shall I say, ...more colourful metaphors. 'Double dumb ass on you' ...and so forth.
Of course in The Search For Spock we had
> McCOY: That green-blooded son of a bitch! It's his revenge for all the arguments he lost.
Time progresses. "Hell" was shocking in the 60s
It only occurred three times in TOS -- twice by Kirk (Space Seed as a noun, and in City on the Edge of Forever), and once by McCoy in Spectre of the Gun
Hell was fairly normal through TNG though, cropping up in about 70 episodes - or half of them.
"son of a bitch" was used to great effect in Search for Spock for emphasis, but in Enterprise it was normal, mostly by Tucker, but Archer on multiple occasions too
Like I always bring up whenever we get going on these "people should be swearing in Star Trek" type discussions, the Star Trek novels have used all kinds of profanity, including the word Fuck since the early 2000s, at least fifteen years before Tilly said Fuck canonically onscreen for the first time in the franchise's history or Admiral Clancy talked about sheer fucking hubris. Yet many of the same people who condemn modern Trek for using profanity place the novels on a pedestal as being "more Star Trek than the Pope is Catholic" in spite of their copious use of proanity.
We get it, That Crowd doesn't like Kurtzman and will apply any and every double standard to make that known. Hell, Picard S3 dropped more than a few F-Bombs, including at least one spoken by Picard himself, which makes the only time we've heard Fuck spoken onscreen by someone from one of the "legacy era" casts. Yet no one has complained about that, and indeed That Crowd consider Picard S3 to be The Best Ever and that Terry Matalas deserves to sit in the command well of the Enterprise D's bridge along side God and Jesus.
My point? The backlash against profanity in modern Trek has nothing to do with people considering profanity unprofessional or against Star Trek's worldbuilding and everything to do with the fact That Crowd just doesn't like Kurtzman.
We get it, That Crowd doesn't like Kurtzman and will apply any and every double standard to make that known. Hell, Picard S3 dropped more than a few F-Bombs, including at least one spoken by Picard himself, which makes the only time we've heard Fuck spoken onscreen by someone from one of the "legacy era" casts. Yet no one has complained about that, and indeed That Crowd consider Picard S3 to be The Best Ever and that Terry Matalas deserves to sit in the command well of the Enterprise D's bridge along side God and Jesus.
My point? The backlash against profanity in modern Trek has nothing to do with people considering profanity unprofessional or against Star Trek's worldbuilding and everything to do with the fact That Crowd just doesn't like Kurtzman.
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