While I do greatly enjoy the TOS films, a certain feeling has always nagged at me: It often feels like the TOS movies are tonally, and "ideologically" (for lack of a better word) at odds with TOS for the most part.
TOS' tone varied thorougout the series but I always felt there was a general consistency. You had a baddie of the week, but nothing was overly dark. Even the Edith Keeler episode for me wasn't that dark. Darkness was always contrasted with a bit of humor or humanity or with a lesson learned. Whereas I feel, at least in TMP, II, III, and VI a sense of darkness for darkness' sake. TMP while enjoyable was self-serious; II was very grim. III less so, but still and VI back to the relentless dark tone of II.
I just feel like the central themes of Star Trek were optimism about a utopian future, and a sense of wonder about the unknown. These attitudes reflected that of the mid 1960s and of the age of space exploration. TOS came about in a time where the idea of flying cars and a true utopia on Earth wasn't too far-fetched. An age where men were landing on the moon, and it was an amazing thing even to the regular person. The movies on the other hand FEEL only 'ideologically' distinct - there is no sense of optimism; we're even showed that the Federation is as bureaucratic and potentially corrupt as any current government - there's no real sense of awe. Where SPACE was the central objective of the series, I feel like the TOS movies are (TMP and TFF aside) your average blockbuster movie plots that just happen to be set in space. If the TOS series reflected the optimism of the mid 1960s, I feel the films were a purposeful deconstruction of that and reflected the more cynical and more "grounded" 1980s. The space program wasn't breaking any new ground; the Space Shuttle was just doing milk-runs here and there. Gone was any sense of camp or awe. The bright technicolor worlds of the original series were replaced with the subdued tones of the films.
Does anyone get what I'm trying to say, and does anyone agree?
TOS' tone varied thorougout the series but I always felt there was a general consistency. You had a baddie of the week, but nothing was overly dark. Even the Edith Keeler episode for me wasn't that dark. Darkness was always contrasted with a bit of humor or humanity or with a lesson learned. Whereas I feel, at least in TMP, II, III, and VI a sense of darkness for darkness' sake. TMP while enjoyable was self-serious; II was very grim. III less so, but still and VI back to the relentless dark tone of II.
I just feel like the central themes of Star Trek were optimism about a utopian future, and a sense of wonder about the unknown. These attitudes reflected that of the mid 1960s and of the age of space exploration. TOS came about in a time where the idea of flying cars and a true utopia on Earth wasn't too far-fetched. An age where men were landing on the moon, and it was an amazing thing even to the regular person. The movies on the other hand FEEL only 'ideologically' distinct - there is no sense of optimism; we're even showed that the Federation is as bureaucratic and potentially corrupt as any current government - there's no real sense of awe. Where SPACE was the central objective of the series, I feel like the TOS movies are (TMP and TFF aside) your average blockbuster movie plots that just happen to be set in space. If the TOS series reflected the optimism of the mid 1960s, I feel the films were a purposeful deconstruction of that and reflected the more cynical and more "grounded" 1980s. The space program wasn't breaking any new ground; the Space Shuttle was just doing milk-runs here and there. Gone was any sense of camp or awe. The bright technicolor worlds of the original series were replaced with the subdued tones of the films.
Does anyone get what I'm trying to say, and does anyone agree?
