TOS fans. Was TNG's 'Relics' respectful or disrespectful of TOS?

[The Grim Ghost]

It's hard for me to believe that Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty, etc., would not be revered and celebrated by the entire Federation.

You know to fans in the real world, Scotty is an icon...but in the Federation, after 80 years, he's still was just chief engineer on a famous starship...how many engineers from the USS New Jersey do you know of? No, I think he was portrayed realistically in Relics, as were Geordi's reactions.

RAMA

This. No reason Scotty, Bones or the rest should be especially remembered or considered legends (though I'm sure they are very well regarded by historians and people who DO know who they are).

Not that they should be able to recite every mission or every past crew member, but anybody on a Starship named Enterprise should at the very least know something of Kirk and Spock.

But the idea of Kirk and Spock not being famous and bordering on legendary figures is ridiculous. In-Universe we see in Trials and Tribbilations that Kirk and Spock are still considered to be a big deal. And for Spock, just being Sarek's son alone would have made him a semi-public figure even if he never did anything else.

 

[The Lensman]

It's hard for me to believe that Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty, etc., would not be revered and celebrated by the entire Federation.

You know to fans in the real world, Scotty is an icon...but in the Federation, after 80 years, he's still was just chief engineer on a famous starship...how many engineers from the USS New Jersey do you know of? No, I think he was portrayed realistically in Relics, as were Geordi's reactions.

RAMA

This. No reason Scotty, Bones or the rest should be especially remembered or considered legends (though I'm sure they are very well regarded by historians and people who DO know who they are).

Not that they should be able to recite every mission or every past crew member, but anybody on a Starship named Enterprise should at the very least know something of Kirk and Spock.

But the idea of Kirk and Spock not being famous and bordering on legendary figures is ridiculous. In-Universe we see in Trials and Tribbilations that Kirk and Spock are still considered to be a big deal. And for Spock, just being Sarek's son alone would have made him a semi-public figure even if he never did anything else.

Yeah....I'm gonna have to disagree. I can't recall all the stuff they did, but these two alone put the Enterprise crew in the "will never be forgotten" category.....

They were the first crew to work out the means by which time travel would be possible....twice! Intermix and slingshot. I believe Scotty was instrumental in both, along with Spock.

And they were the first humans to travel to another freakin reality altogether. Scotty and McCoy being two of those people.

First in time travel, first in trans-universal travel.
That's Neil Armstrong level of recognition. That is some seriously major shit, and I highly doubt Starfleet guys are saying "doesn't everybody do that?" like it's common place.

You can throw in all the planets they saved and stuff if you want....not really needed to put them into "legendary" status. After proving time travel possible and the existence of other realities, that's just icing on the cake.

You can even throw in "first to find a stable time travel portal" if you want. That's pretty big too. Finding a complete duplicate of Earth would be pretty big as well. The people in-universe wouldn't be treating these things as episodic oddities or curiosities like us. These would be HUGE discoveries......there'd be all kinds of massive discussion on any one of these, from the scientific, to the philosophical.

As for the "well they were one ship, other ships must've had similar adventures and encounters too". Sure they did. Surviving them was another matter. See: Intrepid, Exeter, Constellation, Defiant, etc, etc, etc.

As per the JFK inspired vision of the future, they were the best and brightest. If everyone were pulling the kind of medical miracles McCoy pulled off, I doubt there'd be any diseases by the 24th century.

As for PAD's Jellico suggesting that Starfleet thought Kirk was telling "whoppers" about his adventures......fucking seriously? What, did they think the visual records were faked too? It's not like "Court Martial" didn't show us that there were visual records of stuff going on on the bridge during crisis moments...wait, yeah it did.

As for "Relics", I liked the episode well enough, though it's a perfect example of a character being written a different way for the ep. Geordi seemed out of character big time in this ep. I don't have a problem with "pissy" characters...I have a problem with characters who have no prior history of being "pissy" all of a sudden being "pissy" to meet the demands of the story for all of one week. Geordi was never "pissy" after that.

For me, this ep made up for the massive disappointment that was "Unification". It was cool to see Picard on a classic bridge (would've been neat if he'd gone in period dress!). The Dyson Sphere was awesome....you could have an entire franchise built out of that one thing! Did they ever follow up on the thing in print?

 

[Noname Given]

It's hard for me to believe that Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty, etc., would not be revered and celebrated by the entire Federation.

You know to fans in the real world, Scotty is an icon...but in the Federation, after 80 years, he's still was just chief engineer on a famous starship...how many engineers from the USS New Jersey do you know of? No, I think he was portrayed realistically in Relics, as were Geordi's reactions.

RAMA

This. No reason Scotty, Bones or the rest should be especially remembered or considered legends (though I'm sure they are very well regarded by historians and people who DO know who they are).

Not that they should be able to recite every mission or every past crew member, but anybody on a Starship named Enterprise should at the very least know something of Kirk and Spock.

But the idea of Kirk and Spock not being famous and bordering on legendary figures is ridiculous. In-Universe we see in Trials and Tribbilations that Kirk and Spock are still considered to be a big deal. And for Spock, just being Sarek's son alone would have made him a semi-public figure even if he never did anything else.

Really? The Engineer who SABOTAGED one of the biggest engineering projects (the Transwarp U.S.S. Excelsior) wouldn't be remebered in Engineering circles 80 years later?

Does anyone remeber Henry Ford today? I'm sorry,m but I would find it hard to belive Montgomery Scott's was 'just one of the crowd' in Starfleet circles 78 years later. If geordi didn't know his name or rep; I think tghat would say more about the character (as written in the show) of Geordi LaForge.

 

[Dusty Ayres]

A thought occurred to me: When Melissa Snodgrass left STNG, she vowed (waving her fist all the way) that she'd do STNG better...because of course, petulant crewman who fart and have other foibles are always better than "perfect" people. She labored mightily and brought us this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117729/

I can't believe that Snodgrass was behind that piece of shit, but yes, she was-even hyping it up in an issue of Starlog saying how better it would be than STNG! But the costumes sucked, as did the CGI and the spacecraft it was used to make. All around, worse than STNG, and the capper to her having a career in Hollywood.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Howzabout this for an analogy: Everyone knows Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but how many know Gunther Wendt?

 

[Ghel]

Just to add my two cents. . . even if you assume that Kirk, Scotty, Bones et. al. were looked at as heros and remembered as such, if you were a software engineer working on an important deadline, when suddenly 1950s computer scientist Alan Turing (creator of the "Turing test" for AI sentience) showed up, would you be happy to let him tinker around with your mission critical software? Heck NO! Even for a hero, a rational reaction would be, "sir, I'd love to discuss your ideas of computers later, but we no longer use punch cards, and I really need to finish this!!!"

Hence, I'd go with respectful on this one.

 

[Capt_Pickirk]

Howzabout this for an analogy: Everyone knows Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but how many know Gunther Wendt?

Who? But how come no one in star trek remembers yuri gagarin??? He was the first frakking guy in space.

But I like this episode, it's exciting!

 

[Ronald Held]

I would think Kirk and Spock are well known in the 24th Century. Scotty maybe only to engineers.

 

[The Lensman]

When I think of them being well known, I'm not thinking of the general public per say.....but they should be known in some shape or form by anyone in Starfleet.

 

[number6]

Howzabout this for an analogy: Everyone knows Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but how many know Gunther Wendt?

Wasn't he in Apollo 13?



Seriously though, exactly my point!!

 

[Nero's Shadow]

I liked the episode when it was first aired but I don't agree how scotty was treated in the episode I think the crew of the next gen made him feel a outsider but scotty did have some great scenes with the crew.

I wished they could of done a two part episode with more TOS characters appearing helping the next gen crew. It would have been great to see kirk Spock and crew one more time ?

 

[Warped9]

What have the TOS crew actually done?

"Balance Of Terror" - by defeating the Romulan incursion the Enterprise might have just prevented an interstellar war. That said this incident might have been made classified for who knows how long.
"Arena" - If it had gone badly (beyond the destruction of Cestus III) there could have been interstellar war between the Federation and the Gorn. Mind you the Metrons played a hand in this.
"The Alternative Factor" - Containing the nutbar Lazurus likely prevented untold widespread destruction. Again could this incident have been classified and to what extent?
"The City On The Edge Of Forever" - Repairing the timeline after the deranged McCoy changed it saved countless lives, particularly those in the mid 20th century. But mucking around with time would likely be a highly classified issue.
"A Taste Of Armageddon" - Kirk's actions could well have prevented an interstellar war between Eminiar 7 and the Federation. Starfleet could have been really suspicious of two starships going there and not coming back.
"Operation Annihilate" - Killing those parasites definately prevented any further deaths on planetary scale by those things.
"The Changeling" - Stopping Nomad definately saved countless lives. And Nomad was already intent on heading for Earth.
"Wolf In The Fold" - Killing the Redjac creature definately prevented any further loss of life even if on a smaller scale.
"Obsession" - Killing the cloud creature certainly saved further lives.
"The Doomsday Machine" - Stopping the doomsday robot might well have saved the Rigel colonies in the least.
"The Immunity Syndrome" - Similar situation as in TDM. The enormous amoeba like creature had to go.
"By Any Other Name" - The Kelvins were determined to invade our galaxy. They had to be stopped. And this directly threatened the Federation.
"Return To Tomorrow" - Henock in Spock's body looked like he was all set to raise all kinds of hell.
"One Of Our Planets Is Missing" - In the least the Enterprise saves the planet Mantilles.
"For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky" - The asteroid ship Yonada is diverted from colliding with the inhabited planet Daran 5.
"Beyond The Farthest Star" - The malicious energy being couldn't be allowed to escape the negative star mass.
"The Infinite Vulcan" - Stavros Keniclius was determined to risk countless lives in his quest to defeat enemies of Earth and the Federation. He had to be stopped.
"Jihad" - The Skorr had to be prevented from starting a galaxy wide interstellar war.
Star Trek - The Motion Picture - The Enterprise saves Earth from certain destruction.

The Enterprise crew have indeed saved untold countless lives yet the Earth threatening or Federation threatening incidents aren't that numerous. They've also prevented potential interstellar wars a few times. Earth was directly threatened only twice by Nomad and by Vger. The Federation (as a whole) was threatened by the Romulans (if BoT had gone differently), by the Klingons (if not for the Organians) and by the Kelvan from the Andromeda galaxy.

The Enterprise crew are definately heroes, but realistically how well known could their actions have become in that era? And there are certainly some actions that could have been made classified. A hundred years later stories would have been retold and embellished within Starfleet, but how many outside of historians and Starfleet texts could really recognize the TOS crew and what they had done?

In today's world how many times has nuclear war or terrorist attacks been prevented and the public at large mostly knows nothing about it? Throughout the 20th century alone how many intelligence personnel as well as military personnel have been widely and openly lauded for taking decisive action to save countless lives? In general the public probably sleeps better not knowing how close they came to buying the farm.

In regards to "Relics." I initially liked it then later not so much. I haven't seen it in awhile so I'd have to refresh my memory. I think it was intended to be respectful, but my main beef was with how Scotty was initially portrayed. On further thought I'm not so sure. Scotty feels rudderless and useless and out of synch with everything around him. He once felt mattered and he no longer has that.

Speaking from experience it's quite easy to look back towards your younger days and reflect on the good times or at least the events that really made an impression on you. Everybody does it and seniors likely most of all. Now Scotty's behaviour doesn't seem all that off. Laforge's behaviour could be questioned, but I think under different circumstances he might have been more considerate, but he was under pressure to get his job done and thus was more curt with Scotty than he really should have been. In counterpoint Scotty could also have been more understanding of Laforge's situation seeing as he himself didn't like intruders in his engine room.

In the end they were portrayed credibly even if we like to think they each should have behaved better.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I think Ron Moore did a very clever thing when he wrote this episode. By having the Enterprise-D crew being less than reverential towards Scotty, I think he was also making a point that TNG was in the habit of being less than reverential towards TOS, and it was high time they were called on it.

 

[CoveTom]

^ I don't know. TNG has a reputation for looking down its nose at TOS. But in the pilot episode we had a very touching and well-written appearance by Dr. McCoy. We had quite respectful stories written about Sarek. Spock was revered as one of "the Federation's most celebrated ambassadors" in "Unification." Scotty may have been dismissed at first, but he ultimately got to be the hero of the show and save the day. I just don't see where people get the idea that TNG was not respectful of its predecessor.

 

[Anwar]

It's probably because it didn't go out of its way to constantly mention TOS at every opportunity and talk about how great they were all the time.

Never mind that in TOS there were famous past Captains that only ever got mentioned if they played a role in that story.

 

[Gary7]

Oh no, I don't think Scotty was treated badly overall. Yes, Geordi was not as respectful of him as he should have been... at first. This did indeed seem to be out of character for Geordi, who has shown a passion for "relics" and appreciation of the people who came before him. Remember his reaction to Zephram Cochrane? Yes, Scotty didn't invent warp drive, but he used it in incredibly inventive ways saving the day on and on. Captain Picard was certainly respectful, as was Riker and Deanna.

Now of course, you also have Scotty throwing his $0.02 at any chance he gets, which can be annoying when you're dealing with someone who has been out of the technology stream for 80 years. Remember, there were moments when Scotty freaked out with something Geordi was planning to do, thinking he'd be blowing up the ship, when Geordi was able to settle him down and show him the technology changes that made it safe. The repetition of this ground into annoyance for Geordi.

Doohan did a great job with his Scotty role, but he did ham it up quite a bit on the excitement. Remembering Scotty as he was in TOS, his character certainly changed a lot. Sharp calm minded engineer turns into excitable old coot. Geordi should have been more gentle in placating him, but then as someone pointed out it was necessary friction to keep it interesting.

 

[Ronald Held]

Scotty lives for his work. With no engineering to do and on the way to a retirement colony, that could make a major change in his personality.
I will not say he suffered pattern degradement enough to behave as his did.

 

[Navigator_NCC2120]

I wished they could of done a two part episode with more TOS characters appearing helping the next gen crew. It would have been great to see kirk Spock and crew one more time ?

On a somewhat related note. When I saw Walter Koenig (who played Chekov) at a Star Trek Convention in 1986 or 1987 he said he submitted a script to Paramount for Star Trek 5 which had the crew of TOS working with the crew of TNG to save the day/universe. He said Paramount rejected it because they could not afford it (to pay both casts in one film).


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

 

[Warped9]

^^ I'm actually glad they didn't do it. It's just so fannish an idea as to make me want to hurl. The cooperation between the two crews as depicted in the novel Federation is as close as I was comfortable to them getting.

 

[Shazam!]

It's hard for me to believe that Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty, etc., would not be revered and celebrated by the entire Federation.

Yeah, it's that kind of attitude that turned TOS-based stories into such fucking bores. Just one more reason to find Abrams's reboot of TOS a cause for hope for "Star Trek's" future.

The movie were Kirk and co. save the Earth on their very first mission?