TOS: Showing, not Telling.

[Trekkin]

-Marla McGivers. Also, Kirk's behavior in the same episode.

-Elaan of Troyius

-Scotty developing a 'hatred of women,' that can only be cured by strippers in Wolf in the Fold.

-Kirk having absolutely no issue with fucking the slave that was ordered to sleep with him in Plato's Stepchildren.

-Original flavour Orion women

- The bloody Cage.

That's just the sexism. There's also shit like hippies being a deluded terrorist cult.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I'll admit it...Enterprise sometimes came off more as a prequel to TNG than to TOS.

Thank you, Anwar. Thank you.

 

[BillJ]

Agreed on pretty much every point.

-Kirk having absolutely no issue with fucking the slave that was ordered to sleep with him in Plato's Stepchildren.

"Bread and Circuses"

 

[spockboy]

There were two main problems with Enterprise:

1. First Contact. This movie painted the earlier stories into a corner. By having humanity meet the Vulcans on Earth, just crawling out of the rubble of the Eugenics War; rather than "out there", in a later period of warp-driven exploration, as was always assumed from hints in TOS, they were saddled with always being the junior partner. Rather than "boldly going where no man has gone before" they were stuck "timidly going where everyone else has already been"! Plus, Earth as Junior Partner, doesn't wash with the Federation being so Earth-centric. Verdict: First Contact -> TOS... "you can't get there from here."

2. The Killer Bs. Berman and Braga were too steeped in the TNG / "politically correct" ethos to ever be on board with how un-PC a true TOS prequel would need to be. This is the wild and wooley frontier. Something that full-blooded, with a rich, romantic old-style musical score, was simply beyond their ken. Add to this that they also had NO INTEREST in TOS and it was doomed from the start.



This is what I've always thought. I would have locked the writers in a room for 8 hours with Forbidden Planet and The Cage playing in a loop and told them: "Give us something precisely between these two."

And before someone says "nothing with those old-fashioned, un-PC attitudes could possibly be a hit with today's audience, I have two words: Mad Men.

Well said!!!
I agree 100 percent.
Oh and there's this...

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Spockboy

 

[spockboy]

Let's be fair here, the chemistry between Shater/Nimoy/Kelly? The thing that kept the show watchable more than the plots and anything else?

It was dumb luck they got it so good so fast. Chemistry isn't really an easy thing to find or produce.

I disagree, the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triumvirate did not take off at the beginning and truly came into it's own in Season Two, and Trek was great from the get go. The chemistry was simply icing on an already awesome cake.

Spockboy

 

[Trekkin]

Agreed on pretty much every point.

"Bread and Circuses"

Shit. What BillJ said.

 

[Albertese]

...Why wasn't the heroes ship a Daedelus class or one of earlier ships (Marshall class??) from the Spacelight Chronology? (Oh, and before the High Priests of canon remind me that SFC is not canon, let me ask where the design of the Enterprise-Declaration class liner model in the Rec room in ST TMP came from - yes SFC! )

....

Point of order. The ringship Enterprise was from the on-screen canon before the SFC came out, it being shown in the alcove of the rec deck in TMP. TMP predated the SFC by a year.

Also, the image in question was, as I recall, concept art MJ did for GR for a television idea that never got very far into the pitch process. The art was a more refined version of concept art MJ did in 1964 while finding a direction for the original Enterprise (possibly before the actual name Enterprise had even been nailed down. So, no, the Declaration design did not have its origins with the SFC.


And I say this as a huge fan of the SFC. I tend to ensconce much of that work in my personal head-canon as ranking higher than the Enterprise TV show we finally did get. I would have loved to see tips of the hat to Rick Sternbach's work from those heady days of yore, but sadly, it was never meant to be.

--Alex

 

[Harvey]

Can anyone think of any prequels on tv or in movies that were critically successful and embraced by fans? I'm sure there must be a few but I'm drawing a blank.

Better Call Saul, a prequel to Breaking Bad, is terrific, and has been embraced by critics and fans of the original.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Better Call Saul, a prequel to Breaking Bad, is terrific, and has been embraced by critics and fans of the original.

I think it helps that they're working on the prequel more or less directly after they completed work on BB, and that the original creators are involved. Those are two advantages that most prequels don't have.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Can anyone think of any prequels on tv or in movies that were critically successful and embraced by fans? I'm sure there must be a few but I'm drawing a blank.

Another one just occurred to me: The Godfather, Part II. That was half-prequel/half-sequel, a commercially successful hit, and it won Best Picture at the 1974 Oscars. From what I understand, it used some material from the original Mario Puzo novel that they didn't put into the first film.

 

[Harvey]

Another one just occurred to me: The Godfather, Part II. That was half-prequel/half-sequel, a commercially successful hit, and it won Best Picture at the 1974 Oscars. From what I understand, it used some material from the original Mario Puzo novel that they didn't put into the first film.

It occurs to me now that X-Men: First Class was a popular prequel, as well -- better received than the previous X-Men sequel (#3).

 

[TwoJakes]

Ironically, Sulu explains exactly how the "old police special" that he finds on the Shore Leave planet actually works...

But later didn't explain how the gun was able to fire so many times.

For me ENT had so much promise, but just did not deliver - well not for me anyway. I expected it to be humanity making its first faltering steps out into space

Personally, my expectation was that Humanity was going to engage in "boldly go," which we didn't usually see. The faltering steps was one of the things I disliked about the show.

In term of being a prequel, imo Enterprise should have focus on being it's own show set in a younger trek universe, and avoided any effort to deliberately "lead in" to prior verisons of the show.

Mad Men worked because it was a more-or-less accurate portrayal of our own past, it wouldn't work to have people in our own future brazenly displaying attitudes we ourselves have already moved past (or at least acknowledge the flaws of).

The future society two centuries from now would be just as likely to be like the '60s, (or '80s, or '00s) than an extension of today's current society.

Even in the 24th century there are many more male captains and admirals in evidense, than there are female.

 

[Nyotarules]

There were two main problems with Enterprise:

1. First Contact. This movie painted the earlier stories into a corner. By having humanity meet the Vulcans on Earth, just crawling out of the rubble of the Eugenics War; rather than "out there", in a later period of warp-driven exploration, as was always assumed from hints in TOS, they were saddled with always being the junior partner. Rather than "boldly going where no man has gone before" they were stuck "timidly going where everyone else has already been"! Plus, Earth as Junior Partner, doesn't wash with the Federation being so Earth-centric. Verdict: First Contact -> TOS... "you can't get there from here."

2. The Killer Bs. Berman and Braga were too steeped in the TNG / "politically correct" ethos to ever be on board with how un-PC a true TOS prequel would need to be. This is the wild and wooley frontier. Something that full-blooded, with a rich, romantic old-style musical score, was simply beyond their ken. Add to this that they also had NO INTEREST in TOS and it was doomed from the start.



This is what I've always thought. I would have locked the writers in a room for 8 hours with Forbidden Planet and The Cage playing in a loop and told them: "Give us something precisely between these two."

And before someone says "nothing with those old-fashioned, un-PC attitudes could possibly be a hit with today's audience, I have two words: Mad Men.

Mad Men looks to the past, viewers expect it to be racist and sexist. A Star Trek drama set 100 years after the 'First Contact' movie should be more culturally progressive than how we live today or yesterday. And why expect the Federation to be Terrancentric from the get go? (Replacing WP with HP is one of Star Trek flaws IMO)

 

[JonnyQuest037]

A Star Trek drama set 100 years after the 'First Contact' movie should be more culturally progressive than how we live today or yesterday.

At the end of the day, though, Star Trek is intended as an entertainment to people living in the 20th and 21st centuries, not a documentary on life in the future. As David Gerrold shrewdly observed in his book The World of Star Trek, TOS featured contemporary men in a future setting, with contemporary values that were meant to relate to the viewership, not genuinely futuristic people of the 23rd century with values to match.

The Trek crews can represent the very best of us, but they still have to be us to some degree. And that's as it should be.

 

[Anwar]

Why, are people so insecure that they have to somehow think they are Humanity's apex or something?

 

[MGagen]

Mad Men looks to the past, viewers expect it to be racist and sexist. A Star Trek drama set 100 years after the 'First Contact' movie should be more culturally progressive than how we live today or yesterday.

If you think history only goes in one direction, you haven't read much history. What you see as progressive, your great grand children may see as embarrassingly backward; and not necessarily because they've gone beyond you in the same direction.

 

[Nyotarules]

If you think history only goes in one direction, you haven't read much history. What you see as progressive, your great grand children may see as embarrassingly backward; and not necessarily because they've gone beyond you in the same direction.

Depends on what they deem 'embarrassingly backward' - present day attitudes to sexuality? Yes, present day attitudes to ethnic groups? - yes. Fifty years ago I would be expected to sit at the back of the bus, fifty years before1966 I would be lucky to get a job as someone's nanny, sixty years before that I would be sold as chattel. Hundred years from now a female black Prime Minister of the UK might not raise an eyebrow... Time will tell. Yet I still expect a fictional 23rd century Star Trek to be less Mad Men and more something else, perhaps more 'Humans rule' and less 'White males rule'?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Yet I still expect a fictional 23rd century Star Trek to be less Mad Men and more something else, perhaps more 'Humans rule' and less 'White males rule'?

Considering that it was being produced in the time where you would've been still expected to sit in the back of the bus, I'd say they did okay overall. Could TOS have been more progressive than it was? Sure. But when I get to moments that are awkward to my early 21st century eyes, I just remember to judge it within the context of its time. YMMV, of course.

 

[Nyotarules]

Considering that it was being produced in the time where you would've been still expected to sit in the back of the bus, I'd say they did okay overall. Could TOS have been more progressive than it was? Sure. But when I get to moments that are awkward to my early 21st century eyes, I just remember to judge it within the context of its time. YMMV, of course.

I refer to the post 73 for the context of my comment.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I refer to the post 73 for the context of my comment.

You mean the post that I quoted in post 74?