In the future you could have just told everyone that your dad was Bolian ( or whatever)
In the future, they won't make fun of kids for that
Weird ways that children are treated in "TNG."
- Thread starter Jayson1
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In the future, they won't make fun of kids for that
I think my issue with Lwaxana & Alexander in The Cost of Living isn't so much anything to do with nudity, it's the relationship part of it. Who is she to this child, that she is sharing some clearly mature themed pleasure program with him, complete with sensual mudbaths, & body painted dancers & shit? It all just strikes me as creepy, & for all intents & purposes, she is a stranger to him. She's the randomly visiting mother of the ship's counselor, where his dad works. Even Worf & Troi don't seem all that fond of the relationship, even though they don't handle it as harshly as I might. Stay the hell away from my kid lady. You don't know us. Your input into how he should be living is NOT required. Then again, I'm biased, because I don't like Lwaxana anyway. She lives in a fantasy land most of the time anyhow. Half a Life was the 1st time she woke the hell up from it
I have to admit that my reaction would match yours -- and I like the Lwaxana character (or, more correctly, I liked her until the later seasons and DS9). She has no right to be interfering with the Alexander's upringing or the Rozhenko family's counseling sessions.
As for the nudity matter... I think people are way to hung up on nudity. Nudity is not automatically sexual, but even if it was sexual, that doesn't make it automatically bad or inappropriate. Maybe by the 24th Century, humanity at large -- whatever residual discomfort may persist vis a vis modesty concerns -- people have learned to be a little more open minded and have a clearer sense of what's actually harmful for children. Anecdotally, as a 21st Century father, I can say that I'm much more concerned about my sons' exposure to violence (which is everywhere) than sex. They mimic fighing moves and practice on each other, pretend to shoot property and people, behave aggressively and disobediently, and more -- all learned outside the home. On the contrary, I've never seen them spontaneously start to masturbate, try to mimic sex acts with their female friends, or develop aggressive or harrassing behavior as a result of exposure to nudity.
Perhaps by the 24th Century, their attitude toward it is really "Meh, nothing interesting going on here." Which is my attitude as well.
The weirdest detail is specifically that the kids are left ON THE ENTERPRISE, a ship which every week is narrowly escaping death and destruction. When Wesley was left behind by Beverly for season 2, at least he had his acting ensign thing already going to justify it.
Actually, we do that a lot - but in select company. And said company can range from the boringly domestic to the titillatingly sexual, or both at the same time if need be. It's just that privacy is easy to come by in the sparsely inhabited wastelands, while the cities don't exactly revel in nudity.
The exception is the public sauna phenomenon, carefully gender-segregated but encouraging public nudity in the urban environment. No point wandering the streets nude (and especially barefooted), tho - sort of defeats the point of getting clean and comfortable in a sauna.
Timo Saloniemi
Bearing in mind that, if Alexander were being raised as a Klingon kid, he'd probably have been cut with knives or jabbed with painsticks by now, I don't think a topless spa outing is particularly worrying.
Damn, too uptight.
Interfering in how his parent chooses to raise him is
They definitely did this at my high school. You absolutely did not get naked in the locker room. I mastered changing under my clothes my freshman year. Now even as an adult in many locker rooms you still have to go hide to change as many women bring their boys into the locker rooms, even younger teenage boys. =/
Bring their boys in??? WTF???
Wow. I don't go to gyms, but if the boy looked more than 4, I'd complain to management. Or I'd just strip off and let the broad that brought the boy in go to management. If the boy looked like a teen,
Maybe a leacherous wink at the boy?
Where was this shit when I was a teenage boy? lol
In your mind!
What about Jame Finney? At least she had a character arc. She goes from blaming Kirk to understanding him and defending him.
At the end of the day, they are just episodes with odd scenes set in the future, aimed at a late twentieth century audience. Even now, it is what it is.
I think there was more to it than that. TOS was produced in the very early days of (semi)reliable birth control. You never knew when you'd get hit with one of those little parasites, with an 18 (at least) year sentence. TNG was produced at a time when, not only was contraception more reliable, but we had legal abortions. Children were more likely to be planned and, presumably, wanted.
Technically we were supposed to shower after PE classes, but they didn't really force the issue if people didn't want to. Probably too much risk of lawsuits.
We had skins and shirts for basketball. That tended to be a bit cold running around the gym shirtless, since it was during winter.
Jamie Finney was a child? I mean, I guess technically Kirk had a dad and a mum, too, but the underage part of "being a child" seemed to be missing in the "Court Martial" case.
The upper limit to her age comes from the day Ben Finney first came to appreciate Jim Kirk enough to name his daughter after the man, and that could be even before Jim's Academy years for all we know (FWIW, Ben appears quite a bit older than Jim).
The lower limit... Well, when was Alice Rawlings born?
Timo Saloniemi
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