I suppose that's because you didn't buy a "trekkie pole"!
Hey, I just noticed we're fellow Connecticut-ites!
What Makes TOS So Iconic ????
- Thread starter Nero's Shadow
- Start date
I suppose that's because you didn't buy a "trekkie pole"!
Hey, I just noticed we're fellow Connecticut-ites!
I like it.
Yep, this says it all, doesn't it?
Sometimes it's just impossible to quantify why something simply "works". Plus, what "works" for one person may not "work" for another.
True enough. And while I can't speak for everybody else around here, you and I are in complete agreement on this subject.
The Campyness!!! STAR TREK was like a live action comic book, really: Colorful costumes, sets and planets; Strange looking, colorful aliens; a lot of fight scenes and ships firing. But the shows weren't so weird looking that it was offputting. The actors were accustomed to being on stage in plays where they had to evoke the imagination of the audience to fill in the blanks of whatever the budget could not afford. And the stories themselves are relatable, because they're mostly about Human Nature, anyway. But more than anything, I think, it's because the people involved cared about whether you were entertained. Nobody ever winked at the camera, as if to say, "I can't believe they actually pay us for this crap!". It had a lot going for it ... except having been made in the Sixties.
Let's face it...by today's standards it's pretty crappy. Even as a Trek fan, I can't watch some of the episodes with a straight face, some are glacially slow, the acting is horrible, and if I came to it today, instead of an 8 year old kid in the early 90's, I probably wouldn't be a Trek fan.
But, like others have said, it had a cool sci-fi setting that was kinda out there for the 60's. It had easily-identifiable character archetypes, allegory and social commentary. The reruns more than anything kept it in the public eye. Today it would probably be a Firefly-esque cult classic that's popular online, but given the time it aired, it was able to seep into pop culture.
But, like others have said, it had a cool sci-fi setting that was kinda out there for the 60's. It had easily-identifiable character archetypes, allegory and social commentary. The reruns more than anything kept it in the public eye. Today it would probably be a Firefly-esque cult classic that's popular online, but given the time it aired, it was able to seep into pop culture.
You're lack of understanding, particularly in terms of not knowing anything of who you're talking to, doesn't warrant any further response or clarification from me.
That might matter if today's "standards" weren't shit.
I know, it's hard isn't it? Whenever I hear somebody describe TOS as "campy", I just write them off as know-nothing youngsters who think they know everything, and, for some reason, hold Ron Moore's BSG remake in high regard.
For me it was 6pm where I grew up, but yeah, this. Mon-Fri EVE Syndication in the 70s and the 80s kept it alive.
However, for me and probably a lot of people my age, TOS became iconic for 4 important reasons:
1. TMP,TWOK,TSFS especially
2. Mon-Fri EVE Syndication
3. Saturday morning TAS reruns as a child in late 70s/early80s
4.And the TNG\24th century haters won't admit it, but guess what? For me and I suspect a lot of people my age, TNG did a LOT to help people regain interest in TOS or even discover it for the first time! I remember when TNG was in its first run on Sunday nights, the same local station it appeared on aired TOS on week nights. It tied me over until the next episode of TNG! By then I was in my early teens and I really started getting the nuance of TOS. Until then, it was just a cool sci fi show, with so-so FX (compared to Star Wars and Star Trek movies) that I had lost interest in, but rediscovered once i started watching again, along with first run episodes of TNG.
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The Modern Trek series wish they had half the staying power of the "pretty crappy" series from the sixties.
Whenever I see comments like that, it's usually from someone whose upset that their favorite cast/crew has been assigned to the annals of TV history while Kirk and Spock are still in the spotlight.
You aren't.
You might want to look up "camp". You won't find an "unintentional" category.
Since you don't understand stagecraft, acting, dramatic plotting or the myriad other aspects of the art, I'd have to say you're right.
Isn't there a new Transformers movie out?
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I maybe senile... and a fart... but I am not a communist!
I'm neither senile, nor a communist.....
Since I deleted this response right after I wrote it since I wasn't in the best of moods and it was a little ranty, I don't know where you and the others are getting the material to quote.
But to call me NOT a Trek fan? Seriously? By Whose standards, O Mighty One? I've been a Trek fan since 1992. I watched all of TOS more than once. In fact I've seen the whole of TV-produced Trek episodes more than once. And all the movies. And I have almost 100 novels and books. Numerous collectibles.
I'm not a Trek fan? Yeah right. I might laugh at TOS today, but that doesn't mean I can't still enjoy episodes like "Balance of Terror", and "Menagerie" and "City on the Edge of Forever", etc.
And y'know what? I don't hate any aspect of the franchise. Even the episodes of Voyager and Enterprise I didn't enjoy, I'm thankful we got them. And I LOVE the new JJ Abrams films.
So go ahead and call me not a fan since I say TOS is campy and laugh at Shat's acting. I'll say the same about the majority of TNG season 1 and DS9 pre-Dominion, and many scenes where Avery Brooks is as bad as Shatner when he scenery-chews.
Since you know what defines a fan, here's my Trekkie membership card. You can have it. I don't need it anymore.
If you come into the TOS forum and set about pissing all over it then don't be surprised at a heated response. It would be no different if I or someone else like minded went into the JJtrek forum (or ENT's or VOY's) and started pissing all over those.
I could write volumes about what I see wrong with ENT or VOY and JJtrek, but what would be the point? It would foster no discussion, only argument. I don't like those versions of Trek so I just stay out of those discussions specifically addressing them. I have no extreme dislkie of DS9, but since I also have no interest I stay out of there as well.
And I've certainly expressed myself enough before regarding the parts of Trek I can't abide.
I could write volumes about what I see wrong with ENT or VOY and JJtrek, but what would be the point? It would foster no discussion, only argument. I don't like those versions of Trek so I just stay out of those discussions specifically addressing them. I have no extreme dislkie of DS9, but since I also have no interest I stay out of there as well.
And I've certainly expressed myself enough before regarding the parts of Trek I can't abide.
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I was watching a review of Best Of Both Worlds on the SciFi channel and I was sort of listening in the background when they said it was so campy. They said they've heard the criticism that TOS was cheesy but when they showed the clip from the excellent Best of Both Worlds they said you can't get more camp than this.Since I deleted this response right after I wrote it since I wasn't in the best of moods and it was a little ranty, I don't know where you and the others are getting the material to quote.
But to call me NOT a Trek fan? Seriously? By Whose standards, O Mighty One? I've been a Trek fan since 1992. I watched all of TOS more than once. In fact I've seen the whole of TV-produced Trek episodes more than once. And all the movies. And I have almost 100 novels and books. Numerous collectibles.
I'm not a Trek fan? Yeah right. I might laugh at TOS today, but that doesn't mean I can't still enjoy episodes like "Balance of Terror", and "Menagerie" and "City on the Edge of Forever", etc.
And y'know what? I don't hate any aspect of the franchise. Even the episodes of Voyager and Enterprise I didn't enjoy, I'm thankful we got them. And I LOVE the new JJ Abrams films.
So go ahead and call me not a fan since I say TOS is campy and laugh at Shat's acting. I'll say the same about the majority of TNG season 1 and DS9 pre-Dominion, and many scenes where Avery Brooks is as bad as Shatner when he scenery-chews.
Since you know what defines a fan, here's my Trekkie membership card. You can have it. I don't need it anymore.
I was shocked. I've always heard that criticism of TOS from the 24th century fans but looking at that clip I particular scene I have to agree with them.
And if you're looking at acting perhaps you should look a bit more carefully at McFadden, Frakes, Sirtis and the over the top performances (sometimes) of Spiner.
Well, the show actually did prove iconic in terms of popular culture to the point where there were people who couldn't conceive of SF that wasn't Star Trek (cf. a recent conversation in the "Do fans want the Prime timeline back?" poll thread). That it made genuine strides beyond the pulp shows of the Fifties is a key reason for that. So I think calling it "iconic" is a reasonably realistic statement; it's a very solid reason the Abrams reboot chose the original crew to focus on, and not the TNG crew, for all that it's turned out to be Star Wars-in-Trek-clothing.
I feel a little bad about some of the heat sttngfan1701d has gotten, because I get where they're coming from. Viewed cold with today's dramatic and FX expectations -- expectations that have been formed by a surplus of high-quality serious drama on the small screen and intimidatingly awesome spectacles on the big screen -- let's face it, one can see why someone wouldn't "get" the appeal of TOS. Its appeal by this point comes from an understanding of its context.
If you haven't tried to watch old episodes of "Lost in Space" or "Space Command" -- the prior standard of SF acting, believability and effects -- it's not easy to appreciate the enormity of what Shatner did with the role of Captain Kirk, and the near-effortlessness with which he delivered vivid (albeit hammy) moments of television on punishing shooting schedules that allowed zero time for rehearsal. Similarly, without context, it's easy to view TOS as campy and goofy in its own right and hard to appreciate how much less campy and goofy it was than its predecessors in the medium... and how daring it often was. "Balance of Terror" was revelatory as televised SF when it aired -- and still holds up better than most of what Trek subsequently did save STII -- but it's not as easy to see this now as it would have been then, unless you're aware of context.
TNG Trek was, barring very early childhood, the Trek I mostly grew up with. It took me a long time to understand, and even longer to really admit to myself, the extent to which a curious combination of cynical exploitation and stultifying sentimentality doomed it to second-rate status by comparison with the ballsy inventiveness of its parent franchise. It was a long time before I appreciated that the "planets-just-like-Earth" budget-saving trope was actually less cowardly (albeit somewhat goofier) than the "let's-watch-our-heroes-battle-their-entertainment-system" trope that stood in for it in the form of Holodeck episodes on TNG and subsequent shows.
And everything that TOS did was obviously not nearer-my-God-to-thee. It had more than its fair share of blatant chauvinism and cringe-worthy racism and over-reliance on repetitive tropes (esp. the "god-being"). Roddenberry may have been something of a visionary, but he had plenty of truly awful ideas, many of which found their outlet in The Animated Series and later in TNG and contributed some of the very worst content of both.
If someone tells me that they don't "get" TOS? I'm more of a partisan of TOS now than I've ever been, but I still completely get it. It's perfectly understandable.
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