When Trek insults our intelligence

[Timewalker]

What a disappointing, negative thread.

There are other forums filled with threads tearing down Discovery and JJ Trek from every angle possible.

How dare they produce new Trek that I don't like! Does anyone really think that's "insulting our intelligence"? Well, I call BS on that.

How dare anyone criticize shows and movies that you don't like.

You're entitled to your likes and dislikes, and so is everyone else. We don't all have the same reasons, so it's a bit... offputting... to have a finger wagged in our faces for wanting to talk about it.

Whether you like DISCO or JJ or whatever, I guarantee you no one behind the scenes is creating this stuff and thinking to themselves "Those idiot nerds won't even realize how cleverly we've insulted them. Brilliant!" Every single person involved is trying to make the best Star Trek they can. Why wouldn't they? What possible motive would there be to spend multi-millions on "insulting our intelligence"?

Oh, so you were there and know for sure that TPTB said?

In one of the making of TMP books I read, there's mention of some of the stories suggested for the movie's plot. Somebody at the studio thought it would be a great idea to bring in Mayan mysticism and some other BS. When saner people pointed out that the idea wasn't remotely in keeping with either history or science, the response was, "So what? The audience won't know the difference."

This assumption thatt "the audience won't know the difference" is what has turned me away from so many shows I might otherwise have liked. I quit watching Doctor Who because it was perfectly obvious that whoever was writing and approving the shows had no difficulty in treating the audience as children with less scientific understanding than an 8-year-old. And even when I was 8 I could have punched holes in that ridiculous "the moon is an egg" story.

Another Doctor Who show many years before informed the audience that "The Mayans lived 8000 years ago in South America." Well, no, they didn't. The story took place in the 20th century, so the timeframe given was completely wrong. And the Mayans were never in South America, so that was wrong as well. I guess TPTB thought nobody would be watching who knows anything about North/Central American history and anthropology and figured, "the audience will never know the difference." For that reason that episode will never be on my top-anything list of Doctor Who stuff.

It's one thing to make an honest mistake, based on knowledge not yet known. I forgive certain assumptions in Star Trek if they had things happen on planets around stars that we didn't yet know couldn't have existed.

But now we do know that there can't ever be colonies on planets around Vega, because Vega is too young. It's still in the process of forming its solar system. Vega itself will have a very short lifespan that won't allow for billions of years needed for evolution to produce life, let alone any intelligent life. Assuming it even ends up with any planets in a goldilocks zone.

The problem is the fans who nitpick the ever-loving shit out of every fucking little thing like it's life-or-death, instead of just going along for the ride. Or just not hate-watching a show they loathe and then posting their nerd rage over fucking head ridges and subtitles.

And so what? I agree that it's not life-or-death, but I do feel entitled to point out how stomach-turningly repulsive I find the Disco"Klingons" both to look at and hear and wonder why the hell they're called "Klingons" when they could have just been a different species altogether.

Are TPTB so afraid the audience will abandon the show if we don't get some sort of Klingons?

We have met the enemy, and they are us.

Whatever.

I’d forgotten about the brewery engineering. It wasn’t an insult, but it was wtf? Did they run out of money for a set?

Were they trying to organise a piss up at a brewery but inadvertently filmed the engineering scenes there instead? I don’t get it.

About the only thing that makes sense to me is that the nuEnterprise is the offspring of a mating between a real starship and a TARDIS. It's bigger on the inside than on the outside.

For what it's worth, I think canon is owned a lot more by the collective imagination of the fans than it is by the IP holders. And I do think that 'canon' is worth considering, because it's essentially the sum of decades of worldbuilding in the universe that has captured all of our imaginations and made us invested in it. I disagree that we should just ignore when there's continuity problems. If you tell stories in an established universe you need at least some level of faithfulness to the universe.

Which is why I try to make any fanfic I write as true to the source material as possible. It's a sign of respect.

To be fair, the "fact" that Uhura was "deep into linguistics" is mostly fanon and had NOT been established at the time they made TUC. It's a neat idea, but it was NEVER actually stated on the original TV series. She was an accomplished expert on communications technology, like the chief radio operator on a military submarine, but the widespread assumption that she was also a super-linguist didn't become "canon" until the reboot movies.

Yep, I get the impression that Uhura was more of an engineering/security communications specialist than a linguist (hence the red uniform, rather than blue).

Yeah, sure, you can make the case that it would be valuable for a Starfleet communications officer to be fluent in Klingon, but never once on TOS was she actually shown to be fluent in Klingon, Romulan, or whatever.

We do know that she's fluent in Swahili.

That was a fan theory that somehow became taken for granted, kinda like the false notion that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet, etc.

Was it ever stated that he wasn't? (within TOS; I don't count Enterprise as a valid source). By the time of TOS, Spock had already served over a decade with Pike and he would have had several years at the Academy. That's 15-20 years, so it's very plausible he could have been the first, and the Intrepid could have been commissioned and launched after that.

Back in TOS, McCoy was going to have a full-grown daughter in an episode called "Joanna" (the title of which always makes me think of the song). But Fred Freiberger stupidly decided McCoy shouldn't have a full-grown because he thought McCoy should be the same age as Kirk and Spock. So the episode became "The Way to Eden".

I would've liked to have seen McCoy have a hippie daughter who Chekov had a romance with. It would've put interactions between McCoy and Chekov in a new light. "You made my poor, sweet little daughter so upset she joined a goddamned hippie commune! Drugs, sex, and who knows whatever else! All because of you. And, to top of it all off, you work closely with Spock! That green-blooded Vulcan's been contaminating your mind! You'd best watch your step, commie... All you need is love? I'll show you what you need."

At least we have Joanna in the novels.

 

[The Old Mixer]

How dare anyone criticize shows and movies that you don't like.

You're entitled to your likes and dislikes, and so is everyone else. We don't all have the same reasons, so it's a bit... offputting... to have a finger wagged in our faces for wanting to talk about it.

Oh, so you were there and know for sure that TPTB said?

You could have made all of the other points in your post without throwing in the needlessly personal element. Dial it back, please.

 

[fireproof78]

About the only thing that makes sense to me is that the nuEnterprise is the offspring of a mating between a real starship and a TARDIS. It's bigger on the inside than on the outside.

The same could be said of the original Enterprise as well. some of the sets might not fit perfectly inside the model. I think it's a struggle of most science fiction to produce a ship and then make the sets make sense.

 

[1001001]

Oh, so you were there and know for sure that TPTB said?

Come on...

In one of the making of TMP books I read, there's mention of some of the stories suggested for the movie's plot. Somebody at the studio thought it would be a great idea to bring in Mayan mysticism and some other BS. When saner people pointed out that the idea wasn't remotely in keeping with either history or science, the response was, "So what? The audience won't know the difference."

So, a guy came up with a bad idea, and it wasn't used? And that's proof of...what exactly?

This assumption thatt "the audience won't know the difference" is what has turned me away from so many shows I might otherwise have liked. I quit watching Doctor Who because it was perfectly obvious that whoever was writing and approving the shows had no difficulty in treating the audience as children with less scientific understanding than an 8-year-old. And even when I was 8 I could have punched holes in that ridiculous "the moon is an egg" story.

Another Doctor Who show many years before informed the audience that "The Mayans lived 8000 years ago in South America." Well, no, they didn't. The story took place in the 20th century, so the timeframe given was completely wrong. And the Mayans were never in South America, so that was wrong as well. I guess TPTB thought nobody would be watching who knows anything about North/Central American history and anthropology and figured, "the audience will never know the difference." For that reason that episode will never be on my top-anything list of Doctor Who stuff.

And this has to do with Star Trek...how?

Was it ever stated that he wasn't? (within TOS; I don't count Enterprise as a valid source).

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

 

[Tenacity]

Insult to intelligence.

Generations, Soran fires a device into a sun from the fourth planet, okay with warp drive the device could be into the sun in a relatively short period of time, but the narritive of the story suggests that Picard would have been able to see the efffect the device had on the sun (dimming) almost immediately. And not several minutes later.

The "bottomless" pit anywhere in the Enterprise in Nemesis.

The shaft the Kirk and company rocket up in Final Frontier.

Why Spock couldn't have shot Sybok in the leg to stop him, McCoy was right there and they probably could have been in sickbay in a short period of time. What reason could here be other than "it would have ended the movie ?"

 

[WRStone]

The reality is that the moment GR died, this was going to happen.

Love him or hate him, GR kept the general tone of the series going. Berman did a decent job of keeping it, but the latter part of his era was ridden with predictable (and often stupid) A/B plots.

To me, the biggest insult to my intelligence is the complete loss of that tone in later Trek. It's most obvious in the Kelvin timeline and in STD, but it was headed that way regardless.

You need to be able to see the intelligence and the good in people in order to be able to write it. Small wonder that people who live in Hollywood (you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy) can see neither intelligence nor goodness. They live nothing but horror and so assume the rest of the world is the same.

I do a live SF review show on Mondays on YouTube. Much as it might help my numbers, I can no longer bring myself to review Star Trek. It's uniformly stupid and depressing. It has the wrong tone throughout (particularly STD). It's just more of the same stupid, nihilistic crap rampant in all 21st century films and TV.

That's the biggest insult to my intelligence: the idea that everything must conform to a semi-comprehensible and/or nihilistic worldview.

Thank goodness for The Orville.

(Shamless plug: tomorrow I do a retro-review of Capricorn One.)

 

[SpocksOddSocks]

Can't say that I'm actually irritated or insulted by it, but I always get a chuckle that, despite the vastness of the space-time continuum and innumerable worlds in our quadrant, almost every temporal crises hinges on a trip to the North American continent of late 20th century Earth.

;

I know what you mean. Though, to be fair, it's not as funny as Doctor Who doing the same thing with Britain. Unfortunately, both boil down to budget and convenience of filming (plus familiarity among writers) than anything else. At least Into Darkness included some scenes in London, and modern Who has been to New York a few times. But yeah, I tend to find it amusing too.

Golden Gate bridge in particular has quite a few near misses in Trek.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

There's a difference between criticizing something you don't like and constantly doing it ten times a day in passive aggressive ways like "Discovery has poopy pants, what else has poopy pants?"

 

[1001001]

Not to mention the “Get Off My Lawn”-ness of some of it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Not to mention the “Get Off My Lawn”-ness of some of it.

And it's not even their lawn!!!!!!

 

[TrickyDickie]

To continue the analogy, it is like applying noxious weed killer to someone else's lawn.

 

[Vger23]

The reality is that the moment GR died, this was going to happen.

Love him or hate him, GR kept the general tone of the series going. Berman did a decent job of keeping it, but the latter part of his era was ridden with predictable (and often stupid) A/B plots.

To me, the biggest insult to my intelligence is the complete loss of that tone in later Trek. It's most obvious in the Kelvin timeline and in STD, but it was headed that way regardless.

You need to be able to see the intelligence and the good in people in order to be able to write it. Small wonder that people who live in Hollywood (you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy) can see neither intelligence nor goodness. They live nothing but horror and so assume the rest of the world is the same.

I do a live SF review show on Mondays on YouTube. Much as it might help my numbers, I can no longer bring myself to review Star Trek. It's uniformly stupid and depressing. It has the wrong tone throughout (particularly STD). It's just more of the same stupid, nihilistic crap rampant in all 21st century films and TV.

That's the biggest insult to my intelligence: the idea that everything must conform to a semi-comprehensible and/or nihilistic worldview.

Thank goodness for The Orville.

(Shamless plug: tomorrow I do a retro-review of Capricorn One.)

The same general tone? No, not even close, sir. TOS had a massively different tone than TNG, and DS9 followed being very different from that. The only shows that had repetitive "sameness" of tone were VOY which (badly) aped TNG and ENT which tried to ape VOY and DS9 combined, both to the detriment of the franchise.

Even worse is The Orville, which badly apes VOY which was just a weak copy of TNG and therefore (despite some fun) ends up suffering bad from replicative fading. So....not agreeing at all there. The tone has changed with every successful and worthwhile iteration of the franchise.

And if anything, the tone of Kelvinverse films is VERY close to the fun and adventure of TOS, upon which it was based.

There's a difference between criticizing something you don't like and constantly doing it ten times a day in passive aggressive ways like "Discovery has poopy pants, what else has poopy pants?"

No secret here, intend to agree with this to a large degree.

 

[WRStone]

The same general tone? No, not even close, sir. TOS had a massively different tone than TNG, and DS9 followed being very different from that. The only shows that had repetitive "sameness" of tone were VOY which (badly) aped TNG and ENT which tried to ape VOY and DS9 combined, both to the detriment of the franchise.

All the GR/Berman era had the same general tone: hopeful.

Certainly there were variations in tone, but the overall tone was hopeful.

To some extent, I have emotional affinity for a movie/series based on whether it's a future in which I would like to live.

I'd like to live in the GR/Berman era of the franchise. I would most definitely not want to live in the STD era. I can cope with the Kelvan timeline where we see amazing things like Yorktown. That's a place I'd like to live. My problem with the JJ-Verse is simply that it ignores GR's general tenet:

"There is an intelligent life form on the other side of that picture tube."

STD is nihilistic. I have no desire to live in that future. If I wanted a nihilistic future, I'd watch damned near any other SF show now on TV. Or for that matter, almost any show on TV period.

Star Trek should be hopeful. When it's not, you've lost the soul of Star Trek and it's simply no longer Star Trek.

Even worse is The Orville, which badly apes VOY which was just a weak copy of TNG and therefore (despite some fun) ends up suffering bad from replicative fading. So....not agreeing at all there. The tone has changed with every successful and worthwhile iteration of the franchise.

The Orville is hopeful. I'd like to live in that future. That's why it's more Star Trek than STD.

The real problem is that all of our entertainment has become increasingly bleak and nihilistic. That applies to films, TV, music, everything.

Creators of today's popular entertainment will tell you that it's more realistic, but that's nonsense. The Big Bang Theory is no more realistic for being more sophisticated than I Love Lucy.

It's the entertainment producers. They themselves have become incapable of seeing anything other than darkness and nihilism because they live and work in a place that's nothing less than a wretched hive of scum and villainy. They don't believe that light and hopefulness exists or even can exist because they know no other way of life.

We're going to make it. That's what Star Trek always told us. That was its general tone in the GR/Berman era. Now it's either nihilistic or stupid, and that's not Star Trek.

 

[Vger23]

All the GR/Berman era had the same general tone: hopeful.

Certainly there were variations in tone, but the overall tone was hopeful.

To some extent, I have emotional affinity for a movie/series based on whether it's a future in which I would like to live.

I'd like to live in the GR/Berman era of the franchise. I would most definitely not want to live in the STD era. I can cope with the Kelvan timeline where we see amazing things like Yorktown. That's a place I'd like to live. My problem with the JJ-Verse is simply that it ignores GR's general tenet:

"There is an intelligent life form on the other side of that picture tube."

STD is nihilistic. I have no desire to live in that future. If I wanted a nihilistic future, I'd watch damned near any other SF show now on TV. Or for that matter, almost any show on TV period.

Star Trek should be hopeful. When it's not, you've lost the soul of Star Trek and it's simply no longer Star Trek.



The Orville is hopeful. I'd like to live in that future. That's why it's more Star Trek than STD.

The real problem is that all of our entertainment has become increasingly bleak and nihilistic. That applies to films, TV, music, everything.

Creators of today's popular entertainment will tell you that it's more realistic, but that's nonsense. The Big Bang Theory is no more realistic for being more sophisticated than I Love Lucy.

It's the entertainment producers. They themselves have become incapable of seeing anything other than darkness and nihilism because they live and work in a place that's nothing less than a wretched hive of scum and villainy. They don't believe that light and hopefulness exists or even can exist because they know no other way of life.

We're going to make it. That's what Star Trek always told us. That was its general tone in the GR/Berman era. Now it's either nihilistic or stupid, and that's not Star Trek.

That's a lot of writing just to have me draw the conclusion that I fundamentally disagree with you regarding a nihilistic tone in DSC or Kelvinverse.

It just flat out ain't so. It's not gooey and pretentious about it like other Treks have been, but it's most definitely still there. I also think it's rather snobbish to claim that the Kelvin films are "stupid," as though the rhetoric about how Star Trek is so smart were actually somehow true.

Even if not, I don't judge entertainment on its tone. I judge it on whether it entertains me. Crazy, know...but that's how I roll.

 

[LJones41]

Even worse is The Orville, which badly apes VOY which was just a weak copy of TNG and therefore (despite some fun) ends up suffering bad from replicative fading. So....not agreeing at all there. The tone has changed with every successful and worthwhile iteration of the franchise.

All I can do is shake my head in disbelief at this statement.

We're all here because we love Star Trek, but the people behind Trek do treat us like idiots sometimes and it's frustrating.

Like Romulans sprouting brow ridges in Next Gen to differentiate them from Vulcans. Like EVERY Romulan having a bowl cut and shoulder pads up to and including the guy in the soup kitchen on Romulus. Like T'Pol, native of a desert planet, wearing less than her human crewmates. Like Spock screaming "Khaaaan!" because the film had Khan in it and they thought we'd like that. Like the powers-that-be insisting Disco is the same world as TOS despite the obvious changes to visuals and continuity (although lets debate that one in the Disco forum where several threads covering it) or like the day being saved by a teenage boy because a crew of highly trained Starfleet officers apparently aren't up to the task.

When else has Trek made you feel like your intelligence is being insulted?

All of the Star Trek shows and movies have done this every now and then. But for me, the biggest offender is 2009's "STAR TREK". It had so many plot holes that I ended up writing an article about this on my blog.

 

[Vger23]

All I can do is shake my head in disbelief at this statement.





All of the Star Trek shows and movies have done this every now and then. But for me, the biggest offender is 2009's "STAR TREK". It had so many plot holes that I ended up writing an article about this on my blog.

I can't figure out what you'd be shaking your head at. That VOY is a diluted copy of TNG? That Orville is a diluted copy of VOY, right down to the opening credits and beat-by-beat pacing and structure of the episodes? That the tone has evolved and changed with every successful iteration of Trek? Disbelieve all you like, but essentially that's all true.

Trek 2009 had no more plot holes than TWOK, TSFS, and most of the other films. They're all deeply flawed if over-examined. We just ignore it in the ones we like and hammer on it in the ones we don't...because fandom.

Sorry to hear you were so upset you had to write a blog though. That never happens in fandom.

 

[1001001]

All the GR/Berman era had the same general tone: hopeful.

Certainly there were variations in tone, but the overall tone was hopeful.

To some extent, I have emotional affinity for a movie/series based on whether it's a future in which I would like to live.

I'd like to live in the GR/Berman era of the franchise. I would most definitely not want to live in the STD era. I can cope with the Kelvan timeline where we see amazing things like Yorktown. That's a place I'd like to live. My problem with the JJ-Verse is simply that it ignores GR's general tenet:

"There is an intelligent life form on the other side of that picture tube."

STD is nihilistic. I have no desire to live in that future. If I wanted a nihilistic future, I'd watch damned near any other SF show now on TV. Or for that matter, almost any show on TV period.

Star Trek should be hopeful. When it's not, you've lost the soul of Star Trek and it's simply no longer Star Trek.



The Orville is hopeful. I'd like to live in that future. That's why it's more Star Trek than STD.

The real problem is that all of our entertainment has become increasingly bleak and nihilistic. That applies to films, TV, music, everything.

Creators of today's popular entertainment will tell you that it's more realistic, but that's nonsense. The Big Bang Theory is no more realistic for being more sophisticated than I Love Lucy.

It's the entertainment producers. They themselves have become incapable of seeing anything other than darkness and nihilism because they live and work in a place that's nothing less than a wretched hive of scum and villainy. They don't believe that light and hopefulness exists or even can exist because they know no other way of life.

We're going to make it. That's what Star Trek always told us. That was its general tone in the GR/Berman era. Now it's either nihilistic or stupid, and that's not Star Trek.

I think you've hit on the central issue, which is one that by definition can't be resolved.

Albert Ellis described our experiences as not being caused by an "objective" reality, but rather by a combination of an external event, AND our thoughts/beliefs about the event. A+B=C.

You've eloquently described how your beliefs about the world influence how you see the various incarnations of Star Trek. We all do that, myself included.

So when I look at Discovery, I don't see nihilism at all. And when I look at TOS/Early TNG, I see a naivete, even a quaintness, to how they approach various subjects. My 15 year old son and I have watched every episode of TNG, VOY, ENT, DS9, and DSC. He's not interested in even trying TOS, and he thinks DSC had the best first season of all of them. Kids today, eh? Probably ruined by the video games and the smart phones.

I don't have any problem with anyone's opinion of any show. I really don't (and even if I did, you shouldn't care). What I have a hard time with is the declarative statements of "objective fact" (e.g. "NuTrek is stupid"). "I don't like it" is a far cry from "it is bad", and I guess I just wish more people were able to express themselves at that level. I have had many interesting and productive discussions with people over my 17 years of being on this board when we discuss our own thoughts and feelings about a particular topic. Not so much when it comes to absolutes.

But then again, that's also, in the final analysis, my problem.



Carry on.

 

[Timewalker]

Come on...

You said:

I guarantee you no one behind the scenes is creating this stuff and thinking to themselves "Those idiot nerds won't even realize how cleverly we've insulted them. Brilliant!"

How can you possibly make this "guarantee" unless you were present and know everything that was said? The fact that at least one person did shrug off any objection to Mayan-ancient alien crap in TMP, saying "The audience will never know the difference" refutes your claim.

So, a guy came up with a bad idea, and it wasn't used? And that's proof of...what exactly?

It's irrelevant that it wasn't used. The idea was expressed and recorded, and included in that was the opinion that the audience would be too stupid to know the difference anyway. This is mentioned in one of the "making of" books. So obviously someone deemed it important enough to take note of.

And this has to do with Star Trek...how?

It's this thing called an "example." Star Trek isn't the only show or book that had writers who assumed the audience was too stupid to know the difference when they skipped or ignored the research, or didn't do any in the first place.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

the false notion that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet

Was it ever stated that he wasn't?

The existence of the USS Intrepid - a Starfleet vessel crewed entirely by Vulcans - proves it.

 

[WRStone]

1001001, I can offer some insight to your kid, as a father of a pair in their 20s.

Yours won't watch TOS because it's as divorced from him in time as Flash Gordon serials were to me at age 15. There's no possible way he can become emotionally invested. Appreciate it some day as quaint, perhaps, but he'll never be emotionally invested.

I can never get my kids to watch TOS for the same reason.

(Shamless plug: I'm doing a review of Flash Gordon's Trip To Mars next Monday on my live YouTube show. One of the things I do is attempt to put 80-year-old SF into the context of the time. Sometimes it helps us appreciate it more. )

The reason he likes STD has little to do with video games, though the nihilism present in many doesn't help. It's because he's the second of two entire generations that grew up indoctrinated both in schools and pop culture that he will die at any moment of entirely fictional causes. If you ask, I suspect that you'll find his world is one of nothing but impending doom -- tomorrow. He's been taught that there's nothing to look forward to but death.

As to why you don't see the nihilism, I'd suggest that you're part of the first generation indoctrinated to believe the same. Certainly my own children were. It was only through the sustained effort of my ex and I that they were able to free themselves of the shackles of a culture that has become obsessed with darkness and death.

The world isn't like that. It's only the combined, sustained resources of both our educational system and pop culture over a period of several decades that has made you believe it.

When all you ever grow up with is indoctrinated nihilism and impending doom, you cannot see the light that is reality. Similarly, the nihilism inherent in characters who'll start wars when a sane person would simply have walked away in the first episode is probably lost on both of you.

(The Klingons want nothing to do with you? Ok, turn around and fly away. It was the first thing I thought of.)

I'm not attempting to be insulting in saying that. I'm just saying that as someone who -- until well into adulthood -- lived under the real threat of death by nuclear fire, the culture was nevertheless radically different.

We grew up hopeful. Part of that was Star Trek. Our progeny have grown up knowing only darkness and death. Part of that is STD.

Take, for example, the kids on YouTube who believe that Thanos did the right thing in killing half the population of the universe. They were indoctrinated to believe that this would be a rational response to a non-problem (they've been saying that "unsustainability" will kill us inside ten years since before I was born).

That's nihilism writ large.

This issue is, by the way, one of the consistently major themes of my show. We have indoctrinated two entire generations to they point where they cannot distinguish between fantastic nihilism and the reality of the world around them.