This isn't aimed at you, but frankly I'm sick of hearing all the bellyaching from those who weren't even alive back then trying to paste modern PC ideals on an old show. The show wasn't a political show. That only happened later, like Disney and the Lion King trying to save animals and romanticizing primitive cultures (who in reality die like rats of plague and pestilence). How many posts have we read about how the poor women were subjugated and not given prominent parts. For crying out loud, it was 50 years ago!! Have we had a women president yet? NO, so for all the PC-ness we haven't progressed as fast as people want a TV show to progress. As for references to Gunsmoke, it was a man's world and the prominent woman on the show was a slut who owned a bar. So Star Trek ain't so bad.
Where TOS stumbled....
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
This isn't aimed at you, but frankly I'm sick of hearing all the bellyaching from those who weren't even alive back then trying to paste modern PC ideals on an old show. The show wasn't a political show. That only happened later, like Disney and the Lion King trying to save animals and romanticizing primitive cultures (who in reality die like rats of plague and pestilence). How many posts have we read about how the poor women were subjugated and not given prominent parts. For crying out loud, it was 50 years ago!! Have we had a women president yet? NO, so for all the PC-ness we haven't progressed as fast as people want a TV show to progress. As for references to Gunsmoke, it was a man's world and the prominent woman on the show was a slut who owned a bar. So Star Trek ain't so bad.
Whoa....but true.
YARN
Fleet Captain
But it did occasionally fall flat on its face.
Tribble Herder
Lieutenant Commander
That would be a pratfall.
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
Not to mention that one of the things derided today (the miniskirts) was in fact for that time seen as a symbol of progress for women, representing their increased freedom to express their sexuality.
Except there were plenty of episodes with political overtones. "Errand of Mercy", "Balance of Terror", possibly "Arena" if looked at a certain way, "Taste of Armageddon" all were cold war metaphors, and that's just season 1. For romanticizing primitive cultures there's "Private Little War" or "Paradise Syndrome". Seems to me TOS was one of the pioneers of modern PC ideals. I agree with you that it's anachronistic to ding the show for PC "failures", given the times. (cf Nichelle Nichols anecdote about meeting MLK.) But that stuff still jumps out painfully to the modern viewer.
I suspect YARN was tweaking the board a little with the post. Still, swallowing the bait:
I think Shatner doesn't get nearly enough credit from fans for the success & durability of the show. He had serious charisma, and that charisma carried much of the first season, while the chemistry between Kirk & Spock was still evolving. Most of the earlier first-season episodes were not built closely around Kirk as the viewpoint protagonist
(like "Charlie X", 2nd pilot, "Mudd's Women", Dagger, Corbomite, "Balance of Terror")
rather than being ensemble shows. So Shatner had to perform to audience expectations of the hero. And he did!
He was also asked to do some challenging stuff, and – overacting or not – he really delivered. Episodes like "Enemy Within", "What Are Little Girls Made Of" and "Dagger of the Mind" depended on Shatner selling complex ideas entirely thru his acting. And he went for it.
Eventually Shatner became really broad, I would say after around the midpoint of season 2. And after that difficult period in the 70s where he wasn't getting work (the sleeping in the car era), he emerged a changed man, a changed actor. But first season Shatner was tight, focused, charismatic, sympathetic, excellent. Huge factor in the show's success.
The Way to Eden is one of my favorite Episodes. Spock's Brain is a lot better than quite a few episodes in my opinion.
As I type this I am in the middle of season 3 and I think it gets a bad wrap. I personally don't think season 3 has any more bad episodes than the previous seasons.
I am one who thinks Star Trek never really stumbled at all...the network did.
Well, I'm not sure I would go that far. There are some real stinkers in s3 (though also in other seasons).
Even if you are right, and s3 has about the same absolute number of bad episodes: still the quality ratio is off. There are fewer very good episodes; and the very best s3 episodes are nowhere near the same level as the very best s2 (Amok Time?) and s1 (City?) episodes.* So the ratio of quality to suck is much worse in s3, than in either 1 or 2.
_________________________________
* You might say that's a tough standard, and you'd be right; but it's Star Trek's own standard. So it's fair.
I guess I should say that I like about the same number of episodes from each season and even a few of the stinkers are guilty pleasures of mine.
But I will agree with you that although there are good episodes in season 3 except for a couple of them they are not up to the standards of the best of season 2.
This is very much so, and it was a kind of casual, unconscious insensitivity if not racism. Spock=Uhura=Tonto=Mingo and a lot of other examples in this regard.
I was alive back then and watched the series in its original run on NBC - and not as a small child. So I guess you'll have to put up with my "belllyaching" without getting tired.
I would have rather Sulu and Uhura have no first names at all than if they were to give them some lame white sounding 60s name, like Harry or Betty.
Studios probably (mistakenly) felt that white america was not ready for a "Hikaru" or a "Nyota"
Pavel on the other hand, was a russian name, and the cold war made russians a very hot topic at the time, so i think that's a different situation.
The only reason Spock doesn't have a first name is because it makes Vulcans seem cooler if they only have one name. He was a white actor, so the motivation obviously wasn't flat out racism.
Studios probably (mistakenly) felt that white america was not ready for a "Hikaru" or a "Nyota"
Pavel on the other hand, was a russian name, and the cold war made russians a very hot topic at the time, so i think that's a different situation.
The only reason Spock doesn't have a first name is because it makes Vulcans seem cooler if they only have one name. He was a white actor, so the motivation obviously wasn't flat out racism.
Those names weren't coined until well after the series was cancelled; Roddenberry and other writers didn't even try.
I'm well aware of that. I was using them as an example of foreign sounding names.
I was just saying that the studio probably didn't want a bunch of foreign sounding first names on the bridge, out of misguided fear that the majority white audience couldn't relate to them at all, and so RATHER than giving them lame white bread names, it was a better decision to leave their first names to the imagination.
In conclusion, they were playing it safe. They were not trying to be racist or disrespectful.
This reminds me of people who think Thomas Jefferson was an evil man because he had slaves. Get real, people. It was the times and it was all they knew.
There's little evidence outside of Roddenberry's tall tales that the studio (Desilu) or the Network (NBC) was as conservative as you suggest. They certainly never told the production not to use non-Western sounding names (if that was the case, how did Sulu and Uhura get through?).
Is it not true that the suits requested the first officer not be a female after seeing "the cage"?
Is it not true that they tried to get Spock off the show because he was too demonic?
Is it not true that the they felt "the cage" was too cerebral for television audience?
All of these decisions were based out of FEAR, not malice. They were AFRAID that 1960s White Christian America couldn't handle these ideas. AKA Playing it safe.
This is the 60s television suits we're talking about, of COURSE they were overly conservative.
If I were Roddenberry I probably wouldn't attempt to give my main cast any foreign sounding names based on the studios previous reactions. It obviously would have been shot down.
Not true; this is, by all accounts other than Roddenberry, a total myth.
True (although, due to the character's immediate popularity, NBC quickly changed their tune).
By all accounts an actual comment, although the Solow/Justman book provides more detail and nuance of NBC's position (they felt they didn't get the action/adventure show that had been promised to them, they felt that it was too suggestive in terms of sexuality, they weren't crazy about most of the actors).
Conservative, yes, but not to the degree that you paint them.
Fair enough, but I'm not convinced that they weren't just playing it safe. I guess you can just say "No that's a myth" to whatever argument is presented and that's fine. Not every word that came out of Roddenberry's mouth was a lie, and I think it's a well accepted fact that the money men behind television shows are not usually willing to take any unnecessary risks.
Even 21st century television suits are too conservative, just in a differnent way. Anything that is new, is dangerous. Having a bunch of foreign sounding first names on the bridge would be very new and different in 1966.
Only to the statements that aren't true. If you want to know more about the Number One character's elimination, read Joel Engel's biography of Gene Roddenberry, or Inside Star Trek: The Real Story.
I never asserted as such.
True, and I wasn't arguing otherwise.
