It boils down to some not being so asshurt over a certain end of Star Trek not being as celebrated as they believe it should be. All things are rarely equal, especially in entertainment.
Will TOS maintain its legendary status as Trek fandom gets younger?
- Thread starter BlueStuff
- Start date
Trek fans would do well to learn from my high school tennis coach; "If I win we win. If we win I win."
Instead of the "my Trek is better and here's proof!" that divides more than it unites.
Instead of the "my Trek is better and here's proof!" that divides more than it unites.
Sad but true.
I don’t begrudge anyone their fandom in whatever form it takes.
I do wish there wasn’t the undercurrent of judgment/condescension that accompanies some of those fandoms.
I like VOY more than DS9.
Back in the day, I got a lot of “you’re not intelligent/sophisticated/insightful/discriminating enough” to appreciate DS9.
Whatever.
Star Trek is mine and mine alone.
Get off my lawn kids
Get off my lawn kids
I just don't get why some people are so binary on this site. TOS can be the most recognized (of which I agree) and legendary (also agree, Kirk and Spock are on their third iteration for a reason) while at the same time the other shows are able to not be completely erased from human memory.
It's not an either or situation.
It's not an either or situation.
The funny thing is, the most controversial episode of Star Trek during the '90s came from VOY, not DS9. And it still gets argued about to this day! I agree with Janeway, BTW.
Within fandom, few things ever enjoy universal agreement or appreciation, as you'd be pressed to find a fan who embraces all of a franchise. Talk to Bond (films) or Star Wars fans about that. Or just say "Star Wars Prequels" and see what happens.
Then you misread the statement and its intent.
It's not universal praise.
It is universal sharing of positive experiences, i.e. I'm happy that M'rok had that cool experience as Trek fan. That's pretty cool. Because fan experiences should not be seen as oneupsmanship opportunities or to trash them for being "anecdotal." Rather an opportunity to celebrate the diversity of experiences we get to share with each other. Unless fandom is only about being right.
You seem to miss the OP's question:
When any number of members gave their explanations leaning in the "yes" category to the OP's question (which, by the nature of the question, must include some reference and/or assessment to other entries in the ST franchise), somehow, this became a rallying cry for certain people to send themselves into a kneejerking overreaction to opinion. Some of the overreaction seen in this and other threads have no goal of celebrating or sharing diversity of opinion at all when dragging TOS in every category of its production. It would seem the call for sharing and celebrating diversity where ST fandom is concerned should find its way in those threads as well, unless that only works in one direction.
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No.
I commented on the immediate need to rise to TOS' defense in the face M'Rok's anecdote. That such an anecdote prompted defensiveness rather than support was sad to me.
Perhaps it shouldn't be.
A random data point on the "TNG had no lasting impact on pop culture" argument... yesterday I was on a 12 hour flight. Someone in front of me was watching a movie called Unpregnant with the subtitles on. I caught a reference to Picard and Data, and that BOBW was at the end of TNG's third season. The two main characters even speak to each other in Klingon! Wikipedia says it was a film released in 2020 on HBO Max. So, pretty recent, and with a Gen Z target audience.
TNG’s biggest contribution to popular culture is probably the Borg. Talk about the Borg and their characteristics and there’s a good chance even non-sci-fi people will know roughly what you’re taking about. I’ve heard it used as an adjective (ie, Borg-like) more than once in regular, everyday conversation.
Yeah, now you mention that, that’s something that’s come up frequently in various workplaces.
TNG had a huge impact on popular culture and it’s still watched, all over the world, every day, by fans old and new.
Taken as a body of work, TNG is a significant, enjoyable, unique production. For the most part, it’s polished as well. It was well made then and though it can’t help looking like a thing of it’s time, it looks like a thing of quality.
It’s a good show. A very good show. I think that the general public are more aware of it than we assume.
I just wanted to make the observation that the fan collectives are each based on specific themes and not just collections of fan favourite episodes. The amount of episodes included from each show doesn’t really indicate that particular shows popularity within the fandom.
That TNG and VOY have twice as many episodes featured than the other shows is due to the ‘Borg’ and the ‘Q’ fan collectives being almost entirely limited to those two shows. The other fan collectives ‘alternate realities’, ‘captains log’ and ‘time travel’ have a much more even selection of episodes from each series though occasionally limited by their specific theme.
Occasionally look at Popcorn in Bed. One of those YouTube series which reacts to movies. The young woman has just started watching TOS for the first time, starting with "City on the Edge of Forever."
The
smiley usually means the person using it is joking. It could also indicate approval of something, but I think in this context it means a joke.
Yesterday, I was hanging out with one of my friends, someone who isn't overly familiar with Star Trek, and somehow Star Trek came up. My friend kept mixing up TOS and TNG.
Them: "Wasn't one of the characters satanic?"
Me: "You're thinking of Spock, who only looked satanic."
Them: "Wasn't Spock someone else?"
Me: "No. That was Spock. In the '60s, NBC rounded off his pointy ears in some promos for the show because they were worried about what the Bible Belt would think of the character."
Them: "Wasn't there this character with brown skin and a strange head?"
Me: "You're thinking of Worf. He's a Klingon. That's The Next Generation. The Klingons used to be the bad guys in The Original Series, then they became good guys in The Next Generation. Worf was an example of how yesterday's enemies can become today's allies. Spock was someone else."
Them: "Spock was so nice. Didn't he have a cat?"
Me: "No. Spock didn't have a cat. That was Data. You're mixing up the two shows."
All of my friends are in their 40s. So that's not exactly, "the younger generation". But that's going to go into my next point about mixing series together...
With "the younger generation", to the extent that they might be familiar with Star Trek -- like I said upthread -- they're going to mash all the series together in their mind. It's not TOS. It's not TNG. It's not TOS vs. TNG. It's TOS is the first show in this HUGE THING called Star Trek. People who discover Star Trek now, through YouTube Reactions or their parents or what-not, view Star Trek has one huge entity comprised of several shows. They don't think "Star Trek is TOS!" or "Star Trek is TNG!" That's not how they think.
And whenever someone discovers one of the newer Star Trek installments, their first thought is, "Was I supposed to hate this? This wasn't bad at all!" All of this tells me is that older fans have let their biases get in the way of enjoying something they might otherwise enjoy. Seeing reactions from non-jaded fans is quite the eye-opener. They're generally more open-minded.
Them: "Wasn't one of the characters satanic?"
Me: "You're thinking of Spock, who only looked satanic."
Them: "Wasn't Spock someone else?"
Me: "No. That was Spock. In the '60s, NBC rounded off his pointy ears in some promos for the show because they were worried about what the Bible Belt would think of the character."
Them: "Wasn't there this character with brown skin and a strange head?"
Me: "You're thinking of Worf. He's a Klingon. That's The Next Generation. The Klingons used to be the bad guys in The Original Series, then they became good guys in The Next Generation. Worf was an example of how yesterday's enemies can become today's allies. Spock was someone else."
Them: "Spock was so nice. Didn't he have a cat?"
Me: "No. Spock didn't have a cat. That was Data. You're mixing up the two shows."
All of my friends are in their 40s. So that's not exactly, "the younger generation". But that's going to go into my next point about mixing series together...
With "the younger generation", to the extent that they might be familiar with Star Trek -- like I said upthread -- they're going to mash all the series together in their mind. It's not TOS. It's not TNG. It's not TOS vs. TNG. It's TOS is the first show in this HUGE THING called Star Trek. People who discover Star Trek now, through YouTube Reactions or their parents or what-not, view Star Trek has one huge entity comprised of several shows. They don't think "Star Trek is TOS!" or "Star Trek is TNG!" That's not how they think.
And whenever someone discovers one of the newer Star Trek installments, their first thought is, "Was I supposed to hate this? This wasn't bad at all!" All of this tells me is that older fans have let their biases get in the way of enjoying something they might otherwise enjoy. Seeing reactions from non-jaded fans is quite the eye-opener. They're generally more open-minded.
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That's one of my biggest eye openers was with non fans and watching ST 09, which made me a lot more open minded myself. I really enjoyed ST 09 but a lot of my Trek friends didn't. But, I saw it with my wife (a non Trek fan) and some others and all of them enjoyed it. And I listened to a friend's podcast and similar attitude of non Trek audiences enjoying it a lot more. So, I discovered it was a lot more fun to watch it with them than the usual hyperanalytical approach.
And you know what? It works.
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