Me: "I'm talking the old hairy-chested Starfleet with guns, not the bald-headed one with shipboard daycare centers. The one where the captain got the girl."
RX: "Picard got... well... he got a flute in that one episode."
Me: "Riker always got the girl. He was the only one on that bridge with any testosterone. Well, except for Tasha Yar, but she died early on, so she doesn't count."
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Overheard in the Office:
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23 comments:
My coterie always figured you had the perfect analogy for the decline of American confidence between Star Trek and the Pepsi Generation.
Kirk was brash, arrogant, often wrong but never uncertain. Picard seemed, as all humans, also to be frequently wrong, but awfully conflicted about things. Riker's beard always made it seem as if he was trying too hard.
I always liked the inherent contradiction of the globalists depicted in Star Trek--the Federation was the dream, a peaceful universe in which equality has been achieved, comfort is universally accessible, medicine has become magic and we all live together. Sort of a UN view in theory.
Then there was the reality of the Romulans, the Borg and occasionally some recalcitrant Klingons.
Keeping the pacifist idealism current in a universe of natural conflict was a masterful task even if contradictory in the extreme.
And, then there's the trouble with Tribbles...
Worf had enough testosterone to inseminate women just by looking at them hard.
Besides, Picard got stabbed through the heart from behind and laughed
"...e was the only one on that bridge with any testosterone. Well, except for Tasha Yar..."
Hello, what about Warf, the resident Klingon?
'Wesley, Lieutenant Warf wants to know if you like gladiator movies ...'
I don't know...Picard got a fair amount of action, and even the robot Data had at least two flings...
Little known fact: Riker's beard was actually a rare form of an Andorian STD. Side effects include walking around like you're trying to open doors with your forehead and an inability to tell the difference between when your face is set to "charming grin" and "creepy leer."
You hit in one post why I never became a STNG fan - I watched the first three episodes, which seemed to consist of "Surrender? OK, here's the keys to the Enterprise, have fun, kthxbi!" and I called it quits.
Thanks, Stingray. Now I have to clean the coffee off my laptop...
Tasha had to go. I mean, Bing Crosby's granddaughter on the Enterprise? Really?
Kirk also apparently didn't care what colour the women were or how many antennae they had on their foreheads.
As for Picard, a French name and an English accent? Huh?
Jim
"As for Picard, a French name and an English accent? Huh?"
Actually, the accent was phony: Gene-Luke Pickerd was the first Federation starship captain from Alabama...
Also whitewashed from the screen accounts of Cap'n Pickerd's adventures in outer space would be the gun rack located on the bridge, behind the captain's chair, and the Truck Nutz attached to the ship's stern.
To use a meme, this thread is full of WIN.
As Sean said, I watched a bit of STTNG, and stopped. Started calling it "Middle Managers In Space". Lots of meetings, office politics, consensus building, and avoiding conflict. Bleahh.
Actually, if you're using "hairy-chested Starfleet" to refer to Kirk, I must point out that in the episodes where Kirk was bare-chested, (for medical exams, shirts torn in battle) he was seen to be shaven-chested; back in those days, chest hair (and open-mouthed kisses) were strictly forbidden by TV execs.
It's a metaphor.
Pity they never got around to making that series from the movie Wing Commander. It actually had a military feel to it. Not to mention Saffron Burrows. Yes, I know,socialist/vegetarian/lesbian, but in another time and universe...
Real world decisiveness is something unknown in near space, where decisions have to be riddled with existentialist angst and timed to straddle both sides of a commercial break.
I enjoyed the original Star Trek at the time, and still smile at the now campy reruns I see occasionally.
Give Gene Roddenberry credit as a trailbreaker, a D.W. Griffith or John Ford of S.F. if you would. It's just a shame nobody ever came along and developed the seed he planted.
Of course, a Twelve O'Clock High set in the future wouldn't sell to the cretinoids, but perhaps they could be educated slowly with a good rendition of something like Hammer's Slammers.
Plenty of action and gore, and exposure to a culture the general media know only from McHale's Navy and Hogan's Heroes.
Do you remember the story "Counting the Cost", taken from Belesarius's cure for the Nika Rebellion?
Imagine how savagely the New York Times would react if it were presented as an honorable and needed correction to society. Their knickers would be in the largest knot of all time.
I maintain that Star Trek is not only a matter of imprinting during a vulnerable age, only the series airing during the Age of Imprint will really take.
Yeah, okay, I'm a Next Gen fan. (And could tick off each occasion when Picard did, in fact, get the girl. Man had two steady girlfriends and one case of unresolved sexual tension.) It did get a lot better after the first season, but it never really did entirely lose that "let's have a meeting" thing. Now that I'm old enough to see the plot holes and flat ridiculous bits it's as much fun to snark as it was to watch when I was thirteen.
The episode about terrorism was surprisingly good, though. They had a brooding, pretty terrorist kidnap the ship's doctor... and pretty much painted him as a romantic-looking asshole that was condemning his children and his people to endless pain and violence for no good reason.
LabRat,
Don't tell anybody, but I think that as a TV show, ST:TNG completely pwnd TOS: Better writing, better acting, better stories... The gulf was huge.
But the TNG-era Starfleet was still a bunch of twinkies. ;)
My main complaint with NexGen was no different than my main complaint with KirkGen: Every episode was resolved by one deus ex machina or another. Lessee: is this one going to be Cmdr. La Forge's save? Or Chief O'Brien's? Or DATA's?
Wore a man plumb out.
The best thing (IMHO) about TNG was the novel "Imzadi". It's a shame they couldn't make a movie about that. 'Course, they would probably screw it up, by making unnecessary changes to plot and characters. As is typical for Hollywood.
Don't forget Tasha Yar had a bit of a kinky streak, hooking up with Data in one episode...
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