What’s So Wrong With Being a Trekkie?!
By Adam Hunault
I’ve had the conversation several times. I tell someone I’m a Trekkie and they say, “You ARE?!” Like they’re shocked as all heck. “Yeah, sure,” I say, “Star Trek, great show, love it.” They shake their head.
Ten minutes later the same person is telling me about their favorite episodes. Because that person is a Trekkie too.
It’s amazing, really. Even after I tell them I like Star Trek they put on a show of being surprised and repulsed, as if even though I admitted I’m a Trekkie I might take it back and try to make fun of them. Then a few minutes later they decide it’s safe and, often in a hushed voice in case someone overhears them, they talk my ear off. It comes out all in a rush because I’m the only other Trekkie they know. That’s ’cause all their other Trekkie friends are in the closet too. Being a Trekkie is not the kind of thing you admit.
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| Star Trek: Not lame at all! |
You don’t admit it because we all know that Star Trek isn’t mainstream, right? It’s Cassavetes, not Spielberg. It has a small cult following. There’s a tiny group of really committed people that watch it. It’s no X-Files, that’s for sure. Back in the ’90s The X-Files was the biggest, baddest genre show there ever was. It transcended sci-fi and picked up a huge mainstream audience. So awesome is its continued popularity that, after a lackluster final season and six years off the air, 20th Century Fox dropped $30 million to make a new X-Files movie last summer!
But, wait a second…
Star Trek has a new movie coming out too. And, Trekkies? Paramount gave J. J. Abrams $150 million to make it. Either Paramount producers are gambling that the small Trekkie cult is so obsessed they’ll buy five times more movie tickets than the larger X-Files audience, or those producers know there’s a huge, committed, MAINSTREAM audience out there that wants to see some freakin’ Star Trek.
I mean, JEEZ! A hundred and fifty million bucks! Either everybody you know is a Trekkie or somebody in Hollywood sure thinks they are.
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| Spock (Zachary Quinto) in the new Star Trek movie |
If you look at the popular genre franchises that people aren’t too ashamed to admit they like, you’ll see even more proof. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was so popular it was recently resurrected as a comic book from Dark Horse, the third largest comic book publisher in America. Big deal. Star Trek comics have been published for decades by DC, Marvel, IDW, Key and Malibu, among others. Battlestar Galactica and Stargate SG-1 are capitalizing on their success with made-for-TV and straight-to-DVD movies. Firefly got the full cinematic treatment. The X-Files got two theatrical releases. So? Not counting the new movie, Star Trek has been in movie theaters TEN TIMES, and nine of the movies were huge financial successes. Lost, the most popular genre show currently on television, is going to call it quits after its sixth season. Star Trek ran for 28 seasons and nobody seriously believes that it won’t be back on television some day. And if you check the résumés of those other shows you’ll see that none of them have a cartoon, a dozen video games, the largest series of novels ever written, a Las Vegas theme park and a Save Our Show campaign that actually saved the freakin’ show!
Star Trek isn’t “cult”. It isn’t a niche market. It is mainstream and it is big time. Its fans are legion.
Star Trek is about hope. It came out of the ’60s, an era of hope, and back then it was on the cutting edge of the geek chic. In a recent Entertainment Weekly article J. J. Abrams said that he intend to make his Star Trek every bit as epic, optimistic and uplifting as The Dark Knight was epic, pessimistic and depressing. According to Zachary Quinto, the new film’s Mr. Spock, the movie is thematically the perfect entertainment for Barack Obama’s America. Obama said, “I grew up on Star Trek, I believe in the final frontier,” in a speech last March. We’ve come full circle. We’ve weathered a jaded, cynical era and now, look!, change is the new watch word, hope is cool! It’s 1966 all over again.
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| Chekov (Anton Yelchin), Kirk (Chris Pine), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Bones (Karl Urban), Sulu (John Cho) and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) in Star Trek the movie |
Trekkies, you’ve survived the dark ages and the zeitgeist is back on your side! Get with the image adjustment, already! You aren’t a little, underground fan movement. As far as geeky fandom goes, the only thing bigger than Star Trek is professional sports. If you geek out for tribbles, it’s time to come out of the closet. It’s time to take your shameful stash of season box sets out of that cupboard you keep them in and display them proudly on the shelf with your other DVDs. Cut out the self-loathing and pitch in to give Trekkies a more friendly face. You are NOT a few hundred overweight nerds with Coke bottle glasses and poor hygiene who can discuss inverse tachyon beams and your favorite Kazon sects for hours but can’t hang in there for twenty seconds when you’re talking to a cute girl. You ARE tens of millions of cool, healthy, totally normal people. Odds are that if you aren’t a cute girl yourself you know one. Odds are she’s a Trekkie too. You like Star Trek the way you like any number of other TV shows (though maybe a teensy weensy bit more) and you shouldn’t give a flying fig who knows it.
I mean, for God’s sake, Trekkies, look at who’s President! The world has changed. There’s so much hope in the air that people are dancing in the streets, hugging complete strangers! This May, a major movie studio is spending $150 million to take you out on a really, really fancy date and praying to God they’re good enough to impress you. Behave like you’re worth every penny of that money and a whole lot more. It’s high time. You’ve arrived, my friends. Act like it!
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Adam Hunault is a playwright and published short fiction writer who occasionally writes about Star Trek for Pink Raygun ’cause he’s a geek and he can’t help himself.
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I tend to have the opposite experience. Whenever I tell someone that I’m into sci-fi, most of the time, I get “Sci-fi? You mean, like, Star Track?” uttered from underneath a nose wrinkled in distaste. This is mostly from women, so I guess in the real world women I’m interacting with aren’t the legions of women watching the Sci Fi Channel. However, these same women tend to turn around and ask me to show them how to compress a file or do a mail merge.
I’m not nearly as big a Trekkie as I am a fan of other genre franchises, but Trek – mostly TNG and DS9 – was certainly a part of my formative geek years. I find that, when lumped in with Star Wars, Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, seaQuest, Highlander, Stargate, the Buffy-verse, Firefly, the Matrix films, etc., it doesn’t have the same stigma. It seems to be okay to be a fan of genre stuff in general. It’s when you pigeonhole yourself with a single fandom – and Trek in particular – that the “normals” start to back away slowly and avoid eye contact.
Society takes a while to change its opinions. And, since the most visible and vociferous fans – the ones who cand and do discuss tachyon field variances – have been the stereotype for the past few decades, it’ll take a little longer for mainstream Trekkies to not receive weird looks.
What the studio knows is that the Trek world is such a part of our cultural lexicon now that everyone, not just the hardcore fans, will go see the new film. It will make a lot of money. The difference between success and big success will be whether it’s good enough to entice the hardcore fans into repeated viewings. Whether it’s another First Contact or the next Nemesis. Only time will tell.
OMG GORN CAPTAIN! I have a doll of him, for real.
Anyway. Glad you wrote this, because the stigma of being a Trekkie seems to be disproportionately larger than any other fandom I’ve seen. I mean, does Star Wars have a documentary slightly mocking their fans? Nuh-uh.
Talking about the EW article, I thought it was absolutely HILARIOUS that Abrams tried to play the movie off as less geeky than it really is. I think he said “Star Trek isn’t a movie for fans of Star Trek. Star Trek is a movie for fans of movies.” Uh, denial much? Your movie is a geek movie, you Cloverfield-dork, so stop denying it!
Although I guess I can’t blame him for saying that (totally ridiculous) quote. The whole EW article has an undertone focused on poking fun at the campy 60’s show–and then Abrams is forced to defend his movie in a very playground way. “Well, it’s revamped! And it’s for fans of movies!! So neener neener!”
Finally, I have to agree with Lisa–I don’t know anyone who is secretly a Trekkie like me. It’s hard to find people that like Buffy!
@Rhea Dee – There IS a movie poking fun at Star Wars obsessives – A Great Disturbance, but it has nowhere near the distribution or exposure that ST films have had. And, of course, the movie Fanboys looks to take the piss out of Star Wars fans everywhere.
Maybe it’s about time spent in popular culture – Star Trek has a decade plus lead on Star Wars in popular culture.
@Rhea Dee – It’s pretty normal that whenever a new Star Trek thing comes along the producers fall all over themselves trying to assure everyone that it’s for a wide audience, not just the fans. They did it for First Contact, they did it for Insurrection, they did it for Nemesis. It’s the reason why Enterprise didn’t have “Star Trek” in its title for the first couple years. It hasn’t worked yet but I’m sure they’ll keep trying.
I’m a sci fi snob, in that, if someone says thay aren’t into sci fi, I don’t waste my time with them.
Consequently, save for my blood relations and a few former coworkers, *most* of the people I know are also sci fi geeks.
I’m not on board with the new Trek film yet, though. I wasn’t impressed with the casting, especially knowing some of the people that were up for certain roles and were turned down. I mean, even Jimmy Doohan’s son was rootimg for Paul McGillion to be Scotty! And of course I would have been all over David Hewlett playing Bones. Maybe others wouldn’t have been, but I can see him in the role more easily than Karl Urban (even if I do *like* Urban)! I like Siler, but his voice doesn’t say “Spock” to me (it’s his lisp, sorry), nor does his heavy brow. And I am thus far utterly uninterested in Chris Pine as Kirk. Personally, I was hoping for a DS9 movie.
I think STAR TREK is the perfect modern myth to capture the spirit of the Obama generation. I’m hoping it leads a wave of movies and comics returning to the 60s spirit of hope and away from the “grim’n'gritty” school that has infected them since WATCHMEN and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.
If I may digress a bit, I beleieve that the Kennedy assassination fixed an idea in the national consciousness with the generations who grew up after that, that good guys get dead; that you can’t do good for its own sake, you have to be obsessed or something; and that we have to be meaner than the bad guys to survive. That even infected TREK, where exploration and peaceful contact gave way to Bajoran/Cardassian wars, Borg wars and Dominion Wars. The new Trek online rpg has the whole gorram Trekverse at war. FIREFLY, with its merry band of outlaws is more hopeful than that; Gene Roddenberry’s spirit must be restless.
Don’t get me wrong, darker stories have their place and I love X-FILES, BUFFY and FRINGE, but not as a steady diet. I’m hoping for a large scale return to more positive myths.
If I might self-advertise, I’ve posted a 30s fantasy cartoon called THE SUNSHINE MAKERS at my blog Stories Are Signposts that to me captures the hope that Obama’s election offers (especially if you view the dark gnomes as neocons!)
OH MY GOD, a DS9 movie would be AMAZING. *fingers crossed*
But I like Chris Pine. He’s got just enough hot, jock swagger to be able to pull it off. I think he’s purdy.
I thought Zachary Quinto as Spock was an inspired choice, and I’m happy to see Simon Pegg in ANYTHING.
And JJ Abrams is one of the few people I would trust with a Star Trek prequel. I’m excited for this movie!
@ Adam:
Whoa, there, son! You might wanna’ amp down that persecution complex a bit. It’s not 1973, when I can and did get beat up for liking trek. It’s not even 1979 when I got made fun of for draggint my family to that God-awful movie.
Trek was increasingly successful thorugh the 80s, came back to TV in the late 80s (Despite being kind of crappy for the first couple years), and became increasingly popular. By the mid-90s, everyone knew what trek was, it had 3 spinoffs – all long running – and actually polls showed that at least 30% of Americans considered themselves at least marginally Trekies. This was the period where people turned up at halloween costumes in starfleet uniforms and didn’t get made fun of, put “Starfleet Academy” Stickers on their cars, and so on. It was a HUGE trendy deal for like a decade there. X-files had nothing on Trek in it’s prime!
Then everyone got kind of bored with it because at root Trek really only has 6 or 8 storylines, and they used ‘em to death in most of the shows, and people wandered off to find more interesting SF shows like Babylon 5 and Lost and the Stargate franchise and stuff.
So we’re not living in a world where Trekies are persecuted, we’re living in a world where Trek has come and gone, and no one cares anymore. Trek is about as relevant nowadays as 19th century Nurse Romance Novels are.
@ Wolfen and Teresa
A lot of people have hoped for a DS9 movie for a long time. The show’s been off the air for nine years and it was never as popular as the others, so I doubt it’s going to happen.
@ Doctor Zen
You, my friend, are a wise, wise man or woman.
@Hoobajoobah
Whoa there! yourself, dude.
I believe the point you’re trying to make is the point I’m trying to make. As you say, Star Trek is immensely popular but for some reason the average fan is ashamed to admit they like it. Why do Trekkies act like they’re a small persecuted minority when they’re anything but? That’s all I’m asking.
Oh, and… Did you really get beat up for liking Star Trek? That’s hardcore, man. Way to stand up for your show. These nancy boy Lost fans they’ve got nowadays would’ve run away like little punks. Sissies.
Hell yeah I got beat up for it. I wasn’t standing up for it, I just got in one of those “Who’s cooler, Captain Kirk or Commander Koening?” conversations on the playground and a bunch of kids kicked my ass “For bein’ a faggot.” That wasn’t the only time, either. Boston is a shithole town. I never could understand what David E. Kelly saw in the place. Sure it’s pretty, but the people…gah!
Anyway, your point (Which I missed) about the persecution complex of Trekies is a good one. Why?
My point (Which you missed) was simply that it isn’t immensely popular anymore, it’s done. Maybe in 20 or 30 years we’ll see a revival – I mean, hell, they brought back “The Night Stalker” – but I think it’s done.
So why *do* Trekies feel like they’re being persecuted? Well, persecution complexes generally come out of innate feelings of inadequacy. There’s a certain high-functioning aspergery-type that’s associated with Trek in the popular mindset, not entirely without reason. (And just about every version of the show has made a point of including a high-functioning aspergery type as their token genius-on-a-leash). Such people are frequently dogged on for their lack of social graces, poor hygiene, and somewhat abnormal emotional responses to commonplace situations. Perhaps the “persecution complex” comes from the fact that the most hardcore obsessive mouthbreathing fans already feel rather persecuted, or at least shut out, by society in general, so the neat, clean, logical, sexy-yet-sexless, cultureless, religionless, passionless, never-too-loud world of trek appeals to them.
In other words, mabye Trek attracts people who feel persecuted in the first place.
I’m not saying EVERY trekie falls in to this cagetory, but we’ve all met a lot of them havent’ we? A lot more than we’d really care to admit.
Oh, no, I got your point, Hoobajoobah. And you’re right. Trek’s totally played out right now. But it isn’t played out the way Night Stalker is. Someone just needs to come along with a fresh take on Star Trek. There are more than 6 or 8 stories, it’s just that nobody bothered to tell them. A lot of the Trekkies are dormant right now but there’s still a huge market for more Star Trek, which is why they’re making a movie and bringing back Star Trek: The Experience and publishing novels and publishing comics and selling DVDs for way more than they should cost (highwaymen!). Plus I really do think the mood in this country is swinging back in Trek’s direction.
And just so you know — it wasn’t that David E. Kelley saw something in Boston. He saw something was MISSING in Boston. Namely, Captain Kirk. Those losers up there in Boston were beating up kids for liking Captain Kirk, so David E. Kelley put William Shatner in a show about Boston and it rocked hard. And that’s what finally broke the curse and let the Red Sox win the Series. True story. I guess means Captain Kirk is cooler than Babe Ruth, let alone Commander Koening (as if!). Take that, kids at recess.
What? You didn’t like Space:1999? For shame!
I’d submit that after using the same 6 or 8 plots over and over and over again for 500 or so episodes, it could be either a lack of imagination on the part of the producers/writers, or it could be that those 6 or 8 plots are the only ones the fans will tolerate.
If it’s a lack of imagination on the part of the producers/writers, then what the hell are we paying them for? SF is supposed to be imaginative, right? If that’s the case then just let it die. If it’s a lack of imagination on the part of the fans – and the only show to break the format was DS9 which is easily the least favorite of the series – then no ammount of “We have a 9th story idea!” is going to bring them in, because they *liked* all that Brannon Braga nonsense.
The Trek movie is just a test baloon from the studio. If it’s successful, then you’ll see another movie. Not another series, just another movie. If it’s unsuccessful – and frankly, I think it will be – then no more Trek for another decade or so.
@Adam ~ Oh, I’m not holding my breath on a DS9 movie, I’m just saying I had been hoping for one, and certianly wanted it more than revisiting TOS territory. And the thing is, I didn’t even *like* DS9 to *start* with — I didn’t really get into it until it’s 4th season, and then I went back and watched the earlier stuff. (Gods, has it really been taht long? Wow ….)
A DS9 movie would be coolness, but I think that now that they’ve broken the mold by casting new actors as familiar characters, we’d be liable to see Will Smith as Sisko or Jack Black as Quark.
@Adam re: The Shat vs. The Babe — That’s hilarious. :p Although I live in Boston, I don’t care at all about baseball (I know, sacrilege.), but it’s still really funny.
@the Asberger’s discussion: Yes. This is what I was trying to articulate in my first post. Thank you. I certainly doesn’t help that the mass media glom onto the visibly extreme fans (at ComicCon and whatnot) and then proceed to mock them for their enthusiasm. In some ways, it’s really brave to say you’re a Trekkie these days because you know what sort of ridicule you’re opening yourself up for, despite the ever growing fanbase of Trek and genre entertainment in general.
There’s a strange dichotomy I’ve noticed between American and British audiences. In the U.S., we’ve moved toward an attitude of “it’s not really sci-fi, it’s more about interpersonal relationships, so it’s okay to watch [insert show here].” Over the past few years, this “not really sci-fi” label has been applied to everything from Lost to freakin’ Battlestar Galactica. Come on! BSG is sci-fi. It’s really good sci-fi, with compelling, complex characters and plots, and it has its first run on the SciFi Channel, so stop denying that it is what it is. Get over your prejudices and watch it because it’s awesome.
The Brits have developed a much healthier attitude, I think. More along the lines of “genre fiction can be really good if done well”. From what I’ve seen (and granted, it’s filtered from a couple thousand miles away), they don’t have the same sense of shame and imminent persecution that American genre fans have adopted. They seem much more open to good storytelling, no matter what world it’s set in, and are less concerned with drawing boundaries between “mainstream” and “sci-fi”. Not surprising, really, when you consider that this is the nation who gave us over 40 years of Doctor Who.
Ahem. Rant over.
As for the potential of a DS9 movie, I really don’t think they could do anything in 2 or 3 hours that would be nearly as interesting as the season-long Dominion War arc. The best part of the series (as far as I’m concerned, anyway) was its deep exploration of morality and cultural differences. Such things make for great discussions, both within the show and among the fandom, but they don’t generally make for a great movie. At least, not in the way we’ve come to expect from the Star Trek franchise. I can’t imagine the extremely serialized plotlines of DS9 — or Voyager for that matter — translating well to a medium with such short time constraints.
As I said somewhere else on this website, when Burton’s Batman came out 20 years ago, reviewers kept saying things like “It’s got the inherent duality of Wagnerian Opera” and stuff like that, which annoyed the hell out of me at the time because it was clearly a case of “I’m trying to justify liking kid stuff.”
If you like kid stuff, then you like kid stuff. Don’t apologize for it.
I think the “It’s about interpersonal relationships” thing comes from two sources:
1) Obviously, it’s a justification for liking something you feel somewhat embarased by
2) To be honest, the “interpersonal relationships” of the most obvious classical shows in the genre were pretty frackin’ scant and cardboard. Dr. Who and his companions? Kirk? Spock? McCoy? Give me a break! The original Galactica? Space: 1999? the Space Family Robinson? ST:TNG? Please. They weren’t characters, they were ciphers, and this lack of characterization inevitably puts the skids to drama. So there’s a perception – a fairly correct one – that SF is kid’s stuff and not ‘real’ storytelling because it ignores the human element so they can do more pinnochio stories about hebephrenic whackjobs learning to become “A real boy.” All these shows (Except Space: 1999) have their good elements, but they make Gold Key comic books seem like great literature by comparison.
More modern SF – Stargate, the new BG, Firefly, the new Dr. Who have made a concerted effort to put the characterizations front-and-center and concentrate on fully-realized people in exotic situations. So I don’t think it’s entirely without merit.
In respectful disagreement with Hoobajoobah, I would not say that the characters in Stargate, Battlestar Galactica or even Firefly are more developed than the characters of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The BSG cast, for example, has more internal conflict in their group and more of the show’s drama is derived from those conflicts, but that doesn’t make the characters more developed than TNG. That cast and the cast of DS9 had some very nuanced characters and performances. I’m especially thinking of Picard, Data and Worf as I type that.
As for Classic Trek, Kirk, Spock and McCoy are more like archetypes than ciphers. A cipher’s characterization is blank. The Classic Trek big three are simple characters without a lot of nuance, but they have identifiable personalities. Simplicity wasn’t a bad thing with those three — the fact that they were like three conflicting parts of one nuanced person is what makes them so interesting.
There has been a definite trend towards more character-based drama on recent sci-fi shows, as Hoobajoobah says. It’s different, it’s interesting but I don’t think it’s necessarily better.
I’ll call myself Adam W to distinguish myself from the other Adam here.
This is a great post, and I agree with Adam’s comments. Hopefully, Obama’s election will be good for Star Trek, and for more optimistic entertainment in general. During the past seven years, we’ve been inundated with ‘dark’ depressing dramas. I like nu BSG, Firefly (and all of Whedon’s shows), etc. But it is time for a more positive change.
I am a lifelong Trekkie, and have loved it since I was 11 years old. I endured some ribbing from kids at school. But then, several of them would turn around and admit to me that they were closet fans, too. The last time Trek was cool in the mainstream was probably back when FC came out in 96. Everyone at school was talking about how cool it was. I miss that. I want ST to make a comeback.
I actually have Asperger’s and
Whoops. Posted a bit too early there!
As I was saying, I have Asperger’s and I was always more drawn towards the outsider characters like Data, Odo, Spock, etc. I probably related to them more so than the human characters, lol!
A good philosophy for people to have is that there is good and bad to be found in any genre. There are good sci-fi movies and shows, there are bad ones (Andromeda, Cleopatra 2525, IMO). There are good Westerns and bad ones. Good Romance movies and bad ones.
I hate it when the mainstream get turned off something simply because it’s ’sci-fi’. If it’s good (no matter the genre), watch it. If not, don’t.
Geekiness seems to be in these days, and yet, when you say you’re into Trek, they start to back away. Hell, when I tell people I love Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, they back off. Is Whedon’s time in the sun already over?
@ The Adams:
Hi guys.
If you look at the series bible notes on Kirk, Spock, and more especially McCoy and Scotty, they’re not much like what ended up on the screen. I’ll grant that they’re more like archetypes than ciphter, but that’s because the actors (And later writers) decided to move them in that direction. Little of what was intended for those characters is what came to pass on screen. But that’s a moot point, you’re right and I’m wrong: they’re more archetypes.
I’d disagree about TNG. Whereas Kirk, Spock, McCoy, were inherently interesting, seven years of Next Gen never made me give a damn about Riker, Troi, Jordie, Wes (Shudder), Crusher, Pulaski, Guinan, or any of the rest. The only characters that held up were Picard (From season 3 on. In the first 2 years he’s basically an entirely different character w/ the same name, played by the same actor), Data and Worf. The rest really are ciphers.
There’s a tendency in Trek for the character to be defined by their job, make of that what you will.
As for DS9 breaking the mold, I can’t say. I gave up on it during the 2nd season, and never saw anything at all after the middle of the third. I sort of took Babylon 5’s side on that whole shindig. If you say it did, I’ll take it at face value that you’re right.
I do think the characters on BSG and Firefly and suchlike are more defined and developed, however. Look at Edward James Olmos’ body language and how it completely changes based on the characters he’s around. Look at the way Helo interacts with others differently based on wether they’re men or women. Look at Baltar’s weird character arc. I don’t find all of this pleasing, but it’s a lot more emotionally gripping than “Riker is afraid of promotion.”
Of course there’s exceptions to all these things.
I think Wheedon’s day in the sun is, in fact, over. I mean, he’s already got stuck with yet another crappy time slot for Dollhouse…
Hi again!
Yeah, I still don’t know why he came crawling back to FOX after what they did to Firefly. After what went down with Firefly and Angel, I didn’t think he’d be rushing to make another TV series for a long while.
I agree that Trek characters, for the most part,(as much as I love Trek) are more archetypes then actual characters per se. They serve the plot, and not vice versa. TNG is especially guilty of this. In seven seasons, what did we really learn about any of these people?
I’ve known I was a Trekkie my whole life, being that I’m only a few months younger then Star Trek. The show helped me get through high school with a smaller then usual number of scars because by then I had decide if the people on Trek could be who they were, then there was nothing wrong with being who I am. Trekkies rule the world, we’re just very careful not to let anyone else know it.
Btw, I’m female.
1) I think that a good sign that Trek is alive and well is that, whenever Pink Raygun has posted one of Adam’s posts about Star Trek, people come out of the woodwork to comment!
2) I’ve been in love with Star Trek pretty much my whole life, and I have to say that the thing I love most – as well as what has kept Star Trek so successful for OVER FORTY YEARS – are its characters. I think Hoobajoobah is right when he says that there are only 6 to 8 stories on Star Trek. I think that’s true on every show. I think that’s true of all human stories. What makes each telling unique is what different characters will do in each of those situations. I mean, both all Star Trek shows and Battlestar Galactica have plots that involve trying to better humanity by getting somewhere in a spaceship. What makes both these shows intriguing in different ways is how the characters go about doing that from week to week.
3) One thing I thought DS9 got right over the other shows were its female characters. Uhura and Nurse Chapel were cool in the original series, but they didn’t really get much to do. Nurse Chapel seemed to pretty much only be given stuff to do that had to do with a man in her life. And Uhura, while obviously capable and smart, didn’t get very many plots devoted to her. On TNG, Beverly was pretty interesting, when they’d give her something to work with – but I never really liked Deanna Troi all that much. The best female character on that show by far was Lwaxana Troi, and she was recurring. But Kira Nerys, Jadzia Dax, and even Ezri Dax were amazing! All of them strong and feminine in very different ways, and all of them complex and finely etched characters brought to life by incredibly talented actresses. Not to leave human beings out, there was also Cassidy Yates, who was a more than worthy companion for Sisko. And of course, there’s Quark’s mother, Ishka, who made a fortune and asserted herself on arguably the most mysogynistic planet in the universe. Despite being created without Gene Roddenberry’s guidance, I think that Deep Space 9 captured something that, due to various societal constraints, the other Star Trek shows never got to (at least not fully) – complex and interesting women.
4) Lastly, I think we NEED a break from Star Trek on television. There was a 20 year gap between Star Trek and TNG, which is why I think TNG was so successful. People were ready for new, weekly Star Trek stories. But immediately after that there was the DS9VoyagerEnterprise train, and there was never any breathing room. I think Star Trek sabotaged itself by doing that. Instead of leaving viewers wanting more, it overstayed its welcome. If DS9, or something like it, were being released NOW? I think it would’ve fared much better.
Though, talking about how “unpopular” or “unsuccessful” DS9 was in comparison to TNG seems silly to me when it lasted for, what, 7 seasons? Oh yeah. What a failure.
Voyager lasted for 7 seasons, too. God, what a clusterf@#k THAT was. Heh.
But for now, the new movie(s) will serve its purpose in tiding over the fans with a taste of new Star Trek, and perhaps initiating new Trekkies. It’s laying the groundwork for the fanbase of a new future Star Trek show that I’ll enjoy watching when I’m 50.
Well, that’s enough rambling from me…
@ Teresa
1) Yeah, thanks everybody!
2) I hadn’t thought about that. Even if Star Trek really only has eight stories, it still has seven more stories than Law & Order, ER, and most other shows.
3) I think TNG’s portrayal of women was derailed early when Denise Crosby left the show. There was such a great Tasha-Deanna relationship being set up in those early episodes that was really similar to the Nerys-Jadzia relationship later. But once Tasha died the show was missing a strong woman. You also forgot to mention Guinan. Voyager’s female characters never seemed like real women to me, especially Janeway and Seven of Nine. (B’Elanna and Kes were okay.) I definitely agree that DS9 had the best female characters: Nerys, Jadzia, Ezri, Kai Winn, Ishka, Keiko, Kasidy Yates, the Founder, Tora Ziyal and… Leeta? Well, it mostly had the best female characters…
4) DS9 never got to stand alone. It never got a chance to be the only Trek series on TV. I watched it every week for its entire run but I didn’t really appreciate how unique it was until later because TNG and Voyager were always around to spoil the ambiance.
@ Theresa:
>>Though, talking about how “unpopular” or “unsuccessful” DS9 was in comparison to TNG seems silly to me when it lasted for, what, 7 seasons? Oh yeah. What a failure. Voyager lasted for 7 seasons, too. God, what a clusterf@#k THAT was. Heh.<<
The cost-effective lifespan for a TV show is 5 years, after which time production costs, crew raises and so on make it too expensive to produce unless it’s phenominally popular. The TNG cast were signed to a 5-year contract, but the show still *was* phenominally popular as they started year five, so rather than end the show as they had originally intended, they negotiated a 2-year extention for the contracts (Which cost ‘em a bundle!) and started casting about for a spinoff.
They assumed the spinoff would be just as popular as TNG, so rather than go through the costly business of negotiating an extention after 5 years, they went ahead and signed everyone for 7 from the outset. The same was true of Voyager. “Seven Years” was the standard deal for these shows.
That said, neither DS9 nor Voyager ever got anywhere *near* the ratings that TNG did. Voyager happened mainly because DS9 “Failed to thrive” the way TNG did, and they figured they needed another ship-based show to keep the fans. Even so, Voyager’s ratings were limp to begin with, and got worse as the show went along. By the end, no one was watching. The shows ran mainly because they had long-term contracts, but Paramount had lost faith in the TV Franchise, and when Enterprise came along, it was only signed to a 5 year contract, rather than seven.
ANd it was consistently beat out in the ratings by Stargate: SG1, which was only available in a portion of the country.
Long Run doesn’t always equal popularity. I mean, SNL has been running for like 35 years, but it hasn’t been *popular* in decades.
Teresa, Hoobajoobah is totally right except for one thing. SG-1 didn’t ever have higher ratings than Star Trek: Enterprise. It would be pretty astonishing if it had since Stargate was on cable and Enterprise was on network television. While frequently leaked, Neilsen ratings are secret and difficult to find, but judging from what I could uncover on Google (what can I say, Hoobajoobah’s claim fascinated me) SG-1 had ratings around 1.7 most of the time, occasionally breaking 2.0 at its height. That’s very respectable for a genre show on cable — Battlestar Galactica is usually only a few points north of 2.0.
In those last dark years, Enterprise’s Neilson ratings were usually between 3.0 and 4.0, twice the viewership of Stargate but still pretty abysmal for network. Other than its premiere episode, Voyager’s best rating was 7.9, and was more commonly around 5.0 or 5.5. DS9’s were lower, since Voyager was on UPN but DS9 was in first run syndication. The Next Generation used regularly get Neislen ratings around 13.0 and 14.0, and definitely broke 16.0 on at least one occasion. It was so popular it used to regularly beat professional football in male demographics.
Wow!
I seem to have fallen for an urban legend. I’ve always heard SG1 called “The show that killed Trek” and it was generally cited to have gotten better ratings on cable than Enterprise did on an actual network.
I’m embarassed to realize I’ve been spreading an untruth.
I wonder if it’s partially true, but got misrepresented? Like maybe SG1 syndicated repeats consistently got better ratings than syndicated Trek repeats or what have you? It matters not. I’m wrong.
Thanks for taking the trouble to straighten that out!
@ Adam – I can’t believe I forgot Guinan! Yes, indeed. She was awesome. But she was the only woman, other than Lwaxana, that was full-out awesome on TNG.
Also, yes, thank you for being enough of a nerd to look that up, so the rest of us can focus on being geeks.
@Hoobajoobah
I know exactly what you’re thinking of, though. It isn’t exactly an urban legend. At one point in 2004, when SG-1 was was going into it’s 8th season and Enterprise was going into its final year, TV Guide announced that the Stargate franchise had surpassed Star Trek and become more popular. That wasn’t based on the raw numbers of people watching as much as fan enthusiasm. SG-1 was doing phenomenally well on cable and Enterprise was absolutely dying on the network. While Enterprise technically had a bigger audience it was on life support until it could get the 100 episodes necessary to sell the syndicated re-run rights. Meanwhile SG-1 had a loyal and committed fan base and a spin-off show coming out. It was more popular than Star Trek qualitatively, if not quantitatively.
@ Adam:
Excellent! Thank you for clearing that up. I even vaguely remember that, so now I feel like a bit less of an idiot. Thanks.
@ Teresa:
No offence meant, but here’s my opinion: Troi’s whole purpose on the show dramatically speaking was to state the obvious for the slow people in the audience who couldn’t follow what was going on, or to get the characters to say what they’re thinking in an unnatural and expository fashion. Guinan, dramatically speaking, was a new, improved Troi in that she tended to state the obvious (“The Borg are Bad” “You can’t trust Q”) and get people to say things that are on their minds, and then toss it back at them in a way that makes them feel kinda’ stupid. (“In every society there have been people who are for whatever reason not considered people”)
The difference is that Guinan did this somewhat more naturalistically, and in a less Soviet fashon than Troi did in the early years, and she had a mysterious past that made her a bit more interesting than Troy. And of course Whoopee is a much better actress than Marinia.
I don’t think she’s awsome, though, she’s basically an expositional tool more than a character.
Of course more Guinan meant less Troi, and that’s always a good thing.
1st, to set a record straight – Hoobajoobah – You were and weren't spreading an urban myth. Yes, "Car Wreck: Enterprise" did always have higher rating due to it's larger audience, but SG-1 consistently beat it in houses/markets that had access to both (A very limited demographic to be sure, but us geeks have always been the underdogs! And how would you like to have had that job to track down the 150 people per city watching both?!?!?)
As for Star Trek being done, far from it. I do some side work for the people running the conventions. I was in Cherry Hill, NJ last week (where neither Alpha Girl NOR Space Cowboy threw rocks @ me!) fort the final East Coast Stargate SG-1/Atlantis convention. Poor sales are ending it & the yearly one in Burbank California will be the last one there, as well. It was about half full. I'm working the Star Trek Convention in March & while there last week, we were already going over security arrangements for the 2010 one. As great as SG1 is, the fan base just isn't as strong.
Rick Berman said @ the utter collapse of Enterprise: "People are tired of Trek. It needs a rest." What he didn't get is that people were just tired of BAD Trek, and fortunately, they sent him out for a very long rest.
Star Trek has always been about hope for the future. Zachary Quinto is right about the new movie being the perfect entertainment for Barack Obama’s America. As we face the horrors of both a liberal president AND a liberal congress, hope for the future is all we have left. We must believe that we can get through this & we will endure. (Now, aren't you sorry you DIDN'T throw rocks at me, S.C.?
)
Star Trek has always given me that hope. Now that Berman's out of the picture, I'm betting it can do it again…
ENT came along too soon after Voyager in my opinion. And it shows, blatantly. Voyager's final season was a total mess, creatively speaking, because Berman was busy creating ENT at the time. They should have just stopped Trek on TV after VOY ended. If they had waited for several years, and brought ENT out about now, for example, it would have performed a lot better.
Berman seemed to think that you needed a ship called Enterprise to have a successful Trek series. Audiences didn't so much care what the vessel was called, as long as the show was GOOD. ENT was rushed out to fill an ailing UPN lineup, IMHO.
Berman is an arrogant prick. He believed that he knew what was best for Trek, despite what the fan outcry, execs AND the ratings told him. When Ron Moore balked at Berman's 'vision', he sent Moore packing – Moore went on to reinvent BSG. Berman went down in flames. Not soon enough to prevent "Nemesis," unfortunately, but at least he's gone…
- And – AND – I somehow missed the comment about Whedon – Done? MWA HAH HAH! Did you NOT see Dr. Horrible's Sing-along-Blog? The man may have just re-invented the way we watch ANYTHING in the future!
@ Jack
I mean, this is a show about a eutopia where capitalism, free markets and even money itself have been abolished and in which the government of the Federation, through the aggressive investment of its resources in technology and space exploration, has found a way to provide its citizens with all of the necessities of life — the ultimate socialist welfare state. The end of all poverty and want has not caused people to become lazy parasites, as conservatives would have it, but empowered them to throw off materialism and dedicate their lives to the improvement of their civilization through the tireless pursuit of whatever personally fulfills them, sometimes at great personal risk.
I'm glad I get to pick your brain because I've never understood conservative Trekkies.
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Not only that but the Federation seems to have given up on the military doctrine of proportional response, whereby the US uses military force to desuade our enemies from attacking us. Time after time we see episodes where the Federation is attacked and foregoes vengeance to negotiate a truce with the attackers. I doubt Barack Obama will sit town with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions but I'm absolutely positive Jean-Luc Picard would. While there are sometimes references to "our many beliefs," the Federation seems to strictly to adhere to the separation of church and state. It has no central religion, and most of the characters we see seem to be secular humanists.
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Furthermore the Federation practices a philosophy of moral relativism — there are no moral absolutes, so every culture has the right to decide what is right and what is wrong for itself. In other words, they're pro-choice in every respect, not just on abortion. And with all the alien cultures involved, we've had hints that the Federation tolerates not only gay marriage but group marriage (in the case of Denobulans and Andorians, anyway) and marriages between humans and aliens. In every way I can think of, the Federation is either as liberal as Obama or far, far to the left of him. How can a conservative regard Star Trek as anything other than folly?
Also, the new length requirements for comments on this site ARE EXTREMELY ANNOYING!!!!
I wasn't aware that there were length requirements set…I'll look into it.
Thanks very much, J. I should have added a smilie near my CAPITAL LETTERS. I wasn't really shouting at you.
Also, now the reply-to dialogue box doesn't seem to work
testing the reply-to dialogue
Jack – try clearing your browser's cache. What browser are you using? Reply-to seems to work fine here in Firefox.
Also using firefox… And now it's working…
Adam – What you've mentioned is the ideals of Star Trek, yet the reality (And yes, I see the irony in talking about the reality of Star Trek…) is quite different.
I would love to live in a world where there is no want & everyone was taken care of. You say >"The end of all poverty and want has not caused people to become lazy parasites, as conservatives would have it, but empowered them to throw off materialism" < All well & good, except that's just the way the writers wrote it. In reality, I live less than 8 miles away from where, in the early '90's, there was rioting, looting & general destruction in 'protest' of the NYS Governor's idea of making able-bodied welfare recipients work for it.
You say Trek has thrown off the yoke of materialism – Again a lofty ideal, but the reality… TOS never even tried to perpetrate that myth, using 'credits' as the currency – TNG, in it's poorly written way, tried to present it, but couldn't pull it off. (Just what WERE the stakes at all those poker games?) DS9 clearly showed it's Starfleet members gleefully engaging in commerce, and even Voyager, cut off from the rest, used replicator rations as currency among the crew.
I pretty much adhere to the cultural/religious tolerances myself, so I'm not going to try to dispute those.
The "Starfleet is not a military organization" is, of course, the biggest crock that they try to pull. And if you think that the Federation doesn't use the threat of military response to keep other races in line, you haven't watched closely enough *any* TNG episodes involving the Khardassians.
The US military, when not engaged in battling the forces of evil, is one of the biggest humanitarian aid suppliers in the world (and usually while we ARE battling the forces of evil, as well!)
You site Jean Luc's negotiations 'skills'. The weakest captain of the lot, he's the last one I'd want negotiating anything, and the last I'd want watching my back in a fight. In his 1st official act as captain, when faced with a threat, he ran away & when that didn't work, he surrendered. But, that's what happens when you put a Frenchman in charge. Give me Sisko or Janeway any day.
Federation policy has always reflected the best of American ideals – Say what you want, it's true. Created by an American, subjected to American studio/network scrutiny & written by Americans, it's a philosophy I've tried to share. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
I don't think you could label me a conservative, per se. Probably more of a libertarian, or somewhere in between. Most of my comments are to get Space Cowboy's goat. But he's starting to ignore them…
Thanks very much for your insight. I'm sorry I labeled you as a
conservative and challenged you with some conservative social beliefs
when you're really a libertarian. I made an assumption based on your
dislike of liberals and I was wrong. And I absolutely agree with your
assessment that some of the stuff in Star Trek works that way just
because "that's the way the writers wrote it," I was more wondering
how conservative (or libertarian) Star Trek fans felt about the
Federation. I've always assumed that they must consider Federation
values very naive, which would make it hard to watch a show that's
mainly about how enlightened humans have become because they've
adopted those values.
As for the Federation's distaste when it comes to proportional
military response, it is consistantly present in the series. It shows
up for the first time in "Arena," where the Gorn destroy a Federation
outpost and Kirk decides over the course of the episode of forego
retaliation in favor of settling the root grievance diplomatically.
There must be dozens of episodes of TNG where Federation citizens are
killed and the Federation responds by trying to communicate rather
than counter-attack — "The Vengeance Factor", "Ensign Ro", "Silicon
Avatar" and "I, Borg" are only a few examples. On DS9, the Dominion
destroy several Federation starships in the years leading up to the
Dominion War, destroy all of the Alpha Quadrant powers' outposts in
the Gamma Quadrant in "The Jem'Hadar", bomb a Federation conference on
Earth in "Homefront", wipe out the Maquis who are formerly Federation
citizens in "Blaze of Glory" and destroy several starships in
Federation space before the Dominion War, according to "In the Cards."
The Federation doesn't strike back until all hopes of a diplomatic
solution evaporate.
You mentioned the relationship with the Cardassians in TNG as a
counter-example. While it isn't naive, the Federation certainly isn't
hawkish. The Cardassians rearmed their border in "The Wounded" and
the Federation helped them capture the only Starfleet captain willing
to use force to stop them. The Cardassians destroyed a Federation
outpost posing as Bajorans in "Ensign Ro" and the Federation did not
respond militarily. The Cardassians then sent an invasion fleet to
seize a Federation sector in "Chain of Command" and the Federation let
them off with a slap on the wrist and signed a new treaty with them
the next year in "Journey's End." The Federation definitely takes the
high road, even when blood has been spilled.
@ Adam:
Sorry it took so long to reply; that damn pesky 'real life' keeps getting in the way…
We could keep going back and forth siting counter examples, you sited several excellent ones, but I agree for the most part. The Federation does try to take the high road, but is not always able to do so was my point & when not able to do so, Starfleet is quite the military organization.