Spock and the Legacy of Star Trek

StartsWithABang writes While the nerd/geek world mourns the death of Leonard Nimoy in its own way, it's important to remember the legacy that Star Trek — and that Spock and alien characters like him — left on our world. Unlike any other series, Star Trek used a futuristic, nearly utopian world to explore our own moral battles and failings, and yet somehow always managed to weave in an optimism about humanity and our future. This is something, the author argues, that is sorely missing from the new J.J. Abrams movies.

Comments

Live

[invictusvoyd]

long and prosper .. sniff

Re:Live

[frovingslosh]

He's dead, Jim.

Re:Live

[PolygamousRanchKid]

He's not dead. Just resting. Pining for the Fjords.

He had a blue shirt. Not a red one.

Re:Live

[Anonymous Coward]

I enjoyed the FIRST of the new Star Trek movies, it was a good popcorn flick and I was satisfied how they handled the trek universe for the most part, regardless of the lack of utopian optomism. The second movie though, not so good most of the way through, but when they re-did "that scene" - wow.
WOW Holy shit, they brought out an inner Trek Nerd I didn't even know existed in me. That was insulting as fuck. The most touching scene in the history of Star Trek, re-hashed as an homage? Fuck off.

Ultimately though the article summary is correct, there's this innocent wonder, optomism and good in the vast majority of Star Trek, particularly ToS and TNG which is just doesn't exist in most other movies or TV shows. It's sorely lacking in the world.
I've always been a cynical bastard who loves to hate on things, loves a dark theme but it's so over done now, SO over done. It's sad that it's refreshing to see people with clear, honest, straight up good values.

I'm not a big fan of the Marvel movies (they aren't terrible) but I really like Captain America. If you told me 15 years ago, I'd like Captain America, I wouldn't believe you. I'd say "that's lame" "he's a dork" "who cares". But now? In the society we're all living in? Captain America is refreshingly good and nice, it's great. (This is also why the original 1977 Superman is a masterpiece, it's an archive of a time long gone where good was good because it's right)

I fear that with the death of Gene Roddenberry and the worlds ever intense focus on money, which while always existing, has become sharpened the last decade or two, you're just not going to see a classic return to original, cheesy, fun Star Trek. It has to have an edge to appeal to the mainstream. Maybe some tits or a fistfight or someone lying or cheating or bullshit drama.
In TnG when someone cheated or did something bad, it was addressed, it was weird, they investigated, found why the person was sad / angry / hateful and they fixed it because it's not productive, it's not good to be like that. Nowadays as per /the norm/ someone is going to be a piece of shit with all these complexities in a TV show, cheating / lying / playing games / one upping people is normal behaviour on standard television :/

ToS and TnG might be utopian and cheesy but it's in a good way. I laugh with them and I laugh at them and when I laugh at them, I don't dislike it. I just go "oh Star Trek" and keep on watching. Unfortunately for most people, that shit won't play anymore. The people who respect that kind of television are few and far between now.

As for Nimoy, RIP indeed :( RIP - if I can give you all one piece of advice, go read his timeline of tweets for the last couple of years, he'll tell you one critical thing. STOP.SMOKING.NOW

RIP Spock and RIP good values in television and movies, arguably, RIP Star Trek

Re:Live

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ignorant in the sense that Quinto's real life has no bearing on Spock in the film. It was just a trollish slam. If AC has an issue with Quinto's portrayal of our favorite Vulcan, insulting him without offering specific and relevant criticisms isn't helpful.

Re:Live

[hedleyroos]

I'm pretty sure his shirt was white and gold.

Re:Live

[nctritech]

Surprisingly, you've stated my opinion better than I think I could have. The death of Gene Roddenberry and the slow decline of Star Trek seem to have coincided. It makes a LOT of sense if you watch the various older shows and films and "making of" specials about Star Trek TOS and TNG. Gene had a vision and Gene made Star Trek what it was. After his death, some of the people who worked with him (like Jonathan Frakes) did a decent job of keeping his vision around, but few who watch, say, Voyager (and have seen TOS/TNG) would say that Voyager is generally a better series.

The newer Trek creators have forgotten that Star Trek is about exploring the nature and folly of humanity. Futuristic space exploration just happens to be an excellent container to ship it in.

Re:Live

[thedonger]

Agreed the second movie sucked balls. The homage was pure hollywood crap. Shows how JJ Abrams is utterly over-rated. After creating their Star Trek universe they had an opportunity to create new story lines. Instead they punted and decided to destroy a classic movie.

My thought on the reboot is not that they punted and rehashed old story lines; rather, it is meant to demonstrate that even with an alternate future from the original movies -- a smart way to retell a story with the same characters and not be beholden to an old story arc -- they couldn't escape their shared fate, or their shared destiny.

Regardless, I'm just going to enjoy the reboot. That is, unless the next one involves whales and time travel.

Re: Live

[Oligonicella]

Ah yes, the "I made more money so I have more class" theory.

Spock is not dead.

[Z00L00K]

Only the vessel for him carried by Leonard Nimoy has passed on, but as long as he's remembered he's not truly dead.

The Original Series did a lot within the frame of that series to actually poke at contemporary issues about racism and other things. It was not so much about the science as it was about studies on humanitarian issues.

Make it DARKER dammit.

[ihaveamo]

I'm sorry capt'n , I can't make the movie any darker! But seriously, its a good point raised ... why is darker always better?

Re:Make it DARKER dammit.

[garyisabusyguy]

I think that you need to look at the generation of authors that created Star Trek TOS, they (like Roddenberry) were military veterans from WW2 and seemed to believe that good could overcome evil, bridges could be built across cultures and the idea of service to the betterment of their society wasn't an alien idea.

Harlan Ellison wrote one of the darkest original episodes, City on the Edge of Forever, and maybe the popular acclaim that it received allowed younger authors to take the series into different directions. When TNG was produced the authors were largely younger than the original group, with Roddenberry providing oversight through the the later series that were almost playing a neo-classical hand with references to past episodes and different riffs on themes.

Now Roddenberry is gone and the ownership of Star Trek has been taken over by generations of authors that never knew life before there was a Star Trek...

At least that is my long-winded summation of how we got to where we are now. What would it take to get it back in line with TOS? Maybe a dose of optimism and belief in conquering great evils and striving for a greater society. Maybe it just isn't a widely held set of beliefs anymore

It is that sort of spine that Spock brought to the new productions when he was brought into the story line. I think that is what we will miss most about both Nimoy and Spock

Re:Make it DARKER dammit.

[discord5]

What would it take to get it back in line with TOS? Maybe a dose of optimism and belief in conquering great evils and striving for a greater society. Maybe it just isn't a widely held set of beliefs anymore

I like to think that the decline of Trek is a combination of various factors. If we disregard TOS, the series that is most in line with that line of thought is TNG. Picard (in the series at least) holds those ideas in high regard and acts in nearly all episodes as a strong moral compass. The hand of Roddenberry is strong in that series, but Gene Roddenberry died during the making of TNG yet somehow Picard hasn't made a complete 180 and the show retained much of its popularity.

The change in the Trek universe is much more visible in the series of DS9, which sets an overall darker tone with the Dominion war. The point has been brought up before that DS9 battled for viewers with B5 where the tone in general about the future is far less resembling the Trek utopia, although comparing it to most modern scifi it's not all that "grimdark". To be honest, one of my favourite episodes in all of Trek is "In the Pale Moonlight", where Sisko basically goes against everything he stands for because it was necessary to get the Romulans on their side.

Once you get to Voyager, the change is irreversable. Voyager pretty much throws nearly continuity and Trek philosophy out of the airlock as Captain Janeway happily trods her way through the delta quadrant making alliances with the Borg, violating the prime directive in an almost action-hero kind of style, using warp 9 at an almost daily basis (despite it being forbidden in TNG by starfleet), contemplating genocide with the Borg, oh and in the series finale violates the temporal prime directive... It did make for good TV though. Compare Janeway to Picard (in the series) and you'll notice that they embody totally different ideologies. You could argue that over 70 years away from the federation they had little choice but to go with the flow, but just imagine Picard in that position.

A lot of Trek fans attribute the change in Trek to Rick Berman, but I think it's more complex. The audience has changed, and above all science fiction (or rather special effects) became relatively cheap to make. Trek suddenly had to compete with a lot more shows, and instead of focusing on storytelling the choice was made to focus on things like action and effects. Voyager is the best example of having a lot of characters they could build incredible stories about, but opted not to. They take on a Maquis crew, but aside from a few episodes it hardly gets mentioned what kind of problems this causes. Bellana as a half-human, half-klingon could have had so much more character development but barely got any aside from 2 episodes in 7 years. The only character to really get any character development was 7 of 9, and even there the plot always felt so underwhelming.

By the time Enterprise came out, I think most Trek fans were giving up on the franchise. I remember at the time that few people had something good to say about the show, so I skipped out on it.

As for the Trek movies. Picard in the TNG movies is no longer the Picard from the series. A complex man who upholds his principles and beliefs above all else was written into the role of an action hero,and in some movies even has a one-liner to finish off the villain. The TNG trek movies are action movies in line with the Trek universe, and I think the Trek reboot just makes the gap between the Trek ideas even bigger. I don't think they are bad movies, as long as you watch them as action movies and not as TNG Trek.

The problem with Trek, I think, is that the franchise is overused. The only way it can continue on and attract an audience is in a way that derivates from the original work but strays as far from it as possible. The traditional Trek audience won't be happy unless Picard 2.0 comes along, and the traditional Trek audience simply isn't as big as the generic-action-movie audience. With how

STO

[arbiter1]

The Game Star Trek Online, on thursday they are gonna have an update that add's a memorial for him on vulcan.

The Optimistic viewpoint hade a source

[phayes]

The reason TOS had such an optimistic viewpoint is because it's creator, Gene Roddenberry believed firmly that in the future, Mankind would get beyond the childish violence. You youngsters also need to remember that the TOS was shot at the height of the Hippy/Flower Power movement.

Gene was still around for TNG but passed in 1991 before DS9 (1993) & it shows in the subject matter & tone. DS9 becoming much darker than the previous series for example.

Re:The Optimistic viewpoint hade a source

[fermion]

This is it. The original Star Trek, all of them, pretty much said that diplomacy occasionally backed up with defense would end up in the best results. That technology over time helps us build trusts. There are a few bad agents, but we are mostly good.

The new Star Trek says violence is the way. That the violent people win. And brings a new level of suspension of rational thought. That the Earth would have no defenses against a rougue star ship. That a meeting would have no defenses against a rough droid. That we would be running across the city chasing a suspect. That civilization could build a starship, but could not protect the citizenship. It is not so much a dark world, but a world that reflects the fears of technologically illiterate audience.

Life is pretty bad when your star trek movie makes less sense than the Fifth Element, which at least had good actors.

Re:The Optimistic viewpoint hade a source

[LaurenCates]

As long as we agree that The Fifth Element was a great movie in and of itself, we shall never be enemies.

Re:Optimists is for fools

[Stormwatch]

"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?" -- Terry Pratchett

Star Trek gave us a future to shoot for.

[Zombie Ryushu]

Star Trek gave us a future to shoot for. Lenoard Nimoy just acted in the TV Show. Gene Roddenberry had an optimistic future about Humanity, that really, we could all get along with each other, and use science, reason, and education to solve our problems. There are a few notable flaws with this way of thinking.

Where are the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindu, Sikhs, Jains, etc etc. The answer is: They don't exist. In the universe of Star Trek, there are no gods, only creatures we don't understand. Some friendly, some hostile we must overcome by intellect or force. All Humans in Star Trek are a kind of Secular Agnostic Deist. Nobody fights wars over the stuff we fight over because we are seen of one of Billions of Species spread all over this universe in a vast cosmos. This would result in social upheaval, mass hysteria, and suicides, and homicides at first as there are people so indoctrinated in these cults, that the shattering shift in reality would be unreal.

Another thing that makes the Star Trek Universe "Possible" we don't have is Matter Replication and Transmutation. We know enough to take any given source atoms and convert them to any given destination atoms with minimal effort. All thats needed is electricity to power the machines. This would result in the collapse of Capitalism as we know it. A kind of Socialism would take its place.

The last thing that would make Roddenberry's Future possible is Anti-matter Fusion and Fission. This would provide us with nearly limitless power generation capabilities. Its also extremely dangerous and can lead to a large scale ka-boom

Earth's Government in Star Trek is a unified secular government with a guaranteed Charter of rights. All three Abrahamic religions would flip their shit. As a government like this is described as being despised by the religions as a sign of the Apocalypse. The reason is with with a "Government of Planet Earth and all Terran Colonies" all laws would need to be based in reason and have a rational justification for existing and secular purpose. Equality and Egalitarianism would be necessary for this to work, and the Majority of religions are completely contrary to this concept. So, basically, for a Future like Star Trek to work, the heritage of our ancestors has to die.

Re:Star Trek gave us a future to shoot for.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindu, Sikhs, Jains, etc etc. The answer is: They don't exist.

Sorry, you're attributing your own wishful thinking to Star Trek here. Kirk, McCoy, and Uhura have spoken of Christ. Khan Singh is a Sikh. Worf's parents are Jewish. And the Vulcan salute is a traditional Jewish benediction, intended as such by Nimoy himself.

The problem with the Abrams Star Trek ..

[lippydude]

"Star Trek used a futuristic, nearly utopian world to explore our own moral battles and failings, and yet somehow always managed to weave in an optimism about humanity and our future. This is something, the author argues, that is sorely missing from the new J.J. Abrams movies."

The problem with the Abrams Star Trek movies, is they're not really Star Trek movies. They do contain a Starship called Enterprise and the crew are called Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Bones, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov. But the core has been excised and they've been rendered for a generic audience. You can tell Abrams doesn't trust his audience to engage with the characters, hence the reason the plot races at breakneck speed from one spectular effects/action sequence to the next. Take 'Star Trek Into Darkness' for instance. This just from the opening sequence, Enterprise underwater, volcano exploding, natives attacking and so on.