Post-Lupin
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Immanentizing the Eschaton
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Post by Post-Lupin on Sept 8, 2016 13:44:40 GMT -5
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Post-Lupin
Prolific Poster
Immanentizing the Eschaton
Posts: 5,673
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Post by Post-Lupin on Sept 9, 2016 8:14:45 GMT -5
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Sept 9, 2016 17:25:33 GMT -5
I thought this was a nice write up regarding DS9.
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Post by King Charles’s Butterfly on Sept 9, 2016 19:18:38 GMT -5
So I just started reading Leonard Nimoy’s I Am Spock, and inspired by his talk about the making of the episode I rewatched “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” and I’m putting it here because it’s amazing how much of Trek really starts here. You have the shorting-out control panels (interestingly one’s destroyed beyond repair with different-looking salvaged ones in the episode), Kirk telling Spock to leave orbit in case if he doesn’t come back in a specified time, Kirk ripping his shirt. Dehner and Lockwood even have more than a bit bit of Ilia & Decker and Troi & Riker (hell, Mitchell almost is Riker) to them. I feel confident that at least a few of the beats established in “Where No Man Has Gone Before” will show up in Discovery, and without any conscious revival either (incidentally Sisko reminds me a lot of Pike and “Emissary” reminds me a lot of “The Cage”—maybe why DS9 feels simultaneously like one of the “purest” Treks and the odd one out).
It also sets the tone for much of the first season in how empty it makes the universe seem—it’s mostly lost ships and empty planets—I don’t think we’ll be getting that this time, since it appears we’ll be going back to the crowded, almost claustrophobic space opera of Enterprise (in TOS space is big and unknown; ENT, as a prequel, was operating in what was “known space” to the writers and never took the unknown and uncomfortable aspects of exploring space seriously). There’s also an odd backwards-looking plot element linking it to the Cage, with an old ship’s SOS—or in this case black box—being the thing that starts up the plot. And in a big departure it’s implied that the Enterprise will be exploring past our galaxy, in contrast to “The Cage” where FTL travel’s implied to still be a new thing.
But the big echo forward, and one I didn’t really expect even though I remembered the outline of the episode (probably haven’t seen it since it was aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in 1998-99). It’s the theme of transcendence, linking it to early TNG of all things. There’s the very odd ESPer aspect, treated completely straight out of a contemporary parapsychological handbook, which is implied as being the next stage of human evolution. Although we talk a lot about the shift Roddenberry made between TOS and TMP and/or TNG’s season one but that theme of transcendence is there from the beginning. It’s different in each.
In TNG it’s similarly, though positively eighties, new-agey (remember Lwaxana’s little monologue in “Haven?” No? You don’t remember “Haven?” at all?), though the episode with the closest thematic resemblance to “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” “Hide & Q,” the biggest danger seems to be that beardless Riker will be more smug than usual. In “Where No One Has Gone Before” galaxy-spanning telekinesis is actually depicted positively. In both, cases, though, it’s something to be developed and grown into. We’re getting close, we’re on the right track, but we’re not there yet.
TMP’s is the most interesting, perhaps—here transcendence comes from the search for meaning, and it’s achieved by reconciling logic with emotion (Nimoy’s underrated in TMP) and humanity with its machines, making it the rare (and perhaps only significant) positively transhumanist installment of Trek.
“Where No Man Has Gone Before,” though, has the most punch, literally and figuratively. The worry expressed by so many about the nuclear age, that we don’t have the maturity for the power we’ve amassed, is brought to the bodily level Mitchell goes from merely cocky to genuinely threatening. His powers aren’t just destructive—he also makes a garden—but for all his power he remains small. Rather than the unknowable dimensions promised in TMP and TNG he wants to impress his goddess, and he makes a garden (an Eden—and Kirk says he might not be God) for her. Kirk also calls Mitchell a jealous God, like one of the very human gods of the Ancient Mediterranean, and asks him to acknowledge his limits. If TMP and TNG deal with what we might be, TOS is about regulating who we are. Dehner’s admiration for Mitchell foreshadows McGivers’s admiration of Khan—there’s period sexism there, certainly, but also a warning about the allure of power that isn’t tempered by humanism.
Trek’s uniquely good at facing who we are and what we might become in an accessible way—so accessible it’s easy to watch without really noticing. Trek’s been in the background for much of my life, to the point where I couldn’t really identify its influence. If it’s anything for me it’s part of that drive to be better.
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Post-Lupin
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Immanentizing the Eschaton
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Post by Post-Lupin on Sept 10, 2016 7:35:15 GMT -5
I thought this was a nice write up regarding DS9. Plagiarise Babylon 5? (Didn't say that in comments there, because DS9 meant a lot to her... but it's not just me being snide here, B5 had pretty much the same effect on me.)
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Post-Lupin
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Immanentizing the Eschaton
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Post by Post-Lupin on Sept 10, 2016 7:41:12 GMT -5
@jeanlucdelemur: Excellent work there (username/comment etc).
If you can handle the high Woo levels, Chris Knowles on the influence of Newage stuff like Esalen on Trek in its various stages (especially 'Haven' and 'Insurrection') has a lot of fascinating titbits.
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Post-Lupin
Prolific Poster
Immanentizing the Eschaton
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Post by Post-Lupin on Sept 10, 2016 13:51:10 GMT -5
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Post by King Charles’s Butterfly on Sept 10, 2016 20:34:12 GMT -5
Hmm, Post-Lupin, that was a very woo-ish for me (and while I wouldn’t be surprised in Esalen ended up an influence on big influence on Trek made under Roddenberry’s aegis, even if indirectly, “Justice” is certainly not an idealized portrait of it, of if it is the philosophy there’s much stricter and more cult-like than I thought). But woo found itself attracted to Trek very early—Nimoy recounts that some of his first fan response was from people thanking him for “embodying” Spock, an actual alien.
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Post by Floyd D Barber on Sept 10, 2016 21:57:42 GMT -5
I remember the first run of Star Trek. It's really difficult now to realize how different it was than anything that had come before. It's hard to imagine how different TV, and the world itself, was then. Televised space shows had mostly been kid's shows like Buck Rogers or My Favorite Martian. I think Star Trek was closer in tone to more thoughtful shows like Twilight Zone, and Outer Limits, than it was to any of the space shows that preceded it. I started re-watching ST-TOS the other night. The remastered video and audio is pretty wonderful. The first episode that played was the unaired pilot, which I had seen before only when Roddenberry screened it at an appearance of his I was able to attend many years ago. I didn't remember much about the pilot, and the copy he had was in pretty poor condition. (He, himself, seemed in rather poor condition that night, talking rather aimlessly about the series, and then going into detail about his hoped-for next project, who's plot, it seemed to me, was a direct ripoff of ET. I chalked it all up to advancing age, possible weakening health, and boredom at giving the same presentation for what had to be the 1000th time.) What struck me about seeing the unaired pilot again was how solid it was. I think it would stand up to broadcast even today. It had some very dated attitudes, but overall was more serious and less hyperbolic than a lot of the series' episodes. The plot held together. The cast gave solid performances, with Nimoy being the only actor (and character) to carry over into the series as broadcast. The most fascinating thing about this incarnation of Spock was that one of the first thing he does is touch a "singing' plant, and break into a big grin. It was a delight. I personally, would have loved to see a (possibly younger, less cynical with age and experience?) Spock who was still extremely logical, but more open to a sense of wonder, and with a very dry, very sharp sense of deadpan humor. From what I have read, the original pilot was considered too cerebral, and as such was scrapped, and the more kinetic version that was aired was created. I think the original was simply ahead of it's time. A similar fate, although much more extreme, befell Trek's immediate predecessor, and, I believe, competitor during it's first season, Lost In Space. Full disclosure: I have a warm spot in my heart for Lost In Space, mostly because I was almost the same age as Will Robinson when the show aired. Watching Kirk and Spock and the enterprise was great, but a couple of years before that, watching a kid my own age having intergalactic adventures (and his own robot) was pretty sweet. LOS began surprisingly dark, which will probably shock anyone who isn't really familiar with the show. It took several episodes before it succumbed to a terminal case of Irwin Allen-ism, with the switch to color from B&W in the second season coinciding with the premier of Batman competing with LOS in it's time slot hastening it's slide into camp. By the third season, it was down to talking carrots. It was a pretty good kids show, but in no way serious si-fi. Star trek was something totally different from anything that came before. It was a product of it's time, the same era that saw such experimental and groundbreaking shows as Mission Impossible, and The Prisoner changing the playing field for television. I believe if it had debuted even a few years later, the tone might well have been closer to this unaired pilot. I wish that series, created at that time, with those actors, existed in the Star Trek universe as the adventures of Pike and crew in the years before Kirk took command of the Enterprise.
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Post-Lupin
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Immanentizing the Eschaton
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Post by Post-Lupin on Sept 11, 2016 8:33:16 GMT -5
Hmm, Post-Lupin , that was a very woo-ish for me (and while I wouldn’t be surprised in Esalen ended up an influence on big influence on Trek made under Roddenberry’s aegis, even if indirectly, “Justice” is certainly not an idealized portrait of it, of if it is the philosophy there’s much stricter and more cult-like than I thought). But woo found itself attracted to Trek very early—Nimoy recounts that some of his first fan response was from people thanking him for “embodying” Spock, an actual alien. Ever hear this Harlan Ellison story? So, Harlan's speaking at a Trek convention. He's talking about writing Spock's dialogue for 'City'. A male voice from the back of the hall: "YOU LIAR!" Astonishingly calmly for him, Harlan asks what he meant. The guy insisted that Harlan could not have written Spock's dialogue because Spock was real. At most, he allowed that it was possible Harlan suggested things Spock (and, let's be clear here, he did not mean Nimoy) later said. This, in a nutshell, is why I'm fascinated by religions based on pop culture.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Sept 11, 2016 13:51:05 GMT -5
Some of my earliest TV memories include watching two beings contemplate the joys of dying together on the bridge of the Enterprise ("Return to Tomorrow"), a guy turning off another guy because he's a fricking android ("The Measure of a Man"), a guy being attacked by a skeleton in a swamp (either "The Emissary" or "Where Silence Has Lease," it's Worf fighting the skeleton guy on the Holodeck circa season two) and a British voice speaking of "Space... the final frontier" as a starship comes into view.
I don't know who I'd be if there wasn't a Star Trek, but I'm not sure I'd be able to recognise that person. The extent to which I obsess over geeky pursuits in general always comes back to Star Trek in the particular, and there's a fundamental decency to its humanism which manifests, in different ways, across its storied history, and which I'm affectionate towards the way I'm not really with much less in the way of TV morality (and this is particularly true really whenever Picard is the voice of that decency.)
I guess I'll just leave you with some of my favourite speeches now, because man, would I love speeches as much as I do without Star Trek? I don't even know!
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Post by King Charles’s Butterfly on Sept 12, 2016 15:56:49 GMT -5
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Post-Lupin
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Immanentizing the Eschaton
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Post by Post-Lupin on Sept 30, 2016 18:31:18 GMT -5
Today was the 25th anniversary of the first transmission of 'Darmok'; one of the best hours of SF TV ever.
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