Open Left

Not exactly nostalgia, no.... (4.00 / 1)

I kinda liked it as a whole, although the stupidity bothered me -- liberalism as imagined by parents who didn't want their five-year old seeing anything nasty. By the standards of the day, though, the coding was remarkable. Smart people were actually running things, and they came from San Francisco, not Dallas or Biloxi, or even New York.

I didn't mind Spock representing intellectuals. I suppose it was the raised eyebrow instead of the lecture that endeared him to me, and given the Pon-Far, or whatever the hell it was called, at least they didn't make him entirely sexless, although he was portrayed as rather spectacularly out of his depth once his id did make an appearance.

Shatner as the man of action, though...God forbid. An American meathead, plain and simple. The casting director should have had him pushed him out of an airlock, and found someone who could be decisive without chewing the arms off his captain's chair.

In an era which produced The Beverly Hillbillies, Mr. Ed, and The Monkees, Star Drek, as we called it then, was bad, but not as bad as it got.

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by: William Timberman @ Fri May 08, 2009 at 21:27:20 PM CDT

Kirk Had To Chew Them Off (4.00 / 2)

I agree that Shatner's acting was often over-the-top ("Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhn!"), but Kirk's character was comprised of so many extremes, it actually made a degree of sense.

You can't mention Spock without mentioning Bones. They were like the two little consciences resting on Kirk's shoulders. The interplay between those two characters (as ham fisted as it was at times) was so critical to original Trek. And yeah, there wasn't any subtlety to it. It was formulaic (although I think you could make an argument TOS's formula was smarter than TNG's more techno-babble driven formula). You could argue it was "stupid." But, then again, it was the sci-fi trailblazer, so it had to be digestible. The foundation is often the ugliest part of any building, but everything you construct afterward is dependant on it. Darn near everything sci-fi that followed Trek owes its existence to Trek. That's why I still enjoy watching the original series so much. Old Trek contains within it some of the DNA of not only every other show in the Trek franchise, but Star Wars, both incarnations of BSG, Babylon 5, etc etc.

And, yeah, San Francisco as the capitol of half the galaxy (or at least a good third of it): eat that conservatives. Ha!

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by: ecotect @ Fri May 08, 2009 at 21:43:57 PM CDT

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And yet, there are tons of right wing star trek fans.... (4.00 / 1)

I don't know how they manage to get past the obvious liberalism of the show...  

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!

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by: lord_mike @ Fri May 08, 2009 at 22:37:01 PM CDT

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Makes Sense (4.00 / 1)

"And yet, there are tons of right wing star
trek fans.... I don't know how they manage to
get past the obvious liberalism of the show..."

Star Trek is a very liberal show (that I've
always been a fan of), but it is also (like most
action flicks) profoundly reactionary. Namely it
glorifies violence and macho swagger.

So it makes sense that right-wingers would
also love the show.

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by: Katie @ Sat May 09, 2009 at 02:42:15 AM CDT

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New movie actually owes a lot to BSG as well... (0.00 / 0)

The space sequences looked and sounded a lot like BSG with the "handheld" look, etc... And, well... there are some minor plot elements that are similar as well.

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by: leshrac55 @ Sat May 09, 2009 at 04:00:37 AM CDT

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