All the original SNL cast. I started watching in fall 1978, so it was from a season prior to that. Chevy Chase (great here as Spock) was only with the show from fall 1975-fall 1976, so that narrows when it aired. Notes say it aired 5-29-1976.
I was looking up an actor on IMDB who I saw in the list of credits was also in a Star Trek episode, and clicked on it. From there I clicked on a tab for "all episodes". One of the cool aspects is that there's a viewer-rating for every episode. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060028/episodes?ref_=tt_ep_epl
No surprise, the highest-rated episode is "City On the Edge of Forever" (9.3). The next highest is "Mirror,Mirror" (9.2) also I think beyond dispute in that ranking by most Star Trek fans.
But I was surprised to see a lot of my favorites not as highly rated as I regard them, such as :
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" (7.8), "The Man Trap" (7.3), "Space Seed" (8.9), "Bread and Circuses" (7.2), "A Piece Of the Action" (7.9), "Return To Tomorrow" (7.6), "By any Other Name" (7.7), "The Omega Glory" (6.2), "The Empath" (6.7) and "That Which Survives" (6.6)
To name a few.
Plus many I consider to be kind of lame ("The Naked Time", 8.0) rated high by voters. Eye of the beholder, I guess.
Old Vulcan proverb: “Show me a beautiful woman, and I’ll show you a man who’s tired of F*^king her”
Don't get me wrong, I love women. But observing things from the fantasy perspective of a Vulcan civilization devoted for millenia to dispassionate logic, one might unblinded by emotion reach that conclusion a lot more quickly.
At least once on these boards I recalled my agony in 1991 of having the love of my life marry another guy in Spain. Oddly, she kept calling me several times a week from Spain in the months after she initially left the U.S., and never bothered to tell me she was engaged to this guy. I actually found out through mutual friends, not her, despite her talking to me on the phone almost daily. She kept calling me before, during, and for 2 years after marrying, till I finally asked her to stop calling. For a while I clung to the delusion that she would realize she made a mistake and would in a short time leave him for me. She clearly was calling me for something she was not getting in her marriage. For a while having her cake and eating it too. Having emotions and not being a Vulcan, it took me two years to realize that 1) For her to do what she did, even if she left him I wouldn't want her back, and she isn't the person I previously gave her credit for being. And 2) I don't want to be anyone's second choice.
It was several years before I finally met a girl who restored my faith that there are good women still out there. And yeah, no matter how beautiful a girl is, if she doesn't have those inner qualities, her looks eventually won't be enough.
It does piss me off when actors, particularly from Star Trek, who supposedly represent a better future for humanity, become mired in very bitter divisive and highly opinionated politics.
Another who has disappointed me is Levarr Burton, and his obsession with black victimhood and identity politics, and calling people as milquetoast and moderate as Mitt Rommey "white racist".
As Paul Levitz said in answer to a similarly angry black reader letter in LEGION 297, who saw racism in discontinuing Tyroc and introducing a French-speaking black African character, Jacques Foccart/Invisible Kid, and comments by Levitz in a fanzine interview, that this reader interpreted as a racist exclusion of an African American character. To which Paul Levitz responded:
Quote:
Actually, my quote in the interview was to say that by the thirtieth century I believe racial problems will be a thing of the past, and that certainly includes the holocaaust. If not, I rather doubt there ever will be a thirtieth century. For that reason, I found Tyroc's origin (as a character who came from an island of blacks who had formed a separatist state to avoid prejudice) anachronistic, as was the scene in that issue where all the Legionnaires pointed to their skin color to show they weren't prejudiced (see --we have green, blue and orange people). Jacques Foccart was introduced not for the sake of his color, but as a hopefully interesting character, with a French accent because of his origin on the Ivory Coast of Africa, where the French have taken great pains to help their language live on. An "American Black" (quotes because in the thirieth century our stories presume America is no longer a distinct political or social boundary) would speak Interlac exactly as the other Legionnaires do, so the accent was added for an extra touch --without my being aware of the particular example of prejudice you mention existing in the modeling industry.
You have seen Jacques in considerable action in previous issues, and more will follow. As well as more presence of other ethnic groups in 30th century stories, something I admit we've neglected from time to time, not from prejudice but with preoccupation with our existing characters. --Paul Levitz
In the example of Gene Rodedenberry and other writers of the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, I saw them as projecting a unified and better future, in an effort to create a vision for a better future to imagine and aspire toward. A future with true unity and a shared universal culture, without prejudice, without resentments and warring subcultures. In recent years, I've seen actors like Levarr Burton and Patrick Stewart, and like-minded leftist writers, projecting their prejudices onto the future, as a vision for preserving those grudges long into the future, and thus sabotaging the future.
I'm pretty sure that worries about Brexit and the Orange Bad Man will be long past in that future. The petty grudges of these actors will be seen as anachronisms, that will diminish their own legacy. They will be seen as part of the problem, that eventually faded away.
I think in future retrospective, Trump's presidency while controversial and hotly disputed in its time, will be seen (like the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan) as having shown great leadership and made difficult choices toward a vision of the future, that preserved and resurrected a United States, and a world, that was in jeopardy before his presidency eliminated those dangers.
Way to alienate 50% of your audience, Trek producers.
Quote:
I don’t know about you, but when I woke up this morning I thought to myself, “self, what the [world really] needs is Hollywood to destroy another classic franchise into a pathetic tool for leftist politics.” I’m just glad Star Trek is here to fulfill that vision.
I enjoyed Trek:Picard. Wasn’t expecting to but some of the guys at work got me to check it out. I’ll have to check out the other trek show now. One thing that doesn’t make sense to me is the Federation’s ban on androids apparently doesn’t extend to the holographic AI’s. Maybe I’m missing something there but those are both similar things.
My favorite of the STAR TREK original series posters. There's also an index key to all the characters. It's fun to chaallenge your memory and remember all the characters and what episode they appeared in.
I felt like watching some classic Trek today so I pulled up Season 1, Episode 1 ("The Man Trap") on Hulu today. "The Man Trap" might be better known as "the Salt Vampire" episode.
After having not seen this one in years (if not decades) I was surprised that, a few hiccups (Uhura trying to flirt with Spock and an incredibly cheesy plant puppet) notwithstanding, the first episode established a lot of what made Trek "Trek": A mystery on a strange world, a moral dilemma about species extinction vs human life and a nascent version of the "Kirk/Spock/McCoy" trinity.
I could also see how, back when it first aired, parts of the series could have caught people by surprise. The diversity of the cast was there at the beginning. The opening had Kirk, McCoy and a crew member named Darnell beam down to a archeological outpost for a routine medical examination. The way it was set up Darnell seemed as major a character as McCoy or Kirk but he died pretty quickly (even if he wasn't wearing a red shirt). Later, when the salt vampire is loose on the ship it appeared as if Uhura, Sulu or Rand might get killed like Darnell (none of them were in the opening credits back then and you could have easily assumed all them were just cannon fodder, especially the "minorities."). There was even a moment or two where characters attempted to suggest that the monster might be something that could have been dealt with by more peaceful means if Kirk allowed it.
I'm tempted to rewatch the whole series from start to finish now.
I saw that one recently too. They did a good job on the salt vampire Imho. I think that episode was a little different than many of the others because there was a little bit of time with the secondary characters. Rand would disappear after the first season and Sulu pretty much stayed at his spot on the bridge beyond a couple of episodes. The shows main characters were the big three and that was probably smart but I always liked liked the episodes that gave us a little more focus on the secondary characters. Growing up in a very rural area the minority cast was the only ones I would see outside of Sesame Street and Little Rascals for a long time. And I wonder how different comic titles like Legion of Superheroes or X-men would have been in the 70’s without Trek?
Have not watched Star Trek Discovery but I see they have a spin off show coming using the Captain Pike Enterprise and crew that I’ll have to check out. I remember when Marvel got the rights to do Trek and they had one title using those characters and really being into it. Can’t remember much about it now though so it probably wasn’t the greatest.
I recall a STAR TREK comic I lucked on in late 1996, an X-MEN/STAR TREK one-shot book that was more of an artist jam. But the best part for me was about 15 pages of previews of all the pending new STAR TREK titles about to be released at the time:
Virtually all of these had the original series uniforms and setting, that made them a lot more appealing to me. But even the ones that didn't had nice art that was consistent with the other new series.
I was less into the earlier 1980 STAR TREK series from Marvel, that ran 18 issues. Mostly because it followed the first 2 movies rather than the original series.
There was a 1984 STAR TREK series from DC also, that ran 56 issues. And then a 1989 STAR TREK series, that ran a very respectable 80 issue, the first 15 scripted by Peter David. But again, my affection is for the orginial series, and both of these continued in the visual style of the first six STAR TREK movies.
Have you caught any of the DWI ones by Byrne? I seem to remember Peter David writing some great paperbacks for StarTrek. One of my favorites was with Q and his son.
I know IDW has done a number of STAR TREK series I haven't seen.
The one I saw on the stands was scripted by Byrne, with photo art (I believe the term is fumetti) instead of comic art. Probably some of them have good work, but I haven't seen them.
Ooops sorry it is IDW. I haven’t checked them out myself either. I remember being as a kid being super excited seeing the first Marvel issue of Trek but while the movie adaptation was okay I don’t remember being to impressed with the run. Kind of thinking about checking out the collections of the newspaper strip. The first story from the reviews I’ve read starts before the first movie does and you get to see Decker and gang some more.
The new season of Discovery will have them 1000 years into the future. They will be far from any Trek cannon. The writers will be free to tell stories they want to and not worry about stepping on Trek history.
"My friends have always been the best of me." -Doctor Who
"Well,whenever I'm confused,I just check my underwear. It holds most answers to life's questions." Abe Simpson
I can tell by the position of the sun in the sky, that is time for us to go. Until next time, I am Lothar of the Hill People!
I’ve enjoyed Expanse and Dark Matters also but there was a time when you could just take for granted a Trek show being on the air along with a couple of other “people on a spaceship having adventures” type of shows. Shows like Babylon 5, Lexx, Andromeda and that show on SciFi that had muppets for example. The last couple of years it seems like there’s been a return.
They will probably mess up a Pike series too. No one remembers what Trek is about apparently.
For me, the original Star Trek series, and the franchise beyond that, is about an optimistic future, where the human race didn't have a nuclear war or an otherwise dystopian future, but all races and cultures progressed into a truly utopian near-perfect society, where everyone is educated and people of all races have a shared and prosperous society.
I think somewhere midway into Star Trek: The Next Generation, and definitely into Deep Space Nine, they diverted the franchise into a more dark future, and got away from what Star Trek is supposed to be all about. I think Gene Roddenberry died in 1991, around the time of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and it was about that time I think the franchise shifted in direction and lost its way.
I'm sure virtually everyone reading this already knows, the 1967 episode that aired is credited to Harlan Ellison, but is in fact vastly different from the screenplay Ellison wrote. The aired episode was re-written by Gene Roddenberry (and possibly others) to focus on Dr. McCoy as the one who changed time, who Kirk and Spock had to travel through time to 1930 to eliminate the changes to Earth history that McCoy caused. Roddenberry in particular changed the episode's ending. But even so, it is ranked by most as the best episode of the series.
This new comic version presents the story as Ellison originally wrote it, WITHOUT the changes made in the televised episode. Ellison also had complaints about the appearance of the ruins and city of the time-Guardians, he called the time portal a "donut". I actually thought it was really cool. And the Guardians not having faces made them more compellingly mysterious to me. What Ellison envisioned was considered way too expensive to create, and would have taken the show way over budget, and stretched the production time.
As I recall, it was the screenplay by Ellison that won the award for Best Teleplay from the Screen Actors' Guild for 1967, and not the televised version. And that gave Ellison quite a bit of satisfaction. Ellison severed his ties with the Star Trek series in a big blow-up in 1967 for changing his teleplay, possibly without his consent. I first read Ellison's original script version in a mid-1970's book titled Six Science Fiction Plays. But it has been published in one or two other books since then.
This 5-issue series finally presents Ellison's unused screenplay in a visual narrative form that is comparable to watching the 1967 aired episode, allowing you to fully compare the two.
I like both (the original aired episode, and this 5 issue adaptation of the unused screenplay), but have a preference for the aired episode. But there are aspects of this screenplay adaptation that are superior, I think. Such as the more full development of Kirk and Edith Keeler's love for each other, and the intimate connection they have, that makes the loss in the final scene more impactful. Also, the art has remarkably good likenesses of all the characters, as contrasted with the often horrible likenesses in many other comics versions I've seen.
The banter in the televised episode between Kirk and Spock is much better in the aired episode. It is both funny, and develops both characters quite well, as Kirk pushes Spock's buttons. For example:
SPOCK: Build a pnemonic memory circuit here?!? In this zinc plated vaccuum tube culture?!? KIRK: Yes... it would present a rather difficult exercise in logic... SPOCK: [ raises eyebrow in surprise and agitation] KIRK: I'm sorry... I sometimes expect too much of you... SPOCK: [ raises eyebrow in even deeper agitation ]
There are many scenes like that, more polished in the final aired episode. For me what makes the aired episode superior is its focus on the central characters of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. It eliminated other characters to focus on them. Also interesting is that Scotty and Uhura appear in the final aired version, but are absent from the screenplay version. Yeoman Janice Rand, conversely, was no longer a character on the show when the episode aired in 1967, written out of the series after the first dozen or so episodes (City on the Edge of Forever was episode 28, of 29 first-season episodes). Ellison in the text lets on that the series was still not fully developed when he wrote the screenplay for the episode. And you can see watching all the first season episodes the changes that occurred in Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Uhura, Janice Rand, and other characters that could have taken on greater roles but were eliminated.
This was published by IDW in 2014, and I'm amazed I never heard anything about it till now.
I have to agree, M E M. Star Trek: Discovery is outstanding. My brother loaned the Season 1 DVD to me on Blu-ray, and I was very pleasantly surprised. Visually, it is very high-end, like a movie with a $200 million-plus-budget. I've seen the first 4 episodes so far.
My only complaint is it's a bit hard to follow and requires a lot of re-winding to catch all the dialogue, particularly the scenes in Klingon language with subtitles. While intelligent and inventive, with a lot of clever twists, it demands your full attention and can be difficult to follow.
I have to agree, M E M. Star trek: Discovery is outstanding.
Explain yourself.
The first episode was painful enough. Heaven forbid subjecting myself to 4 of them. After experiencing the pretension and self-indulgence of the pilot, it's clear the tone was set: just another shitty millennial retcon. I think the only feather in its cap is the fact that the show HBO has titled "Watchmen" is even worse.
There's a reason that Kurtzmann is being skewered after STD, Picard, and Lower Decks. ViacomCBS is losing shit tons of money (which is cool), but it's at Star Trek's expense.
Have not seen Lower Decks yet but very much looking forward to the Christopher Pike series. What kept me away from Discovery for so long was I thought it was just a prequel like Enterprise. Clearly not the case. I might have never bothered checking it out except they started airing it on the network. Agree with you WB about the Klingon parts. I missed quite a bit of the dialogue.
Pariah is right, it's not Star Trek. It's violent, myopic, pessimistic, millenial fluff meant to pander to the minority SJW demographic that don't even own a TV. It's a waste of money and the destruction of a franchise, in lieu of desperate modern virtue-signaling. No sale.
Oh and I doubt PIKE or Season Two of PICARD will ever see the light of day. With the new head of Paramount not onboard with Kurtzman's failures, where they are obviously losing money (see also: the collapse of CBS ALL ACCESS), and the fact that ancient-Stewart can't get covered by insurance due to age and the Wuhan Flu, I think STD is the last circle of the drain for this era of fanfic-Trek.
I have to agree, M E M. Star trek: Discovery is outstanding.
Explain yourself.
The first episode was painful enough. Heaven forbid subjecting myself to 4 of them. After experiencing the pretension and self-indulgence of the pilot, it's clear the tone was set: just another shitty millennial retcon. I think the only feather in its cap is the fact that the show HBO has titled "Watchmen" is even worse.
There's a reason that Kurtzmann is being skewered after STD, Picard, and Lower Decks. ViacomCBS is losing shit tons of money (which is cool), but it's at Star Trek's expense.
I thought I'd responded to this before, but the post isn't here.
Since I never watched the remainder of the episodes, I guess ultimately (even having both the first 2 seasons on DVD to watch wnenever I wanted) I didn't like the series enough to watch all the episodes. But I still think it's visually high-end and has some good twists and cliffhangers.
On the down side, yes, I have to agree that it's a bit overly "PC" with an exceptionally heavy ratio of female and minority characters, in the early episodes almost to the complete exclusion of white male characters. It was as if making that statement was more important to the series creators than the actual story, and it was a distraction from the actual story. And as I said before, it had many scenes that were too rapid, to the point that I had to frequently re-wind over and over to catch what was being said. Which to me is bad storytelling. While I still thought the story was interesting and provided a lot of dynamic characters and new concepts to explore, without my even realizing it and liking it enough that I intended to see the rest of the series, I ultimately bailed out. It just became too much of a chore to watch.
Pariah is right, it's not Star Trek. It's violent, myopic, pessimistic, millenial fluff meant to pander to the minority SJW demographic that don't even own a TV. It's a waste of money and the destruction of a franchise, in lieu of desperate modern virtue-signaling. No sale.
That's actually how I felt about STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE 9, and STAR TREK: DISCOVERY, at least in many episodes. They presented a much darker future than the original STAR TREK series by Roddenberry. And even many episodes of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION were a departure from the optimistic utopian future of the original series. While the movies also had some dark and political elements, I felt they overcame that by injecting a lot of humor that the series generally didn't have, at least not in the needed abundance the movies had (1980-1991 movies).
And it deeply saddens me that guys like George Takei, Levarr Burton, and Patrick Stewart are so rabidly "woke" and race-obsessed. To me it undermines the characters they played on STAR TREK, their attitudes are antithetical to the characters they portrayed. And if their attitude prevails in the next 50 or 100 years, the world will not reach the brighter and better 23rd century that Roddenberry's original series envisioned and inspired us to achieve.
If all this is true, I was unaware that William Shatner felt threatened by the popularity of Leonard Nimoy's popularity as Spock during the original series. Certainly, Shatner as Captain Kirk was very popular as well with viewers of the show, to the point that he should not have felt threatened by Nimoy's popularity.
The George Takei/Shatner feud we all know about. Likewise the Ellison feud with Roddenberry and the series producers over "City On the Edge of Forever". Some of the others surprised me.
If you haven't seen this, it's very much worth watching. I love how "the wrath of Khan" is done by bringing in a food inspector. "Full revolve, Mr Sulu!" William Shatner was the guest host in this episode, and was in multiple skits, including one where he was himself answering questions from fans at a Star Trek convention, and another where he played Oliver North in Senate hearings.
