Trek Literalism

If you've read any of my earlier posts, you've probably noticed that I am having a hard time enjoying the original Star Trek series.  Here's the short version: it often comes off sexist, the acting seems pretty cheesy, and some of the plots are completely and totally unbelievable.

There.  You're caught up.

It's this last point that most inspires today's topic: unbelievable plots.


Expectations
I expect certain things from sci-fi:  I expect it to be self-consistent, and I expect the plots to seem plausible.  The plots I dislike most in the original Trek are things like "hrm, an exact copy of Earth, well, let's not investigate that at all" or "look, a planet full of English-speaking humans with TV studios and guns, whose culture is coincidentally just like ancient Rome, that's normal" or "mobster planet, that makes sense, let's take it over and be mobsters, too".


Literalism vs Contextualism
As I was ranting about this to a friend, she stopped me and pointed out that I was a "Star Trek literalist".  Like biblical literalists, I have been refusing to interpret these stories in the context in which they were written.  If the Enterprise shows up to a mobster planet, then I think they are telling me that a mobster planet literally exists in the universe of Star Trek.

So the mobster episode, I guess, is a not really a story about a star ship that finds a mobster planet; it's a story about mobsters, which the writers had fun telling, and for which Star Trek was merely a venue.  I'm trying to be sympathetic to the fact that this show was being made by people, and sometimes, those people were just having fun and not trying to create an alternate universe of truths.


I Have A Context, Too
I've been trying to consider Star Trek more in context of its time and place.  What's considered sexist now was considered progressive 50 years ago.  (Even so, I still can't excuse the abusive dynamics of, for example, The Enemy Within.)  But it's still tough for me to contextualize the original series.

The world I was born in was markedly different from the world in which the original Trek was born.  And the world I live in now feels very different from the one I was born into.

Even over the past two or three years, I feel like the world around me is becoming more "woke".  Just look at a trans woman unseating the author of a bathroom bill, or the long list of people speaking out about abuse in Hollywood and the way public attention on the problem is having a positive effect.  So the gender and sex dynamics of the Trek of 50 years ago are hard to swallow, no matter how much I try to contextualize them.  But I digress.

As far as plots go, an important difference between the world I grew up in and the world in which Star Trek premiered is that I grew up watching sci-fi that was inspired by the immense fandom that the original Trek collected in syndication.  When it was new, the original series was exploring new territory for television, and there was nothing much to compare it to.  The audience at that time had nowhere near the expectations for it that nerds have for new shows today.

After Trekkies worldwide had spent 20 years picking over the bones of the original and rationalizing it into something resembling a literal narrative, Star Trek: The Next Generation was born.  Unlike the original, TNG debuted to an audience of nerds who had certain expectations.  I think this context made it more consistent and easier to digest from a literalist point view.  So perhaps I've always taken a literalist approach to sci-fi because I was raised on TNG and on other stories that mostly work when taken that way.  Maybe that viewpoint is a privilege of my own time and place.


Pushing Forward
As we push toward the end of season 3, I'm trying to be more forgiving of 50-year-old flaws.  I'm trying to lower my expectations a bit and meet the original Trek where it is.  (But I'm very, very much looking forward to starting TNG next year.)  Here's to the last 19 episodes!

Cheers!

A Piece of the Action

Status Report
It's week 34 of the Seven Year Trek.  We have managed to consume 47 episodes of the original Star Trek so far.  This means we're more than half-way done with TOS, but moving at about 70% of our intended pace.  Progress has been slow, largely due to low morale.  And morale is low because... Well, this is what we need to talk about.  We need to talk to you about "A Piece of the Action".

A Piece of the Action
Season 2, episode 17, entitled "A Piece of the Action".  I have seen some disgusting crud in my time, but "A Piece of the Action" takes the cake.  The Enterprise visits a planet entirely composed of 1920's Chicago gangsters.

All books on subjects related to
ancient Earth must use German
Gothic fonts per Federation law.

If this is news to you, take a moment to let that sink in.

The Lotians are, according to the episode, a highly intelligent but "impressionable" species whose culture may have been contaminated 100 years prior by contact with a Federation ship.  What apparently happens is that someone on that ship left behind a book called "Chicago Mobs of the Twenties".  In a gothic font.

So, we are supposed to believe that they found this book and utterly rewrote their entire society, including their technology, architecture, event their language and accents, to turn their entire planet into that thing they read about in that alien history book.

Even for Star Trek, this is completely unbelievable.

Koik!

So Kirk (pronouncing his name "Koik") forcibly takes over the ruling mob families and unites them into a peaceful... um... still mob planet.

According to historians, Gene Roddenberry wanted more comedy episodes after the success of "The Trouble with Tribbles" (which, incidentally, is only just okay).  Maybe this was comedy gold when it was filmed in 1967.  It's hard for me to say what was good 50 years ago.

Some of my favorite TNG episodes are comedies.  Will "A Fistful of Datas", itself already 25 years old, be this tired and painful for my son in 25 years?  Will I still think it's funny?  Will I still find the plot more or less believable?

This is more difficult than I realized

Status Update
We've made it through the end of season 1 and well into season 2 of the original Star Trek.  It is getting increasingly difficult to get excited about it, though.

Initially, I was writing about each week's episodes and getting into the details, but it's just too tedious.  Especially when I find myself wanting to write the same things every time:

• the dialog is often cheesy
• the acting is often bad
• the characters often do things that make no sense (including, but not limited to, flushing radioactive waste into the ship's ventilation system)
• military officers regularly act in ways completely inappropriate to military service
• we rarely meet any aliens, and those we do meet often look exactly like humans
• the majority of the "new life" we've encountered, we've destroyed
• the majority of women with speaking roles have slept with or are about to sleep with Kirk
• Kirk is basically portrayed as the Übermensch, and regularly:
• beats Spock at chess
• uses logic to convince computers to destroy themselves
• holds his own in fights against beings of super-human strength

The Dumb Spock Game

I have discovered a fun new game.  While you watch, imagine that Spock is not, in fact, brilliantly intelligent and computer-like.  Imagine instead that Spock, half-human and half-Vulcan, is actually of sub-par intelligence, even for humans.  He's very serious, though, and very proud of his Vulcan heritage, so everyone humors him.

When he gives incredible statistics out of nowhere, Kirk knows Spock is just making things up.  It's like when (just for fun) I ask my toddler what time it is, and he just says some random number he's heard.  We know that's not the actual time, and we know he's not basing it on anything at all, but it's cute and we don't discourage him.

This is how Kirk beats Spock at chess, and why he teases Spock about being too "logical".  This is why Spock's father is so disappointed in him.  Mentally, Spock is a toddler, and an embarrassment to all Vulcans.

Final Thoughts

I'll simply leave you with this: the most needlessly slow and awkward way Kirk could choose to sit.

Janice and Kirk

The Dagger in the Mind

The Enterprise brings aboard a Doctor Manette-type character; a smart man who’s been ruined by wrongful incarceration.  I enjoyed this one, though our poor Doctor Manette yells too much and it quickly gets annoying.  Also, in the future, flipping a switch in the wrong manner will instantly kill you.

The Corbomite Maneuver

Classic smart-aliens-are-testing-us-scenario, in which the Enterprise faces off against a spinning Windows icon and a menacing disco ball and everyone almost dies.  Uhura is suddenly wearing gold, not red.

The Menagerie, Pt. I & II

The classic human’s-been-captured-for-the-alien-zoo plot, played out over two episodes.  Spock pulls a hugely ballsy gambit to help a former coworker, and that adds lots of artificial drama to the storytelling.  The Federation has the technology to save the life of Captain Pike, who's been burned to a crisp and should be dead, but Future Medical Miracles! Unfortunately, future tech can't give us any communication from Pike other than one beep for yes, two beeps for no. Excellent appearance from Roddenberry’s wife, Majel Barrett.

"I recorded you breathing at night
and made it my new ringtone!"

The Conscience of the King

Kirk investigates a former butchering dictator posing as a Shakespearean actor.  The actor’s great; his manic daughter is a walking crazy girlfriend meme, and Kirk’s the honey pot, using the daughter to get to the father.  Sidenote: I always love hearing Uhura sing.  

Balance of Terror

We meet Romulans (Romans with spaceships) for the first time, who are disciplined military strategy geniuses.  Kirk is effortlessly better at war than they are (because of course he is).  Also, why are there Romans in space?  Like, how could these Romulans have patterned their entire culture around Earth’s Rome?  

Janice and Kirk

"My hairdo? It's just naturally
like this when I wake up."

Might I mention that these six episodes are the last with Yeoman Janice?  I’m told that someone at the studio didn’t like Grace Lee Whitney and she got fired, though no one is owning up to being the person who wanted her gone.  I didn’t have any real problem with Janice, but it was jarring to have her replaced with no explanation whatsoever after being an important secondary character since the beginning.  

Major hair respect, Janice.  I’ll miss that basketweave hair fez you’ve been wearing.  

Janice and Kirk have a weird relationship.  Kirk’s evil transporter double tried to rape her because his id has a major thing for her.  Janice straight up admits that she wants Kirk to look at her legs in the episode Miri, when she starts getting twitchy about Kirk flirting with a prepubescent girl.  It’s obvious that the writers are setting these two up as the archetypical  OTP-will-they-won’t-they-unresolved-sexual-tension-couple.  In this set of episodes, Janice brings Kirk meals unsolicited, puts a linen napkin in his lap, stands weirdly close to him on the bridge when she thinks everyone’s about to die in Balance of Terror, and makes herself oddly scarce when Kirk’s wooing the actor’s daughter.  

Janice seems to exist to help us empathize with the loneliness of Kirk’s command - it’s totally obvious to everyone that Janice and Kirk wanna tear each other’s clothes off, but he’s not allowed to, because he’s a swell captain, dedicated to the standards of Starfleet professionalism.  Except for when he rides the elevator shirtless. (Why?  Why, Kirk?  You couldn’t put on a shirt for walking around the ship?)

"As per a yeoman's duties, I'll perform
the daily sniffing of your uniform, sir."

Janice gets credit for being feisty - every time there’s a creepy misogynist stalking someone on the Enterprise, you can safely bet that Janice is the subject of their obsession, and she does usually speak up for herself: not that anyone takes her very seriously, even when she’s been assaulted.  Still, as a feminist watching Janice, I can’t help feeling like even her feistiness is dialed way, way down, to a level acceptable to the patriarchy, leaving her pliable and easy-going enough to play opposite a real man’s man.  

Janice and Kirk, alas, were not meant to be, but that’s awfully convenient for our old-fashioned red-blooded captain, who needs to encounter a different sexy lady every week.  Still, the way Kirk’s been mooning over Janice, you expect him to at least mention why she’s suddenly gone from the Enterprise.

Captain's Blog, Supplemental: Color Bias

The weirdo green wrap-around number.

In an earlier post, I wondered aloud about Kirk's weirdo green uniform.  My phone recently told me "You've shown interest in Star Trek" and suggested I read an article about almost this exact question: Shirts and Skins in TOS

It turns out that the yellow uniform we're used to was actually green all along.  To summarize the article, film is complicated, and color perception is complicated.  Film especially sucked in the 60's and 70's, and post-processing of the film turned green uniforms yellow.  Colorists added additional "red bias" during processing to make people's faces rosier and healthier-looking.  (There's also a fascinating YouTube video about the history of film's color bias as it pertains to race: https://youtu.be/d16LNHIEJzs)

So anyhow, the weird wrap-around top that Shatner wore was created by the costume designer in a deeper shade of green after seeing how skewed the film came out.

The more you know.

So now you know, there were no yellow/gold/mustard uniforms in the original Star Trek.  Only green ones.  Crazy, right?

The Enemy Within / Mudd's Women / What Are Little Girls Made Of? / Miri

"Kirk likes eggs, so I hate 'em!"

Ugh.  Let's get this over with...

Synopses

The Enemy Within
A transporter malfunction splits Kirk into two antithetical people.  Sulu almost freezes to death.  Frost doesn't form until 117 degrees below zero.

Mudd's Women
The Enterprise interferes with a business supplying wives to rich miners.  "Venus drugs" are no more effective than a placebo.  The magic feather was just a gag!  You can fly!  Honest, you can!

Ron Popeil invented a machine that
clones people into robots AND
rotisseries chicken.

What Are Little Girls Made Of?
Nurse Chapel's former fiance starts turning people into robots with an ancient robot-making machine.  Robo-Kirk infiltrates the Enterprise to yell at Spock.

Miri
The Enterprise finds a band of orphaned children living alone an identical copy of Earth.  Kirk hits on a barely-pubescent girl.

Reactions

First off, there are two episodes in close succession in which there's an evil double of Kirk.  Really?

If they dressed me like that,
I would be angry, too.

Second, that dog.  That terrible, terrible, angry, weird dog in an alien-unicorn-dog costume.  Where was the Humane Society?

Third, "venus drugs" seem to just be pills that do your hair.

But mostly, I'm going to harp on the episode Miri.  Everything about this episode was wrong.

Kirk is really flirty with Miri, a girl who is just hitting puberty.  It's plainly wrong.  He's obviously flirting with her, and when she starts to show some affection for him, the rest of the away team has to explain that to him.  He's like, "Whaaaa?  She likes me?  Nah, that's crazy!"  You've been flirting with her basically non-stop since you got here.  Also, gross.

Then there's the fact that kids have been living alone, self-governing in weird little gangs, not aging, for 300 years.  And they just ran low on food.  What the hell kind of food have they been living on for 300 years with no agriculture or industry in their society?

No, no, no, no, no.

And lastly, we come to the captain's log at the very beginning: "In the distant reaches of our galaxy, we have made an astonishing discovery. Earth type radio signals coming from a planet which apparently is an exact duplicate of the Earth. It seems impossible, but there it is."  Nobody cared enough to ask why there was an exact duplicate of the Earth.  Not only is it ridiculous for it to exist, and more so for it to be quickly ignored, it was irrelevant to the plot anyway!

In summary, John Kennedy was a Catholic.

Where No Man Has Gone Before / The Naked Time

Recently we watched the third and fourth episodes of Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before and The Naked Time.

Phenomenal cosmic power!
(Itty-bitty living space.)

Synopses

Where No Man Has Gone Before
While exploring the edge of the galaxy, the Enterprise encounters an energy barrier that gives two crewmen godlike powers.  Godlike powers seem to include immunity to phaser fire, but vulnerability to large rocks.

Oh my.

The Naked Time
The Enterprise crew is intoxicated by an inhibition-stripping contagion that causes Sulu's shirt to disintegrate.  Kirk gets jealous and rips his own shirt.  Scotty can't change the laws of physics, but accidentally invents time travel anyway.

Reactions
The godlike powers plot was really not that different from the previous episode (Charlie X) and left me a bit bored.  Parts of it were completely inexplicable, and the rest was just cheesy.

Seeing everyone lose their inhibitions was fun, but even that episode had its fair doses of "seriously?"  Like when they have to give Kirk a shot, so they rip his shirt apart.  And after traveling back in time three days, they basically say "Well, that was interesting.  Some day, we may try it again."  Just stuffed that little trick in their back pockets for a rainy day, I guess.  It felt all wrong.

I'm starting to get this feeling of "okay, let's just get this over with" in season 1.  To be fair, some of it's cheesy because it's fully 50 years old.  Some things I think of as cheesy now were probably new and interesting at the time, and have now been copied to death.  But I think some of this cheese is why I had a negative impression of the original series to begin with.  Here's hoping it gets better.

The Man Trap / Charlie X

Tonight we watched the first two episodes of the original Star Trek series: The Man Trap and Charlie X.

Synopses

The Man Trap
During a "routine" mission on a remote planet, a crewman mysteriously dies.  A shape-shifting monster goes around stealing the salt out of people's bodies.  Crew deaths?  4.

Charlie X
A spooky kid is rescued from a crash after 14 years in solitude.  He gets on-board and immediately starts melting things with his mind and creeping on Janice.  Spock encourages Kirk to be a father figure.

Reactions

The martial arts were different back then.
Or, will be different then, eventually.
Whatever.

Monsters!  Theremins!  3D chess!  Punching with clasped hands!  Console burns!  For me, all familiar old Trek tropes.

But as a first-timer on the original series, some things really surprised me.  Where are Chekov and Scotty?  Are they not introduced until later?  Why is Shatner wearing a weird green uniform, seemingly at random?

I was also surprised by Uhura's flirtation with Spock.  I had assumed that the Spock/Uhura thing was an invention of the J.J. Abrams movies.  Also, Spock plays the lute!  I had no idea.

Fun fact:  Light bulbs that illuminate the
entire face were not invented until 1967.

One scene keeps bothering me.  At one point in The Man Trap, Uhura encounters a strange crewman in the hallway.  He starts out being a bit forward, and quickly transitions to creepy and physically menacing.  Some other people show up and she runs off, but at no point does she report him to anyone.

I guess not reporting it was not troubling to audiences in 1966, but it is a bit unsettling to me now.

Charlie X really reminded me of a TNG episode called Suddenly Human, in which the Enterprise rescues a human kid who was raised by aliens.  Picard reluctantly agrees to try to be a father figure and teach the kid about being human.  But nobody gets melted or disappeared.  In some ways, Charlie X had more in common with The Twilight Zone.

I am so glad we're doing this.  I can't wait to see what's next.  Happy New Year!