Star Trek The Original Series

[Majestic]

This was something I found posted by one of the the users on my watch list on DeviantArt. I found it really inspiring and something that all those young uptight fans need to read who like having a bash or insult spree of where Star Trek originated from.

Star Trek TOS was the shining star of the first generation of science fiction television. No other show, not Battlestar Galactica, not Lost In Space, and not even the Star Wars films could hold a candle to the original Star Trek. Star Trek TOS had a vision. Not just a vision of a better future and a united Earth, but a vision of a united Earth working together with aliens. A United Federation of Planets free of racism, greed, bigotry, and corruption working together for mutual defense and the exploration of space. Star Trek TOS was a bigger show than any of the others. It did more with less money than any of the others. Star Trek TOS was a testament to how well a good story on its own stands without the aid of a high production budget. Star Trek TOS created the legacy and well deserved its fame. But despite its greatness it was still easily the worst of the Star Trek shows. There were a number of reasons for this.

Because Star Trek TOS was produced largely in the 1960s, a few of the incorrect sentiments of the day bled into the writing. For one, Star Trek TOS almost totally ignored the metric system in favor of English Imperial Units. This is an unfortunate reminder that TOS was a 1960s American television show. Americans in the 1960s were very hostile toward the metric system. Even to this day, there are a few future-based shows on American TV which ignore the metric system. I was especially surprised that Babylon 5 was one of them, which was produced in the 1990s! Additionally, Star Trek TOS had quite a bit of overt sexism inserted into the series. This was much to Gene Roddenberry's discontent, as the original TOS pilot The Cage presented a much more gender equal setting. The pilot was rejected and Roddenberry was (perhaps in not so many words) asked to make the show more sexist. And so it was. Fortunately, later TOS productions largely removed the sexism during the movie era. Star Trek eventually converted to the metric system as well.

TV networks' requirements though went far beyond a few trivial details. In order to boost ratings, Gene Roddenberry was forced to make many TOS episodes "less cerebral" so as to appeal to the average American more. Plots were simplified, fighting was frequent, technical problems were rampant. TV networks did everything they could to make Star Trek an action show, not a profound story with a science fiction setting. Still though, every once in a while, something profound bled through too. Episodes like All Our Yesterdays, The City on the Edge of Forever, The Day of the Dove, Errand of Mercy, Journey to Babel, Space Seed, and Balance of Terror among others will always leave me with fond memories. Gene Roddenberry struggled against both TV network politics and the cultural norms of the world. In the beginning it looked bleak. TOS was canned in 1969 during its third season. TAS was the wrong approach from the beginning and died during its second season in 1974. Third time was the charm though. The TOS films produced starting in 1979 were nearly all a huge success. No matter how much TV networks and right wing conservatism tried to kill off Trek and its ideals, it just kept coming back. Trek's perseverance won.

Star Trek TOS was not a perfect series. It had more problems than any of its descendants. But in the end, better executed TV shows had less effect on people. Star Trek was the first truly great science fiction television show to be created for it was the first to have a truly optimistic vision for humanity. Had it not been for Star Trek TOS, the second generation of science fiction would have never been born and grown into the glorious era of storytelling that it was. Star Trek TOS was the shining star. It was the undeniably the best of the first generation science fiction television shows. It was way ahead of its time and it set the standard for future science fiction television. For this it has become the most famous science fiction television show of all time. At the time, to quote Star Trek I, the human adventure was just beginning. The legacy Star Trek TOS left behind was extraordinary. Any man would be lucky to leave a legacy behind half as impressive as Gene Roddenberry's.

 

[Jetfreak]

Great find Majestic, and kudos to the writer. I've really gained an appreciation of TOS over the years.

Hard to believe that back in 2k7, I never bothered to add a Constitution Class in my Armada 2 build, how times have changed.

 

[CABAL]

Yeah, the problem with TOS when it aired was that the network kept trying to force it to be something it wasn't and conform to a formula that would guarantee a certain demographic. Now of course we also realize that several other things didn't work. There's no way you could operate that ship with just switches, for instance, and some of the science is outdated or just doesn't make any sense.

I suppose if there's a moral to all of this, it's that if you have a show or movie that you want to make, you need prove yourself before you start your dream project. That way the network will let you do what you want more. I imagine that TNG was much more what Roddenberry envisioned than TOS.

Hard to believe that back in 2k7, I never bothered to add a Constitution Class in my Armada 2 build, how times have changed.

Yeah, the Connie has grown on me too, but I still don't include it because it just doesn't fit the time period I'm going for. I have thought about it, though, several times.

 

[thunderfoot]

Like this, Majestic. except for one thing. The statement that "right wing conservatism" killed Star Trek. I am a right wing conservative. I see no stigma or shame in this. Nor do I see myself as some sort of Agent of the Evil Powers. Neither do I view "left wing liberalism" as the Great Enemy. According to this person's viewpoint, I should have been actively trying to kill off Star Trek instead of all those letters I wrote as a teenager where I was trying to convince the networks Star Trek should be put back on the air. Sorta wish they'd left this particular statement out of their post. Makes the rest of it look a little weak. One of the things I've always liked best about Star Trek in general is how petty name calling politics was deliberately left out by Roddenberry and the primary writer for the show, DC Fontana. There were political issues, yes but they were simplistic in nature and easily resolved by the final commercial break. And how many TV shows still follow this same format today? The Bad Guys are drawn as Bad Guys with their evilness over emphasized so we all "get it".

TOS was and is a product of its time. Like the music of the Beatles. And a great many people who were not there have knowledge of the Sixties which has been, for lack of a better word, 'sanitized'. Gene Roddenberry was not on some Grand Crusade to Right all the world's injustices. He was producing a TV show to make money for himself. He wanted to tell good stories. He wanted to tell relevant stories. He wanted people to remember and talk about last night's episode the next day. He was willing to compromise on some things to get Star Trek on the air, since he figured, rightly, half a loaf was better than none. He also knew he could get around some of the things the network execs and censors insisted on by some clever story telling and pretending the story had nothing at all to do with the Real World. Hardly anyone ever mentions one of my favorite episodes, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. Guest starring Frank Gorshin. Dark in tone, content and message. Even now I cannot watch this one without experiencing a sense of helplessness and lost opportunities. And being from Mississippi, I am pretty sure I have seats which are much closer to the stage than most whenever people start looking at racism, bigotry, prejudice and all the evils associated with them. I do not need to Wiki or Google the Civil Rights movement. It all happened right outside my door when I was growing up. I do not believe anyone has ever done a better TV story on the horrors of racism and bigotry than Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. To me, it is what TOS could do when it was at its best.

 

[Majestic]

I didn't mean to offend, I just copy what is was written. My aim is purely about what was said about Trek and what some people who came in when DS9 and Voyager was airing say about TOS, and not the nice things but the ones who say nothing but bad things. The ones too thick headed and arrogant to realise that without TOS their beloved DS9 or other Trek series would have never become about.

I have very little time for politics, as you yourself has said (at least mentioned about), there is too much of in in the online A2 Community. I personally keep away for government politics. I have a very basic understanding of Aussie politics and have absolutely no known of any other countries politics. I just vote for who I believe will do the least worst job out of the groups up for election which for the past few years is Labour in Australia.

I am sorry if I did offend, it wasn't my intention.

 

[thunderfoot]

You, Majestic, did not offend me. I do not think you could. Even if you tried to. I understand fully what you were trying to do by reposting what the other person wrote here. Like you, I get tired of the name calling and school yard bully tactics most people employ when speaking of or about politics. I just felt compelled to point out this person's presentation of his/her own opinion would have been a whole lot stronger had he/she chosen to not fall into the tiresome old trap of relying upon premade labels to describe a time and a people they know very little about firsthand.

 

[Majestic]

You, Majestic, did not offend me.

That's good to know.

 

[Hellkite]

As thunderfoot I'm a the same era and from a very old military family and can remember all to well that era as well. How the world has changed From those days. and have a father go off to war in South east Asia and you know what some off my earliest memories are of watching tos on the Bace channel; in fact I remember I was watching Star trek that they interrupted to cover the evacuation of Saigon and the Eps that was playing was "A Taste of Armageddon" and Still to this day every time I see it it take me back back to April 30, 1975

But I'm meandering off

The Fact is that the greatness of TOS is its the storytelling , the fact that it teaches and engages thought. This is the thing that most if not all modern shows have lost and try to make up for with mindless eye-candy.

"Step of Soap box "

 

[StarBlade]

Thunderfoot makes an excellent point-- it wasn't right-wing anything that killed Trek in 1968, then again in 1969, it was idiot network executives. When Trek originally aired it was on Fridays from 10 to 11pm. Nowadays anything on Friday nights is in what's referred to as "the death slot", because no one watches it. Trek had vision and ideals and it lived in a sort of metaphorical / parable-type storytelling sphere that can ONLY be achieved by the fantastical or science-fictional storyteller. But show business has never been about ideals or storytelling. It's always been about minimal input of dollars for maximum input of ratings and eyeballs. The original series was able to achieve what it did partly due to the time (space travel was the future then, now it's seemingly becoming more and more of a lost horizon), and partly because no one else was working in that space of the imagination (although this is not to discount films like Forbidden Planet and other great scifi classics that came before Trek).

If the original series had been given more leeway to succeed it probably would have been unspeakably wonderful, but that doesn't necessarily mean it would've been spared the ignorance of those same network executives who were more interested in following trends than making timeless programs. I think it was the very adversity which killed the show's original series that allowed its memory to endure. The same is true of a number of shows that have come along in the meantime, notably Firefly and Farscape and Jericho, which aspired to that same higher plane only to be given untimely ends to satisfy a bottom line. They suffered the same fate, but none of them had a Trek-like resurgence (yet) to make them classics of the genre (although Firefly in particular has a lasting resonance, at least online). What makes Trek great is that those that do see it for more than just an hour-long story, never forget it.