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The Two Sides of ‘Star Trek’
nytimes ^ | May 9, 2009 | DAVE ITZKOFF

Posted on 05/09/2009 4:53:47 PM PDT by JoeProBono

It takes a certain mix of optimism and frustration to contemplate the possibility of space travel. To dream of navigating the cosmos is to assume that man has the resources and the know-how to propel himself into the heavens, but also some compelling reasons to exchange his home planet for the cold vast unknown. It was these seemingly contradictory impulses that shaped “Star Trek,” the supremely influential science-fiction television series whose three-season run yielded 40 years of sequels and spinoffs including a new feature film about the origins of Kirk and Spock that opened on Friday. Yes, the series is at heart a geeky space epic, but it is also one with a political and historical context.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: autism; gitcheegumee; goonch; joeprobono; mindlessresponses; nonsequitir; scifi; sonofbigfoot; startrek
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DIVIDED Frank Gorshin in the episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.”


1 posted on 05/09/2009 4:53:47 PM PDT by JoeProBono
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To: JoeProBono

2 posted on 05/09/2009 4:56:52 PM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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To: JoeProBono

Uh, he really, really needs some Visine or sumptin’
I’m just sayin’


3 posted on 05/09/2009 4:59:45 PM PDT by 50cal Smokepole (It's only recoil)
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To: JoeProBono

Star Trek anti-racist?

I disagree. It has a blatant pro-Human bias.


4 posted on 05/09/2009 4:59:51 PM PDT by Shermy ("The whole world has financed the United States, ...they have a reciprocal debt with the planet.")
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To: JoeProBono

Good lord. It is a movie, a really good movie.
These leftist are an unhappy bunch. Sorry as a baby boomer I will not apologize......


5 posted on 05/09/2009 5:02:18 PM PDT by svcw (There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who know binary and those who don't.)
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To: JoeProBono

Lokai was obviously less a character than Bele, why just look at them!

6 posted on 05/09/2009 5:03:12 PM PDT by Cvengr (Adversity in life and death is inevitable. Thru faith in Christ, stress is optional.)
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To: JoeProBono
Why do these idiots have to pretend to be pseudo-intellectuals and analyze science fiction?

Maybe they should have started with the classic "Killer Clowns From Outer Space".........

7 posted on 05/09/2009 5:03:49 PM PDT by Hot Tabasco (This country isn't going to hell in a handbasket, it's riding shotgun in an Indy car....)
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To: JoeProBono

“...,” the supremely influential science-fiction television series...”

You are kidding me.

It’s entertainment. It’s really bad entertainment most of the time.


8 posted on 05/09/2009 5:06:57 PM PDT by OpusatFR (Those embryos are little humans in progress. Using them for profit is slavery.)
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To: JoeProBono

Here’s the deal about space travel . . .

Investing in space travel is valid if:

1. You believe that life exists elsewhere in the universe.
2. We have the technology to mine and untilize resources from planets and asteroids.
3. Cost to benefits is direct and promises immediate pay-back.

It is not valid if:

1. Evidence of extraterrestrial life is less than conclusive. When UFO-ology graduates from the level of ghost hunts and parapsychology, we’ll talk.
2. We ain’t nowhere near able to extract resources from ANWR, let alone the moon, Mars or some other planet.
3. We’re bankrupt.

Discussion over.


9 posted on 05/09/2009 5:13:53 PM PDT by WorkingClassFilth (Actually, it all started back in Mayberry. Helen Crump was a traveler and Floyd, well, you know...)
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To: Shermy

10 posted on 05/09/2009 5:14:18 PM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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To: OpusatFR

yeah, but then again, if it had really been so influential, when it showed handdeld communicators, earily similar to cell phones, why didn’t it show gangstas and teens texting so fast their thumbs are about to fly off?

And when we saw Phasors, why didn’t we hear pleas of, “Don’t Phaze me , Bro!”....?

IMHO, too many cultural icons of the 70s were embedded in the scripts for it to have been ageless, but the series was good and a good iconoclast of that period.


11 posted on 05/09/2009 5:14:29 PM PDT by Cvengr (Adversity in life and death is inevitable. Thru faith in Christ, stress is optional.)
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To: Shermy
Star Trek anti-racist?

I disagree. It has a blatant pro-Human bias.

Since the Vulcans were in space long before humans left earth in the Star Trek universe, why aren't any creature with two arms, two legs, one head with two eyes pointing forward and ears of any shape on the side of the head called Vulcanoids rather than humanoids?

12 posted on 05/09/2009 5:15:13 PM PDT by KarlInOhio (No free man bows to a foreign king.)
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To: JoeProBono
That is just so wrong - so I stole it.
13 posted on 05/09/2009 5:18:20 PM PDT by KarlInOhio (No free man bows to a foreign king.)
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To: JoeProBono

Nice touch - Sloan Royal Flush units.


14 posted on 05/09/2009 5:21:45 PM PDT by WorkingClassFilth (Actually, it all started back in Mayberry. Helen Crump was a traveler and Floyd, well, you know...)
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To: Hot Tabasco

15 posted on 05/09/2009 5:27:56 PM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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To: KarlInOhio

How do you know they aren’t? Do you speak vulcan?


16 posted on 05/09/2009 5:32:24 PM PDT by mamelukesabre (Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum (If you want peace prepare for war))
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To: WorkingClassFilth

Except for:

1. A very good axiom is, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

2. The Earth is a single basket.


17 posted on 05/09/2009 5:44:46 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Everyone has a right to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.)
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To: JoeProBono

While I know that everyone these reporters know probably views Obama with optimism, the guy scares the bejeebies out of me and makes me think more of post-holocaust science fiction from the Cold War than Star Trek’s optimism, which actually has more in common with the “science is good” optimism of the 1950s than the hippies of the 1960s. Remember, when Star Trek did hippies in the 1960s, while it admired their optimism, their leader wound up dead from utopian foolishness after engaging in ends justify means fanaticism and in every episode where children wound up in charge (e.g., Charlie X, Miri, And the Children Shall Lead), the results were horrific and the children needed adults to control and lead them. Gene Roddenberry may have been a liberal in his day but he served in WW2 and the liberalism of the mid-1960s was far to the right of the Baby Boomer liberalism today.


18 posted on 05/09/2009 5:44:50 PM PDT by Question_Assumptions
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To: Sherman Logan

Well go shopping in about 10,000 years then.


19 posted on 05/09/2009 5:54:55 PM PDT by WorkingClassFilth (Actually, it all started back in Mayberry. Helen Crump was a traveler and Floyd, well, you know...)
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To: Question_Assumptions

Liberalism (Progressivism) in the mid 1960’s still had national pride and patriotism within it. The Leftist movement that hijacked progressivism during the Vietnam war destroyed these ideals.


20 posted on 05/09/2009 6:32:49 PM PDT by Thunder90
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To: WorkingClassFilth

What do you mean with the 10,000 year reference?


21 posted on 05/09/2009 6:38:42 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Everyone has a right to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.)
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To: JoeProBono

What were the implications of this scene and added graphics?


22 posted on 05/09/2009 6:44:26 PM PDT by tbw2 (Freeper sci-fi - "Humanity's Edge" - on amazon.com)
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To: KarlInOhio

1. The Star Trek universe made it clear humans did anything that didn’t kill them first. Vulcans didn’t make lots of mixed-breeds. Or create a lot of colonies that I saw in that universe. Thus humanoids expanded and bred far more compared to Vulcans.
2. The Federation was probably held together by human Rishathra (to borrow from Larry Niven). Which added human DNA even to alien gene pools, making them all “human-oid”.


23 posted on 05/09/2009 6:46:46 PM PDT by tbw2 (Freeper sci-fi - "Humanity's Edge" - on amazon.com)
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To: Sherman Logan

Wasting money on space exploration at this time is crazy. We have more than enough terrestrial problems to deal with and not enough resources or brainpower. Maybe, just maybe, if we last 10,000 more years we can go fooling around in space. It’ll take that long to solve the distance travel and we might have the funding for something irrelevant to life on earth. In short, space travel is the province of SF.


24 posted on 05/09/2009 6:46:49 PM PDT by WorkingClassFilth (Actually, it all started back in Mayberry. Helen Crump was a traveler and Floyd, well, you know...)
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To: WorkingClassFilth
It is not valid if:
4: Your planet has already been mined.

Like this one. Where did the Mayans go? How much gold did it cost them?

25 posted on 05/09/2009 6:51:05 PM PDT by rawcatslyentist (<P><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajsov1M4h50"> Thank You Satan 1:50</a>)
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To: tbw2

Implications of this scene?


26 posted on 05/09/2009 6:54:41 PM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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To: WorkingClassFilth

IMO, if we don’t get some of our eggs into an extraterrestrial basket we won’t be around in 10,000 years.


27 posted on 05/09/2009 6:56:09 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Everyone has a right to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.)
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To: JoeProBono

What are the doing in the picture?


28 posted on 05/09/2009 7:00:05 PM PDT by tbw2 (Freeper sci-fi - "Humanity's Edge" - on amazon.com)
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To: rawcatslyentist

Fine. When you can demonstrate to me that we’ve solved anything on this planet by way of government, we’ll discuss planetary travel and/or migration.


29 posted on 05/09/2009 7:01:00 PM PDT by WorkingClassFilth (Actually, it all started back in Mayberry. Helen Crump was a traveler and Floyd, well, you know...)
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To: Sherman Logan

Check post #29.


30 posted on 05/09/2009 7:01:54 PM PDT by WorkingClassFilth (Actually, it all started back in Mayberry. Helen Crump was a traveler and Floyd, well, you know...)
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To: Sherman Logan

IMF, the earth WILL be destroyed, and remade as it was intended to be at creation.

Really no need to worry about the “eggs in one basket”...

Because if my faith isn’t true, there isn’t even a point to humans existing another 10,000 years.


31 posted on 05/09/2009 7:03:17 PM PDT by MrB (Go Galt now, Bowman later)
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To: JoeProBono

Several lines of thought.

The first is, that all science fiction is a reflection of the times in which it was written. However, at the time Star Trek was made, there were some interesting contradictions about the direction it would take.

To start with, Star Trek had to compete with different visions of space and science fiction on TV, that predated and ran consecutively with it, such as Lost In Space (the space version of the Swiss Family Robinson), My Favorite Martian, The Invaders, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

For its part, Star Trek was supposed to be the space version of the western Wagon Train, but that idea didn’t last long. And fortunately, they moved away from “the monster of the week” with some pretty substantial science fiction writing. This was essential on the heels of The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits, which took science fiction writing into the stratosphere. Many of the actors used, however, were well known in other western dramas of the time.

And a year or so into production, Desilu Studios was sold by Lucille Ball to Paramount Television, which substantially changed the program’s direction and vision.

The strange idea of adult oriented science fiction was a hard sell, as it was still seen as a children’s and adolescent’s genre. And the ham-fisted efforts to incorporate blunt social themes was just as uncomfortable then as it appears today.

However, it captivated an audience segment that has never been duplicated. It became the single greatest impulse into the study of engineering ever devised, and most engineers working today trace their inspiration from that show and its influence on them.


32 posted on 05/09/2009 7:03:39 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy
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To: JoeProBono
“when human beings get over the silly little problems of racism and war, then we can tackle the big problems of exploring the universe,” said David Gerrold, a writer for the original “Star Trek” series.

Another reason to avoid this cult!

33 posted on 05/09/2009 7:03:59 PM PDT by Revolting cat! (Let us prey!)
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To: tbw2

Which picture?


34 posted on 05/09/2009 7:09:30 PM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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To: Cvengr

This episode always made me observe that these people must not have discovered mirrors.


35 posted on 05/09/2009 7:09:40 PM PDT by motor_racer (What is the color of the boathouse at Hereford?)
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To: Revolting cat!

36 posted on 05/09/2009 7:13:37 PM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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To: Revolting cat!

Wow, what a dumbass...
racism? where? who’s being affected by it (besides whites, these days)?

and war? We’ll eliminate that when we lay down and let the next tyrant just take over instead of fighting back.

Has to be a lib to be this much of a dumbass.


37 posted on 05/09/2009 7:13:49 PM PDT by MrB (Go Galt now, Bowman later)
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To: WorkingClassFilth
Wasting money on space exploration at this time is crazy. We have more than enough terrestrial problems to deal with and not enough resources or brainpower.

We will always have problems. Good thing those who explored the new world did not wait until their societies were perfect before coming.

Societies that expend energy and capital exploring and exploiting frontiers aren't spending energy and capital on social engineering and nanny states.

38 posted on 05/09/2009 7:20:51 PM PDT by hopespringseternal
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To: MrB

That’s just dandy for you.

I assume you don’t object to the rest of us taking appropriate steps to deal with the very real possibility of a dinosaur killer?


39 posted on 05/09/2009 7:34:18 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Everyone has a right to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.)
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To: WorkingClassFilth
>"When you can demonstrate to me that we’ve solved anything on this planet by way of government, we’ll discuss planetary travel and/or migration."

Well it does seem to give employment to a lot of criminals!

40 posted on 05/09/2009 7:38:43 PM PDT by rawcatslyentist (<P><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajsov1M4h50"> Thank You Satan 1:50</a>)
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To: JoeProBono

What’s with the toupees, pointed ears, the pasted on foreheads in this series? Is there some deep meaning behind it all?


41 posted on 05/09/2009 7:40:28 PM PDT by Revolting cat! (Let us prey!)
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To: Revolting cat!
Deep meaning? Umm - Beauty is only skin deep?


42 posted on 05/09/2009 7:53:40 PM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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To: Thunder90

Yes, that and pride in Western Civilization and humanity. A human created warp drive in the original series.


43 posted on 05/09/2009 7:57:29 PM PDT by Question_Assumptions
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To: tbw2
Which added human DNA even to alien gene pools, making them all “human-oid”.

So... what does that say about "hemorrh-oids"?

:-P

44 posted on 05/09/2009 8:27:02 PM PDT by gogogodzilla (Live free or die!)
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To: KevinDavis

PING


45 posted on 05/09/2009 8:36:23 PM PDT by Thunder90
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To: mamelukesabre

Literally the only vulcan I know is “Ponfo miran”. Means roughly “go to hell” LOL Just a bit of trivia.... Not intending to tell you to do that, it really is all I know LOL That and Pon Far and I am not gonna go into THAT one.


46 posted on 05/09/2009 8:36:26 PM PDT by Danae (Amerikan Unity My Ass)
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To: JoeProBono
I like this one better.


47 posted on 05/09/2009 8:36:42 PM PDT by gogogodzilla (Live free or die!)
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To: JoeProBono
Ingenuity

James T. Kirk
48 posted on 05/09/2009 8:37:58 PM PDT by Danae (Amerikan Unity My Ass)
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To: gogogodzilla

You beat me by what less than a minute? Great minds think alike!


49 posted on 05/09/2009 8:39:33 PM PDT by Danae (Amerikan Unity My Ass)
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To: gogogodzilla; Danae

50 posted on 05/09/2009 8:45:39 PM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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