I used to be a Star Trek fan

Post Reply New Topic

...still am to a certain degree but I've realized or come to learn that Star Trek is very childish, IMO. It's filled with getting along and playing nice themes and being all nicey-nice. There's also a lot of dialogue that seems to me to be infantile or just silly. People don't talk like that - using $20 words all the time. There's also too much exposition in the series - they're always explaining what needs to be done, how they're going to do it and then recapping. Just do it, already and get the job done. Never mind explaining it to the audience will all the made up technobabble, they'll figure it out.

And, if you don't mind me saying so, I think Star Trek fans are somewhat "special" in that they don't have very good imaginations. A lot of them will go to conventions dressed up as a Bajoran and wear a red head band and the earring. I'm guessing they think that Bajorans in Starfleet are all like Ro. Everything has to fit in with the established canon with them - it's like they can't make up some stuff or expand - like thinking outside the universe. Know what I mean?

I'm still a fan but I don't consider myself a Trekkie or Trekker anymore. I probably know more trivia that most fans but still...

I guess it might be me growing up or something. Not saying that people who watch Star Trek are children mentally or chronologically. I guess Star Trek to me was a juvenile escape that I'm only now growing out of which I think is a very good thing. I used to eat, live and breathe Star Trek. I guess I'm trying to grow beyond and with this comes more interests - with that comes a distancing from things that held me back or isolated me from other peers or coworkers.

What about Whovians? At least when it comes to conventions, you aren't restricted to a skivvy.

I stopped liking Trek sometime in college, when a professor explained how it was all an allegory for the gradual expansion of the United States, with Spock as the native guide, wars and alliances with other nations, etc. It suddenly clicked with me why I always found it so boring: I can't enjoy a scifi fantasy that conservative because I really hate my own species, and need the reassurance that we could someday be randomly squished like the bugs we are by the Yog Sothoth, the Decepticons, or what have you.

Don't get me wrong, the original Trek will always hold a special place in my heart for straddling the gap between hokey '50s scifi movies, and the Star Wars era stuff I grew up on, which tried to take itself more seriously, or at least went for "epic". The original Mobile Suit Gundam similarly straddles the gap between "japanimation" and "anime".

Transfans usually get more creative in the artwork/customized toy department, since any costume has to be a bulky cardboard affair. There's always that one guy wandering around Botcon in his homemade Ramjet suit...and some girl in Japan made a costume that actually transformed into a car when she folded her body the right way! So I guess we go big, or don't bother. It's freaky enough see members of our online community face-to-face anyway. Everyone doubts Raksha's a real person until they meet her...

We're also the worst bickerers in all of pop-culture fandom, though. Debate that claim if you like, but Transformers doesn't have one, single, undisputed storyline, so every Transfan has their own personal idea of what TF is supposed to be, cobbled together from various cartoons, comics, and bio cards. Yet despite not agreeing on anything, we have a remarkable sense of unity. That's why we have the most fun.

This is not a hijacking; someone else just needs to post some insights on Star Wars or something. I'm not sure where this thread was originally supposed to lead.

Yes... I agree that Star Trek is Childish...

Dr Who is adult

*breaks out the beating irons*

REPENT!

I've always felt that Star Trek is juvenile (although that didn't stop me from watching it as a guilty pleasure for many years). In fact, having read science fiction novels from a very early age, I've always felt that most sci-fi TV and movies are hopelessly immature and unrealistic. They've perpetually been about 30-50 years behind literary science fiction. It's only recently with series like Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, the anime Planetes, and the movie Sunshine, that they've seemed to be catching up a bit.

Pet peeves of mine:

Sound passing through a vacuum.
Everything in space moving too slowly and being too close together.
Spaceships flying like fighter jets or submarines.
All planets looking like Earth.
Aliens looking and acting like humans with bad makeup.

I like Star Trek because it's hokey and juvenile. That makes it fun.

I like science fantasy because you can ignore the limits of reality.

Put Star Wars on - turn the sound off - watch the death star explode ......... boring.....



cant figure out what you mean here .... like 2001? or Planets etc..



Once again, the Death Star would be pretty boring without those fighters.... you must hate those scenes. How would you want them to be played out?



Sadly a budgeting thing - I'd love to see Gallifrey properly having bright, silver-leafed trees and a burnt orange sky with fields of deep red grass, capped with snow. I know we saw a shot in the new series but it wasn't quite how I'd imagined it. The original Dr Who series did have some good establishing shots - eg: Mindwarp with it's pink water, green sky and blue rocks. I couldn't find a photo so I'm showing the novelisation cover instead.





It would be interesting to have aliens who only ever spoke subtitles but not with any frame of reference and who didn't use voice or mental ism to talk - how about scent?

It's not boring. A lack of sound for explosions gives an eery otherworldly feeling to a movie/series that is perfect for depicting space. Watch Firefly if you don't believe me.



I mean that spaceships would be moving at speeds greater than 10 km/s relative to each other. You would barely get a chance to see them before they zip past you. And as an example of the "too close together" thing, you often see spaceships dodging and weaving among asteroids in TV/movies. In the real world, even in asteroid belts, asteroids are rediculously far apart. And you certainly can't dodge them, because before you've even seen one, it would have smashed into you at tens or hundreds of km/s.

Yes, this sort of realism would make a space opera movie like Star Wars boring. But it works very well in the anime Planetes.



Watch some Battlestar Galactica (the new series, not the 1970s version) space battles. Those ships mostly obey Newtonian physics, and the battles look way better than Star Wars. And no, I don't hate those Star Wars scenes. I just roll my eyes at them, because almost every #^&$ing movie and their dog does it.



Yeah you're right about the budgeting thing. That's not so much of an issue these days, thankfully. Battlestar Galactica gets it (mostly) right, with only an occasional tree-covered Earthlike planet.



Yes, that would be very interesting. Far more interesting than "aliens" blabbering away about who slept with whom in an American accent. There are human cultures in the real world that are more unusual than most "aliens" depicted in sci-fi.

Star Trek was written by a man who says the show helped him mature as a human being. The first shows there are sexist themes but more enlightened views on inter-cultures getting along. The newer shows have both better views on gender and inter-cultures getting along. Good sf explores how humans deal with themself and tech. That you find it childish means you sould read some good sf books that have a more mature take on the humans.

yeah, I owe Star Trek a lot for giving me my vocabulary and a lot of my values.

I don't think that Star Trek is childish by any means. It is very idealistic, but not childish. I think you might be comparing it to shows like the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. Shows like that do their best to portray humanity as it is. On the other hand, Star Trek portrays it as certain people (like Roddenberry) would like it to be. It is a show for dreamers (as is a lot of good sci-fi) and those who are in my view, forward thinking. The fact that the Original Series featured the first inter-racial kiss on American TV is evidence of this.

I don't think Star Trek is childish. It is mildly escapist, and even if it were childish and with a bit of dodgy science, where's the harm?? Really.

It's good for the same reasons that a lot of Science Fiction is good -- by presenting issues which we might normally not wish to present, but in a context that is imagined, speculative fiction can force us to confront ourselves. But at the same time not get too close to history.

And some of what is presented is pretty intense.

So anyway I like DS9 best of all because it is darker than other series and because in the best episodes it does confront a lot of those issues. And also because it occasionally puts that kind of idealism up for much closer scrutiny.

...And like I said, even if it were childish (which it isn't not really) with dodgy science (which yeah okay but who cares?) then where's the harm??

My fav is TNG, but I like DS9 for the same reasons you do. I loved the whole Section 31 story arc and the way the show delved into Klingon culture in more detail.

Oh HELL YEAH!! !

Section 31 was such a brilliant story idea (and Julian Bashir is my favourite character ever so bonus) I like TNG too. Actually I like all of them -- just not equally.

We must be on the same page .