My grandmother loved Star Trek and one of my handful of experiences of TNG is watching an episode with her on TV. By the time I was born, she'd had a stroke and couldn't communicate very well, which is too bad because she lived kind of a cool life (she was a math professor!!) and had very prescient nerd taste (loved LotR right when it came out, was an early Dune adopter etc, also loved Mary Renault).
Anyway I'm pretty sure the one I watched with her was the one where that woman sleeps with a ghost. I'm not sure how relevant this is to your post really but here we are.
Watching a lady sleep with a ghost with your grandma is a classic Trek experience. I swear everyone has some version of this story. Those shows did such important work exposing kids to weird shit at too young an age
‘Sub Rosa’ also harks back to a fun TOS conceit/budget measure where we go to a distant planet that suspiciously looks like an awful stereotype of an Earth culture/place. In this case it’s Scotland… but with horny haunted candles
Always thought what made Janeway interesting is how she didn't fit the mission. She's sent into a dangerous search mission in the badlands to get Tuvok, not to explore anything. Which is why when she seems trigger happy to risk it to get some real replicated coffee and not a diplomat like Picard, it's because she was never supposed to be or wanted to be in deep space.
This is a great point! I’m in season 2 of Voyager right now and every time Janeway is like “that nebula looks anomalous, better investigate” my wife and I just scream, “goddamn it Janeway, focus on getting home!”
Obviously this is just how episodic tv works but I think your justification checks out
I like the investigatory side-quest things, because (a) any Starfleet officer worth their salt would investigate and (b) it's great episodic TV. The ironic bits are when she courts danger (the excellent Counterpoint for example, going through dangerous territory) in order to speed up the route. It's almost as if she finds the danger enticing (which is totally opposite) Picard, but would make sense thinking of her martial background.
What a great conversation. As useful and clarifying as the observation about fans expecting "a newspaper from a fictional universe" is, though, I suspect it's not quite the right choice of words. A newspaper has an author, and that author has sources, and these facts are generally clear to the reader. The illusion of film and television is that you, the viewer, are a firsthand witness to the events in question. The camera is not a character in the narrative.
My hypothesis (catalyzed, in large part, by this piece!) is that this dynamic depends on a media ecosystem in which film is paradigmatic. I wonder, for example, whether a new relationship to the "facts" of Tolkien's imagined history—that is, as "lore"—emerges after film adaptations provide the culture with a standard template for imagining it. Tolkien himself insisted on giving his stories imaginary authors and imaginary redaction histories in order to play around with different literary registers and authorial priorities (and, crucially, to introduce ambiguities and conflicting accounts) which film necessarily elides. I wonder if these fan dynamics have Star Trek as their ground zero simply because it was the first cult TV show.
I think "Enterprise" is deeply, deeply underrated. It's probably my favorite Trek after TNG. It has some plot points that just kind of fizzle out (I still dunno what the hell is going on with the "temporal cold war" etc.). But TNG had two whole seasons of crap and nobody seems to be that upset about it! The antipathy between humans, vulcans, and Andorians strikes me as extremely well done and plausible. The human naive "gee whiz!"-ness of space travel seems exactly on point. Even the baseball hat bedecked uniforms and maudlin rock theme song seem about right for a show set 100 years from now. Well, I just think it's super. Haven't been able to watch anything after that, though.
TNG had two crap seasons before it figured out how to do it right. But it had 5 stellar seasons afterwards. Enterprise also had two crap seasons before figuring out how to do it right, but then it got canceled after season 4. So with TNG you are rewarded with 5 great seasons after wading through crap. With Enterprise you are only rewarded with 2.
I grew up watching Star Trek because my mom watched it in the 60s. I lived in the boonies and didn’t have cable so my uncle would record TNG episodes for me and brother on VHS and bring us a stack of them when he visited.
When I was a senior in high school circa 2000-2001, I had a public speaking class. One assignment was for an impromptu speech, where we had to draw a random subject out of a bowl, had three minutes to prep, and had to talk for at least five minutes (coherently or at least reasonably close to it), or we had to go again another day. Longer story shorter, I picked Star Trek. I spoke for a coherent seven minutes about the original series as a metaphor for the Cold War and wrapped up with the idea that the next generation, in the late 80s and early 90s, with a Klingon on the bridge, romulans as a new major enemy, and Borg on the horizon, was just a continuation of real world analogy with glasnost, perestroika, China, and insurgent militant Islam. I had just been reading about those themes and connections elsewhere a few weeks earlier so it was all fresh in my head.
My grandmother loved Star Trek and one of my handful of experiences of TNG is watching an episode with her on TV. By the time I was born, she'd had a stroke and couldn't communicate very well, which is too bad because she lived kind of a cool life (she was a math professor!!) and had very prescient nerd taste (loved LotR right when it came out, was an early Dune adopter etc, also loved Mary Renault).
Anyway I'm pretty sure the one I watched with her was the one where that woman sleeps with a ghost. I'm not sure how relevant this is to your post really but here we are.
Watching a lady sleep with a ghost with your grandma is a classic Trek experience. I swear everyone has some version of this story. Those shows did such important work exposing kids to weird shit at too young an age
‘Sub Rosa’ also harks back to a fun TOS conceit/budget measure where we go to a distant planet that suspiciously looks like an awful stereotype of an Earth culture/place. In this case it’s Scotland… but with horny haunted candles
Always thought what made Janeway interesting is how she didn't fit the mission. She's sent into a dangerous search mission in the badlands to get Tuvok, not to explore anything. Which is why when she seems trigger happy to risk it to get some real replicated coffee and not a diplomat like Picard, it's because she was never supposed to be or wanted to be in deep space.
This is a great point! I’m in season 2 of Voyager right now and every time Janeway is like “that nebula looks anomalous, better investigate” my wife and I just scream, “goddamn it Janeway, focus on getting home!”
Obviously this is just how episodic tv works but I think your justification checks out
I like the investigatory side-quest things, because (a) any Starfleet officer worth their salt would investigate and (b) it's great episodic TV. The ironic bits are when she courts danger (the excellent Counterpoint for example, going through dangerous territory) in order to speed up the route. It's almost as if she finds the danger enticing (which is totally opposite) Picard, but would make sense thinking of her martial background.
What a great conversation. As useful and clarifying as the observation about fans expecting "a newspaper from a fictional universe" is, though, I suspect it's not quite the right choice of words. A newspaper has an author, and that author has sources, and these facts are generally clear to the reader. The illusion of film and television is that you, the viewer, are a firsthand witness to the events in question. The camera is not a character in the narrative.
My hypothesis (catalyzed, in large part, by this piece!) is that this dynamic depends on a media ecosystem in which film is paradigmatic. I wonder, for example, whether a new relationship to the "facts" of Tolkien's imagined history—that is, as "lore"—emerges after film adaptations provide the culture with a standard template for imagining it. Tolkien himself insisted on giving his stories imaginary authors and imaginary redaction histories in order to play around with different literary registers and authorial priorities (and, crucially, to introduce ambiguities and conflicting accounts) which film necessarily elides. I wonder if these fan dynamics have Star Trek as their ground zero simply because it was the first cult TV show.
I think "Enterprise" is deeply, deeply underrated. It's probably my favorite Trek after TNG. It has some plot points that just kind of fizzle out (I still dunno what the hell is going on with the "temporal cold war" etc.). But TNG had two whole seasons of crap and nobody seems to be that upset about it! The antipathy between humans, vulcans, and Andorians strikes me as extremely well done and plausible. The human naive "gee whiz!"-ness of space travel seems exactly on point. Even the baseball hat bedecked uniforms and maudlin rock theme song seem about right for a show set 100 years from now. Well, I just think it's super. Haven't been able to watch anything after that, though.
TNG had two crap seasons before it figured out how to do it right. But it had 5 stellar seasons afterwards. Enterprise also had two crap seasons before figuring out how to do it right, but then it got canceled after season 4. So with TNG you are rewarded with 5 great seasons after wading through crap. With Enterprise you are only rewarded with 2.
I grew up watching Star Trek because my mom watched it in the 60s. I lived in the boonies and didn’t have cable so my uncle would record TNG episodes for me and brother on VHS and bring us a stack of them when he visited.
When I was a senior in high school circa 2000-2001, I had a public speaking class. One assignment was for an impromptu speech, where we had to draw a random subject out of a bowl, had three minutes to prep, and had to talk for at least five minutes (coherently or at least reasonably close to it), or we had to go again another day. Longer story shorter, I picked Star Trek. I spoke for a coherent seven minutes about the original series as a metaphor for the Cold War and wrapped up with the idea that the next generation, in the late 80s and early 90s, with a Klingon on the bridge, romulans as a new major enemy, and Borg on the horizon, was just a continuation of real world analogy with glasnost, perestroika, China, and insurgent militant Islam. I had just been reading about those themes and connections elsewhere a few weeks earlier so it was all fresh in my head.
All right. So let's celebrate rate those two seasons, brother! The last two good Star Trek seasons. Worrh celebrating imho!
Garak, two As. Great read, thank you.
Gah! I will correct this. Thank you!