Star Trek
I’m just watching a rerun of Conan O’Brien, with William Shatner. I don’t know what the feud was between him and the cast members, I’m not sure if I like his spoken word stuff or not and I definitely think that Patrick Stewart was the superior captain, but you can’t question Shatner’s achievement.
He was the star of America’s 1st real science fiction hit. (Well, the was Lost in Space, but that was a bit of a joke, now, wasn’t it?) He was the commander of the Star Ship Enterprise, the hero to a generation of sci-fi fans and the role model for Picard, Cisco, Janeway and whoever else has done it since, I think I might be a Star Trek incarnation or two behind.
Anyway, much has already been written about Star Trek, and the reasons why I prefer “The Next Generation,” but also kind of liked Deep Space Nine and hated Voyager, although it got better after Janeway let her hair down and much better after Jeri Ryan joined the program, are not really relevant or compelling.
So, here are just some random notes on the Star Trek universe that I think have been underdiscussed.
The Ferengi were the Jews of Space. Every big ear joke was a big nose joke. Once you realized it, it was easy to confirm. The laws of acquisition. The way their interest perked whenever a financial opportunity arose. So, what other racial stereotypes were there? Well, I’m guessing that the Klingons are supposed to be black. The Vulcans were inscrutable and highly intelligent, therefore Asian.
Anyway, in the Star Trek universe there were Klingon-Human hybrids, Vulcan-Human hybrids, etc…I don’t think anyone ever had sex with a Ferengi, because that would have been gross, but other than that, it was free love for everybody. This was before inter-racial relationships were acceptable on TV. So, that was how they said it. It was a great and noble thing.
It’s amazing that for a show set 400 years in the future, technology overtook them very quickly in a couple of ways. Their communicators just don’t seem that cool anymore. And they had to totally update the holo-deck the 1st season after they introduced it.
3rd, the best single line on TV ever: Get your Vulcan hands off me!
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