Old Man Grumpus

USS Enterprise ©Paramount Pictures

I heard recently that “Star Trek has not aged well”. This was a comment on the original series. You know; Shatner, Nimoy, the one from 1966.

My first reaction was to agree.

In the 1970′s, you would have been hard—pressed to find someone who was more of a Trekkie than me. I was even informed by one fellow fan that I actually qualified as a “Trekker”, since I became a fan about as early as possible: September 8, 1966. Thursday night. 8:30 PM. NBC. In color.

I was hooked immediately. I finagled special dispensation to stay up late to watch it. Nothing took precedence. I waited impatiently, totally frustrated, when it was preempted endless times for sports games, Presidential speeches, news bits, etc, etc. It was a prime candidate for preemption, of course, being in the bottom ten percent of the ratings during its entire run. That’s right; during its initial run, Star Trek was a flop.

During the 70′s, it was even more of an obsession. Syndication meant that it was on five times a week. I bought all the James Blishbooks. When the first novel (Spock Must Die!) was published, I searched every bookstore within range, in vain. Finally, I ordered it directly from the publisher. I had a first printing of “The Making of Star Trek“. I checked off each episode in its list as I saw it.

In the 80′s, I went to all the movies, in costume: I was the only fat Vulcan in the galaxy. I memorized vast amounts of trivia. Only once was I ever stumped. It was about 1982, and someone asked me the following question: “Those immortal words ‘Beam me up , Scotty’; on which episode were they first uttered?”* I lost that bet. I would program my login at my computer job to show me the number of hours until the next upcoming movie, and made sure I had my Vulcan ears ready for each and every one of them.

Now, forty years later, I watch reruns from that original legendary 1966-69 run and even I cringe a little. The hairstyles! Those absurd panels with the huge labels [ENGINE ROOM]! Those cheesy effects! I can barely watch now without giggling, even through my intense nostalgic haze. They just look ridiculous.

Or do they?

Let’s put this into perspective. What other shows were on the three networks in 1967? Sure, doctor shows, cop shows, westerns, and sitcoms were fine, but those were relatively easy to make. Here are some genre shows that also made their debut in the 1960′s:

The Time Tunnel: The Spirograph of time travel. They went everywhere wearing suits.

Lost in Space: The only robot in SF history with a spider-sense.

Batman: “No, Penguin! Don’t put him in a giant coffee pot! He’ll just escape! He ALWAYS escapes! Get a gun and blow his brains out!”

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: Kowalski got beat up every other episode. He was probably a distant ancestor of Chekov.

Land of the Giants: No place has that many needles and spools of thread lying around.

My Favorite Martian: OK. I’ll give you this one. But it was SUPPOSED to be funny.

The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone: They managed anthology series just fine, even then, although each episode always presented a world populated entirely by WASPs.

Many of the modern SF concepts that we take for granted now were pioneered by Star Trek, as far as TV is concerned.

The Devil in the Dark: starts out with a hideous monster killing miners. Turns out to be a mother Horta fighting back because the miners were unknowingly destroying her eggs. The episode ends with the miners enjoying a mutually beneficial arrangement with the entire race of Hortas. The “hideous monstrous alien” turns out to be the sympathetic victim, and a peaceful coexistence is reached on Janus VI. Pretty routine stuff, eh? Ho-hum. How predictable.

NOT IN 1967!

Monsters were monsters, and monsters were there to be killed. In 1967, there was no question about that. In 1967, nobody ever made peace with monsters. They were monsters, for Surak‘s sake. The story always revolved around just how to kill said monster. In fact, the first 45 minutes of Devil in the Dark followed the formula perfectly. In 1967, that episode had a stunner ending; a breakthrough in Hollywood SF.

Devil in the Dark © Paramount Pictures

Then there is Mr. Spock, an ET serving with humans, and everybody taking it for granted. Look! That guy has pointed ears and is from another world. Of COURSE he is on our starship with us; nothing unusual about that, right?

NOT IN 1967!!

Check out every single outer-space show that came before. How many aliens are on the crews? That chimpanzee — whatever — thing on Lost in Space? A pet. Everybody else on the Jupiter II? Not just human, but all WASP. Tom Corbett? All WASP male. The Time Tunnel guys? WASP males. Captain Video? See a pattern here?

Mr. Spock © Paramount Pictures

The fact is, Gene Roddenberry had to fight tooth and nail to get Spock on the show at all. The networks were afraid that they would lose viewers in the Bible Belt (he looked vaguely satanic, you see). Finally, they allowed Spock, but told Gene to “keep him in the background”. Check out the first few episodes: not much Spock. By the middle of the first season, the network execs were complaining that Spock wasn’t being used enough. “Why aren’t you featuring more Spock? He’s terribly popular”. No wonder TV producers become neurotic. (1)

Then there’s the women’s lib and race bigotry thing. The way Uhura was relegated to opening hailing frequencies, showing off her legs, and admitting to being frightened seems positively archaic to the modern audience. “Captain — I’m frightened…”. How racist and reactionary, right?

NOT IN 1967!

Watch a Twilight Zone marathon sometime, or Outer Limits, or Lost in Space. Count up all the non-white actors you see. Tell me how many women are portrayed as being in positions of authority or command. Gene Roddenberry had to fight tooth and nail to get a black woman on the show at all. “Nobody in the South will watch our show!”, lamented the nitwit network execs. (1) Sure, the Thirteenth Amendment had freed the slaves almost exactly a hundred years earlier – but not so’s you’d notice.

It is sometimes difficult to remember that Star Trek was on during the era of civil rights protests in the streets. Cops were still clubbing black people in Alabama who were trying to vote. The Watts riots were very recent history (a little over a year) when Star Trek premiered. Martin Luther King and RFK were assassinated during the second season.

So, before criticizing Star Trek for how it is aging, try comparing it to its contemporaries. It took decades for TV series SF to even catch up with Star Trek, let alone surpass it (it took Babylon 5 to do that). Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica came out a solid decade after Star Trek, and they were not even as good as Star Trek, let alone better. It is certain that they would not have been as progressive as they were had Trek not blazed the trails.

* In answer to the trivia question: those words were never said once.

(1) From “The Making of Star Trek.

  Trackback     •     Post a Comment