Putting my mod hat on here- This post is about how Star Trek inspired you, not what you think of Whoopi Godlberg. Think of the quote as why Star Trek inspired someone, not who that someone is.
If you choose to focus on how Star Trek inspired you I think that’s great. If other members of the community choose to focus on Whoopi’s frequent shit takes, then this post is also about that.
It concerns me that you would brandish your mod card in an effort to influence narrative. Your comment sans ‘mod hat’ is perfectly reasonable.
Part of a moderator’s job is keeping things on topic and keeping discussion civil. Both are an issue in this thread. You can call requesting people stay on topic “influencing the narrative.” I would argue the topic is the narrative.
The content is an image referencing a Whoopi Goldberg quote, asserting that her words and actions are not at least partially ‘on topic’ is unreasonable.
Accountability and power dynamics were common themes in Star Trek, it definitely inspired me to hold people accountable for their words/actions, and to speak truth to power.
You are welcome to speak truth to power, but this thread is about how Star Trek inspired you. The second rule in this subreddit is be courteous. Having discussions unrelated to the topic is discourteous to Stamets. If you do not care for the courtesy rule, you are welcome to create your own Star Trek community.
Eh I wouldn’t say it’s breaking the discourteous rule personally but I do find it disheartening. I love Trek and love seeing how it inspires people. Inspiring them to just hate on a person is… Rough. Like don’t get me wrong. I have serious issues with Whoopi but she’s still an inspiration.
Unfortunately a lot of people who inspire others can be horrible human beings. Gene himself wasn’t exactly a peach.
And Celia Rose Gooding is continuing Nichols torch bearing with her hair choice!
“I think the first thing that people were really keeping an eye out for was that I chopped off all her hair, and I love it,” she told TVLine.
“[What] was incredible with Nichelle’s Uhura and Zoe’s Uhura was that they had the epitome of what Black femininity was at the time.”
"Now we’re in [2022], and I think the iconic short Caesar cut has been a thing for Black men for a long time, but we are slowly but surely as a community getting closer and closer to widening the ideals of what Black femininity looks like.
“Having an opportunity to take on the iconic character and still give her this layer of incredible grace… and also have her have this incredibly gorgeous short cut look – it just feels so right to me. Even with the Dora Milaje in Black Panther, their femininity was never questioned, but they all had real short cuts.”
That made me real sad in a way. It’s a beautiful story, but I wish Nichelle Nichols could’ve gone into theatre like she wanted. There was a quote from a black feminist group that I can’t find now that said something about how it isn’t really a choice to become a fighter to resist oppression, because if they could choose, they’d choose something else, that they want to do, rather than what they are compelled to do. The reason to be a fighter is to try to make it so that the black little girls of the future can be free to self-realise.
It was an impactful quote because I felt like it acknowledged the respect that is due to people who fight for a better world, while also not excluding the grief and sorrow that comes from recognising that to commit to a cause is a sacrifice that wouldn’t have needed to be made in a just world.
I know that Nichelle Nichols’ work and activism extends far beyond Star Trek, but underlying it all is a deep sense of duty that I find at once beautiful and sad.
I’m curious too because I’ve definitely heard that he’s a giant dick but never really looked into it. He did a great job with the Sisko and they even put some episodes in addressing racism in the modern world so too bad he’s apparently a dick but oh well I guess.
Personal experience. He was screaming at some fans who went to say thank you for his work. I’ve heard other things from people who’ve met him and had similar experiences as well as people having worked with him. He’s a bit bitchy about Star Trek now.
We-ell, it inspired me to respect Star Wars more. Hard to take seriously people laughing about midichlorians and space wizards, and at the same time being serious about transporters and creating matter from nothing and all that “post-scarcity” stuff.
Also Star Trek: Bridge Commander is an awesome game, simpler than something like Battlecruiser Millennium, but still cool. It’s the Star Wars game I’d like to see minus Star Wars.
To your first point, that’s fair but Trek and Wars are just different things and the same thing at the same time. The only time Star Wars tried to add hard science to it, it was mocked relentlessly (midichlorians) because that sort of hard science fiction didn’t make sense or fit in the world of Star Wars. Star Wars is science fantasy, not fiction, and introducing explanations start stripping the world of its mystery and awe. It also just didn’t jive with the vibe already established. It was basically someone just saying “Um actually, it’s not mystical. It’s just science.” Star Trek on the other hand actively tries to explain everything all the time anyway.
Star Trek is fantasy masquerading as sci-fi while Star Wars is sci-fi masquerading as fantasy. Both fandoms get really upset when the mask starts to slip on either.
Star Trek is a fantasy in the same vein as the Odyssey. Go somewhere on a ship, encounter magical creatures, get into a problem that’s resolved with a moral lesson. The magic of the creatures is never really explained in the Odyssey beyond the magic just being inherent in those creature. Same goes for the magic of various aliens in Star Trek. Vulcans can do mind melds because that’s a magic only Vulcans possess. Can it be studied and reproduced by others? Nope. It’s magic inherent to being a Vulcan.
It also should be noted the resemblance between Star Trek races and classic Tokien races. Vulcans are Elves, Klingons are Orcs, Romulans are Dark Elves.
In Star Wars people have magical abilities like telepathy, telekinesis, and prescience. These abilities are present in Star Trek. But in Star Wars, these abilities aren’t inherent in being a certain species. And the ramifications are explored. People might build religions around those who have these abilities. Maintaining a galaxy wide civilization would be difficult on its own, but you add in an X factor like certain people having the ability to control people’s minds that have holy wars against each other, it’s likely there would be a constant cycle of collapse, rebuilding, then collapsing again. So you’d expect some feudal power structures to form on some planets during the dark ages of a galaxy like this. So it makes sense that princesses, knights, wizards, pirates, gangsters would all exist in a galaxy that has holy wars between groups that have mind powers.
But people like Star Wars to be a fantasy with mysteries about how it came about. It is set in another Galaxy and started in the middle of an ongoing story. So many people aren’t going to like over-explanations, at least not in canon, because it takes away the mystery and makes it too obvious that Star Wars is actually sci-fi.
Star Trek is fantasy, Star Wars is sci-fi. Just nobody wants to admit it.
I cannot disagree with this enough. Especially the part about Vulcans and mind melds. They have literally explained it and extrapolated on it multiple times. They’ve made artificial mind meld tech to enhance it even. I see where you’re coming from but fantasy inherently does not explain anything. It’s waved away as magic. Star Trek goes out of its way, to the point of creating the term technobabble, to give an explanation as to why a thing is happening. Huge sections of episodes and movies are dedicated to simply understanding the HOW before they ever discuss the WHY.
You also say the classic Tolkein races. Not sure why. Fantasy races existed well before him which is why the estate was not able to prevent DnD from using so many (not that they didn’t try, and succeed, on some of them). Those races in fantasy themselves just stem from us. Orcs are the “savage barbarians”. Elves are politicians and aristocrats or those who think of themselves higher than others, Dark Elves are the schemers and people who do bad things for seemingly no reason. It’s not a gotcha situation to compare those two. It’s just how good fiction works. You take parts of humanity, of all of us, and distill it into its most pure (or impure) forms.
Also that description you made of SW is literally fantasy. A world where no rules exist, where logic is thrown out the window, where princess and pirates hang out at the same time, where magic exists with no rhyme or reason, where things are in endless strife, where no progress is made and where things cycle infinitely. It doesn’t “make sense” that all these people exist together in the same pocket by any stretch of the imagination. It just… Happens. Everything is by pure blind luck. The princess doesn’t choose to chill with anyone, she’s rescued by a teenager and a drug smuggler with his talking dog, a group that already does not make a single ounce of sense to be together. They’ve got flying machines and can go to space but are using swords. There’s pure good and pure evil but no shades of grey until elaborated on in side content. Just black and white morality. That is exactly what fantasy is. Also George Lucas uses the term “science fantasy” when talking about Star Wars, not science fiction.
Star Trek goes out of its way, to the point of creating the term technobabble
What’s the difference between technobabble and a magical incantation from the perspective of story telling. Geordi Laforge casts +1 technobabble and it’s super effective.
You also say the classic Tolkein races. Not sure why.
Really? Put a photo of an Tolkien Elf next to a Star Trek Vulcan. You don’t see any resemblance there? None at all? Besides that Elves are an elder race that are at times disconnected from the affairs of humans. Despite this, there’s an alliance formed between Humans and Elves. It’s not all that different from the relationship between Humans and Vulcans in Star Trek is it? In story terms Vulcans serve the same role as Elves and Klingons are a violent adversary to the Human and Vulcan alliance, aka the Federation. How did that war end again? Wasn’t there magic sorcerers involved in ending the war between the Federation and the Klingons? Oh beings of pure energy (nothing at all like a sorcerer) that they basically never talked about later. Did someone even try to contact the Organians to get them to help sort out the Dominion war? I guess that was a one time thing. There’s literally Gods that can force adversaries to end a war in Star Trek, but only that one time because the existence of such beings didn’t have any long term consequences for how diplomacy was conducted in that Galaxy.
Sorry, but in story terms, it’s just plain magic. Science is repeatable and studied. Star Trek just substitutes “a wizard did it” with “an alien did it” but there’s no meaningful difference.
There’s nothing in Star Wars that doesn’t exist in Star Trek. Telekinesis, telepathy, mind control, prescience, all appear in Star Trek with the only explanation being “because aliens.” And in Star Wars with midichlorians, the explanation is “because microscopic aliens.” Nobody really likes that in Star Wars because technobabble explanations are silly.
The princess doesn’t choose to chill with anyone, she’s rescued by a teenager and a drug smuggler with his talking dog, a group that already does not make a single ounce of sense to be together.
Of all the things in Star Wars that’s poorly explained you chose an example that actually was explained. Teenager found a distress message from the princess, and the smuggler was there because money.
They’ve got flying machines and can go to space but are using swords.
If you have prescient abilities you’re able to see were a blaster will be fired before it’s fired and be able to move the sword to exactly where it needs to be beforehand to deflect it. Something that makes sense if you consider the relationship between the abilities and technology. Also traditions are a big thing in a lot of religions.
Also George Lucas uses the term “science fantasy” when talking about Star Wars, not science fiction.
Of course there’s no doubt a lot of fantasy elements in Star Wars. But not nearly as many fantasy elements as in Star Trek. If you were to say both Star Trek and Star Wars are fantasy, then sure. But saying Star Trek is sci-fi while Star Wars is fantasy is just ignoring how much fantasy Star Trek has going on. There’s no real definition of what makes something fantasy and what makes something sci-fi, but where ever you choose to draw that arbitrary line Star Trek is going to be on the fantasy side of that line if Star Trek is, because there’s way more fantasy going on in Star Trek than in Star Wars. Just Star Wars doesn’t do as much meaningless technobabble and doesn’t hand wave away the significance of some people having telekinesis, telepathy, prescience, etc.
You are ignoring so much of Star Trek to try and fit your narrative that I am not even going to bother engaging further with this. I don’t have the time to write out entire episodes and seasons.
You are ignoring so much of Star Trek to try and fit your narrative that I am not even going to bother engaging further with this. I don’t have the time to write out entire episodes and seasons.
I’m sorry, but he could have said this too about your arguments. SW EU is vast.
It really isn’t. Legacy? Sure. But not current canon. He also could not have said it as I was primarily focusing on Trek. Moreover it was the Trek stuff they screwed up on
Then nothing about it matters. The extended universe was dismissed en masse because majority of it is little better than fan fiction. George had no idea what he was doing so he let others who had no idea at it. Disney was then left with a contradictory mess of garbage and plots that made no sense so it was decanonized. If it isn’t canon then it isn’t part of the world. If it’s not part of the world then it has no part of this conversation.
I was bored of this conversation already with the other one because it was disingenuous. This one is as bad and I’m over it. Goodbye.
Well yeah there’s so much more. Transporters are magical devices that either work or not work depending on the needs of the plot. Nobody even considers whether it’s actually them on the other side of that transporter beam. They can cure diseases with it except when they can’t. They can create copies of people with a transporter but for some reason bad guys like the Dominion never explore this despite being willing to clone soldiers. Why does anyone bother boarding a ship instead of beaming everyone on the ship into their brig (or into space if they’re bad guys? Because transporters are just magic that work according whatever is needed by the story. The consequences of this technology is never really explored which is what science fiction normally does.
Q is straight up a sorcerer, in the episode where he loses his power it’s straight up stated the Q have the ability to alter the constants that govern science at will. Literally magic. Geordi doesn’t respond with “this fundamentally changes how we need to think about physics” as a scientist would when given an indication that scientific theories are incomplete. Nope it’s just “we can’t do that because we aren’t Q” and everyone moves on. It’s just commonly accepted that aliens have magic because they are aliens and it’s rarely questioned.
Star Trek II is often regarded as the best Trek movies and it’s about a villain with a planet destroying weapon. Ah but wallpaper over the planet destroying weapon with the fact that it can be used to instantly terraform planets that sounds sciencey enough so no one will notice the actual story is just a villain with super weapon.
The list goes on and on. Star Wars actually does more to explore the consequences of technology and people having special abilities than Star Trek does. Exploring consequences is what science fiction is about not sounding sciency.
Now to be clear, I like Star Trek, and have watched a lot of it. I’m just not under an illusion about what it is. It’s great at exploring social issues and ethics and uses it’s fantastical setting to allow the audience to see issues from a different perspective. And that’s great. And occasionally there are a few ethical issues that is actually science fiction, like “Measure of a Man.” But those episodes are more the exception than the rule. The bulk of Star Trek is creating scenarios to discuss morals and ethics where the “science” is actually just magic.
I also like Star Wars. And the whole pretentious thing about Star Trek being sci-fi while Star Wars is fantasy is annoying and false. Star Trek is more fantasy that Star Wars, it’s just that Star Trek has more technobabble to make it sound vaguely sciencey. But it’s mostly just the Odyssey + technobabble.
To your first point, that’s fair but Trek and Wars are just different things and the same thing at the same time.
It’s like Catholicism and Lutheranism, don’t know which is which in this analogy.
Star Wars has fairy tales, magic, great crusades and ancient empires, all not very openly or loudly being based on pretty rational laws, actually reminiscent of the Foundation books.
Star Trek has some ideal world, where everything is kinda futuristic and rational, but the balance doesn’t even up, and its philosophy is less rational.
That’s subjective and not to insult anybody. I think SW is much wiser than ST, and it’s clear most people here think the opposite and I’m not insulted by that.
The only time Star Wars tried to add hard science to it,
Eh, Star Wars actually has it in more places than one. It’s just very high-level about describing it, not getting into details too much, but the high-level part makes sense. I’m talking about the way hyperdrives work in Star Wars, and the computers there, and shields, and weapons, and many stuff. “Sith magic” included, yes.
Star Wars is science fantasy, not fiction, and introducing explanations start stripping the world of its mystery and awe. It also just didn’t jive with the vibe already established. It was basically someone just saying “Um actually, it’s not mystical. It’s just science.”
I actually agree with the guy answering you. Star Wars’ problems with being SF are less fundamental than those of ST.
And Obi-Wan says that in essence it’s still “just science” in the very beginning, with it being quite a bit religious and mystical, yes.
Which is what Star Wars is, a world of fairy-tale magic somewhere low and in philosophy not being really magic. It didn’t spoil the thing for most people actually familiar with the Expanded Universe, only for those who wanted to pretend to be “old fans” TBF.
It’s actually the spirit of it.
Star Trek on the other hand actively tries to explain everything all the time anyway.
Well, folk medicine does that too, but at the same time ST is less hard on fundamental laws of the universe than SW.
A modern version of Bridge Commander that was voice-activated would be cool. I know there have been one or two similar games, but I’d like a Star Trek-themed one.
Bridge Crew was pretty close to that but way more streamlined. After a year or so the voice commands were turned off though because that makes sense. Apparently they were fed through IBMs Watson and the contract ran out.
Well, for me voice commands are not as important as the simulation of commanding a ship.
Maybe I still want a SW-themed Battlecruiser Millennium with more intuitive controls. So that you could sit in a fighter cockpit and command your wingmen, or sit on the bridge and give orders to officers in their roles, in general take any role on that ship. And with some personnel management like in Silent Hunter.
And with some ship selection, of course. Nebulon-B is different from a CR70, and commanding an ISD-II, eh, I guess without the ability to command that the game won’t be popular among SW fans.
Well, maybe still without taking any role. Like Sea Dogs in space.
For me personally, two shows/movies made a big impact on me as an early teen:
Star Trek (TNG at the time)
Jurassic Park
The reason being that most of the characters in those two shows/movies weren’t superheroes/cops/etc. They were geeks and nerds.
Star Trek, the geeks and nerds are prized in society, and their purpose is to explore, to learn. They were scientists. They didn’t accomplish their thing by conquest, but by diplomacy and science. There, of course, were battles/warriors/etc, but those are shown as the exception.
In Jurassic Park, every character is a nerd (the Dino obsessed boy, the Unix hacking girl, the Paleontologist/Paelobotanist, the Geneticist, Mathematician, etc). The good guys AND the bad guys were nerds. No strong-man was needed to save the day.
I was a nerdy kid, and those spoke to me. I now work in a science research lab, and love it. I’m still a nerd.
I don’t care for the newer ones because literally none of the characters or moments are memorable. I can remember a deleted scene of… Whoever the female lead is (Christ, even forgot who she is) rubbing dinoshit all over herself and Chris Pratt getting turned on. Also remember a PA having the most unnecessary and violent death for just existing.
There was a scene that was very memorable to me. It’s the scene where Chris Pratt is riding a Triumph Bonneville through a dense forest, full of undergrowth, with his raptor buddies. It is memorable to me because it’s impossible. As someone who rides motorcycles and dirt bikes, that scene stood out to me as so stupid. Oh, one other scene. Where the aviary dome is broken and the pterodactyls immediately embark on a homicidal rampage. Because we all know that animals don’t kill for food, they kill for fun, and what’s more fun than slaughtering an entire city?
If they immediately go to slaughtering everything, that would mean they are hungry, which means the park staff was likely severely underfeeding them… which is animal abuse and gets zoos fined and/or shut down. Well fed animals might take a swipe at someone in their way, but they’d likely just head for the forest and do bird stuff there.
Realistic Jurassic Park would be pretty boring TBH
There’s a neat bit of two-part history hidden there:
Part 1:
(Taken from an interview with Michelle Nichols)
Sometime during the original run of ST TOS, Michelle Nichols wanted to step back from playing Uhura. Roddenberry asked her to think about it on the weekend.
During that weekend, she happened to be at some fundraiser, where the host asked her if she could spare a minute for “her biggest fan”.
She said “of course… but hold on, there’s MLK right over there, I’ve got to take the opportunity to talk to him first.”
Host: “Yeah… um, that is your biggest fan. He wants to talk with you.”
MLK told her how much of an impact her role had (for pretty much the same reasons Goldberg mentioned later).
Monday, she rescinded her resignation.
Part 2:
When the staff of TNG heard that Whoopie Goldberg wanted had asked for a minor role, they thought it was joke.
(TNG wasn’t yet the juggernaut it’d become and Goldberg was a top tier Hollywood star.)
But she told them explicitly that she’d been inspired by the Role of Uhura from the start and just wanted to be part of ST.
So they tailored that minor role to her.
To me, she always looks happy as a clam on screen with that.
Funnily enough, both Mae Jemison and William Shatner will be in Bloomington Indiana for the April eclipse. Also the musician Janelle Monáe for some reason. And she gets top billing with their names below hers in smaller fonts and her picture bigger than theirs on the advertising. I feel like that does Mae Jemison dirty, but I console myself with imagining the fit Shatner threw when it turned out he didn’t get top billing.
It could be a fake IMDB credit. I have a couple. I also have seen other people with fake credits claiming they worked on things I created and did by myself.
I know this is meant as a more serious thread, but all I can think of is this quote from futurama…
It taught me so much. Like, how you should accept people, whether they be black, white, Klingon or even female… But most importantly, when I had no friends, it made me feel like maybe I did.
For me, I would say I just have a lifelong interest in space and a desire to know what’s out there.
Pretty good episodes. I love that they brought Book back even though he was supposed to be in jail. He’s too good of a character to leave in jail for too long. I’m sad that Mr Saru is leaving. I hope he guest stars a bit. I wish we got to see more of the bridge crew like Owo and Detmer because I love them and want to meet the new people.
Also this new McGuffin seems pretty neat. I always wanted to know more about the Progenitors.
Tying in the fun single episode adventure from “The Chase” and integrating the creation mystery as this season’s plot is a great move. Hopefully, they’ve built it out enough to have a fulfilling conclusion (especially since the string of reshoots that occurred when it was announced that this would be their last go). With Kurtzman’s involvement and his association with JJ’s brand of McGuffin storytelling, I will certainly temper my expectations.
First impressions (to be continued when I watch the second episode next week)
5x01 Nice feelgood introductory episode (action scenes in warp, actions scenes in the desert, saving the population of a city through the power of friendship combined shields, Romulan tech, a lot of TNG references I didn’t get because I never watched it but I’m sure it’s good fanservice, Book’s return, new Tilly storyline, new Saru story line, Kovich bringing in the unethical orders, Michael and Vance disregarding them etc etc) but I didn’t like that it felt as if someone desperately wanted to introduce every new storyline in the first episode
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