Life lessons from Star Trek.

[slaytonf]

If ever there were a time we needed the wisdom of Star Trek, it is now.  Ok, ok, it's a TV series, but it's influenced movies.  I'm not talking about the barely disguised jingoistic paradigms, or the quasi Cold War rivalries of the Federation with the Klingons and Romulans.  Or the cavalier disregard--for good reason!--of the Prime Directive in almost any show (come to think of it, I can't remember one where they followed it).  I'm talking about what it can tell us about people and what makes them think and behave the way they do.  The most powerful one that comes to mind was one of the best shows, called Day of the Dove.  An amorphous energy field maneuvers Klingons onto the Enterprise with a reduced crew, warping their thinking and memory, and setting them up for an eternal battle in intergalactic space so it can feed off the emotions of hate generated.  Here is the ultimate resolution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v698nFlAVw&t=1s

I know it's chopped up, which interrupts the flow, but you get most of it.  Confronting hate with hate, confronting anger with anger, confronting violence with violence, only feeds the beast.  When there is unrest in society, you have to wonder who or what is fomenting it, and for what purposes.  Is it the obvious parties at the head of the conflict?  Or is that the show that is meant to dazzle and distract and occupy our attention?  Sleight of hand artists get us to look where they want, so they can perform their manipulations unobserved.  Or is this just paranoid fantasy?

[SadPanda]

The most important thing I learned from Star Trek is that green lives matter.

[EricJ]

And to live life by three simple words:

And not just in 2020, either...

(On a side note, notice how Star Trek:TOS futuristically predicted the AirPod, just like Star Trek:TNG predicted the iPad.)

[slaytonf]

This is what I call the Sulu Effect.  In a dreadful episode, called And the Children Shall Lead,  to keep Kirk from directing the Enterprise where they didn't want it to go, mind-altering children at one point convince Lt. Sulu the ship is coursing through successive rings of daggers:

The Sulu Effect is where a person is so overcome by an idea or belief that they think any least deviation is intolerable.  The preoccupation controls the way they view the world and how they act in it.  Not only will they let it guide their actions, but they will try to force others conform to it too.

 

[hamradio]

Lesson, travel by shuttle, it's safer.

[chaya bat woof woof]

Never travel by transporter.

Spock descended from the Levites.

William Shatner mastered the art of "hamming it up"

Bones swore a great deal.

Velour outfits shrink (something akin to what happens to Shatner's hair)

Everyone has a doppelganger or evil twin.

Leaders are paranoid about losing their "control"

Ancillary characters are expendable and the writers used as little clothing as possible on the women.

Sci Fi and other shows are better when you inject a bit of humor in them.  Especially handy in life also during this pandemic.

[TikiSoo]

Yeah? Well I howled when I saw this happen:

Thank goodness we've eradicated that practice from the workplace. But it just shows how much kinder we were allowed  to be only 40 years ago.

[NipkowDisc]

green alien temptresses are for strong earthmen.

[hamradio]

49 minutes ago, TikiSoo said:

Yeah? Well I howled when I saw this happen:

Thank goodness we've eradicated that practice from the workplace. But it just shows how much kinder we were allowed  to be only 40 years ago.

In case that didn't work...

[laffite]

So there is something sinister in all this. We are being trained to be victims. Or something.

[SadPanda]

2 hours ago, TikiSoo said:

Yeah? Well I howled when I saw this happen:

Thank goodness we've eradicated that practice from the workplace. But it just shows how much kinder we were allowed  to be only 40 years ago.

It had to be a woman doing it. No man could go where no man had gone before.

[misswonderly3]

Nobody here a Next Generation fan ?  I somehow missed Star Trek the first time around, and have seen very few episodes of the original series.  (I'd like to, though, watch them all.)   But I discovered "Star Trek:  The Next Generation"  when it originally aired, in the '90s.  I loved it, and now own the complete series, all 7 seasons, on DVD.  In fact, I'm re-watching them all over the summer.  I'm now at Season 4.

It's a great show,  so smart and thought-provoking, not to mention entertaining.  Isn't anyone here a fan of Captain Picard and company?

[SadPanda]

1 hour ago, misswonderly3 said:

Nobody here a Next Generation fan ?  I somehow missed Star Trek the first time around, and have seen very few episodes of the original series.  (I'd like to, though, watch them all.)   But I discovered "Star Trek:  The Next Generation"  when it originally aired, in the '90s.  I loved it, and now own the complete series, all 7 seasons, on DVD.  In fact, I'm re-watching them all over the summer.  I'm now at Season 4.

It's a great show,  so smart and thought-provoking, not to mention entertaining.  Isn't anyone here a fan of Captain Picard and company?

Loved that show. The pilot episode had me a little bit shaking my head with the mini dress that Deanna Troi was wearing and the somewhat goofy persona of Q.

But once the show was underway, it was thrilling. The final season in particular was absolutely must-see TV in my opinion - brilliant episodes.

 

[slaytonf]

1 hour ago, misswonderly3 said:

Nobody here a Next Generation fan ?  I somehow missed Star Trek the first time around, and have seen very few episodes of the original series.  (I'd like to, though, watch them all.)   But I discovered "Star Trek:  The Next Generation"  when it originally aired, in the '90s.  I loved it, and now own the complete series, all 7 seasons, on DVD.  In fact, I'm re-watching them all over the summer.  I'm now at Season 4.

It's a great show,  so smart and thought-provoking, not to mention entertaining.  Isn't anyone here a fan of Captain Picard and company?

Any life lessons from it?

[SadPanda]

Just now, slaytonf said:

Any life lessons from it?

Yes. Resistance is futile.

[slaytonf]

But it was.

 

Pardon, wasn't futile. 

[misswonderly3]

7 minutes ago, slaytonf said:

Any life lessons from it?

Tons.  It's a very insightful, sometimes even wise, show.  Haven't you ever watched it?

[slaytonf]

I wasn't being critcal, just curious. Can you post any?

[misswonderly3]

I don't know if TNG had little catch-phrases the way the original one did. 

Hmm, let's see...Ok...A "life form"  can be defined as a person if they have 3 qualities:  Intelligence, sentience, and self-awareness.  Also, you can't think of artifical intelligent beings as existing just to serve the purposes of human beings, otherwise it can become a form of slavery.

 

[SadPanda]

16 minutes ago, slaytonf said:

But it was. Pardon, wasn't futile. 

Assimilation is inevitable.

[misswonderly3]

Also  (but I made this one up)  the  most threatening of all the aliens the Star Trek TNG crew encounters is The Borg.  Aside from anything else, they have no sense of humour.  Scary !

 

" Resistance is futile.  "

I mean, they never have any fun!

[SadPanda]

3 minutes ago, misswonderly3 said:

I mean, they never have any fun!

Maybe not, but they're hot as hell. Did you ever meet Seven of Nine? Yowza!

[EricJ]

5 hours ago, NipkowDisc said:

green alien temptresses are for strong earthmen.

Yes, L&G, the ONE time on the series Kirk ever "made it with a green-skinned alien babe".  And he was only manipulating the insane looney-bird, as an ally to help them escape.

(What, you were thinking of that other one, the one that had the documentary about her?  An illusion .  Shown to Capt. Christopher Pike.  The other "green-skinned alien babe", out of TWO.

Unless, by "earthmen", you mean Capt. Archer from Enterprise, who ultimately discovered a good reason not to.

1 hour ago, SadPanda said:

Maybe not, but they're hot as hell. Did you ever meet Seven of Nine? Yowza!

Or, as fans cynically referred to her last-ditch ratings insertion into "Voyager", Thirty-Six of C.

1 hour ago, misswonderly3 said:

 Also  (but I made this one up)  the  most threatening of all the aliens the Star Trek TNG crew encounters is The Borg.  Aside from anything else, they have no sense of humour.  Scary !

" Resistance is futile.  "

I mean, they never have any fun!

On MST3K, every time there's a long minute-wasting scene of a car pulling out of a driveway, or turning a long U-turn on a backroads highway, the comics always joke, in a Bob Newhart voice, "Er, Mrs. Webb?...Both hands on the wheel, Mrs. Webb?"

One of the (obviously) younger fans on our discussion board asked "What's that 'Mrs. Webb' thing they quote, when they want to assimilate [sic] a driving instructor?"  We patiently corrected the lad that the word was "Simulate", as, quote, "Bob Newhart was not a member of the Borg collective".  😆

Which, in the natural progression of our net-conversation, led to:

" (on phone) Well, see, th-that's the point we were making about Resistance, y'see, (ahem) Resistance is Futile....Well, I'm quite sure it IS!....I'm sorry, what does what mean?...'Futile'?  It's sort of like when you--Y-yes, you could look it up, I'll wait..."

[hamradio]

24 minutes ago, SadPanda said:

Yes. Resistance is futile.

Tell that to Species 8472! 

 

[chaya bat woof woof]

Not in the original but did anyone ever notice that there were Bjorns (sp?) and the Borgs?  Put them together and you get one great tennis player!

I watched the original when it was on and the reruns of the different shows.  Never a great fan of TNG, though liked some of the characters.  And Patrick Steward looks better when his head isn't used as a soccer ball (for anyone who saw him in PBS's I Claudius).