...so, Star Trek. O_o

[jennaria]

Four episodes in! And dear God how are you not all dead.

I mean, part of it is definitely the 1960s vs. 2020 culture clash? But part of it is also, during the coronavirus pandemic, watching, as someone in a protective suit, who's dealing with dead bodies! From unexplained causes! just casually takes off his glove, braces himself against a table for a while with that bare hand, then rubs his nose with that same hand before putting his glove back on. AND YOU CALL YOURSELF A SCIENTIST, MR. BLUE SHIRT.

But seriously. In four episodes, they've dealt with a murderous shapeshifter, not one! but three! god-like beings! although granted, one of them was more of a threat to the ship than the other two (and wow, they are remarkably chill about the Thasians - no wonder Next Gen doesn't worry about Q), and the aforementioned itty bitty epidemic. I was expecting cheesy sci-fi, not border-line horror. WTF.

...that said, Sulu looks better shirtless than Kirk, Uhura is clearly The Best, and Wife has decided she's Team Scotty. Also, the show apparently ships Kirk/Enterprise harder than anything.

Comments

[branchandroot]

Oh, um, yeah. It's kind of horrific high stakes WTF every hour of the day, on the Enterprise. I think people dwell on the cheese because that was one of the biggest criticisms of it, in its own day. Kind of the same way "omg satanism!" was one of the biggest criticisms of Harry Potter (in the US)? With about as much relation to reality and evidence of actually having, you know, viewed the source.

(Also, yes, Uhura /is/ the Best, and it's Kirk/Enterprise all the way down, though Spok does eventually get in on the love triangle, esp once you hit the movies.)

[jennaria]

I'm not sure if it's that I've watched (and enjoyed!) old-school Doctor Who, and Sapphire And Steel, and Man From U.N.C.L.E., and other such shows from a similar era, so the special effects and the occasionally over-the-top acting doesn't hit me the way it might otherwise? :spreads hands: Heck if I know.

[nodrog]

apparently ships Kirk/Enterprise

This is why G L Whitney as "Yeoman Rand" quickly became irrelevant, despite being the origin of the tricorder.  (True! They wanted her to be able to do something besides be eye candy.  That's why it was strap-slung like a purse - how else would she carry it?)

(The character was obscure anyway, a carryover from the original pilot, where she was an awkward ad hoc replacement for the Captain's original yeo man, killed in action.)

[jennaria]

why G L Whitney as "Yeoman Rand" quickly became irrelevant

Lord save us all from gratuitous Proof of Heterosexuality. :sigh:

[nodrog]

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

- L P Hartley

[hitokage]

Uhura is everything and yes, it's Kirk/Enterprise all the way.
I ... I think it gets a bit less horrifying as things proceed? Sort of? It's been awhile since the last time I watched through, I could be wrong. XD There's a continual sort of spunky, make the impossible happen ... TOS is sort of the ancestor of the modern fyhumans trope, so yeah

[jennaria]

I have to admit, we hit the point where we decided, nope, not going to marathon through after all. :rueful: So we have a page-long list of episodes we want to watch instead, picking and choosing.

[cimorene]

I've always thought that about The Naked Time. Scientists certainly 'knew better' in the 1960s: germ theory and radiation poisoning were known, the amount of work that went into making space suits was a thing... microscopes were everyday even in schools, so of course adequate safety gear and its precautions were a thing. I suspect the obviousness of that fail was mainly to make sure the whole tv audience could follow it - that kind of incident in literary SF would have been a tiny bit subtler most of the time.

But on the other hand we know the statistics about doctors washing their hands, so... it's also maybe not that unrealistic as a brain fail (although the safety gear being that easy to take off and the dude being that unsupervised with it in that situation maybe is).

[jennaria]

Eh - I suspect it's definitely a thing that wouldn't have hit me as hard if not for the current pandemic, and having WASH YOUR HANDS DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE being thrown at me everywhere I Look. :shrug: Sometimes it's easier to accept Reality Tweaked For Plot Purposes than others, depending on the reality and on the plot.

[rebeccama]

I am embarrassed to admit that I have only seen "The Trouble with Tribbles" and a couple of the films featuring the TOS cast. I did see pieces when my father would watch reruns when I was a kid.

[jennaria]

I'd likewise seen a couple of the films, and read a metric ton of the fanfic. Otherwise, it was just...cultural osmosis. Which, as is frequently true of cultural osmosis, was only sorta accurate.