It's been a summer of vacations, a summer of work, a summer of reading, a summer of working on a novel, and of course, a summer of fewer television shows, but nevertheless, pretty good time for a wrap-up post on What I Did Over My Summer, right?
Star Trek: The Next Generation
We wrapped up our re-watch of this over the summer after a very slow start God knows how long ago, because of what a slog the first season or two are. But once you get to season three, things are really kicking.
I grew up watching the original Trek -- my father had been a fan and we watched the first few movies on a regular basis as well -- and I have distinct memories of anticipation of Next Generation premiering. I think, honestly, the original series might still be the one I prefer. It has aged, Lord knows, but maybe I forgive it its cornball moments because it's before my time instead of contemporary with me, whereas I find the flaws of Next Generation harder to forgive because I feel like it's recent enough to know better.
The bad stuff first:
* The Prime Directive is horseshit, in no small part because any foreign policy framed as such a broad general principle without considering context is going to be horseshit, no matter what the content of that principle is. This is simply not well thought out. In fact, it's two kinds of horseshit: first, it's horseshit in that following the Prime Directive is often going to cause more harm than good. The show acknowledges this particular horseshit, which is why Picard (and Kirk, earlier) so often either defy the Prime Directive or are put in moral dilemmas (Picard especially) where they feel conflicted about it. (And there are many other episodes where had someone been thinking more clearly, the Prime Directive SHOULD have come up, but no one bothered to bring it up.)
The second kind of horseshit, though, is this: I don't believe in this culture's treatment of the Prime Directive.
The Prime Directive is so plainly horseshit that I don't believe it would be treated as a sacred principle to which people do not regularly and routinely object. It's one thing to believe that the Federation would insist on its adherence -- though like I said, that's ridiculous in of itself -- but to believe in a world where that is not the source of regular and ongoing controversy is just not possible. Every time Picard says, "Well, that would violate the Prime Directive," Riker should be like, "Man, my parents met at an anti-Prime Directive protest in Trombone City," and Crusher should be all, "Yeah, I spent a summer in the Academy doing volunteer work for Doctors Against the Prime Directive Because It's Dumb." Which is a subset of the next bullet point:
* The Star Trek writers do not really know how to create or write about cultures.
This is a Roddenberry problem, I think. I mean, I know that it begins with Rodenberry, especially because I know about the Star Trek writers who have complained about some of Rodenberry's rules. The idea that this future utopia has no economy, for instance, is at odds with a show about a military. What is the incentive to join a job that puts your life at risk if there is no material gain for you or your loved ones? I have no doubt some people would join out of their love of the Federation, a desire to kill Romulans or Cardassians or what have you (though of course, they're not currently at war), or in order to explore the galaxy, but Starfleet seems very large -- are there enough such people? And if they're assigned a boring duty out on some remote mining planet, what incentive do they have to not just quit and say "well, fuck Starfleet, then"? (I realize that the show is in fact inconsistent about whether money exists in the Federation, insofar as it essentially says that it doesn't but portrays private possessions and even people purchasing things. I also realize that there are probably Star Trek novels that explain how it all "works," but that's not really a defense of a shittily conceived culture as depicted on the actual on-screen television show.)
It's obviously not JUST a Roddenberry problem, since most of the episodes that deal with "the Enterprise has to deal with a culture that..." are pretty cringe-worthy and just feel completely impossible. No culture is fully fleshed out -- most feel more like versions of humanity with all the features removed except one. Star Trek writers don't seem to have a basic understanding of any social science, and the cultures they create are created with far less care and detail than the spacetime anomalies are. What I'm describing is of course the science fiction cliche, especially for a particular period and especially for science fiction on television and film, but just because every other restaurant is serving a shit sandwich too doesn't mean I've suddenly decided I don't mind yours.
* Like I said, it really does take a while to find its voice. Some of this is just age -- the special effects and sets, for instance, were expensive and cutting-edge for their time, relative to what was normal for a television show, but that says as much about the cost of special effects at the time as it does anything else. It can be hard to muster up a sense of wonder when a show ostensibly about, in part, the spirit of exploration for its own sake keeps encountering aliens who look and act like humans who have had extra bits glued to their faces. I mean, there is a kind of wonder to that, but it's not really the right one, and I am not really the kind of soaked-to-the-bone science fiction fan who can suspend his disbelief enough to feel the wonder anyway, I guess.
* The ladies. LEAVE THE LADIES ALONE, STAR TREK.
Jesus, if they ever write another episode of any Star Trek series where a Star Trek lady gets seduced, raped, mind-controlled, etc., it will be too soon. Ensign Ro is largely spared, if I remember right, but I don't entirely trust my memory.
Subset to this is the disservice to Troi's character in the episode when, because she's lost her empathic powers, she's pretty much helpless to do ANYthing, and this is a huge crisis for the Enterprise. Okay, a) I get that empathy is a big deal for Betazoids, but you did go to Starfleet Academy, right, plus regular fucking school and stuff like that, so somehow you must have picked up other skills -- not to mention, is having magical empathy that you were born with seriously your only job qualification for being Ship's Counselor? I'm pretty sure they didn't put Spock on the Enterprise just for being a Vulcan and being super-rational, I think he still had to demonstrate measurable skills. b) What does every other ship in the fleet do for a Ship's Counselor? One assumes there are not enough Betazoids to go around. One assumes, then, that other Ship's Counselors received training in Starfleet. One assumes that you went to class with them. Break out your textbooks.
I'm blaming the writers for this, not Troi, because again: Star Trek writers flunk social studies.
The good stuff:
* It really picks up after the first couple seasons. The characters come into focus, Beverly Crusher comes back after the Pulaski interlude, there are fewer episodes that feel like they could have been written for the original series.
* Worf!
Although I don't like episodes that revolve mainly around Problems With The Klingon Empire -- the least interesting running subplot in the show -- I love Worf-centric episodes, and once they realize Worf is funny in a straight man kind of way, Worf is so great. Worf is fed up with your bullshit. Worf is fed up with your human frailty. Worf is just so tired of all this. Worf-eyeroll. Worf-sigh.
I can't imagine the challenge of acting and emoting week in and week out in the amount of facial prosthetics that Michael Dorn had to deal with -- even if most of it is on his forehead and not interfering with his facial muscles, it still must be a lot more distracting than pointy ears -- but he got so good at conveying Worf's reactions that in a lot of episodes, I started just watching Worf in every scene, even scenes that were not about Worf.
And although I don't like Problems With The Klingon Empire, Worf's family are exempted from that issue, by and large -- his challenges dealing with his parents, his brother, K'Ehleyr (I had to look up that spelling), and Alexander are part of the great fun of Worf.
* The crazy "science" stuff.
As bad as Star Trek is at cultures, it's pretty great at its crazy fake sciencey shit.
Time loops, monsters in the transporter tube, Yesterday's Enterprise and its later ramifications, all this kind of stuff, this is the good shit. One of my favorite episodes is "Parallels," where Worf keeps blipping into alternate universes where things are slightly different than the previous one, including one in which he's married to Troi, one in which the Enterprise is at war, etc. The series finale is great too.
And while the holodeck logic never really works -- and it's a little ridiculous how often the holodeck is used to recreate "times from history" that just happen to be from Earth's past, sometime before 1950 (never, you know, the 22nd century, or the Sapphire Dynasty of Planet Blerk) -- most of the holodeck episodes are a lot of fun.
* Q. You'd think he'd be overused, but even binging the show, the Q episodes are highlights.
* Barclay, the second-best character -- kind of a joke character in his first appearance, but what's great is that they bring him back and develop him more, and in doing so he becomes an actual human-seeming character where most of the rest seem like paragons
Feed the Beast
This show was fucking awful, and I'm so pleased to learn AMC -- which renews almost everything for a second season -- canceled it after its first season.
I watched four episodes, and Caitlin couldn't take more than one. It was a collection of such awful cable-drama cliches of the Male Antihero type -- two troubled grunty men being troubled and grunty over what troubled grunty genius chefs they are, with a completely unnecessary organized crime element AND a completely cliche disapproving grunty father character.
You could reduce this show to both of the guys whipping their cocks out and slamming them against a dry-aged steak while cry-shouting about their feelings, and if anything, it might be an improvement.
The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
I am just old enough to have grown up watching Carson, but it was Carson's waning days -- the days of frequent guest hosts and reruns, and for me, sometimes the endgame of watching Carson was to stay up to watch Letterman and Tom Snyder after. It's been cool having the reruns -- out of order, so you might get a couple from the 60s followed by a few from the 70s -- on ... MeTV, if I remember right, and we watch a couple episodes a week, based on who the guests are.
The guests are one of the interesting things about the show, of course -- oh, that's what Teri Garr had to say about Tootsie when she was doing the PR for it, or oh that's her anecdote about Mr Mom, or what have you -- but the show itself has a lot of interest beyond that. For better or worse, obviously it set up a lot of the structure of late-night talk shows that remains in place today, and what was already set up, it ensured would become almost sacred features: the sidekick, the desk, the monologue, the skits, the characters. It's hard not to view it with cynicism and realize that, at base, what's being served is the need to fill time so that little more is asked of guests other than that they plug their movies and pad out their appearance briefly with a rehearsed anecdote.
All of that is far more true today than it was then, but it began then.
One of the other interesting things is that -- and I say this without detracting either from Carson's impact and legacy, or from my opinion of him -- Johnny is not actually a very good interviewer.
This is where you see Letterman's similarities to him, actually. While they were both on the air, the contrast was pretty stark -- Letterman was much zanier, much weirder, much goofier-looking. But in both cases, their demeanor in interviews varies wildly according to the guest -- which means, I'm assuming, according to their interest in the guest, and what the guest has to say. Letterman fawns on the ladies, of course. Johnny asks them a couple of superficial questions, usually gives them only a few minutes of airtime and, in the 70s, asks them about their poster. He barely seems to be paying attention, at least to their answers. But with male guests there are other issues -- sometimes he seems to have trouble absorbing the point of a long answer, like he was listening to a producer in his ear instead of to the guest, and at other times he'll just look for the opportunity to deliver a punchline instead of having a conversation.
What makes this interesting is that, apart from his handling of women (especially in the 70s, and especially if it's anyone who would have had a poster for sale), it still pretty much works. Johnny Carson wasn't an expert interviewer. I don't just mean he wasn't a journalist, I mean by the standards of late-night talk show hosts, he wasn't one of the better interviewers -- Craig Ferguson was better until he gave up, Dick Cavett was obviously better. But he had a natural charisma that made it kind of not matter very much to the overall quality of the show. Now, in terms of the success of the show in its era, obviously it helps that it also didn't have the timeslot competition that talk shows have now. But I don't think I'm looking at things with rosy-colored glasses here.
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