Hi! So I really want to start watching Star Trek. But in this world there is literally so much Star Trek and I’m so clueless and have no idea where to start. Do you have any suggestions?

Friday, August 21st, 2015

Well… I tell everyone to start with TOS because it’s my baby and because the later shows ALL reference it in some way from time to time (the recurring tribble episodes, the mirrorverse episodes, etc.) but in actuality I guess you could start with whichever one fits your personality best (because the beautiful thing is that they’re all really different)

Like, if you like complex political drama, maybe Deep Space Nine is the place for you.

Enjoy cranky captains with child aversion, androids exploring their inner humanity, sassy lady doctors, and LeVar Burton (because who doesn’t love LeVar Burton????) – try The Next Generation! The thing about TNG is that it is much more serious and dramatic in tone than TOS, but it is still lighthearted at times. The episodes with Q are the best because he basically shows up at random moments just to fuck with everyone and hit on Picard like a creeper. (Seriously he quotes Shakespeare and Jean Luc is just like – *perpetual eyeroll*)

Personally I did not enjoy Enterprise, but if you want to start at the canonical BEGINNING of EVERYTHING, that’s a good place to start. It’s a prequel to TOS and is set in the 22nd century. 

Then there’s Voyager, which takes place in relatively the same timespan as TNG and DS9 (24th century) and deals with the mission of the Voyager crew after they become lost in space. It was never really my bag, but I like Janeway. I relate to her strongly on a coffee drinker level. “There’s coffee in that nebula!”

Honestly, the TOS movies are some of my faves because old married spirk but if you’re going to watch them (and you should) you really need to start with TOS. 

As far as the movies themselves go, Wrath of Khan is LIFE (Filled with classical literature references and Spirk ANGSTTTTT.) The Voyage Home is funny camp but also wonderful because it’s about saving the planet (i.e. save the whales) and that’s just a beautiful thing. It is also super Old Married Spirk-centric and I know what I’m about, son.

So I guess at the end of the day, my answer is START WITH TOS because it is delightfully philosophical and asks the timelessly deep questions like:

  • Why does racism exist? 
  • Will we have grown out of greed and petty hatred by the 23rd century? (The show proceeds as if we have, and it’s a beautiful thing)
  • Can we, as a species, ever learn to embrace our differences rather than being divided by them?

But then also is super campy and fun at times (for a nice balance) so you get things like:

  • Unicorn dogs… in SPAAAACEEEE
  • 2 Kirks + 1 Spock (oh ho ho i can’t tell you what i’m thinking right now)
  • TRIBBLES
  • COSPLAY IN SPACE (every time they beam down to an alien planet that is inexplicably a representation of Earth’s past and they have to dress in the attire of the locals – 1920′s gangsters, evil space Nazis, etc.)

And also just in general you will fall in LOVE with the characters because:

  • Jim Kirk is a beautiful ray of sunshine who loves books, flowers, and stepping up to defend anyone who is being marginalized or subjected to bigotry. In the second episode, he literally shuts down a fuckboy who is being super creepy with a female crew member who has made it perfectly clear that she wants nothing to do with his inappropriate advances. The boy complains about being friendzoned and Jim is like, “LOOK SON, YOU CAN’T BE DOING THIS SHIT – YOU NEED TO R-E-S-P-E-C-T HER” and it’s amazing.
  • Spock is a literal awkward baby giraffe that you will want to clutch to your bosom and protect from the world. He starts out thinking he’ll never fit in anywhere because of his mixed race and inability to be fully Human or Vulcan, but then he meets Jim “blessed bundle of rainbows” Kirk and finds a true friend who completely accepts him as he is and can bEAT HIM AT CHESS which is totally a turn on for spock, fight me on this BECAUSE HE’S A BIG TIME GENIUS AND A NERD and it’s the greatest love story of all tiiimmeeee
  • Leonard “Bones” McCoy is the sweetest Southern Belle to ever traipse through space. He HATES being in space, is afraid and paranoid of everything, but he does it anyway because he loves and cares SO deeply about helping people. He expresses his love through the grumpy exterior of a man who gets frustrated when he can’t immediately solve everyone’s problems and ailments, and that is something I relate to on a spiritual level. Also Bones and Spock’s sassy banter is LIFE.
  • Literally every character in this show is to die for. Uhura is a BAMF who is fantastic at her job and can successfully perform half the jobs on the bridge when she needs to in a pinch) loves to sing and casually flirts with Spock (because she knows he secretly enjoys it but it’s all in good fun, they’re good friends and they bond over their mutual love of music and AUGH I just can’t with them; they’re too cute) 
  • Sulu is a dorky history buff who loves fencing and chivalry and is a bOTANIST in his free time and super nerds out over plants and antiques and UGH I CAN’T SULU IS THE SWEETEST BABY
  • Scotty is super invested in his Scottish heritage and enjoys a good drink and LOVES THE ENTERPRISE SO MUCH like she’s a beautiful lady whose honor must be defended when anyone insults her
  • Chekov is the little lovable piece of trash that you just can’t help but adore even though he’s always going on about how Russia invented everything and is the best (because it’s a big joke at this point – he just gets off on fucking with everyone) and is all about getting lucky with the ladies so everyone is just collectively rolling their eyes at his flirtatious antics at this point
  • Rand! Chapel! 
  • EVERYONE IS AWESOME GO WATCH THIS SHOW IMMEDIATELY

….I’m sorry. At some point this devolved into me just gushing about TOS characters and how beautiful and perfect they all are.

Bottom line: WATCH STAR TREK. WATCH IT NOW. YOU ARE MAKING GOOD LIFE CHOICES, FRIEND.

image

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1EIB9Ts.

Tags: star trek, tos. Posted in Tumblr by jbc | Permalink | No Comments »

“Star Trek is about ethics, morality, optimism, cultural understanding and acceptance. It’s an…”

Sunday, May 19th, 2013

““Star Trek is about ethics, morality, optimism, cultural understanding and acceptance. It’s an earnest wish for a better future.””

–

Lettered, in a very spoilery essay about why Star Trek: Into Darkness left her feeling cold and hollow and not a little bit angry.

(This is my friend Joy, who is also my favorite writer.)

(Above text by Rainbow Rowell. Below text by me, John Callender. You know, lies. Which you’re welcome to interpret as descriptive of the content, not just the author. But this is true for me.)

I saw STID on Friday, and I both very much liked a lot of it and repeatedly felt that something I valued but had a hard time articulating was being violated. I’m not going to bother getting spoiler-y, but having the linked-to post to point to is helpful, because while I mostly had different specific issues of canon-contravention that bothered me, I kind of do agree with much of the underlying sentiment. I’m specifically not going to address the casting of Benedict Cumberbatch; I’ve got some thoughts about that, but I’ll save them for another post.

There is a glibness, for want of a better word, in modern big-budget effects movies. There’s an assumption that things that defy logic and physics but look and sound cool can be thrown at the audience, and the audience will howl and clap and buy more popcorn, and the film makers needn’t worry about explaining or justifying or even lamp-shading the wackiness; they’ve already had their payoff and can whoosh-cut to the next gag. And sure, TOS and Wrath of Khan (for example) were far from perfect in that respect, and for a modern reboot of the series to reflect the strengths and weaknesses of its time, just as earlier Trek reflected its own, is unsurprising.

With both Lord of the Rings and the 2005 Pride and Prejudice I fell into the fandom camp that argued that updated retellings should be free to make bold changes. Fans didn’t lose Tolkien’s Faramir just because Peter Jackson sacrificed him on the altar of injecting cinematic tension into The Two Towers. They didn’t lose the complexity of Austen’s Darcy just because Joe Wright jettisoned him in favor of a simplified romantic lead. By the same token, if JJ Abrams wants to abandon large chunks of the subtle but (at least to lifelong Trek fans) important characteristics of the Trek universe to pursue his (admittedly emotionally powerful) storytelling, in a way that bows to the logic of what a big-budget effects movie is like circa 2013, then he gets to do that, and at least in the eyes of those who put their money at risk I’m sure the numbers are proving him right.

I reached a point toward the end of STID where I had pretty much decided that while this was a good movie, and an enjoyable movie, maybe even a FUCKING AWESOME movie (as one Tumblr review I reblogged characterized it), it wasn’t, at least in my eyes, Star Trek. It had crossed one too many lines, dismissively violated one too many conventions. And not just conventions like “starships don’t enter planetary atmosphere.” Conventions like the one quoted above, about Trek representing “an earnest wish for a better future.”

Then came the movie’s climactic sequence, and Abrams reeled me right back in, and I was immediately emotionally invested, and whatever you might say against some of the choices, the action was too deeply enmeshed in the Trek part of my brain to be denied, and I was in Trek heaven through the end of the movie.

It’s interesting to read the linked-to reviewer’s charges against the way that scene was re-imagined, and I can see the truth of what she’s saying. But I guess it didn’t matter for me. It may not have been completely honest on Abrams’ part, may have been a cheat, appropriating emotions that were earned by a different generation of Trek. But if that’s what it was, the trick worked in my case. I guess I’m predictable that way, and I don’t doubt for a second that at some point in the creative process there was a cynical choice made to manipulate me by those exact means.

I think Trek gets to be its own new, different, thing for the purposes of being a big-budget effects movie in 2013. That’s just reality. I’m happy about it. I’ll probably see it again in the theater.

But it is a different thing. I waited in line in Westwood opening weekend to see one of the first showings of Wrath of Khan. I went in not really knowing what to expect; my expectations were actually pretty low after having done the same thing a few years previously for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. When I walked out of that theater a few hours later I was stunned. Not just by how good the movie was, but by the ending, an ending that at that moment, at least, was unrelieved by the way they ended up walking it back in the next movie.

It was an early afternoon showing of Wrath of Khan that we saw, and when we walked out we passed even longer lines of fans waiting to get into the next showing. And it was a really cool experience to have those people actively engage with us as we left the theater. “How was it? Was it good?” Because this was 1982, pre-Internet, and again, given the debacle that the previous movie had been, for fans obsessive enough to be lining up hours ahead of time, this was a real question.

I remember being locked in quiet, intense conversation with my party about what we’d just seen and what it meant. And then looking up at this line of expectant fans, realizing they were all watching us really intently. Was this movie good? Was it worthy of Trek?

Oh yeah, I remember saying to someone. You’re going to love it. But (shaking my head and chuckling) you have no idea. And then walking off to continue dissecting it, trying to come to grips with what we’d just seen.

Star Trek: Into Darkness is a damn good movie. It may or may not be Trek, and I can’t give it the same unqualified praise I gave those strangers waiting in line back in 1982. Especially if you really love Trek, this is going to be a complicated movie to process. But it’s a damn effective one, whatever it is.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/50869963582.

Tags: star trek, star trek into darkness. Posted in Tumblr by jbc | Permalink | No Comments »