General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMrScorpio
(73,631 posts)We live in a world influenced by Trek. I find that to be a more compelling description.
LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)Really.
Remember how he got his seat in the senate? Incumbent Senator Jack Ryan's rather scandalous divorce records got leaked to the press. EVERYBODY printed them, mostly because it was an excuse to print a picture of his soon-to-be-ex-wife Jeri Ryan and her gravity-defying body in her skin-tight costume as Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager. As press found more and more scandal Ryan stepped aside. Carpetbagging clown Alan Keyes ran in his place. Naturally Obama won. The new senator got a speaking role at the next convention, impressed the shit out of everybody and ran for president.
This was the only good thing that came out of Star Trek: Voyager.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)Besides Ms. Ryan's outfit.
It did have the first female captain starring on that series. All the female characters were empowered. More so (in my opinion) than any other Star Trek series.
I liked the retro sci-fi stuff in the Holo-Decks too. It was really funny the way they presented that.
The new shuttlecrafts / runabouts were cool.
The design of the ship itself was cool. I liked the variable shape Necells (sp?) Similar to the variable wing fighter aircraft of the same time period.
I enjoyed the series. It went back to the roots of exploring unknown space, the way the original series did.
Tikki
(14,560 posts)Plus plenty of new aliens to meet and technology to discover.
Tikki
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Janeway was the worst.
Every star trek captain knew *something* and played to that strength... except Janeway, she knew everything better than anyone on the ship, and was surrounded by squabbling mutinous incompetents. Just like real life, amirite?
Science fiction has plenty of examples of good female leaders. My favorite is the character played by Tori Higginson on SG Atlantis. She was written and portrayed in a way that showed that she was the domain expert at what she knew but allowed the other characters to fill their roles while still being the boss.
DS9 was the best.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)Janeway was always the smartest person in the room, but she was also the only character qualified for the position she held.
The premise of the show was that most of the original crew was killed at the very beginning of the series. This forced the Voyager crew to be composed of people who were not qualified.
There are also plenty of examples where someone like Paris, Kim or Torres came up with something on his/her own to save the day.
I could get into Higginson's character on SGA, but she was really just a diplomat. Yes, she let everyone else play to their strengths because she really had no strengths other than the ability to form compromises that make everyone happy.
Not that I don't like her character, or that series, I do. I just like Janeway more. Also I liked Amanda Tapping more in both SG incarnations that she was on.
FarPoint
(12,472 posts)Her husband ran for governor several years ago. Tim Hagan I believe was his name.
pink-o
(4,056 posts)And she's freakin' AWESOME in it! Kate Mulgrew is her name.
And, yeah, I've known that story about Jeri Ryan's ex-husband for awhile. He was running as a "Family Values" Repug all moral fibre and nauseating et al. But somehow, their sealed divorce files were opened in the middle of his campaign and they revealed his propensity for dragging her to sex clubs and making her perform S & M acts against her better judgment.
I would LOVE to know how those records got unsealed and how it was so perfectly timed!
2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)adavid
(140 posts)They never went anywhere
IllinoisBirdWatcher
(2,315 posts)when Shatner kissed Nichele Nichols. At the time Nichols was the only black female role model on a TV series not playing a servant.
According to an anecdote told by Nichelle Nichols in the documentary film Trekkies (1997), a young Goldberg was watching Star Trek, and upon seeing Nichols' character Uhura, exclaimed, "Momma! There's a black lady on TV and she ain't no maid!" (Nichols, Nichelle (1997). Trekkies (DVD). Neo Motion Pictures.)
Years later that caused Whoopi Goldberg to request that Roddenberry create a role for her on Star Trek Next Generation, which he did.
Good speculative fiction has helped frame the social future as much or even more so than the tech future.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)I am just responding to the attack on STV. I liked it.
pokerfan
(27,677 posts)Sulu: "I'll protect you, fair maiden."
Uhura: "Sorry, neither."
And when Nichols was thinking about leaving the show it was none other than Martin Luther King who convinced her to stay.
Ms. NICHOLS: I went in to tell Gene Roddenberry that I was leaving after the first season, and he was very upset about it. And he said, take the weekend and think about what I am trying to achieve here in this show. You're an integral part and very important to it. And so I said, yes, I would. And that - on Saturday night, I went to an NAACP fund raiser, I believe it was, in Beverly Hills. And one of the promoters came over to me and said, Ms. Nichols, there's someone who would like to meet you. He says he is your greatest fan.
And I'm thinking a Trekker, you know. And I turn, and before I could get up, I looked across the way and there was the face of Dr. Martin Luther King smiling at me and walking toward me. And he started laughing. By the time he reached me, he said, yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan. I am that Trekkie.
(laughter)
Ms. NICHOLS: And I was speechless. He complimented me on the manner in which I'd created the character. I thanked him, and I think I said something like, Dr. King, I wish I could be out there marching with you. He said, no, no, no. No, you don't understand. We don't need you on the - to march. You are marching. You are reflecting what we are fighting for. So, I said to him, thank you so much. And I'm going to miss my co-stars.
And his face got very, very serious. And he said, what are you talking about? And I said, well, I told Gene just yesterday that I'm going to leave the show after the first year because I've been offered - and he stopped me and said: You cannot do that. And I was stunned. He said, don't you understand what this man has achieved? For the first time, we are being seen the world over as we should be seen. He says, do you understand that this is the only show that my wife Coretta and I will allow our little children to stay up and watch. I was speechless.
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942461/Star-Treks-Uhura-Reflects-On-MLK-Encounter
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)Course nobody but teabaggers care now.
CBGLuthier
(12,723 posts)There were more than a few interracial kisses on TV prior to Star Trek. Gunsmoke as an example had an asian and a caucasian kissing. Sammy Davis Jr also kissed a white woman on a variety show.
That particular story about ST being the first is just plain not true and trekkies need to drop it.
IllinoisBirdWatcher
(2,315 posts)I should have clarified with "first black-white interracial kiss in a US TV series..."
The episode features a kiss between James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) which is often, incorrectly (see Emergency Ward 10), cited as the first interracial kiss depicted on a scripted television series.[1][2] Similarly, over two years earlier on The Wild Wild West, James T. West (Robert Conrad) and Princess Ching Ling (Pilar Seurat), shared a white and Asian interracial kiss ("The Night the Dragon Screamed", aired 1966 Jan 14). In the same year on I Spy, Kelly Robinson (Robert Culp) and Sam (France Nuyen) would also share a white and Asian interracial kiss ("The Tiger", aired 1966 Jan 5). However, Plato's Stepchildren was the first white and black interracial kiss produced on US television, drawing critical and negative attention where the white and Asian interracial kisses did not.
Neatorama clarifies the difference between The Nichols-Shatner kiss in the scripted series and the Davis-Sinatra kiss on the Movin' with Nancy TV special with this:
And so, television history was made- the first-ever interracial kiss.
The Star Trek kiss, nonetheless, does hold its own place in TV history, as the very first scripted interracial kiss in a TV series.
So yes, technically Sammy's "peck on the cheek" did occur in a TV special a few months earlier. My apologies for not being more specific.
Hippo_Tron
(25,453 posts)Maybe Voyager's tie with DS9 but it's really hard to get stronger female characters that Kira and Dax. Both shows are miles ahead of the original and TNG in that regard, although TNG might've been closer if they'd kept Tasha Yar throughout the show.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)But since Dax had spent previous lives as a male, that character being an empowered female is somewhat vague. She also had the rank of Lieutenant Not exactly in command of anything.
Kira was second in command (to a male) and had all sorts of anger issues. It seemed to portray her as an emotionally unstable woman.
I will admit they were both strong characters who were extremely capable at their jobs but I think Captain Janeway, Chief Engineer Torres and 7 of 9 have them beat.
adavid
(140 posts)Voyager had continuity. Good acting.
RC
(25,592 posts)KatyMan
(4,214 posts)DS9. Really love both shows!
TheMightyFavog
(13,770 posts)He was supposed to be the next big thing in the GOP, and he was running for a senate seat that was being vacated by Republican Pete Fitzgerald, who was retiring.
LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)And I'd googled the whole thing to get Jack Ryan's name right, so it's a worse mistake than if I'd dredged the whole thing up from the mists of memory.
ProfessorGAC
(65,319 posts). . .Obama was ahead in the statewide polls at the time, so Ryan's departure didn't gain the seat for the Dems, but it did assure it. (I was part of the campaign that year for the far south parts of Chicagoland.) And Keyes entry to replace Ryan assured a landslide., which it was.
GAC
Hippo_Tron
(25,453 posts)Kerry might've still given him the speaking slot (they gave Elizabeth Warren one while she was in the midst of a tough Senate race) and that's what really propelled him to a viable 2008 contender. Ryan's implosion still didn't hurt, though, because Obama was able to spend the fall campaigning for other Democrats since his race was a done deal.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)I had a "StarTac" flip phone ~1996 and I thought that was among the first ones (I paid over $500.00 for the damn thing).
Also, you forgot the wrist communicator thing that looks a lot like the wrist "bluetooth" that Samsung now has out. It was in one of the first Star Trek movies.
Edit to add: (no flip phones in 1973)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_phones
^snip^
The first hand-held cell phone was demonstrated by John F. Mitchell[1][2] and Dr Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing around 2.2 pounds (1 kg).[3] In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first to be commercially available. From 1990 to 2011, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from 12.4 million to over 6 billion, penetrating about 87% of the global population and reaching the bottom of the economic pyramid.[4][5][6][7]
The first handheld mobile cell phone was demonstrated by Motorola in 1973. The first commercial automated cellular network was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979. In 1981, this was followed by the simultaneous launch of the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.[8] Several other countries then followed in the early to mid-1980s. These first generatiion ("1G" systems could support far more simultaneous calls, but still used analog technology.
In 1991, the second generation (2G) digital cellular technology was launched in Finland by Radiolinja on the GSM standard, which sparked competition in the sector, as the new operators challenged the incumbent 1G network operators.
Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)I know, because my Dad help design it. He was a CAD/CAM engineer for GTE.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)I might have had one of those. So long ago I don't really remember, but it sure does look familiar.
I think my point about the picture in the OP still stands, but thanks for sharing.
edbermac
(15,949 posts)Fuck the long lines and the TSA at the airport!
Scotty, beam me to Aruba...NOW!!
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)They're not really transporting your molecules. They're reconstructing you from local atoms at point B after disintegrating you at point A.
edbermac
(15,949 posts)E-Z-B
(567 posts)Then reconvert it back to matter
jeff47
(26,549 posts)But they aren't transmitting the energy.
Beaming someone up would actually cause a massive explosion, roughly equal to 1,000 thermonuclear weapons.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)and "transport" the energy which is then converted back to a replica of the original.
It is more like a replicator. Once they have the pattern, and enough energy, they could create as many of whatever/whoever is being transported as they want.
It is a cute idea, and is a great tool to help move the story along. Unfortunately, it is the least likely thing in a series that includes faster than light travel (and a giant space amoeba).
pokerfan
(27,677 posts)Otherwise how could we have wound up with the two Kirks in "Enemy Within" or the two Rikers in "Second Chances?"
Oh, sure, it may seem unlikely now but remember by the 23rd century they've invented the Heisenberg compensator which removes the uncertainty from subatomic measurements, making transporter travel feasible. When asked "How does the Heisenberg compensator work?" by Time magazine, Star Trek technical adviser Michael Okuda responded: "It works very well, thank you."
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)The idea that the specific state of subatomic particles would have any influence at all on something as complex as a human seems far fetched, at the least.
I don't really care what state my subatomic particles are in. So long as they exist in a range that is not harmful to me.
It just sounds like techno babble.
Oh, and the two Rikers thing was because they used two transporter beams. One got reflected back down to the surface. I forget why there were two Kirks.
Even so, it does substantiate my claim of it being more like a replicator.
pokerfan
(27,677 posts)Meaning, of course, that it works (or doesn't work) exactly as the story requires.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)But how often do I get a chance to discuss Heisenberg compensators?
Not often, that is for damn sure.
I had to voice that opinion while I had the chance.
JHB
(37,163 posts)It started off as just a plot device to save on the screen time and production expense of using a landing craft move people around all the time. Once established, it started being used in various ways, some of which were inconsistent. People have speculated on ways it might work in real life, but the writers of the various series have never limited themselves to any particular interpretation.
proudretiredvet
(312 posts)My son who is a big time tech just took a look at it and laughed. He is one of those 19 year olds who can fix, software or hardware, all of the electronic devices and games.
We are also waiting for the transporter and the food synthesizer.
shenmue
(38,506 posts)I wouldn't need to be afraid to go on planes anymore.
PCIntern
(25,619 posts)jeff47
(26,549 posts)(you'll have to copy-n-paste the URL to work around DU's handling of parentheses).
Specifically:
9.0×10^16 J mass-energy in 1 kilogram of antimatter (or matter)[148]
A human has roughly 70kg of matter (~150lbs). So converting a human into energy releases 6.3X10^18 J.
For comparison, the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, released 2.1×10^17 J. Annihilating the matter making one human is setting off 30 Tsar Bombas.
Transporters won't happen, at least in how they are described in Star Trek. On the other hand, telepresence via humanoid robots as in the movie Surrogates is likely and still solves the travel problem.
(Btw, do not watch that movie. It's awful.)
tkmorris
(11,138 posts)But you realize of course that we are talking about technology which does not exist, so discussion about how it would work specifically are bound to be inaccurate. The energy problem you put forth is a real one but it isn't a brick wall. Can such energy be released in such a way as to not be so disruptive to the immediate area? I can think of a few ways to approach that problem which really aren't any more fantastical than the basic idea of a mass>energy>mass transporter in the first place.
Oh, and more generally at this thread: Star Trek didn't originate ANY of these ideas. They borrowed them from existing and common science fiction. Since they were on TV it may be the first time some people were exposed to them, but were they far from new.
Dirty Socialist
(3,252 posts)"You are assimilated"
2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)to be sure.
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)They reject everything not like themselves in a constant struggle for anti-perfection.
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)TheMightyFavog
(13,770 posts)IllinoisBirdWatcher
(2,315 posts)Heinlein
Dr. Asimov
Bradbury
and all the children of John Wood Campbell who began printing their good speculative fiction in the 1940's.
Gene Roddenberry had an amazing vision of a better future (including No Smoking on the original Star Trek bridge while the majority of TV advertisers were tobacco companies), but the very best of his plots were taken from the heroes of the golden age of speculative fiction.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)he wrote 2 episodes.
I don't think Asimov wrote any, but I could be wrong.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)It's just taking us a bit of a while catching up.
napkinz
(17,199 posts)and one of the best moments in TV history starting at 2:20
And we're still grappling with this today ... we have a long way to go.
underthematrix
(5,811 posts)yuiyoshida
(41,868 posts)CAN somebody get a Transporter lock on this girl???
3catwoman3
(24,083 posts)...before my food replicator, my transporter, my medical tricorder, and my holodeck are going to be delivered? I want them now!
2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)mucifer
(23,589 posts)or the 1980s
But, I still love Tom Baker and his silly computer dog.
El_Johns
(1,805 posts)napkinz
(17,199 posts)Lurks Often
(5,455 posts)All are in the first stages that will almost certainly lead to the final version listed above.
I remember reading about all of these in the past year or two.
Bio bed: The US Army has developed the first step toward the bio bed
Replicator: The new 3-d printers are the first step toward a replicator
Holodeck: The virtual reality glasses/goggles are the first step toward the holodeck
Transporter: There was a science experiment were they made a molecule/atom/element move from one place to another without physically traveling the intervening distance.
pokerfan
(27,677 posts)Scruffy Rumbler
(961 posts)Mine doesn't look like this model though.