I used to rail about the image of the Borg being only the most obvious facet of the anti-transhuman bias of Star Trek, and high-budget SF in general. Circuit4 and I see this often enough that we have a routine for it: when becoming "more than human" suddenly turns out to be a bad idea for insufficiently explored ideas, we start reciting in unison, "He learned too late that man is a feeling creature..."
Damn, it's been awhile since I inflicted TNG on myself, so I'm reaching. Let's see. Barkley was a prime example: the scriptwriters seemed to think it was much better for him to be a nebbish struggling to become a better human being than an emergent hyper-intelligence who could fly a starship with his brain. The Q's seemed to sometimes be in the right, but always be assholes into the bargain. Most of the digital sentiences were painted black, too -- it was always bad for computers to become self-aware.
I no longer have cable and thus can't cite as many specifics as I'd like. Maybe I'll see if one of my friends has a DVD set.
No question, DeLancie made a _great_ arrogant godling. :) He totally stole the show.
I thought TOS had some of this humanist-in-a-bad-way thing going on too, but I felt it was more forgivable in the 60s. The 80s TNG really wanted to be cutting-edge (although they also failed signally to deal with TEH GHEY, which is its own whole other discussion) and so its shortcomings were thrown into starker relief. After that, I caught the occasional DS9 or Voyager, but not enough to assemble a case against either. :)
Trying to remember, also, if Enterprise did this. I have to say that my interest in that series was kept on life support a little longer when they had the Vulcans act like dicks. Another rant I keep meaning to write about Star Trek concerns its glorification of the Vulcans' Victorian levels of repression, which in my experience is a terrible idea. Maybe it works for them. It don't work for us.
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Also I'm going to go look it up on Memory Alpha and chalk up yet another entry - y'all are pushing The List a little hard. ^^;;
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I no longer have cable and thus can't cite as many specifics as I'd like. Maybe I'll see if one of my friends has a DVD set.
y'all are pushing The List a little hard
Man, I ain't even started yet! :)
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Also I'd say that de Lancie, at least, made a very amusing-to-watch jerk.
So I should just dig around in Memory Alpha, you're saying ?
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No question, DeLancie made a _great_ arrogant godling. :) He totally stole the show.
I thought TOS had some of this humanist-in-a-bad-way thing going on too, but I felt it was more forgivable in the 60s. The 80s TNG really wanted to be cutting-edge (although they also failed signally to deal with TEH GHEY, which is its own whole other discussion) and so its shortcomings were thrown into starker relief. After that, I caught the occasional DS9 or Voyager, but not enough to assemble a case against either. :)
Trying to remember, also, if Enterprise did this. I have to say that my interest in that series was kept on life support a little longer when they had the Vulcans act like dicks. Another rant I keep meaning to write about Star Trek concerns its glorification of the Vulcans' Victorian levels of repression, which in my experience is a terrible idea. Maybe it works for them. It don't work for us.
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Christ, I've forgotten a lot about Trek. I think I'll stick with just remembering that Stewart and de Lancie were damn good, and not rewatch.
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