Star Trek comments (without spoilers)

[momokaachan]

At least, I hope it won't spoil anyone's enjoyment of the movie to know how glad I am that they made REAL personas for Uhura (and how!), Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov. I am not neglecting Spock & McCoy, but their personalities were well established in the series.  Chekov - well especially am I glad for character development for him. As y'all may or may not know, in the series the PTB (Producers, etc watching the ratings) introduced the character "to attract the younger watchers" and modeled him a good bit on the Davy Jones character in the then-popular "Monkees" comedy series. To be sure, at that time it was a bit of a risk making him Russian (and proud of it!). Still, what writers etc did with the character was pretty pathetic, mostly limiting interaction to jokes about his accent and mis-pronunciation of English, and using him as a red shirt (although Walter Koenig had a GREAT scream of terror). I think maybe the only reason Sulu was NOT so badly treated was that George Takei "made" the character - that is, gave him reality, sometimes in spite of the writers etc. Same said of Scotty, I like to think that James Doohan was proud of him. Now Uhura...another juggling event for the writers etc as having a BLACK WOMAN in a very visible (if not significant) role at that time was a definite risk. Thousands, if not millions (XD) of fans were with me ranting, "Please God give her SOMETHING to do besides 'hailing frequencies open, sir'!" Even Gene Roddenberry remarked in interviews that he would have liked to do more with her (this notwithstanding his personal relationship with Nichelle Nichols which is another story altogether), but such story ideas were turned aside, if not down, by the conservatives at NBC who did NOT want to take a chance, rock the boat, ah, well, you get the idea.
LOL enough already, let me know what you think!