30 Days of TV Meme -- Day 4
I thought I'd posted this yesterday, but it looks like I didn't.
***
Day 4 - Your favorite show ever.
I'm going with the show that has had the biggest impact on me as a person, a show that I have loved for forty years:
Star Trek: The Original Series.
I will agree with the criticisms of the show. The special effects are not much by today's standards; the props were done on a shoestring (on one occasion, a piece of 23rd-century tech was represented by a handheld mike); yes, the women's costumes were miniskirts, which was anything but practical (to be fair, the pilot did have women in slacks, but that didn't go over well), and yes, Starfleet of the original series was extremely sexist, saying that women were not able to command. Yes, there were problems.
But at the same time, it sold me on an vision of the future that I love--that humanity will grow up and will get to a point where people will choose to get along, where the wars and the famine and the diseases will be a thing of the past, as quaintly alien as wigs with clocks and birdcages in them.
That was a huge deal. Remember, this show was being made in 1966 to 1968, during a very bloody war...and the people making this show were issuing the anti-establishment message of, "We will not destroy ourselves. We will stop fighting. There will be peace and that will be the norm. And that won't make us flabby or weak or get us conquered--no, it's going to be the beginning of an era of discovery and exploration and adventure beyond anything we can imagine. Peace will give us the opportunity to be great."
At the time, that message was revolutionary. And I wanted to believe it. I still want to believe it.
I also have to say something about the original Uhura. Because Uhura had an incredible impact on me.
I first saw Star Trek when I was about six-going-on-seven and it was in permanent reruns. It was 1969.
I mention the year to give you a hint of the era. Martin Luther King had been assassinated the previous April. I remember his funeral being televised. And I can still recall the rage and rioting that followed in the wake of his murder. Despite a civil rights bill being passed the previous year, blacks were still "the poor" and anonymous, angry protesters on the news to me. The few shows that existed with black stars or co-stars (I Spy, Peyton Place, Julia) weren't the sort of shows my family watched. There were no blacks in my neighborhood; until busing came in a few years later, there were no blacks at my school.
Enter Lieutenant Uhura.
Who was not only part of the crew, but part of the bridge crew. Not just a grunt in the bowels of the ship, but a respected officer...and one, I assumed, in the chain of command. She was smart, tough and quick-thinking. And she was utterly beautiful.
Just by existing, she contradicted every racist comment I'd ever heard.
Uhura sent the message that yes, women and minorities were part of the future--and that their being there was going to be important. We were going to get past the hate and the rage and the injustice, and work together as equals. And that this was not only possible, but necessary.
It was a heady message to send a six-year-old.
And then there was Spock. I don't know if I would have survived school without Spock. Mimicking his stoicism helped me survive a great deal of torture and humiliation at school that I don't think I could have managed otherwise. He convinced me that logic was a tool to be used--and one that anyone could use--but not an idol to be worshiped.
(This, believe it or not, caused trouble later. My teachers insisted that I was "too logical" and "too rational." That I thought "in too masculine a way." I confess that I never saw logic as masculine. By my observation, men more often than not said or did something based on emotion and then claimed they were being logical. That was not the same thing as being logical in fact.)
And finally, Star Trek shaped my taste in reading. Without Star Trek, I wouldn't have gone looking for science fiction and fantasy and discovered Harlan Ellison (hardly surprising, as he wrote the script for the episode "City on the Edge of Forever"), and from there moved on to Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. LeGuin, James Tiptree, Jr. (otherwise known as Alice Bradley Sheldon), Poul Anderson, Anne McCaffrey's Ship That Sang series (for I did not read or even hear of Pern till I was much, much older), Tanith Lee, Frederick Pohl, Larry Niven, Samuel R. Delany, C.S. Lewis, H.G. Wells, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, John Varley, Zenna Henderson, Marion Zimmer Bradley...
I read and read and read. Hundreds of books. Thousands. Probably tens of thousands, all speaking of future or alternate worlds where technology was different but where people remained people, universes of infinite potential where intelligence, curiosity, discovery and humanity (not in the sense of being human, but in the sense of being a caring, compassionate person, regardless of species) actually mattered.
One more thing.
About three or four months after I started watching Star Trek, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. My mother was shocked and dumbfounded. I wasn't. As I remember, my reaction wasn't so much "Oh, wow!" as it was "But of course we're going to the moon." It never occurred to me that we wouldn't travel in space. (Or that this was NASA's finest hour, and that it would all go downhill from there.)
What I do remember is thinking, as I realized that the moon looked like a cross between the Southwestern Desert and the Badlands of South Dakota and that the astronauts bouncing across the moon's surface looked like they were having a lot of fun, is, "Hang on, Enterprise. We're coming."
This is the show that shaped my politics, ideals, reading, and outlook. A show I still love.
That lasts.
***
Day 1 - A show that never should have been canceled.
Day 2 - A show that you wish more people were watching (or that you wish more people had watched).
Day 3 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season).
Day 4 - Your favorite show ever.
***
Day 4 - Your favorite show ever.
I'm going with the show that has had the biggest impact on me as a person, a show that I have loved for forty years:
Star Trek: The Original Series.
I will agree with the criticisms of the show. The special effects are not much by today's standards; the props were done on a shoestring (on one occasion, a piece of 23rd-century tech was represented by a handheld mike); yes, the women's costumes were miniskirts, which was anything but practical (to be fair, the pilot did have women in slacks, but that didn't go over well), and yes, Starfleet of the original series was extremely sexist, saying that women were not able to command. Yes, there were problems.
But at the same time, it sold me on an vision of the future that I love--that humanity will grow up and will get to a point where people will choose to get along, where the wars and the famine and the diseases will be a thing of the past, as quaintly alien as wigs with clocks and birdcages in them.
That was a huge deal. Remember, this show was being made in 1966 to 1968, during a very bloody war...and the people making this show were issuing the anti-establishment message of, "We will not destroy ourselves. We will stop fighting. There will be peace and that will be the norm. And that won't make us flabby or weak or get us conquered--no, it's going to be the beginning of an era of discovery and exploration and adventure beyond anything we can imagine. Peace will give us the opportunity to be great."
At the time, that message was revolutionary. And I wanted to believe it. I still want to believe it.
I also have to say something about the original Uhura. Because Uhura had an incredible impact on me.
I first saw Star Trek when I was about six-going-on-seven and it was in permanent reruns. It was 1969.
I mention the year to give you a hint of the era. Martin Luther King had been assassinated the previous April. I remember his funeral being televised. And I can still recall the rage and rioting that followed in the wake of his murder. Despite a civil rights bill being passed the previous year, blacks were still "the poor" and anonymous, angry protesters on the news to me. The few shows that existed with black stars or co-stars (I Spy, Peyton Place, Julia) weren't the sort of shows my family watched. There were no blacks in my neighborhood; until busing came in a few years later, there were no blacks at my school.
Enter Lieutenant Uhura.
Who was not only part of the crew, but part of the bridge crew. Not just a grunt in the bowels of the ship, but a respected officer...and one, I assumed, in the chain of command. She was smart, tough and quick-thinking. And she was utterly beautiful.
Just by existing, she contradicted every racist comment I'd ever heard.
Uhura sent the message that yes, women and minorities were part of the future--and that their being there was going to be important. We were going to get past the hate and the rage and the injustice, and work together as equals. And that this was not only possible, but necessary.
It was a heady message to send a six-year-old.
And then there was Spock. I don't know if I would have survived school without Spock. Mimicking his stoicism helped me survive a great deal of torture and humiliation at school that I don't think I could have managed otherwise. He convinced me that logic was a tool to be used--and one that anyone could use--but not an idol to be worshiped.
(This, believe it or not, caused trouble later. My teachers insisted that I was "too logical" and "too rational." That I thought "in too masculine a way." I confess that I never saw logic as masculine. By my observation, men more often than not said or did something based on emotion and then claimed they were being logical. That was not the same thing as being logical in fact.)
And finally, Star Trek shaped my taste in reading. Without Star Trek, I wouldn't have gone looking for science fiction and fantasy and discovered Harlan Ellison (hardly surprising, as he wrote the script for the episode "City on the Edge of Forever"), and from there moved on to Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. LeGuin, James Tiptree, Jr. (otherwise known as Alice Bradley Sheldon), Poul Anderson, Anne McCaffrey's Ship That Sang series (for I did not read or even hear of Pern till I was much, much older), Tanith Lee, Frederick Pohl, Larry Niven, Samuel R. Delany, C.S. Lewis, H.G. Wells, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, John Varley, Zenna Henderson, Marion Zimmer Bradley...
I read and read and read. Hundreds of books. Thousands. Probably tens of thousands, all speaking of future or alternate worlds where technology was different but where people remained people, universes of infinite potential where intelligence, curiosity, discovery and humanity (not in the sense of being human, but in the sense of being a caring, compassionate person, regardless of species) actually mattered.
One more thing.
About three or four months after I started watching Star Trek, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. My mother was shocked and dumbfounded. I wasn't. As I remember, my reaction wasn't so much "Oh, wow!" as it was "But of course we're going to the moon." It never occurred to me that we wouldn't travel in space. (Or that this was NASA's finest hour, and that it would all go downhill from there.)
What I do remember is thinking, as I realized that the moon looked like a cross between the Southwestern Desert and the Badlands of South Dakota and that the astronauts bouncing across the moon's surface looked like they were having a lot of fun, is, "Hang on, Enterprise. We're coming."
This is the show that shaped my politics, ideals, reading, and outlook. A show I still love.
That lasts.
***
Day 1 - A show that never should have been canceled.
Day 2 - A show that you wish more people were watching (or that you wish more people had watched).
Day 3 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season).
Day 4 - Your favorite show ever.