Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
at the risk of sounding like a raving lunatic, i think one of my favorite trekkie memes/posts is that one where someone comments on a screenshot of tos and asks if sulu is texting, because it PERFECTLY encapsulates star trek’s strange little place at the intersection of pop culture and the tech world:
like listen… 55+ years ago a bunch of actors had to use a mix of existing habits and wild imagination to come up with what they felt would be believable movements and muscle-memory for someone using completely unbelievable tech a few hundred years in the future. like tv had less than ten channels and the screen was a foot across, and they had to go “ok how would someone who’s used to a tiny wireless gadget with a screen hold it and use it? how would they talk to a computer? how would the computer sound when she talked back?”
and over half a century later our own tech has surpassed the clunky retrofuture gizmos in so many ways, no doubt inspired by it, that now someone two decades into the 21st century sees an actor in the 60s holding some tiny rectangular plastic prop in both hands and immediately recognizes it as “oh, sulu’s texting!” now THAT is a called shot. hell, that’s putting your money on a roulette wheel in a casino that hasn’t been built yet. i LOVE it. it’s so star trek. sulu is absolutely texting.
I don’t watch Star Trek but I’ve talked it over with some Star Treks and I think the next Star Trek crew member should be a potted plant. Just a weird looking little succulent or w/e in a pot, with wheels and a hawkings-style voice synth. Their badge or whatever can be a lil tree ornament. Low budget, no actor required character that will be instantly iconic. Whoever owns Star Trek write me a goddamn check.
They are an important member of this crew with many responsibilities!!!!!!!!
Remember I know nothing about Star Trek
I love this for two reasons: 1) it would be awesome to have a sentient plant with an accessibility device on a starship, 2) from a meta standpoint, the brilliance of having a literal (non-sentient) plant as an actor/character who audiences WOULD attach to and create stories for and care about…it’s just, the height of human storytelling, and I mean that in a non-ironic way.
don’t get me wrong i do love dsc and the canon queers but why was star trek like. ok gay and trans people are allowed now but they HAVE to be boring. or like One interesting episode abt them. like. give me gay dude vulcan klingon couple. give me lesbian trill betazoid couple. give me a trans andorian going through 5 different sex changes. give me denobulans with unlimited amounts of spouses they can have with no gender restrictions. give me gay aliens that can’t stand the same temperature or atmosphere or pressure or gravity to they have to have a relationship through regulated bubbles. give me nonbinary alien couple where one species has zero pronouns and zero genders and the other species has dozens of genders and pronouns and they have to figure out how the hell their wedding is going to happen. give me lesbian ferengi communists. give me an aroace orion scientist that figures out how to make her hormones into repelling hormones instead of attracting ones. give me a straight trans couple that switched bodies and is like “no don’t fix it this is great actually”. give me a transporter accident that merges a couple and they decide to stay like that. give me gay planets. make the cloud and the teleporter rock from tos to get together. give me shapeshifter couple that always manages to accidentally find each other. give me lesbian romance between a starfleet captain and a space pirate. give me a triad traveling to different planets trying to get divorced because polyam marriage has been legalized most places but not polyam divorce.
My favourite fact about Star Trek TOS is that, because automatic doors weren’t invented yet, the ‘automatic doors’ in TOS were really just some guy yanking a rope and pulley system to make them slide open. Problem was the person was far enough away that they couldn’t see when exactly the doors needed to be open, and relied on a signal from somebody just off set. The actors, however, had to act as if they were 100% confident the doors were going to open at the exact time and moment despite the fact that they occasionally did not which lead to multiple occasions in which the actors walked directly into the doors while they were opening.
A. it’s so surreal to think of the modern technology like automatic doors, that we just take for granted while watching Star Trek. But they were legitimately part of the futuristic elements of the show to the viewers at the time. It’s interesting to consider how these elements may have influenced those future inventions, as in the case with other tech on the show like the commmunicators. Also how differing social/historical contexts influences the reception of a work. What elements in our contemporary science fiction will seem commonplace or even hopelessly dated, to societies of the future? How will what we envision wind up shaping those societies, and what is the responsibility of us to…
B. nah anyway someone tell me there’s footage of Shatner doing this
Here’s a montage of several bloopers where people have problems with the doors. My personal favorite is Michael Dorn walking directly into the turbolift door and Patrick Stewart just smiles because it has to happen all the time.
