Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. 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.
90% of the technology in star trek is either like 20 years out of date now or is so incredibly infeasible that trying to understand how it works will give you a headache after 2 minutes
Ok, not to hijack the post, but I had a moment watching Julian deliver a bunch of reports to Sisko in “Statistical Probablities.”
“Why is he giving them all those individual padds?” I thought as I watched him pull out a padd for each projection the Jack Pack had made. “Why not just put them all on his–”
And then it occurred to me. In the 90′s, i-pads had not been invented yet. Kindles had not been invented yet. The idea of handing someone an immense amount of information in the form of a metal and glass rectangle was something that people thought of as very futuristic. The idea of making a call with something that could fit in the palm of your hand was an absurdity. The idea of being able to see and talk to people from across great distances was a fantasy. Now, we see people making video calls and using communicators and think of it as natural or (in the case of communicators) a little on the weird end. (How do you make the call if you’re just saying your name and then the other person’s name? Why say your name at all? How do you make sure you’re contacting the right Sisko since there’s both Jake and Benjamin?)
My point being that we have made such tremendous strides in technology in 20 to 30 years that what was once considered a pipe-dream now looks dated and clunky. Julian handing Sisko padd after padd looks like a joke when really they were emulating how the 90′s worked with its paper copies and limited amounts of data storage. And I think part of the reason we’re getting all these things is because nerds watched Star Trek. Nerds saw the futuristic technology and went “Yeah, I’ll try to make something like that” and then they did. You can’t tell me that at least some of the people working on making VR more realistic aren’t telling themselves: “Oh my God, I’m making a real life holosuite!”
And, personally, I think that’s beautiful. I think it’s beautiful that people saw a future with all this technology and, not only did they enjoy the show, they decided to make it real over 300 years earlier than projected.
“Star Trek offered hope to a generation who had grown up haunted by the specter of nuclear war. A significant portion of its viewers remembered the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the country was readying for World War III. Kids were being taught to “duck-and-cover”; beneath their school desks if they saw an atomic flash. Grim end-of-the-world scenarios were shown in popular books and films. At the same time, our paranoia toward Soviet Russia had reached an all-time high—which may explain why space aliens were generally portrayed in fims as evil monsters, bent on conquering Earth.
And in the midst of this paranoia and fear came a bright message of hope in the form of Star Trek, which said, “Yes, we will survive the atomic age. We will contact other intelligent life on other planets, and they’ll be our friends, not our enemies. Together, we’ll work for the common good.’”
— Leonard Nimoy, I Am Spock, hypothesizing on why Star Trek found a place in the hearts of its fans, and why its fans would be so passionate about it. (via greekamazon)
I hypothesize that this new wave of Trek fans has very similar reasons. I know for me, I started watching Trek during the pandemic because I was struggling with severe anxiety and loneliness and I desperately needed something positive. I laid on the couch and just watched back to back episodes of TNG and imagined a good future where the Earth unified and we solved climate change and we became the kind of people portrayed in Star Trek
Yeah and like. I’ve had this big huge fear my whole life of both space and aliens (thanks dad) but my friend got me to watch DS9 and like. It couldn’t have come at a better time, bc I was just feeling really hopeless and shit about the future and the plague tbh but like. The stunning combo of DS9 helping me over my fear of aliens and space by making space feel like a home and making all the aliens really relatable and/or fruity, and of the general hopeful message trek has of “Hey humanity can fuck up really bad and we’re probably gonna keep fucking up for a hot minute but. We can improve and we might have friends out there who want to help us do that,” and the wish fulfilment of living in a post-scarcity society where for the most part you can follow your passions, and it just being a really compelling story?
I didn’t think I’d like space sci-fi at all but seeing trek for the first time is making me feel shit I haven’t felt since I first watched and read lotr as a kid, and it’s really nice
people who don’t watch star trek are like “yeah it’s just way too boring and intellectual and stuffy for me. way too stiff sci-fi.” and star trek is like anyway this guys name is Jenkem Pog.
the best kind of media is when it’s so terrible and/or all over the place that it accidentally births really compelling characters and narrative points. it fucks severely.
Usually I do not agree but as everyone can see I’ve gotten into starch wreck
i think we should have gotten a star trek show where they put majel barrett jeffrey combs and brent spiner in the same room and made them play 7 main cast members and guests
time to place your bets on which one of the shows currently airing is going to hopefully break this 22yo drought of women kissing onscreen (counting from DS9’s “The Emperor’s New Cloak”). Is it going to involve Mariner on Lower Decks? Raffi and Seven on Picard? Joann and Keyla on Disco? Is it going to happen on SNW, even?
there’s no point to this except me saying IT’S TIME
Hey so random thought/question:
It wouldn’t be cannibalism for a Cardassian to eat a Klingon or a Ferengi to eat an Andorian
But
Would it be cannibalism for a Romulan to eat a Vulcan?
