Ship’s Log Supplemental

December 7, 2013

Ship’s Log, Supplemental Bonus: “…maybe 20 good ones.”

Forest of IllusionsBonus Posts, Ship's Log Supplemental, star trek4

So Monday we finally start Star Trek: The Animated Series and the next phase of the franchise. This means today is sort of our last opportunity to talk about the Original Series as the incumbent form of Star Trek (although even then it’s not quite cut-and-dry as I make it seem, which we’ll talk more about tomorrow) and, given that, I thought I’d use this space to very briefly sum up my thoughts and recommendations concerning the 1964-1969 series.

Under my post on “The Apple”, frequent commenter and blog friend Flex quoted a Futurama episode where Fry, when talking about the Original Star Trek says something along the lines of how the show had “79 episodes…and maybe 20 good ones”. Back then, Flex mused as to whether we’d even be able to meet that tally on Vaka Rangi.

I took that as a challenge.

More recently, under the “Turnabout Intruder” post, 5tephe wondered if I could put up my revised list of recommended episodes: I mentioned coming up with such a thing for my Trek neophyte sister when talking about “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” and made an offhand remark on how I’d’ve chosen different episodes after doing this project. 5tephe quite reasonably thought this might be a good resource for other people who are trying to get into this historically significant but notoriously sticky and problematic series.

So this is for Flex, 5tephe, my sister and I suppose anyone else who might get some use of it. It’s a list of twenty episodes of the original Star Trek that I feel showcase the series at its strongest and that most clearly reflect its best virtues. I tried to pick six from each season, although that still doesn’t divide evenly so I gave more weight to some eras than others, but not unjustly I feel. There were a few other episodes I thought were solid, if not particularly outstanding and I could have included them as well, but I really wanted to hit an even 20 here to keep with the theme I’d chosen for myself.

So with that, I hope you enjoy.

September 24, 2013

Ship’s Log, Supplemental: Bjo Trimble and “Save Star Trek!”

Forest of IllusionsShip's Log Supplemental10

Yes, Star Trek did in fact come back for a third season. Barely.

Critically however, this wasn’t a renewal in the traditional sense either. What happened in March of 1968 was something the likes of which had really never been seen before in US television, and about which there is a considerable amount of myth and contradictory lore, most of which seems to have been deliberate. Central to these events is a woman name Betty JoAnne Trimble, better known as Bjo. So, in the first entry of the “Ship’s Log, Supplemental” series, which looks at miscellaneous aspects of the Star Trek pop culture phenomenon, in particular the history and historiography of its fandom, I’m going to try and piece together as best I can the extent of her influence and connection to the franchise and the series of events leading up to Star Trek‘s unexpected renewal…And inevitable, if postponed, cancellation.

Although Star Trek never commanded acceptable, let alone impressive, ratings in its original run, what fans it did have were notoriously passionate and vocal. Throughout the duration of the first season, NBC got close to 29,000 letters from fans gushing about the show, which was the most amount of mail they got for any of their shows save The Monkees. Although a comprehensive cross-section of Star Trek fandom in the 1960s is difficult to establish, it is clear a great many of these early fans were women. Numerous producers, executives and other creative figures associated with the franchise for decades have pointed this out, despite their tendency to make spectacularly unfounded inferences from this fact, mostly in regards to how all those women were apparently just lusting after Spock (Ron Moore is particularly egregious in this regard, having made a somewhat thoughtless comment in the context of one of his early Star Trek: The Next Generation scripts but we’ll get to that). Although there were most certainly more then a few women who fixated on Spock and who turned him into a sex symbol for one reason or another, the sexism implicit in assuming the *only* reason women watched Star Trek was because of this should be self-evident. In truth there is a long tradition of a feminist Star Trek fandom which goes all-but-ignored thanks to the unbelievably patriarchal nature of science fiction culture, and which will start to become more of a theme once we reach the 1970s. This outpouring of fan mail is the first manifestation of it.

It’s not terribly difficult to see why women would feel inspired and empowered by Star Trek in 1968. Gene Roddenberry may have had a tendency to act like a misogynistic bastard, but in the two years since the series has been on the air people who aren’t him have used the show to make considerable strides for more egalitarian representation: We’ve had characters like Ann Mulhall and Charlene Masters being depicted as colleagues in equal standing with their male shipmates, not to mention Uhura, who’s become a strong and capable character in her own right over the course of the last season.…

Ship’s Log Supplemental

Ship’s Log, Supplemental Bonus: “…maybe 20 good ones.”

Pilots and Season 1 (1964-1967)

Season 2 (1967-1968)

Season 3 (1968-1969)

Ship’s Log, Supplemental: Bjo Trimble and “Save Star Trek!”