User:Karsten Sill

January: Presentation - Genre Conventions in the Star Trek universe

Presentation (online version) http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dfqbdcvf_101dvwrppt6

Relevant episodes:

Crime Fiction

• TOS A Piece Of The Action (2x20)
• TNG Elementary, Dear Data (2x03)

World War II

• VOY The Killing Game, Part I (4x18)
• VOY The Killing Game, Part II (4x19)
• ENT Storm Front, Part I
• ENT Storm Front, Part II

Other

• TOS Catspaw (2x01)
• TNG Ship In A Bottle (6x12)

Thoughts: First week of December 2007

Virtual Realities

• found this out while reading the first chapter of Shapiro's work: TOS 'The Cage' introduced a virtual reality that Capt. Pike had to cope with but which he decidedly denied. In the pilot the Talosian virtual reality shows Pike's past life
• interestingly, the writers came up with the Holodeck which exactly is of the same purpose but slightly different as it helped the writers to incoporate intextual references, that is references to other genres. For example:

• The Big Goodbye: Picard trapped in 1940s gangster San Francisco
• References to Sherlock Holmes (Data) and entire episodes that deal with crime novels
• various other holograms

• so I am asking myself: Why did the writers put so many other genres(references) into TNG? Probably this was a way to make the series more attractive, diverse
• also, this relates to Picard as a character being of French origin and an avid reader/user of "old" literature and languages (Latin). Did the writers pursue to attract an educated audience?
• while the holodeck becomes part of the entire series but in Voyager and DS9 it is hardly noticeable. Why did the holodeck disappear?

Gender roles/Women/Soap Fiction?

• Soap Fiction is an interesting term... Well, in later series, namely Voyager and Enterprise the writers put more stress on female characters
• the Voyager pilot promotes strong, authoritative and dominant women like Janeway and the half-Kling B'Elanna Torres who is also suffering from racial separating in some way. They are extremely talented , always in charge and as heroic as the male officers (also the Borg Seven of Nine)
• on the other hand, and this is the crucial point, they are all single but more than once involved in romances. Somehow I got the impression Voyager is more or less a romantic cruiser with its various lovers, rivals and short term relationships...
• Janeway somehow sacrifices her relationship on the odyssey of the Voyager as her financé chooses to marry another woman. Additionally, the actor of Janeway, played in various Soap operas before and after the filming of Voyager. This cannot be incidentally!?!?

Emotionality Issues

• ok, something short on the emotions of robots, aliens etc.:

• Spock does not show his emotions and does not seem to have much emotions compared to humans
• Data, being an android, somehow tries to feel like a human and implants himself a emotion chip later in TNG
• Seven of Nine in Voyager does have an anti-emotion implant but is eager to experience sexuality with other crew members (which she does... quote)
• T'Pol with reference to the infamous shower scene, that I watched again :), is probably the first Vulcan to have romances with Vulcans and humans (the guy from the shower). This in a way breaks with all conventions of the older series. Still, there are some conventions that remained intact throughout the series: the cyborgs/alien's attempt to feel emotions, to become part of human culture and/or a perfect human

Notes

• you don't have to comment on every paragraph, I might focus on aspects that are more suitable for a fruitful discussion and that clearly show genre changes
• bits and pieces on Enterprise will follow soon as I started watching the first season
• as there is so much material dealing with the various series of ST I would rather leave out a comparison with Star Wars though it migh still be an interesting topic.

November 2007

DS9 religions and politics

1. compared to other Star Trek series DS9 seems clearly based on religious conflicts and civil war. Some scholars even think the Cardassians have fascist traits as far as politics is concerned.
2. I am still trying to find out why ST writers introduced that many religions and if they tried it to put the series into a historical context
3. currently I assume that the theme of religious war fitted into the contemporary hist. context and that the writers tried to attract a larger audience by depiciting more warlike conflicts
4. if I might still compare Star Trek to Star Wars it might be of interest to find out the differences between Star Trek and SW religions and their origins (magic, nature) as well the connections between religion and politics.

Off Topic

Articles on Shakespeare: http://www.independent.ie/education/shakespeare/

http://www.uni-kiel.de/medien/stj/bibliographie/framesseite.htm