Star Trudge

[aggienaut]

The Original Series
   Hark! Last night I achieved a cultural accomplishment 66 hours in the making! I have watched the entire Star Trek Original Series. As a fan of science fiction I'd felt for awhile like it was something I should do. I fondly remember watching The Next Generation in the 90s. Since that time I haven't been as fond of the later Star Trek frenchises, but the cultural references to the original series always seemed perplexing yet authoritative, like references to Egyptian hieroglyphs only a very erudite egyptologist could understand. I wanted to be in on these arcane secrets, and verily, I have looked upon these ozymandian works ... and may have despaired if I hadn't started to have it on the second screen while doing other things. Anyway, like the tourist's quick perusal of the Sphinx's mysteries whilst eating at the pizza hut across the street, let me give you my general observations:

   It begins with a "I'm not used to having a woman on the bridge" comment in the first five minutes by then-captain Pike. Certainly anchors it firmly in the sixties right there from the start! One of my favorite classes in college was actually a Soviet film class, which I liked because all the themes were so clearly a product of their time and place (the hero was always a humble worker and themes focused on the group effort), and altogether the whole Original Series was just as much distinctly of the 60s. Themes almost obsessively hit on the triumph of human emotional intelligence over "cold logic," whereupon it was Spock's role to be the foil. It's a real testament to him as an actor that he became so beloved considering he was essentially the fall guy in many episodes. I was annoyed because often what he was claiming to be "logical" and our "heroes" disagreed with was actually clearly illogical and the "right" decision should have been arrived at by his logic anyway. And in at least one episode he ends up in charge of the Enterprize and does so incredibly badly at it for "lack of emotion" that it was really painful to watch and I felt very bad for him and angry at these idiotic writers.
   The theme of over half the first season's episodes seems to be that they've stumbled upon a hyperintelligent race with godlike powers who looks exactly like humans but wants to test our protagonist's heroic benevolence yet again. I felt this same plot conceit was starting to get really old but by the last season they had more interesting plots.
   It's really true that Kirk gets with a woman in nearly every single episode. If an attractive new bridge ensign walks in in the first scene you can sit back and say "oh I guess there will be no attractive alien to seduce in this episode, it will be this girl," and sure enough he smiles leeringly at her and makes some comment about never seeing her before and you know it's on. Again, very interesting insight into a culture where apparently it was laudable for the big boss to be flaunting his sexual sovereignty over all in his domain. Watching from the vantage point of this day and age one just keeps thinking of the rampant HR complaints he would be getting.
   Kirk spectacularly overacts everything. I know this is kind of a meme but seriously he's a terrible actor. And a sub-theme of the series that seems to grow as the series goes on is that Kirk is a smarter better commander than anyone else can possibly be and even if he's not the one writing the scripts it starts to seem kind of tediously self-congratulatory.
   As mentioned, eventually I just had it going on my second screen because the slower pacing of shows back then and plots that I sometimes found annoying made it tedious to try to give it my full attention but I did want to get through all of it.

The Next Generation
   Towards the end of my OST watching really I was just chomping at the bit to get into TNG, of which I had fond memories. And as I'd only caught the tale end of it really, the likes of "Tasha Yare" were just an obscure name from history for me, I wanted to know how does it begin?? As such, I've watched the first episode now and intend to continue on through the series.
   Observations on the first episode: Wow Picard is really kind of a hardass in the beginning. He comes across as stern and scary, though he can turn a sudden smile which is all the more valuble because he was just scaring the bajeezes out of a subordinate. And unless they do a sudden turnaround in episode 2, so far it doesn't look like he's just putting on a scary act to scare the new crew but actually was more stern and scary in the beginning.
   Counselor Troy is like third in command, right after Riker? I don't rememeber the latter episodes all THAT well but I feel like her relative importance must have gone down later, because I remember as more of a background support character and I think Data or someone was the third in command.
   Also no one has gratuitously angered the contemporary HR gods or otherwise seduced any green alien women, though Riker and Troy have been eyeballing eachother something fierce. I guess by 1987 they had figured out that workplace romance is supposed to involve thoroughly mutual desires, unrequited angst, and possibly consummating any acts off-screen on your own time. They also imply the two had a history, which also makes workplace angst more understandable.


And here's a totally unrelated picture that didn't fit in the Dominican Republic entry but I liked it and every entry needs a picture so here it is!

And the Travel Writer From Hell
   Er, I mean "Do Travel Writer's Go To Hell?. After the Bounty I decided to leave the South Pacific for a bit and wander in the darkness of, say, dark ages Europe with John Gardner's Grendel, which I remember hearing about years ago like it was something special. I found it kinda stupid, full of overwrought attempts to be really deeply philosophical. Usually I choose my books based on recommendations or having seen references to them or heard of them but the next one just popped up on the usually terrible Audible "you might also like" list, a book about an aspiring travel writer's first gig, subtitled "A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism." Being very interested in travel writing it sounded interesting, and having just read the Foraging Afar book that was also kind of about one man's voyage into the world of travel writing, maybe it would fit into my usual pattern of reading books on similar themes for comparison.
   It can be hard to judge an audiobook separately from the quality of the narrator, though Grendal had been read by the same narrator I had just been lauding for reading Don Quixote and Typee, and yet even he couldn't make me like Gardner's book. In the case of Do Travel Writer's Go To Hell, the narrator is pretty uninspiring. He reads in kind of a monotone and yet when he comes to what should be a deadpan suddenly he finds the enthusiasm to read it like the "applause" sign has just been turned on, turning what might have been funny into a an eyerolling groaner. He does do varying accents better than _I_ could do a variety of accents, but even there while quoting an Australian it weirdly veered Irish in the middle. So in sum the narrator isn't helping (so if you're using audible and are on the fence about a book narrated by Paul Boehmer run the other way).
   The tone of this book is pretty well established by about the third sentence when he says "and I laid more than my share of fetching local women" or some such. Like, well, okay, that's a crass way to put that but okay. The book begins with the authorho living in Manhattan working for a predatory wallstreet firm like a douchey chadling, when while medatating on the office's conference room table he gets an email from Lonely Planet offering him a gig with advance payment to go to northwest Brazil to update the guidebook. He promptly quits his job, breaks up with his girlfriend of years so cavalierly I am convinced he must be a psychopath, and embarks on a two day drug fueled bender in New York City which he describes every minute of. This girlfriend of several years, he talks up the relationship for two or three sentences, followed by "but really the relationship was [here the narrator pauses for dramatic effect right before very enthusiastically and cheerfully saying the word...] GARBAGE!" and other then a sentence or two explaining how the break up happened (over the phone) she is never again mentioned.
   I'm not going to dissect every part of his book but the first sentence about actually being in Brazil has him waking up next to a naked blonde stewardess there. What I think is noteworthy about this is his editorial decision to start with that rather than leading up to it. Romance and salacious adventures in travel can be good reading, I'll readily recognize that, but starting with the pursuit of her would make more sense to me. To start with her already "conquered" is emblematic of putting braggadocio over narrative. She's not a story element, a goal he as a character pursued, she's a trophy, a tribute to the glory that is the author on the road. Anyway he then gives us a play by play of 48 hours of drug addled binging in Rio (in which, in case there was a chance one didn't fully see him as a megadouche, he sleeps with another girl while this first one is waiting for him back at their room. She then flips out and of course he acts like she's a psycho).
   What's most perplexing is the rave reviews this book has gotten from some major publications, with New York Times saying "A comic rogue who seems to have modeled his life and prose on Hunter S.Thompson's… I could not get enough of the most depraved travel book of the year." and things like "The best-written, funniest book of travel literature since Phaic Tan." ... but what's interesting is in contrast the reviews on goodreads.com more frequently roundly deride the book.
   And to it's credit it's well written enough that I keep reading to see where this goes. I'm actually only about 40% of the way through it (but on day 3 of his countdown to his deadline 60 days away so I guess his pacing becomes more compacted after the beginning), though after perusing some of the reviews, spoiler alert, he apparently continues to mainly binge drink and womanize. And apparently he created quite a scandal because he freely admits he plagiarized or made things up in his travel guide. Looknig at his list of publications I see he has also written the Lonely Planet guide to Venezuela. Oh great.
   But as far as comparative literature goes, Blomstedt in his book did also seem to mention drinking to excess any time his narrative abutted an evening, and being badly hungover any time the morning was mentioned. I had felt Blomstedt shied away a bit too much from mentioning romance we can only deduce was there. Looking back at my own entries I do mention for example meeting and pursuing a beautiful young lady on occasion but generally don't mention waking up beside anyone because that's crass, not actually important to the narrative, and I rather feel disrespectful to the person involved. To trumpet to the world the finer details of one's "conquests" in a published book as Thomas Kohnstamm has done requires a psycopath's disregard for the dignity of all involved.
   But at least by comparison to both these two in terms of alcohol consumption and nights spent partying, my own travels are incredibly straightlaced and mundane, full of going to bed early and never, ever, missing breakfast!

Comments

[fauxklore]

Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? mostly made me even less likely to buy a Lonely Planet guide unless there is nothing else available. I already thought they were shallow (come on - suggesting eating at MacDonald’s in Rome to save money?) and have horrible maps, so the poor quality of research is no surprise.

If you haven’t read them, you might like Peter Biddlecombe’s books about business travel in Africa.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I'm almost ashamed to admit it as a regular traveler to obscure places but I almost never consult Lonely Planet. I've been gifted a copy before going a place before and glanced at hte page about the place I was going and was like "::shrug::, there's nothing in here I can't figure out on the fly"

The book is definitely inspiring me to want to write for them in a "I could do this so much better than him!" kind of way. He complains a lot about how there's just not enough time to do this assignment but then he spends every evening binge drinking and every morning hungover, with my thoroughly boring habits I'd have heaps more time than him to devote to doing the actual work ... though I might not have as much research on the nightlife...

Haven't heard of this Peter Biddlecombe I'll have to investigate!

[lookfar.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, I have so many Old Lady Comments about your run through the original Star Trek. Yes indeedy, it is slow moving. But please picture me, age 10, throwing meself down on the living room carpet in my PJs, Thursday night at 7, saying "Shut up, shut up!" to my younger brothers, and watching the series as it came out. I'd never seen anything so...world building, on TV before. Probably the moral dilemmas and human chauvanism were about right for a kid that age - it certainly wasn't complex, in that sense - but mostly it was the sense of entering into a different place and time. Also, dude, that shaking-the-camera-and-throwing-styrofoam-boulders was state of the art storytelling at the time. It looked fine to us.

But you've got Spock all wrong! He was the desire of every neurotic middle school girl because he suffered with his half-human, half-Vulcan weirdness, his inability to fit in or to speak his feelings. I mean, basically, he WAS a middle schooler. Every time he was, you know, fighting his human side that wanted to show feelings, and you could see the struggle on his face, I swooned with love.

Of course I then dated some Spock types when I was older and found that this sort of thing is best enjoyed on the screen.

And, yes, Nimoy was a much better actor than Shatner. Do you know that Shatner is notorious in Trekker history for being a right bastard to everyone else on the set and after the show stopped? No one could stand him and at every con, he'd snub the other actors. I think that came from Nimoy's memoir.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Haha oh maybe I should have stated that I can appreciate compared to it's contemporary alternatives I'm sure it was great, I mean neither I nor anyone else is about to rewatch whatever it was competing against so there you go. I can't fault them for their styrofoam boulders and actually marveled at the effects sometimes knowing what they were working with (they did a surprisingly good ship flying through space for not having CGI and all that!)

Ahh yes Spock does have that going for him. But I still think it's a testament to his acting. Another actor could easily have made that character not even appeal to high school girls.

Interesting to know about Shatner being a jackass, the chest-puffingly way he comes across on screen makes that really not surprising!

[lookfar.livejournal.com]

Also, your travel writer book - I once read the famous The Ginger Man by JP Donlevy, and although I understood that he was meant to be an unlikeable character, I found him so unlikeable that I couldn't stand the book. So, there's that.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Oh which reminds me another book I'd meant to write a review on, focusing on the theme of unlikeable characters is David Donachie's John Pearce series, which is another one of those series following characters in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars a la Master and Commander and Horatio Hornblower ... but what's interesting in this case is I found the protagonist very unlikable but I don't think they author actually intended that. After careful analysis and consideration of what made it clear the author didn't realize how unlikeable his character was I hit on the fact that in the series all the other characters who are good like his character and only bad evil characters dislike his character. I think if he had known his character was in fact bad and dislikable himself he wouldn't have it quite like that. Generlaly his protagonist is an argumentative asshole. He wrote him to be likably "rebellious" but he comes it too strong and just seems disagreeable.

Also as a major plot element in one book (like, it's literally the title, "The Flag of Truce") he comes into a french town under a white flag and then pulls out weapons to rescue some people, taking the mayor hostage. And having read many books about the era, I'm pretty sure the Royal Navy would have found this behavior absolutely anathema and reprehensible. A flag of truce was sacred. Yet in his book not one person criticizes him for the exploit. Compare that to Horatio Hornblower who is captured, given his parole (ie, swears on his honor that he won't escape and is then free to stroll about town), is picked up by a British ship when he gets swept to sea trying to rescue some fishermen, and asks to be delivered back to the French because he has given his parole.

[lookfar.livejournal.com]

Honor, gentlemen, was a big deal!

[adoptedwriter.livejournal.com]

Spock will always be my all time fave character followed by Data.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten how funny Data was! His serious delivery of lines showing a humorous naivety about figures of speech and quibbles of human behavior is spot on! I watched episode 2 last night, where the whole crew gets drunk by some strange phenomena, including Data, and he does this thing where he tries to lean on something that isn't there and falls down and it was just so funny! And usually I'm not amused by slapsticky physical humor but it was just perfectly timed and executed I laughed out loud.

[zhent.livejournal.com]

I was a college freshman in the fall of 1987, and my roommate had the entire STOS on VHS tape. He had carefully recorded each episode then edited out the commercials and put them together in episode order. So of course when TNG debuted we had a little watch party.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Haha rad! Did you get through the whole thing over several evenings or just watch as much as you could in one? (because it's 66 hours of total airtime!)

[zhent.livejournal.com]

It took me a while to get through them, a few months I think.

[nattalie-m.livejournal.com]

the picture is great!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Haha yeah her poise is just perfect, like "voila, this parrot!" (:

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I have never seent the original Star Trek (and disliked Shatner enough to never want to) but as my mum picked up a set of most of the James Blisj adaptations, actually read it...

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

As in, they turned the episodes into books? Are they good??

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

It was looooong ago and I was very young, so all I can say is that I remember enjoying them uncritically :)