more on Star Trek!

[raven]

Am I the only person who got to "These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission..." and immediately teared up?

Oh, come, on. Anyone? ...anyone? Bueller?

Anyway. Moving right along. I love Star Trek. I love it. It is not a part of my earliest childhood, as it is for some people, but I have been watching it on and off for ten years or so, and when I think about it, I think about coming in from school when I was eleven or twelve and putting it on, and it's all mixed up with coming home and growing up and finding some of the first things, science fiction and fandom and grand liberal visions of the future, that I consciously understood I was going to carry with me into adulthood. I love it, very, very much, and I think everyone should love it. It makes me kind of angry to see this weird thing against newbies that's starting up. I am all for new people seeing it and going "omg! shiny! I want to write Kirk/Spock now!", and I really don't understand people getting all... weird about it. Sure, Star Trek has lots of history and Star Trek fandom has lots of history, and it's nice if people know about that. But the history of Star Trek fandom is the history of fandom, too! And, I don't know, I always thought the point of fandom was joy and fanfiction and people jumping up and down with excitement because of this really cool new fandom they're into.

Oh, and can I say again, I love Star Trek. The thing I love about it, is, okay. Star Trek is a vision of our future - us, pathetic human us. We, all of us, have spent decades just eating up this vision of the future where we are - strong, and moral, and liberal, and, sure, you can criticise it for all sorts of reasons, but basically, it shows us as better than we are. I love that. We want to be better, we can be better. That's why I get silly about it.

I think this may be Classic Fandom Week in my head, because having finished A Civil Campaign and laid Bujold down for the moment, I am also sort-of accidentally re-reading lots of Discworld. I read Thud! and Making Money last week (oh, also: whose is the copy of it I have? I'm sure I borrowed it off one of you), and The Wee Free Men, and now I am re-reading Night Watch. Which I also love, but for very different reasons from why I love Star Trek. I have not yet read Nation, which I really ought to read, I'm told - I read half of it over the winter, but must remember to finish it after my exams.

Speaking of my exams - waily, waily, waily, etc. I am aware on some conscious level that there is absolutely no way that I can possibly get through all this stuff in time, especially as Operation Mental Health is going well but not spectacularly, and I keep needing to take time out of my hectic schedule of doing nothing at all to do a slightly different kind of nothing at all, but I have it in a box marked "Do not look at this box". It's... a fact, but it's just there. Oh, and also, my results for the last batch were supposed to come out on May 11th. That's... kind of fail, actually.

...anyway. Still here.

Comments

[ancalemon.livejournal.com]

...yeah, I definitely shed tears at that part too.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, yaaaay. I am not such a dork, or at least I'm not the only dork in the world. :)

[stained_glass]

*gingerly raises hand*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yaaaay!

[potatofiend.livejournal.com]

I am a newbie. It is signed and sealed. I saw the film. I loved the film. I have now watched about half the first series of TOS and am wading through fanfic at a ridiculous race. Kirk/Spock has eaten me. And oh, the plastic rocks and the innastudio set, and the way Bones and Spock have to fly to Jim's side like the supporting chorus in a musical every time he says anything Important! And the fact that all of Kirk's expressions are Intense and vaguely flirtatious! And, and, and, the swishy noises the doors make, and the awful font, and how everything is made out of stuff they had lying around and Kirk and Spock are clearly in love and Spohura, it is canon too, and yes.

I love with a passionate love.

[proskynesis]

... I agree with this comment. Yes.

*is watching Balance of Terror right at this moment!*

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

I am just now watching "Patterns of Force," AKA "Spock and Kirk dress up as Nazis and have kinky fun."

Although it kinda reads differently when you realize that Shatner and Nimoy are both Jewish.

[gules]

DITTO TO ALL OF THIS OMG. ♥_♥

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am so glad. I am so glad. I love all of those things too, and oh, oh, the way Bones is always leaning on the captain's chair, and the aliens are all... covered in sequins. I love it.

(I also love the word "Spohura" with an entirely unironic love.)

[potatofiend.livejournal.com]

(Athena and I also posited 'Spirkura' this morning. I'm quite attached to that, too.)

Ohgod, we just watched Charlie X, and there is a plant in Yeoman Rand's room that is so clearly a person with their hand in a frilly pink glove. This is joy in the way that early Dr Who is a joy because the Daleks are, you know, washing up liquid bottles. And the way Bones and Spock are always shooting each other evil looks and clearly fighting for Jim's love, and all the planets have orange skies, and WIN, SO MUCH WIN. That is all.

[potatofiend.livejournal.com]

I may also have contributed to the anonymous kink!meme. *cough*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am jealous of you, you have so many joys to go. You have "Miri" (with the planet that looks coincidentally EXACTLY LIKE EARTH), and The Corbomite Manoeuvre (with scary alien babies!) and omg, "The Empath" (which is just scary) and... yeah, I am a little overexcited.

[potatofiend.livejournal.com]

*grins* Athena's overexcited too - I kind of discovered - oh - two weeks ago that she's one of those Trekkies who was indoctrinated from birth and has therefore seen every piece of Star Trek related anything ever committed to film, and has slashed Kirk/Spock since before she knew what slash was, etc. So as you can imagine, I am getting a helping push right into the centre of this fandom. Not that I need one. I have SO MUCH LOVE. SO MUCH.

We may be watching Series One in the wrong order, but meh. I care not. I only care about KIRK and SPOCK and MCCOY and SULU'S TINY FACE and UHURA'S TINY SKIRT and THE BEAUTIFUL SHIP WHICH BEEPS.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Oh, you are so not alone. I mean, one of my earliest tv memories is watching original Trek (my parents were Trekkies from the beginning) and, for the most part, I really didn't like the movie, but when Nimoy at the end did the "these are the voyages" thing with the old theme music? Oh god, I was ready to bawl. I'm SO GLAD they had Nimoy do it.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

jgdfjgdlfg I KNOW. It was so... omg, FLAIL.

[jennygriffee.livejournal.com]

I can indeed tell you've been reading The Wee Free Men when you bust out with the waily, waily, waily. ;) Hugs.

I'm effectively a Star Trek newbie myself; I watched a fair bit of TNG during my stint of babysitting for a family full of geeks, but that's the extent of it. ;) (Some of my best memories of babysitting those kids were from after I put them to bed, when I had the run of their dad's library until they got home. So many SF books, oh my.) The movie's a great place to jump in, really. It's actually fun, which is more than you can say for most of the genre these days, and the characters are so damn endearing....

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Aren't they, though? They're so.... well, they're themselves, but a bit younger and softer around the edges. They're wonderful.

(Thank you for hugs!)

[amchau.livejournal.com]

I can't help compare the attitudes in Trek with the attitudes in Who - when new-Who arrived, I don't remember any old-school fans saying 'get off my back lawn' to fans. (Some said it about RTD, but that's a different kettle of fish.) Or maybe it was all on Outpost Gallifrey and I missed it, being an lj type?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

It did happen a little, if I recall. calapine was mentioning it just the other day. But I hated it there too, because there it was kind of gendered, and while it hasn't had quite the same icky flavour here, I still think it's, you know, failboats.

[amchau.livejournal.com]

I must have managed to avoid it, then (I suspect that you and Colleen made up so much of my new-who experience that you drowned it out!). With reference to the specific case of Trek-oldschools-failboats which calapine linked, I have two questions: one, how on earth do you define a 'fandom' specifically enough to count them in historical order (never mind Matthew's Gospel and bits of the Midrash, what about Virgil and Shakespeare?), and two, how could anyone pass up the best slash smooshed name ever (Kirk/Spock = Kock)?

[osymandias.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I liked the film, but TOS never really did it for me - watching the film, I think, drove home that the major reason for this is that I can't stand Kirk. Give me Picard any day.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I didn't like movie!Kirk either, really... Spock and Uhura and Scotty made it for me.

[osymandias.livejournal.com]

I couldn't stand original Kirk either...

Kif, I have made it with a woman. Inform the men.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

I don’t like Kirk either *hides* I essentially have the problem that whenever he speaks, I imagine the lines coming from the mouth of Zapp Brannigan, and then I laugh too much to hear the rest of the conversation. Is terrible handicap.

Re: Kif, I have made it with a woman. Inform the men.

[potatofiend.livejournal.com]

I kind of want to be Kirk's Random Conquest #456790545.

It's a good thing I'm gay, really. I'd end up with the most horrendous men.

Re: Kif, I have made it with a woman. Inform the men.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

I JUDGE YOU. *judges* *waves her wee Sulu and/or Chekov flag*

Re: Kif, I have made it with a woman. Inform the men.

[potatofiend.livejournal.com]

Suluuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. I adore him, too, because how could you not? But yes, Kirk and my love of his Kirkfaces call judgment upon my head.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

*raises hand* I cried.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*wibble* Leonard Nimoy, HIS VOICE. yeah.

[subservient-son.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have that, but with me it was more TNG and Voyager that I watched after school.

Seeing the film tonight. I will probably either love it or hate it. I hope the former.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Have fun! I think you will like it.

[yahalomay.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that Operation Mental Health is going well. Be kind to interesting, keep being interesting. =)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you, dear. :)

[janne.livejournal.com]

One more for the weepy -- For 'These are the Voyages', for the music of my childhood, and oh-my-stars for Nimoy's voice. Him and Alan Rickman, I don't care what they look like as long as I can listen to them!