For the Trekkies and Trekkers and Feminists

[odanu]

Why we still argue about Star Trek at my house

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Aheh. I've spent the last two years of my life participating in fandom for the 2009 movie, actually.

There are actually at least three African American men with speaking roles in it, though two don't have names. There's Admiral Barnett, the pilot of Winona's shuttle, and one of the officers in the Kobayashi Maru. I'm only mentioning them because someone else may as a reason to invalidate your analysis.

I do agree with your criticisms (not least of Enterprise, gah), and yet I also love the 2009 movie. It's weird, I know, but one of my ways of reconciling these is that I and others in the fandom, at communities like where_no_woman, have been thinking about and telling the stories of the female characters we can see around the edges and with only one or two lines. There should have been more (I would have loved if, like Battlestar Galactica, they had genderswapped and or chromaticised some of the characters) but these are things we've been thinking about.

Would you like if I posted a link to your blog post at my fannish journal?

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Re: Enterprise.

They got stupidly hamfisted in the last season(s) and I stopped watching, but I loved two characters - the black kid who was born on a space ship, and the translator. Oh, I loved that translator fiercely. I was the first time *I* was on screen in the Trekverse - Asian female *language expert*. Please don't erase my Hoshi experience.

[seawasp]

While I won't argue about the merits or lack thereof of the movie or any of the series (my opinion: TOS was great, but has unfortunately dated, all of the follow-ons ranged from passable to drek, a few of the movies were fun), I take issue with "they took it away from me".

No. No they didn't. In one sense, you never had it (Trek always belonged to Paramount, so if they wanted to cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Spock, no one else had a thing to say about it); in the other sense, you're the ONLY one who can "take that away". It's like the Star Wars fans who say that George Lucas "Ruined My Childhood". No, he didn't. I can still put in the original Star Wars and enjoy it just as I did before. The fact that Lucas' Neck made him do stupid things with the universe doesn't change what he did before, and he cannot erase my joy and love of it, no matter what he does. Only *I* can do that.

I ignore what the producers make if it's stupid or damaging to my perceptions, and I strongly recommend others to take that view; why cede control of YOUR enjoyment, YOUR fandom, to someone who neither knows nor cares about you?

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

The movie was an AU and I think they should have emphasised the Alternate. An Alternate to good story telling!

The only thing I did like was Zach's portrayalof Spock. And they had to distort that by getting him to do an "emotional outburst" and the Transporter scene with Uhura.