Vulcans Never, Ever Smile

Someone posted "What gravitates me to Star Trek is the concept that someday, humanity will leave behind its destructive materialistic ways..." Funny how nearly every episode (and movie installment) of Star Trek culminates in someone being photon torpedoed back to the stone age.

Love Star Trek, love it when they blow stuff up real good!

Note that the TV show "failed" before there were rating systems. The decision of success was based on advertisers. They hated the show because they did not understand it and did not feel it would bring in the right audience. It was a couple years later when monitored viewers rating systems came in and then the producers and networks knew who was watching.

I hope it's released on HD WIDE-SCREEN DVD too, I already have the old set-up!

Excellent! Yes???this article captures the main reason why I have loved Star Trek since day one.

The new movie is EXCELLENT by the way.

Mr. Mlodinow: This is one of the most fun, funny, and thoughtful essays I've read in a long time. You are obviously a special person.

If the concept had evolved earlier, perhaps they could have developed a parallel reality- dramatic show entitled "Writer Genocide." It makes me laugh thinking about all the bizarre behind-the-scenes choreography that generated Star Trek.

Mr. Mlodinow: This is one of the most fun, funny, and thoughtful essays I've read in a long time. You are obviously a special person.

If the concept had evolved, perhaps they could have developed an accompanying reality- dramatic show entitled "Writer Genocide." It makes me laugh thinking about all the bizarre behind-the-scenes choreography that generated Star Trek.

TNG was just such good stories and characterizations that the world they lived in was accepted. One of my favorites, and it was that because of the love and respect developed for Jean Luc Picard, was when an orb was sent into the ship and Picard was transported in his mind to a dying world where he lived an entire life, married, had a child, learned to play the flute. TNG played with concepts of time and alternate realities with intelligence. And, Troi was hot.

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Star Trek is American folklore and just recently have trek fans come out fo the closet,many years I keeped my interest in trek a secret,due to persecution from people;but those very same people ware baseball shirts and buy sports artographs and thats ok,their a cult just as much as us ! I think I can enjoy the new trek movie, alot of things have changed in 40 years,the competition in the film industry demands a better story and exceptional special effects,the magic will be reinvented by this writers ,Paramount has the ligthing in a bottle,a chemisty that works ,the franchise that continues to live on ! I grew up in the 60s as a child only to be disappointed that they cancelled the Apollo moon program and trek was marooned to reruns for several years in the 70s. Certainly the new characters will represent what the trek people will be like ,man hasnt changed in the last 6000 years and wont change much in the next 300 years ! The success will rest on how good the story is and the characters in the movie, Spocks chracter unlike in the past, would be made fun of and teased, he would have to struggle with human emotions and vulcan logic ,a inner war,perhaps Kirk icould be ADD.These new stars will give the characters life, they will be more realisitc .This all prue conjecture on my part I havent seen the movie yet,but given the script writers creativity, I would suspect it may be a big hit with many people and reach out beyound the hard core fans! Star Trek is entertainment that asks what is possible, are there any limits ? And ofcourse imagination is limitless , you can write about new frontiers .

I would like to see a 25th Centery Star Trek come out in a few years. Enterprise was ok, I like Scott, so was DSP and Voyager but still wasn't the same. Iit needs to go forward, new stories, technology. I think SiFi could do it. The format works great, like with Stargate. You have an ongoing plot but most of the stories are going somewhere new each week. I bet it would work if they could work a deal out with Paramount. Do it just like TNG, new characters, new ship, etc. I would really love to see something like that. :)

I was driving home from work that fateful day in 1991, when NPR announced Roddenberry had died. I was so stunned, so shaken, I pulled my car over to the side of the road and stayed there for nearly an hour. All Things Considered continued, but I didn't hear any other news that day. By 1991, I was 34 and had left my Trek years mostly behind. I not only went to conventions in years past, I organized them. The only place I collected the autographs of the cast was on contracts. Yet, the series still had that spell. Roddenberry created Star Trek. He is the man that created the vision, a vision so strong, so alive, so compelling, even when he was gone, the vision stayed strong. The answer to why Star Trek was so successful and still going strong is and will always be Gene. I heard him speak at Stanford when I was in high school, just a few years after the cancellation. He showed the now-famous, but then still-secret blooper real. Then he spoke. The place was filled to the rafters, people on stairs, railings, doubling up seats, a fire-marshall nightmare, yet he spoke directly and completely to me. To each of us. His vision spoke to us then and it is still speaking. There was complete silence as spoke. He was simply telling us about a future we could believe and his series did that in incarnation after incarnation. He was such a force, such a personality, no one in the audience that night left unchanged. That is the power Gene's vision held and his ability to tell it.

Star Trek is because of Gene. Sorry, there is no other answer. Everything else is just his vision alive in us.

Vulcans [ Spock,who is half-human] smile on STAR TREK in three episodes [all the original series].

Two are blamed upon emotional change created by external influence. On one planet, a flower shoots ''spores''into Spock rendering him into an emotional man who smiles ,laughs and feels anger. In another, Spock is turned into a emotional wreck by an alien force which has taken over ENTERPRISE causing hyper-emotional states among the crewmembers, with the rapier-armed Sulu turning in an especially memorable perfomance,seeing himself as a sort of Douglas Fairbanks,and Nurse Chapel, who reveals her long-hidden love to Spock.
Only in ''Amok Time'' does Spock display a smile that is genuine, and comes from inside himself. After learning that he has killed Capt. Kirk in man-to-man combat under a Vulcan ritual that demands a to-the-death fight, and McCoy slipping in one of his patented medical concoctions on Kirk to make it appear that he has been killed by Spock, a resurrected Kirk confronts the astonished Vulcan outside of sickbay back on ENTERPRISE where Spock cries ''Jim''! and releases the human -side ''illogic'' of emotion by being overjoyed at Kirks remarkable recovery.
It is important to recall that the ideal of TREK was to create ''federations''through peaceful means,that included negotiation,but ultimately depended upon force to realize these goals. From the humorous ''Piece Of The Action'' which had this planet form a Chicago 1920s-style mob structure which was dealt with by having Scotty ''tazer'' [''Set to stun Scotty''], the warring factions to get them to the table, to the various Federation-Klingon-Romulian ''feuds'' usually begun by violating these ''neutral zones'', violence as the means to an end while being nevertheless cognizant of the ''Prime Directive'', remained a main portion of the shows success.

What I hold dear with Star Trek the franchise has nothing to do with going to conventions, learning to speak Klingon, or putting on a tight captain uniform while hangin out with someone dressed as a Ferengi. What gravitates me to Star Trek is the concept that someday, humanity will leave behind its destructive materialistic ways and strive to better itself for the sake of bettering ourselves. In the universe of Star Trek we are more idealistic but still retain enough of our humanity, the kind that makes Kirk swagger or Picard wary of his mortality.

Sure I would gush over the science of Trek whether it be warp drive technology or quantum torpedoes, but what keeps me coming back is the portrayal of humanity trying to find its way against the backdrop of a very diverse and dangerous universe. So I sincerely hope any incarnation of Star Trek will continue that voyage.

With so much having been said about Star Trek already, it's nice to come across an article that has something interesting to say in an entertaining way. Years ago, I purchased Dr. Mlodinow's book, Euclid's Window, because he had written for StarTrek: The Next Generation. That's how much of a Trekkie I am. I guess it's about time that I take the book off my shelf and read it.