A Question About the ST Fanbase

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 3:09 am

To briefly explain, I grew up on ST:TNG and watched intermittently from there. I'm not really connected to the Star Trek community as many others seem to be. Could just be me, I dunno, but culprit to blame for this is 40% my living in BFE and 60% my own intorvertedness. So I've been stuck with this question for a while;

I've heard about and seen a lot of hostility toward changes and hot debates over canon and so on. Is that just normal for a fanbase, or is the Star Trek one special that way? I see a lot of flaming haters on the net over some pretty simple stuff. I used to be very forgiving of this or that show until I started seeing the opinions of others on the net. Some of it made sense, but the rest... was kinda scary in some ways...

Anyways, I'm amazed people might take this so seriously. Again, is this just the Star Trek base? I don't see a lot of it with Star Wars or Doctor Who.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 3:38 am

It happens to a certain degree in all fan based communities, but I do agree that it happens in the Trek community more than any others I have seen.

A lot of it comes down to being passionate about the franchise I think. Everyone has their opinion about everything from which series is their favourite (many pointing out errors in the others but refusing to see them in their favourite series) to weather disruptors are more powerful than phasers etc

Personally I try and avoid those type of discussions/debates as I see them rather pointless. We all have our opinions but it doesn't mean we have to try and prove everyone else wrong who doesn't agree with us, after all it;s just a fictional universe and not some historic event.

Personally I look at Trek canon as more flexible than the average Trek fan, and have adopted my own personal concept of canon and often use the saying "Canon is just an excuse for lack of imagination" as it restricts us as artist's and modders from reaching new heights. Anyone who does something new and different (even if it conflicts with canon) has my utmost respect for being original.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 4:11 am

As far as Trek technology goes..I'm all for artistic license/representation... how a phaser should look..or how much damage it should do yadda yadda yadda. When it comes to stuff like the timelines of the show and what happened when..there isn't much ground to give.

For one..I happen to like the idea of the reboot for Star Trek. I like the actors.. they are a homage to their original counterparts from the original series. But they are different in that it is for all intents and purposes an alternate reality. So the creators had free reign to do whatever they want. A lot of purist fans can't seem to grasp that concept.

From a 'canon' standpoint, we know that our beloved TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY had all the familiar Trek nonsense and weapons and plot devices that made things impossible yet apparently real (Voyager having a complement of 38 photon torpedos, as stated in Caretaker) yet managing to fire approx 175 or so through out Voyagers 7 year run. Or the fact that a 75 year journey from the Delta Quadrant to Earth took them 7 years.. (approx 10.5K Lightyears per season, if you divide it up) .

When I mod my game..I like to keep things as close to what I saw on screen as possible.. I like the burst fire weapons that Starfleet ships are implied to carry. I like to make Borg ships big and massive and require 100 or so ships to take down one Cube. I like the massive-ness of the Romulan Warbird. But thats me. Thats what I like.. That might not necessarily be what everyone else likes. I don't pay as much attention to other fanbase communities (Dr.Who, Stargate, etc., etc.) as much as i do Star Trek.. simply because they don't hold my interest nearly as much.. Although I did enjoy Babylon 5.

Just my two cents.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 4:50 am

As far as Trek technology goes..I'm all for artistic license/representation... how a phaser should look..or how much damage it should do yadda yadda yadda. When it comes to stuff like the timelines of the show and what happened when..there isn't much ground to give.

For one..I happen to like the idea of the reboot for Star Trek. I like the actors.. they are a homage to their original counterparts from the original series. But they are different in that it is for all intents and purposes an alternate reality. So the creators had free reign to do whatever they want. A lot of purist fans can't seem to grasp that concept.

I am in the same boat, I grew up with TOS, TMP movies and TNG and I still really enjoy the new movies. It's really sad when some fans get themselves so stuck in canon and what was that it stops them from enjoying new stuff. They tried to do what those types of fans wanted with Nemesis and Enterprise and both the movie and series didn't do too well.

I don't pay as much attention to other fanbase communities (Dr.Who, Stargate, etc., etc.) as much as i do Star Trek.. simply because they don't hold my interest nearly as much.. Although I did enjoy Babylon 5.

Babylon 5 is my all time favourite series, I haven't done any mods or models for it as I don't think my skills are good enough to do them justice.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 6:03 am

I am in the same boat, I grew up with TOS, TMP movies and TNG and I still really enjoy the new movies. It's really sad when some fans get themselves so stuck in canon and what was that it stops them from enjoying new stuff. They tried to do what those types of fans wanted with Nemesis and Enterprise and both the movie and series didn't do too well.

Well, Nemesis, anyway. Enterprise didn't really pay much heed to the established timeline until the final season when they got a new set of writers. And I still don't think the Temporal Cold War makes any kind of sense. Apparently it was forced on them by the network.

Anyway, yes, Trek fans tend to get a little worked up about canon. Just look at how seriously some people are taking the April Fools news post. Though considering how many Trek fans there are it could just be a vocal minority. What really bugs me about some of the 'fans' though is when they display blatant hypocrisy, like hating on the new movies for being action-y and 'un-Trek like' while praising First Contact as being an excellent Trek film despite it basically being Die Hard. Not that First Contact wasn't good, it's just that there are fewer differences than they would like to admit.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 7:01 am

Fans are, by definition, passionate about what they enjoy, and passionate people tend to get heated when what they love is debated. This is something that has been around in fandom before there the word "fandom" was a thing. I can imagine the debates that went on in VIctorian homes after the publication of each issue of the Strand magazine, for example.

These arguments aren't unique to Trek fandom. Whovians get into some pretty heated debates about Moffat vs Davis; what kind of actor should play the next incarnation; and the undoing of the erasure of the Time Lords as probably the most recent example. They happen, good people disagree. It's a healthy activity, as it demonstrates a long-term interest, and as long as everyone involved remembers Wheaton's Law ("Don't be a dick"). Plus, canon debates can be a lot of fun.

When it comes to failures in fan-pleasing exercises like Nemesis and (apparently) Enterprise (which I've not watched; not because of distaste, but because I was out of fandom for a while and it's only been a couple of years since I've really come back), it should be remembered that self-referential exercises rarely work, and the fans are best pleased and served by keeping to the core ideas of what caused people to fall in love with the creation in the first place.

Which brings me to the reboot.

To get it out in the open right off the bat -- I loathe the reboot films. I would rather that nothing had been made in their stead. JarJar Abrams should have stayed the hell away from the franchise. And I'm far, far, far from being the only older fan who thinks that way -- at last year's Las Vegas con "Into Darkness" was voted the worst film of the franchise, handily beating Star Trek V, the previous consistent winner.

You may wonder why there's such a strong element of the fandom who wants to piss in Abrams/Orci/etc's chips. It's simple; they pissed in ours first. Knowingly. In interview after interview they've expressed disdain for the fandom. In interview after interview, they've repeatedly shown either a lack of understanding of or outright hostility to Roddenberry's vision of the future which has been so inspirational. They've made writing and casting choices that grotesquely distort things past. I can't see Simon Pegg's comic-relief Scotty being the inspiration of a generation of engineers the way James Doohan was. Uhura has been debased from being a professional in her own right to being a love-interest angle for Spock, as a whole the representation of women and minorities in the reboots is regressive compared to a show from the 1960s, and even Khan was whitewashed to being a white dude. And I've only scratched the surface.

So yeah. Fuck Abrams. Fuck the reboots.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 8:19 am

i agree with nick madhatter. not a fan of jj's vision. glad he's finally been allowed to make star wars films for disney, it's what he's always wanted.

i appreciate the angle of "it's a reboot, it's something new". which would be fine if they'd write some original stories and stop trying to remake real trek so tightly. we didn't need another khan film, i'd have liked them to embrace the idea of rebooting and do what they wanted to do. they'd probably end up with something more entertaining. they're stuck halfway between being original and taking a giant shit all over real trek.

unless they really are just technically poor writers. jj is definitely a technically atrocious director.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 11:02 am

i appreciate the angle of "it's a reboot, it's something new". which would be fine if they'd write some original stories and stop trying to remake real trek so tightly. we didn't need another khan film, i'd have liked them to embrace the idea of rebooting and do what they wanted to do. they'd probably end up with something more entertaining.

Couldn't agree more, while I enjoy the new Trek I was disappointed when I found out that Kahn was in it. The actor was a good actor who protrayed him but still I found it weak that they had Kahn in the movie.There is more to the 23rd century than Kahn, and just swapping Kirk's and Spock's role in the end was also a bit poor on originality.

Lets hope Star Trek 3, they'll do something completely new.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 11:48 am

Is that just normal for a fanbase, or is the Star Trek one special that way? I see a lot of flaming haters on the net over some pretty simple stuff.

It's not unique to the Star Trek fanbase, I could argue that the Legend of Zelda fanbase is a lot worse when it comes to teeth grinding rage filled arguments over pointless things and personal opinions. It's probably more noticeable in the Star Trek fanbase because 1) It's so large and 2) Star Trek has nearly fifty years of material to discuss.

Perhaps it's only in my experience, but it seems a lot of the arguments not surprisingly seem to be amongst younger people. It's possibly linked to lack of maturity or a sense of insecurity. I tend to get a feeling that if someone doesn't agree with another person it makes them feel like their opinion is somehow wrong or invalid, hence the shift to hostility over something fictional.

What really bugs me about some of the 'fans' though is when they display blatant hypocrisy.

This bugs me as well. Wrath of Khan is considered one of the best Star Trek movies, but based on the common "JJ Trek is different than Prime Trek and therefore bad" then Wrath of Khan should be knocked down since it's blatantly against what Roddenberry wanted and pretty much everything TOS and the Motion Picture established. There's no exploration or peaceful resolution to the conflict, it's hate filled, Starfleet is inexplicably and suddenly super militarized after the first movie complete with (admittedly awesome) military uniforms, and more then half the movie is two ships firing pew pews at each other for 45 minutes. It's essentially a slower paced JJ Abrams Trek film. Undiscovered Country is my favorite Star Trek film and generally loved by the fandom, yet Roddenberry loathed the film to the point of crying just before his death. It probably broke him seeing his creation turned into something different, yet Star Trek fans seems to give those movies a pass. I hate to say it, but Wrath of Khan pissed all over TOS and Roddenberry's intent, and if Star Trek fans are going to hound JJ Trek for messing with the "original progressive vision" then Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, Undiscovered Country, and First Contact have to be as well.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 1:07 pm

Wrath of Khan should be knocked down since it's blatantly against what Roddenberry wanted and pretty much everything TOS and the Motion Picture established. There's no exploration or peaceful resolution to the conflict, it's hate filled

i can't see where you're coming from here. khan was deliberately a relic of a hostile and warlike era. he was like that in TOS as well. he was never going to be able to chill. i'm sure kirk would have happily arrested him, but that opportunity never presented itself, khan (smartly) rarely left the safety of the reliant. also khan blew himself up with the genesis device, not kirk.

Starfleet is inexplicably and suddenly super militarized after the first movie complete with (admittedly awesome) military uniforms

i'd be interested in some concrete evidence for that, i didn't notice any significant change between the films. they introduce only 1 new ship, the reliant, and it's no more powerful than the enterprise. in fact, without khan's ruse, it may even have been weaker. starfleet has always been a combined military/police/exploration organisation.

and more then half the movie is two ships firing pew pews at each other for 45 minutes.

not even close. the battles were memorable, but weren't that long.

using my non-directors cut ST2 video file (the directors cut is 3 minutes longer):

total run time: 113 minutes (~106 minutes from title card to start of credits)

the first battle doesn't even start for over 45 minutes, it runs from 46m to 55m. that's from when kirk enters the bridge to deal with the unexpected arrival of the reliant to when khan flees. duration = 9m

the second battle runs from 78m to 94m, that's from when kirk says the phrase "battle stations" to when the reliant explodes. duration = 16m

both of those battles are mostly talk and buildup, the actual pew pew didn't last nearly as long. but i'll include all the talk anyway, as it's technically all part of the battle.

all in all roughly 25 minutes of battle from over 100 minutes of film. not even a quarter of the film.

i grew up on tng era stuff, the rick berman era trek, ds9 being my favourite. i love roddenberry's vision, he was ahead of his time. but i think it's perfectly acceptable without denigrating his vision that sometimes things can't be perfect. it's easy to be an angel in paradise. but the whole universe can't be paradise. sometimes things don't work out peacefully (sometimes they do), the solution to every problem can't be a hug and a tug.

---

on the topic of reasons for disliking jj trek, i'd like to make clear that i don't dislike them solely for messing with previous trek. i have several reasons for disliking jj trek. also it's less about "messing with roddenberry's vision" and more, messing with the feel that all previous trek shared, roddenberry and berman eras alike. trek was always space opera, jj trek is like stars wars, space benny hill.

other reasons include technically poor directing, lens flare speaks for itself.

poor visual effects as well. the effects look nice, but the camera swings around so much and there's so many phaser bolts firing, that you never get long enough to appreciate anything. the screen is just too busy, again just like star wars. nemesis was "fast" compared to previous battle scenes, as was the dominion war shots, but they were at the upper end of watchable, jj trek's battles are just a mess.

art direction wasn't good either. i was fine with the fed ship designs, but the narada design was a horrible tentacle monster. it's impossible to get a beauty shot of the narada, same goes for the jellyfish.

worst of all was the uss vengeance. it was stupidly just the enterprise scaled up and painted black with more angles and a built in bottle opener for merchandising potential. the ILM lighting technical director even admitted that they struggled to light it properly, yeah no shit, a black ship in black space was a bad idea. it looked terrible on screen, but even worse it still looked bad in promo stills.

also the romulans themselves looked weird, tattoos don't suit them. they didn't need to go back to the archaic grey romulans from TNG. or even nemesis, nemesis could have been a starting point. as the narada was a mining ship the uniforms could have been ditched. the tattoo weirdo romulans look nothing like the vulcans at all.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 1:29 pm

Wow... I think I can safely say my question's been answered.

Perhaps it's only in my experience, but it seems a lot of the arguments not surprisingly seem to be amongst younger people. It's possibly linked to lack of maturity or a sense of insecurity. I tend to get a feeling that if someone doesn't agree with another person it makes them feel like their opinion is somehow wrong or invalid, hence the shift to hostility over something fictional.

That sounds about right to me.

It's not unique to the Star Trek fanbase, I could argue that the Legend of Zelda fanbase is a lot worse when it comes to teeth grinding rage filled arguments over pointless things and personal opinions.

Ho yeah. Saw just one IRL. That was enough...

As for Abrams. The movies come off as action flicks. Star Trek should be more than that. Star Wars does seem to be more up his alley. I'll probably catch flack from that fanbase on that comment, but I think its a good thing. Star Wars seems better at delivering action along with its philosophy.

Roddenberry, however, had some serious issues. After my own hiatus from fandom, I watched S1 of TNG. Everyone seriously had a pole firmly crammed up their derriere. 'We're too good for this.' 'We're higher than that.' I didn't know why I hated it so much until I saw a documentary with Eugene Roddenberry. Then it all made sense and really, it was kinda sad. Still, IMO, the TNG era fell into better hands after Roddenberry. I don't think it would have survived otherwise.

Coming to know Star Trek for what it really is, I think the wonders and possibilities are in fact what make it. That success is Roddenberry's for sure. Sadly, when I started Star Trek, my very first episode was Yesterday's Enterprise. After that, I watched TNG hoping to see another spaceship battle. It's only recently I've come to appreciate Star Trek for what it is.

[LHoffman]

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 2:29 pm

Last edited by LHoffman on April 3rd, 2014, 2:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In lieu of restating good points, I will just say that I wholeheartedly agree with Myles and MadHatter. Their words describe exactly my feelings on the subject. I penned a nicely scathing diatribe against JJ Trek on the Khan thread the other day, but unfortunately I had internet problems and it was lost before posting.

I am 24 years old, so did not grow up with TOS in the same way that maybe someone in the 60s did, but I love it just the same. While I think of TNG as "my" Star Trek, I watched TOS Movies just as much and even at a young age understood their relationship to one another, both temporally and philosophically. I have watched little DS9 and VOY, but am looking forward to doing so. Rodenberry and Berman Trek are perfectly compatible in my opinion and Berman did much to enhance and expand what Star Trek means.

JJ Abrams took it in a totally different direction and basically wrecked what was good. The anti-JJ crowd can try to cope with his version's existence by rationalizing it as being some sort of alternate universe, but the fact remains that here in our universe they were made as movies. I don't know how future Trek gets back to Berman-Rodenberry timeline/message from here, but I sure hope it does someday.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 2:55 pm

Well, fans will always care about the content of the show. The thing about Star Trek is it always tried to be more than a sci fi story. Gene Roddenberry's ideas were super political, so they sparked that kind of conversation.

Another reason (and the reason Trek got so popular) is that it appealed to college age guys a lot. From the beginning they offered things like technical manuals and ship blueprints, and even if they didn't always agree it let those guys feel like the ship really existed and could be studied. They set it up so you could be an "expert" in Star Trek even more than you can be an expert in Star Wars or Dr. Who. The universe itself is more fleshed out with additional information than almost any other story universe.

And finally, Star Trek was one of the first universes where the author himself encouraged fan fiction and on several occasions actually granted canon status to things that Trek fans created (Star Wars later did the same, but George Lucas himself never got behind it). The idea that your work could become a part of the universe and really matter motivated lots of fans to create stuff. In fact they call it fan fiction nowadays, but the very idea of amateurs writing their own stories about a show or other story was created inside the Star Trek community and flourished for half a decade before it spread to other shows/books etc.

That had an interesting effect on the community. For one thing, people got used to the idea that their opinions really mattered. But on the other hand, by supporting fan creations the universe sometimes accidentally let contradictions in. So now it's possible for two people to be experts in Star Trek lore and still disagree with each other because the material itself supports both points of view. Add to that the fact that they're both college guys who enjoy arguing and a few of them are also spiteful and conceited, and you have the perfect formula for guys arguing over things that everyone else thinks are really trivial and pointless.

Does that make sense?

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 3:49 pm

It does

With demographics of TOS, I think the primary reason for its popularity among young men was Kirk's girl on every planet Apparently kissing scantily clad women was good back then... <_< never thought I'd ever use that emo. Probably shouldn't have, but screw it.

Another good point on Roddenberry there. 'Cowboy-Kirk' was not in his plans and he hated it. He wanted a father figure in TOS same as Picard. I'd even bet there would never be a TNG era if that had happened. Sadly, that series needed a cowboy since that was that genre was dominant in tv back then.

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 5:09 pm

I have to agree with Jinseta Yensei, as you've suddenly made me realise what it is that bugs me about Early TNG too, and why I like DS9.

There has to be character development, growth, change.

The feeling that we are going on an emotional journey, not just a physical one. Star Trek at its best is when these supposedly superior, better people, realise that "hey actually wow we really got that wrong, we're really still very flawed and need to do better". Episodes like Measure of a Man for example. Not an action flick at all, but it was awesome because these characters that can often come across as rather smug and superior are suddenly "thrown a curve ball". We go through that journey of realisation with the characters. DS9 had lots of this, moral minefields to trudge through, characters in no win situations, the "good guys" sometimes being extremely shitty to people.

I think that's what has always appealed to me about the TMP films, as well as First Contact. The whole TMP Arc is basically Kirk having to deal with growing old, finding a place in the universe, not shooting first and asking questions later. Going from the "Final Frontier" gunship diplomacy seen in TOS to having to actually deal with a peace treaty with his mortal enemy. Compare the Kirk seen in TWoK, at least post-attack, willing to blast the crap out of Khan at the drop of a hat, to the Kirk in Undiscovered Country. He actually surrenders (you can hear the shock in Uhura's voice) rather than precipitate a conflict.

It's why First Contact is so good also. We see Picard go from that same "damn the torpedoes" approach to having to realise that his prejudice is becoming part of the problem not the solution. It's a little bit incongruous to his attitude with Hugh in TNG, as he'd already decided he wasn't going to commit genocide to stop the Borg, but it's still a good story in terms of character development.