Star Trek, or the story of my troubling memory loss

[petronia]

Was thinking about this due to comments on the last post. In fact, the ST series I watched the most of was Voyager, because that was what was on at the time. I don't remember anything that happened in it, although I remember the characters and that they were trying to get back to Earth. I was dead set against hard SF (i.e. harder than Anne McCaffrey) in my tweens so never watched TNG or DS9, although I came around enough that I caught a couple of the TNG films with my high school best friend. Remember more about said friend's kibitzing than the content of the films themselves. XD;; I don't know why I started watching Voyager. I liked that the captain was female, which... is telling, perhaps. In the later stage of the game I even read a bit of Voyager fic - supacat wrote for it, for instance.

I know I watched some of the original Star Trek series with said friend, too, because I can remember her making fun of that sort of Western-in-space thing it had with Kirk shooting phasers from behind a rock on a soundstage, and explaining the red shirts....... geez, she was a geek wasn't she. Other than that, I don't remember what happened in it. Years earlier, and it is also telling that I didn't think of this as being "the same thing", I'd read a few TOS-based Star Trek novels. As my house is a black hole for books they must still be around somewhere but I don't know where. Stop me if you've heard this before but I don't remember a thing about them. However, ever since I started reading STxi fic I've had this persistent deja-vu-like sinking feeling, which I can only describe as a growing conviction that when I was ten I had MODELLED MYSELF ON SPOCK, adopted whatever descriptions of Vulcan emotional discipline had been in those books for my own use, and promptly forgotten where the shit all that had come from. I've had to consciously dismantle some of those thought patterns in my twenties, and can certainly tell you now why they're suboptimal for real Homo sapiens type people, but for the life of me I cannot reverse my instinctive reaction that Vulcans are perfectly sensible and going about it in the right way.

Comments

[flamebyrd]

I have a rant percolating somewhere about the attitude in Trek (and, I suppose, associated fandom) that Vulcans are doing it WRONG and that the human, emotive way is the only right way to live.

I mean, maybe it isn't entirely healthy for humans, I'm not a psych, but Vulcans are different!

I feel like a Trekkie much more than I actually am. I know very little trivia and I've never actually seen a complete episode of TOS (although I loved the movies).

[bell]

hen I was ten I had MODELLED MYSELF ON SPOCK, adopted whatever descriptions of Vulcan emotional discipline had been in those books for my own use

.....Somehow, that does not surprise me.

[petronia]

I don't think I ever understood the Vulcan Way Of Life (tm) properly until this last movie, actually - it always seemed so, well, logical XD (tautological argument yeah). Then I was talking with Erin afterward like, Wow they would be complete basket cases if they didn't know how to keep themselves in check, wouldn't they? And she was like, LOL what did you think was up with Romulans.

I'm not bothered about the attitude of the other Trek characters re spechul Vulcan powerz of repression, though, because I GET THAT ALL THE TIME FROM MY FRIENDS. It's so realistic! /dying

[troisroyaumes]

Oh! I had similar feelings of déjà vu, except I didn't even know the difference between Vulcans and Klingons until this movie so I can't attribute it to "memory loss" as such. But the whole description of Vulcan culture pretty much sounded like my middle school diary entries where I exhorted myself not to be swayed by mere emotions, etc. (I suspect in my case, I just read too many books influenced by people who watched ST:TOS?)