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handful_ofdustSo: The other day, Star Trek TOS came on in the background (sometimes Steve puts on Space and just walks away, like every other geek in the world), and the episode in question was “A Piece of the Action”. I watched most of it, just because I always remember it as having one of the most sublimely stupid TOS plots of all time (and there were many): The away-team lands on Sigma Iotia something-or-other, where the planets’ entire culture has been hopelessly deformed by stupid pre-Prime Directive humans who stopped by and left a textbook history of gangsterism in 1920s Chicago. Kirk, Spock and McCoy therefore spend the entirety of the episode getting kidnapped by/escaping from various ganglords with names like “Bela Oxmyx” (‘cause they’re aliens, see?) who want to cut the Enterprise and its crew in on “a piece of the action” in return for weaponry and technology which will allow said ganglords to destroy all their competitors.
Eventually, Kirk forces the Iotians to form a huge crime-syndicate which will hopefully start to function as a genuine government, and warns them that the Federation will be back to kick everybody’s ass (and take that “piece of the action”) if they don’t shape up. I must admit, I’m still not sure how all of this doesn’t violate the Prime Directive like a roofied college kid, especially since McCoy then leaves his communicator—ie, the basic blueprint for Federation-level technology—behind when they transport back up, and all Kirk does in response to this rather threatening announcement is make a bad joke, because I guess he just doesn’t feel like going back and getting it.
My old-school Trek dirty secret, however, is that I always sort of wanted the Iotians to show up again—probably not dressing like people from the 1920s anymore, but still a completely amoral, deterministic culture of people who’ve been raised to act like capitalism-obsessed thugs, and see absolutely no problem in doing anything they think they can get away with. Maybe you were supposed to see what that would have been like with the Ferengi, who certainly share a lot of the same qualities—but it’s relatively easy to dismiss the Ferengi rather than feel threatened by them, because they don’t look human and are constantly presented as “funny” (though grantedly, the fact that the Iotians do look human is one of TOS’s eternal mysteries, only explainable through evoking the twin concepts of panspermia and budgetary restrictions).
Yup. And that’s what I’ve mainly been thinking about for most of today, in and between chasing a small boy around. You?
Eventually, Kirk forces the Iotians to form a huge crime-syndicate which will hopefully start to function as a genuine government, and warns them that the Federation will be back to kick everybody’s ass (and take that “piece of the action”) if they don’t shape up. I must admit, I’m still not sure how all of this doesn’t violate the Prime Directive like a roofied college kid, especially since McCoy then leaves his communicator—ie, the basic blueprint for Federation-level technology—behind when they transport back up, and all Kirk does in response to this rather threatening announcement is make a bad joke, because I guess he just doesn’t feel like going back and getting it.
My old-school Trek dirty secret, however, is that I always sort of wanted the Iotians to show up again—probably not dressing like people from the 1920s anymore, but still a completely amoral, deterministic culture of people who’ve been raised to act like capitalism-obsessed thugs, and see absolutely no problem in doing anything they think they can get away with. Maybe you were supposed to see what that would have been like with the Ferengi, who certainly share a lot of the same qualities—but it’s relatively easy to dismiss the Ferengi rather than feel threatened by them, because they don’t look human and are constantly presented as “funny” (though grantedly, the fact that the Iotians do look human is one of TOS’s eternal mysteries, only explainable through evoking the twin concepts of panspermia and budgetary restrictions).
Yup. And that’s what I’ve mainly been thinking about for most of today, in and between chasing a small boy around. You?
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 12:05 am (UTC)Fic?
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Date: 2009-05-20 01:33 am (UTC)...but yeah, I think I'll just have to file that one away for later. Maybe with extra serial number-filing, and stuff.;)
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Date: 2009-05-20 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 03:05 am (UTC)I guess he just doesn't feel like going back and getting it
LOL!
But--can't you sympathize? Have you ever locked your door, walked or driven down the street maybe five minutes, then realized that you'd left something almost crucial--in fact, crucial, by some definitions, but perhaps you can fudge it--back at home? But forward momentum just makes it so hard to go back...
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Date: 2009-05-20 04:55 am (UTC)Then again, Kirk's always doing stuff like that, and never getting called on it. Yeah, okay, there was that whole thing with Khan and how that later led to his son getting killed--but let's face it, he'd only known he had a son for maybe a week, at that point. Meanwhile, because he suggested to Mirror-Spock that the Terran Empire could/should be brought down from within, Terrans end up slaves of the Cardassians and the Vulcans are hunted almost to extinction! (Further) ruining Iotian cultural development doesn't really compare, given that sort of context.
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Date: 2009-05-20 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 02:59 pm (UTC)