Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather are joined by Trekonomics author Manu Saadia to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek with (another!) consideration of what makes Trek special as a kind of show, as a body of thought, and as a tradition handed down from being to being.
THERE IS A SECRET SECOND TOPIC TO THIS PODCAST.
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Our Guest
Manu Saadia is the author of Trekonomics and a previous guest on the podcast.
Follow him on twitter @trekonomics.
Your Panel
Further Reading
- “Overthinking It Podcast Episode 408: Boldly Going, and So Forth”
- Trekonomics
- “The Enduring Lessons of ‘Star Trek’” by Manu Saadia
- Masks
- How Much for Just The Planet
- “Far Beyond The Stars” on Wikipedia and Memory Alpha
Two of my favorite lines of dialogue from Star Trek are both by original series Spock, both spoken at times when Spock thought Kirk was dead. In “The Tholian Web” spock is delivering a memorial service for the crew and says in part:
“…Each of you must evaluate the loss in the privacy of your own thoughts.”
I love that. It’s so dignified.
In “Amok Time” Spock says to his intended Bride’s chosen man:
“…You may find, after a time, that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”
Yes it is, Spock. Yes it is.
I humbly propose that you Overthinkers do a piece on favorite lines of TV dialogue ever. I will argue that few lines can ever be quite as sublime as Jack Bauer’s simple declaration in Day Two, episode 1:
“I’m gonna need a hacksaw”
That’s a great idea. I don’t have, like, an established favorite, but it’s probably “I can live with it. I *can* live with it.”
Or possibly, from Futurama, “Ahh! Fire indeed hot!”
Neither of these make a damn bit of sense out of context, and they both depend almost entirely on the delivery. But they’re so good.
Futurama was wonderful. Another great but almost meaningless without context line is Fry proclaiming “The list of things I’ve heard now contains everything,” A line which is actually badly translated Japanese.
Let’s have a contest for the Futurama line that makes the least sense out of context.
“Monkeys aren’t donkeys! Quit messing with my head!”
“Strip naked and get on the probolater.” Or words to that effect. (I’m at work and shouldn’t Google the exact quote right now!)
“They’re tasty, right? Let’s call ’em ‘Tasty-cles’.” (Why, yes, I do still have the sense of humor of a 13-year-old.)
My favorite line of TV -ever- was 6th season of Buffy. There was a roomful of people screaming with glee upon the utterance: “I’d like to test that theory.”
Even now, chills. Excitement and chills.
My favorite Star Trek quote, from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. “You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.”
Because oral history is so unreliable, and people, generally, are so bad at keeping reliable information for more than a few generations at the time. Naturally, provided long enough contact with the Klingons, they’re bound to co-opt earth culture and believe it was their own all along (and vice versa). So much science fiction presents the march of progress as including an almost perfect preservation of all the information we have now + everything we’ll discover in the future, but the notion that two different planets would both claim Shakespeare as their own is exactly the kind of absurdity one imagines might actually happen in an interstellar society.
An excellent observation, Inside Joke. Klingons also invented Opera. Although it can also be argued that opera is something every civilization would come up with on it’s own. Like pyramids.
“Infinit diversity in infinit combinations” is probably my favorite quote.
It’s not my favorite ever, but in an episode of Orange Is the New Black I recently watched a character says, “She’s gone mad with slight empowerment!” I’ve been saying that ever since.