A Geek History of Time - Episode 94 - Star Trek TOS and Social Justice Part II

Episode Date: February 20, 2021

I'm not here to poke holes and suspended this belief. Anyway, they see some weird shit. They decide to make a baby. Now, Muckin' Merchant. Who gives a fuck? Oh, Muckin' which is a trickle, you know, baby. You know what I mean? Well, you know, I really like it here. It's kind of nice and it's not as cold as Muckin'

and I'm a bit sore, but I'm better. So yeah, sure, I think we're gonna settle. If I'm a peasant boy who grabs sword out of a stone. Yeah. I'm able to open people up. You will, yeah. Anytime I hit them with it, right? Yeah.

So my cleave landing will make me a cavalier. Good day, Spree. If Sysclothon it was empty headed, Oplibian trash, is not really good at grue. Because cannibalism and murder, we'll go back just a little bit, build walls to keep out the radiance. And it's a little bit of a ground tunnel.

A thorough intent doesn't exist. Some people stand up quite a bit, some people stay seeing a lot of the rest. But it just... This is a geeketry of mine. We're going to connect to the new world. My name is Heather Gimla. We're the first to be featured in the film. We're going to tell you which is a video.

Because you could say, and a remedial reading. And I'm doing of course all of say, and a remedial reading. And I'm doing of course all of that right now as you all who are listening already know over the magic of the internet thanks to the plague stalking the land. And my bit of personal news is that I have managed to get my wife interested in joining me in an online Zoom-based D&D game with a group of friends that I've been playing the game with since college. That sounds awesome. Yes, the one downside is it's second edition AD&D because our dungeon master is a Luddite.

That sounds awful. awful. So I know I know that's going to generate Twitter hate. I know that's going to be Twitter hate. Like you can find me. E.H. Blaylock bring it on bring it on. I will addition wars you to death. How that is not becoming episode yet. I disappoint. I mostly it's the thing is I enjoy all of them to one extent or another and I find the hate tedious but I am going to say that like I genuinely think fourth edition Introduced some interesting things into the concepts around the game I think 3.5 became way too clunky and

0.5 became way too clunky. And I generally like fifth a lot, but I think there are a lot of ways in which it is a little bit oversimplified. So there you go. Yeah, I still think you could come up with a full hour or two about the history of the addition. I know I totally could. We have a hundred episodes coming up soon. I know I totally could. I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could.

Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could.

Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could.

Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could. Yeah, I know I totally could that's what I've got going on. Who are you? My name is Damien Harmony. I am a Latin teacher from up here in Northern California also teaching safely, thank God because I have a union and despite my district's best attempts to try to get us all dead from a preventable disease we're actually holding fast which is really nice to see. So, and solidarity to the teachers in Chicago who are flat-out saying, no, you don't get to kill us,

just so that you can have chicken wings. So, yeah, and also, point of interest for me, next week, one of the, another reason why we're not gonna be doing a recording next week, but we'll have why we're we're we're not going to be doing a recording next week, but we'll have an episode. Don't worry folks. Yeah. Largely because we're behind by one anyway. But I I'm getting my COVID shot next Thursday. So my first COVID shot. And here's what kills me about that with nothing because it's a vaccine. But here's the part that bothers me about it, is that anybody I've told about that, the reaction that I get from them

is roughly the same. And I saw it in your eyes of how did this motherfucker get the hookup. And there should not be the same idea about getting a vaccine as there is toward getting same idea about getting a vaccine as there is toward getting sneakers that people want. Like it's a sickness in our system that number one, you gotta have a hookup. And number two, it's seen as a hookup instead of a vital thing to get society back on track or on to a better track. Like it bothers me no end that people are like, oh, how'd you do that? Like it's like you should have to a better track. It bothers me no end that people are like, oh, how'd you do that? Like you should have to hustle for it.

Yeah, no, I mean, you're my friend. I mean, I am deeply, deeply genuinely happy for you that you are good at. Everybody has been too. But there's another layer of how to do. Yeah, but at the same time, I'm like, what do I have to sign up for, who do I get I'm like, like, what do I have to sign up for? Who do I get to talk to? Right. Right. Out of way, you know, instead of we just go down to the local

VA or the local armory or the local high school and stand a far distance apart and get our goddamn polio shot and get and get jabbed. Yeah. You know, my folks both got their first shots. And of course they're in their 70s. So they're in a high priority category. And they just got theirs day before yesterday. Or might have been yesterday. Anyway, yesterday, They just got there yesterday. And when I saw that my mom had posted that on Facebook, the level of relief that I experienced was totally understandable, but it shouldn't be understandable. It shouldn't be a relief.

It shouldn't be a relief. And the thing is, we're in this situation right now, and he and I feel this particularly keenly because in our profession, we've had this emotional roller coaster of like back in March, everybody on the internet wanted to fall all over themselves to talk about, oh my God, I got my kids home all day now,

and now I understand what it is, my teachers, you know, their teachers are dealing with and they all wanna get paid a million dollars and dead out and out. And I couldn't enjoy that because I knew that it was going to eventually turn into what we have now, which is literally being told, you aren't special, go back to work.

And I wouldn't see, here's the problem that I have with any of that. I don't like the begging of the question that has become this whole situation. It shouldn't be you aren't special, go back to work or I deserve to, like I shouldn't have to argue for my right to be alive and safe. What should happen is, and I found a soapbox. I'm going to stand on it. We

should be paying people to stay home and paying businesses to stay afloat so that we can all stay the fuck home. So that the vaccine is more efficacious so that we can all come back together. That's what we should be doing. Absent that, don't you dare pull my ass down to try to stand on me to hop over a fence. And that's, and, and I ain't going to do that to anyone else either. Like it's just, it bothers me no end. Like you want to chicken wings and now you have to deal with the consequences.

Yeah, you know, the thing is, we all have to deal with those, unfortunately. Yeah, everybody, yeah, the trouble is it isn't just, you know, one group of people, it's all of us have to deal with it. And what has been coming back to me over and over and over again since the 20th of this month, because it's January 2021, as we're recording this.

Every day since the 20th of this month, I have seen the highest level of leadership in our country, politically, making solving this set of problems. They're literally their number one priority. Like they're doing all kinds of stuff about all kinds of things that need to be fixed. But at the forefront of all of it is, we got to figure out how to deal with the pandemic because it is killing people and every one of those deaths is preventable. And if we had had a functioning fucking adult in the White House in February of last year, yeah, we would not be here right now. That's true. And a lot more people would be. It'll be a lot more people would be with us. 400,000 people. Or somewhere in that neighborhood. For 30,000.

Oh, God, dammit. Yeah. Um, we absolutely right. Would still be with us. And the thing is, and the thing is, it didn't, you know, we're, we're, the, in a spoiler alert, we're going to continue to talk about Gene Roddenberry. And, you know, a big, a big part of your, your thesis with this is, you know, his narcissism.

Yeah. And the thing is, if know, his narcissism. Yeah. And the thing is, if we hadn't had no shit, a clinical malignant narcissist in the White House, the decision would have been made. Okay, look, we gotta, we gotta, you know, tell people to stay home. We gotta tell people to take this seriously. But to him, to Donald J. fucking Trump, telling anybody to take the virus seriously sound in weak. Yeah.

And it was more important to him not to sound weak than it was to actually get a handle on this fucking thing. And you know Mitch McConnell probably would have stood in the way of relief anyway because these Mitch fucking McConnell, and he's another one, is going to wind up hopefully consigned to the Ashbin of history. You know, and you know, Dem Nachio memor- Memoria, Dem Nachio, Memoria, Memoria, you know, is too good for him. You know, he probably would I'm not sure. I'm more. I am. I'm more. I am. I'm more. I am.

I'm more. I am. I'm more. I am. I'm more. I am. I am. I am.

I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am.

I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. weeks, just in March of last year. Everybody stay home for six weeks. And by the end of that, we knew, you know, by mid-April, we knew, no, everybody needs to be wearing a mask. And when the lockdown ended, just tell everybody, show up to every event with everybody in your administration wearing a goddamn mask and don't try to politicize it. Don't worry about, well, you know, it makes me, it makes me look like I'm afraid of getting sick.

Of course you're afraid of getting sick. You're fucking mortal. How fucking old are you? How many health conditions do you have that you haven't told the American people about? Of course you're afraid of getting sick because you're not a fucking moron. But instead, he chose to look like fucking John Wayne, which meant that all of his mouth breathed worse fucking supporters have refused to wear masks because it turned into political issue, it turned into my rights.

No mother fucker. You don't have a right to expose everyone around you to a preventable fatal lethal fucking pathogen. And we shouldn't even be having that debate. Well, I'm gonna back you up. And so anybody, sorry, I'm not quite done venting. Anybody who wants to come at me with, well, you know, you can't blame Donald Trump for a virus. I can't blame him for the existence of the virus, but I sure as shit can blame him for 430,000 Americans

being dead that didn't have to be. Well, I would say that you can't actually blame him for it because he defunded the very thing that was put into place to prevent viruses around the world. And he, you know, that was created by the previous president. So yeah, actually you can lay this at his feet and the deaths of every single one of those people can be laid at his feet. In addition to his bungling of handling it after he, I mean, he basically took the supports out from the pier and then people started falling off into shark-infested waters. Yeah. So, yeah, you can blame all that on him.

So yeah, it's bloody awful and it could have been prevented and it could have been fixed and we could have found a lot of ways to deal with it at every step along the way. And now we're at the point where people are throwing up their hands saying, well, it's impossible. And it's like, well, we actually haven't tried doing things the right way yet. So let's give that a shot first before we throw in the towel. And again, it's been immensely harder on plenty of my students' parents and plenty of my students. It's been way harder on so many more people that aren't in my position. I'm not saying that it's not.

I've known people who've lost businesses, who are stuck doing work that is just getting them further and further into debt, unable to feed their families regularly, stuff like that. Those things are all there and the problem with that is the existence of those things doesn't mean that those things are okay. Those things should not be happening. And at this point, when we finally have somebody who can actually put together a coherent plan for recovery, this is not the time to throw in the towel because we did our best absent anything useful. Now we have something useful. So we need to continue to do our best.

And I totally get the fatigue. Just as people are probably wondering how far forward they should have scrubbed on this because we're still going on about it. So let's talk about a narcissist from the 70s instead. Yeah, Gene Roddenberry. So yeah, Gene Roddenberry, there we go. When it was quaint.

So Roddenberry. And oh, that When it was when it was quaint. So, uh, Roddenberry. And, oh, that's just, you know, how he is. Yeah, it's, you know, uh, Roddenberry was very conscious of what he was doing on his show. Okay. He deliberately was writing what Michelle Nichols once called one hour morality place. He absolutely was. And when interviewed, he was very clear in his intent. He said, quote, I have no belief that Star Trek depicts the actual future. It depicts us now, things we need to understand about that.

Which is exactly what science fiction is for. Oh, yeah, well, yeah, it's the fun house mirror that allows us to, to, you know, get a look at, you know, the things in our society that get most distorted in the picture, to figure out, you know, who we who we are. And, you know, go ahead. Oh, I was going to say, and he does it in a way that uses all the primary colors and very colorful backgrounds because color TV is coming into the scene. Like this is absolutely part of the color TV movement. So if you ever wonder why they always had such bright,

vibrant colors in space and didn't just all wear the same jumpsuits, it's because color TV was brand new and this is a great way to explore that. Oh, yeah, no, it was a huge technological flex. What I just found to this out the other day, in the original series, of course, security and engineering guys all were red. Science, medical and technical people all wore blue. Technical or any operations of the ship were red. So technical was part of it.

Yeah. So science and medicine. Medical. Yeah. Was blue and then command. Yes. Was green. Is that why he had the stupid blouse? Yeah, here's the thing. So it looks to most people. And now of course this was even more interesting to me because I'm actually very, very mildly yellow-green colorblind. I have a form of colorblindness that when I get to a certain couple of pages on the colorblindness check every time they check my vision,

I'm like, I'm not going to be able to tell you that vision, I'm like, I'm not gonna be able to tell you that answer. Like, I know, I'm just not gonna be able to tell you. Because certain shades of yellow and green look the same to me. And it turns out because of the way early color television treatment worked in the way studio lighting and the fabric that those uniforms were made out of operated

Those uniforms look yellowish on the screen. Yeah, they're golden right. Yeah, but they were actually lime green Oh, wow Okay, and then that wound up getting codified then when they went to TNG They just said they're gold now. Yeah, it's a tan now. It's a gold, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it was actually lime green. If you actually look at the uniforms in the Smithsonian, it's a green tunic. Oh, man.

That's definitely a place that I wish I'd gone in the before times. So. And tan of getting. So, well, okay. So post-war America, okay, in the 19, through the 1950s, there's a growing and more visible civil rights struggle capturing the imagination of mainstream America. And through the 1960s, white women, especially, were pushing for greater equality for women as well.

Well, they're, yeah, let me back that up a bit. It's not that black women weren't pushing for greater equality for women as well. Well, they're, yeah, let me back that up a bit. It's not that black women weren't pushing for it. It's that, that was not seen as something separate from the Civil Rights Movement by mainstream America. The dominant culture of, exactly. So you have two seemingly separate issues going on there, although they're absolutely braided together. Intersectionality was not a known right or or explored quantity in the 50s and 60s. So yeah. The times in which Gene Rodinberry was writing were extremely volatile and fraught with change. extremely volatile and fraught with change.

Now he absolutely did try to cast a female first officer in the pilot played by his later wife, Major Barrett. Now that pilot failed and the women on the first pilot, if you go back and you watch the first pilot, I think it's called the cage. You watch it and you'll see that the women are wearing trousers, pants-based uniforms that are essentially unisex.

Uh, scandal. Well, I don't know that it's necessarily scandals so much as it is that's not going to market well, so let's put them in minis. And that'll put a market a lot better to target audience. And our target audience is going to want to see men in these strong positions. So could you, could you, if you're going to include the women, can you push them sideways a little bit?

And so they did. So they redid another pilot. And this new pilot has Spock as the first officer instead of number one uh... which by the way number one came from that cage that episode uh... but uh... so spock is now the first uh... officer there is a woman on the cast and now she's wearing a red mini skirt and she's in the background literally

she is uh is a space secretary. I mean, well, she's a communications officer. She's fourth in charge, but she's never actually put in charge. Yeah, never she never actually gets command of the ship. And there's also an age in man. I would I would pay money. I would put money down to see an episode or to see or to see somebody write something where Ururo winds up running things. They had episodes like that and like wreck shit and NBC kept tinkering with it and saying, basically going back and saying, no, you need to rewrite this scene. And the shell nickels would fight hard.

She called it pitching a bitch. She would fight hard to have her character do shit. So at one point she actually runs the helm when everybody else is down on the planet. And there's a few times where she gets more lines in. But they also they had a pan Asian because he wasn't full Japanese because the name Sulu isn't necessarily a Japanese name They had a pan Asian helmsman who previously had been the ship's physicist So you have you have really yeah and so you have a Ethnicly diverse cast you have just ethnically diverse cast.

You have just one woman now. Yeah. But they're kind of background, and they're a little bit more scenery. They don't get all the good lines necessarily. They are ubiquitous. Women are ubiquitous. And it's a diverse cast, but it is background. And some people blame the culture at the time,

and I think there's a very valid argument to be made there because the studio owned the show and was making edit decisions from the jump. And the studio kept lowering the budget every year. Now, especially given that the original pilot and the role of women in that particular episode, most of the women in the series that made it to air were there largely to show us the fear

that the crew was facing or the danger and ruthlessness or seductibility that the crew was facing with the bad guy of the week. Okay, that makes sense. And they're all placed in support positions. Yes. You don't ever see women on an away team as red shirts. Right.

You don't ever see women in any kind of position giving orders to a to a male character right and and you know you have Uhura who is the communications officer and you have Nurse Chapel who's a nurse. Mm-hmm. They're helpers. In the very yeah in the very 1960s idea of a nurse being like the personal assistant to the doctor. And they're helpers to the men and they're in traditionally women's occupations. Yes. Yeah. As you said last episode, Uhura is basically kind of a space secretary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I will say this at one point she does pseudo seduce mirror universe so solo But that's still a very feminine wilds kind of thing to do

Well, it's a very feminine wilds thing to do, but I think we need to give an awful lot of credit to Any any me to Nishel Nichols for succeeding in introducing any version of Sulu because knowing what we know now about George decay, like, you know, I had to. I had to. I was gonna say an actor can act though, you know. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I had to make the joke. Maybe that's bad of me, but I had to make the joke.

I totally get it. I just picture myself as the sandwich between the two of them. So, oh man. There you go. My goodness. So the other women, aside from Ahura, who is fourth in charge,

who is very competent, who does all kinds of things. She has generative lines, not just responsive lines in the show. The other two women that really kind of are in the show more frequently, or as frequently, not as frequently, but with any frequency, would be Yomin Rand.

You remember Yomin Janice Rand? Big old blonde B hive. Oh yeah. Yeah. How can I forget? Yom, are you kidding? Yeah. I remember Yomin Rand.

And Nurse Chapel. I've been your old name, Yomin Rand. Very good. Yes. Well, and Yom ran to absolutely played into the I'd like at one point she had some sort of dread disease and she says to Kirk Something along the lines of I've tried for so long to get you to look at my legs and now look at them And they're all diseased and and crushed it over a blue shit or something like that

and she brings him his coffee and she makes him take his pills and she and at one point Kirk says something to the effect of like and I want to talk to the person who thought it was a good idea to give me a female yeoman. So yeah, I mean she basically is there to be the dizzy blonde the the damsel who needs rescuing and nurse chapel is absolutely there to be like you said the personal assistant to the doctor so they're regulated purely to acceptable in the 1960s women's roles. Other women that show up on the show are typically important for only that episode and they're essentially a plot device. And I think here's what I. I think that Gene Roddenberry actually thought that he was being woke at his time. I think because, I mean, he is getting more women on TV. And it's a working ship.

It's not a pleasure cruise. There's not like, you know, port of Honolulu. So he absolutely is showing women in the workforce working alongside men as ostensible equals, but usually working more for the men, but still. So I think for his time, you know, he was, he was the woke bay of his time. Yeah, you know, which, which which is more indictment of the time.

And that's, and that's of course a ticket. Joss, we know. Well, yeah. No, that's true, but still. Like, you know, yes, it's an indictment of the times, but, you know, it's, it's again, still progress. Another example of a, of a liberal creative right guy, if Wokens, you know, for thing, don't even really earn Wokens. Yeah. Like the whole concept of Wokens is a bullshit idea in the first place, but yeah, you know, and yeah,

and yes, everybody listening, I am going after Josh Weedon in the same breath because he deserves it. Yeah. And I would, I would also point out that while he is increasing representation, the way that he casted the show was inherently predatory, sexually predatory toward the women. So any good that he gets on screen comes at a cost. That's fair. Yeah.

So now I'm going to switch a little bit here to ethnicity. So by 1966, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act had already been passed. So Star Trek was coming on to the scene with the unrest of white supremacy struggling against those things. And from 61 Forward, if you remember, Roddenberry definitely had the goal of an ethnically diverse crew. I talk about this in the previous episode. And you had Sulu, you had Uhura, you later had Chekhov, which Chekhov was actually an effort to get young girls to tune in because of the monkeys. Um, you also, yeah. You also, so Chekhov had an accent, so did

Scotty. So you have two foreign sounding fellows, you have two people of color, and you also have Spock, who is not just an alien, but a half human, half Vulcan alien. Okay. Which is important because it speaks to multracial families. And, and as you pointed out in the last episode, loving the love, okay, loving was what? 66 loving versus Virginia. I believe with 66. Yeah.

So yeah, that's, that's definitely a, a cutting edge kind of social issue. Mm-hmm. Now, the thing about Sulu is he is, how do I say this? He is Kato, like he's the driver for the captain. Like, functionally the helmsman, that's what he does, you know? And he's essentially Captain Kirk's driver. Now he's mentioned similarly to her

as being very competent in several ways. They mention his combat capabilities at some point and they don't like say, oh yeah, he's really a kung fu. They don't do anything like that. They're just like, oh, he's a very capable combat officer. He's a physicist, he knows a lot about botany, he's a swashbuckler. So like, he'm so glad you brought the swashbuckler thing in because you know the thing is

I love the fact that You know the episode where everybody gets infected with the you know makes some crazy virus You know he doesn't turn into a samurai caricature. Right. He turns into d'Artagnan. Yes. And, and, and, and number one, it is so clear, like looking at that episode, all these years later, it is so clear how much fun George decay was having with that. Yeah. fun. George decay was having with that. Yeah. And and the fact that you saw an Asian American actor shirtless by the way. Like let's talk about that for a minute. I don't know, I don't know how much credit Roddenberry gets for that or play to a stereotype with that, that like, you

know, Hikaru, and I am going to push back a little bit about, you know, Pan Asian, I think. Well, Hikaru is a Japanese name, but Suluaru is immensely is a C that is out in the Pacific. Yeah, okay. All right, that makes sense. I see what you're saying there, but I think anyway, um, because the other argument is that you basically get a

a a JK rolling is a, aization of his name. Like either, either he's Pan Asian or like Rodinberry was lazy with coming up with the you know like You know, where is Sanchez? It's like a little a little a little column A little column B. Yeah So but but you know the fact that they didn't you know have it be well, you know He's his background is you you know, Japanese, so he thinks he's told you to tell me he's a Yoshi or something. Right, right.

You know, it's, no, no, his fantasy life is, you know, he's going to have a psychotic break, who's he going to turn into? Is fucking Dartanian. Yes. A Frenchman from the 1700s. Right. Yeah. I, it's brilliant.

And again, George the K is having so much fun in that part. of the 1700s, like it's brilliant. And again, George Decay is having so much fun in that part. Oh yeah. Um, you know, and I, yeah, so in just bringing up to case, not to case, our Sulu's combat abilities, I had to bring that up. Uh, totally valid because as a, as a sword nerd, that ability is I had to bring that up. Totally valid.

Because as a sword nerd, it's as a huge deal to me. Yeah. So the problem is, is that that's kind of one of the only times that he gets to do much of anything in the show, because very often his lines turn into something like, they're up ahead captain, captain, what do you want us to do? Warp factor five captain. And it's just literally

just responding. And those are sometimes the only lines that he gets. And then he gets to flip buttons. So yeah. Now, a lot of this reduction of the roles of women and people of color had to do with network control. Because again, they're doing that pandering kind of thing to the quote Southern market, but they're also, I mean, it's also the Northern market, it's also the Western market. And a lot of it was just also how Gene Roddenberry wrote. Either... Yeah. wrote either. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's let's not let's not sure code anything. It's it's the white market. It's the the the majority market in the

country at the time, dominant culture. Yes. Was just not ready to give, you know, a real, you know, command authority of people who were not. Yeah. So either he's writing, Gene Rodney Berry is writing because he knows the studio is going to object to certain things anyway. So he's doing a little bit of self-sensorship or Gene Rodney Berry is a hack. And I again, little column A, lot of column B. Little column A, little. Yeah, absolutely.

And as a result, while people of color were frequently seen, they were very, very infrequently heard, or doing very much. Star Trek also, and again, this is, I mean, you, it's a military organization on some level. So of course, the captain is giving orders and stuff like that. But captain Debra really gave orders to Spocker bones. And they got to do all kinds of shit. Now Star Trek also had the first interracial kiss on TV when Con, played by Ricardo Maltebon, a kiss to White Yom yeoman to seducer

into his scheming to take over the enterprise. That actually happens before the famous kiss. Okay, but here's a question. Okay. In a context of that episode, she could pull Bonc coded as non-white. He's called Nunean Singh Khan, which I think how much how much awareness how much awareness would a what a night these white audience have had of what it meant for him to be named

what it meant for him to be named, Condunian sang. How much would a true? True. Pimpley 13 year old nerd and Pukipsi. That's an Indian name. Yeah, true. And also, as opposed to, it's the, you know, it's the far future people's names might sound weird.

Right. And also, yeah, Yeah. There's also a couple of other things. There are one sing doesn't spell with an H when you say it out loud, two, so you could get around it that way. And two, the idea of Indian folks, folks from East India, being called white was a thing in America because when immigration happened from Asia, there were court cases to determine whether or not they were considered Caucasian because it's Caucasian just defined in terms of not being black or not being what, you know, so you get into all kinds of really shitty versions

of racism and how that goes. So, and that's why nobody really notices this one. Yeah. Also the fact that Ricardo Maltibon, I believe, was Puerto Rican playing a Sikh, but, you know, he is kind of coded white or swarming. That's a good point. Yeah. but you know he is kind of coded white or Swarthing sing that's a good point. Yeah

Well like you know, okay, you know Southern European maybe but right, you know Swarant Yeah, I'm looking at Rickard O'Montel-Bonnie to see where he was born. So the The one where born in Mexico, yeah, in Mexico City in 1920. Maybe it's because he played on fantasy island that I thought he was from an island. Could be. I think that is true. I think that's where I got that.

The association you made in your head. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I thought he made in your head. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I had thought he was Spanish. Oh, interesting. I had like completely not and I think and I think and and this is awful of me, but I'm going to admit it's it's because so many of the roles he played carried such a patrician air

about them. Yeah, that's fair. You know, I could see you thinking, oh, he's Iberian. Yeah. Yeah. Like, no, no, Mexico City. Now, Patricia Mexican. So, you know, heavily European background, Mexican. Yeah, yeah. Still. Yeah. Anyway. So Kirk was telekinetically forced to kiss Uhura at one point and that was significant on all the layers that it was. It was the first kiss of a white man and a black woman on TV as far as I could find. It was considered a big goddamn deal at the time. Also, I point out that they were

forced to do it. It wasn't their agency. It wasn't their choice. But I would say that Star Trek, despite the fact that you had all of that, is still hella racist because of the way that Scotty and McCoy talk to Spock all the time. But it's safe to be racist against him because he's an alien who passes for white. So it's kind of okay Wait stop He's an alien who passes for human Yeah, it's what I said same same See what you did there yeah, no and true and it should also be noticed and noted, of course, that, you know, Dr. McCoy was very clearly from a Southern background.

Yeah. Yeah. So make up that what you will. Mm-hmm. So now there's also an episode with the guys who have the black and the white faces. And I'm going to go ham on this. So. This is Gene Roddenberry's attempt to be rod-sealing,

right down to just exactly how ham-fisted his metaphor was. Well, and this was third season, so budget was a problem. For instance, those guys both had to wear gloves because that way you don't have to paint their hands Oh, you're kidding. No really? Yeah So also I think this might be the first that time yeah This also well one of them had an invisible ship so

But this also one of them was Frank Gretchen, by the way. And I think, if I recall correctly, this episode is the first episode that you see two moose knuckles on the same screen. So, now, this show, this particular episode, which is called, let's see, the, oh god damn it, that last battlefield of yours or something like that. It aired January 10th 1969, which means that it was filmed or it was written and filmed the prior year. Now the prior year was 1968, as we all know. So this air is 10 days before, 10 or so days before

Nixon takes office. But yeah, it was written in film the prior year and it had been an idea as early as season one, but 1968 was a much more fertile year for such ideas. Just for side note, the title of the episode is let that be your last battlefield. That's what it was. Fifteenth episode of the third season of the original American science fiction television show Star Trek, according to WikiPedia.

There you go. So Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April of 1968. Over a hundred cities erupted in riots when he was killed. King had been a voice for moral, non-violent protest, and his assassination led many people to believe that the cultural white supremacy clearly wasn't listening to non-violence as a tactic. Therefore, violent resistance to white supremacy seemed a pretty appropriate response now. Yeah. White businesses were often targeted during these riots, but not white churches or white schools.

So even during riots, black people are doing better than white people who aren't rioting. Mm, yeah. Yeah. Now Watts had already happened in 1965. As a result, because again, this shit's getting filmed in LA. As a result, there are several community leaders, activists, as well as the LAPD and they work together to help

avert a repeat of Watts. This was also true in Boston, thanks to a James Brown concert in Indianapolis. Was it Boston? We mentioned the James Brown concert before and we couldn't remember in the earlier episode we weren't sure what city it was. Yeah, it was Boston. Yes, it was. Yeah. It was also true in Indianapolis because RFK gave a pretty good

and prompt to speech about it. And it was also true in most of New York, owing to the fact that the mayor of New York drove straight into Harlem and told the leaders in Harlem that the community leaders in Harlem that he is working against poverty and let's please not like fall back from what we're doing. So by and large, most of the riots in New York were very small, very localized and they weren't really riots.

There were, you know, attacks on buildings and a little bit of looting. The three cities that got it, the hardest were DC, Chicago, and Baltimore. And this is largely due to the tremendous problems that had already predated King's assassination in April. In Washington, DC, it was especially acutely felt probably because it's the seat of the government. Now get this. There are riots going on, right?

There are people who are breaking shit. There are people who are stealing shit. There are people who are breaking shit. There are people who are stealing shit. There are people who are setting fires. Lyndon Johnson ordered the National Guard to be deployed. And machine guns were mounted on the steps of the capital building. Really? Yes. Machine guns. Machine guns.

I'm going to have to look that up. Yeah. Not not because I doubt you at all, but because I I want to see. Yeah. It's hard to wrap your head around. Oh, man. Well, you got to keep in mind a lot of the people writing were black. So it makes sense to call in the National Guard and machine guns to defend the capital. I mean, yeah, well, you know, as as recent history has shown Yeah, you know if they were if they were bourgeois, you know white people right whose mom drove them in Yeah, let them let them in who could afford tickets to get there and Yeah, and hotel rooms to stay in Yeah, yeah in Chicago mayor daily to stay in Chicago. Mayor Daley encouraged his police to shoot to maim the looters. Even Mayor Daley has a better moral compass about looters than what we saw this summer. You remember when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Mayor Daley, the guy who was in charge of the Chicago police riots during the Democratic

National Convention later that year was saying, well, no, no, don't kill the looters. Yeah, same, same year. Mame them. No, no, just, just injure shoot to disable. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny how, how when looting starts the shooting starts is somehow doesn't apply what we are again Petit bourgeois

Why people? Yeah, well that's from the Congress building right or anytime a sports team wins I cannot I literally cannot Well, yeah, okay, there's that too, but like I literally cannot get over the images of that one dopey faced fuck with the nit cap carrying the, the lecturing, um, podium, I don't know what word it would be before it. It's a podium, cause you know, out of the congress building with that. Okay, yeah, podium, that, you know, carrying it,

like he's gonna carry it, like, what the fuck are you gonna, one, what the fuck are you gonna do with that? Number two, he has this happy, happy smile on his fucking face, that just completely reveals the fact that there's no concept that he's going to have to face any fucking consequences for storming a building, at least being tangentially involved in the murder of a law enforcement officer and stealing government property.

Well, I could tell you a lot about him actually. Oh, fuck it. I'm actually told, do you have to be? Really? Yeah, my cousin taught his kid. Really? Yeah. I'm sure the child was a perfect angel.

Well, the reason that she had to call him in was because the child was spitting all over his math test instead of taking it and then the meeting with the dad went so disturbingly that she said he's persona non grata on this campus unless my administrators in the room with me. I am utterly unsurprised by any of that. Dude has five kids. His other kids like our in-classes where they cannot bring up politics because these kids will just start trumpand-z-ing.

And yeah, this is all elementary, by the way, my cousins and elementary school teacher. Sweet Jesus. Yup. I can't begin like, like, like, I am utterly unsurprised to find any of that out. And I'm still deeply saddened. Yeah. Like by all of it. Yeah. Like, like, I feel, I feel badly for the kids.

Mm hmm. I can't begin to tell you how badly I feel for the guys wife. Like a doctor. And then and in your cousin. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Uh, yep. Is what happens when you get involved in a cult? You do so much to alter things. Yeah. So meanwhile back to Chicago, Daly's ordering the police to shoot to me. Sorry, sorry. Sorry.

The South side of Chicago, which is a largely black enclave of Chicago, was actually fairly untouched by the riots because the gang leaders in those communities came together with the with each other, even though they were rival gangs, and they came together to keep their neighborhood safe from the riots largely due to the fact that Martin Luther King had worked with them in 1966 when he went up there. Over a quarter of the deaths during the nationwide riots happened really in Chicago. Yeah. Oh, wow.

There's now there's a reason. So I had not known that the can't done. Okay. So there's there's a reason that King had previously said, quote, I've been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can stay that I have never seen even in Mississippi and Alabama. Mobs is hostile and hate-filled as I'm seeing in Chicago. So again, a quarter of the deaths during the riots over a week were in Chicago. And then Baltimore. Jim and Christmas. Yeah. Baltimore, the governor of Maryland's over the top militant response and then subsequent blaming of the

black community leaders for not doing more to quell the riots was so over the top and so egregious. Do you know what happened to the governor of Maryland as a result? and so egregious do you know what happened to the governor of Maryland as a result you got elected to the senate nope vice president spiro agni fuck yeah so in other cities uh... kingsmururder had been the spark that ignited the tinder. So in other cities, Kingsmurder really just got things going because there had been so much

underlying brutality by the police. There were uneven economic relief programs. There was red lining, the ghettoization of certain neighborhoods, et cetera. The week after King was murdered, over 20,000 people were arrested, thousands were injured, and 42 were dead. Again, more than a quarter of them in Chicago.

Many of these cities took years to recover, and if you really want to predict the 1992 Rodney King verdict riots, you could have looked at any number of these cities. You could have done exactly a one-to-one and just replaced the word Korean with white in some of these cities and you would what's going on. When the actual writer of this episode, Gene L. Kuhn had written it under a pseudonym because he wasn't supposed to write for Paramount at the time because he had worked for Universal Studios at that time.

Kuhn had been a showrunner when Rodenberry took off mid season during the first season. And he's actually the one credited with making a lot of Star Trek as good as it was. So I did some digging into Koon and he grew up in the Midwest. He grew up with a family or he was part of a family that eventually moved to Glendale, California. I think his dad was working in poultry or something. His dad was also a sergeant in the Marines. Jean Coon had been very active on the radio in Omaha. He had been part of 4-H, the Boy Scouts, and the marching band.

And I mentioned these things because he clearly was used to working in a group in an organization. And then when the war broke out, when World War 2 broke out, he joined the Marines. And what I found was interesting, oh, his dad was in the army, I'm sorry, what I found was interesting though is that Koon was in the Marines for the totality of the war and never once did he get deployed outside of the United States. I couldn't figure out why. I couldn't figure out why. And then he also served in the Korean War.

So what did he do? I don't know. I couldn't find that. I think there was his work with the radio might have been part of that. His expertise in radio. Okay. Kind of the same. Yeah.

Like a dispatcher of some sort. Like a dispatcher. Yeah. Okay. So, and I couldn't find if he ever did any combat during the Korean War, but he served during the Korean War as well until 1952. Now, I mentioned all of that because, again, clearly here's a man who's used to working with an organization, who's used to having a place in an organization, and who had an having a place in an organization, and who had an early aptitude for actual show business having been in radio. He wrote for TV starting in 1956, and by the time Star Trek came about, his moral lesson

oriented Western scripts had drawn the attention of NBC executives. He wrote a lot of Westerns that had like that strong moral moral compass and he helped rewrite a lot of the scripts for Star Trek So Koon gets yeah Koon gets the credit for creating con For creating the Klingons Zephyr and Cochran the prime directive the name of the United Federation of planets Yeah, all of this was under his tenure. There were his scripts while he was running the show and even Starfleet commands structure. He also helped to kind of set up the relationship between Spock and Kirk and McCoy.

He's like, no, no, these guys are like the demons of Kirk, and they're going to argue with each other. And by all accounts, well, yeah, it's, it's there, they're, they're the power trio with, with Kirk as the, it, McCoy is the ego and Spock is the super ego. Hmm, Kirk is, I don't think that that one works there quite honestly because Kirk is the one who is making all the decisions and the other two are essentially compassion and logic. Okay, I'm going to see what you're saying, but by the same token, I'm going to push back a little bit because Kirk is very clearly the motive, bus id. We got to go out, we got to get stuff done and fuck everything that moves. Oh, yeah, that's all true too.

You know, element of the trio. Yeah. You know, and then McCoy is, you know, let's, let's, you know, look at this and, you know, come up with moral imperatives and then Spock is, no, no, let's be logical. That's kind of where the, where the id egos or you go thing comes in your you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, Kirk is the decider. Mm hmm. It's just there's kind of takes him out of the, the Ed realm in that regard. Yeah, because he's moderating between those two. I think both can simultaneously kind of apply. Yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely shades of it. Yeah, I think both can kind of simultaneously apply.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, and also, of course, I'm taking power trio and those three roles, you know, straight off of the pages of TV tropes, which by the way, at some point probably ought to do an episode about just so I can get you to look at it so you understand where I'm getting all these things from. Oh, I just let your hell of smart. So, you know, well, I mean, I'll take a credit, but, you know, I'm also, you know,

cribbing and awful, because part of being smart is knowing who to steal from. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You know, so by all accounts, Koon did a really good job of running the show, but he also regularly argued with the big three. And when Gene Rodenberry returned, Koon and Rodenberry argued up until the point where Koon left midway through the second season.

Still afterward, he contributed more than a dozen scripts or more like half a dozen. more than a dozen scripts or more like half a dozen, creeping up to a dozen, seven or eight scripts, including this episode. Now initially NBC rejected this script, but then it came in under budget, and they were like, yeah, I go for it. And the plot is pretty straightforward. I love it.

They were totally skittish about, oh. This is this is so overtly like Rods Sirling level some animals need to be dropped. We can't touch this with a 10 foot pole. Well yeah, but it came in under budget. All right. Do it. Yeah. Green light. Like like we're terrified of this, but wait under budget, do it. Like at the end of the day, all $90. So anyway. So the plot pretty straightforward. There's a character named Locke. I haven't seen it in so long.

I don't remember how to pronounce the name. So I'm gonna say it's Locke. He is or Lockeye. Lockeye sounds better. He is an escaped refugee from the planet Chiron, and he stole a federation shuttle, and the enterprise happens to go across his path. He claims political asylum, essentially, and then Bayley shows up. And each man is inked black on one side of his face, and clown make up white on the other

side. However, they're opposites because one has the white on the left and one has the black on the left. Bayley is hunting political traders so you can see where the obvious conflict is here. Low-key and his people are considered inferior because they're black on the right side of their face and their bodies, whereas Bayley's people are white on that side. And this surface difference isn't readily apparent to Kirk or the rest of the crew until Bayley points it out,

and even the way that it's pointed out makes it seem silly and kind of arbitrary. However, the real issue is how low-guys people are treated. Because of low-guys people's inherent inequality, they're not able to take care of themselves and they require paternal guidance from Bayley's people who are considered superior. And Bayley even says something to the effect of, we take very good care of them. Low-guye tells the bridge crew about what racism is and what persecution is, and the bridge crew emphasizes that racism and persecution

existed at one time, but it was a thing of the past in their society. See? How can remarkably woke. Yes. Now, in this ensuing discussion, the men almost beat each other up and Kirk says, that's it. You're both going to the brig.

You can't talk like this to each other or attack each other on my bridge. However, both these men, of course, have force fields around them that they just naturally create. Bailey then takes over the ship with his will, which is a thing you can do in 1960s sci-fi, and then Kirk orders the self-destruct sequence, which is I think the first time self-destruct as a thing actually existed.

Eventually this issue gets resolved. Their difference is more than political though, and it's more than skin deep, and it's also more than 50,000 years old. But, and here's the important part, to the enterprise, their differences are mostly academic, and to the audiences, their differences are mostly academic. The real difference that anybody can actually see

is the only one that needs to be pointed out, which is he's black on his left, and I'm white on my left. Now, when they get to chair on, loci and bele fight, and they almost destroy the ship, and then they chase each other through the ship, and then they run down to their planets,

only to find that the whole planet has been wiped out by a war. And they're the only two people left of their respective peoples. And of course, they blame each other for it, and they carry on the war, continuing to attack each other, blinded by their hatred of each other. The tragedy of their mutual loss is completely beyond them, and they're attacking each other over it. So that's the episode.

How very, very woke white guy in the middle. Yeah. So in late July 1967, the police of Detroit conducted a raid on a speak easy operating after hours. While they conducted this raid, they expected to find a dozen people. They found 82 there who were celebrating the return of two young GI's from Vietnam. The police decided the best course of action here was to arrest all 82 people, a crowd gathered outside, angered by this overreaction to a party celebration of two black GI's. Now to back up just

a little bit because no catalyst ever happens without a tremendous underpinning of institutional racism, the city of Detroit had been one of the major destinations for the Great Migration. This was pretty upsetting to the white folks who were living there who continued to find ways to segregate both Dejure and De facto. The KKK was also very active in Michigan in the 1930s. As a result, they were terrorizing black people living in God's oven mitt. Malcolm X's dad was likely killed by a group called the Black Legion of the KKK in Lancet. And after that, this was after they'd already burned his family's home.

So, red lining, oh, your racism. No, just I had not known that that was the case about Malcolm X's father. Well, it's it's been written up as a suicide and a street car accident, but it's it's entirely likely and possible, possible and likely that the they were called the black legion and they were specific to lancing and they'd already burned his family's hometown. So it's very possible that they... She made Christmas. Yeah. So redlining kept segregation pretty stringent and Detroit, and segregation kept black people pretty

heavily policed. In 1956, the year that my mom was born, Orville Hubbard, the mayor of the town that she lived in, who was called the dictator of Dearborn, which was a suburb of Detroit. He bragged to an Alabama newspaper. He said, quote, negroes can't get in here. These people are so anti-colored, much more than you and Alabama. We watch it. Every time we hear of a Negro moving, for instance, we had one last year. In a response quicker than to a fire. That's generally known. It's known among our people and it's known among the Negroes here. He also boasted, yeah, and he got elected 18 consecutive years in a row.

Oh my God. He also boasted of having the police come by and check on black families at all hours of the night until they got the hint. He called it like doing to a good job. Wow. Yeah. Like, okay, here's here's how bad it was. My mom grew up in Dearborn, okay. They, the teacher left the class and their art class and the kids ran a muck.

I mean, just ran a muck for like 10 minutes, you know, while the teacher was out dealing with something or other. When the teacher got back, the whole class was torn up. She's what happened here. And the kids made up a story about how black men came in and threatened to shoot them if they got in the way of these guys destroying the classroom. The teacher believed them.

What? Yeah. Like, okay, like actually believed them or bought into it because it was a socially acceptable lie. Probably option B, but either way. Yeah, I kind of don't know which one is worse. I'm going to admit, but like one of them is infinitely more believable. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, she's either really, really stupid or just really, really racist and stupid. Wow. Yeah. Now, you combine red lining with overpricing, and you have a pretty efficient fuel for growing discontent in the black community.

And because you have all that separation, you have a tremendous amount of hostility in the white community. And while the black middle class in Detroit, owing to the auto industry, unionized labor, and very especially black entrepreneurship, while it was wealthier in most places, or than it was in most places of the country in many ways that also fanned the hatred of white supremacy. Well, yeah. Now the mayor of Detroit, like same as it, same as in Tulsa, you know, Black Wall Street, got destroyed for a reason. Yes. You know, it's the same, it's the same ugly shit.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So the mayor of Detroit was a gentleman named Jerome Kavanaugh. He was an Irish Catholic Democrat. He'd started some police reforms and some city reforms in 1961. Most importantly, probably, he'd created several commissions and staffed several positions with black people in positions that had decision-making power.

So not just advisory but decision-making. Also, he was trying to change the way that the police operated toward the black community. However, this meant disciplining police officers who perpetrated brutality toward black suspects and arrestees. Of course, this means that the police turned against the mayor and he got tagged with being too soft on crime because he said, hey, While you're arresting them, you can't just beat the shit out of them. Yeah, all the time. Yeah

Constantly. And there were also multiple studies at the time. Some were federal for instance the Kerner Commission under President Johnson, that were aimed at these problems already. And they found that prior to the riot in Detroit, 40, oh, by the way, spoiler, this is riot in Detroit, 45% of police working, 45% of police working in black neighborhoods were, quote, extremely anti-need grow. So you basically have a coin flip chance of having somebody who's considered extremely for the 1960s.

And an additional 34% were prejudiced. So I don't do math very well, but that's damn near 80%. 8 and 10, four fifths of the time. So 20% of the time you might run into one of the good ones. Police. Further, in 1967, 93% of the police force was still white, even though 30% of the city's residents were black. Now the police were also regularly reported in these reports as reported in these reports

God dang, as addressing black men as quote boy and black women as honey or baby. Frequently they'd arrest black people who did not have quote proper identification. The local press reported several questionable shootings and beatings of black citizens by officers all leading up to the riots of 67. White Johns also would come into black neighborhoods frequently. So segregation stopped apparently at the zipper. And the police did very little. Well, it always, it always has. And again, it's that predatory power strong, you know, just and the police didn't do shit to curtail prostitution for for the beginning at some point they actually did put some effort into it deploying in squadrons at one point.

But they were often accused of being on the take by the local press. So when this raid occurred, this was the dried tinder that was laying around, and the protests erupted into a riot, and the Detroit police just watched it first. Eventually, Governor George Romney, that one guy's dad. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's Papa. Yeah. that one guy's dad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mitz. Mitz. Papa. Yeah. Uh, he asked Johnson. Do you think he named his son, Mitt, because they lived in Michigan? That's a really good question. I don't know. I, I always thought Mitt would be short for something, but I never figured out what I think, Mitt and, yeah, well, I mean, that makes sense, but I also wonder if like Richard Gephardt was his parents were from Florida. So did I ever tell you that story?

No. My grandma, she is very fun, fun, she still is probably, but she's very fond of saying that when God rested on the seventh day, he'd put his hand down and that's how you got Michigan. And I was 11 and didn't have a filter and asked, well then how do you explain Florida? I did not get to do it. Yeah. So anyway, that could be pissed, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, could be. So eventually, Governor George Romney asked President Johnson to send in federal troops, and Johnson said, well, you first have to declare a state of insurrection per the requirements of the Insurrection Act of 1807. Okay.

Now, Romney was, now this is again July of 67. Romney doesn't want to do that because he's thinking of running for president in 1968. See back then, people would wait until the election year to start running. Yeah. Instead of starting running to cycles before they didn't have super packs back that well, good. So good. Yeah.

So that's right, because people got taxed back then. Well, people got taxed and corporations weren't treated as people for first amendment purposes, right? Whereas people were treated as property for, you know, when the looting chart starts, the shooting starts perfectly. Well, yeah for you know when the looting shirt starts the shooting starts You well, yeah, you know there's that So Romney didn't want to ask Johnson for help because he was thinking that'll hurt his chances at a 68 presidential run Meanwhile because Kavanaugh was an Irish Catholic Democrat

He didn't want to ask Romney for help because he had worked really hard to forge good working relationships with the black community leaders in Detroit And so he was reluctant to ask for for federal and state troops But by the second day They needed to come in so Johnson sent in the military per Romney's request and additional which I that's what you would send if you're the president So I don't I don't know why I was like on he sent the military of course he did would send a few of the presidents. So I don't know why I was like, oh, and he sent the military, of course he did. Additionally, state and national guard troopers came in.

5,500 various troops occupied the city, and I do mean occupied the city because they came in with tanks. There was a rumor that there were snipers, and there were actually a few snipers, but the fear grew way out of proportion to what was actually there. The military did what it does best in a policing the civilian's situation. They overreacted. And they opened up from a tank into what they thought was sniper fire turns out someone was lighting a cigarette.

They opened up with a 50 caliber machine gun. They killed a four-year-old little girl. Later, the National Guardsmen who had opened fire was exonerated in her killing. The Detroit police were increasing their brutality during these riots. Against anybody who was arrested, they beat them severely. They also sexually assaulted several women that they arrested. All told, there were 43 dead by the time it was over. 7,231 had been arrested, property damage totaled around $50 million, driving up insurance rates in the black neighborhoods, which of course slowed regrowth. 412 buildings had been damaged enough that they actually needed to be demolished. Now of the 43 who were dead, 33 were black, 10 were white, 24 of the

black people who had been killed were shot by police, national guard or federal troops. Four of the white people who had been killed were shot by police National Garden Federal troops. One white person touched a downed power line and one black person touched a downed power line. I found that interesting. There were a couple murders. There's no getting around that. And that was true. But if you look, it's a majority of the state killing citizens. Now, I mention all of this because at the end of the episode that we were talking about, the footage that Star Trek used to show the burned out planet was footage from the Detroit riots in 1967.

So Roddenberry is absolutely telling us about ourselves at that time. Yes he is. He's consciously doing it. This is an important thing. This is representational. This is absolutely 100% true. Cannot deny this. Good for him for doing this. And then Kirk gives his soliloquy at the end.

He, yeah. Wish he'd kind of, go ahead. My point can wait until after Kirk's soliloquy. Yeah. So Kirk gives a soliloquy. He does not acknowledge that either of them was right or wrong.

He says, but all that mattered for them or to them was their hate. Despite the fact that loci had told him about the apartheid that he suffered under Belé's people, and Belé didn't deny it, in fact just justified it. But yeah, sure, both sides are equally wrong. And that's largely because white America totally saw it as both sides being totally equal, despite the power disparity, despite the attempts otherwise, despite the murder of black activists, despite the actual arguments of black sex protists, white America saw it as just as bad

and just as extreme as the KKK. So when the black panthers wanted to feed children, that was the same as the KKK lynching people. Most of White America only saw a fierce and uncontrollable hatred from both sides against those who are opposed to them. Not looking at the actual reasons, just wow, you're just so concerned about winning. Much like Bayley and Lokai in that episode. The message to them was simple. Hatred and violence will bring about everyone's destruction.

And I do mean simple, like the colors being arbitrary. It's just that simple. Now, to bring it back, well actually you're gonna make a point and then I'll bring it back. Well, yeah, no, I mean my point is pretty straightforward. It's just that, you know, it takes a very particular kind of privilege to not only witness

that happening and come to that conclusion, but then to turn around and turn that into the moral of a story that you're writing about that. Like at what in your reflection does the idea of fair and come in? You know, it strikes me that when people who believe, when people of faith get at surveyed, and I'm trying to remember where I, where I read this or where I, where I heard this, it's really, really, really telling that people from higher socioeconomic statuses and and and frumctions of being part of the dominant culture. They all describe God as being kind and people from minorities, people God as being just, not kind, but just. Those are the same things.

In the end, what's important to them, that in the end, God is going to balance the scales. Mm-hmm. And in and in affluent churches, in churches of the dominant culture, it's, you know, God, it loves everyone and God is going to save everyone. It's a very different kind of emphasis and it tells you everything you need to know about What's actually going on in society in terms of inequality and in terms of whether or not people can get justice in this world

And Good through that lens It is infuriating to me. After what we have witnessed in just the last 12 months, what we have witnessed and what we have now that cameras are ubiquitous, now that everybody has the opportunity to share what they're seeing live streaming stuff onto social media for the entire world to witness. We no longer have the luxury of being as able

to overlook or look away or not see the unfairness and the injustice around us of the way people are being treated differently. And so to us, the idea that you would be able to look at those situations and rob them of any context and turn them into, well, you know, both sides. Yep. Now, if you look at codes, like the level, the level of disconnect, the level of moral abdication. I'm actually, I'm even gonna be

harsher than just disconnect. The level of moral emptiness in that. And you know, you know, come at some of these things from different directions, but we arrive at the same place. Like I'm the believer of the two of us. I'm the guy who identifies as Catholic. And to me, like that's an insult to Christ. Like, you know, morally, that's just,

that's so disgusting. Yeah. That you can come to the conclusion that like, well, you know, you're both just being childish. No mother fucker. Yeah. Yeah. You know, half of that picture is a group of people being actively subjugated over,

like what we can agree on is it's stupid shit they're being subjugated for. Yep. But that's the point at which you're, I'm the smartest guy in the room, bullshit, becomes fucking annoying and you need to sit down. Well, it's not just annoying at that point. It's damaging. And so to bring it back, look at how you're centralizes himself. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, it's okay. Look at how Kirk centralizes himself in the conflict of two other people. Look at how he knew nothing about it before it came to him,

and then he passes judgment on them from a safe distance, making snap decisions all the way, and even threatening to exercise his total power over everyone in the process by blowing everyone up. And here is, finally, my thesis. Rodden Berry's only understanding of religion, race, and feminism come from his own opt-in comfortable interaction with them. He doesn't really care about women unless he can fuck them. Witness his casting practices, and while he did initially write a pilot with much more equality, it's still in response to his own male gaze, and their still junior partners

to his central character, the captain, who is absolutely a stand in for himself. His only understanding of race is that it doesn't make much sense to be racist. But if anyone is involved in any conflict over it, he centers himself as the only sane one, as you said, the smartest guy in the room, wishing that the rest would just live according to his precepts. As such, the race issues that he brings up for Ahura are sexualized, because he sees her as sexual. Kirk largely ignores Ahura and Sulu on his own bridge, unless a problem arises with them. He doesn't really care about the issues that others face, and he absolutely fetishizes and tries to have sex with most aliens.

Here's a few other episodes where Kirk absolutely lays it down like this. So regarding religion. If you look at the episode the Apple, where it's a thinly veiled reference to the Garden of Eden, and Kirk essentially kills their God, allowing them to now experience a normal life. That is 100% Roddenberry's idea on organized religion. He's freed them with his judgment and his actions. Kirk also faces down Apollo and defeats him in another episode. He also defeats the Technogod Landrue in another episode, freeing the people from their religious devotion.

In every single one of those instances, Kirk is the most woke, most reasonable, and only correct voice. He visits, he fixes things for them, and then he leaves them to relearn their life. Similar to Kirk, Roddenberry's only understanding of religion is through his own ego as well, and his own diamonds, or daemons, are represented by Spock and McCoy. Now I'm not going to get into the anti-war episode, but I will mention that there are several episodes that take on the thirst of war, and they have Kirk arguing against it, one where the Klingons and Federation are feeding a proxy war, Vietnam.

Another where the concept of war has become so sanitized that the people simply accept a constant state of war as normal. So long as it's remote from them, I personally think that it's his way of digging at Robert McNamara because Robert McNamara was in charge of the army air force and now he's in charge of Vietnam. But it's also pretty clear that Roddenberry doesn't like war, but he goes about it in his very Roddenberry-in kind of way. And while people can say that each episode had different writers, and that's well acknowledged that Gene absolutely rewrote and rewr and re-wrote episodes all the time. And this brings me to the saddest

part about all of this. As much as we love Star Trek, Roddenberry kind of sucked as a writer. His own biographer even said that his chief problem was constantly rewriting and having to have control over every script and that Roddenberry quote, the problem for Roddenberry was quote, he basically couldn't write well enough to carry it off. And if you look at his first attempt of a script for the motion picture, maybe this isn't the saddest part, maybe the saddest part's coming. But the first attempt at... If he gets a worse... Oh yeah!

Thankfully Paramount had its own rewriters, so this never... We will never have to hear Kirk say the phrase, have you ever sexed with a human? Wow. Yeah. Now, I'm not gonna get into the TNG stuff in this particular podcast because it's such a richer tapestry

and we've got lots to mind in there, but rest assured, Jean does not come out of it well. One writer, Matthew Contanetti writing a column for the Washington Free Beacon ended his column with this phrase, or with the sentence, been transformed and appear good. It's because he knew more than anyone how truly awful we could be. Ooh, he ain't wrong. Wow. So, is Star Trek focused on social justice? No, it isn't. It's focused on Jean Roddenberry being right and being the smartest and sexiest person amongst us. It's his fantasy of himself based on his love of travel, his disdain for organized religion,

his interpersonal beliefs on race, and his self-centered libido. Does it highlight all of those issues in the shadow of a very flawed man's attempt to show off his greatness to everyone else and validate himself? Yeah, it does. He's not incapable of doing kindness

or doing the right thing. I truly think that he cared about those issues, similarly to how Joss Whedon does. Going all the way back to the beginning, though, Rodden Berry was saving people's lives at risk to himself in the Syrian desert. He led people to safety, but those acts absolutely helped him to later craft a self-image that he wanted to continue to maintain in creative ways as well. And for his time, that is pretty progressive of a white liberal. He did try. And the fact that Roddenberry is considered progressive, considered social justices, and considered woke for his time is much more indictment of that time than it is praise of the man. So what Roddenberry started and what we'll see later is that the promise that he made, hamphisted in cardboard as it often was, it does end up getting paid off in some pretty major

ways by other properties that were inspired by his efforts. that were inspired by his efforts. Okay. Yeah, I had to go ham on that. No, you've brought me, you've brought me, yeah, no, you've brought me, you've brought me through your thesis. And I find nothing I can, you know, find any kind of a, in any kind of a weakness in. I think you're definitely right that it's an indictment of the times. And I think... And an improvement.

And we... It was an improvement. Shouldn't... Oh, it was a huge improvement. And I think, you know, I think this is a blow against what I referred to as the hagiography of him within fandom. But I don't think, I'm going to try to stave off, you know, some of the, you know of the Twitter hate we may get over this. The thing is representation by itself is crucial. Yes.

Like the fact that Asian American kids and African American kids and especially African American girls could look on the screen and see them straight in the future. At a time when science fiction was so white. Oh yeah. So very white. So many actresses. Like even better than it is now. Yeah. Still way too white. Yeah, people talking about who are being such an inspiration will be Goldberg, you know, who are being a big deal to her, You know, all of that is still important. And, you know, I think, you know, as time has gone on and, you know, living in the era of, we're living in now,

we know even more how crucial it is for people to see themselves in the stories that we share with. And I think that's, that's credit. I think it is sad. motive is behind it. But at the same time, but at the same time, the good that was done is still good that was done. Yes. And like, you know, this isn't us, you know, attempting to, to, you know, assassinate the entire effort just because we're pointing out that he was kind of a dick.

Yeah, the deep flaws of a very deeply flawed man. It's that makes sense. Who gave us a property that other people did really wonderful things with. I'll go with that. I like that. Yeah, that works. Well, it seems like we got what you gleaned. So let me ask you this instead. What is your favorite episode of the original series? Okay. Oh, man. That's that's a tough one. I think I'm going to go with swashbuckler, sueloo. Okay, yeah, yeah. Because, and I don't know the title episode, but the virus making everybody crazy. And part of it is just seeing

George to Kay, like clearly having so much fun. Oh, yeah. Number one, the level of I get to I get to run around with a with a fencing foil and and you know shout like a 17th century musketeer. I like like how could that not be fun? That's awesome. Yeah.

And I already talked about I'm a sword nerd and seeing that depicted that way is just amazing. And the just there are so many things about that episode beyond that. I just I just find awesome. And that's that's one of my favorites. And it manages to kind of have a little bit of a lesson because in the end they find out that they're all being manipulated by a party space alien. And like the longer we continue fighting, we're just feeding it. So we throw down our weapons and we laugh.

Right. And I mean, it's like Rod's certainly level-headed. Like how much more of an anvil can you make this. But that was written at the height of the Cold War when the Klingons were very obviously the stand-ins for the Soviet Union. Yes. Or maybe the Chinese, I don't know. One of the two. union. Yes. Or maybe the Chinese. I don't know. One, one, two. And, and, you know, it, it, you know, still smacks a little bit of, you know, look, look how smart I am as the writer of all this. But I think it was, it managed to hit a tone that, for me as a kid in the 80s watching it and syndicate, we're still facing off against the Soviets. There, there, there was an underlying level of positivity and hope, open that ending.

Yeah. That I think was important. So, that's, I'm going to go with that one. How about you? What's your, of the original series? What, what do you think is your favorite episode? You know, I really liked the Pond Far episode. The music was fun. The story was, was fun.

Okay. I thought, where Spock goes through midlife puberty. But the episode that really sticks in my head the most. There's a whole new meeting the midlife credit. Yeah, no kidding. Jesus, I have to kill my best friend to get laid. But the one that really sticks in my head the most is probably the one where. What's his face Captain Pike is in the wheelchair and they put Spock on trial. It's a two-parter

and and I Love that episode like the fact that Spock is just like so willing to do the right thing At great cost to himself is definitely that's that's likely my favorite. So I'm going to recommend a book as well. I'm going to recommend Orvey O-R-V-I-E, the dictator of Dearborn, written by David L. Good and it's a biography of that son of a bitch mayor that was in Dearborn. It is, anytime you hear about a strong mayor initiative in any major city, read this book and realize why that's a bad idea.

It's really, really good. So. But for anybody in the audience who's not in local local to me and Damien, it should be noted in the intermost recent election. One of the issues on the ballot was a strong mayor initiative. So that's part of the reason I'm laughing. Yes, aren't as I am. Which had also been an initiative on the ballot years ago when we had a basketball player,

child predator as a mayor. So, yeah, keep, keep away from having strong mayors if you can. Trust me, it doesn't go well. So where can people find you on the social media is I can be found on the Twitter and on Instagram at EA HBLA lock. And of course, if you want to yell at both of us at once because how dare we say these horrible things about St. Gene, you can yell at us at geek history time on Twitter. And where can they find you, sir?

You can find me at duh harmony on the Twitter and the Instagram. You can find me every Tuesday night at 8.30 pm PST on twitch.tv forward slash capital puns. You can also, what was the other thing I was going to say? Bad coming. Oh, yes, you can find this podcast on Spotify, on Stitcher, and on the iTunes store. Please subscribe, hit that subscribe button. We like that, rate, subscribe, and review.

Give us that five star that you know that we deserve. And tell your friends, absolutely tell your friends. So, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until the next time, live long and prosper.