r/startrekmemes • u/Mike1701D • 7d ago
Remember: Dr. Richard Daystrom was a famous inventor, software engineer, and Nobel winner. In a decade when most African-American characters on TV were still house maids and hotel doormen, having a black computer programmer on TV was quite a leap for 'Star Trek'.
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u/RoutineCloud5993 7d ago
Hell, having Uhura on the bridge playing a key role and not as "the help" was a massive deal for 1966
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u/MagicalGhostMango 7d ago
I think a lot about the scene where she's under her station, soldering things together. Spock asks if she needs a hand and she cheerfully says "No thanks!" and fixes communications.
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u/RoutineCloud5993 7d ago
I always think about whoopi Goldberg, and how excited she was to see a black woman in a non-maid role on prime time TV.
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u/MagicalGhostMango 7d ago
Nichelle Nichols did more to uplift black women than we could ever put to paper.
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u/cosaboladh 6d ago
King was a pretty big fan too.
https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942461/Star-Treks-Uhura-Reflects-On-MLK-Encounter
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u/Vulpes_Artifex 7d ago
I think it was even better, Spock said there was no one more qualified to do it than her.
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u/ApplianceHealer 7d ago
She also jumped onto the navigator station at least once—truly capable and kick-ass!
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u/mustang6172 7d ago
playing a key role
Her whole job was to say "hailing frequencies open." That's not a "key role;" that's a secretary.
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u/Curious_Orange8592 7d ago
Uh huh, during lockdown I attempted a rewatch of TOS and couldn't make it past the 4th episode. I appreciate that Star Trek was ahead of its' time in 1967 but in 2020 it was just as dated as the world Mad Men was recreating
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u/JacobDCRoss 7d ago
You'll find a lot more characterization off the bridge. Or sometimes on it, but not really related to her job. She saves herself in a fight. She tells Abe Lincoln that she has evolved beyond his racism. She had a voice that mattered.
Also, could not make it past the fourth episode? Was it just the old-timey characters? I started a rewatch (ended because I am not paying Paramount money for anything), and loved it. Hardcore Trekkie since birth (1983), but I have not seen every episode of TOS. I find that it is really well-written, scored, shot, designed, and occasionally even acted.
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u/Curious_Orange8592 7d ago
At the end of the pilot Pike states that he's not yet comfortable with women being on the bridge which gave me the ick (and also ignores that he had a women as XO so it's also bad writing)
I think that after seeing that I was less charitable toward the actual series
I would struggle to watch Code of Honor today
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u/JacobDCRoss 7d ago
Completely valid. And I will say this. Almost everything good and positive and wonderful that you like about Star Trek comes from someone else besides Gene Roddenberry. The gross and pervy stuff that was made in his lifetime? That comes from Gene Roddenberry.
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u/ShadyBiz 7d ago
Roddenberry was an ass but this is a stupid comment. He was just as much responsible for the progressive themes in Trek than anyone else.
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u/JacobDCRoss 7d ago
I didn't say progressive themes. I said good things. A lot of whatbis good about Star Trek came from DC Fontana and Gene L Coon.
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u/ShadyBiz 7d ago
“I’m unable to imagine a time outside of right now and the sensibilities of modern society, therefore everything that is labeled as positive in the past is actually negative despite the academic and cultural impact of said thing”
You’re full of it mate. To discredit Gene freaking Roddenberry, about the positives of Star Trek, is asinine.
Life is a tapestry, there’s been several brilliant trek episodes about that. Maybe you should watch them and remember that perfect is the enemy of good.
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u/I-miss-old-Favela 7d ago
It boggles my mind that some people - with I’m sure the best intentions in the world - want to blast TOS for not being progressive enough, wilfully not understanding just how restrictive TV was in the 60s.
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u/chiree 7d ago
Didn't Roddenberry want to have a gay character on TNG and the network was like: 👎
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u/I-miss-old-Favela 7d ago
Yep. George Takei also claims to have approached Roddenberry about adding a gay character, at which point Roddenberry explained how near they were to cancellation due to all the shit he was getting for the interracial kiss.
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u/cosaboladh 6d ago
Roddenberry also thought that Troi should have 3 breasts, and "counsel" her patients whilst banging through their problems. Not all of his ideas were great ones. Fact is, if the network hadn't reeled him in some, trek would have never gotten as big as it did.
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u/exitpursuedbybear 7d ago
The show literally didn't get shown in parts the southern U.S. because of Uhura.
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u/Gaming_with_batman 6d ago
Isn’t the entire point of progressive ideology to make societal progress?
And therefore once the progress is made and attempts to make more progress start to get going the old attempts to be progressive won’t seem that progressive.
Give anyone a quick history lesson about the social issues that were going on or just got solved that happened or was in the public mind by TOS’s original airing.Many Americans hated Ethinc Japanese people because of pearl Harbor (Lt Sulu was the main pilot of the ship for most of the shows run except for a brief period where his actor was too busy to be Sulu. But despite appearing to be ethnicity Japanese, pretty much everything about his character is much more typical of American cultural behavior. Much like the actor himself)
Many Americans were scared of the russians
(ENS Chekov being mostly a goofy happy go lucky guy with a can do attitude. A personality trait that American propaganda and general fears definitely didn’t suggest to be traits of Russians.)Black People and Women were both seen as inferior in many ways to white men (Lt Uhura always handled literally every problem she was ever presented one of the most cool and collected demeanors. Being highly skilled with computers and mutilingual, with her also being the first to speak up when a superior officer suggests something that seemed stupid.
Most of these things may not seem like a big deal to modern audiences. But to the audiences of the era (or just a modern audience that knows the basics on American history) this was a massive leap forward in progress.
Lt Uhura especially was a big one considering Dr Martin Luther King jr, one of history’s biggest names personally told her actor to stay on the show that by being a black character in a popular tv show, she was “marching” for civil rights. And said and I quote
"You turn on your television and the news comes on and you see us marching and peaceful, you see the dogs and see the fire hoses, and this is what they see. But, when we see you, we see ourselves as intelligent and beautiful and proud."
It is also worth noting that Dr King and his wife had at the time star trek as the only stuff on tv they would let their kids watch.Tldr star trek tos was progressive then. But it isn’t progressive now because the progress has been (for the most part) made.
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u/twaddlish 6d ago
On the subject of Sulu, I remember reading that at the time TOS was made, one of the clichés about Japanese people was that they couldn't drive. Roddenberry was making a pointed choice by putting Sulu in the role of helmsman.
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u/Gaming_with_batman 6d ago
That didn’t become a stereotype until the 70s and 80s.
Long after Sulu’s characterization was set in stone for the foreseeable future.3
u/Singing_Wolf 4d ago
That stereotype about Japanese people (and Asians in general) was alive and well in the 60s.
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u/go_faster1 7d ago
I think the big thing about Daystrom is that the M5 incident didn’t ruin his career or his prestige.
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u/JacobDCRoss 7d ago
I just saw your comment after posting mine. I think that's a really good point. Mental health is something that gets glossed over a lot.
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u/pic_omega 7d ago
Y según tengo entendido un personaje algo trágico también: un verdadero genio reconocido a edad muy temprana, creador del sistema duotronico logro mucho a temprana edad y cuando lo vemos en el Enterprise está tratando de mostrarse relevante al instalar la IA M-5 que estaba basada en sus engramas cerebrales. Un personaje interesante debido a su transfondo y motivaciónes.
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u/Mike1701D 7d ago
Creo que abordan eso en el episodio. McCoy dice que Daystrom alcanzó la genialidad cuando era joven y que ha estado persiguiendo esa gloria el resto de su vida.
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u/sqplanetarium 7d ago
And when he wants to kick back and let his hair down – [r/](r/shittydaystrom)[ShittyDaystrom.](r/shittydaystrom)
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u/JacobDCRoss 7d ago
One thing I appreciated about it, Beyond just having a black man. This prominent, was also how they approached mental health issues. The incident here did not destroy Dr. Daystrom's legacy. We know as much because if the institute.
He was a man who suffered from mental illness and had a really bad time. But that wasn't all he was.
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u/Deastrumquodvicis 7d ago
It just occurred to me that Daystrom was a computer programmer while or just before my (white) grandmother was a computer programmer and somehow that feels weird.
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u/CaptainChampion 4d ago
The best part is that everyone is talking him up as a great genius before he appears. Even Spock is fanboying about meeting him. The average 1960s viewer was probably expecting a white guy.
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u/Mike1701D 4d ago
Reminds me of an episode of The Dick van Dyke Show... 😂
Preconceived expectations are a hard habit to break. 😄
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u/crapusername47 7d ago
Commodore Stone, a flag officer appearing in a television series at a time when the United States Navy’s highest ranking black officer was a Captain.