When it is a real person whose death traumatized millions of Americans, yes, I think it is quite different from doing it to a fictional character.
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When it is a real person whose death traumatized millions of Americans, yes, I think it is quite different from doing it to a fictional character.
It went over better in 1992 than it would have in the late 70s/early 80s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Kennedys
There was one story by David Gerrold, too, "The Kennedy Enterprise".
Most of those stories are not about the specific idea that bothers me, the implication that JFK's assassination was somehow necessary or right, that his survival would've been bad for the country or the world.
Aside from JFK being a real person, there’s also the fact that the story was structured so that, at the critical moment, the “correct” course of action required them to do nothing. The stories come off differently if Kirk has to shove Edith in front of the car, or if Spock just has to let Oswald pass him by rather than committing the assassination himself.
I think it’s the difference, metatextually, between the idea of accepting that bad things happening is a part of life, versus the idea that heroes should make unambiguously bad things happen because the butterfly effect will turn them into good things eventually.
Isn't that just part of the whole 'butterfly effect' concept about not changing events, especially major ones? Then again, perhaps everything would be a whole lot better today had he not been killed. I also like the point that David cgc made above about accepting bad things that happen vs. making them happen.
General argument and specific argument are two different things. I'm not talking about every possible story using that idea. I'm talking about doing it with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That carries baggage and implications that don't come with other stories.
One of the of the unofficial taglines for the movie (apart from "Star Trek: The Motionless Picture" and "Spocalypse Now") was "Where Nomad has gone before".
I mean, early space probe merges with alien entity to make a super powerful sentient hybrid that threatens the Enterprise? That only fits one TOS ep!
And it's a well that's been gone to so many times.
Again, my issue is not with the general category of Kennedy assassination stories, but with the specific idea of a story implying that he "needed" to be assassinated because the future would've been far worse otherwise. So basically "Tikka to Ride" and the Roddenberry Trek movie proposal, or anything else with that specific premise. Or just the general category of stories about time travelers realizing they have to preserve awful things in history for "the greater good," like the Flashpoint storyline in The Flash or the whole subgenre of "Killing Hitler made things worse so we have to save him." Okay, it was effective when "City on the Edge" did it, maybe a few other times, but it's a well that's been gone to far too often and I've lost my taste for it. Moral inversion can be powerful when it's an exception, but once it becomes commonplace to say that protagonists have to let evil happen instead of stopping it, that starts to feel morally complacent if not worse. I found it refreshing when recent shows like Legends of Tomorrow and Timeless had their protagonists say "You know what? Screw the integrity of history, let's stand against the injustices and human suffering instead of making excuses for preserving them."
Heck, at least "Tikka" had JFK become his own assassin, so it could be taken as a heroic sacrifice on his part, however squirm-inducing I find the way they went about it or the idea of playing it for laughs. Having Spock commit the assassination himself is crossing a line.
Re JFK... JFC
That's not what the story is about at all. Why do people repeat this stuff as if it's accurate? Hey, here's a thought...WE ARE RIGHT HERE. If you want to know something about one of the proposed movies, ASK. We have a lot of the treatments and a number of the scripts and we could clear this up without getting into the weeds with these myth-packed games of telephone.
Or maybe consult a properly researched source like Sherilyn Connelly's underappreciated and under-read The First Star Trek Movie, which touches on just about all of the film proposals Roddenberry had his fingers in, including the one in question.
That's not what the story is about at all. Why do people repeat this stuff as if it's accurate? Hey, here's a thought...WE ARE RIGHT HERE. If you want to know something about one of the proposed movies, ASK. We have a lot of the treatments and a number of the scripts and we could clear this up without getting into the weeds with these myth-packed games of telephone.
Or maybe consult a properly researched source like Sherilyn Connelly's underappreciated and under-read The First Star Trek Movie, which touches on just about all of the film proposals Roddenberry had his fingers in, including the one in question.
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Okay. Back on fact stuff...
On this date (June 2nd) 56 years ago "The Corbomite Maneuver" wrapped filming. Between 2006 and 2016, a popular ad campaign for Dos Equis beer featured a debonair, gray-bearded gentleman, identified as “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” who ended each ad with a variation on the slogan — “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. Stay thirsty, my friends.”
If you follow Star Trek anything on social media you probably know where this is going, because for the past decade memes like the following have been circulating, and continue circulating a half-dozen years after the actor in question retired from his “Most Interesting” role.
The memes identify the actor as Jonathan Goldsmith and claim he appeared as a non-speaking, unnamed redshirt in an episode of the original Star Trek.
One of those is true.
Even Shatner's official Twitter feed treated it as fact.
The Most Interesting Man in the World was indeed played by Jonathan Goldsmith.
But as to Star Trek, in an interview with the Television Academy, Mr. Goldsmith dismissed the story:
The Most Interesting Matter here is just how stories like this are born, spread, and propagate to the point they’re gleefully accepted as fact when they, in truth, are patently false.
All the details are in the Dos Trequis article (link). But given all the myth-spreading memes, we made one of our own you can share any time you see this false "fact" shared. Fight memes with memes.
On this date (June 2nd) 56 years ago "The Corbomite Maneuver" wrapped filming. Between 2006 and 2016, a popular ad campaign for Dos Equis beer featured a debonair, gray-bearded gentleman, identified as “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” who ended each ad with a variation on the slogan — “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. Stay thirsty, my friends.”
If you follow Star Trek anything on social media you probably know where this is going, because for the past decade memes like the following have been circulating, and continue circulating a half-dozen years after the actor in question retired from his “Most Interesting” role.
One of those is true.
The Most Interesting Man in the World was indeed played by Jonathan Goldsmith.
But as to Star Trek, in an interview with the Television Academy, Mr. Goldsmith dismissed the story:
David M. Gutiérrez: It's fitting you're being sent to Mars [in a commercial], considering you're credited as being a "Redshirt" in the original Star Trek.
Jonathan Goldsmith: No, I wasn't. I've never done that show. I can’t convince the fans of that. They keep sending me pictures of a guy in a red shirt, but it ain't me.
Jonathan Goldsmith: No, I wasn't. I've never done that show. I can’t convince the fans of that. They keep sending me pictures of a guy in a red shirt, but it ain't me.
The Most Interesting Matter here is just how stories like this are born, spread, and propagate to the point they’re gleefully accepted as fact when they, in truth, are patently false.
All the details are in the Dos Trequis article (link). But given all the myth-spreading memes, we made one of our own you can share any time you see this false "fact" shared. Fight memes with memes.
This one is so wild, it's all fairly reasonable going from the audition list to the Concordance to the Encyclopedia, but the person who identified the particular extra as Goldsmith is just completely outrageous. They just picked some guy (and there's many extras in Corbomite Maneuver!) and said that was Goldsmith. Absolutely incredible.
TMP is nothing like the Corbomite Maneuver in that it isn't a First Contact situation (the aliens didn't fix Voyager 6 to make contact with Humans) and Kirk's bluff isn't about mutually assured destruction. TMP is so much like The Changeling by comparison - Earth Probe encounters aliens and is repurposed for an effectively deadly purpose and returns to Earth to effectively kill the population...Plasma Bolts in the opening that are virtually unavoidable/unresistable that destroy ships...
Hahaha. Good stuff. I always assumed he was this guy.
This was my Halloween costume 12 years ago, by the way:
Ah, so the myth got started in the '95 Concordance. I found that a very, very problematical update. It had other errors, like crediting James Doohan with every unidentified male voice in TAS even though many of them clearly weren't him.
By the way, a project I was working on a while back was putting names to faces of all the unsung extras of Trek to build sort of an extended crew for the ship. With all the resources at your disposal, @Harvey and @Maurice, is that something I could bounce off of you?
(I could even make it an ongoing thread in TOS where I go episode by episode, crewmember by crewmember. That could be fun.)
(I could even make it an ongoing thread in TOS where I go episode by episode, crewmember by crewmember. That could be fun.)
I don't always drink Dos Equis but when I do, I like to look like the spokesman,
Memory Alpha has tried to do that. I don't know what we could offer other than looking at daily production reports (where available) to verify names of actors who might've gone uncredited.
So, to button up this JFK thing (which is way OT), here's the relevant excerpts from what The First Star Trek Movie says on the subject:
Having read this treatment, the above is accurate.
Let's just put that damned rumor to bed, shall we?
"Stay skeptical my friends."
Despite the largely negative critical reception, the Robert Wise film had been successful enough that Gene Roddenberry submitted a 60-page treatment for a sequel on May 23, 1980. Titled Star Trek III, for he still thought of the 1960s television series as Star Trek I and the Robert Wise film as Star Trek II, it involved the Enterprise having to fix damage done in 1963 by time- traveling Klingons. [...] The Enterprise goes back to 1963, where President Kennedy is still alive because he canceled the Dallas trip. Kirk has to talk Kennedy into giving him a rare isotope the Enterprise needs to travel faster than light in order to both go further back in time to stop the Klingon ship as it first appears in 1963, and then return to the 23rd century.
[...]
In March 1981, a rumor soon spread via Starlog from a Paramount official “who asked not to be named” about Roddenberry’s Star Trek III treatment, claiming that “just about the last scene in the story had Spock walking up to Kennedy’s limousine and killing him with his phaser,” which was not true.
[...]
In March 1981, a rumor soon spread via Starlog from a Paramount official “who asked not to be named” about Roddenberry’s Star Trek III treatment, claiming that “just about the last scene in the story had Spock walking up to Kennedy’s limousine and killing him with his phaser,” which was not true.
Having read this treatment, the above is accurate.
Let's just put that damned rumor to bed, shall we?
"Stay skeptical my friends."
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Well, that makes more sense. It's a relief that Roddenberry didn't actually go there with the Kennedy thing. Thanks for clearing that up.
