On Fri, 4 May 2001, Marvin Long, Jr. wrote:
> Hypocrisy alert: those who knew me in college may remember that I
> enjoyed ST:TNG quite a bit when it was in its first run. I even went
> through a period when I thought old Trek was horribly dated, an
> embarrassment... fickle me. Now I watch ST:TNG and much of the time
> get struck with the same sense of "Ewww!" Its good shows are good &
> the bad ones bad, just like the original series, which I no longer
> think has anything to apologize for.
OK, in college, the thing about ST:TNG was that it was a shared activity.
What I remember was everyone piling into one big room to watch, being
quiet during the action, chatting during commercials, and there being a
topic that *could* be brought up during Sunday lunch besides RPGs and,
geez, it was something annoyingly uninteresting to me, but I've forgotten
what now. (The sort of discussion that would one day drive Keisha to
announce in a loud voice, "I've read _Gone With the Wind seven times!)
:) You weren't there for the initial tearing-apart of "Encounter at
Farpoint", but that was *fun*. (And second season, which was when you
showed up, was better.) It wasn't about Marvin's opinion as much as the
entertainment value derived from Marvin arguing his opinions. (Same for
Jerry, Dan, Dan, Daniel, Rosa, Shanna, etc.) I started watching X-Files
for similar reasons, because my sister and Keisha really liked it, for
two. (And there are a few episodes I love, but I can really leave the
rest of it.)
I came into the whole Star Trek experience in college. I'd never watched
classic Trek, never seen any of the movies. The guys I hung around with
fixed *that* very nicely my freshman year. :) TOS and TNG each had their
merits, as far as I was concerned. I loved Spock. (I still do, but not
with the intensity I did the summer after my freshman year, when I was
going back home to a household vastly changed by the death of my father
the previous fall, trying to fit myself back in with the parent I hadn't
been as close to and a younger sister who'd had to take on too much, too
soon and was, in a number of ways, more mature than I was (OK, she was
more mature than I in some ways for a few years before then, but she'd
been forced into even more by the whole thing), a place that didn't make
*sense* the way it used to; something about Spock gave me something to fix
on that actually *did* make sense.)
Actually, I started reading science fiction as a way to connect to
specific other people (my father, the guy who was my boyfriend for about a
month in 6th grade, my friend Liz, friends I met summers, guys I liked
being around from my calculus class, friends in college, co-workers, etc.,
and now this list); I've joined the Fandom Association of Central Texas to
meet more people, and it being the organization it is, well, we all like
science fiction. (I go to Adventures in Crime and Space as often as I do
not because I think I need to buy the weekly book, but because I've been
there enough times that it's a familiar space and most of the people
working there know me, and if I find an unfamiliar person behind the
counter, I introduce myself and chat for a little while.) Aside from the
actual *reading*, which is going to be a somewhat solitary activity, and
which I think has done me a lot of good (certainly more good than harm!)
I'm into science fiction for the possibilities of socialization.
So I'm not going to hold any perception on my part of hypocracy on
Marvin's part against him or anything, I'm just going to enjoy the fact
that we're all engaged in this debate, and while I have opinions on the
subject, I'm not going to take the time to be even half as eloquent as ol'
Silver-Tongue and may decide not to express my opinions on this topic at
this time. And Marvin is not the same person he was his freshman year of
college, and I'm not the same person I was that year, and more episodes
and movies have come out since that year for us to argue about, if we are
so inclined. :)
Julia
