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“Set phasers to… well, just about anything… Dude’s got a silly-looking sword…”
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Yeah but the fact that they did it anyway, and it was fine is kind of a big sign of how unenlightened the late 80’s and early 90’s were.
IIRC there was protest and criticism about that at the time, including in main stream press and from white folks. Although that sort thing was mostly centered around the NAACP and Black Newspapers.
I don’t recall how prolific that was.
But by a couple of years later with Song of the South, protest and criticism was a lot broader and more visible. If still driven by the same core. I seem to remember reference to the Dumbo Crows in period criticism of Disney over Song of The South.
Even going back to Birth of Nation. That film was way more controversial than we generally assume these days. Even The New York Times’ review was negative, called it out as inflammatory.
Often times when I poke these “artifact of their time” assumptions with a stick. It just doesn’t seem to be the case. Everyone knew they were racist, plenty were pissed about it. It’s whether that mattered at all that seems to be the x factor.
If you could get away with it. Or if it was even considered a good thing.
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Having watched the Skallagrim video in the story a few days ago, and the scholagladiatoria today, they basically agree. The only version that the Skallagrim strongly criticizes as impractical is the Star Trek: Discovery version, as the reversed spikes would make it more dangerous to use defensively. They both agree that the one large hand opening would be much better than the three smaller holes. The Skallagrim video does say that he things a sword is a better general purpose weapon, but he points out that in universe the Bat’leth is supposed to have significant ceremonial uses similar to many real weapons designed to be used as a part of training in a martial art and not primarily as a combat weapon.
I think that Devin Nealy took only the negative points from the video and ignored the parts where Skallagrim discussed the positive aspects of the Bat’leth.
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I think there was an episode of DS9 where a Federation strike force needed to get past some Klingon security guards on a planet’s surface and employed some kind of magical particle shower thing from orbit to make all energy weapons useless, forcing combatants to fight using bladed weapons and bayonets.
One has to wonder why neither side ever thought to stock any old-school firearms for such a situation. For that matter a 19th-Century rifle would be better than a phaser for taking out enemies from a distance in most cases because the shooter could fire from behind cover without a big red beam giving away their location.
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Indeed. This weapon was inspired by martial arts weapons. Many of which look like an Nth degree black belt got stoned and decided to design some “totally badass shit”.
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The first 3 seasons of TNG are its worst. Get through them and its smooth sailing.
In Wil Wheaton’s book Memories of the Future he has the following behind the scenes notes:
The sad truth is that I don’t recall much of anything about this episode, other than how unhappy everyone was to be doing it. In fact, until I watched it for the first time in twenty-one years for this review, I’d completely forgotten that I was even in it.
I’ve read that the Ligonians were not explicitly described as entirely African American in the script, but were cast that way at the behest of director Russ Mayberry, who apparently went on to be so offensively racist and treated the actors so poorly that Gene fired him before the episode was completed and handed the directing responsibilities over to then-First AD Les Landau. [Citation Needed]
The ‘[Citation Needed]’ is in the original, presumably because he didn’t have first hand memory of the firing.
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The one with Clarence Williams III guest starring. Good episode.
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The issue came up in Babylon 5 (in its worst episode). Conventional firearms “slug throwers” being not very ideal to use on spaceships/stations out of fear of possible breaches into the vacuum of space.
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I mean, that would kind of make sense if all combat was taking place on pressurized spaceships… and no one had ever thought to invent body armor made out of whatever the spaceship hulls were comprised of.
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There might be some other evidence for that, though that he’s referencing.
If the director was racist, then it seems like it’s not something that Roddenberry would let fly. For whatever failings Gene had, he would probably not let something like that go on.
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Projectile weapons were used in DS9 for special purposes- assassination. With a miniature transporter on the barrel to hide to point of origin.
Edit:
“ The TR-116 rifle was a hand-held projectile weapon developed by Starfleet Security during the 24th century.
History
The rifle was developed by Starfleet Security as a contingency for use in dampening fields or radiogenic environments where conventional energy weapons would be useless. It was designed to fire a chemically propelled tritaniumbullet”
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For me one of the immersion-breaking things about Star Trek was how warfare was conducted in ways that didn’t even make sensible use of the technologies from our era, let alone the fictional technologies of the 24th Century. There should have been about a thousand ways to take out an enemy using transporter technology alone. So why are so many battles conducted by unarmored people playing laser tag?
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The Sci-fi Code Duello?
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Or we can go crazy SF and say what prevents energy weapons also prevents combustion needed for slug throwers.
But then crossbows, slingshots and spearguns would probably be a better first choices than melee weapons.
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But then you can’t breath.
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In Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (1974) the humans deploy a “stasis field” that renders their advanced weapons useless, so the battle is fought with swords and arrows. I wonder if that’s where DS9 got the idea.
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I could never figure out how she was apparently in her thirties in that film and still only in her forties in Luke Cage twenty years later.
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