before a year or so ago i'd never been into sci-fi (excepting a brief and random flirtation with voyager when it was originally running), and though i'm pleased as punch to be splashing around in stargate: atlantis now, i'm doubly glad my best friend and i acquired and watched star trek (TOS) last year. and not just because my pop-culture understanding has increased tenfold, but for all the reasons you outline here. i could watch atlantis without knowing anything about any of the star treks, but because it's seemingly written specifically *for* people who come from trek backgrounds, i'd be missing huge chunks of its philosophical and practical underpinnings. sometimes the show seems to take a left turn and find itself on an actual star trek set, in the middle of an actual episode ("childhood's end," "condemned," and "aurora" were particularly transparent). if i didn't recognize it, everything that's meant to resonate would just play out monophonically.
what i love even more than the writers and creators being fanboys, are the writers and creators making the characters fanboys too. it's one thing to create parallel characters (equating elizabeth weir to janeway was incredibly enlightening, by the way), but it's something else when the characters are aware of it and explicitly mention it—it turns homage into actual canon. plus it's fun! it's so much fun when rodney tells sheppard that he's kirk, that romancing the alien priestess is very 1967. and beckett is dr. mccoy, because sheppard's actually *told us* that he is. it's one of my favorite exchanges on the show:
mckay: he [beckett] just doesn't like going through the stargate. sheppard: he's worse than doctor mccoy. teyla: who? sheppard: the TV character doctor beckett plays in real life.
it's so damn playful and self-aware. it gives us a little background for the characters (GEEKS), and it could be a throw-away line, but instead it's a huge chunk of character development—when, as you point out, they didn't actually have to develop his character at all! and of course there's the moment a few episodes later when beckett himself comes out with, "i'm a bloody medical doctor, not a magician!"
it was definitely fandom that got me into sci-fi (or at least here, at the fringes of it) and the more i stick around, the more i understand that sci-fi begets sci-fi. every genre has its tropes, but they seem tighter and more clear-cut here, not to mention completely shameless about recurrence—that seems to be the actual point.
aaand i think i just took a really long time to repeat everything you already said. sorry about that, but i did love this post.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-11-15 09:40 am (UTC)what i love even more than the writers and creators being fanboys, are the writers and creators making the characters fanboys too. it's one thing to create parallel characters (equating elizabeth weir to janeway was incredibly enlightening, by the way), but it's something else when the characters are aware of it and explicitly mention it—it turns homage into actual canon. plus it's fun! it's so much fun when rodney tells sheppard that he's kirk, that romancing the alien priestess is very 1967. and beckett is dr. mccoy, because sheppard's actually *told us* that he is. it's one of my favorite exchanges on the show:
mckay: he [beckett] just doesn't like going through the stargate.
sheppard: he's worse than doctor mccoy.
teyla: who?
sheppard: the TV character doctor beckett plays in real life.
it's so damn playful and self-aware. it gives us a little background for the characters (GEEKS), and it could be a throw-away line, but instead it's a huge chunk of character development—when, as you point out, they didn't actually have to develop his character at all! and of course there's the moment a few episodes later when beckett himself comes out with, "i'm a bloody medical doctor, not a magician!"
it was definitely fandom that got me into sci-fi (or at least here, at the fringes of it) and the more i stick around, the more i understand that sci-fi begets sci-fi. every genre has its tropes, but they seem tighter and more clear-cut here, not to mention completely shameless about recurrence—that seems to be the actual point.
aaand i think i just took a really long time to repeat everything you already said. sorry about that, but i did love this post.