Phasers on Stun! Quotes

“True fans of Star Trek know that to love Star Trek is to love something that is deeply flawed.”
― Ryan Britt, Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World

“Other fandoms—from Batman fans to James Bond fans to Doctor Who fans to Scooby-Doo fans—are all debating the same set of characters and circumstances. For example, in 2019, Scooby-Doo fans—including noted critic Nathan Rabin—were outraged that Matthew Lillard was not returning to play the voice of Shaggy for a new reboot of Scooby-Doo called Scoob! If you were to talk about this in terms of Star Trek post-TOS, it would require you to imagine a variety of Scooby-Doo sequels which took place in the same shared universe, featured zero talking dogs, no Velma, Fred, Daphne, or Shaggy, and only occasionally featured anyone driving a van called “The Mystery Machine,” which, in some versions, may not even be a van. The hypothetical Deep Space Nine of an expanded Scooby-Doo universe is a cartoon about kids living in a different city, who don’t have a van, who don’t solve mysteries, but were visited by Scrappy-Doo in the pilot episode. Now, imagine this hypothetical Scooby-Doo spin-off having its own fandom inside of “regular” Scooby-Doo fandom. That’s right. You can’t.”
― Ryan Britt, Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World

“if there’s one way in which Star Trek is starkly different than Star Wars, it’s simply this: In Star Trek, adolescent tales of heroic quests are mostly backstory. And that’s because working adults—complete with regrets and family angst—tend to dominate the narrative. They’ve gone on the hero’s journey already, they’ve been there, done that, and bought the Starfleet uniform.”
― Ryan Britt, Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World

“I worked with both Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas . . . one of them was the most professional and genuine person I ever met in Hollywood. The other was Gene Roddenberry.”
― Ryan Britt, Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World

“Maybe when you can comfortably wear a velour shirt without a space helmet while smoothly riding into orbit, the various space agencies of the world will consider the name Enterprise for a real spacecraft. It’s as though in holding off in naming another spaceship Enterprise, the people of Earth feel, somehow, we haven’t quite earned it yet.”
― Ryan Britt, Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World

“Nichols successfully recruiting women and people of color into the space program would be like if Jerry Seinfeld gave up comedy and became a social activist, intent on reforming the customer service practices of fancy soup places in New York.”
― Ryan Britt, Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World

“NBC actually did Star Trek a favor by canceling it,” William Shatner recalled in 1994, adding that Star Trek “would be remembered fondly as a great show that got screwed by the network, rather than a good show that got worse over time.”
― Ryan Britt, Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World

“If someone had never seen an episode of Star Trek before, having them watch only “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” or “Day of the Dove” could convince them that this show was just a series of heavy-handed old-timey after-school specials written by white people on drugs. Which, through a certain microscope, is exactly what ’60s Star Trek was. But the power of classic Trek’s diversity politics can be easily misunderstood if you try to pick out one great episode. Takei felt it was all about metaphors, but Walter Koenig thinks the representation itself was more impactful than specific plotlines.”
― Ryan Britt, Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World

“You might think the alien worlds in the original Star Trek look fake. You might think the blinky lights on those old sets are silly. You might not love those oh-so-tight 1960s velour uniforms. But nobody thinks Spock’s pointed ears look bad. The ears are legit. It’s one of those classic Hollywood tricks that should be hugely impressive but somehow isn’t praised enough. Whether the stoic Vulcan is played by Leonard Nimoy, Zachary Quinto, or Ethan Peck, the applause for the most famous fake alien ears is mostly absent. And that’s because the ears work. Praising Spock’s ears would be like praising James Bond’s tailor; you expect Spock to look that way. The believability of Spock’s ears allowed the characters—and by extension the earliest Star Trek—to prevent the entire series from becoming, as Leonard Nimoy had worried in 1964, “a bad sci-fi joke.”
― Ryan Britt, Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World