It’s so bizarre to read this in the present, knowing how incredible TNG was, but I get it - the original crew WAS Star Trek to them.
The dedicated fans revived this series in syndication, well after it had gone off the air in 1969, and felt attached to the characters that they had obsessed over between then and the 1980s. Like modern fans, they thought that departure from what they knew would ruin it.
I wish I could go back in time and tell them that TNG is going to rock.
Haha, Spock wasn’t replaced by LaForge. Spock was replaced by Data.
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Yep, I noticed that too … it’s pretty damn obvious actually!
Wdym, Burton has a normal photo and the character is named among the others. Stewart’s picture is from a performance, so also different.
Also funny how you’re complaining about someone not getting named, and you’re just referring to him as a black man.
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It also feels like they intentionally picked that photo for contrast value: smiling so broadly when that is something “the original Spock” never did. They were going for the outrage factor, truth be damned.
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Especially since Spock was often described by Bones as being a walking computer, and Data was described as an Android. It would be less of a logical leap than having Geordi be the new Spock.
I remember thinking, “I don’t wanna watch a Trek without Spock,” and then Data came along and I was hooked.
Was that part of the marketing at the time, or just some bizarre leap from the author? I’m having a hard time finding any good comparisons between La Forge and Spock. In season 1 Geordi wasn’t even in engineering, let alone the science officer. He was a helmsman, so in that sense more comparable to Sulu or Chekhov, and he certainly doesn’t have anything like the relationship with the captain that Spock did.
Is it just because he was a recognizable name at the time? It’s just a weird jump to make.