AMV: Just A Dream Away
May. 24th, 2015 22:28![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladysource: Star Trek: The Animated Series
audio: They Might Be Giants, "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow"
length: 2:01
download: 48MB mp4 | .srt subtitles
summary: Man has a dream, and that's the start: the final frontier is still out there, just a dream away.
AO3 page | tumblr post
My![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
wiscon_vidparty 2015 premiere.
I've been planning on making this AMV for something on the order of five years, ever since my friend M and I finished watching the series before I moved to California. It was always going to be forwere_duck, whose discussion of "the big evil eagle" and other delights that TAS held convinced me to watch the show in the first place. With Leonard Nimoy's death earlier this year, I knew the time had come.
What you must understand is that TAS is completely ridiculous. It was the most expensive cartoon ever and it looks like crap because they spent all the money on getting the original cast (except Walter Koenig) back on Leonard Nimoy's insistence, to the point that they couldn't even hire a producer who wasn't colorblind, which is why the Klingons' uniforms and the tribbles are pink. If you watch even a few episodes you will understand why it is officially "quasi-canonical." There are so many cracked out bits that I couldn't include (the mermaid AU! The time giant slugs put them in a zoo! The disco tentacle spaceship! The holo deck! Quetzalcoatl on the Mayan Riviera! Gassing the tentacle dragons for great justice, or something!), I can't even tell you.
And yet (and this is an angle I wouldn't have wanted to work five years ago) TAS is far more like Star Trek than the new movies, which are afraid to live up to the essential goofiness and grandeur of Roddenberry's vision, kumbaya 1960s white man progressivism hoohah and all, and are thus afraid of what makes Star Trek Star Trek. TAS is where Star Trek first confronts feminism (and the American Indian Movement), a rocky argument that is still in process to be sure, and yet for my money it advocates for feminism far more effectively than the Abrams travesties. The core of this AMV is from "The Lorelei Signal," in which Uhura and Chapel and the Enterprise's female security officers save the day and convince a crew of evil Amazon Barbies to give up preying on men and choose death (another thing Abrams doesn't understand about Star Trek). Also, it is the slashiest thing on two feet. If you ship Kirk/Spock this show is for you.
I wound up relying, as one does, on the song I chose for the AMV quite heavily to try to get some of these cross-currents across. The song is actually from the Meet the Robinsons movie soundtrack--I have never seen the movie and never intend to, speaking of travesties, but probably ten years ago now in the heyday of mutual dorm music piracy I saw a TMBG track I hadn't heard in someone's library and yoinked it. It turns out that it's a cover of a song originally written for the 1964 World's Fair at the behest of Walt Disney, and it played for many years (and does again now) in Tomorrowland in Disney World, which only seemed to make the song more perfect. No one will ever convince me that TMBG weren't thinking of the original TOS theme song with this cover, what with the theremin in the background. Moreover, they play it straight, and Star Trek is nothing if not earnest: even better.
All of this was in my mind when I was editing--I was attempting to convey the goofiness and the hilarity as well as what makes me love the show, and Star Trek, wholeheartedly. If any of that gets through upon viewing, I'm happy. LLAP.
lyrics
audio: They Might Be Giants, "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow"
length: 2:01
download: 48MB mp4 | .srt subtitles
summary: Man has a dream, and that's the start: the final frontier is still out there, just a dream away.
AO3 page | tumblr post
My
wiscon_vidparty 2015 premiere. I've been planning on making this AMV for something on the order of five years, ever since my friend M and I finished watching the series before I moved to California. It was always going to be for
were_duck, whose discussion of "the big evil eagle" and other delights that TAS held convinced me to watch the show in the first place. With Leonard Nimoy's death earlier this year, I knew the time had come.What you must understand is that TAS is completely ridiculous. It was the most expensive cartoon ever and it looks like crap because they spent all the money on getting the original cast (except Walter Koenig) back on Leonard Nimoy's insistence, to the point that they couldn't even hire a producer who wasn't colorblind, which is why the Klingons' uniforms and the tribbles are pink. If you watch even a few episodes you will understand why it is officially "quasi-canonical." There are so many cracked out bits that I couldn't include (the mermaid AU! The time giant slugs put them in a zoo! The disco tentacle spaceship! The holo deck! Quetzalcoatl on the Mayan Riviera! Gassing the tentacle dragons for great justice, or something!), I can't even tell you.
And yet (and this is an angle I wouldn't have wanted to work five years ago) TAS is far more like Star Trek than the new movies, which are afraid to live up to the essential goofiness and grandeur of Roddenberry's vision, kumbaya 1960s white man progressivism hoohah and all, and are thus afraid of what makes Star Trek Star Trek. TAS is where Star Trek first confronts feminism (and the American Indian Movement), a rocky argument that is still in process to be sure, and yet for my money it advocates for feminism far more effectively than the Abrams travesties. The core of this AMV is from "The Lorelei Signal," in which Uhura and Chapel and the Enterprise's female security officers save the day and convince a crew of evil Amazon Barbies to give up preying on men and choose death (another thing Abrams doesn't understand about Star Trek). Also, it is the slashiest thing on two feet. If you ship Kirk/Spock this show is for you.
I wound up relying, as one does, on the song I chose for the AMV quite heavily to try to get some of these cross-currents across. The song is actually from the Meet the Robinsons movie soundtrack--I have never seen the movie and never intend to, speaking of travesties, but probably ten years ago now in the heyday of mutual dorm music piracy I saw a TMBG track I hadn't heard in someone's library and yoinked it. It turns out that it's a cover of a song originally written for the 1964 World's Fair at the behest of Walt Disney, and it played for many years (and does again now) in Tomorrowland in Disney World, which only seemed to make the song more perfect. No one will ever convince me that TMBG weren't thinking of the original TOS theme song with this cover, what with the theremin in the background. Moreover, they play it straight, and Star Trek is nothing if not earnest: even better.
All of this was in my mind when I was editing--I was attempting to convey the goofiness and the hilarity as well as what makes me love the show, and Star Trek, wholeheartedly. If any of that gets through upon viewing, I'm happy. LLAP.
lyrics
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow's just a dream away
Man has a dream and that's the start
He follows his dream with mind and heart
When it becomes a reality
It's a dream come true for you and me
So there's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away
(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-24 14:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-28 08:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-27 01:56 (UTC)I really love your notes about the goof and the grandeur, and I think the fact that this show was sort of terrible also allowed it space to do things like let Uhura and Chapel save the day for once. Your thoughts on its advancement of progressive ideals are important. It is so awkward and silly and weird and campy!
On the vid party panel, Julie asked me about how it felt when I saw that the dedication was for me, so I had to talk about feelings of friendship and community. I really had been missing you all convention--your snark and your humor and your epic rants are hugely important to my wiscon experience! I said some stuff about how valued it made me feel, that a friend would go to all the trouble and work of creating this offbeat piece of art to premiere at the Vid Party dedicate it to me by name, that it really made me feel like a valued member and part of this community of creators that we're building even though I don't make vids myself. I really appreciate the gift, and was SO delighted by the vid itself.
See you next year if not sooner <3 <3 <3
(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-28 14:16 (UTC)All of which is to say, you are welcome, and THANK YOU for your lovely comment. I missed you and everyone at WisCon too! NEXT YEAR IN MADISON. <3 <3 <3
(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-27 03:04 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-28 13:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-01 14:08 (UTC)I heard this song at Tomorrowland when they (briefly) revived the Carousel of Progress about 20-something years ago. It was ridiculous then, and the TMBG cover is a thing of beauty. As you point out, it's utterly perfect for this.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-03 16:24 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-04 14:10 (UTC)Beer with Satan? WTF, show?
(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-07 22:52 (UTC)Delightful!
Date: 2015-06-01 16:06 (UTC)During the vid panel discussion, I mentioned how I liked that you paired They Might Be Giants -- an offbeat band whose genre most people do not easily categorize -- with The Animated Series, an entry in the Star Trek sequence that even completists often ignore or forget. They're both goofy and earnest and hard to pigeonhole, and I liked how the pairing emphasized that similarity.
Upon reading your launch post and rewatching "Just A Dream Away" I started thinking about how different ST: TAS's animation is from, say, Batman: The Animated Series's, and that then started thinking about "Just A Dream Away" in connection with the live-action Batman vid "I Am What I Am" by
Re: Delightful!
Date: 2015-06-03 16:22 (UTC)And thank you for your lovely comment! In terms of the song match, I think I wound up considering and rejecting most of the songs in my music library before realizing that this was the only possible song it could be. And the goofiness of TAS, and on some level of Star Trek in general, is something I want to hold up against the current attempts to valorize geeky things by making them super-serious (cough DC movies cough). We should embrace the goofiness! It is part of what makes us love it, and what makes it great. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-20 17:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-22 01:50 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-05-31 21:21 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-06 16:11 (UTC)I was wondering why that song seemed familiar even though I was sure I'd never heard it before. I guess I had and didn't make the connection.
Enjoyed the view!