McCoy walking around the hospital just being thoroughly pissed off at all the archaic medical techniques and technology was one of my favourite parts of that film.
It’s a funny scene, but it also doesn’t make much sense. He traveled the galaxy and had traveled through time before. He had seen much more primitive medicine and he knew that 20th century Earth was primitive compared to the medicine of his time, so he shouldn’t have even been a little surprised.
No, it’s realistic. People get used to a modern standard and then struggle to cope when they see that standard not being followed.
Imagine going from a country with fair elections to a country with a dictatorship. It would piss you off that they’re not “with the times” politically, regardless of the fact that you knew it in advance.
Same thing with any modern standard.
Often thought I’d lose my mind if I was sent to re-do the 80s.
A college friend told my gf and I (1989), “You guys are so wild! Whenever you want to learn something you just go to the library and get a bunch of books!”
But think of how many planets he had already been to with primitive medicine.
But this is San Francisco on Earth. That’s where Starfleet Headquarters is going to be. It’s like walking around Cambridge before Newton and noticing it’s just a crappy Middle Ages town with a primitive University.
McCoy is a chronic complainer, though. He even complained in TMP when he decided his facilities were too modern and his staff too capable. He for sure is going to complain when facilities aren’t good enough. Even if he’s used to it, he’ll complain every time like it’s the first.
That’s consistent too. You don’t expect medieval societies to jump light years ahead. But if someone is just a couple steps behind you, you notice the discrepancy between you and them more.
And I think it’s much worse when it’s kinda close. People using cocaine as a panacea are much more irritating to us than tribal medicine or ancient Egyptian cataract surgery.
Why would he think it would be otherwise? That’s poor expectation management on his part.
If you were transported back to 1750, would you expect them to know germ theory? Antibiotics?
Mccoy stopped giving a fuck after that damned vulcan invaded his head.
To be fair, 20th (and probably 21st) century Earth history is going to be very interesting to people in the far future, provided we get there. The century opened with the Wright brothers barely getting off the ground for 120 feet in a crazy headwind, Armstrong took a giant leap a mere 66 years later, and then in 1998, the International Space Station launched, and we go into space with people and objects so often now that nobody really cares anymore.
And that’s just our timeline. In Star Trek’s we started inter planetary colonization already and had a eugenics war.
But then you’d think Kirk & Co. would know it better.
How well would you fit in if you found yourself 300 years in the past? You probably have a passing knowledge of what the world was like in 1724, but would you really be able to blend in and get the little details right?
And that’s probably an easier task than going back 300 years to the 20th century, when changes were coming much more rapidly.
Kirk had very little trouble in the 1930s.
Well, he was also just keeping his head down and hanging out at a soup kitchen at the time.
Much more impressive was the fact that (iirc) he infiltrated NASA during a military satellite launch in 1968, blending in so well that you’d almost think he was invisible or something.
So basically…
Kirk 1930s: Essentially blended in.
Kirk 1960s: Understood society in detail enough to completely figure things out.
Kirk 1980s: What the double dumbass is going on around here?!
1930s: We’ve accidentally wandered into the past, we have to keep a low profile and avoid doing anything to change the timeline
1960s: We’re here to study the past, so we’ve come prepared for this exact scenario, and we’ll need to be extremely careful not to do anything that interferes with
the backdoor pilothistory.1980s: Hi, I’m from space and want to take your whales into the future.
But in all seriousness, for the most part Kirk does quite well in the 80s, failed attempts at profanity notwithstanding. It’s mostly Spock that gets him in trouble, and he was still recovering from that whole being dead thing.
Those ding dongs were still using fax machines.
As often as they go back, “20th Century Earth History” is probably a recommended companion course to “Temporal Mechanics 101” at Starfleet Academy
Hey, they made it to our century in DS9!
I literally just realized that after making that comment. I should have said 20th / early 21st century Earth history. lol
Life as an older millennial has blurred the line between 20th and 21st centuries for me haha.
To be fair, it was filmed in the 20th century, so they were making a (disturbingly close) guess.
It is 1.5 months away.
Exactly! If you want to travel to the past, you will require extensive training in order to cope!
