Explain this Chris Rock joke to me

[Walloon]

@Askia

I’ve always assumed the lack of diversity on ST:TOS was due to limited casting opportunities for minority actors in the 1960s.

NBC put out a memo to its entertainment division and associated production companies in 1965 that explicitly encouraged minority casting in its programming. I belive Herb Solow (executive in charge of production at Desilu) quoted from it in his book on Star Trek.

A Vulcan first officer, an African communications officer, a Russian navigator, and an Asian helm officer — I’d say that bridge was fairly diverse. Even the first pilot, shot in 1964, had a female first officer, a Vulcan science officer, and a Latino helm officer.

[Ephemera]

Alexander was played by a white actor intentionally. K’ehylar was half human and played by a white woman (Suzie Plakson, who also played Dr. T’Pau) with minimal Klingon makeup. When Alexander was introduced, he was intended to be a cross between the two and is a little darker than his mother but intentionally lighter than his father.

And by the way, I’m not sure if you inferred that I thought Tuvok being played by Tim Russ was wrong or not but I didn’t and don’t. I just found it odd after thirty years of white Vulcans. For good or bad, Trek aliens are generally all of the same stock and it’s odd to see them break from type.

I’d be just as shocked to see a green Andorian. Or a yellow Orion.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Aesiron

Alexander was played by a white actor intentionally. K’ehylar was half human and played by a white woman (Suzie Plakson, who also played Dr. T’Pau) with minimal Klingon makeup. When Alexander was introduced, he was intended to be a cross between the two and is a little darker than his mother but intentionally lighter than his father.

And by the way, I’m not sure if you inferred that I thought Tuvok being played by Tim Russ was wrong or not but I didn’t and don’t. I just found it odd after thirty years of white Vulcans. For good or bad, Trek aliens are generally all of the same stock and it’s odd to see them break from type.

I’d be just as shocked to see a green Andorian. Or a yellow Orion.

Plakson’s Vulcan character was named Selar, and if you thought Tim Russ as a Vulcan was unsettling, you obviously hadn’t prepared yourself by watching a lot of 1970s cartoons.

[cckerberos]

@Aesiron

Alexander was played by a white actor intentionally. K’ehylar was half human and played by a white woman (Suzie Plakson, who also played Dr. T’Pau) with minimal Klingon makeup. When Alexander was introduced, he was intended to be a cross between the two and is a little darker than his mother but intentionally lighter than his father.

And by the way, I’m not sure if you inferred that I thought Tuvok being played by Tim Russ was wrong or not but I didn’t and don’t. I just found it odd after thirty years of white Vulcans. For good or bad, Trek aliens are generally all of the same stock and it’s odd to see them break from type.

I’d be just as shocked to see a green Andorian. Or a yellow Orion.

I had always been under the impression that Vulcan’s skin color was supposed to be slightly green. I’m not sure if I got that from the RPG or some other source, but Wikipedia says the same thing. I didn’t like the idea of a black Vulcan when I first heard about it because I considered it to be breaking canon.

Of course, the inclusion of a black Vulcan would turn out to be the least of the problems I had with Voyager.

[Walloon]

@Aesiron

I just found it odd after thirty years of white Vulcans.

[Counting on fingers] Twenty-one years.

[Ephemera]

@Bryan Ekers

Plakson’s Vulcan character was named Selar, and if you thought Tim Russ as a Vulcan was unsettling, you obviously hadn’t prepared yourself by watching a lot of 1970s cartoons.

Selar. I knew that, I swear. I’m a huge fan of the New Frontier series and she’s one of the main characters. I have no idea where the hell I got T’Pau from. Well, I do, but I have no idea how I confused them. Oy.

And I’ve thankfully never seen a single episode of The Animated Series.

@cckerberos

I had always been under the impression that Vulcan’s skin color was supposed to be slightly green. I’m not sure if I got that from the RPG or some other source, but Wikipedia says the same thing.

Vulcans have a copper based physiology which means their blood is green. So by extension, their complexion would be slightly green, yes.

@Walloon

[Counting on fingers] Twenty-one years

TOS debuted in '66; Voyager debuted in '95. That’s 29 years. Or am I being whooshed?

[Walloon]

Voyager had the first black Vulcan in a starring role; there were earlier black Vulcans in the movies and TNG.

[Ephemera]

I’ve never noticed. Which movies? Do you remember the episodes of TNG?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Aesiron

And I’ve thankfully never seen a single episode of The Animated Series.

I wasn’t talking about the Star Trek animated series.

[Ephemera]

I should really click on links instead of assuming I know where they’ll take me.

*Superfirends * scares me.

[TellMeI_mNotCrazy]

<wanders aimlessly in direction of OP>

I take it to mean that when you’re black, “the limit” IS your sky. Everything over you is a limitation of some sort.

[Lord_Ashtar]

@TellMeI'mNotCrazy

<wanders aimlessly in direction of OP>

@TellMeI'mNotCrazy

I take it to mean that when you’re black, “the limit” IS your sky. Everything over you is a limitation of some sort.

::click::

That was the sound of the joke suddenly making sense. I still think he could have worded it better so dumb white folk like me would get it easier. Thanks.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Star Trek tangent.

[Askia]

Walloon. Tokenism isn’t diversity. But I grant you that it led to genuine racial and gender diversity of characters in subsequent ST franchises, although not the TOS films.

Aesiron. I understand WHY the racial choice of actors was made, I just didn’t think it makes sense unless – unlike humans – Klingon physionomy dictates light-skin is a dominant trait. Also, does anyone here know why Worf’s 3/4 Klingon son end up with the name “Alexander Rozhenko”? I mean, I get the last name – Worf’s foster parents – but why a human first name?

[Ephemera]

I don’t think Alexander was that much lighter than the typical Klingon. He definitely wasn’t the creamy color of his mother or B’ellana on Voyager.

And I assume he got a human name because his mother, like B’ellana, preferred her human ancestry to her Klingon one.

[Trunk]

Consider for contrast. . .

“In America, you can always find a party. In Russia, the party finds you.”

Each statement make sense and is not funny, but the juxtaposition of the two meanings of “finding a party” and “party finding you” and the differences between the countries that it highlights make it a good joke.

But, to say “for whites, the sky is the limit but for blacks, the limit is the sky,” is a bad joke, and I’m not sure it really makes sense at all.

The two main parts are “the sky is the limit” and “the limit is the sky”. Now, we’re all used to hearing the first one, but the second one, unlike the Yakov Smirnov line, doesn’t make a joke.

Really, since they’re both equating sky and limit with “is”, they really do mean the same thing, unlike the Yakov joke where “to find” is the verb instead of “is”.

If I were to say to you, “if you graduate from Yale, then the limit is the sky,” you would take it to mean the exact same thing as “the sky is the limit”.

Only from your own knowledge of Chris Rock’s angle do you take the unknown phrase “the limit is the sky” and assign it one of the meanings that TellMeI’mNotCrazy mentioned. But, you need to already know Rock’s point to get it.

If I told you “In Made Up Land, for the Foobies, the limit is the sky, but for the Beefoo’s the sky is the limit” you really don’t have a clue about who is better off. You wouldn’t even know one of them was better off if the word “but” wasn’t in there.

I’m a CR fan, but this is a bad joke, and none of your explanations make it a well-written joke, nor (especially) a funny joke.

---

It’s not like Kennedy’s famous line either. If Kennedy had said, “ask not what your country can do for you, but what can be done for you by your country,” then it would be the same thing.

---

Are people really arguing over multiple posts about diversity of the alien races in Star Trek or am I imagining that?

[Ephemera]

You’ve obviously never read one of the innumerable Trek threads here or elsewhere on the 'net. This is pretty tame compared to some of our more geeky pursuits. And much more civil.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

Dude, if you REALLY want to see some dork passion, ask whether a paladin loses his paladinhood for killing a baby orc.

TellmeI’mNotCrazy, your explanation made sense to me, too. Thanks!
Daniel

[The_Hamster_King]

@Walloon

NBC put out a memo to its entertainment division and associated production companies in 1965 that explicitly encouraged minority casting in its programming. I belive Herb Solow (executive in charge of production at Desilu) quoted from it in his book on Star Trek.

A Vulcan first officer, an African communications officer, a Russian navigator, and an Asian helm officer — I’d say that bridge was fairly diverse. Even the first pilot, shot in 1964, had a female first officer, a Vulcan science officer, and a Latino helm officer.

As I recall from reading the old Star Trek production books years ago, they were actually pretty committed to showing a diverse crew during the first season, so you tended to get a wide variety of ethnicities in the background extras. As the series wore on they gradually drifted away from that ideal, not because they rejected their principles, but because in the weekly rush of production they got sloppy.

[tim314]

Getting back to the OP:

When you’re white, the sky’s the limit – i.e. you can go as high as you want.

When you’re black, the limit’s the sky – i.e. you can’t even see anything above the limit. The limit is your sky, and you can go no higher.

It’s more natural to interpret “the limit’s the sky” to mean the same thing as “the sky’s the limit”, but then the joke would make no sense, so I assume that’s not the correct interpretation.
Getting back away from the OP:
I never really thought it was weird to have a black Vulcan, but I don’t really blame others for thinking so, only because almost all alien races in Star Trek are ridiculously homogenous. Not just in terms of apperance, but in terms of personality. All Klingons are violent, all Ferengi are greedy, all Vulcans are logical, all Romulans are scheming, all Bajorans are religious, all Horta are silicon based, etc.

Yes, I realized there are exceptions to some of those traits I’ve listed above, but in general it seems that most of the alien species commonly appearing in Star Trek have one overriding personality trait. I realize the writers want to make the aliens different from humans, but couldn’t they do this without making them all the same?

For the record, I really like Star Trek. This particular aspect just always bugged me.

[drewbert]

I’ve always assumed that Alexander was named for Alexander the Great, who I imagine Klingons might have had some respect for as a Earth warrior.