Episode of the Week: The Neutral Zone

Though in fairness, that's a character trait he was given after this (Contagion was the first to mention it wasn't it?) so you could argue it was the later episodes contradicting his complete disinterest in the past here.

A flimsy defence for a flimsy episode, one I'm fairly (haha) neutral on. Good Romulan stuff (including a fantastic new ship design) but yeah... the humans. Yeuch. Pretty much fully covered by everyone else but... yeuch.

 

Excellent point.

And I'll add that a part of The Cage--the very first Star Trek episode ever made--took place on Earth, during one of Pike's illusions.

 

I think Earth is boring. I don't watch Star Trek to see the planet I'm living on be the center of attention in the most predictable manner possible. If Deep Space Nine showed us anything, it's that there is a whole galaxy of characters who aren't human that have stories to tell that aren't hinged on benefitting humans or Earth

After all, aren't the aliens, planets, cultures and even our interactions with them what make's Star Trek unique compared to every other science fiction series?

 

^ This is one reason Roddenberry avoided Earth stories in TOS.

 

^ I wonder if that had more to do with the difficulty of representing 23rd-century Earth on their budget. There were several episodes set on 20th-century Earth: Tomorrow Is Yesterday, Assignment: Earth, and The City on the Edge of Forever.

There were also several "Earth on another planet" episodes like Miri, The Omega Glory, Patterns of Force, and A Piece of the Action.

 

Assignment: Earth was also a backdoor pilot. Roddenberry later did Genesis II, Planet Earth, and The Questor Tapes. Then there's Earth: Final Conflict. So, I don't see that Roddenberry had an aversion to Earth stories.