Has Fred Freiberger been misblamed for Season 3 over the years?

Pretty plausible. Another thing I like: Kirk doesn't go on and on. Makes the point. Vian still has some humanity it resonates with. Reminds me of the great scene in Jedi where Luke gets through to Darth as David Prowse turns his head just slightly. You can really imagine him going, "hmmm."

 

Is there anyone Roddenberry didn't have a falling out with at some point?

 

That depends who you ask. Justman, for all his differences over Star Trek: The Next Generation, seemed to remain friends with Roddenberry until his death.

Nonetheless, Roddenberry certainly had many friendships that ended tumultuously.

Who knows if it's true, but Gerrold describes (second-hand, I believe) a time when someone found Roddenberry weeping alone in his office, wondering why all his friends had left him.

 

That's been my thought about the season 3 clunkers all along. Seasons 1 and 2 had the safety net of a cohesive team of re-writers who knew what they wanted and what the show was really about. If you want to diss Freiberger you have to come up with some way to dismiss the really good episodes while blaming him for the bad ones and I don't think life is ever quite that simple.

As far as the Starlost is concerned I remember that it was quite dreadful although the germ of the idea was very workable. I also remember that one episode that involved the devolution of the main computer was very good. One standout episode in a series full of dreck doesn't say much, although I will say that it shows there was unrealized potential.

 

And what about the other planets in the system with sentinent life? Will they also get a chance to have a representative of theirs tested for self-sacrificing qualities? Or have they all already been tested and found wanting?
And why assume that every native of Gem's world has the same noble qualities that she has?

 

Ehi, in Star Trek universe you can safely judge a whole race or culture by one person! (Arena docet!)

 

I think the idea was that Gem's example proved her people were at least capable of learning self-sacrifice for the good of others -- which I suppose might be a necessary trait if they were to survive a rough transplantation process and the building of a new society, since many individuals would have to make sacrifices for the good of the whole in such a situation.

 

Maybe the others talked too much.

 

Getting back to 1999, but not to diss it. While I could never buy into the nature of how the moon got flung into deep space, it made for some very evocative imagery. But how do you retain that "look" and yet have some "sliver" of plausibility in the overall concept? I've suggested the following in a few other threads and forums.

Don't have a conventional explosion tear the moon from its orbit. As stated by others earlier, that just won't work. Instead, have it be some sort of warp/jump/hyperdrive what have you kind of experiment gone horribly wrong. Yeah, yeah, I know, that DeviantArt piece with the space station set in 2099 presents the same basic idea. All I can say is that you will just have to trust me when I claim I considered a similar idea years BEFORE reading that piece. (No, I'm not claiming that artist used my idea. It's just one of those instances independent parallel thinking.) Chief difference, in my scenario, it's not just a space station that suffers the accident, but like the original concept, it's the whole freakin' moon.

Either the accident is caused by human technology and error, or, since the series was influenced considerably by Kubrick's iconic film "2001", take it that one step further and have it be alien technology humans have found upon the moon. Maybe that's the reason for the base, to analyze the artifacts, and somehow we "stupid apes" manage to activate it without being able to control it. The best the Alphans can do to is to notice certain patterns that serve as warnings when the thing starts up and shuts down, thus giving them the opportunity to explore using their own comparatively limited technology like the Eagles.

Eh, don't mind me; I'm just rambling.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

Stargate: Universe managed to find a way to make the premise at least plausible (there's no silly moon explosion, and the ship goes into hyperdrive between star systems, but slows down when something is of interest -- which isn't that different than '99, except it comes with an explanation). Somehow, though, SGU it also imported all the empty mysticism, petty bickering, and parodic self-seriousness that has crippled what I've seen of '99's first season so far.

 

Agree. Freiberger was a factor in both cases.

 

Agree.

 

I can understand how the concept of Space: 1999 bothers people, and from a purely scientific perspective it would bother me too. What I find most interesting in the story is the fact that the characters know that what's happened to them is impossible - they talk about their survival as a miracle. So the show really foregrounds its implausibility, and I think I admire that more than them trying to wrap it up in a bundle of technobabble. As the series goes on, we discover that there's a whole different story going on - it's suggested that higher powers are protecting and guiding the Moon, and that the Alphans are basically fulfilling a new specific destiny. So the flaws in the science, I believe, are accounted for in the text. But also, I don't think the show is hard sf at all - I think it's telling a tale more akin to an anicent myth, with a lost tribe cast adrift into the unknown, seeking a new destiny - and in that regard, the plausibility of it all shouldn't matter that much. Otherwise, one might as well nitpick the scientific accuracy of the Greek myths. I also think that science, as it's presented in popular sci-fi shows, is only really there to serve the needs of the story. And I'd ignore the inaccuracis of Space: 1999 as much as I ignore those of Star Trek or Doctor Who, as long as the story gets told.

 

It's an interesting thought...just what would a relocated planetary society be like? Imagine a story of the Enterprise visiting one. For that matter, envision an episode where the entire population, like Gem, is a mute!

 

The more I think about this episode the more I like it. That is rare at age 48, having been a fan since my brain turned on. I think I should try novels so I can have new adventures with my ol pals.

 

When the ancient Greeks were telling their myths, most of the stories were scientifically accurate as far as anyone knew.

 

Actually the Classical-period Greeks had very advanced science for their day, yet they still created plays and artworks based on their myths. Maybe the first tellers of the myths used them as attempts to understand the cosmology and workings of the universe, but the myths were still being told by Greeks at a point when Greek science had moved beyond them. By that time they were understood as allegories and symbols.

 

Didn't TNG screw this idea up with the Paul Sorvino episode? (never got through all of it, so I'm really not sure, but TNG left heavy prints all over a lot of good ideas with godawful execution, like pissing away the dyson sphere in the Scotty episode and totally blowing the space pollution angle. I think quantum alter-realities might be about the only sf angle TNG didn't totally crash on.

 

Yep, it's awful.

Yep, as pitched originally they wanted it to a 2-parter with more about the Dyson's Sphere since it was one heckuva unique find. But that was pooh-pooh'ed somewhere up the chain.
Can't remember where I heard that, from a commentary/doc with the new TNG BD sets I think. Maybe the writer's roundtable doc?

 

I read somewhere that the Andersons were saddened by the fact that everyone is ready to nitpick the science of the show (ignoring the stories they wanted to tell) and in meantime "Star Trek" has a "free pass" for all its inaccuracies...

Edit. Wikipedia tells me that the quote is from this book: "Destination: Moonbase Alpha, Telos Publications, 2010"