Anybody else thinking of making comparisons between Gene Roddenberry eventually losing touch with what made Star Trek work and George Lucas having the same issue with Star Wars?
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- Thread starter ZapBrannigan
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Well, they do make such bloody good cameras . . .
It has crossed my mind, but unfortunately I don't have anything "deep" or worthwhile to say.
It has crossed my mind, but unfortunately I don't have anything "deep" or worthwhile to say.
Based on the book Inside Star Trek (Solow, Justman), it's my impression that GR was starting to adopt hippie values by the end of the second season, around 1968. And, per his Wikipedia entry (section 4.4), in the 1970s he graduated from hipster to full-blown druggie.
I don't know what messed up George Lucas, but for my money he sure messed up the SW prequels.
It was a lame and old attempt even by then.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB4NH5J19ow[/yt]
He's also the guy who describes Yeoman Colt as possessing "surprising efficiency" and "a strip-queen figure even a uniform cannot hide" and notes that she "undoubtedly dreams of serving Robert April with equal efficiency in personal departments."
Roddenberry's wide-spread reputation among some fans as the standard bearer for an "evolved humanity" is amusing.
I suppose, if you think leering at women and comparing them to "strip-queens" while finding the fact that they can be efficient "surprising" is a sign of "open sexuality" and "evolved humanity."
How dare he be imperfect! That Colt thing he was writing in, like '63, right? And we have people making gay jokes here about Takei in 2014, people who might be quite "enlightened" in other arenas (though it still ticks me off). Warts and all he still wrote a female first officer, an alien, an Asian botanist, and part-Hispanic bridge crewman. A lot of people were already heading that way in the early '60s, true. And a lot weren't.
^ Oh, my beef isn't with Roddenberry for not being perfect. It's with fans who claim he was. 
^ Oh, my beef isn't with Roddenberry for not being perfect. It's with fans who claim he was.
Got it. Be well!
Of course, this is exactly what TNG-R has done in places: replacing the incorrect Enterprise on the LCARS screen in The Naked Now for example. The original episode had the movie era Enterprise identified visually on the screen as being the one that originally encountered the virus, but TNG-R replaced it with the correct, TOS era starship instead.
I think even in TNG's timeframe they probably never expected televisions to ever be a high enough resolution to see all the fine details, and they were probably even less expectant of TNG ever being remastered in such high quality that we'd actually be able to make out every line and word seen on LCARS at a mere glance. Technology marches on!
I do recall reading a web site where they pulled screen images of the monitors from some of the original cast movies and that they were franz Joseph's blueprints. Sorry, not a tos comment, but the blueprints were from tos era.... Does that count?
And, by the way, some brilliant links to some folks who've done fantastic research.
And, by the way, some brilliant links to some folks who've done fantastic research.
When you see that episode now, one thing that stands out is Mr. Data having to personally flip through every page and image in the Star Fleet database because the search engine hadn't been invented yet. You could argue that TOS was closer to the real future, because Spock was never more than three clicks away, so to speak, from any piece of stored information.
Isn't it Comack? the guy who later became Komack?
^ No, it's Comsol.
There must have been some other science officer named Spock who was not half-Vulcan. Or there was some other half-Vulcan science officer who wasn't Spock. Or something like that.
I've long-maintained that during the time of TOS (on TV), they did indeed have money. By the movie era they still had currency, but had moved to a cashless society - at least in Starfleet and on major Federation worlds.
There are probably fanfics like that, but the place I read this idea was in one of the Best of Trek books, in the "Star Trek Mysteries - Solved" article. Once TNG made it clear that it was a normal nickname for the First Officer of a ship, it all made sense.
Maybe Kirk had two middle names (some people do), and he just didn't like the one that started with "R." My own grandmother had two middle names but only used one of them.Better he deliberately choose to use something other than Kirk's actual middle initial. Kirk himself never uses the R, and neither do his official records.
Romeo?
BTW, when trying to imagine what the "R" stood for, what's more obvious than "Roddenberry"?
True.
The LCARS looked almost impossibly advanced at the time, but in nearly every way it has aged very poorly indeed. At least, in the manner in which it is often depicted as being used by the crew. Lack of solid indexing abilities, the painful way text comes up one line at a time, etc... in the cold light of today LCARS just doesn't look very user-friendly. Even my Kindle can access data better than LCARS often did! 
In other ways though TNG were remarkably prescient in their depiction of technology. Removable isolinear rods as a means for storing data, for example. This at a time when home computers were still using 3.5" disks, holds up to the test of time superbly, as a prediction of the USB flash drives that we all use these days.
In other ways though TNG were remarkably prescient in their depiction of technology. Removable isolinear rods as a means for storing data, for example. This at a time when home computers were still using 3.5" disks, holds up to the test of time superbly, as a prediction of the USB flash drives that we all use these days.
Another thing is, I'm pretty sure TNG's PADD inspired the modern tablet computer in general, and the iPad in particular. And TNG control panels were mostly simulated touch screens that could display any configuration of controls you wanted. That's still very modern.
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