Bryan Fuller: Diversity is key

[Longinus]

They had a therapist on the bridge, had a secretive evil empire enemy hidden behind a big space wall and their biggest threat was cyborg technology run amok. They couldn't have been more late 80s if they tried. That's before we even get to the design and the hair.

Apart the therapist and style, those are allegories of (then) modern stuff. That is obviously absolutely fine.

They were certainly trying to portray an evolved future human race, I don't deny that, but what they ended up with was an eighties vision of the future.

I love TNG, it was my Star Trek, and it has a holistic consistency to its visual world building which I think is brilliant (you know what you're watching from a single frame), but it is as much a product of its time as any Sci-fi, and perhaps even more so for trying not to be.

Of course any fiction is inevitably product of its time to certain degree. But they intentionally tried to portray the future humans different than modern humans, and I think they succeeded pretty well.

 

[johnjm22]

Relative to other science fiction shows of its time, I think TNG holds up pretty damn well visually speaking.

Ironically, I always thought the special effects from TNG to VOY got progressively worse. TNG still looks the best out of TNG/DS9/VOY.

 

[UssGlenn]

The switch from models to early cgi is responsible for TNG looking better than Voyager.

 

[BillJ]

Relative to other science fiction shows of its time, I think TNG holds up pretty damn well visually speaking.

Does that really have anything to do with diversity?

 

[johnjm22]

Does that really have anything to do with diversity?

No it doesn't. I was responding to some of the posts above mine.

 

[CorporalClegg]

About that, the one thing about TNG cast--or any of the 24th century MCs, is they were all passive aggressive racists. Or I suppose that would be specists.

 

[johnjm22]

The switch from models to early cgi is responsible for TNG looking better than Voyager.

I agree.

Even to this day, I think model space ships often look better than CGI. I think the space shots in TUC are some of the best in Star Trek history. Hence the avatar.

 

[Mudd]

TNG people arrogantly claimed to be more evolved and different, but they were basically moderately conservative late twentieth century humans.

Kor

Yep.

Star Trek has absolutely nothing to tell us about how we might get from the kind of world we live in now to the kind of oppressive faux-utopia that Roddenberry's "Revised Star Trek" of the 1980s posited.

It just happens. Because Vulcans land in a spaceship.

Of course, "port the modern world" into the Trek future. That's what TOS did, which is why it has been the lasting success that it is. Dump the stupid utopia.

 

[Longinus]

Well, some of us like that utopia.

 

[CorporalClegg]

The cake is a lie.

 

[Kemaiku]

The cake is a lie.

Any world where they leave a killer robot in charge of deadly neurotoxin is already not a utopia.

 

[BillJ]

Well, some of us like that utopia.

But it never made any kind of sense.

 

[Longinus]

But it never made any kind of sense.

Makes sense to me. It is inspiring.

 

[Mudd]

Well, some of us like that utopia.

Too few to make a TV series for.

That "utopia" is a fundamentally dishonest soporific.

 

[BillJ]

Makes sense to me. It is inspiring.

That makes one of us!

 

[Longinus]

Too few to make a TV series for.

...

TNG was the most popular Trek series...

 

[Mudd]

...

TNG was the most popular Trek series...

So what?

What do you suppose the number one TV series was in 1957?

 

[BillJ]

...

TNG was the most popular Trek series...

You do realize TNG launched thirty years ago, and had little to no competition for most of its run?

 

[Longinus]

So what?

What do you suppose the number one TV series was in 1957?

It was Perry Mason. HBO is doing a remake with Robert Downey Junior starring.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Yes, they did overcame their differences by abandoning their misguided and hateful ideologies.

By transferring them from humans to aliens.