David Gerrold on TNG and the Behind-the-Scenes Drama

[Christopher]

Oh, come on. PEOPLE use religion as a justification for war - religions rarely advocate such acts.

To draw an analogy - many terrible acts and crimes have been committed in the name of love, or self-protection, or national pride etc. Should we "exterminate" all of these from culture as well?

Human beings are responsible for what they do. The fact that many use religion as some of explanation/defense of terrible acts they commit speaks poorly of those individuals, not the religion itself.

Exactly. Religion doesn't make people moral or immoral -- people make religion moral or immoral. Religion is a tool, an instrument for exerting influence. Like any tool, whether it's wielded for good or ill depends on the intent and responsibility of the wielder.

It's been found that organized lethal violence exists in chimpanzees as well as humans. So the potential for war in our species is genetic, and predates the invention of religion. Religion was simply co-opted as an excuse for doing what humans had the innate potential to do anyway. But religion has also served as a way of countering that drive to war and motivating people to save the lives and ease the suffering of its victims. (Genetic potential doesn't mean we're doomed to wage war eternally, since we can choose whether or not to act on those drives. Religion has been one way of organizing alternatives to war, along with government, law, and other human institutions that allow the addressing of grievances through means other than force.)

 

[GeorgeKirk]

Whatever Mr. Gerrold's motivations are for saying the things he's saying, I tend to believe him. His depiction of Gene's fixation on maintaining control of TNG correlates very well with his overall pattern of behavior since at least 1979. According to multiple accounts, during the production of TMP he was a royal pain in the ass as he tried to maintain the same level of control over the movie as he'd had over the TV show in 1966.

After Paramount stripped him of his creative control of Star Trek when TMP failed to be a Star Wars-level hit, Gene spent the next several years complaining to convention audiences about almost everything that the Harve Bennett/Nick Meyer/Leonard Nimoy team was doing with the films. He generally framed his criticism as disappointment that the films weren't living up to his "vision" of Starfleet as a peaceful, non-military organization.

One thing Gene often complained about was the scene in Star Trek II where Kirk kills the Ceti Eel that crawled out of Chekov's ear. He said that the scene was too violent and that Kirk would never simply kill a new lifeform, even one that was repulsive and likely dangerous. Fast forward about five years, where characters on the Roddenberry-controlled TNG also face a situation where fellow officers are being controlled by alien brain worms in the episode "Conspiracy". And what happens? In a sequence that's way more violent than anything we saw in The Wrath of Khan, Picard and Riker blow up Cmdr. Remmick's head, then grimace in revulsion before killing the alien worm that was living inside of him.

Now, you might think that maybe Roddenberry was indisposed when that episode was being made and that Leonard Maizlish or Maurice Hurley were calling the shots. But according to a story told by Richard Arnold on the Mission Log podcast, it was Roddenberry himself! It seems that the original version of the scene was less graphically violent, but when the studio objected to it, Gene deliberately made it even more violent just to show them who was in charge.

When you take all of that, and add the changes to the licensed material in the late-80s as Gene took control of it (or delegated it to his sycophant-in-chief Richard Arnold, whatever you believe) and set out to eliminate stuff like Diane Duane's Rihannsu or John Ford's Klingons that he couldn't take credit for, a certain pattern emerges: to wit, as much as people wax poetic about Gene Roddenberry's Vision being the key element of Star Trek, it was never the most important thing in Gene's mind.

To Gene, the most important thing was that he maintain control of Star Trek. It didn't matter if the show was any good or not, it didn't matter if he had to violate some of his high-minded ideals in the process (as he did with "Conspiracy") it didn't even matter if all the fans turned on him (at a convention during this same period he told an audience that was unhappy with some element of TNG: "I don't make Star Trek for you people. I make it for me."). It didn't seem to matter if Star Trek went right over a cliff, as long as he was the one in the driver's seat. Now, might some of this have been attributable to a deteriorating mental state brought on by his abuse of drugs and alcohol and the strokes he suffered? I think that very likely. But I think we need to keep this in mind whenever people start talking about how Star Trek needs to stick to Gene Roddenberry's Vision. Roddenberry's primary "vision" for Star Trek was himself in control of it. Everything else was secondary.

What Star Trek needs is good stories with believable characters. Are the ideals that Roddenberry frequently espoused (or at least pretended to) important? Absolutely. But I personally believe that we need to separate the ideals from the man.

 

[Marsden]

Conversations about inclusivity and diversity make me uncomfortable because I don't like categorizing everyone and everything and saying there isn't enough of fill in the blank here. I understand why some people want certain things but I don't think everything belongs everywhere, although I also believe they shouldn't be deliberately excluded either. If there's a call for a certain type of person then they shouldn't be doing it just to say they did it in an artificial way or excluding things because of someone's potential imagined offense that they showed something different.

Also, I think a big mistake is trying to introduce "something" that's supposed to be mundane and normal and have it be part of the plot, because that inherently makes it "unusual"

For a specific example, a homosexual couple in a relationship can be shown in ten forward without any plot involvement and no regular character making a stupid remark about how great it is or some such. Just for them to be there and be there like they belong there is the best way to introduce and show it. Then maybe after a few times then have a plot that involves it, but not first time right out, that makes it as alien as some of the alien concepts.

 

[Christopher]

Conversations about inclusivity and diversity make me uncomfortable because I don't like categorizing everyone and everything and saying there isn't enough of fill in the blank here.

But that's just it. People who object to greater diversity in fiction -- i.e. having fiction reflect the actual diversity of the real world -- are the ones who are categorizing everyone and saying there aren't enough straight white people to suit them. It's when you take away the categorizing that fiction gets more diverse, because diversity is the natural state of humanity. It's what you get when you stop defining people by categories and just let them be people.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

There are at least seven other disabled people in Star Trek who were regulars or central guest characters: Christopher Pike, Geordi La Forge, Reginald Barclay, and the genetically-engineered savants in DS9's "Statistical Probabilities" and "Chrysalis", Jack, Lauren, Patrick, and Sarina.

Geordi was a regular cast member, he was very well-adjusted*, and his disability of congenital blindness was anything but debilitating.

And I've heard thatthe president of the Federation in Star Trek VI was blind.

I am convinced as long as we have religion we will have war, the first step for global peace is the total extermination of religion in human culture.

Oh, come on. PEOPLE use religion as a justification for war - religions rarely advocate such acts.

To draw an analogy - many terrible acts and crimes have been committed in the name of love, or self-protection, or national pride etc. Should we "exterminate" all of these from culture as well?

Human beings are responsible for what they do. The fact that many use religion as some of explanation/defense of terrible acts they commit speaks poorly of those individuals, not the religion itself.

And they don't just use religion either, discrimination can be based on ethnicity, economic systems, gender, sexual orientation, countries of origin, and ect.

Really it seems all forms of discrimination are based on some people noticing something about themselves, thinking it makes them superior for some reason, and using this as a reason to be dicks to other people just becuase they aren't this thing.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

And I've heard thatthe president of the Federation in Star Trek VI was blind.

Yeah, he seemed that way, partially or totally blind.

 

[suarezguy]

Be careful what you wish for. I have cerebral palsy, and wanted to see a disabled character in Star Trek. I finally got my wish (sort of) with the DS9 epsode "Melora", but could not have been more disappointed with the results if I tried.

Doesn't Geordi count?

Agreed. Similarly, I've often said that the writers of Enterprise missed a huge opportunity to include a Muslim or Arab character as a member of the crew.

They already did that on DS9 with the Bashir.

True, he was Arab by ancestry, but he couldn't have been more British and wasn't remotely Muslim. I always found that disappointing. Of course not all Arabs are Muslims or vice-versa; there are Muslims of every ethnicity. But it would've been such a potent statement to have a positive portrayal of a Muslim protagonist at a time -- even before 9/11/01 -- when the predominant image of Muslims and Arabs in American media was as terrorists.

I think there's an interesting parallel between how filmed Trek has been reluctant to depict any gay or lesbian characters and to depict or reference Earth religions (aside from a handful of fleeting references, most prominently "Balance of Terror"), I think it shows that Berman and/or higher-ups were very weary of risking controversy, certainly with a regular character.

 

[Christopher]

I think it shows that Berman and/or higher-ups were very weary of risking controversy, certainly with a regular character.

Which is a pity, since TOS was rather daring for its time. Women on a military vessel, black people and Asians and Russians as protagonists, the first white-black kiss in scripted US television, discussions of birth control in "The Mark of Gideon," and enough skin and sexuality to give the network censors fits. That was a Star Trek that wasn't afraid to push the envelope. DS9 is the only one of its successors that was anywhere near as daring. ST is sort of like the rebellious hippie teenager in the '60s who grew up to be a respectable, business-suited establishment figure in the '80s and '90s.

Really, it was a victim of its own success. As an underdog, the original show could afford to take chances. By the late '80s, the franchise was such a huge cash cow for Paramount that they didn't want to do anything really risky or controversial with it.