Did Star trek get to safe.

[Orphalesion]

Well and let's also be honest. Game of Thrones can't be really compared to Star Trek. It is adapted from a series of novels and the producers, writers and in many cases the actors knew when they would exit. Even so since the very first season/book they have not really killed one of the (truly) principal or fan-favourite characters. What Game of Thrones/The Song of Ice and Fire has going for it is that it makes you really care about the secondary/background characters and makes their deaths sting in universe and out. I recall a character being only introduced a few chapters before they were killed, they never did anything, they did not even speak in these chapters yet they with a few words they were characterized in a way that made me go "NO, not <blank>!"
So it would not be a question of vaporizing McCoy out of nowhere but to spend enough time on "Ensign Cannonfodder" to develop him in relation to the other characters and the audience. Also not forgetting him the very next scene would be a plus.

 

[Autistoid]

^ That's part of the charm of 1960s television, and one of the reasons why I don't watch much of anything else.

And while Enterprise was on the air, I always got the impression that it was trying to be "edgier", but for no real reason other than for the sake of being "edgy," and didn't actually challenge any norms at all. If the "edginess" doesn't actually make the story better or make you think more, than what's the point?

Kor

Edgy and dangerous are not at all the same.

By that logic apollo 13 was a movie made to be edgy.

Space is dangerous it's part of the appeal, and so is exploring/adventuring. To loose this aspect may play largely into why the shows didn't last.


Star trek has a hard wired aspect where the crew are supposedly in great danger quite often.

However as the shows went along the danger became increasingly far removed from consequence. As the times technology etc theoretically allowed for much more danger.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

^ That's part of the charm of 1960s television, and one of the reasons why I don't watch much of anything else.

And while Enterprise was on the air, I always got the impression that it was trying to be "edgier", but for no real reason other than for the sake of being "edgy," and didn't actually challenge any norms at all. If the "edginess" doesn't actually make the story better or make you think more, than what's the point?

Kor

Depends how you define the term 'Edgy'. That can mean different things to different people. Do you mean 'More likely to offend the audience'? 'Grittier'?

Making a show more likely to offend the audience doesn't make the writing better, so much as being afraid to offend the audience when appropriate makes it worse.

 

[Nightdiamond]

The irony is, viewers won't take Trek as an edgy show if they see things like the crew laughing or joking in the same episode where a redshirt is killed.

Well, at least today, anyway.

Nothing screams "safe", more than the hero bubble. And if the heroes don't have to worry about making a living, losing a limb, going crazy-- way too safe.

At the end of the episode, everything works out. If the characters have issues, they always solve them at the end of the episode.

If Beverly agonized over her feelings and sexuality concerning Odan, that would be edgy and interesting and real. If she went ahead with the relationship, even though it was a strange thing for her, it would be interesting.

Her character played it safe. She chose to reject Odan outright. She never mentioned Odan again.

Those type of things are kind of odd for a space soap opera.

 

[Starborn Dragon]

I'd agree that it was too safe, and unfortunately I see it as the consequence of both the powers that be at Paramount and the fans.

ex.
Voyager as a show should have been dark. Resources should have been limited, decisions should have been made in desperation etc. that were less idealistic. Alas, because Voyager became the anchor of UPN, it became TNG light instead primarily because studio execs wanted to keep it upbeat (especially in comparison to ds9).

Similarly, but from the opposite direction, fans freaked out when there was an episode of Enterprise in which Archer threatened to push someone out of an airlock. Sure, the decision was a brutal one, but fans freaked out that their Starfleet Captain couldn't possible make a less than ideal decision.

Finally, if you listen to the "fans" there are those that would argue vehemently that anything after Star Trek:TMP is garbage, anything after TNG is garbage, and that the JJ Abrams Trek is just the worst thing that they've ever seen. What it seems to boil down to is that everything that is changed in the Trek universe is immediately lambasted as terrible.

Unfortunately, in these environments, I'm not super surprised that the powers that be at Paramount fear doing anything with Trek that isn't vanilla and therefore less than satisfying.

i'm not one of those fans that goes all African tribal on the shows I like.

I really just do not understand this tribalism among fans, and i don't' think Gene Roddenberry would like it either, because it's anathema to the message and philosophy of Star Trek.

Which is that we can overcome our petty differences and end racism if we really want to.

I guess a lot of people out there just don't want to, and that is a shame.

Star Trek is a good show.

in all its incarnations.

 

[T'Girl]

because it's anathema to the message and philosophy of Star Trek.

What is "African tribal?"

 

[mos6507]

how about Janice Rand? A decision was made to stop writing the character into scripts, Rand simply disappeared without a word.

I would agree that finding a touching way to have her die would have been a better ending than having her disappear and just show up in a few cameos in the films.

On the flipside, killing off a character because the actor leaves or is fired is in itself a trope. It's not easy to avoid predictable writing formulas.

I do think that the tendency to want to see TV writing as having evolved and improved (as if it's technology) then vs. now is biased. People may prefer novel-like serialistic writing more now, but I don't feel that way of storytelling is objectively "better" than straight episodic stories that can be viewed out-of-order.

I think there was a golden age of quality writing in the Mad Men era which brought us Hitchcock, Twilight Zone, through Outer Limits. The "mature" westerns of that era were also excellent, including Have Gun Will Travel, where Gene got his start. While it's true that Trek started to slide into the mid to late 60s style of writing ala Gilligan's Island, it has more in common with that golden age of a more serious or literary approach.

In some respects Trek could be viewed as an hour-long anthology series like Outer Limits was, only with a single framing device (the Star Trek Universe). When you think of it that way, the issues raised within that isolated story are what matters the most, not character arcs. The characters then are more observers of situations rather than the focus. And that's a perfectly valid way to write fiction.

Most of the Gulliver's Travels style episodes where they beam down to a planet that suffered some sort of dystopian society operates that way. The focus is on exploring that society's issues more than what kind of ongoing inner anguish Kirk and Spock were suffering.

I think as far as mainstream entertainment goes, more people are interested in character-based stories rather than issue-based stories. Character-based stories mostly make you feel. Issue-based stories mostly make you think. That's why soap-operas became popular. The serialized cable dramas are really what soap-opera becomes when you put more work into them. Film franchies like Marvel Universe is the same. It's a serialized TV series blown up into a series of blockbuster films.

 

[MarsWeeps]

Did Star trek get to safe.

I know Gary Seven did. There may have been others.

 

[Jonas Grumby]

^ I like that one!

Oh, the madness the lack of a simple "o" can spur!

 

[Maurice]

i'm not one of those fans that goes all African tribal on the shows I like.

What is "African tribal?"

A racist term.