Embarrassingly Bad Article on Reason behind TNG families

[HaplessCrewman]

Do you want to read an article where the writer passes off his own opinion as fact? Here's a doozy.

Yet another example of the obsessive nature of fans. What do you think the writer's agenda is?

Why Did Starfleet Allow Families Aboard the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/20..._did_the_starfleet_allow_families_aboard.html

 

[T'Girl]

Nothing new really, other fans have been saying the same things for years.

 

[mos6507]

I don't like the disrespectful tone of the piece, but I agree with the writer's assertion that families on ships was a bad idea. How that actually played out in TNG writing is (as another thread recently mentioned) the D rarely fought, and when it did, it seemed to be so heavily armed and shielded that it was rarely in mortal danger. So the D often just sat there and took hits until Picard convinced the opponent to stop firing. This, combined with Rick Berman's famous sonic-wallpaper policy on the soundtrack, led to a duller show than it needed to be.

None of this diminishes that Gene had plenty of good ideas for Trek. This just wasn't one of them.

 

[Christopher]

The intent behind the Enterprise-D was to be a deep-space vessel that would stay away from known territory for a minimum of 15 years. In that context, it's perfectly reasonable to have families aboard, because you wouldn't get a lot of people willing to give up all contact with their loved ones for such a huge portion of their lives. I mean, who do you think goes to settle starbases and colonies? Families, that's who. They're going out onto the frontier and facing danger, but they're going there for the long haul, so of course they take their families along. That was the intended idea here. It just got lost in the shuffle when the show's format shifted back toward rescue, diplomatic, and political missions in known space. The problem isn't that they wanted families aboard, the problem is that they abandoned the premise that justified that.

And I've never bought the "space is too dangerous" argument. It's adventure TV. Anywhere you set it is going to be dangerous. Set a murder mystery series in a sleepy, small Maine town and it's bound to become the homicide capital of the world. No place where a fictional adventure series is set is ever going to be a safe place to raise a family. And in both fiction and real life, there's plenty of danger to civilians on planet surfaces -- natural disasters, warfare and violent crimes (though less so in the Trek universe), industrial accidents, even perils from space such as (in reality) asteroid impacts and supernovae or (in fiction) alien invasions. Hell, the average commuter driving on the freeway probably has a higher likelihood of being killed on any given day than the average officer on a naval vessel, because the latter is far more prepared to cope with a crisis and is surrounded by people and technology equally well-prepared for same. Danger is a fact of everyone's life, but it can be guarded against to a reasonable degree.

That said, I think TNG's oversight was having a single hybrid vessel with a battle section that could separate from the research/crew section. What they should've done was to have a large research vessel with at least a couple of military vessels as protective escorts. Picard would've commanded the science ship and the overall mission and Riker would've been the captain of the defense squadron, leading to more opportunities for conflicting priorities.

 

[wulfio]

What they should've done was to have a large research vessel with at least a couple of military vessels as protective escorts. Picard would've commanded the science ship and the overall mission and Riker would've been the captain of the defense squadron, leading to more opportunities for conflicting priorities.

I guess Ronald Moore had the same idea.

 

[Christopher]

What they should've done was to have a large research vessel with at least a couple of military vessels as protective escorts. Picard would've commanded the science ship and the overall mission and Riker would've been the captain of the defense squadron, leading to more opportunities for conflicting priorities.

I guess Ronald Moore had the same idea.

Err, what?

 

[iguana_tonante]

While not identical, the concept sounds similar to the revived BSG, with the Civilian Fleet led by President Roslin and the military Battlestar Galactica under the command of Adama.

 

[jimbotron]

From the article:

Roddenberry was part of the creative team of Deep Space 9, and as such, his initiating ideas were allowed to filter into it, but the battle of Wolf 359 was essentially portrayed (from the Sisko perspective) to highlight an end to "families on ships" idea.

Uhhh, no he wasn't. Any Trek fan knows that. But in the comments section, he claims "I've read every biography on Roddenberry and I've been a Trek nerd all my life." Uh huh.

From Memory Alpha / Captains' Logs book:

Regarding Gene Roddenberry's involvement, Berman stated, "Michael (Piller) and I discussed it with Gene when we were still in the early stages, but never anything conceptual." "We never got a chance to discuss it (the concept) with Gene. By the time we had it to the point that it was discussable, he was in pretty bad shape and not really in the condition that it would have been wise to discuss it with him. On two specific occasions I was with him at his house and we tried to bring it up, but it wasn't really appropriate

 

[HaplessCrewman]

From the article:

Roddenberry was part of the creative team of Deep Space 9, and as such, his initiating ideas were allowed to filter into it, but the battle of Wolf 359 was essentially portrayed (from the Sisko perspective) to highlight an end to "families on ships" idea.

Uhhh, no he wasn't. Any Trek fan knows that. But in the comments section, he claims "I've read every biography on Roddenberry and I've been a Trek nerd all my life." Uh huh.

From Memory Alpha / Captains' Logs book:

Regarding Gene Roddenberry's involvement, Berman stated, "Michael (Piller) and I discussed it with Gene when we were still in the early stages, but never anything conceptual." "We never got a chance to discuss it (the concept) with Gene. By the time we had it to the point that it was discussable, he was in pretty bad shape and not really in the condition that it would have been wise to discuss it with him. On two specific occasions I was with him at his house and we tried to bring it up, but it wasn't really appropriate

Yeah, that's a pretty obvious and egregious mistake. After I read that rather poorly researched "fact", the credibility of the article pretty much vanished for me.

Pathetic.

 

[Christopher]

While not identical, the concept sounds similar to the revived BSG, with the Civilian Fleet led by President Roslin and the military Battlestar Galactica under the command of Adama.

Glen Larson's original Galactica also showed a civilian Quorum in the fleet along with the military leadership. Several episodes were built around clashes between Adama's military command and the leaders of the civilian Quorum (sometimes called Council). So that wasn't a Moore innovation, just an existing part of the concept that he made more central.

 

[Armored Saint]

Yeah, that's a pretty obvious and egregious mistake. After I read that rather poorly researched "fact", the credibility of the article pretty much vanished for me.

The tone of the text makes him sound rather like an h8ter from comment section than a serious blogger. It's just really basic (and innacurate) information with value judgements.

 

[xezt]

I didn't like families and children on the Enterprise because it just felt way too cheesey 1970s/early 80ish Love Boat style. This despite TNG premiering in the late 80s, a lot of the sensibilities of the show almost seemed like they came from a decade earlier. You have expected Tom Bosely to make a guest starring appearance in some of the early episodes.

Families, children and having a therapist on the ship were all goofy ideas. They should have just made Troi another chief doctor on the ship, and gotten rid of the families part.

 

[borgboy]

Whether you agree with families on the Enterprise or not, the article had a mean spirited tone, pushing opinion as facts.

 

[Ithekro]

At least they didn't go the Galactica 1980 route with the kids.

 

[Mudd]

The idea behind it all, actually, was to provide a greater range of potential drama without leaving the confines of the ship by including potential guest stars of all ages and temperaments rather than simply confining the crew to (para)military types. You're building elaborate, expensive sets for a ship that's putatively humongous and populated by thousands of people - so, you use them, there are your stories.

IOW, better bottle shows. It wasn't all that novel an idea; an extension, really, of Roddenberry's original "Wagon Train to the stars" premise for Trek in the early 1960s. Exactly how expansive a series could be produced within budget was always a matter of concern in the early going.

TNG was conceived and put into production within a very short time frame - just about nothing existed on the day in October 1986 when it was publicly announced - nothing written, nothing designed, no series format. Roddenberry's publicly expressed attitude for quite a few years had been "I've already done 79 Star Trek pilots." "Encounter At Farpoint" was not a pilot, per se, in the sense that a studio produces a pilot episode for the approval of a television network. TNG was sold to nearly 200 independent stations around the country without anyone ever having seen five seconds of footage. So there were never test audiences, or "focus groups" or any other significant, influential outside feedback within a time frame that might have affected the initial approach of the two-hour opening episode or the first episodes that followed.

 

[wulfio]

What they should've done was to have a large research vessel with at least a couple of military vessels as protective escorts. Picard would've commanded the science ship and the overall mission and Riker would've been the captain of the defense squadron, leading to more opportunities for conflicting priorities.

I guess Ronald Moore had the same idea.

Err, what?

That`s a pretty similar premise to BSG, not including the meta.

 

[Christopher]

I didn't like families and children on the Enterprise because it just felt way too cheesey 1970s/early 80ish Love Boat style. This despite TNG premiering in the late 80s, a lot of the sensibilities of the show almost seemed like they came from a decade earlier. You have expected Tom Bosely to make a guest starring appearance in some of the early episodes.

I'm sorry, I don't understand that at all. Plenty of television shows are about people with families, so I don't see what makes that cheesy. And The Love Boat was not about families or children, it was mostly about single people seeking romance or sex. More to the point, it was mostly about washed-up name actors from earlier decades doing gimmicky guest shots. I don't recall TNG doing a lot of that.

Families, children and having a therapist on the ship were all goofy ideas. They should have just made Troi another chief doctor on the ship, and gotten rid of the families part.

What's goofy is the assumption that mental health care is somehow less legitimate or important than physical health care. That's an ignorant stigma that society had largely overcome by the 1980s, but for some reason we've backslid since then and the old, silly prejudices against mental health care have resurged. Of course the crew of a starship spending years cooped up together in close quarters and facing dangerous situations needs mental health care. It would be criminally irresponsible of Starfleet not to provide for the mental health of its crews just as much as the physical health.

I can concede that having the therapist also be a key advisor at the captain's right hand was a little much, but of course she should've been aboard the ship and played just as important a role as the medical doctor. The brain is the most complicated part of the body and of course it needs care.

I guess Ronald Moore had the same idea.

Err, what?

That`s a pretty similar premise to BSG, not including the meta.

First off, I already explained that Glen Larson's BSG had a military/civilian divide long before Ron Moore used the idea. Second, I'm not even talking about military/civilian. I'm talking about two branches of Starfleet, one specializing in scientific research and exploration, the other specializing in defense. Basically blueshirts and redshirts (or goldshirts in the TNG era), different specializations within the service, but at the command level, and with the ships specialized for different fields as well as the officers.

If anything, what I'm suggesting is the inverse of Galactica, because that was a huge military ship surrounded by a gaggle of smaller civilian ships it was protecting, while I'm talking about a huge research vessel shepherded by a few smaller combat/defense vessels -- and with the research vessel's captain being the central character and overall commander.

 

[HIjol]

The idea behind it all, actually, was to provide a greater range of potential drama without leaving the confines of the ship by including potential guest stars of all ages and temperaments rather than simply confining the crew to (para)military types.

IOW, better bottle shows. It wasn't all that novel an idea; an extension, really, of Roddenberry's original "Wagon Train to the stars" premise for Trek in the early 1960s. Exactly how expansive a series could be produced within budget was always a matter of concern in the early going.

TNG was conceived and put into production within a very short time frame - just about nothing existed on the day in October 1986 when it was publicly announced - nothing written, nothing designed, no series format. Roddenberry's publicly expressed attitude for quite a few years had been "I've already done 79 Star Trek pilots." "Encounter At Farpoint" was not a pilot, per se, in the sense that a studio produces a pilot episode for the approval of a television network. TNG was sold to nearly 200 independent stations around the country without anyone ever having seen five seconds of footage. So there were never test audiences, or "focus groups" or any other significant, influential outside feedback within a time frame that might have affected the initial approach of the two-hour opening episode or the first episodes that followed.

I agree with you, Dennis ( and find I usually do) on the "...greater range of drama..." afforded by including families on the Enterprise (s), and, in fact, the shows did at least partially deliver on both grown-up and kid "stars" being included in the plots...

...I LOVE that fact that, as you state,

"TNG was sold to nearly 200 independent stations around the country without anyone ever having seen five seconds of footage..."
L
...say what you want about all the rest of it, THAT is powerful!

 

[Christopher]

That's a good point about the Wagon Train comparison. Wagon trains, of course, did include civilians and families braving the dangers of what, to them, was an uncharted frontier (although of course it was somebody else's home first). And the reason Roddenberry cited the show Wagon Train as his model for TOS was that it was a pseudo-anthology series in which each episode focused on a different guest star who was a member of the wagon train. His original ST format proposal talked about all the possible stories to be generated from the various crew members aboard the ship. So it makes sense that he thought adding civilians and families to the mix would expand the dramatic possibilities. But that was one of the many formative ideas behind TNG that fell by the wayside due to the steady erosion and replacement of the original creative team.

 

[Tosk]

I can concede that having the therapist also be a key advisor at the captain's right hand was a little much

Why? Deanna is a Lt. Commander who can read the emotions of people they encounter and advise about their mental state...If I was the captain, I'd have sat her beside me too.