Gene gets much bad talk around here....

[plynch]

I'm so glad that he created Star Trek, but people that prop him up like some kind of L Ron Hubbard diety freak me out.

Who does this anymore?

He was Lord of the Nerds in the 70s when it was truly not cool to be one. But few and far between is anyone left who thinks that way.

I mean "Gene's Vision" is always written in derision.

I've ironically been his apologist in this thread, b/c I really don't think he was that much of an ogre, and actually better than numerous Hollywood types I've read of or know of . . .

but I sure wouldn't make him out to be a deity.

And, his behavior was certainly shitty in many regards.

Like many other people.

 

[BillJ]

And on top of that, this attitude completely overlooks Gene L. Coon and Dorothy C. Fontana, both of whom, in my opinion, added as much to Star Trek as Roddenberry did.

There is nothing for them to add too without Roddenberry.

 

[BK613]

There is nothing for them to add too without Roddenberry.

At the bare minimum, give the showrunner the credit of hiring the talent to get the job done well.

 

[plynch]

He thought it up, had the gumption to make it happen.
Other people made big contributions.
He could be a good guy.
He could be a dick.

"Both and."

 

[BillJ]

At the bare minimum, give the showrunner the credit of hiring the talent to get the job done well.

Like I said earlier in the thread, people are just going to have to come to grip with the idea that something they love was created by someone who was a pretty poor human being. His name and ideas will always be associated with the Star Trek franchise. Heck, Strange New Worlds is going to run with the original big three that he created.

 

[The Wormhole]

I'm so glad that he created Star Trek, but people that prop him up like some kind of L Ron Hubbard diety freak me out.

Roddenberry wishes he could be L Ron Hubbard.

For real, maybe. I remember a rumor that Roddenberry was actually jealous of Hubbard because he wanted his fans to form a religion around him. It may not be true, but it sounds amusing, so it's part of my head canon.

 

[drt]

Roddenberry wishes he could be L Ron Hubbard.

For real, maybe. I remember a rumor that Roddenberry was actually jealous of Hubbard because he wanted his fans to form a religion around him. It may not be true, but it sounds amusing, so it's part of my head canon.

More likely he was jealous of the cash that poured into Hubbard's pockets from scientologists. Roddenberry saw very little of that sweet loot Trekkies paid to Paramount.

 

[Odo]

Roddenberry wishes he could be L Ron Hubbard.

For real, maybe. I remember a rumor that Roddenberry was actually jealous of Hubbard because he wanted his fans to form a religion around him. It may not be true, but it sounds amusing, so it's part of my head canon.

I think that's from the Chaos on the Bridge doc:
"In one telling bit, Rick Berman (an exec who later became the show’s producer) says Roddenberry used to talk about being friends with L. Ron Hubbard—and Roddenberry would boast that he, too, could have started a religion if he’d wanted."
https://io9.gizmodo.com/a-new-documentary-shows-how-gene-roddenberry-almost-kil-1721153875

 

[137th Gebirg]

Well... to be fair... to some folks he kinda did.

 

[fireproof78]

I mean "Gene's Vision" is always written in derision.

It's actually not. Around here, certainly I see more derision that adulation or support. But, going over to other discussion platforms or (if I'm really brave) YouTube and I'll find those who are serious about Gene's vision.

 

[Sci]

To the extent that Gene created Star Trek and used it to portray an optimistic, progressive future, he and his vision were good.

To the extent that Gene tried to take credit for the contributions of other writers, he was an asshole.

To the extent that Gene posited a future in which all races and ethnicities were equal, Gene was an anti-racist.

To the extent that Gene depicted a future in which white men were usually in charge, people of color were relegated to stereotypical subordinate positions such as "space driver" and "space secretary," in which brown men were seducers and corruptors of white women (Khan), and aliens were coded as Yellow Peril In Space (the TOS Klingons), Gene was an unintentional, unconscious racist.

To the extent that Gene posited a future in which men and women were equal and women had control of their lives and bodies, Gene was a feminist.

To the extent that Gene depicted a future in which women were passive, easily frightened, too emotionally erratic to assume command of a starship, and constantly sexually objectified, Gene was a misogynist.

To the extent that Gene served numerous combat missions during World War II and saved many lives after a commercial plane crash, he was a hero.

To the extent that Gene was a serial womanizer, carried on multiple affairs, may have practiced the "Casting Couch," and may have sexually assaulted Grace Lee Whitney, he was a predator.

To the extent that Gene posited a future in which humanity had outgrown greed, everyone's material needs were met, poverty was long forgotten, and there were no more class divisions, Gene was an anti-capitalist.

To the extent that Gene tried to cheat his collaborators out of the money they were owed and was himself a greedy rich SOB, Gene was a capitalist pig.

To the extent that Gene imagined a genuinely progressive future, Gene and his vision were good.

To the extent that Gene imagined a world where the things that make us fully human were no longer present (e.g., nobody mourning for their loved ones anymore), Gene was a fool trying to use his fiction to escape the pain he had caused his family in his own life.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Damn. Sums it all up quite nicely.

So!

Zero-sum game!

 

[BillJ]

Zero-sum game!

Unless you're one of the people he hurt over the years...

 

[137th Gebirg]

Good point. Negative-sum game.

 

[Odo]

Sci sums it up quite well.

As an aside, I think Space Seed originally had some subtext commenting on white suptemacy/the Aryan Übermensch.
One tidbit from Memory Alpha:
"Also in Wilber's original treatment, the Khan character was a Nordic superman named "Harold Erricsen". This evolved in the first draft, where the character first introduced himself as "John Ericssen" but was later revealed to be Ragnar Thorwald, who had been involved in "the First World Tyranny". Thorwald was more brutal in this version of the story, where he dispatched the guard outside his quarters with a phaser. (Star Trek Magazine issue 120, The Star Trek Compendium, pp. 57-58)"

 

[Sci]

Sci sums it up quite well.

Thanks.

As an aside, I think Space Seed originally had some subtext commenting on white suptemacy/the Aryan Übermensch.
One tidbit from Memory Alpha:
"Also in Wilber's original treatment, the Khan character was a Nordic superman named "Harold Erricsen". This evolved in the first draft, where the character first introduced himself as "John Ericssen" but was later revealed to be Ragnar Thorwald, who had been involved in "the First World Tyranny". Thorwald was more brutal in this version of the story, where he dispatched the guard outside his quarters with a phaser. (Star Trek Magazine issue 120, The Star Trek Compendium, pp. 57-58)"

Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, it's cool that they portrayed someone who wasn't white as being "genetically superior."

On the other hand, I think Khan in "Space Seed" is still a problematic character. First off, it's a Mexican actor of European descent playing a Sikh, which gives the impression that the producers essentially lumped all non-Anglo people together into one big pile. And secondly, they gave Montalban makeup to make his skin look darker, which in my view ends up playing into the "scary brown men coming to take our white women away" trope.

Also, just, y'know, the sexual politics of a woman in Starfleet longing for a dominant man to take over her life, and then Khan doing just that and she falls for him after he's borderline assaulted her? That's, um. That's some misogynistic sexual politics there, and they're not all Khan's politics; a lot of that is the narrative's politics -- it depicts McGiver's submissiveness uncritically.

None of this is to shit on Ricardo Montalban, mind you. Him, we must stan.

The moral of the story: Khan Noonien Sighn is a really difficult character to depict in a manner that isn't in some way offensive, and it was a mistake to use him in Star Trek Into Darkness.

 

[Sci]

Also, if Gene was a rapist, which there's a strong chance it was him that raped Grace Lee Whitney, then I tend to think that outweighs most of the good he did. (The fact that he was essentially a functional alcoholic/drug addict who didn't really try to sober up and who objectified women his entire life doesn't endear him to me, but that plane rescue ain't nothin'.)

Ultimately, I'm more inclined to take the broad strokes of "Gene's Vision" than I am to take Gene himself, or the more detailed "in the future nobody fears death and nobody feels pain ever under any circumstances not even when their loved ones die" bullshit.

 

[plynch]

Yeah: my thoughts too, where he's a flawed human who created and produced TV shows (no mean feat) are predicated on not knowing if he raped someone. If that is true, then obviously my summation would be way different.

 

[Harvey]

To the extent that Gene depicted a future in which white men were usually in charge, people of color were relegated to stereotypical subordinate positions such as "space driver" and "space secretary," in which brown men were seducers and corruptors of white women (Khan), and aliens were coded as Yellow Peril In Space (the TOS Klingons), Gene was an unintentional, unconscious racist.

You should read his script for Tarzan (1968) and comments made that same year about the Burroughs property. Can I have “‘Dark Continent’ used without irony for $500, Alec?”

 

[plynch]

Unintentional and unconscious. But a man of his times. Who at least envisioned the nations of earth all finally cooperating as a glorious UESPA!

Sometimes I wonder what we are.all gonna be pilloried for in 50 years. Seriously. Where all the people will commonly just think us immoral about something. Maybe eating meat. Maybe destroying the climate. Yet most of us go about those two endeavors not conscious ly meaning harm. Maybe burning up all the petrochemicals. People are of their time, except for the very rare individual here and there.