I so freaking agree! I mean no one is saying don't give GR credit for what he did but also give due credit to all the other contributors. And let us not forget that not all of GR's contributions were gold.
How would Roddenberry rank his canon?
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I so freaking agree! I mean no one is saying don't give GR credit for what he did but also give due credit to all the other contributors. And let us not forget that not all of GR's contributions were gold.
If it was an official Star Trek production for the big or small screen then it's canon. Whether I or GR likes or agrees with all that is contained therein doesn't matter as "you've got to take the bitter with the sweet" or as they say on Earth, "C'est la vie."
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Yes. I think Robin Curtis Saavik would've been more believable, but Alley's Saavik being a traitor would've been hard to swallow. Alley's Saavik was so good of a character to be tarnished in that fashion.
Why would he exclude TNG seasons 3-4?
Absolutely agree. It would have truly made it Shakespearian (which considering how heavily TUC leaned on that old son-of-a-bard would've made it so perfect). What made TWoK really work was the very real passage of time between Space Seed and the movie. The fact is was totally organic give it a magic that can't be artificially reproduced (no matter how many times they try). Having Saavik as the traitor would have bestowed upon TUC that very same magic.
Now the story I always heard, correct me if I am wrong, was that Saavik didn't happen because they wanted Kirsty Ally and Ally had said no because she thought the fans would hold it against her.
The story I heard was that Kristey Alley's popularity on Cheers drove her price tag way up. TUC couldn't afford to have her. Nick Meyer didn't want to have a third actor playing the same character, so Saavik became Valeris.
Have to disagree. Robin Curtis was too soft and feminine. Same reason why I never cared much for Kim Cattrall's Valeris. Kirsty had that Vulcan stiff-upper lip and stoicism that one would expect of Spock's disciple.
Maybe this should be a license plate or bumper sticker or something. WWGT - What Would Gene Think?
Because by then he wasn’t able to rewrite anyone’s scripts.
I don't think Gene Rodenberry was that egotistical. He was proud of TNG. He felt he had left it in capable hands by the end of season 4.
You do realize that he constantly rewrote scripts in season 1 to the point where the writers’ original stories and intentions were completely different from what ended up on screen, right? And that most of those writers left because they were rightly pissed off at him for doing that, right?
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Gene and his lawyer's antics during the first season are the stuff of legend. It was a bloodbath.
Although he ceded more control over to other writers and producers I don't think he would disown the stuff he didn't write. He was still reading the scripts and sending notes well into season 4. He and Berman selected Michael Piller to be head writer and when Piller wanted to leave at the end of season 3 it was Roddenberry who convinced him to stay.
- TNG (before he got relegated from having a big part in its development and before every other admiral was eeeevil since he hated that trope, see STVI for more)
- TOS (a couple moments of religion aside, the show was very progressive for its time)
- TMP (a fair chunk of it is his)
- VOY (since the number of eeeeeeeeevil Federation admirals was a low lower than from TNG and in spirit it's closee to what he envisioned)
- Trek II-VI (in chronological order, since he got shoved away from those and wasn't allowed to re-use his "time travel to prevent Kennedy from being assassinated" plot and he's on record calling V "apocryphal" and he loathed VI for making the Federations baddies and I somehow doubt he would have changed his mind since then)
- DS9 (Roddenberry did state the idea but given the usual routine of eeeeeeeeevil admirals and even Sisko does something that would clearly be apocryphal and how Roddenberry was against having religion in his creation...)
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- ♫ and the rest (but not in the nice ways that the Professor and Mary Ann were)
"Justice" is one of the more notorious examples. There are some great ideas present, but Gene turned it into cootie-sharing planet, hoping everybody would notice and immediately do it in real life as a result. I'd guess. I don't know all the details behind the original draft and changes incurred, except the original idea was a lot more grim than "tripping into tulips and getting a nice cozy painless death as punishment", and I suppose all the oil and foreplay on display was to show they're too busy getting busy to want to commit crimes, but nobody bothered to rewrite the pre-credits teaser where they want Wesley to beam on down to see if all the kids on ship would like it and that's after Tasha and Geordi have a field day describing euphemisms about dropping hats and "making love" as a result (
). And note how they're all the same skin and hair color too in that one, "planet of wigs that look criminally vulgar in of themselves"... if nothing else, they nailed the ADR to the point I couldn't tell how much raw voiceover work was done on location...
1, Whatever was making him money
2. Whatever he happened to like that day
When I was in college, I borrowed a book from the library, Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation, by Yvonne Fern. Anyone interested in Gene Roddenberry's thoughts in 1991 should read that book. It goes pretty in-depth.
The man should be called out for his personal and creative faults but I think Rodenberry bashing is overdone often to the point of dismissing his actual contributions and his talent as a creator and a producer.
There would be no TOS or TNG if he hadn't assembled the right people.
Yeah, esp. back early on when they were still developing the show. He seemed to be more on the ball about things back in the 60's, and I think that goes to his vision. He insisted on certain things to make sure the show adhered to his vision and didn't go off the rails. By the time of TNG it seemed he needed other people more to keep things on track. But certainly early in the game Star Trek benefited by having him insist on certain things.
Yeah, something along those lines. I thought I read they did consider picking another actress to play Saavik (I guess Robin Curtis wasn't considered) but they decided on a new character. So Roddenberry won, just not for the same reasons. In a way Nicholas Meyer should be flattered, in that Roddenberry felt that strongly about a character that Meyer created. I guess there were things about TWOK that Roddenberry liked after all.
Maybe that's where reading the various novels that featured Saavik colored my opinion a bit. With all the back story I read about her in the various books, and that at one point she was married to Spock (at least through the Vulcan's Soul novels) it just didn't sit well with me that Saavik would betray Starfleet. Perhaps if I hadn't read about her in all the novels it would sit better.
I am glad they decided not to have a 3rd actress try to take on the role though. I think if they didn't get Alley or Curtis to do it for whatever reason they were better off going with a new character.
Yeah, I agree. He was flawed. But he did have a great vision for Star Trek and it's telling that it is still going strong through how many regimes. And all the showrunners since then have said how important it is to stick to Roddenberry's vision (we can argue how successfully each has done that but it's still part of their thought process--no one's considered wholly making Star Trek in their own image--it's always been based on how it was originally created).
Early on during it's creative stages and first steps he kept the show on track. And TMP is my favorite Star Trek movie of them all, which he had a big hand in making. Even many of TMP's detractors will say it is probably the most pure sci-fi oriented story of all the films. And he was able to find the right people to keep his vision intact.
So he certainly had a big hand in how Star Trek is perceived today. Where things maybe fell apart is when he'd get lost in the weeds, and certainly later in life. I don't know if it's because he got older, was ill, moody, or just had the wrong lawyers helping him out. But after he was relegated to 'executive consultant' for TWOK he didn't seem to be quite the same. He had some good ideas for TNG but that's where it seemed he needed other people more to develop the show. And that seemed to be more when he started to question what was canon and what wasn't (again with 'help' from his lawyer I suspect).
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