Roddenberry calls Wrath embarrassing

[Maurice]

Card to me is an example of putting your money where your mouth is. If I buy his work (outside of used) then I'm basically giving him money which he may choose to spent in anti-gay causes. As such I won't watch or read anything whereby he could get one red cent out of it. You don't help someone buy a knife so he can stab you.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Card to me is an example of putting your money where your mouth is. If I buy his work (outside of used) then I'm basically giving him money which he may choose to spent in anti-gay causes. As such I won't watch or read anything whereby he could get one red cent out of it. You don't help someone buy a knife so he can stab you.

I myself never saw Ender's Game in theaters, or bought/rented it on DVD/saw it on streaming, but I did see it by downloading a copy from BitTorrent. The concept's crap to me, basically saying that child soldering is cool when it isn't, and could/can be scarring for life.

 

[BillJ]

However, the more I read and learn, the less certain I am about saying it was GR's.

TV is obviously a collaborative process, but the original Star Trek doesn't exist without Roddenberry. He created the show, hired the people involved, rewrote scripts...

 

[ChallengerHK]

TV is obviously a collaborative process, but the original Star Trek doesn't exist without Roddenberry. He created the show, hired the people involved, rewrote scripts...

I agree with this completely. I'll add that 1) many of the important additions came from outside of Roddenberry, who often struggled against them (humor is an important example), and 2) many of Roddenberry's initial decisions, like the battery-powered Spock, the six-breasted Troi, and the prohibition against dramatic storylines within Starfleet in TNG, would have made for a much weaker and in many instances childlike, sillier show, a la Lost in Space. Yes, there would still be a Star Trek if Roddenberry had had his way, but it would have been very different, and if my guess is correct, it would neither have been nearly as popular nor would it have lasted nearly as long. What Star Trek is today, in terms of longevity and quality, is due to the people with which he surrounded himself.

The credit I will give him is that he brought the original series to production, sometimes through sheer force of will. When it comes to making it great, I don't think he could have succeeded on his own. His instincts were just not that good.

 

[Valenti]

Yea, he could have done all by himself in his room with a sock puppet named Spock.

 

[Qonundrum]

Card to me is an example of putting your money where your mouth is. If I buy his work (outside of used) then I'm basically giving him money which he may choose to spent in anti-gay causes. As such I won't watch or read anything whereby he could get one red cent out of it. You don't help someone buy a knife so he can stab you.

How much research do you really do for everything you buy? You'd probably be surprised by your own answer. And in any democracy or tolerance or Federation or nation or you name it, we all have to get along with people we don't agree with 100% of the time. Which goes back to your first question, since 100% is going to be impossible in that condition as well, on some level.

 

[Maurice]

How much research do you really do for everything you buy? You'd probably be surprised by your own answer. And in any democracy or tolerance or Federation or nation or you name it, we all have to get along with people we don't agree with 100% of the time. Which goes back to your first question, since 100% is going to be impossible in that condition as well, on some level.

"You'd probably be surprised." No I fucking wouldn't.

We all act on what information we have gleaned. We can't know everything about every consumer-based decision we make, and the way supply chains go it's very difficult to even know who you might be unintentionally supporting. Certainly almost none of us make the effort. But once informed should we just shrug our shoulders and give them your money anyway? Do we give money to PACs which represent causes we are opposed to? Of course not.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

But once informed should we just shrug our shoulders and give them your money anyway? Do we give money to PACs which represent causes we are opposed to? Of course not.

Exactamundo.

 

[Armus]

Rodenberry said Ricardo Montalban "saved their ass" from hokey Moby Dick lines in Star Trek II. He was right that Montalban was the highlight of film, just as he was a highlight of Space Seed. Great actor.

 

[fireproof78]

But once informed should we just shrug our shoulders and give them your money anyway?

Apparently, with great TV shows, the answer is yes...

 

[Commishsleer]

Rodenberry said Ricardo Montalban "saved their ass" from hokey Moby Dick lines in Star Trek II. He was right that Montalban was the highlight of film, just as he was a highlight of Space Seed. Great actor.

He has that charisma, that 'presence'.
Sort of like Darth Vader. I'm not being disrespectful here but when Vader turned up everyone held their breath.
When Khan turned up you know Chekov had no chance.

It wasn't all about Montalban but if they had recast him I can't see the movie as being as great.

 

[Maurice]

Apparently, with great TV shows, the answer is yes...

If you mean Gene, he's long since stopped benefitting from any money you spend on Star Trek. I certainly wouldn't support any product that would benefit Card or John K or Cosby. Do I trash the character drawing that John K drew for me when I met him a dozen years back? As to if you can still separate works from their creators and enjoy said work, that's obviously a personal judgement and I'm not going to presume to decide that for anyone but myself.

 

[Timewalker]

I have friends who also think "Amazing Grace" was a terrible thing to play at a Vulcan;s funeral.
I disagree and think it was a great choice. Wasn't part of TWOK about Spock accepting himself, his human half. TWOK is littered with examples of Spock's (In can't think of a better way of saying this - I mean something between love and affection so I'm going to say) fondness for Kirk, McCoy, Saavik, the Enterprise, his crew.

Spock once was lost but now was found, was blind but now he sees. Spock accepted himself in TWOK, his friendships, his duties and responsibilities as a Starfleet Captain just like the hymn literally says.

Shatner was so great in the funeral scene. One of the greatest movie scenes in Star Trek IMO.

I don't care that it wasn't Vulcan enough. Spock didn't owe Vulcan anything. Funerals are not really for the dead. They are for the survivors. This is the way his friends (and real family) showed their respect to Spock

There's something about that song that has a powerful effect on people, even on those who are atheist.

I attended a concert back in the '90s, and one of the pieces presented was a lone piper playing "Amazing Grace" under a single spotlight.

By the end of the song, most of the audience was in tears.

...Kirk discovering that he had a son that had been kept secret from him by the mother...

Kirk already knew he had a son. As he said to Carol while they were in the Genesis cave, "I did what you asked, I stayed away...". So it wasn't that he didn't know of David's existence, he just hadn't met him.

Who the hell cares who he screwed.

His victims and their families cared.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Kirk already knew he had a son. As he said to Carol while they were in the Genesis cave, "I did what you asked, I stayed away...". So it wasn't that he didn't know of David's existence, he just hadn't met him.

And his very next line is, "Why didn't you tell me?" So Carol obviously kept something secret from Kirk. Even if he found out about the existence of David before TWOK, there was a time he didn't know.

KIRK: I did what you wanted. ...I stayed away. ...Why didn't you tell me?
CAROL: How can you ask me that? Were we together? Were we going to be? You had your world and I had mine. And I wanted him in mine, not chasing through the universe with his father. ... Actually, he's a lot like you. In many ways. Please tell me what you're feeling.
KIRK: There's a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years who's trying to kill me. You show me a son that'd be happy to help him. My son. ...My life that could have been, ...and wasn't. And what am I feeling? ...Old. ...Worn out.

Even though those lines were added to clarify whether or not Kirk knew about David, they're still pretty vague.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

The Kirk/David thing is an intriguing question, but I don't want to derail this thread, so I created a new thread in General Trek where we can discuss it.

 

[Jonesy]

Well, let's be fair, Spock wasn't really in any condition to be sorting out his funeral arrangements.

In all seriousness, it's kinda funny how basically the entire memo (aside from his comments about the funeral scene) is Roddenberry ranting that the script isn't true Star Trek without actually bothering to explain why. Makes me wonder if he already knew that his feedback was just going to be ignored, and decided to take the chance to blow off some steam.

This is kind of how I feel when I read this. I don't entirely get what Roddenberry's problems are, even if this is an early draft that wasn't used in the final film.

Edit: I had to chuckle when I saw this at the end of the letter: "Cc: Leonard Maizlish"

 

[Jonesy]

As for Gene's disdain for TWoK, I suspect he did have genuine creative issues with the direction Nick Meyer was taking the production, but ... Nick basically treated Gene like an interfering outsider and ignored him, for the most part.

That may be true, but if you had someone critiquing your work from outside of the direct creative process, and who perhaps may have not had constructive ideas or ideas which didn't work, wouldn't you perhaps find him someone who you didn't want to pay much attention to?

 

[TrickyDickie]

The letter to Gary Nardino that was linked to in the first post in this thread is only a small part of the story. Whether Nardino subsequently told Roddenberry to take the matter up directly with Bennett or whether Gene decided to do it anyway after all, the following is a 9-page letter from Roddenberry to Bennett just 11 days after the letter to Nardino. (Note at the end that Gene sent a copy to Nardino as well.) The letter gives quite a number of insights into the state of the script at that point, including some interesting specifics, and without having an actual copy of that script to peruse it's at least helpful in revealing some of the directions that elements in the story were taking:

 

[F. King Daniel]

I don't think Gene liked the character of David very much

A lot of that echoes posts here from fans about every new incarnation of Trek since Enterprise. Yes, I'm aware that shields in TOS "knew" a threat was coming and automatically switched on a couple of times preventing serious harm, but the way things happened in Wrath were far more dramatically satisfying that I've been overlooking it.

And as for there being no famine in space in the future... who wrote the Tarsus IV storyline?

 

[apepa]

It's just a combination of sour grapes and "visionary" Gene being pretty clueless when it came to what actually made "his" creation compelling.

The Spock death scene and the funeral that followed it were two of the best scenes in all the franchise. I remember watching it as a kid and thinking how pretty the tune on the bagpipes was. At the time I hadn't even heard of Amazing Grace, I just thought it was some beautiful music in a movie I really enjoyed.