Roddenberry, Solow, & Justman

[Praetor Baldric]

That's some interesting history, Noname Given, but it doesn't address the point I was getting at, which was the way TNG's characters were required to be idealized, perfected people free of normal human foibles and conflicts because Roddenberry wanted to showcase his vision of an ideal future. By contrast, TOS's characters had plenty of flaws and conflicts, because TOS's Roddenberry was more interested in telling interesting stories than being a visionary. It goes without saying that he was doing it to make money in both cases, but the way he went about portraying characters and conflicts was very different.

I can't imagine 1987 Roddenberry allowing a story in which a Starfleet officer openly displays racism toward Mister Spock as 1966 Roddenberry allowed in "Balance of Terror."

Too bad he didn't. It would have given TNG's characters more depth. I always found the Terrans seemed more alien than the aliens on TNG.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Roddenberry made most of his living for a number of years on the college speakers' circuit. I saw him several times. I think it was during that time when he honed the personna that he'd present to fandom for the next several decades by enlarging on the image he and Whitfield created in The Making Of Star Trek: the idealist, the skeptical and independent thinker rebelling against the mediocrity of corporate groupthink in Hollywood and defying authority. His sure-fire applause lines included stuff like "I believe that all of you are much smarter than the executives in the studio boardrooms."

You can imagine that was just tailored for the college crowd in '72, '73, '74...basically, GR got good at flattering the audiences who paid his bills.

 

[Maurice]

Hell, TNG S3's "Best of Both Worlds (Part One)" was originally written as a sort of farewell FU - as most of the writting staff that wrote it had planned NOT to come back in Season 4 - so they left a 'mess' for the 'new guys'; but as GR' health was declining, and they found he was relinquishing a lot of control, for S4 - most came back, and were kicking themselves as they had to now write themselves out of the S3 cliffhanger.

That sound dubious. What the source of this supposed "FU"?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

It's not dubious, it's completely untrue.

Piller was in the normal process of renegotiating his contract, and he later said that he invested some of his thinking about that in Riker's behavior in this story. Early in the period when this was written it was possible that Stewart and/or Spinner might leave, and the storyline took that into account. But there was no "FU" or general rebellion there.

People seem unaware of the story vetting and script development process on shows like this. The image of a gaggle of staff writers shoving a script through the mail slot on a Friday and leaving production in the lurch while they hit Hamburger Hamlet for magaritas is ridiculous.