Roddenberry's Worst Ideas

[T'Girl]

I've started a new thread over at Miscellaneous (with a lovely poll), if anyone would like to move the discussion on Greece's apparent financial problems to that forum.

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=211624

 

[yousirname]

Causality.

That's what I'm saying, though - you don't establish causality. You just say that some policies were implemented and then point to Greece's current problems. You haven't actually made a case that they're causally linked, you've just said so.

 

[sonak]

RALPH: It's about power.
PICARD: Power to do what?
RALPH: To control your life, your destiny.
PICARD: That kind of control is an illusion.

Offenhouse is a pathetic little creature for whom money is mainly a means for power.

Right in front of you and you missed it. For Offenhouse money is a means of controlling his own life and destiny.

RALPH: That may be all right for you, but I am not willing to allow my fate to be decided by others.

Far from being pathetic, Offenhouse philosophy is to be respected and emulated. He's a man who is unwilling to be simply carried along by will of others, or events that he has the ability to control. This is the reason that he found a way to place himself in a position to provide Picard with essential information.

RALPH: They haven't got a clue. They're hoping you know, but they're too arrogant to ask.
PICARD: ... it's a correct assessment.

Without Offenhouse's presence on the bridge, the confrontation with the Romulan ship easily could have resulted in a battle, or a war.

Indeed, a more enlightened humanity, which strives to better itself, is not even remotely a bad idea.

The question is, is what Roddenberry considered to be enlightened in fact "better." Or is it a advancement in the wrong direction?

One example would be a society that fully expects a child to be indifferent to the death of their parent.

Personally, I would say that this is a society that is "progressing" in a wrong direction. Just because you label a society as progressive, doesn't mean that it's progress is in a positive or beneficial direction.

That sound more like Humans are being treated like children, being provided for. The opposite of grown out their infancy, they would be returning to it.

Uhura might not have been offened because Negress was not used as a pejorative in her culture.

In Brazil "the N-word" is used fairly commonly and is neutral, because it isn't used as a pejorative, it's simply used the way an American would use the word black.

You want to see Uhura react to words, watch her face when Mister Adventure suggest she getting old and is in the downward segment of her career.

But this is a assumption on your (and others) part, not directly supported by anything on the show. Who actual grew up with a replicator in their home ... Keiko. And there no indication that replicator use is cost-free, so what post-scarcity environment?

... even if you're right, and a chunk of society decides "screw volunteerism, I'm going to lay on the couch and eat flamin' hot cheetos and drink root beer," SO WHAT? It's a society of abundant resources.

Not what I meant by a societial change. If a significant portion of your society, the portion that has previously volunteered their efforts says "Okay, the whole volunteering thing was cool for a while, but if you want my efforts (skills, training, education, experience) then I want financial compensation." Off world money is fine, if that's all you got to offer. Because I can take my abilities elsewhere.

I'm one of the best doctors (engineers, educators, thinkers, etc.) on this planet and it is a joke that I have the same lifestyle as someone who dropped out of school when they were sixteen to sit on a beach, surf and screw.

What are you going to do? Grab some "self-improvement artist" off the street to work the antimatter reactor that powers the entire west coast? There's a good idea.

Maybe this gal wants to move her family into a penthouse on top of one of those tall towers in San Fransisco (not everyone gets those), and a nice sailing yacht for the social season (Scotty had to buy his), and a private Vulcan tutor for her children (and out of that government school).

She and those like her are busting their asses, while others sit on theirs. Why shouldn't they be recognized for their efforts? But wait you say, she has been indoctrinated[ since childhood to think a certain way, problem there is Human beings don't alway respond to being told how they should think. The volunteer your abilities for no compensation thing only work as long as the people in your society who are doing the actual work go along with it. If they can shop their skills elsewhere in the Federation, another Member world, then you have to think about how difficult it will be to replace them, and how long it will take.

We have large people now who "live on the dole" in some way or another and it hasn't brought the market economy crashing down.

Haven't been watching the news out of Greece for a while, have you?

as others have pointed out, that's not what caused Greece's economic problems. But of course the way the Western media has largely covered it, I'm not surprised that's the mainstream perception.

As to what you're arguing, I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, but do you mean a brain drain? A large group of the "productive class" "going Galt?"(I hope the reference is clear?)

I don't think that's a likely scenario in a society of highly-educated, highly-trained professionals. The "productive class" would not be as artificially limited as it is today by access to education and the like.

 

[Nightdiamond]

I am curious as to why some people interpret TNG as preachy, and others don't.

Season 1 of TNG is infamously full of monologs about how shitty 20th century humans were (i.e. the audience is currently) and how great the 24th century people are now. And then how much a given planet's race is like the 20th century humans, and thusly how great the 24th century humans are in comparison.

True, season 1 poured it on heavily and usually in places you didn't expect.

You could find it in the ordinary non obvious dialog and not just the famous ones everyone know about.

One way I interpret if a scene is preachy, is if the person's face turns serious and stern when talking about what should be a light subject .

When Picard explains what Starfleet is, he could have laughed and said, "Silly, Starfleet is much more than that!"

Instead, he looks very offended and with a stern look says "Starfleet is NOT the military!"

And then there's the unasked for extended commentary on a simple topic

RIKER: From what I have already seen of our "guests", there is very little to redeem them. In fact, it makes me wonder, how our species ever survived the twenty-first century.

So far all we saw a greedy man, a funny, polite country drunk, and a scared woman.

I think what Riker said was true in general, but as far the guests were concerned that was harsh.

Implying that all 24th century humans were fearless, unselfish, intelligent, with no psychological issues whatsoever.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

I find it interesting you guys think the preachy stuff is limited to one episode (the most blatant I'll give you). Roddenberry (I gather it was him, since he reportedly did a re-write on nearly every Season 1 episode) seemed to slip it in to many episodes in less than blatant ways. At every turn in Season 1 is some kind of underhanded crack at 20th century humans expense.

Nightdiamond's post explained it quite well, suddenly there would be an extended diatribe that no one asked for and wasn't really called for in the situation, etc.

The back and forth with Q about being savages, etc. from Encounter at Farpoint is a big one of course. Picard takes great offense at all this mostly silly posturing by Q. Picard's reaction seems like it should have been similar to Uhura's reaction to fake Lincoln's use of a dead term that was once controversial, which is to say, it shouldn't have bothered him much, and he should have mostly just found it ignorant and moved on (not unlike Kirk finding Trelane to be a bit silly and ignorant thanks to his forgetting to compensate for the time light travels), but of course then we wouldn't of had half of the pilot episode plot.

Go back and look at how episodes in Season 1 call many of the societies the crew encounter to be like "20th century Earth", others are just implied, and then basically there are lessons to be taught to these people by the great 24th century crew.

ex.
Ligonians from Code of Honor
Frengi's are old Earth "Yankee Traders"
The society on Angel One is literally said to be like 20th century Earth aside from dominant gender role flip/flip.
Justice
The whole thinly veiled '80s cocaine plotline in Symbiosis

The preaching exposition seems terribly ethnocentric (Federation-centric), for lack of a better term, and really kind of counter to the Starfleet mission, that kind of exposition is really an odd thing to put in to the mouths of people who were supposed to have moved on from being petty.

 

[Jonas Grumby]

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere (perhaps in The Star Trek Writer's Guide or maybe in The Making of Star Trek) that one of Roddenberry's explicit edicts for TOS was that the main characters be written as basically modern-day men--complete with flaws, weaknesses, and even eccentricities--so that viewers could easily identify with them. That's certainly the way they were portrayed in most, if not all, of the episodes.

By the time TNG rolled around, something had obviously changed. I think, by that time, Roddenberry had so bought into (or, at least, decided to exploit) the fan bullshit that he was some kind of great visionary that he saw his core audience not as the general public but rather as an elite clique of enlightened "Trekkers" who liked to think of themselves as members of Roddenberry's "evolved humanity" and looked down their noses at "20th century man."

 

[Casas9425]

"Gene Roddenberry couldn't write for sour owl poop"

-Harlan Ellison

 

[SpHeRe31459]

By the time TNG rolled around, something had obviously changed. I think, by that time, Roddenberry had so bought into (or, at least, decided to exploit) the fan bullshit that he was some kind of great visionary that he saw his core audience not as the general public but rather as an elite clique of enlightened "Trekkers" who liked to think of themselves as members of Roddenberry's "evolved humanity" and looked down their noses at "20th century man."

Exactly the point I was trying to make a few posts back. The more you hear about Roddenberry's state of mind during TNG, the more it becomes clear he was deep into buying his own hype.

The most recent/best example of this is the new documentaries included with the Blu-ray sets. The season 1 set is filled with the staff from S1 who (to varying degrees of politeness) say as much, DC Fontana and David Gerrold are pretty clear about it as I recall. Others say similar things: Ron D. Moore literally calls it out in his commentary on The Bonding on the S3 set (and a politely implies it in his interview for Trek Nation if I recall correctly, I'd have to re-watch it to be sure), I believe Melinda Snodgrass implies it as well in the S2 docs.

 

[Nightdiamond]

What's even more ironic is when later attitudes clash with the Utopian ones from early seasons or shows.

Early in Trek it goes out to claim that humans are completely open and accepting--no prejudices. There seems to be many types of inter-species relationships .

Does that mean a 24th century person wont let gender stand in the way of attraction?

Beverly rejects her former lover Odan because he's now in a female body. At first it's obvious she anticipates meeting him again when she assumed it would be a male.

She actually admitted she couldn't allow herself to be attracted to him anymore.

But, since humans don't judge or care about appearance anymore, does that mean Beverly should have went ahead and had a relationship with regardless of her gender?

Why couldn't she just be attracted to this woman the same way humans are OK with dating people from other planets/species?

 

[Third Nacelle]

You're attracted to who you're attracted to. If Beverly doesn't physically respond to a female, that's not indicative of prejudice - that's her biology. She still loved Odan, but love isn't always enough.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

You're attracted to who you're attracted to. If Beverly doesn't physically respond to a female, that's not indicative of prejudice - that's her biology. She still loved Odan, but love isn't always enough.

Right, it in-and-itself isn't an issue really.

It's not like The Outcast or Cogenitor which have more clear gender and/or sexual preference issues/allegories.

It's no different than her feeling weird that Odan moved to Riker, which is super awkward and she's very reluctant to move forward with him as Riker. Odan tries really really hard to get her to keep up the relationship while in Riker. The question becomes then would she still like Odan in any body she doesn't personally find attractive? Say an ugly or older man, I assume she'd eventually come to the same conclusion.

As has been said on another site. She's expected to be an omni-sexual when very few people are that open, people generally feel attracted to who they are attracted to both physically and mentally, and it doesn't suddenly change.

Of course if you go with the TNG-era Roddenberry ideology it does seem like by extension of what else he espoused then Beverly shouldn't be bothered by the changes... just like Jeremy Aster shouldn't be bothered by the loss of his mother, just like how no one is supposed to have any major interpersonal issues, etc. etc. People are supposed to be so well adjusted they take everything in stride.

 

[Third Nacelle]

I would guess the Trill are much more sexually flexible (no pun intended). I wonder how many human lovers Captain Boday has had?

As for everybody calling BS on Roddenberry's vision of enlightened humanity, think of this: Star Trek is farther in the future than slavery is in the past. If you don't think it's realistic to portray humans as bettering ourselves and socially evolving, take a frakkin' look around you.

 

[Anji]

Wow, you people really need a life!

 

[SpHeRe31459]

As for everybody calling BS on Roddenberry's vision of enlightened humanity, think of this: Star Trek is farther in the future than slavery is in the past. If you don't think it's realistic to portray humans as bettering ourselves and socially evolving, take a frakkin' look around you.

Again is anyone really against that?

It's the odd extremes that Roddenberry seemed to take things to about interpersonal relationships, not the general idea that people can get past the obstacles of today. Gene seemed to be in love with aspects of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Which says that once other needs such as the basic needs to survive are taken care of a person is free to become a self-actualized person. Which is really great and something to strive for. One of the things that we keep going 'round about in Season 1 is how our crew pretty much said that verbatim to anyone who would listen. How about instead of all this exposition, we saw people who were just living their lives as an example of people who have a very good shot at self-actualization?

Where Gene's newer (post-TOS) outlook starts to become unrealistic is that it seems that in his mind by being self-actualized suddenly nothing would affect you ever. No external events seemed like it should bother anyone. And of course there is some truth to this, hypothetically feeling self-actualized a person would generally feel good about his/herself and not generally feel threatened or bothered by other people who are at a different place in their lives or are different personalities, etc.

However, when you something happens that affects getting one of the lower needs met in the pyramid of needs, it can become harder to feel like a self-actualized person. Those other levels include things not addressed in the predominantly economic/social problems exposition that we hear from Roddenberry's mouthpieces in Season 1. For example love and belonging needs are not met in-and-of-itself by having a society that has no need of money and shares resources and has advanced medicine, etc. That would meet physiological and safety needs. But would have little to do with being loved or fostering a person's self concept/esteem.

Obviously these all interrelate, but it doesn't necessarily follow from one to other that suddenly no one would have personality conflicts or feel anxiety about a situation or person or place, etc.

People have different temperaments (which is both a biologically and socially influenced trait), people have different predispositions to things like addiction. These are genetic traits that won't just go away, unless we resort to eugenics and we all know how Trek feels about that.

I love the idea of the world we see in the TNG-era in general, and I truly believe we as humans really could get to something close to what Trek portrays.

It's just what became of Roddenberry's own ideas and how staunchly he felt that no major issues on almost any scale (Federation-wide all the way to interpersonal) would be too much to handle for people. Yet ironically he had a therapist in the crew, specifically for people to work through issues to keep bettering themselves and emotionally feeling safe enough to continue on their self-actualization course. So the idea was there, but it was like he couldn't bring himself to think that people might still have some issues.

We're not perfect, we'll never be. We can be better, perhaps a lot better than we are now. In fact the overly homogenous, "whitewashed" place he was taking it to is almost a reversal of IDIC, because everyone is nearly the same. What happened to celebrating and incorporating diversity?

Weather he meant to or not, TNG Season 1 is almost the exact opposite of the man who said this in 1971:
“If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear.”

Even as recent as 1985 I love this quote from his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony:
"I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We're still just a child creature, we're still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We're growing up, we're moving into adolescence now. When we grow up – man, we're going to be something!"

So if you extend his metaphor, by the 24th century humanity is in adulthood. But adults aren't perfect either, they've learned a lot about the world, and hopefully have some more wisdom and common sense than children or teens would.

So in the end it seems that Roddenberry's best and worst idea was what he made out of his generally very positive and hopeful philosophy of humanity in the future.

It seems his philosophy really did best when others contributed to it (i.e. Gene Coon in TOS and the team led by Michael Pillar on TNG). Which kind of circles back to IDIC doesn't it?

 

[Third Nacelle]

It seems his philosophy really did best when others contributed to it (i.e. Gene Coon in TOS and the team led by Michael Pillar on TNG). Which kind of circles back to IDIC doesn't it?

Agreed. I know season 1 can be pretty preachy and finger-pointing at times, and the cast is pretty whitebread until you get to know them, but I don't attribute that to Roddenberry's ideas about an enlightened humanity. I attribute it to how his ideas were implemented.

Besides, the first season of most TV series is usually pretty shaky.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

I attribute it to how his ideas were implemented.

I see what you're saying, however, since Roddenberry himself had such control over S1 [especially], and no network bosses to report to since it was syndicated (just had to keep making the franchise a cash cow for Paramount's head honchos to be happy), one could make the argument that it was a (near) direct expression of what he thought at the time.

Besides, the first season of most TV series is usually pretty shaky.

No question about that.

 

[Maurice]

Wow, you people really need a life!

Pot, meet kettle...again.

 

[T'Girl]

... think of this: Star Trek is farther in the future than slavery is in the past.

Given that slavery, forced labor, Human trafficking are present today around the world, and unfortunately aren't even a single day in the past, this would be a fair statement.

If you don't think it's realistic to portray humans as bettering ourselves and socially evolving, take a frakkin' look around you.

The question remains, what constitutes "better." Which of Roddenberry's ideas would be a improvement over what we are now, and which others would result in a future Humanity that is worse than we are at present. It isn't a package deal, we can pick and choose, divide Roddenberry's various ideas and place them in separate categories.

So in the end it seems that Roddenberry's best and worst idea was what he made out of his generally very positive and hopeful philosophy of humanity in the future.

His idea for the optimistic future shown in TOS I though was one of his better ideas, TOS was optimistic through showing that mankind simply survived to that point, that (from the perspective of the 1960's) we weren't going to destroy ourselves, we were going to prosper and grow.

Staying away from future Earth was also a excellent idea.

 

[Nightdiamond]

You're attracted to who you're attracted to. If Beverly doesn't physically respond to a female, that's not indicative of prejudice - that's her biology. She still loved Odan, but love isn't always enough.

Right, it in-and-itself isn't an issue really.

It's not like The Outcast or Cogenitor which have more clear gender and/or sexual preference issues/allegories.

That's the interesting thing about that episode--the sexuality part was a non issue, it was more about a romance-of-the week.

And yet there was a subtle sexuality issue with Beverly saying, "I can't be attracted to you anymore because you are another woman".

Beverly's choice was seen as a normal choice--people are normally attracted to the opposite sex right? -Which means Beverly being disappointed that Odan was now a female was normal.

I saw it as normal too. It's only now, when you re-watch certain episodes do you began to see certain things between the lines.

The issue being that humans are so open minded, they dont judge by outward appearance and they think little of dating a very different looking alien.

Up until then, Riker was attracted to very feminine looking women, so when an androgynous person with no figure comes on to him he immediately responds.

Riker's reaction suggested that future humans concept of attractiveness is not based on outward looks because they evolved out of that.

Based on his history maybe he should have said, 'sorry, you're not my type'?

 

[Third Nacelle]

Well I don't know how much Roddenberry was involved this episode that aired five months after his death. Up until The Outcast, Riker always had the same sexual tastes as Kirk.

I believe that we could perhaps evolve past basing attraction on appearance up to a point, but there will always be people who have certain types.

It depends on: How much of what attracts us to a certain person is cultural/learned? How much is physical? How much is pure biochemistry?

When we see humans romantically involved with aliens (such as B'Elanna's parents), they're always attractive, human looking aliens. You never see a human with a Tholian or a Nausicaan. We can change, but I don't know that we could change that much.