Straczynski comment on holodecks - request for quote

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

I seem to remember hearing a quote from J. Michael Straczynski a long time ago to the effect of how he thought that the writers of star trek must be creatively bankrupt if they felt that they had to use the holodeck to tell an interesting story despite the fact that the ship was supposed to be on the edge of the unexplored galaxy.

I've been trying to remember the exact quote - does anyone have it? Thanks!

P.S. - while I feel he had a point, I'm not trying to troll or anything. I just want the quote. Just wanted to clarify.

 

[patlandness]

I think it was something like: "Wah! Babylon 5 will never have as much a cultural impact as Modern Trek, so I'm going to slag it off in every single interview I do."

I'm paraphrasing, so take it as one will.

 

[firehawk12]

And umm, Xbox 360 is better than PS3!

 

[AdmiralGarak]

patlandness said:
I think it was something like: "Wah! Babylon 5 will never have as much a cultural impact as Modern Trek, so I'm going to slag it off in every single interview I do."

I'm paraphrasing, so take it as one will.

Sour grapes. Trek did about a dozen holodeck-malfunction stories over three series. The majority of them were fairly clever and popular, despite the grumbling that usually accompanied the concept.

 

[number6]

patlandness said:
I think it was something like: "Wah! Babylon 5 will never have as much a cultural impact as Modern Trek, so I'm going to slag it off in every single interview I do."

^^ F&cking Brilliant!! (and so true.)

 

[Mordock]

The quote comes from the pitch document Straczynski and Bryce Zabel submitted to Paramount in 2004 for a TOS reboot, and it's archived on Zabel's blog. It's got many pointed but not vituperative criticisms of the Berman era (the simile of Trek being a Porsche that stays in the garage all the time lest it be scratched was particularly striking).

 

[Kegek]

^
True. It also contains a pitch that's an odd mishmash of recycled B5 ideas (the mystery surrounding the appointance of the commander, an ancient foe), Star Trek essentials, and a basic misunderstanding of what 'exploration' is all about. At one stage Star Trek was grounded in the reality of space, and space, with its vast expanse, is only natural to explore. With subsequent Trek - and Babylon 5 - recasting space as basically fictional geopolitics writ large it may not make much sense in there, but it did in the earlier conception.

patlandness pretty much summed it up, though.

 

[Angel4576]

^^ It's hard to imagine any Straczynski-inspired Trek being anywhere near as mediocre/woeful as Berman/Braga Trek in later years.

DS9 was the best that modern Trek had to offer, and B5 topped that IMO.

 

[Anwar]

Eh, B5 suffered from too much "Everyone's gonna act exactly like 20th century people do, even though their society has had contact with various alien cultures and has tech we didn't meaning they shouldn't be exactly like 20th century people."

Unfortunately, 20th century people like peple similar to them so much they never think these things out.

 

[Angel4576]

Compare and contrast B5's human society with that of 24th century human society in Star Trek. I think it's fairly evident which is the more likely representation of how we'll look in two or three hundred years.

B5 models its approach on how society was impacted by the discovery of new civilisations here on Earth. We exploited them, were fearful of anything different, and ultimately based much of our relationships upon what was in it for us and what we could get out of them.

A fairer reflection than pipe-dreaming of how we'd 'like' things to be in the future. Why would human society model the pollyanna society as portrayed in TNG in just a few hundred years? Has society changed that much in the last few hundred? Certainly not outside of the industrliased world.

Star Trek assumes that our technological and sociological developments curves are in tandem, which they aren't, even now. Technology will no doubt continue to increase at a rate far in excess of how we develop sociologically, which gives rise to one of B5's key themes, the mis-use of technology that we're clearly not ready for.

The Star Trek universe, for the most part, is an ideal. It is a hopeful reflection of where people would like to be, at a time where humanity has outgrown its previous petty limitations. Whilst this is a noble view and a worthy goal, the belief that it'll be happening in the short term is incredibly naive.

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

Mordock said:it's archived on Zabel's blog

Are you sure that's the one? I think I recall the line from someone's sig on here and its not at all like the line from the blog.

 

[Kegek]

^
I'm pretty sure the sig was taken from the document, IIRC.

Angel4576 said:
^^ It's hard to imagine any Straczynski-inspired Trek being anywhere near as mediocre/woeful as Berman/Braga Trek in later years.

True. It had its heart in the right place insofar as bringing actual authors onboard (he name-drops Anne Rice and Kurt Vonnegut). But his actual ideas in the pitch are either obvious or uninspired. It's a might-have-been, in any case - one could only have judged it by seeing it.

 

[Angel4576]

^^ This is very true.

Straczynski's strength has always been the higher concept, series-spanning arcs. If only they could combine that with the characterisation of someone like Joss Whedon, we'd all get a series that would cream pretty much everything else in the field.

 

[Navaros]

I agree with JMS about Trek's use of holodecks being total crap and wasted opportunities.

However, I've recently started watching Babylon 5 and have been surprised to learn that Babylon 5 is also filled with useless standalone filler episodes which contain worthless, holodeck-ish stories which are hardly much better than Trek's holodeck stories.

Some examples of this crap which is present on Babylon 5 based on me having watched the first 3.5 seasons of Bablyon 5: Space disease of the week; space monster of the week; psychotic human or humanoid alien of the week/murder mystery of the week ---all three of which have been used extensively to create worthless standalone filler episodes on B5. One episode completely wasted on a traumatized guy thinking he was King Arthur and going around the station threatening everyone with his excalibur sword --- thereby creating his very own holodeck in his mind and wasting all that screen-time using it for the whole episode, etc. etc.

My point is that although JMS has a good point about holodeck stories, if his own show is scrutinized, then much the same criticism can also be perfectly given against it as well. A bit of a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

 

[Anwar]

It's even the same with NuBSG. All those scenes where the chars talk in their heads or have "visions" are pretty much holodeck stories as well. But for some reason everyone keeps saying that it makes the chars "deep" when it's really just Moore doing "no-tech Holodeck" stories.

As for B5 and Trek, the difference between the two was "The Great Burn". In B5 the Great Burn wiped out the old civilization and Earth became a paradise after that, but it happened centuries after B5. In Trek the "Great Burn" (WWIII) happened before everything in the show so they already went through the "Old civilization gone" phase.

 

[Kegek]

^
The King Arthur episode was essentially a rehash of the guy searching for the Holy Grail in the first season. Right down to the Minbari respect for his bizarre belief. It's B5's own unique sci-fi cliche: Arthurian Legend stories! JMS's fondness for the tradition is obvious.

 

[Angel4576]

^^ Let's be fair though, B5 never did anything approaching the levels of Fair Haven.....

 

[David cgc]

Anwar said:
It's even the same with NuBSG. All those scenes where the chars talk in their heads or have "visions" are pretty much holodeck stories as well. But for some reason everyone keeps saying that it makes the chars "deep" when it's really just Moore doing "no-tech Holodeck" stories.

Did you just equate Baltar waking up in a pile of skulls and being told his entire species was a group of lying baby-killers with "The Big Goodbye" and all the other "The crew has fun playing a fantasy game, but then the game turns deadly" holodeck episodes?

As for B5 and Trek, the difference between the two was "The Great Burn". In B5 the Great Burn wiped out the old civilization and Earth became a paradise after that, but it happened centuries after B5. In Trek the "Great Burn" (WWIII) happened before everything in the show so they already went through the "Old civilization gone" phase.

There's no evidence Earth became a paradise after or because of the Great Burn. That was, what, 1,000 years after the show? And then the next time period jumped to was one million years later? Earth could've gone through five hundred great burns in that time.

 

[Anwar]

David cgc said:

Anwar said:
It's even the same with NuBSG. All those scenes where the chars talk in their heads or have "visions" are pretty much holodeck stories as well. But for some reason everyone keeps saying that it makes the chars "deep" when it's really just Moore doing "no-tech Holodeck" stories.

Did you just equate Baltar waking up in a pile of skulls and being told his entire species was a group of lying baby-killers with "The Big Goodbye" and all the other "The crew has fun playing a fantasy game, but then the game turns deadly" holodeck episodes?

As for B5 and Trek, the difference between the two was "The Great Burn". In B5 the Great Burn wiped out the old civilization and Earth became a paradise after that, but it happened centuries after B5. In Trek the "Great Burn" (WWIII) happened before everything in the show so they already went through the "Old civilization gone" phase.

There's no evidence Earth became a paradise after or because of the Great Burn. That was, what, 1,000 years after the show? And then the next time period jumped to was one million years later? Earth could've gone through five hundred great burns in that time.

That first bit, I was referring more to stuff like Adama having head-flashes of his wife and things, or Six and Baltar walking through the Basestar corridors and imagining them as forests and beaches and other crap.

The Great Burn was 500 years after B5 ended, I think. It took a lot longer to fix up the place since they didn't have any off-world help aside from a few Rangers doing things really slowly and were still a divided people. In Trek the First Contact united most of humanity (aside from some regions of Asia that were left pretty barbaric for a while) and they weren't "cut off from the stars" so it was easier for them.

And there was that talk of how "we're rebuilding Earth but better than before", so I took that as proof they were going to get their sh*t together after nearly destroying themselves (any prior "brushes with death" Earth brought on itself in B5 don't compare to the Great Burn).

 

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

The Squire of Gothos said:

Mordock said:it's archived on Zabel's blog

Are you sure that's the one? I think I recall the line from someone's sig on here and its not at all like the line from the blog.

Maybe I'm missing what you're referring to, but I see two references to the holodeck on that page and neither one is the one I'm thinking of. Anyone else know the one I'm talking about. I think he used the word f***ing in the quote, but I don't know for sure.