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TNG after Roddenberry's Death

Vulcanian said:
When in the show did he die again? :vulcan:

I believe the 5th season episode Hero Worship was being filmed when the cast was informed on set that he had passed away. I think in was sometime in September 1991.
 
Re: 10/24/1991

Although as I recall from literature, his active involvement in the show had declined significantly before that. Only the first two seasons felt the full weight of his direction.

To be honest, I've got to agree with Squiggy regarding the dating of Roddenberry Trek. I really think the later years of TNG have aged better than the early years, and the later films better than TMP. TOS has appeal to me on a cheesy level and a storytelling level once you look past the corniness, but the production has aged very badly. TNG's first two seasons have suffered a similar fate in even less time, and it was the later Roddenberry-less years which developed TNG into the franchise spawning TV cash cow it became. And it was Nick Meyer and Leonard Nimoy's movies which saved the fledgling movie franchise.

all told, TNG was better off without the Great Bird.
 
Spider said:
Would you criticize the US Calvary in the 1800s for not riding into battle with tanks instead of horses?
.

No, as the US Calvary was limited to reality in the 1800s. Star Trek hasn't ever had that hindrance. Aside from "going faster than light" and the transporter (which we all know why it was made...had they had the shuttle set, we would've have ever gotten that), there isn't really anything that mind-blowing about TOS's tech.
 
Squiggyfm said:


That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

You're not. The very best TOS, frankly, could be credited to Gene Coon moreso than Gene Roddenberry. Yes, I know he created the show, had the 'vision' yadda yadda, but he wasn't a particularly good producer.

TNG improved substantially after he stopped being involved (around season 3).

If you want to get some sense of the absolute nightmare Roddenberry was to work with in the early TNG years, just read some of the statements from David Gerrold.
 
Squiggyfm said:
BEHOLD THE CAMERA OF THE FUTURE!
Behold.jpg

The remainder of your idiot bleating aside, what exactly is a device intended to focus photons emitted in the visible wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum supposed to look like? Are you expecting the laws of optics to change drastically sometime between now and the 23rd century? :rolleyes:

TGT
 
^ well, given that even today they can look like this, I imagine Squiggy would expect the technology to advance somewhat before the 23rd century.
 
Squiggyfm said:
Spider said:
Would you criticize the US Calvary in the 1800s for not riding into battle with tanks instead of horses?
.

No, as the US Calvary was limited to reality in the 1800s. Star Trek hasn't ever had that hindrance. Aside from "going faster than light" and the transporter (which we all know why it was made...had they had the shuttle set, we would've have ever gotten that), there isn't really anything that mind-blowing about TOS's tech.

If you were in high school in the 60s like me, watching this show on TV then, you would have thought differently at the time. Compare this to other scifi shows on TV at the time, and you will see how much this show stands out. In 1966, this show was incredible.
 
cultcross said:
well, given that even today they can look like this, I imagine Squiggy would expect the technology to advance somewhat before the 23rd century.

That thing has "300 lines of Resolution Color" according to this page. Who today would want their wedding video to look like one of those fuzzy, jerky, postage-stamp sized QuickTime movie trailers from the mid-1990s? :lol:

TGT
 
The God Thing said:
Squiggyfm said:
BEHOLD THE CAMERA OF THE FUTURE!
Behold.jpg

The remainder of your idiot bleating aside, what exactly is a device intended to focus photons emitted in the visible wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum supposed to look like? Are you expecting the laws of optics to change drastically sometime between now and the 23rd century? :rolleyes:

TGT

I would just expect a camera of the future to not look like a security camera from 40 years ago.

Call me crazy.
 
These shows are products of their time, Squiggyfm . It's what they had back then. Have you ever seen the original pilot The Cage? They have some sort of fax machine with paper coming out of it on a bridge console. Ever watched a 1950s scifi movie?

I don't see how you can criticize a production like this for just being what is was at the time.
 
I think it was better.

S3,S4,S5 were the peak when he didn't have the same amount of control that he did in the first two seasons.
 
Roddenberry distanced himself from TNG about halfway through the first season. Berman didn't have the title yet, but he was essentially in charge. Berman inherited chaos. GR had alienated most of the original staff with rewrites that made their scripts worse. His mental health was deteriorating.

According to David Gerrold, when asked the question, "What did Roddenberry write?" he wrote a draft of the writers' bible, written mostly by Gerrold, and he rewrote a few episodes, in addition to writing the non-Q part of Encounter at Farpoint (Fontana created Q).

So, using GR's death is an arbitrary marker. The real turning point is post-Piller. Otherwise, Seasons 1 and 2 were a dash of GR in the beginning and a mixture of chaos and confusion under Berman's direction.
 
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