Today's idea is to notice when someone qualifies their remarks.
The details are great for filling out the background, but it's not the reason the show exists and remains popular after 60 years.
You are replying to and quoted me saying "Part of the reason Star Trek became such a cultural staple is because it was largely able to withstand scrutiny, rewarding those who paid attention to the intricate details."
The first two words of that quote nullify your response. I didn't say it was
the reason.
The same thing happens here:
Are you joking? We've been picking Trek apart since the Sixties. One guy, Phil Farrand, made quite a career out of it.
That's ostensibly responding to "Star Trek provided more {consistency} than most any other science fiction setting for decades" . . . though I fail to see how it does so meaningfully. Just as an example, if I point out a set of paupers and note that one is much richer than the others, it hardly makes sense to feign shock that I'd call a pauper rich . . . because I didn't.
That said, I would argue that Star Trek through 2005 wasn't really a pauper, and is much more consistent than you or Farrand would tend to give it credit for, especially considering the forty years of production and varying mindsets involved. And, as I said, that's part of why it retained popularity.
You can't decry YATIs unless they stand out to begin with . . . though so many of what folks consider YATIs really aren't.
Believability and consistency aren't the same thing in fiction. Gene's rule was never about the minutiae.
On the contrary, consistent (if minimal) use of sci-fi lingo was specifically noted in the TOS writer's guide as something that could "encourage believability", since a "scattergun confusion of meaningless phrases only detracts from believability." For TNG's writer's guide (early on), technological consistency concepts begat, for example, this phrase: "story believability demands that our twenty-fifth-century technology be at least as capable as our twentieth-century technology".
Roddenberry's memo nuking an early version of Star Trek V spends a paragraph on its "glaring science flaws" including the speed of the Enterprise and the extent of UFP exploration before referencing character-related writing failings, ending with the admonition to "do something with the ingredient that is the hallmark of Star Trek.....believability." I always took that to apply to all the areas under nuclear attack.
I also seem to recall, but am currently out of time to locate, memos about maintaining good continuity and tech consistency because Star Trek fans had higher expectations (or were generally brighter, a conceit for both fans and the maker of that which they're a fan of) than was typical.
Yes, character motivation and such was certainly at the core of believability, for Roddenberry, but he was well aware of the other side of it, and so yes, his insistence on believability did include it. It wasn't primary, but then I never suggested it was.
