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why does it matter if the Roddenberry vision is unrealistic?

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indolover

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DS9 was tops, and I guess departed to some extent from the Roddenberry vision.

But does it matter if the Roddenberry vision is not realistic? Does any art form have to be wholly realistic, if art is fundamentally about abstractions?

In the Pale Moonlight is a top episode, but I am ambivalent about it. I love its acting and writing, but hate the fact it signalled a conscious departure from the Roddenberry vision.

Another thing is that Gene/The Great Bird most likely wasn't silly. He probably knew that humanity is just as much cruel as it is benevolent. However, due to it being art, he emphasised it as something better to hope for/aspire to.
 
In my opinion, everyone who has major problems with Roddenberry's vision should simply stay away from Star Trek instead of rewriting it to your own liking. The key points about human society in Star Trek are just like key points about technology in Star Trek, just like they travel at warp speeds, use antimatter/matter reactions as energy source, fire photon torpedoes, use transporter, have replicators, phasers and holodecks, their society has no need for money, Earth is a paradise without any wars, poverty or diseases, humans have developed into wiser beings, etc... that is a given in the Trek universe. If you disagree with that, then write something else.

The way it was handled in Deep Space Nine was a smart one. They accepted the vision and key elements, but they tested how they would hold up against new threats. How does an individual in that perfect society react when he's confronted with extraordinary circumstances? That's was very good.



Nobody would go in and write new stories that introduce technology and firearms into the Lord of the Rings universe just because it's a lot cooler than magic and swords in his opinion.
 
What I liked about DS9 is the fact it constantly questioned that utopia image of earth that TNG had ingrained in the series. I myself was very put off at times by the TNG crew's elitist attitudes towards earlier humanity especially in that first season. As Sisko said "It's easy to be a saint in paradise."
 
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i just think people need to take it with a pinch of salt, and whether or not it's realistic is missing the point.

It's like dismissing Superman or Spiderman as unrealistic, since an alien to comes to Earth as an infant and has superhuman abilities due to the Sun's rays is unlikely.
 
Which Roddenberry vision are we talking about? Because TOS showed Humans to be flawed beings, still prone to the same faillings of today's mankind. However, it also showed that, with effort and perseverance, Humanity could build a better world. That was what Star Trek was about. That in early TNG that vision of Star Trek was transformed into a "We're all evolved now" fairy tale should not have hindered the DS9 writing staff.

In TOS, Kirk chooses not to kill the Gorn. In early TNG, Picard would have probably said that he had evolved beyond such emotions, and felt no need for revenge or had any kind of blood lust.

Which is better from a dramatic and philosophical point of view? To face tentation, and through sheer force of will, manage to avoid it? Or being simply incapable of being tempted, therefore removing any possible danger?
 
Praetorian said:
Which Roddenberry vision are we talking about? Because TOS showed Humans to be flawed beings, still prone to the same faillings of today's mankind. However, it also showed that, with effort and perseverance, Humanity could build a better world. That was what Star Trek was about. That in early TNG that vision of Star Trek was transformed into a "We're all evolved now" fairy tale should not have hindered the DS9 writing staff.

In TOS, Kirk chooses not to kill the Gorn. In early TNG, Picard would have probably said that he had evolved beyond such emotions, and felt no need for revenge or had any kind of blood lust.

Which is better from a dramatic and philosophical point of view? To face tentation, and through sheer force of will, manage to avoid it? Or being simply incapable of being tempted, therefore removing any possible danger?
Click to expand...

Exactly. TNG (the first two seasons of it anyway) was Roddenberry vision 2.0.
 
indolover said:
i just think people need to take it with a pinch of salt, and whether or not it's realistic is missing the point.

It's like dismissing Superman or Spiderman as unrealistic, since an alien to comes to Earth as an infant and has superhuman abilities due to the Sun's rays is unlikely.
Click to expand...
I see this problem often, in various mediums. Some people confuse "realism" with "believably." The distinction between the two is especially important in sci-fi and fantasy, in which the former need only be maintained when doing so helps to support the latter. But if internal consistency is maintained and the world remains believable within whatever rules have been established for it, then it's in the clear, whether or not it's "realistic" by our standards.

CorporalCaptain said:
Praetorian said:
Which Roddenberry vision are we talking about? Because TOS showed Humans to be flawed beings, still prone to the same faillings of today's mankind. However, it also showed that, with effort and perseverance, Humanity could build a better world. That was what Star Trek was about. That in early TNG that vision of Star Trek was transformed into a "We're all evolved now" fairy tale should not have hindered the DS9 writing staff.

In TOS, Kirk chooses not to kill the Gorn. In early TNG, Picard would have probably said that he had evolved beyond such emotions, and felt no need for revenge or had any kind of blood lust.

Which is better from a dramatic and philosophical point of view? To face tentation, and through sheer force of will, manage to avoid it? Or being simply incapable of being tempted, therefore removing any possible danger?
Click to expand...

Exactly. TNG (the first two seasons of it anyway) was Roddenberry vision 2.0.
Click to expand...
Yeah. While I love TNG (it's just barely edged out by DS9 as my favorite Trek show), I consider the first season to be quite bad, and specifically in terms of that preachy, over-the-top holier-than-thou garbage, it's probably the single worst season of the entire franchise. I've always maintained that TNG as a whole isn't nearly so bad about that particular aspect as that first season is (and the second season as well, to a lesser degree). I'm no huge fan of TOS, but I respect it for laying the groundwork, and frankly, "Roddenberry's TOS/Roddenberry's TOS vision" is far superior to "Roddenberry's TNG/Roddenberry's TNG vision". The less direct influence and control Roddenberry had over TNG, the better the show got. Roddenberry was clearly a good writer, and of course the setting and structure for Trek as a whole exists thanks to him, but some of his ideas (especially during the early TNG/early-mid TOS movies eras) were just plain awful.

That said, among all the shows, I do think DS9 struck the best overall balance of optimism vs. skepticism/realism/pessimism/ism ism ism. It maintained the basic concept of "Humans, on the whole, are much better, much wiser, and just overall much nicer people in Trek than in real life", but it smartly discarded any notions that Humans (or ANY sentient lifeform) should be regarded as "flawless."
 
What made DS9 so appealing to me was that it wasn't ideal. Utopia requires everyone to be perfect. DS9 confronted the reality that everyone wasn't. By this virtue it was more dramatic and had much more "human" characters and plots.
 
I was under the impression that TNG is Roddenberry's IDEAL future for humanity not TOS. Granted TNG takes the best things from TOS and improves it. The first season had to find it's footing as a show. I forgive it because I enjoy the season for being uncanny. However DS9 had the benefit of having TNG writers from the very beginning pen the show. TNG being in it's 6th season when DS9 debuted. They had a working formula for how to contruct episodes. While season 1 of DS9 has some good episodes I 'm not really a fan of it. TNG's we are evolved humans thing might be a little prentious, but it is nothing compared to the over the top preachyness of the Bajorans. Not just Kira but every freaking one of them 'screw the Federation, you are infidels who don't believe in the Prohets, I want my dignity and my respect, Cardassians did this and Cardassians did that'. Shit was intolerable, and I never and still don't care for the Bajoran's plight or their complaints. The whole first season building up to a coup of Bajor by the Cardassians turned me off. Kai Winn stories, and the deus ex Prophets and their Orbs also I never liked.

However that's they way DS9 was meant to be set up. Story takes place on the edge of space in a remote region, with preachy aliens who hate Starfleet, Space Nazi's (not those dumb Na'kuhl from ENT) the Cardassian's whose occupation of Bajor and treatment of the Bajoans resembles the Nazi's treatment of the Jews in Germany, the power empire of the Dominion, and the Starfleet officers who were unlucky enough to be assigned on this space station. The utopian ideal was going to be stretched thin and as far as it could go with these circumstances. This is DS9's greatest strength. TNG showed us the bright future, DS9 tears it all down and shows us what maintaining that future costs and why it's worth fighting for.

Toward the end of the seventh season I did feel that DS9 was taking Trek to places it didn't need to go. The final episode's 800 million dead on Cardassia Prime alone, in combination with the millions of casualties from the War, but after seven season it made a great story. Why Berman never sanctioned a true TNG crossover with DS9 during the Dominon War is beyond me and a grand misstep.
 
The problem with "Roddenberry's vision" is not that it's unrealistic, it's with the way that "Roddenberry's vision" is used by both fans and studio execs to needlessly put a stranglehold on the writers. That lead to the series becoming stale and stagnant, unable to appeal to anyone not already hooked, and losing even those of us that were.

Visions should yield to good storytelling, not the other way around.
 
If that was the case then why did VOY under perform? VOY copied the mannerisms and composure of TNG for their cast, but like DS9 was set in uncharted space in order to add a sense of drama to the whole series. And we the fans and general audiences didn't subscribe to VOY like we did for TNG.

Granted DS9's only saving grace was the Dominion War. DS9 had to pseduo jump the shark by start an Intergalactic War than involved the whole of the Trek Universe. It saved the show but the ratings and support never hit TNG's peak.

VOY used and reused the Borg over and over to make their show more epic and dramatic. By the end of VOY it still came up short to DS9 and TNG to the point that even the actors weren't satisfied with the show's resolution and run. Part of setting VOY in the Delta quadrant was to remove the utopian Starfleet sense of things. However that aspect never helped the show, nor was it on display on a ship that was literally lost in uncharted space. Everything and everyone acted Starfleet professional like they were still in the Alpha and Beta Quadrant.
 
I think most people started having problems with Roddenberry's vision after he died. Roddenberry had a few guidelines for TNG--namely that the crew was more of a family and that most conflicts came from outside of the Enterprise--but that was only for TNG. Other shows were free to chart their own course and could have been as different from TNG as it was to TOS.

The only real basic things about Roddenberry's vision--IMO--is that Humans no longer discriminate among themselves or spend time worrying and fighting over the things that we do today (religion, land, who has more of what, etc.). Everything else are examples of it being taken to extremes, generally after Roddenberry's death.
 
I thought Roddenberry's vision was at times extreme, but I would love to see a series come close to it again. A lot of the Sci Fi I see is so military based or based on something apocalyptic that happened. When was the last time we saw anything close to a utopia series. Granted, characters need challenges and it's easy to put them in dire situations, but considering how crappy real life is these days, why not try a series that while there is conflict can be really uplifting and not be like something like BSG where everyone was miserable and reached for the bottle. Yeah their homes were destroyed and that's a terrible thing, but the series went way beyond that into these characters need psychological help and what happened on the homeworlds doesn't seem to be a reason why they are so pissed off.
 
There's 100 years between TOS and TNG, I see no conflict of Roddenberry's visions. If you write for TOS, go TOS, if you write for TNG, go TNG.
 
indolover said:
DS9 was tops, and I guess departed to some extent from the Roddenberry vision.

But does it matter if the Roddenberry vision is not realistic? Does any art form have to be wholly realistic, if art is fundamentally about abstractions?

In the Pale Moonlight is a top episode, but I am ambivalent about it. I love its acting and writing, but hate the fact it signalled a conscious departure from the Roddenberry vision.

Another thing is that Gene/The Great Bird most likely wasn't silly. He probably knew that humanity is just as much cruel as it is benevolent. However, due to it being art, he emphasised it as something better to hope for/aspire to.
Click to expand...

There's a difference, in art, between being unrealistic, and being dishonest about what people are like. Gene's so-called "vision" -- which was really only a mostly-unarticulated, unsophisticated storytelling aesthetic he had during TNG's early years -- is one that is fundamentally dishonest in its portrayal of human nature, and blind to the actual and obvious faults, bigotries, and prejudices of the characters it so lauds for being "evolved."

It is a good thing that this absurd storytelling aesthetic was undermined on DSN.
 
I'd like to believe in a future where nobvody goes hungry, where people can discover and explore their potential, where there's no sexism or racism. I'd like to think that's the vision that Gene Roddenberry had in mind and somehow I think it'll be earned, but DS9 was something of a step backwards and I think JJ Abrams and co. think that way too, they patterned the 2009 after TOS and TNG.
 
DWF said:
I'd like to believe in a future where nobvody goes hungry, where people can discover and explore their potential, where there's no sexism or racism. I'd like to think that's the vision that Gene Roddenberry had in mind and somehow I think it'll be earned, but DS9 was something of a step backwards and I think JJ Abrams and co. think that way too, they patterned the 2009 after TOS and TNG.
Click to expand...

DSN still presented a Federation where nobody goes hungry, where people can discover and explore their potential, and where there was no sexism or racism. What DSN did not do was depict a future in which Humanity is somehow magically more "evolved" than it is today, where there's no interpersonal conflict, where people are naturally saints. DSN presented a future that was brighter, but where people still struggled to listen to the better angels of their natures -- even if the culture was designed to cultivate those better angels most of the time.

And ST09's characters are in no way patterned after TNG's. They're far more three-dimensional, far less self-consciously "evolved" and perfectible.
 
DS9 is only like that because of the extremes of it's environment. You take away the preachy Bajorans, and the super powered Prophets, their Orbs and then entire Dominion conflict what do you have? A show about Starfleet officers and their day to day lives on a remote space station. The station would never see action, their wouldn't be a Defiant so there would never be any exploration. Just an outpost on the edge of Cardassian space. The most excitement you may get is the Cardassians trolling the station because they have nothing better to do. Turning Kira in to a Caradassian or putting O'Brien on trial for BS.

TNG has Starfleet officers trying to be the best of humanity. Their professionals on board the flag ship of the Federation. They are supposed to be a cut above the rest. Put them under extreme duress and the cracks in their characters would indeed show. But that is the difference between TNG and DS9. TNG is a tv show, DS9 is a tv drama. VOY and ENT also tried to be tv dramas but it came off as mediocre. Story aside their wasn't anything that grabbed the audience enmasse like TNG. There are other tv dramas that don't involve aliens and space and succeed in the public arena so it really comes down to the writing and goal of the show. DS9 had the Dominion War which added the gravitas it needed to be a serious tv drama. Without that it's just a general scifi show.
 
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