Well basically you’re saying we agree, but your original point was to try to say we didn’t. Hence you got clipped by me. Watch it next time. ;-)

Anyway, so we agree—it wasn’t theft. This was what I maintained all along. Influence, yes, inspiration, yes… call it artistic borrowing if you really want to (Rapheal borrowed from Michelangelo as we well know) but theft–no.

I think you’re a little hard on the Roddenberry though. A “petty little hack bastard?”

I’d say Gene Roddenberry was your typical hack writer/producer who, as often happens, nevertheless came up with that one great idea. He reformulated traditional adventure/hero traditions into a new synthesis in a sci-fi mode. I don’t see what was all that petty about him–I’d rather say he was a bit of a dreamer, had some half-baked but certainly well-meaning philosophies—but people often mistake the philosophy for what ST was really about—later on, Roddenberry included. He wasn’t the best judge of his own material and unquestionably was a one-idea guy… but like other middling hacks before him he gave us one really cool, entertaining gift. When he was younger he understood what the proper balance was between adventure and philosophizing—even if later he totally forgot. He was…. an A.A. Milne, a Jules Verne, an Edgar Rice Burroughs… one of a group of creators who were no great thinkers and no great artists, but managed, in their relative mediocrity, to create one very great and charming thing that has delighted the world.

What a book cover blurb I just wrote. I either feel like hacking up lunch just now or patting myself on the back.. can’t decide.

I didn’t say I didn’t use it. It can be a very effective way to get to the point. I just don’t feel the need to be snippy when I’m paying a compliment.

just talking about the lineage of creative process, here. par exampla: in a recent novel, william gibson used the word “bladerunnered” to describe a neighborhood in tokyo (we instantly see what he might mean.) this is from the guy who coined the word “cyberspace” about the same time blade runner was being filmed. ‘the matrix’ was inspired by both gibson (conceptually) and ridley scott (visually). gibson was inspired by william s. burroughs. burroughs talks about FB as a retelling of (as you so prudently point out) shakespeare’s “the tempest” that “put despair into space where it belongs”, and ‘the matrix’ was was chock full of shakespearian protaganists. ‘blade runner’s’ title was taken from burroughs, based on a work by phillp k. dick, and NOTHING would happen around here without DICK. et frikking cetera. lots of ideas being tossed about, but no theft.

i’m suggesting that as a culture we assimilate imagery and ideas and recreate them over and over in new forms, adding and subtracting as the artist sees fit. hardly theft. just what artists have been doing forever.
roddenberry appropriated (parts of) another’s work and created something new with it. that said, without FB there may have been oh, something, but not the show we know.

you and i are appropriating the ideas of others to have what i hope is a conversation.

of course i do respect your take on this. i personally think roddenberry was a petty little hack bastard who got real lucky. but that don’t make him no tea-leaf. nor do i love TOS any less because of it.

now isn’t that barely cute?

“there, i’ve run rings round ya, logically.”

Hardly, punk.

We’re debating the difference between INFLUENCE as opposed to PLAGIARISM here. Your thoughts on “sampling” and “appropriation in high art” (which, by the way, neither ST nor FP is) are nice, but not relevant.

Nobody ever said there’s no connection between FP and ST. The question is, did Roddenberry STEAL? Your little missive, while cute (barely) fails to answer this.

ST most certainly would exist without FP, as it had other influences.

And FP was based on Shakespeare. Not Homer. The bard or the yellow guy with the big gut.

in an age of rampant sampling (which i support), and common appropriation in high art (which is a cultural norm), we have to assume that storytelling is ALWAYS based on existing narratives. it’s an oral tradition.

so this supports the ballzian theorum: no, trek would not exist without FP, but FP would not exist with out homer.

there, i’ve run rings round ya, logically.

Okay, come on… he “ruminated” on FORBIDDEN PLANET for *TEN* years? I mean, I love FP, it’s a great movie. But if Roddenberry was “ruminating” on it for TEN years before “burping out” Star Trek, then the man must have been… you know… a little slow in the head.

What’s your problem with this? Why do you feel the need to insist that Roddenberry “stole” his idea for Star Trek from Forbidden Planet? Why can’t it just be that it influenced him?

“What, you’ve never been exposed to information that came back later in your life to affect an idea, concept or notion? Puh-lease!!!!”

YEAH, dude…. that’s *what I was saying.* But you’re calling it “theft.” Why does it have to be “theft?”

As I said, it’s no more theft for Roddenberry to have been influenced by FP than it is for Lucas to have been influenced by the cheesy serials of the 30s and 40s. Why do you feel the need to say Roddenberry “stole” from FP?

Again—if Roddenberry HAD stolen anything from MGM, you can bet your ass they would have been all over him for it. MGM was still a serious, real studio back at that time (in fact, it was one of the last “true” studios, right up to about 1970… by that time the others had all become nothing more than names under larger corporate control, and were no longer making films “in house”… but MGM still was throughout the 60s). Someone like Roddenberry wouldn’t “steal” from MGM and get away with it, in 1964. Trust me. And Desilu/NBC/Paramount wouldn’t have just glossed over it. I’m not saying these companies were above that sort of thing, but they would have had their legal departments “ruminating” on it… and again, there’s no evidence that they felt the need to.

Influence, yes. Theft, no.

And as I said, Roddenberry was every bit as influenced by “Wagon Train” and other westerns and adventure TV series, as he was by FP… same goes for the Horatio Hornblower novels.

I don’t know why this concept is so tough for you…

Thanks… I never get tired of ruminating on how badly Berman and his buddies screwed up Star Trek.

As to the Forbidden Planet thing… again, remember… “stole” just doesn’t cut it. I don’t give Roddenberry much credit as a writer… if you ask me his talent was limited and it shows in some of the stuff he wrote for ST *besides* The Cage (which was great). But I don’t believe he was a plagiarist. And clearly neither did MGM. And if they didn’t believe it, then we shouldn’t either.