I don’t disagree, but it’s that very habit he had that wipes away virtually any respect I had for him as simply “The Creator”. TV is by definition a collaberative medium . One man cannot do it all. Yet, G-Rod seemed to think that because of his self-important status as “The Creator” any and all ideas pertaining to his creation were fair game to get co-opped.

Gots ta remember that Roddenberry was notorious for re-writing scripts during the shooting of TOS. I can’t remember the stylistic choices he made for the TMP novel, but as the true Kree-yay-tor, I always throw the man some slack.

As for his conflict-free TNG set-up, that was an unfortunate misfire, though the series itself made the best of it.

Quite the long moniker!

Thanks for your lucid, thoughtful, thought-provoking reply. I was sure most of the Rod-N-Berry Purists would flame me into oblivion for that one.

I too, for those that mentioned it, read and enjoyed ADF’s adaptaions of TAS in his LOG form. They were always a lot more to the story thatn shown on the cartoon, and they always linked one into the other, which was cool.

Will we see some of the LOG characters turn up in the parallel universe, I hope?? :)

No flames here. You’re right. From everythiing I’ve read over the years, Roddenberry was not considered a strong writer. He had great, or at least highly unusual *concepts*, but when it came to translating those concepts to something practical and marketable in terms of hard writing, well, not so much. Some folks get mad when you make that distinction, and its not intended to slam Roddenberry, its just a fact.

its been decades since I read the TMP novelization, but I recall it being at times a vivid realization of the movie, filling in some details and allowing me to imagine certain scenes that I thought would have benfitted the movie immensely – the scenes with Admiral Nogura, or the connection between Kirk and Lori Ciana, or even the prolog of Kirk seeing the Klingons getting blown up by V’ger. On the other hand, some of the narration was dripping and overwrought, and the issue of embedded mind implants was, well, kinda disturbing.

As far as Roddenberry and utopias go, I personally, think TNG suffered mightily from this unachievable utopian blather he imposed. It made TNG sterile and less credible. Those on the utopia side don’t get that it is the differences in humanity that make us *stronger*, and the notion of everyone being this Borg-like zombie is, frankly, nauseating. Contrarian types, those that create conflict, are often the very types that push people forward to compel achievement beyond the expectations of the masses.

Yes. There it is. Both stank. Because Rod-N-Berry couldn’t write. People can swear up and down that he was some sort of visionary, but in simple truth, he wasn’t a very good writer. His pacing was awful, and he absolutely no ear for dialogue. When Star Trek was really and truly good, either in general story or particular bit of dialogue, was by and large by other writers.

I’m talking TOS. TNG is a whole other can of worms.

Example from the end of the novel, referring to V’Ger’s evolution beyond our plane of existence: “…then it became too beautiful for them to comprehend, and so it was gone without ever really leaving…”. That is just bad writing.

I ain’t gonna wax nostalgic about either one. The Director’s Cut of TMP was marginally better than the original, but there’s no help for the novel. Frankly, both stank.

Flame on…

I suppose a case could be made that Roddenberry was also referring to the state of the space program at the time. Since TOS had aired we had been to the moon and the nation had lost interest so much in the space program that a couple of Apollo missions were canceled. Politicians and public opinion had largely turned against it. Their was debate as to whether the cost was worth it. It didn’t help that there were no visionaries running NASA or in the government that advocated more expansion.

The Space Shuttle program, while technically cool, still kept us in low earth orbit for the next 30 years. Neil Armstrong’s one small step for man became a big step backwards for manned space exploration. The success of unmanned probes such as Cassini, the Mars rovers, etc have provided amazing science but also have added to the critics contention that space exploration can be done without the cost of manned flight.

Wow, i’ve really taken this off on a tangent! Anyway, back to the novelization, perhaps Roddenberry was making commentary on the state of the American space program at the time. Just a thought.