Today’s episode of Larry Nemecek’s “Trek Files” focused on a newly unearthed document from the days when Star Trek: The Next Generation was under development at Paramount. The document outlining the premise for the planned series, dated September 12, 1986, was sent by Paramount executive John Pike to Gene Roddenberry, and makes clear the studio was determined to move ahead on a new Star Trek series with or without a creative contribution from Roddenberry, who was reluctant to return.
A different Next Generation
The 8-page concept pitch, entitled “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” was conceived by producer Greg Strangis (War of the Worlds, Falcon Crest) over the summer of 1986 and is set during a 10-year war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. It tells the story of the U.S.S. Odyssey, a ship ferrying a group of cadets on their first deep space assignment and tasked with delivering a document to Organia that could ultimately change the course of the war.
From the original Star Trek: Then Next Generation pitch
While some of the ideas in this concept can be seen in what ultimately became Star Trek: The Next Generation (such as a young Klingon officer as part of the crew), this original pitch bears little resemblance to the show that went on to have seven successful seasons. One of the more creative ideas was how the original captain dies in the pilot, but “continues to ‘live’ in the ship’s computer” as a hologram who can be summoned for advice.
And there are some elements that remind you this document comes from another era, such as the description of the ship’s weapons officer: “Painfully beautiful, Joyce is still fighting with the timeless battle of trying to be taken seriously while looking as lovely as she does.”
Rick Berman recalls the meeting to discuss this memo in his forward to the book Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Continuing Mission:
When I arrived at the meeting, Gene’s office was filled with a number of high-ranking studio executives. Gene didn’t want to do whatever they were proposing. Gene pounded the desk and the executives pounded back.
The meeting and memo ultimately spurred Roddenberry to jump back into the fray and create what we now know as The Next Generation, but it’s a fascinating glimpse into what might have been.
This pitch inspired Gene Roddenberry to return with his vision of a new Star Trek
Discovery echoes, and JJ Abrams Star Trek too
When reading through the memo you may be surprised how some of the elements echo with Star Trek: Discovery, including a captain – mentor to the show’s lead character who is also an orphan – being killed in the pilot during during a battle between the Federation and Klingons. That sounds a lot like Capt. Georgiou and Michael Burnham. There is also an alien from an “obscure” and “isolated” planet, which sounds a bit like Saru, and a brilliant young cadet who works under the wing of the show’s main character, not unlike Tilly.
In fact, the ship is almost entirely populated by cadets who end up being put into senior positions, which is something that happens in JJ Abrams 2009 Star Trek movie.
The lead character of this original TNG has some parallels with Michael Burnham
Found by Trek Files
Larry Nemecek discovered this memorandum while searching through Gene Roddenberry’s personal archive as part of his “Trek Files” podcast, where every week he examines a document from the archive and has a guest on to help provide insight and context. For this episode, Larry is joined by Dave Rossi, associate producer on Star Trek: Enterprise and the remastered Star Trek: The Original Series project in 2006, and longtime assistant to Rick Berman.
To listen to the podcast, warp on over to Roddenberry.com.
You can download the original TNG Pitch on Google Drive. Fore more in it and other “Trek Files” head on over to the program’s hub on Facebook.
Preliminary conceptual work on Star Trek: The Next Generation, September 12, 1986 from John S. Pike to Gene…
Posted by The Trek Files on Monday, February 12, 2018
Very glad that we ended up with the show that we did.
yes, TNG was fantastic.
The first few seasons were pretty horrible.
The first few seasons were the best lol
Are you people purposely trying to spell Dr. “Pulaski” wrong?
Right? It’s Pulaski! Pulaski!
We all know her name is Polishkielbasa
Most people don’t know that IS her full legal name in the first print, just shortened for the show when Patreek Stuart messed up his line…he never forgave himself
LOL yeah I spelled it wrong too. I was just looking at how someone else spelled it and copied them. Its still much closer than I would’ve got if I did it on my own. ;)
Polandski isn’t the right way? Dang.
I enjoyed the entire TNG run
Season two was the worst in my opinion, mainly because of Polaski. Didn’t like her as Chief Medical Officer at all.
Yeah Polanski truly sucked, agreed. Was so happy when Crusher was back.
I liked Polanski, I just don’t feel her character was ever properly explored.
Nebula1701 I agree with this statement. Polaski, at first, can be very off-putting, but when going back, there was clearly a great character there that provided a dichotomy to Data and Picard. I believe it would have been great to include her as a special guest in TNG episodes after Crusher returned.
At least Dr. Pulaski had a personality and was played by a competent actress. Dr. Crusher did not have a personality nor was McFadden a particularly decent actress.
That would have been soooo much better than TNG. Plus as a plus probably would have used movie era uniforms, movie era universe (free market, 23rd century UFP), movie era ships with perhaps some TOS contributions, movie cross-overs, etc. Star Trek would have been sooo much better.
TNG was one of the best star trek series and tv series period.
Star Trek: The Next Generation is an American science fiction television program that originally aired from September 1987 to May 1994. It won and was nominated for a variety of awards, including seven Emmy Award nominations for the first season, and a further eight in its second season. It would go on to be nominated a total of 58 times, of which it won a total of nineteen awards. Only one of these nominations was not for a Creative Arts Emmy, which was the nomination for Outstanding Drama Series for the show’s seventh season.
That’s nice. Encounter at Farpoint in my opinion was terrible. TNG was only watchable when they threw out the TNG rule book and brought in an evil socialist collective to blow up all those ugly starships. A bland crew in a universe so boring filled with free energy the crew went off to play holodeck. Some redemption for DS9 when we got some cooler ships and a cooler universe with some conflict and some diverse characters.
here are some of the best TNG episodes;
All Good Things” …
“Chain of Command, Parts I & II” …
“Q Who” …
“Tapestry” …
“Family” …
“Yesterday’s Enterprise” …
“The Inner Light” …
“The Best of Both Worlds Parts I & II”
TNG easily had some of the best standalone episodes anywhere. A lot of beautiful stories came out of that show.
agreed Tiger2
Disagree, I don’t feel any of the TNG stand alone episodes came anywhere close to the awesomeness that was Balance of Terror, Doomsday Machine, City on the Edge of Forever, Trouble With Tribbles, Where No Man Has Gone Before etc. And that doesn’t include the movies (Star Trek II, IV, VI).
Cmd.Bremmon, TOS>TNG>DS9>VOY>ENT>DSC
I’d go:
TOS>DS9, DSC, ENT>ST2009 Reboot (wrecked by Into Darkness) >>>>>>Distance between the Milky Way and Andromeda >>>>>>>>>>>>>>TNG>VOY
Lol, nice one
For me, DS9>TNG>TOS>ENT>DSC>VOY
But it also proves Trek fans are all over the map with this stuff lol. And that Star Trek is now a big enough universe where everyone can get something different out of it.
for me TNG,TOS,DSC,DS9,VOY, ENT. Everyone allowed to rank what they liked. For me it seems bizzare that there are people out there that would rank TNG last, really blows my mind lol
It blows my mind that some people would rank it first.
Many star trek fans grew up watching TNG, which was fantastic TV. Some would go back and watch the original TOS.
Thats what I do love about Star Trek, once you watch one, it becomes a gateway to watch the others. I see it on Reddit all the time, someone watches TNG for the first time, the KT films, Enterprise, whatever and starts asking what they should watch next. And I suggest TOS a lot depending on what they want but I admit I always try to get them to watch DS9 lol.
But yes you’re right, I know after the KT films many people became curious of the old show naturally which is why I always tell people even if you don’t like the newer stuff like those films or Discovery, it helps keep Trek alive for every new fan out there who wants to know more about the franchise in general and gets them interested in all the old shows and movies. This is why I love Trek so much! :)
agreed so many episodes to watch and so many cool stories and messages
Still though, I find it odd that you completely rag on Roddenberry and continually negate his creation as His and wish to assign it to CBS or Paramount as their amalgamation…it is on par with the recent agenda in the last couple of years in which every few months something fairly false or twisted words comes out against Gene.
He was involved with every aspect of Trek until his health gave out, and even then, he still had his lawyer bringing him every single script lol. I also think the whole notion of Star Trek as a Franchise is skewed and is a recent development in the way it should be viewed…equally so, I’ve loved the irony of you telling others “noo! Noo! You’re Wrong! Cuz duh title is Star trek, it’s Star trek! And cuz CBS says so, it is! Your online opinion doesn’t matter! (But mine does) Also, here are some statistics dat show Deez new series and movies iz luvved by millions, U jussa big dummy!”
LMAO an irony onion, truly glorious.
Dude, Roddenberry has been dead for over 25 years now lol. The last time he had direct involvement with Star Trek was in 1989. He had nothing to do with any of the shows from DS9 through Discovery and was only directly involved in one film, the first one. Its now 2018, multiple show runners, writers, producers and directors have taken over. He made two GREAT shows, but as said A. He didn’t do it alone and B. He made just many screw ups as he did good things on them and hence why he was kicked off of so many projects. No one wanted to work with the guy.
Are you are his son or something? Why are you taking it so personally? The great majority of Star Trek today he had no involvement with, thats just a fact. I like watching reruns of TOS and TNG like everyone else but yeah I like to look forward and not backwards. In another 25 years there will be even more Trek made that will introduce new crews, time periods, universes, etc and thats a GOOD thing. I am happy Roddenberry started this franchise, but frankly much better people took it over later or we would’ve had multiple boring versions of The Motionless Picture in theaters and MAYBE 3-4 seasons of TNG before it was cancelled for being god awful and that probably would’ve been the end of Trek for a very long time.
And I never said your opinion doesn’t matter chief. What I’m saying is your opinion is YOUR opinion and you shouldn’t subscribe it to the whole fan base. Case in point, canon. If you said “I don’t personally consider anything made after TNG canon because Great Bird of the Galaxy didn’t personally put his hand on the script and turn it into gold” fine man, have at it. Thats how you feel, cool.
BUT when you try and tell the rest of us what *we* should consider canon and shouldn’t be, then you just come off as an egotistical blowhard. And officially canon is whatever is licensed by CBS and Paramount and shown on the screen: television, film or streaming. Again you can IGNORE it, but this is just a basic fact, right? I mean I can IGNORE the fact Trump is President or that I actually paid money to watch The Justice League, it all still happened regardless. Thats how it works.
Lol nice little quip at the end bro, and a great layout of facts. Nicely done
Now to make this clear if you WEREN’T doing that, then my apologies. Thats just the way I read it, thats all. But it did come off that way.
Just playing “that guy” a bit lol, your response was prime. Well done sir, well done.
LOL have you just been trolling me this whole time? Well then, I will say good job! ;)
And I want to make clear to others, I’m not negating Roddenberry or his work, there would be no Star Trek today without him. I was just never one of those people who believed it was he and he alone who made Star Trek great. If that was the case it would’ve died decades ago now but it is his overall vision that has kept the fans so involved and has motivated so many others to keep making it. And I ALWAYS credit him for making TNG. What I mean is he could’ve just remade TOS once again in the 80s (which I heard he had the option to do) and we probably would’ve had about six different boring versions of TOS for another 50 years later like we get a new Batman every 5 years.
But because he knew his concept was bigger than one show or crew he took a chance on something new expanding the franchise which could’ve blew up in his face. But its why Star Trek is so much bigger today and prove its the message that makes Trek special and not just how many times Kirk makes out with an alien or karate chops someone. Trek is a big universe that encompass so much today, its why it excites me as a fan.
If TNG failed then I don’t know where the franchise would be but I doubt we would be watching shows like Discovery now, even if I’m not big on prequels.
😉😀👍😃
So basically TNG had good episodes where they throw out the TNG book and try to bring in some TOS wagon train to the stars. Let’s review:
Yesterday’s enterprise – let’s go back in time and save a cooler Enterprise in a cooler time period full of conflict.
Best of Both Worlds / Q Who – let’s throw out the TNG playbook and have Captain Picard under the control of an evil socialist collective where all are equal blow everything up.
Chain of Command – War and torture
Ok so.. Inner Light, Tapestry and Family – Captain cries about how he wishes he was back on Earth or living a primitive lifestyle because his ship, exploration, is pretty boring except that time he kicked TNG Starfleet command at Wolf 359. I’d be upset too if I sacrificed having children and a relationship to play holodeck on a flying hotel.
Incorrect, there are some season 1 gems also;
Skin Of Evil”
‘Star Trek: The Next Generation,’ Season 1; Episode 23 (1988)
Tasha Yar’s death famously came from actress Denise Crosby’s desire to leave Trek (though she would later return as an alternate timeline version of character and then, the character’s daughter, Sela). It’s shocking for killing off a main character, and her funeral gives us an early example of Data’s journey to understanding humanity.
Conspiracy”
‘Star Trek: The Next Generation,’ Season 1, Episode 25 (1988)
It turns out, sometimes it pays to be paranoid. Picard and Riker discover an alien infestation, with parasites preparing to slip into the Federation by taking over officers. The episode culminates with Riker and Picard teaming up to take down the possessed Lt. Commander Remmick (Robert Schenkkan) to explosive results. It’s the favorite episode of TNG property master Alan Sims, who had to use all of his talents for the hour. “Creating the tongue puppet parasites, the live worms that were eaten by Riker to puppeteering the queen parasite that burst out of Dexter Remmick’s host body … What an episode,” recalls Sims.
“The Measure of a Man”
‘Star Trek: The Next Generation,’ Season 2, Episode 9 (1989)
The emotional touchstone of Next Generation was Data’s quest to understand humanity, and there’s no more poignant example than the android’s very sentience being put on trial — with Picard and Riker finding themselves on opposite sides of a trial for Data’s rights and life.
“Even though I was hardly in the episode, I thought it encapsulated everything that was good about Star Trek,” recalls recalls Marina Sirtis (Troi), of her favorite episode from TNG.
“Elementary, Dear Data”
‘Star Trek: The Next Generation,’ Season 2, Episode 3
Holodeck episodes became a mainstay of Star Trek beginning with Next Generation — and the greatest contribution to this genre came courtesy of Data’s love of Sherlock Holmes. Geordi asks the computer to create an adversary who could beat Data, and the computer grants that wish in the form of the sentient Moriarty (Daniel Davis).
“I was twenty years old when we began to boldly go and twenty three years later, I was going with them,” recalls Davis, a fan from the days of the original series. “I was sent sides for an episode of The Next Generation called ‘Elementary, Dear Data.’ I auditioned for the role of Professor James Moriarty and two days later I was on the holodeck with Brent Spiner and LeVar Burton. It was a brilliant script that combined the Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek mythologies. But it was mostly Star Trek, and presaged the questions of reality vs. virtual reality, computer generated consciousness, whether self awareness is all that is required to define our humanity.”
Patrick Stewart utterly deballed DEAR DATA by demanding Picard not lie to Moriarty about matter being able to leave the holodeck, which introduces a huge unexplained plot hole in the story. Find the old issue of CFQ where director Rob Bowman talks about this, and also how Stewart found the themes of Q WHO objectionable and I guess didn’t want Picard to acknowledge the error of his ways to Q in order to save the day. That’d be like doing ERRAND OF MERCY and having Shatner tell everyone that Kirk wouldn’t permit the Organians to stop the upcoming war!
I really think somebody on TNG needed to write a version of “the letter’ (like the one GR wrote to Shat, Nimoy and Kelley, critiquing them in unfavorable ways, though De only got a 1/2 page, not four or five pages) to TNG principals as a chastisement and to preempt them getting too big for their britches. At the very least that might have reminded Stewart he was a character actor and a good one, and that ‘star’ sensibilities don’t usually contain a lot of sense. Instead that kind of thing runs unchecked, and you wind up with DIEHARD Picard in FC and then Stewart derailing the story process on INSURRECTION before supporting Spiner’s attempt to get John Logan aboard for NEM, which was the final nail in the TNG coffin.
yes, actors should stick to acting and writers writing.
Picard: Older, Wiser and more experienced Kirk
Riker: The the rough and tumble Kirk-like commander
…Gene did this on purpose
checkout some of these early TNG playbook gems, end of day it was the best sci fi on TV during the late 80s and early 90s.
The Borg aren’t an “evil socialist collective”. It’s the TNG era Federation who are space commies (both Coon and Roddenberry were avid leftists). And TNG is filled with gems, with even its poor episodes having great little moments. It’s an iconic and worthy successor to the great TOS.
Roddenberry was actually a republican lolololol people love to assert that he was a leftist in order to push for more obligatory progressive values in today’s Star trek fan fic productions
False. No one knew what Roddenberry actually was politically. I actually was involved in this very discussion on Reddit a few months ago:
http://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/6td79w/what_was_gene_roddenberrys_political_beliefs/
Its all over the map. Roddenberry clearly had liberal ideas though since everything about Star Trek in TOS and TNG were very progressive for their time.
Tiger2 agreed. However I submit #1) progressive does not equal socialism. You can have a free market where people of all races are equal. I would argue diversity is more tolerated in a world where you don’t have to serve the state #2) Roddenbery’s political leanings I felt changed with time mostly due to his sexuality. You read the TOS bible and Roddenbery seems very conservative. The Yorktown / Enterprise is a US Destroyer fighting the Klingon communists. In one episode he has Kirk talking the US Constitution. In another he is PRO-VIETNAM (A Private Little War). The Enterprise has a chapel. They are todays people succeeding in the future. It’s “wagon train to the stars”. The bureaucrats are pretty much always incompetent and Kirk can barely tolerate them. The UFP has free market mining colonies on multiple occasions that the Enterprise must protect and support. In the TMP novel Roddenbery has it where “new man” can’t handle space while “old man” Kirk can. HOWEVER by TNG I believe that Roddenbery felt that his sexual promiscuity was not tolerated by social conservatives but that hippy types saw him as a messiah (this was the time of Genesis II) – a different time. Pretty sure he would have been taken down by the #metoo movement these days. I think then he embraced his messiah status and wanted to replace TOS with TNG – suddenly capitalism is bad, the Ferengi were supposed to be the “big bad” of TNG. The UFP is a socialist bureaucracy. No conflict, no diversity in the bridge. Yes, different races on the bridge but a Klingon is pretty much the same as a Human. No lithium crystals, it’s all free energy, holodecks, etc. No one really even has to work. The end result was some pretty lousy TV until he was forced off the show and some of his rules got tossed out the window.
Wow. Don’t have the time to get into this right now, but your cherry-picking regarding the tone and messaging on TOS is, in its own way, very impressive.
LOL yeah its always a LOT of cherry picking here and he’s done it before. I don’t get why people can’t accept Roddenberry had very liberal views? Star Trek IS a liberal show. You don’t have a Russian exploring space with an American in the middle of the cold war unless you were trying to make both a political and social point.
TOS was just made in the 60s where its less progressive than today and because he was still working in a society who was fighting many of these causes we all take for granted today. When TNG came around he could do what he wanted basically. I can only imagine what he would do with Star Trek today if he was around but I imagine that would be wildly different from both TOS and TNG as well.
“You don’t have a Russian exploring space with an American in the middle of the cold war unless you were trying to make both a political and social point.”
Well, although I basically agree, to play devil’s advocate: what if the message were “Russia will get over this disease of communism and go back to its pre-Revolutionary traditions”?
Yeah thats a fair point, but I think Roddenberry was really projecting the idea all of humanity will become a big melting pot when majority of the world was against that idea or certainly not practicing that belief outside of a few pockets of the world.
I mean I have to laugh when people talk about Discovery today and have issues with its ‘diversity’ and ‘SJW’ insults when TOS was telling the world, especially America at the time, that was in the middle of its civil rights struggles, segregation still a hot topic and communism was considered a global threat with Vietnam in full turmoil that ultimately we’re going to all get along, end all our conflicts and love each other eventually so you better get use to it. That was as liberal and hippy as you can get back then. I can only imagine what the internet would’ve been like if it existed when the show came on.
So in other words his views changed. Yeah that happens to many people in life as they get older. Roddenberry had many ideas that even the showrunner of TNG in the first two seasons called ‘whackey doodle’ lol. No one working on the show seem to completely subscribe to Roddenberry’s view except Roddenberry himself and probably why it had so many problems when he was on it.
I’m liberal and a Democrat and while I didn’t have an issue with some of his ideas the one where all humans will suddenly get along and have no conflict was a head scratcher and created a problem for telling engaging stories. But that was basically tossed out in third season when he left. And we know the other shows from DS9 and Voyager avoided that whole thing. And yet there is still this odd belief that the shows still had this mandate. The Discovery writers actually mentioned it. Uh, yeah that idea has been gone since the early 90s.
But yes Roddenberry believed in humanism which is a very liberal/progressive idealism of humanity, one I believe we should strive for so I understand his belief in it and it fits the basic idea of Star Trek, that man would evolve and that society would improve through rationality and science and how we will find ways to explore space bringing those ideals to the rest of the galaxy, hence the Federation. But it doesn’t mean we can’t have faults and imperfections either. But Star Trek was always about optimism, hope and that the human race will be better in the future and its something all the shows have carried even in times of war and crisis.
It’s quite the stretch to read “A Private Little War” as unabashedly pro-Vietnam. A fairer reading is that it’s kind of neutral, as if to say “we know this is going to be a disaster but we see no exit ramp from the path-dependent outcome that our decisions from years ago created today.”
It’s also ridiculous to say that anything relating to the military, or anti-communist, is inherently “conservative.” Kennedy served in the military. FDR and Kennedy were strongly anti-communist.
Except for Bernie Sanders, very few people on the US left embraced socialism. Even Bernie insists he embraces only “Scandinavian” style socialism (whatever that is), and frankly, he backed off of that once he began getting a whiff of popularity.
Spoiler alert – Kirk beams the natives phasers at the end of the episode to fight the communists, er, Klingons.
Roddenberry was indeed all over the map, however, politically was Republican. Socially, he was liberal. In essence he was libertarian and was registered as an independent voter. Imo, this was one of the main reasons trek was so attractive to people on both sides of the aisle; promoting sensibility, reasoning and critical thinking is a great way to go.
Ummm the original series had a racially mixed crew the first interracial kiss on TV and wanted to have a female first officer all in the 1960s how was it NOT progressive?
Lol progressive values of today are not the same as yesteryear. I am also saying TNG and TOS, and even DS9, did a better job of inputting such things into the writing without seeming obligatory. Nowadays people believe super duper progressive values must be put into trek in a way that, imo, takes away at times: case in point, Discovery. Take a look back and you’ll see how values may have been stitched in, but was just matter of fact, everyone working towards the same goals and not attempting to have a political message, more a human message that doesn’t alienate.
“Lol progressive values of today are not the same as yesteryear.”
LOL indeedy. But, seriously, how so?
Yesteryear: critical thought and employing humanistic philosophy to push for rational ideals that can be agreed upon mutually by cultures worldwide<—this communicates thought going into it
CurrentYear: anything that pushes the limits of what people view as rational or normal within their respective cultures for the sake of seeming progressive<—this ends up more hit and miss
Just my opinion that I feel can be observed by others
Source?
1960s Roddenberry was in my opinion a cool guy who wrote a great show concept – Wagon Train to the Stars with todays people succeeding in tomorrows future. We were all going to be okay and go out and explore and colonize the universe. We are all going to work together, develop technology and the “American dream” was going to live on (ironically I am not American) and beat the USSR. Did he have personal flaws, yes, but the concept was AMAZING.
1990 Roddenberry I think was someone creepy and self-absorbed who dumbed down his writing to become a hippy-messiah that they wouldn’t come after him out of paranoia and to escape the coming of #metoo decades early.
I think you’re caricaturing things quite a bit. But I agree that if Roddenberry were around today, he’d probably be facing Harvey Weinstein-style problems.
I think most people can agree that what Roddenberry preached in Star Trek he didn’t exactly follow in his real life. I mean I know he believed in things like equality, not big on religion and accepting others for being different, but he was also very difficult to work with and from all reports not very likable. He sounded like he had a big drinking and drug problem as well, while cheating on his wives.
In other words he was a very flawed human being which he never wanted to show in his Trek shows. Even if Kirk and the gang were a little more loose than Picard and company they were still mostly shown as straight laced characters who were morally upstanding people always trying to do the right thing and you rarely saw them dealing with any personal issues like someone had a drinking problem or dealt with abuse. And I was convinced that entire crew were virgins minus Kirk lol. At least the other shows the characters did get laid once in awhile like I imagine Rodenberry was fond of. ;)
Lol
Roddenberry would definitely be in hot water lol. That guy seem to have had a crazy personal life, but I guess that was the Hollywood culture back then.
“Roddenberry was actually a republican”
1. I have never heard what political party Roddenberry belonged to. Source?
2. Even if true, that’s not particularly noteworthy. Until quite recently (I’d put it at roughly 1968-94, but even up to 2012-14 there were hints of it, there were a lot of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats.) Think William Weld and Strom Thurmond.
3. This was largely a legacy of the Civil War. Roddenberry was originally from Texas, and it would be unsurprising if someone from Texas in the 1950s with vaguely progressive and integrationist ideals found himself more at home in the GOP than with southern Democrats.
I can give the source in a bit, I have to go through some old Roddenberry records I keep. But yeah great point about his origins I always thought it caused him to think very critically about politics and would often show it is not simply one way or another.
Those are all stories that happened after Roddenberry was kicked to the curve. To suggest TNG was ‘throwing out its playbook’ is like suggesting the TOS films ‘threw out its playbook’ when it made TWOK which was a COMPLETE turnaround from the stories Roddenberry wanted to tell with TMP and why he didn’t like that film. In other words, things change man. Its a TV show they ALL change in time. Roddenberry saw it one way, but that was basically gone by the third season. TNG early seasons had a different show runner, when he was finally gone, they went a different direction with a NEW show runner and hence why TNG became a better show just LIKE the TOS films became better once Roddenberry was gone.
Chaos on the Bridge is an amazing documentary and showed why TNG was such a different show early on because Roddenberry was in a very different place then, as a person and a writer. That said he still managed to make a great show despite the problems.
And its funny how you mock those other stories as if you need everything to be ‘pew pew’ and ‘red alert’ in every episode. Thats what makes Star Trek special because you CAN do both. You can say City on the Edge of Forever is ‘boring’ because its just Kirk falling in love with an Earth girl. Or The Visitor a snore fest because its just Jake as an old man trying to find a way to go back in time to save his father from a freak accident since no one ever fired a phaser in it. Star Trek tells human stories in ways no other shows can and WHY TNG was so special because it did it like no other show although Deep Space Nine came close IMO and that had tons of ‘pew pew’ and ‘red alert’ stories as well.
Spend some time on a website that has more than a dozen people on it like Reddit and read all the new fans who comes on it every week in awe of TNG who are finding it for the first time. I would give anything to feel like that again as a new fan.
Disagree, I think TWOK was “space seed part 2” – exactly what 1960s Roddenbery would have wanted – he often said TOS was Horatio Hornblower in Space. It was 1990 TNG Roddenbery that suddenly was offended that Nick Meyer treated the Enterprise like a cruiser in a militaristic Starfleet… which is EXACTLY WHAT HIS ORIGINAL STAR TREK PITCH CALLED FOR.
And yet Roddenberry hated TWOK. My point is he saw a different direction for the TOS films later on. He didn’t want it to be like old Star Trek anymore. Thankfully like TNG he was kicked to the curve and new blood was brought in.
How exactly are the borg socialist?
LOL they weren’t. Its sounds about as ridiculous as a lot of his arguments. Borg only cared about improving themselves through technology, it had nothing to do with economics nor were they suppose to be an analogy for it. Borg was about the fear of where transhumanism can take us in the future just like Khan and the idea of genetic engineering were when they were invented on TOS decades prior. They just went another (more deadly) level with the Borg.
Borg was exclusively Roddenberry’s idea, juss saiyan. But yeah you’re right about a lot of that, and in addition it was meant the show the difference between a humanity that uses technology to unite for peace compared to technology to unite for power and domination. Isn’t it awesome how transhumanism was seen long before today’s push for barcode scanners being out into people’s hands?
CaptainKirkGroyper14 – If you asked the Borg (in Best of Both Worlds, ignoring the Queen crap they came up later) they would argue that they have “united all of the races” in a peaceful coexistence which ensures no racism and everyone is working each according to their needs for the greater good of all. The Borg would say that they ARE uniting all the races for peace. Do you not agree that if the Borg assimilated all, we would all be together and have “peace”? That we say, hey, what about individualism? What about freedom? Is peace more important than freedom? What about respecting differences? Why do we all have to be the same, can’t we just work together? What happens if I don’t want to work for the State in my assigned role? The Borg would say that you are being a conservative backwards fool blinded to the awesomeness of their progressive utopian society.
Cmd.Bremmon Lol indeed indeed. I’d say every Captain has at some point indicated there is a line that must be drawn in order to preserve freedom and individual choice whilst maintaining a peaceful, whole collective. And, to do so requires the constant effort of each individual working towards said mutual goal, without anyone having a goal to dominate over the collective and control the direction it moves. The Borg would certainly view this as highly inefficient and inferior, therefore assimilation is the only logical step
Exactly! And why the Borg is so fascinating. They didn’t see themselves as evil, they thought their way was the only logical and efficient way to perfection by forcing others to join them. But its antithetical to what the Federation values are.
But of course this isn’t a new thing in Star Trek because as I said Khan and his minions had the EXACT same view as the Borg did, they simply lost lol. The Borg is scary because they have the technology and the power to subjugate anyone they want. And the fear of machines taking over humanity is a sci fi trope as old as sci fi itself, but its a good one.
Tiger2. Agreed, agreed. Definitely a classic since the dawn of sci-fi and with the Borg it felt revitalized. Nice on picking up that crossover with Khan and his gen.eng.’d superhumans.
Wow, I have heard that some people don’t like TNG cause they find it a little boring… But I never thought I would hear a Star Trek fan basically say that dislike practically everything TNG did. Just didn’t think that was possible.
I agree with most of somethoughts’ list, yet still find TNG to be largely a misfire with the numerous disappointments and more than occasional outrage disaster outweighing these ‘wins.’
It’s nice and it also happens to be true. I’d take those numerous awards and sky high ratings over your entirely subjective judgements any day.
I agree with Soren
Damn straight, Bremmon, agree pretty much 100%. A lot of squandered opportunity on TNG, very frustrating most of the time. DS9 is best thing to come out of it.
Deep space nine fan counter signals Roddenberry canon…smh lol
I’m a DS9 fan as well and my favorite show while TNG is my second favorite.
And I don’t think Roddenberry was all of that. He created two great shows but what made them great was by a lot of other people working on them. If anything, Roddenberry was like George Lucas who had just as many BAD ideas as he had good ones. And majority of my favorite Star Trek shows, episodes and films he had nothing to do with.
Roddenberry had oversight and final say on everything..the writers were of course a huge factor as well as the actors. DS9 is definitely better than Voyager, ENT and Discovery however, imo, falls short when compared to TNG and TOS
My point is my favorite Trek shows and films had little to do with Roddenberry himself. Yeah TNG was great but it was better when he left for many reasons. And thats when most Trek fans started to accept the show, oddly after he left and left it up to Berman and Piller.
Yeah it was such an awful show Cmd. Bremmon and my guess is you watched all seven horrible seasons lol.
If you don’t like it, fine, but TNG was some of the best Star Trek ever produced and turned the franchise into a mega-franchise that gave us multiple shows after it. And I had no idea what you were watching but there was tons of conflict. I loved so many things about it and still rewatch the show every now and then (rewatched Unification last week). And I don’t think we will ever get a Star Trek that successful again. Discovery is OK so far but I don’t know anyone personally who watches it. Good luck finding any merchandising on it in an actual store. I miss the TNG days when Star Trek felt huge and was everywhere.
Anyway I’m glad they went with the show we got.
agreed Tiger2
Cmd.Bremmon
Evil socialist government, what?
Aliens and other creatures just ain’t diverse enough for you huh?
CreepSpace 9 fan…says it all I guess lol
TNG was every bit as much Star Trek as my apple tart is a Hostess cherry fried pie …similar in that they’re fruity pastries, but miles apart in ingredients and execution.
So wistful to see Rick Berman – I wonder if he will go down as the last adult to run Star Trek, before the franchise was taken over by mewling muddled dingo pups. You gave your best every day, Rick Berman, for 217 months. Thank you, Rick Berman, for all that you have done. Your work will endure for 1,001 years. WE ARE ALL THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS AND GENDER NONCONFORMING OFFSPRING OF BERMAN.
I can’t tell if this is satire or not.
Rick Berman did a excellent job when he took over Star Trek but it grew tired after First Contact and with Voyager and then Enterprise it was boring. I could not get into Enterprise for some reason.
The issue I had with Berman was that the ships kept getting smaller and smaller and uglier and uglier, from Enterprise E, Defiant, Voyager then prequal junk Enterprise.
No ship will ever top the refit seen in TMP or the D in TNG.
Insurrection was terrible, although good star trek themes. Such a pity there was never a Q movie akin to going everywhere like Forest Gump.
Insurrection was fine. Movies are a different beast though and the general public didn’t take to its gentle thoughtful themes in a big screen setting. It was entirely consistent however with how TNG had been as a show.
Insurrection would have been a great classic TNG episode.
Insurrection was one of the worst story ideas ever conceived for the TNG crew. It would have made a perfect season 6 or 7 episode. Lots of trash in the last two seasons, though the finale redeemed the series in the end.
Trash is a harsh word, there were some lousy episodes but really not many that were nonredeemable. One of the stories in each episode was at least a little compelling.
Ahhyes Insurrection
Dougherty Out.
Insurrection was definitely not “fine.”
INSURRECTION was fine? Sure, if you think boob jokes, zit jokes, kids whining about bedtimes, Data playing in a haystack, Airplane!-style jokes about life jackets, Picard embracing an Amish lifestyle, Gilbert & Sullivan sing-alongs, etc. make for compelling Star Trek.
lol
“Rick Berman did a excellent job when he took over Star Trek but it grew tired after First Contact”
So… Only 13 seasons and two movies?
I think Rick Berman did a lot of great things for Star Trek. But like anyone your ideas start to run dry and I think what people seem to forget is TNG and DS9 had the freedom to basically do what they want being in syndication. When Voyager and Enterprise came on they were on a newly formed network who had LOTS of rules of how they wanted those shows run. Berman and Piller didn’t want to do a TNG remake with Voyager they wanted to do something vastly different like they did with DS9 but UPN wanted to keep the TNG mandate since it was so much more popular than DS9 which is understandable. But Berman and Piller came up with the lost in space angle just to do something a bit different. UPN actually wanted Voyager in the alpha quadrant being another ship out there with the Enterprise. They didn’t want anything new or innovative, simply what worked.
And when Enterprise came around UPN wanted basically another clone of TNG in a farther future but Berman wanted to do a prequel and to do something different. But even their initial ideas of Enterprise was rejected because they wanted to do very different things with it than what we got. And it was UPN idea of reminding people of the 24th century since they weren’t a big fan of the prequel idea and how the temporal cold war came around.
Now to make this clear, end of the day Berman ran the show so he is at fault for a lot of it, agreed, but it was also clear Voyager and Enterprise came out differently because the network hand strung what they were allowed to do. Its the very reason why DS9 was allowed to be serialized and have this long drawn out story line while Voyager was not, even though technically they were run by the same studio and was made at the same time. Because DS9 had more freedom to experiment being syndicated, Voyager didn’t.
And my guess is thats why Fuller left Discovery because he probably felt he was being hand strung in what he could do. Now I’m not saying networks shouldn’t have any say, especially when they are paying for everything but it is a constant reminder end of the day all these guys, from Roddenbery to the new guys running Discovery ALL have bosses and there is only so much they are allowed to get away with although its clear Discovery probably has the most freedom since DS9.
It must be a joke. Berman could make the trains run on time, but you could make the same claim about … well, you know who. Creatively he was a disaster, and the main reason why filmscore in 22nd & 24thcentury is for the birds (except TIN MAN, which I guess he and Lauritson hated.)
From what i’ve read in the past about the hate for Bergman, was that he came from the production side of tv show making rather than from the creative side (ie. script writing)
Krokus, you’re a joke and I can’t help but laugh at your posts. I mean it’s obvious what you’re doing at this point. By the way, Berman almost put the franchise in the grave….so….there’s that.
The last name of the Paramount exec was Pike…situational irony? Or just coincidence?
lots of character names derived from ppl who worked on the show and even fans, Q and Geordi was named after 2 fans. Wesley was the middle name of Gene Roddenberry.
Truth
Apropos of your Reddit discussion of how some Ayn Randian philosophy percolated into TOS: I don’t think you name one of your lead characters “Rand” for nothing.
Lol hmmm perhaps perhaps, could have been an amalgamation of Ayn Rand and Rand Corp…never thought about possibility lolol
“Captain PIke” named in 1964. A tad before this guy.
Who, however, thought that the shuttlepod Pike in TNG “The Most Toys” was named for him. For 5 seconds.
Some of the premise involving the cadets reminds me of the tutorial episode in Star Trek Online as well.
TNG…starring Kurt Russell as Capt. Rhon.
lol
LOL, somehow I missed this one
Lt. Commander Dick Kincaid and Cadet Helen Joyce – theirs is a forbidden love that emblazons the heavens with the white-hot passion of a dozen supernovas.
Maybe in the future they will reboot and recast TNG and re imagine the D. McKavoy as Picard and Fassbender as number 1, Tom Hiddleston as Data, Justin Beiber as Wesley, John Boyega as Geordi, Emily Blunt as Troi, Rachel McAdams as Dr Crusher, Tom Hanks as Q lol
Idris Elba as Worf 😀
Liam Neeson as Spock, Tom Hardy as Kirk, James Woods as McCoy…
nice
There are any number of snides who’ll tell you now how TNG was super lame and Trek needed to move on. It’s worth remembering though that at the time ‘The Next Generation’ was extremely popular and really something of a TV phenomenon. Some serialisation and deeper character arcs were the only thing that needed to be added to update its formula. The elimination of moral points to end episodes, two dimensional villains, dumb violence, swearing and a crew sometimes at each other throats….much less so!
TNG is what made me love Star Trek, then I went back and watched TOS movies and episodes and was like wow dam so ahead of its time. DS9, Voyager, Enterprise I could not get into but I would watch it if on TV.
Somethoughts, well said.. well said. Interestingly enough, TOS and TNG had Roddenberry at the helm and Creep Space 9, Voyager, Enterprise(they didn’t even use Star trek theme music in the intro) and Discovery did not… idk must be unrelated lol
Well Gene always said when he is no longer around he would be happy and proud of other folks versions of star trek.
I never got into DS9 but I hear people love it, to each their own. Voyager and Enterprise felt like they were reaching at the bottom of the barrel and suffered from Star Trek fatigue.
I have actually enjoyed the kt universe and happy to see bob and alex carry the torch from movies to now tv Discovery. They are fans and do care, from interacting with bob here and watching alex on after trek.
Discovery has been good but there were some problems with it ie klingons, spore drive, voq/tyler, killing the doctor, mu lorca and the s1 finale with blackmail bomb. The acting has been fantastic which help offset some of the issues.
Prequel series should have followed Garth of Izar or include him..would have been great
I was already a fan of Star Trek before TNG came on as I watched reruns on TOS. But I will say while TOS made me a fan of the franchise, it really was TNG that made me a fanatic.
Even when I was a kid in the 80s watching reruns of TOS even then it felt old and outdated, but in a really fun way. I loved watching it but it felt like it was for another time. When TNG came on the air, this was made for, pun intended, my generation and to finally have new Trek adventures and FX that didn’t feel like it was made with a shoestring budget. TNG is what made me want to collect the merchandise, go to Star Trek conventions for the first time. It also what made my friends Trek fans as well and we talked about it endlessly at school.
TNG really did create a new generation of Trek fans and I don’t think we have seen that since. Obviously plenty of people watched DS9 and Voyager but it was mostly people who was already watching TNG. With Discovery, its ‘new’ but it feels like its people who has been watching Trek since the 60s through the 90s already. Obviously I’m not saying there aren’t new fans, but I don’t think its anything close to the kind of fandom that sprung from the 90s although its early so maybe it will happen. But I also think being on streaming sites limit that kind of opportunity where TNG was shown everywhere during its run and you can still easily find it on TV today thirty years later than you can Discovery obviously.
Yea, TOS and TNG is the only canon imo and the only Star Trek worth watching.
Your opinion is moot. All the TV shows are canon whether you like them or not.
Lol not really though, Roddenberry was explicit in what was and wasn’t Canon…which is why the animated series was mostly non-canon when TNG was produced. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against a continuation of Trek indefinitely, however I respect the wishes of the Creator to have a line between canon and non-canon.
LOL yes really though. Its all canon because CBS says its all canon, not people who just watch the shows, have an internet connection and think their opinion of it matters. CBS own the property, what they say goes. You may own a few of the blu rays you got at Target, but doesn’t exactly make you the proprietor of the franchise.
And Roddenberry has been dead for over 20 years now and according to people that guy changed what was canon or not whenever he wanted. So if you listen to the ‘creator’ canon could be whatever he felt was at the time which is funny you brought up TAS because when it aired Roddenberry said it was canon at the time only for a few years later to change his mind completely and why fans still argue if it is or isn’t decades later. I think fans care way more about what is ‘canon’ than he ever did. Roddenberry sounded like he got cagier and cagier in his old age.
The Great Bird Of The Galaxy did indeed pick and choose what was and wasn’t Canon. TAS was canon until TNG because Roddenberry had no plans to do TNG, but wasn’t going to allow Paramount and Rick Berman to co opt what he created and partially owned. Lol Blu-rays at Target, nice one. Personally, I would like to visit the timeline in which Roddenberry had raised the funds to buy “Star Trek” outright from Paramount as they had offered to do so after TOS. Would be interesting to see if it would have ended or continued in another form.
captain sounds taken from DARK STAR and George RR Martin’s NIGHTFLYERS.
“Painfully beautiful, Joyce is still fighting with the timeless battle of trying to be taken seriously while looking as lovely as she does.”
Just goes to show that even if we don’t like Alice Eve stripping down, or ridiculous promotions, if you look hard enough, it’s all canon. Even resets.
That promotion would have beat Kirk’s “youngest captain ever” record by 5 years. And even Tryla Scott’s.
Hey, records were made to be broken.
Reality check, is that Treks roots are very sexist. So, even in the 24th century men are still pigs, and women have to rise above beauty?? Trek fans, progressive or not, need to be held accountable for their brand of sexism.
Kirk’s attitude was that women would work a bit on a Starship then go off and have families…sounds normal enough to me, sexist by today’s third wave feminist standards though
60’s sensibilities. 80’s sensibilities. Doesnt explain the raging sexism of STID and that offensive scene of a slack-jawed drooling Kirk sexually harassing Marcus.
That the writers didnt know it was offensive is just another notch against them and the abomination that they created. I bet they all just “happened” to be visiting the set the day that scene was filmed too…har har har
Lol
@TUP..the last lines were intended to be tongue in cheek, which didn’t translate well in print. While we don’t agree on the KU being an abomination, the Alice Eve undie shot just defied explanation, and the writers using very circular arguments to defend it was, and continues to be, maddening.
Omg can you kiss Discovery and JJ butt anymore! It’s obvious that you are kissing butt, to get exclusives for the site. The writing on Disc and the J.J. movies is terrible. You can not put crap out like Discovery and expect people to watch. The bar has been risen with shows like westworld, Black Mirror,Heck Rick and Morty has better sci-fi/season long stories then Discovery. The show and the movies use “member berries” to sucker people in, but if you look at it in its totality it’s just crap. Then they want you to accept the changes. At least the J.J. movies had sense to put it in a new universe, but Discovery wants to force a change to TOS. Set the show in a new universe like the KelvinVerse, it would let them reboot without the fans getting upset with the changes.
You want to take it down several notches? Just because you think its all crap doesn’t mean everyone else does. I like both Discovery and the KT films even if I feel they are lacking what made me fall in love with Star Trek. But Discovery is new. How much did you love TNG in its first season? I will agree they probably should’ve put it in a new universe so people can accept all the changes but its also why TNG was smart to move it so far ahead so they can change what they wanted. Discovery should’ve done the same thing but I’m giving it a chance regardless.
Not to mention that there ARE parralells between this TNG pitch and Discovery? Unfortunately, Tiger2- this site has become infested with barely literate trolls determined to endless whine about the show they say week after week they will never watch again…. but do. Sad.
It’s a shame that the webmasters won’t do anything about these people.
Yeah, once upon a time anything even remotely political got deleted immediately. Now we get folks lecturing that if you aren’t tolerant of racists (individuals merely expressing their opinions, after all, an expression of freedom) you’re somehow part of the problem. It’s not our sandbox, we only play in it.
Phil, yeah I hear what you’re saying, but with racists I’ve found there are generally two types: those that are proud of their race and heritage and wish to work with others while not destroying their own culture in the process; and those who are supremacists. The latter can be found more easily and in my experience I’ve not found one race that doesn’t have at least one group of supremacists. Just my opinion, really
AdAstraPerAs you sound like a stalinist of some sort…”webmaster, remove these dissidents and purge this webpage before opinions are seen by others..they must be stupid and dumb..yeahh..that’s it”
I guess I get so tired of hearing this stuff ALL the time. “My (insert favorite Star Trek show here) is real Trek but the (insert the ones they hates) are trashy fakes made by hacks who never understood Star Trek they way I do and anyone is not a ‘true’ fan if you believe other wise.”
It gets SO annoying and yet look at this thread. No one can seem to agree what ‘is’ a good Trek show or a bad Trek show. So I guess in his view anything Roddenberry didn’t do then is bad. The same Gene Roddenberry who was constantly kicked off one Trek project after another, the one who William Shatner said a few months ago contributed very little to TOS after the first half of season one than all the fans gives him high praise for, the one who hated the GOOD Star Trek films but would probably remake TMP over and over again if he could get away with it.
I don’t really care how people feel about certain shows and films, I just hate when they gate keep everything and pretend the rest of it wasn’t ‘real’ Star Trek because they didn’t particularly like it.
And I’m no apologist, I can be JUST as critical about it as everyone here and was even attacked a few times because I am THAT critical when I feel its so. But I don’t see everything in black and white and I get people can like what I don’t and hate what I like. But don’t talk about it as if its a foregone fact. ITs not, its just your opinion. I don’t care people hate Discovery, but its still Star Trek just the same, so get over it.
Strawman logic “since the name is Star trek, it must be Star trek, cuz we can all get along that way”
Lol
I’m not stopping anyone from watching Star trek spinoffs and can simply see there is a clear difference between TOS and TNG years compared to DS9, Voyager, ENT and Discovery; the main contributing factor most likely being Gene Roddenberry no longer having any involvement, and as time moved forward Successive series began to move away from the feel Roddenberry nuanced into TOS and TNG.
No man, its not a strawman, its Star Trek. Since you have people here who are arguing TOS and TNG WERE different from each other it sort of proves the point. Star Treks is not ONE thing. TNG was only the same in TOS in the sense they were on a Starship called Enterprise traveling the galaxy. Enterprise actually had way more in common with TOS than TNG did lol.
Roddenberry made a great show but he didn’t do it alone and the guy saw Star Trek very differently by the time the films came around and would’ve drove it into the ground if he stayed on the films and TNG. The people who made Star Trek great for me was Gene Coon, DC Fontana, Nic Meyer, Harve Bennet, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Ronald D. Moore, Ira Steven Behr, etc. They took his concept and made a much bigger and exciting universe overall.
But I did like his idea that he thought his universe was just bigger than one crew and timeline and could make Star Trek successful beyond TOS and why Trek is so big and diverse today. But remember even when TNG happened there were people who was convinced Star Trek only meant Kirk and Spock. There are still some of those people who believe that today.
Star Trek has been boldly going 25 years after he died and it will be going for another 25 years thankfully. Roddenberry only had a small hand compared to what it now is.
Lol it was a strawman to say that Star trek is Star trek as long as it is named Star trek. Case in point, “I don’t care people hate Discovery,but it’s still Star trek just the same, get over it”
😂
It’s great for fans discuss, disagree, and agree about various aspects of Star Trek as a whole, but if you can’t handle it then that’s cool, just don’t take it out on those who have differing opinions. It’s long been known that Trekkies disagree about which series is best, which series is true to canon, etc. I think this keeps it from being dragged down and Discovery is a great example of applying the Star Trek name to something which doesn’t resonate the same feel that previous series and movies encapsulated. Also try to keep in mind much of Star Trek used to be designed for the whole family, Discovery killed that entirely, which I would submit as a main point that it did not go in the proper direction.
A better prequel series would have been following Captain Garth. I also think it would have been better to have the ethnic female main stars in a sequel/successive series as opposed to the prequel that is Discovery;just my opinion that there would have been more ability to employ a higher level of creativity and actual expansion of ideas without as many hang ups and probably more appealing to all Trek fans.
People can hate Discovery. Hell I was accused of hating Discovery by someone here just a few days ago because of all the issues I have with it and I was literally told to ‘stop watching’ since I apparently hate it so much lol. I’m not an ‘apologist’ and my views on Star Trek is not black and white, FAR from it. I didn’t like Enterprise when it first came on and stopped watching, I wasn’t fond of the KT films for awhile and while I like Discovery I have MANY issues with it. Don’t read just one and two of my posts and think you understand my view point on this show when I have written hundreds of posts for a year now that both defend AND criticize the show.
But I’m not going to be arrogant enough to tell people what is and what isn’t Star Trek based on how I personally feel about a show or film either. That’s just silly arrogance of the highest level and yes you are telling people they aren’t true fans if they don’t like the same shows or films as you do.
Discovery is divisive, I agree. Guess what so was TNG when IT came out. So was DS9 when IT came out. Now decades, and 100 episodes later lol people see those shows very differently than when they originally aired their fist season. Discovery is 15 episodes old. Think how great TNG was by episode 15 of its first season. We have no idea where Discovery is going this far in. DS9 was my least favorite show when it aired (to be fair there were only three) now its my favorite out of all of them. Its a TV show, they evolve and change in time. At least the good ones do.
So yeah I have NO problems people discussing things of what they hate. Hell I actually COME to hear people complain lol. Thats what keeps discussion interesting. My pet peeve is when people try to subscribe their own opinion for the entire fanbase or have the eye rolling nerve to tell us what Star Trek is or isn’t…like you’re trying to do.
You can hate Discovery man, you’re not alone in that assessment. But its Star Trek just the same. Its a bunch of people in Starfleet traveling the galaxy together, its just not your version of Star Trek that you like. Thats fair. Neither is TNG by some fans account and thats fair too. Do you disagree when they say its not ‘real’ Star Trek because its not like the show from the sixties? If so now you are getting my point.
And a Captain Garth ‘prequel’, no offense but ugh. Sorry, I wouldn’t want to see that but I wish we could stop with the prequels in general, partly a big reason I’m not a huge fan of Discovery so far.
Lol I’m not actually telling people what is and isn’t trek, more instigating for sake of decent discussion mixed with some sarcasm and jokes. The point of a Captain Garth Prequel is just what you said, let’s stop with the prequels. I believe a Garth of Izar Prequel would be far better than Discovery, gnome-sayin?
Anyways, isn’t it great for fans of all sorts to discuss what they love and hate? Imo it keeps it alive and kicking.
Yes, in total agreement! OK I understand more now.
Shatner didn’t wait till GR was dead to say that about GR either. As far back as 1979 in the book SHATNER: WHERE NO MAN, Shatner was saying that Gene Coon was by leaps and bounds the most important contributor to making Trek work, and that was at a time when the only other person making such a claim was David Gerrold. Might be one of the few times historically when Shatner and Gerrold are on the same page, and I’m there too.
Tiger2 nah, it’s crap filled with obligatory progressive values the is meant to attack at the roots of Gene’s creation and star trek canon. It is horrendous lol
How does it ‘attack the roots of Gene’s creation’? Its weird because other fanboys are claiming its exactly what Roddenberry would’ve wanted. Maybe not during TNGs run but maybe TOS. And ‘horrendous’ could’ve been described as TNGs first seasons, right?
Except people ARE watching Discovery and all three JJ movies (as dumb as the first two are) are the highest grossing movies in franchise history.
The rest of your post makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.
Your logic is flawed. JJ created crap movies with terrible acting and loaded with special effects and an odd blue lighting scheme..and Discovery is horrendous. Roddenberry never went into star trek with a goal of “how can I make this appealing to everyone to make as much money as Possible” lol
So I tried to read this, JohnR, and I was immediately reminded of Nomad’s line, “That unit is defective. Its thinking is chaotic. Absorbing it unsettled me.”
That was about absorbing a woman’s mind lol. Terrible attempt at inputting a great line into a non-relevant out of context scenario
JohnR, you got it right buddy. Gene Roddenberry has done a full 360 by now turning in his grave so many times..I’m just happy he found out about Rick Berman’s attempt to co-opt his creation and made TNG His way. Roddenberry was and still is ahead of his time, at least it seems so.
So would making the lead character be a secret sister of a TOS character be what the producer meant by a “gimmick”.
We’d need to ask Laurence Luckinbill about that, too. Right?
Sybok makes sense due to Vulcan mating habits. Sarek having an unknown first Vulcan wife is logical. Sticking characters into backstories because no one said there wasn’t one there is a bit different. There’s no real limit to how many times one can pull that – after all Discovery never said Sarek is not currently raising an Andorian did it?
Incidentally for anyone interested – as I recall the novel Sarek said that Sarek’s first wife / Sybok’s mother divorced him to become a kolinahr priestess.
“There’s no real limit to how many times one can pull that – after all Discovery never said Sarek is not currently raising an Andorian did it?”
In TNG, Picard said he attended Sarek’s son’s wedding. That was unlikely (though admittedly not impossible) refer to Sybok or Spock. So yes, very conceivably at some point after Spock left the nest, Sarek raised yet another male child — and nothing says that child had to be Vulcan.
Sybok makes sense because the writers pulled off a fairly plausible bit of exposition. That’s all. It doesn’t require understanding how many wives Sarek may or may not have had, or speculating if Vulcan males just do anything with a vagina during Pon Farr.
Back then I think Starlog reported that Roddenberry came to what became TNG reluctantly; I believe he saw what Paramount was planning and came back to save his creation. (not my speculation, there was a quote to that effect) I’ve seen articles that insist Roddenberry pushed the series on them, but I remember that was not the case. Doubt a war show would have worked (Discovery got out of that pretty quick). Paramount might have just taken the uniforms and models from the movies and started shooting. Doubt anybody else would have spent the time designing new and appropriate phasers, uniforms, and, importantly, a hero ship and its interiors — and taking the risk of breaking away almost completely from super successful (The Voyage Home) TOS. And they basically used those designs up to Enterprise. I thought TNG became too soap opera like after Roddenberry left, but it was a great, influential show, maybe the last big show to have enormous ratings, merchandising appealing to kids and adults, and wide cultural impact. Thank goodness for them they had Roddenberry, he had to convince Paramount to keep Kirk in TMP back in ’79. They wanted a young Captain in that one, too. That story is in the new TMP book.
The Only Star Trek Worth Watching Is Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek..even TNG started to flail in the sixth and seventh seasons without Roddenberry’s oversight. The man nuanced the overarching star trek archetypes that are objectively non-present in all following series. DS9, Voyager and Discovery are all fan-fics which all tried to give a “Star trek feel” rather than actual star trek and often pushed obligatory progressive themes which undercut all relative and previous Star Trek Canon.
DS9 and Discovery offer some of the best Star Trek television there is.
If that’s what you think, imo you don’t like Star Trek, you like space themed television.
DS9, yes. Discovery, no.
I’m willing to say DS9 was decent enough to follow the style of creativity Roddenberry put out, and the flashback episode paid homage to TOS which was pretty great. Discovery is just a mess and not enjoyable to watch lol
lol imagine thinking this is true.
K
The only TNG influence GR had during the last couple years of his life that I can readily point to is that he had some kind of rage issue when he got hold of the outline for REDEMPTION pt 1 — which led to Piller being called away from my pitch session to handhold him, thus sticking me with Jeri Taylor. All of Trek future history changed in the next 45min, since I didn’t wind up selling any of my pitches or joining the writing staff. So I take GR’s ‘oversight’ on TNG with so many grains of salt that I feel like Lot’s wife.
I want to visit a parallel Earth and watch those episodes.
Cool! That “unused” idea would be re-used for the next television incarnation of “Star Trek”–one that would take place sometime after the events of 2002’s “Nemesis,” air on either CBS or The CW, and have the Federation starship’s name to be changed to “Pinnacle” and have the new show have the subtitle of that same name, since “Odyssey” was seen in the “Deep Space Nine” season two finale.
It seems like parts of this proposal wound up making it into TNG
1) The Rhon/Kincaid dynamic seems reminiscent of the Picard/Riker dynamic.
2) Kincaid has an ‘aloneness’ Riker was a de facto orphan after his mother died during his infancy and his father had no time for him
3) Mynk and Worf have very obvious similarities Worf is a perfectionist and Mynk ‘has no patience for mistakes’. Both characters lost their father in an epic battle
4) Klingon and Federation peace treaty and TNG Klingons and Federation are allies.
5) Holographic captain has more than a passing similarity to the Doctor on Voyager
6) I like the idea of each side having one of the other side on their ships. However this idea seems to be a bit like the Officer Exchange program that Riker was in.
Overall I am glad we got the TNG that was on the air
I think you folks are missing the point. Roddenberry envisioned a universe where cultures put aside their disparities and embraced a common goal: exploration of the unknown. The conflict lay in that same unknown and how individuals would unite for a common goal. Meanwhile, we have TOS, TNG, and DS9 fans griping about how one show was far superior than the other. All of the shows had their good and their bad episodes (I can recall just as many bad stories/concepts from TOS, DS9, VOY and ENT as I can TNG), but one thing we should all be able to agree upon: Gene laid the foundation for an amazing and inspiring universe in the work that he did. We should all thank our lucky stars that someone could create a form of entertainment that has lasted half a century.
True statements. However, I definitely enjoy TOS and TNG over DSC. 😉
So I agree that Roddenberry envisioned a universe where cultures worked together and put aside their disparities to explore the unknown. But 60s Trek Trek was about today’s humanity succeeding in the future. The United States was going to continue to develop technologically, work with other nations and go into space. Space was going to be filled with different aliens and full of hardships but we were going to go explore and colonize space anyway because that is what humans do. We are going to learn to work with dangerous matter and antimatter thanks to some mined dilithium crystals and work hard to harness it to explore the universe. 1990 Trek was we have colonized the universe, energy is free and it turns out today’s humanity working together isn’t going to be progressive enough. “New man” has to have no conflict. “New man” has to have no differences. Individualism is too much and too full of conflict. The bureaucracy will prevail in making all species exactly like “new man” because “new man” is so perfect. Science isn’t good enough, there will be unlimited free reliable energy without any work. The universe isn’t as exciting as what we imagine in the holodeck. One vision is exciting and full of conflict and hardships. One vision sets up boring stories (unless one looks in the mirror which TNG was never going to do).
Today’s Abrams style trek is geared for todays low attention span audience- no time for plot development just a continuous assault of flash and explosions – tng looked real plastic at first but advanced many small plot of sequences making for decent story telling
@Jimi strat — what people seem to forget is that Star Trek looked like nothing else anyone had ever seen before when it appeared on TV in the 1960s. Audiences were sat rapped in front of their TVs watching one of only 3 channels available to them during a short window every week. The world is not like that anymore. AUdiences have seen dozens of Trek-like knock-offs since then, with so many more options to entertain them. The success or failure of a franchise is so much more dependent on what will resonate with a paying audience. Discovery is at least attempting to fit the needs of both types of audiences into the franchise and ensure a paying audience.
“Today’s Abrams style trek is geared for todays low attention span audience- no time for plot development just a continuous assault of flash and explosions”
The actual Abrams movies — especially STID — perhaps. Discovery, absolutely not. They resolved the Klingon war without a single space battle, and they’ve spent oodles of time on character development: Burnham, Saru, Stamets, Tilly, not one of them is the same character we saw in the premiere. You can’t say say that about the sainted TOS.
Indeed, the more common complaint seems to be that we didn’t see *enough* collateral damage from the Klingon war.
Jimi strat
Wait what? Sorry I didn’t finish reading first time around, I just saw a shiny bouncy ball and just had to run after it.
So, as I was saying– *butterfly flutters by*
…
TOS had its time. TNG had theirs. You can personally not like it but clearly with 20 million watching every week and spinned off two shows and went on to make multiple films on its own, it was far from ‘boring’ for the majority of fans. And its still the most binged Star Trek show today according to Star Trek.com just a few months ago. TNG is highly rated and highly liked for a reason, even now, because it was great television. But if you disagree thats fine, but clearly you’re in the minority.
In case you didn’t believe me:
http://www.startrek.com/article/poll-says-series-you-binge-watch-most-is
The ‘boring’ show with all the free energy is living long and prospering better than the others just fine. ;)
What are the backgrounds of those who voted? How much of a self-selection bias exists? What are the age ranges of voters? You need a multivariate analysis. I’m a Star Trek fan and a visitor to this place from almost day one. I’ve never bothered with the official site in all these years.
So this poll of yours simply says to me that TNG fans are more likely to vote in polls at the official site than other fans.
I’m pretty sure all the same ranges as they are here man. Why wouldh’t there be if its a site, the main site at that, thats about all of Star Trek. The point being TNG is still popular, very popular. Thats clearly obvious when you go to bigger sites like Reddit where new people are there every week watching the show for the first time and there are discussions about it endlessly and not places like here where its a few dozen old fans whose been watching for decades now giving out the same arguments clearly set in their ways.
Tiger2
Whoosh! Everything I wrote went straight over your head, didn’t it?
Who voted? Does that in any way represent regular people? What’s the demographic of StarTrek.com? We know Reddit is broadly a site for people who champion neo-Marxist progressivism, for example, so inevitably they’d like TNG because it’s basically a paean to communism.
Like I say, you need a multivariate analysis. The poll you cite simply proves TNG fans are the biggest group of people who vote in polls on StarTrek.com. It’s meaningless otherwise.
And dismissing people for being ‘stuck in their ways?’ People voting for a 30-year-old show are somehow less ‘stuck in their ways’ than than those voting for a 50-year-old show?
Seriously?!
Dude, I’m going to say it again. Its a STAR TREK site. I’m going to take a guess majority of the people are fans of the franchise as a whole like they are here lol. I don’t think a bunch of TNG fans got together and voted up the poll man. I guess with that logic, all the DS9 fans got together to give that one a big show as well. Didn’t mean to get you so upset about it.
The point being the show is still very popular. And not surprising considering it had the biggest audience out of any of the shows and the actors are still highly loved.
And I was talking about NEW fans man, ie, just started watching the shows last few years or months, hence the phrase ‘first time’ which I said that in my post lol. Its more fun talking to them.
I like TM but its like I stepped into 1989 every time I come here and hear the same debates as if they are being said for the first time.
Masses love TITANIC and AVATAR. Masses love TNG. Masses even somehow love TRANSFORMERS. Popularity isn’t an indicator of artistic success for me, and certainly doesn’t register when it comes to watchability.
So true Frisky Jesus and why I still love Star Trek today. I haven’t loved every episode or film obviously but I think the concept is amazing and I like that its been interpreted in so many ways since. I’m not a huge fan of Discovery but I am trying to enjoy it for what it is. It wouldn’t have been the concept I would’ve went with but I love that people are still trying to find innovative ways to tell these stories.
In many ways the fact that there isn’t a consensus on what is considered the best show by fans who have been watching it for decades proves how diverse Trek is because its become something different for everyone and THATS how a franchise progresses. If they were still doing the same thing 50 years later it would feel like a stagnant franchise thats just regurgitating the same ideas and glad they didn’t.
Wish we’d had this idea in the first place. TNG ruined Star Trek for me: it sucked the life and the fun out of Star Trek. I wish Harve Bennett and Leonard Nimoy hadn’t fallen out so badly; I’d have loved to have seen a Star Trek TV show overseen by those guys and Nick Meyer.
Dom, agreed…. I remember being six years old watching ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ after having seen ‘Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home’ and thinking what a train wreck. Where is Kirk training the next generation on the Enterprise-A? Why is everything so bland and cheesy compared to the movies? The next seven years was watching out of routine hoping that it would get better, and apart from Best of Both Worlds where you had a summer to believe Captain Picard had destroyed that whole TNG concept at Wolf 359 to allow for a reboot and Yesterdays Enterprise, where they went back to a cooler time with a cooler Enterprise and a more exciting crew (and that one brief second one could think they were going to see Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the Enterprise-A), it never did. It was only when I was older that I gained the maturity to realize that Roddenberry from the 60s was not the same Roddenberry from the 90s, that just because it has a ‘Star Trek’ label doesn’t mean it IS going to be Star Trek. And if it is horrid and boring – no reason to waste time watching it. I feel for DS9 in a way because I only watched in in reruns having given up on Star Trek (returning for the promise of ENT and an exciting Trek universe only to be crushed by a transporter and peace with the Klingons in the first episode) – and I was the die hard kid buying Star Trek comics, going to conventions, movies, etc. The best Trek in the 1990s was the DC Comics where Peter David and Howard Weinstein basically did “Star Trek” the movie tv series in comic book form with bounty hunters and the Klingons after Kirk, a follow up to Star Trek IV/V (even the trial of JTK), and exploration in that more exciting 23rd century universe.
Hi Cmd.Bremmon
Yeah, your experience is broadly the same as mine. I’m nine years older and TNG only properly arrived in the UK around 1990, when I was 15, aside from rental videos. I’d grown up on the original show, the four/five films, the novelisations and novels and comicbooks.
The scope of Star Trek seemed so much larger back then. Far more of the galaxy seemed to have been explored, Vonda McIntyre’s novelisations talked about Galaxy-class starships now exploring the Andromeda Galaxy. Genesis malfunctioned, but still led to the creation of a planet, thanks to human genius.
TNG came along and basically said ‘Well, they didn’t really explore that much actually, and they were a bunch of cowboys who wouldn’t be allowed in Starfleet now. We’re proper, grown up Star Trek, so forget all that 1960s rubbish.’
Suddenly Star Trek seemed smaller, less outlandish, less adventurous, less fun. In place of characters who no longer argued over nonsense such as race and gender (actually having moved beyond identity politics,) but still able to scrap over ethical issues amidst fistfights and phaser battles, we had a bunch of de-humanised, ‘perfected’ humans for whom identity politics was paramount, whose mission seemed to be less about learning and more about preaching about how ‘perfect’ humans now are to alien races who broadly reflect one or more of the biblical seven deadly sins.
As TNG developed a fanbase that routinely mocked the original show, I drifted away. Discovery has weaknesses, but has by far the most likeable, relatable characters since the original series crew. In the end, everything since is merely moderate to poor, but I’ll always enjoy the original show, even at its most ridiculous.
(((Ferengi))) vs Harry Mudd
Who can sell you on something better? Go.
I honestly never liked Harry Mudd until I saw Rain Wilson’s version on Discovery. I actually rolled my eyes when I heard they were bringing that character on the show, but I must admit I was proven wrong and I really like him now. I hope we see him again in fact.
As for your question, I guess it depends on which Ferengi. If its Mudd vs Quark, I’m going to go with Quark lol. But I would love to see these two working together. That would be fun!
I’m forced to agree with your sentiment about seeing Quark and Mudd working together, that would be great fun!
FWIW: While various people say various things about The Bird, he wrote one of the best and most suspenseful episodes of any television series for the old HIGHWAY PATROL, true edge-of-the-seat stuff for a half hour titled “Human Bomb” (1955). He was far from a weak writer, but just perhaps, like most writers before and after him, their first works are their best, and with those behind them, they’re spent. “The Cage” script may be another case of this. Just a thought.
Brik, Hart, Joyce… Horatio Hornb… I mean, Gage. Very iconic names.
How lucky they were to leave the Vulcans, those intellectual puppets of the Federation.
Star Trek: The Next Generation was the TV equivalent of the North Star for me on Saturday nights throughout its run. Work demands (weekend overtime) and family saw to it that I couldn’t see every episode on schedule but our VCR faithfully recorded the episodes so I’d get a look at them when possible.
I waded in with “The Big Goodbye” and had to backtrack when reruns began but after that I was in-sync. I grew a dashing (or so I believed) facsimile of Commander Riker’s beard in late-’89 which I maintained for over a decade. In the early ’90s I’d watch the late-night syndicated reruns at lunchtime on the overnight shift on a tiny Casio TV my wife had given me on Christmas Day 1990. Carolyn McCormick’s “Minuet” remains my favorite character as the resemblance to my dear, late wife is striking. When I do, by chance, watch “Minuet” in “11001001” there isn’t a dry eye in the house.