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samboct -> RE: Why We Love Star Trek (5/9/2011 6:20:03 AM)
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Some of the writers for the first show included Ted Sturgeon, the aforementioned Harlan Ellison (who I think may have written a few) and Fredric Brown who won a Hugo for his story- Arena. Remember the one with the Gorn?
I wouldn't describe myself as a Trekkie, but I do like the shows. My likes/dislikes are a bit different than some of the other posters- I never could stand DS9, but I liked Voyager once they brought Jeri Ryan on board. No, it's not just because she was the hottest Trek babe ever either- although she was.... I have a hunch Star Trek runs into trouble when they let the Trekkies run the show. Enterprise was an example of that as was the last movie. Too much time traveling to deal with minor plot inconsistencies.
Star Trek was at its finest when it made you think, and the Trekkies were irrelevant since they seemed to focus on the alternate world of Star Trek and the characters. But the power of the show and the reason it crossed to much wider audiences was the power of some of its ideas. As an example, I was at a conference discussing some of the new military drone technology with a very somber gent from DuPont. I commented that I wasn't exactly happy with the notion of a push button war- where people could be killed so remotely and with so little risk to your own combatants. Makes war too easy. Not surprisingly, there's a TOS show which deals with that one- where computers play war and decide the outcome. So there's a beautiful city that's being steadily depopulated, since when the computer decides you're cooked, you get into a chamber that scatters your atoms and doesn't reassemble them. And since there's no collateral damage, the war is quite sustainable and has been going on for centuries. Kirk of course, rails against the idea as well he should. Turns out the gent from DuPont had also seen this one and had the same concerns as me.
When the Trekkies write the show, you don't get any of these big ideas- we get stuff like where did Spock come from etc. although the mating habits of Vulcans were fair game since once you've got a character like that, it's a good question. Star Trek needs its Spock, its Data, its 7 of 9 (The reason why Voyager took so long to be watchable was that without this character, the show was largely a space opera). The worst problem with Enterprise was that the Vulcan was way too human. All of the aforementioned characters let us examine an important question- what does it mean to be human? which was exactly what the clip that started this thread was about.
Sam
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