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the writing of Star Trek
vetteguy904
Member Posts: 3,857 Arc User
one of the other treads touched on it but it was not the main theme. it got me to think.
the thought was put forth that the writing of Voyager and Enterprise was not up to the same intellectual levels as TOS. to a point, I have to agree, but there are valid reasons for it.
First, I have to say that the audiences of the 1960s were more sophisticated. Television was really note necessarily in it's infance, but somewhere in the todder age.
in the 60s probably only 8 out of 10 homes had a TV.. and usually a black and white. people were not yet conditioned to sit on the couch from 7-10 every night. I was a kid when Star Trek aired. more often than not, i was outside playing.. or reading. and I don't think I was atypical. it took something special to grab attention.
the writing of Star Trek did that. it took the problems of the day and hid them in the "wagontrain to the stars" and it took serious writing talent. Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Bloch (psycho) and Richard Matheson (I am legend) pretty heavy hitters helped Star Trek off the ground.
And star trek stood alone.
Sure there was other Sci Fi on. Outer Limits, Twilight Zone being the other two heavy hitters. and the fluff.. campy shows trying to be serious, batman, Lost in Space, Voyage to the bottom of the sea. the same rubber suited monster from radiation story rehashed.
then it was over. Cerebral fans demanded it come back. first in comics and books and then TAS, end even though targeted to 6 year olds, still tried to be thought provoking.
but the 70s turned Television from entertainment to almost caretaker/babysitter. attention spans wavered.
Twilight Zone Perry Mason gave way to Charlies Angels and television dumbed down. Thought provoking story gave way to TRIBBLE and bombs.. literally.
Star Trek stood alone as what Sci Fi should be. Sure there were great movies. 2001, as an example. but there were intellectual turds, albeit financial successes. (planet of the apes)
1977 changed it all with Star Wars. Big Budget super zoom wow pow what plot??
the era of SFX over story was born. Gene tried again. we got TMP. but it did it's job. the movie franchises were born. but with that birth Star Trek began to suffer the disease that plagued entertainment. Thought provoking story began to lose out..
Wrath of Kahn was Star trek's version of Star Wars. the last real star trek movie with "the message" was IV. Next Generation tried to bring it back, but they found they needed the Zoom Wow Pow to make it to Season 3 From there the series devolved to the "gimmick" DS9 was the first black captain. Voyager was the first woman captain.
Fortunately good scripts (not the same deep ones but good) kept the core interested and drew new audiences.
and the competition was there. Firefly, Babylon 5 were trying for the Lucas crowd.
so yes, the writing changed (and in my opinion, for the worse) from TOS to DS9 to Voyager...
America didn't care about the plot as much they cared about the cool way the Xindi blew up the planet and how freaky 8472 was.
it didn't help that talent in writing was being split. DS9 and Voyager were double teaming writers, and themes. DS9 got alpha quadrant stuff, Voyager got the borg, exclusively.
we did get some good stuff out of them. but the audience had changed. Kirk didn't kill the Gorn But Picard killed Ru'afo. I think the movie would have been panned even worse if Ru'afo had lived.
Society has changed.
Kids don't play outside till the moon is up. they are inside, on the xbox, wondering why GTA isn't a TV series
the thought was put forth that the writing of Voyager and Enterprise was not up to the same intellectual levels as TOS. to a point, I have to agree, but there are valid reasons for it.
First, I have to say that the audiences of the 1960s were more sophisticated. Television was really note necessarily in it's infance, but somewhere in the todder age.
in the 60s probably only 8 out of 10 homes had a TV.. and usually a black and white. people were not yet conditioned to sit on the couch from 7-10 every night. I was a kid when Star Trek aired. more often than not, i was outside playing.. or reading. and I don't think I was atypical. it took something special to grab attention.
the writing of Star Trek did that. it took the problems of the day and hid them in the "wagontrain to the stars" and it took serious writing talent. Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Bloch (psycho) and Richard Matheson (I am legend) pretty heavy hitters helped Star Trek off the ground.
And star trek stood alone.
Sure there was other Sci Fi on. Outer Limits, Twilight Zone being the other two heavy hitters. and the fluff.. campy shows trying to be serious, batman, Lost in Space, Voyage to the bottom of the sea. the same rubber suited monster from radiation story rehashed.
then it was over. Cerebral fans demanded it come back. first in comics and books and then TAS, end even though targeted to 6 year olds, still tried to be thought provoking.
but the 70s turned Television from entertainment to almost caretaker/babysitter. attention spans wavered.
Twilight Zone Perry Mason gave way to Charlies Angels and television dumbed down. Thought provoking story gave way to TRIBBLE and bombs.. literally.
Star Trek stood alone as what Sci Fi should be. Sure there were great movies. 2001, as an example. but there were intellectual turds, albeit financial successes. (planet of the apes)
1977 changed it all with Star Wars. Big Budget super zoom wow pow what plot??
the era of SFX over story was born. Gene tried again. we got TMP. but it did it's job. the movie franchises were born. but with that birth Star Trek began to suffer the disease that plagued entertainment. Thought provoking story began to lose out..
Wrath of Kahn was Star trek's version of Star Wars. the last real star trek movie with "the message" was IV. Next Generation tried to bring it back, but they found they needed the Zoom Wow Pow to make it to Season 3 From there the series devolved to the "gimmick" DS9 was the first black captain. Voyager was the first woman captain.
Fortunately good scripts (not the same deep ones but good) kept the core interested and drew new audiences.
and the competition was there. Firefly, Babylon 5 were trying for the Lucas crowd.
so yes, the writing changed (and in my opinion, for the worse) from TOS to DS9 to Voyager...
America didn't care about the plot as much they cared about the cool way the Xindi blew up the planet and how freaky 8472 was.
it didn't help that talent in writing was being split. DS9 and Voyager were double teaming writers, and themes. DS9 got alpha quadrant stuff, Voyager got the borg, exclusively.
we did get some good stuff out of them. but the audience had changed. Kirk didn't kill the Gorn But Picard killed Ru'afo. I think the movie would have been panned even worse if Ru'afo had lived.
Society has changed.
Kids don't play outside till the moon is up. they are inside, on the xbox, wondering why GTA isn't a TV series
Post edited by vetteguy904 on
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Comments
1. Saying that Enterprise or Voyager were worse than TOS is highly subjective. You don't really go into any detail about why TOS is "better," you simply state that it is.
2. I disagree with the idea that 1960s audiences were more sophisticated. If anything, the infancy of television allowed producers to get away with writing that would be unbelievable today (flying killer brain cells), and plenty of generic writing (the fantasy shore leave planet). Just like today. And let's not even get into Saturday morning cartoons.
4. You decry Sisko and Janeway as gimmick captains because they were black and female respectively, but TOS had an entire "gimmick" crew--the Enterprise's bridge crew was a five token band. Star Trek has always been about pushing various kinds of social equality. Whether any specific instance is really a good idea is up for interpretation, but it's in the nature of the series.
5. You claim a shift from high quality writing to "TRIBBLE and bombs," but the TRIBBLE and bombs were always there. In fact, there was an arguably stifling set of censorship rules in place from 1930 to 1968.
7. The greater prevalence (if there was a greater prevalence) of poor writing could just as easily be due to a change in the industry, not the audience. Consider this: early television was difficult and expensive to do, so anyone who did it would want to get the most out of it. As it became easier to do, people with less talent would do it more frequently, and since people with talent in a field are generally outnumbered by people who don't have talent in that field, it would make sense that the quality of content in the field would reflect that.
8. Calling Planet of the Apes an "intellectual TRIBBLE" is a stretch, since it's meant to bu just as thoughtful as TOS, if not moreso. I mean come on, it was about a) animal welfare and b) a way to look at ourselves critically by putting are flaws on apes where we would be willing to examine them.
9. There's still quality TV writing today: Joan of Arcadia (2003-2005) and Monk (2002-2009) spring to mind.
tl;dr AKA in summary, there are a few logical holes in your argument, a large about of subjectivity, and, perhaps, a bit of Nostalgia Filter going on.
Today most of the scripts are written by Hollywood mill writers working to a formula...
Where Silence has Lease
Parallels
Ship in a Bottle
Yesterdays Enterprise
All Good Things Part I & II
And for good measure:
In the Pale Moonlight - the best hour of television in the past 2 decades.
Year of Hell, Parts 1 & 2
While there are many BAD episodes, there are stands outs as good or better than the original series. I was part of the audience of the 60's, through the reruns of the 70's, a fervent hater of TNG before it aired, but became a hardcore fan by season 3.
DS9 had some of the best writing in the series.
Voyager sucked TRIBBLE on so many levels, but even it had moments of brilliance.
Enterprise felt too little, to late although the final season showed moments of brilliance.
I'm a child of the late 60's, just old enough to see all the shows of that age in initial runs, but really only recall them from first reruns. I would agree with you that we did do less with the television and more with other things, like outdoor playing. (I suspect the amount of time it took to fine-tune the old dials and rabbit ears for each channel change contributed to the restlessness)
There are a few note you make I'm not entirely in agreement on:
Your view has points, but I suspect it has tunnel vision. The 60s had a full range of dumbed-down campiness. F-Troop, Gilligan's Island, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, My Mother the Car, The Munsters, Car 54 Where Are You?, the Beverly Hillbillies... the list goes on-and-on. Nothing deep about these. The writing could be clever at times, but there was a lot that could fit the "babysitter" category. In fact, a lot of those 60s shows were used in reruns during the 70s for just that purpose.
PotA was very much like many episodes of TOS. Both were trying to use their storyteller medium to teach moral and social responsibility. With PotA, it was an attempt to show a viewpoint of what disaster might result from the nuclear arms race.
I can't use "gimmick" to describe these two choices. I believe they were in the same spirit as Roddenberry's statement on the existence of a bald captain in the 24th century. It shows that it doesn't matter what the person's appearance is. Whether they can command or not is the issue. (and yes, that part is much debated). Now if you'd said "gimmick" in regard to Seven of Nine, I'd be less inclined to disagree. The cat suit pretty much confirmed it, to my thinking. I'm in the minority, I know, but I much preferred her one appearance in fleet uniform. It allowed the character to shine, not the figure. But I digress.
You may recall during Voyager's first run, that there was an outcry against B&B: Berman & Braga. I think a lot of the concern was justified, and may reflect strongly on why the two later shows seemed weak in several episodes.
That is so far beyond ridiculous it's unbelievable, besides the word you're looking for is Female not Woman.
I can pick out less than one series worth of intelligent or thought provoking TOS episodes (roughly comparable with VOY or ENT) with DS9 or TNG I could pick out at least 4 series worth.
TOS was mainly shirtless Kirk and 'splosions, with a whole bridge crew of tokenism.
As for the TNG films, yes they lacked the messages of the TV series, because they were films, meant to entertain the mass market, the only film in the style of the TV series was TMP, look how well received that was.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Actually, I think we could argue that ST4 was also in the style of the TV series, inasmuch as it consisted of "Kirk et al. get up to wacky hijinks and save Earth".
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Yeah, but I like TVH
I do agree with that, maybe also TFF as well, Kirk meets a false god... again.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Anyways. I too must admit to a certain level of nostalgia for TOS/TAS. But... a lot of the eps were dumb. And there's many that were only partially dumb. For example:
Beyond the Farthest Star was the first episode I ever saw. The concept used for the alien ship was spectacularly ingenious. The premise of the alien entity was lame, and the "Hypergravity" psuedo science used for the dead star was dumb.
the Lorelei signal overall the episode was pretty silly. But... the basic premise of an emergency that required the female members of the crew to take over was kinda interesting.
The Ambergris Element is possibly the best episode of TAS, and ranks up the with the Neutral zone for being awesomely written. It does leave you with a few unanswered questions though.... such as why the Aquans decided to treat their former scientific acheivements like dark magic. And why the Federation thought the place was uninhabited...
My character Tsin'xing