Star Trek

The central idea of Star Trek is that humanity has changed for the better, and technology and social progress has made the world paradise.

... it's really hard to write interesting stories in paradise.

The idea that technology could make everything better was brutally shat upon (no pun intended) by Eighties-era sci-fi authors and television series. A brain bug formed: Science Is Bad.

And the TNG staff adapted it into all those Holodeck Malfunction tales, all those stories about the Good Old Ways. Except for Picard's heart, Geordie's eyes, Data, the USS Enterprise...

Gene was of the World War Two and post-war era: science was a net good. Many of the TNG staff had been the generation of Watergate, Love Canal, Three Mile Island and Vietnam.

edited 22nd Jul '15 12:13:04 PM by TairaMai

Roddenberry was an expert writer and producer, but his style was optimal during the 60's and 70's. Shoddy production values or not, the fact the original series was able to be made on a sub-par budget is a testament to the format he created. He was, however, an expert television producer who was accustomed to having No Budget, not a film producer with a more fluid schedule.

The Motion Picture's problems were rooted in the last minute change from a pilot episode to feature film, and tacking on the pre-production costs of the tv show put pressure on everyone to figure out the movie while filming. They took all the big story beats and expanded them to absurd lengths. They added on a bunch of character moments but the foundation was not designed for a 2+ hour story.

Science is Bad, eh?

So's dying of tertiary syphilis, post-partum infection or scurvy.

Not one of my favorite tropes, to be honest.

My thoughts exactly.

Science isn't bad. Unfettered humanity is bad. Science itself is just fine. None of those issues the Luddites harp on are a problem with science, simply with humanity's fundamental nature. A nature we might be able to overcome, but it'll take a Hell of a lot of work.

Sf Debris recently covered the TNG episode "Ethics":

tl;dr - A Mad Scientist doctor invents a new treatment to cure a character's near fatal condition. Only this doctor has the medical ethics of the PainBoyz from Warhammer 40 K. She even uses her "new innovative" drugs on another patient. Spoiler alert: he dies. The main character lives, but only because Beverly (Fun fact, she had the Fan Nickname "Doctor Death" due to characters dying in her sickbay) rushed to save the main character, er I mean patient. Cue Patrick Stewart Speech on medical ethics directed at the guest Doctor and the woman leaving shamed....

Well, funny thing.... not even six years after this episode hit the US airwaves, a medical device salesman killed a patient because the doctor and surgeon let him demo his company's wizzbang, brand new device. Spoiler alert: the real patient died.

It's not science that's bad, I agree, it's the ethics that's bad.

The old joke about the most dangerous part of the car is the nut at the wheel.^note An American English pun on the driver at the steering wheel.

TNG can put this one in the win column. While the guest Doctor had ideas and ethics that would make the Medic from Team Fortress say "Zat is not a good idea, you really should reconsider..." the use of science to save the main character was a plus. Even if it was made up science. Hacks would have used some Kung Fooy airy woo made up "healing powers" or "Majick" to save the character. And given the warped aesop that science was "somehow" to blame.

While the guest doctor was a crazy madwoman who made Fabius Bile look like PatchAdams, the episode didn't single out science and didn't force the viewer to take a side. And even built up real tension.

And of course that sillyness was shoved aside for the Space Elves of Star Trek Insurrection....

edited 23rd Jul '15 12:51:08 PM by TairaMai

It was the electronic boom in the 80's that scared a lot of people, believing the reliance on technology would undermine self-sufficiency. The Star Trek: Insurrection "Return To Nature" moral was undermined by the fact technology include such things as shovels, clothing and irrigation, things which may require some grunt work to build but once completed make our lives easier. In addition to the fact that those with the better technology tend to be "the fittest" in "survival the fittest."

This reminds me of a Batman Beyond episode that showed students were no longer required to memorize the basic 12 x 12 multiplication tables, and knowing them was almost akin to memorizing pi to 30 places.

#5381:

"... it's really hard to write interesting stories in paradise."

Which is why TOS was out on the fringes almost all the time. It's the same approach that Iain M Banks' Culture novels took.

TNG tried to do the same, but kept the Enterprise within the Federation far too much. Voyager tried, but the writers just didn't understand the concept. Enterprise seemed to get the idea, but that just wasn't very good. :)

In Voyager's case I think that was mostly the Executives. The writers DID give us Year of Hell, after all. It's just that the Voyager couldn't be too banged up to be repaired between episodes because back then episodic content and Status Quo Is God were in full swing. Deep Space Nine was special in that regard, but it wasn't until the next decade that full arcs and continuity lockout were common.

And in the case of Ethics . . . it WASN'T Beverly who saved Worf. I don't know where they got that idea. It was natural Klingon physiology which Beverly knew about. If Beverly hadn't done anything, the episode probably still would have ended the same way, with Worf happily alive and able to walk again.

No, Doctor Doom would've pulled the plug had it not been for Beverly and her nurse not writing off Worf's Bizarre Alien Biology.

edited 23rd Jul '15 12:47:23 PM by TairaMai

"Year of Hell" was basically the original premise of Voyager, although it has its own potential problems in that continuity is more difficult when it comes to damage and destruction rather than photoshoot clean. That's the real reason Voyager was all good by the following episode.

Imo, when TNG did a good job making an ethical or philosophical point or introducing a complex and contemplative situation, it did a really good job at doing so. But on the flipside, their poor examples are pretty poorly done.

It's why, for example, "Ensigns of Command" is my least favorite of the TNG episodes: it pulls the plot through various forced perspectives and no-small amount of two-dimensional characterization to portray as very complex situation as an extremely one-sided one.

On the other hand, "First Contact" is one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek in general (imo, first contact situations in general is where the concepts of Star Trek gets most interesting) because it raises a similar (albeit not too similar) situation but treats it with a bit more weight.

While it's focus is very different (more on political intrigue and internal strife), imo making the two shows almost apples and oranges, DS 9 did a better job of bringing that ethical complexity on a more universal scale. When at it's best, I prefer TNG so far though.

I haven't gotten to Voyager or Enterprise yet, so I don't know how they handle it.

edited 23rd Jul '15 4:56:51 PM by KnownUnknown

Running DS 9 start to finish so hard through season 3 and now into season 4, and then going back to TNG season 4, I find TNG lacking. Season 4 is the best the show had to offer, and it's a yawn next to Deep Space 9 right now.

DS 9 was about a war setting and had action characters. TNG had the occasional action, but it was mostly about exploring ideas and showing new worlds.

TNG season five and six, with "Redemption," "Unification" and "Chain of Command" as the big, epic episodes alongside fan favorites like "Tapestry," "The Inner Light" and "Relics", is generally considered the high point of the series.

Also, DS9 had the actual mandate from Behr in season three to start showing more starship battles on camera rather than the Star Trek Shake simulating a battle. The growing digital compositing infrastructure helped, allowing them to do some Star Wars-esque dogfighting maneuvers with the Defiant instead of the slower naval battle-esque broadside shooting that was in previous stories.

The problem with TNG is that it still followed the pattern of the old series, with very little continuity, arcs, or recurring characters. DS 9 is far more modern in that regards, so this may very well be part of the appeal of this series to our 2000s minds.

I love the optimism of TNG over the (relative) grittiness of DS 9, but the story and characters evolutions of DS 9 are far more interesting than the almost independent episodes of TNG. Of course TNG has its share of outstanding episodes (and DS 9 had the Ferengicentric episodes and Vic Fontaine...).

How do you prevent DS 9 to appear as a red link? Thanks

edited 24th Jul '15 6:46:20 AM by C105

I always found the apparent inability of the writers of TNG to follow up any of the obviously promising story arcs extremely frustrating.

DS 9 started poorly but got much better after it took a turn for more B5-ish arcs.

Use [=DS9=] to keep it from getting parsed as a link.

I'm kind of lazy with it.

^^^ I really wouldn't consider that a problem, the concept of continuity heavy story arcs and a large cast of recurring characters in a television show was simply not common at the time of TNG (late 80's). It would be like criticizing TOS for the same reasons. It wasn't until the mid-90's with The X-Files, Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that it became a known and accepted part of a television series structure.

Even still I wouldn't consider those elements to be a sign of quality either. Heavy continuity can lead to Continuity Lock-Out, Loads And Loads Of Characters can take the focus off the actual cast.

The Loss starts off by showing how good Deanna is at her job so it can show how she's totally useless at it when she loses her empathy and has to relearn how to be a counselor without mental powers (which is BS because she shouldn't have that job without a degree in psychotherapy), but I really don't see how reading her patient's emotions factored into that therapy session at all.

I've always been irritated at their lack of good Troi use. Sirtis could certainly act when allowed to and it was always a charm to see the few episodes/times they let her do it.

She probably learned how, but she cheats with her powers, so she forgets how to do it the old fashion/human way.

Face of the ennemy remains my favourite Troi episode to this day. Although I may have forgotten some good ones, but at least in this one she's not there to say that she senses anger, or to have her senses suddenly blunted because things would have been too easy for the Enterprise otherwise.

Troi and Ensign Crusher were really artifacts of the Roddenberry driven utopian stuff of season 1. The rest of the cast they managed to solidify in terms of the their roles (though I still wish Crusher got more to do). With Gene gone, the wunderkind stuff of Wesley really started getting toned down, and his departure almost feels like the last nail in the coffin of early TNG already done by the Best of Both Worlds.

Deanna they were essentially stuck with and one can tell they struggled to make stories work for her until season 6 where they (psychic vampire silliness in Man of the People aside) started getting some really fun/interesting material for her in stuff like Fistful of Datas, Face of the Enemy, Second Chances, etc and thankfully put her in an actual uniform.

edited 24th Jul '15 5:27:47 PM by BorneAgain

A psychotherapist would actually be really useful for starships. But they hardly ever did stories that used that ability and instead just stuck her on the bridge to probe obvious observations out of the minds of the people they encounter.

"The Bonding" turns out to be a fantastic episode for Troi's competence. "Family" mentions offhand that she's been giving Picard therapy after his assimilation (which could have brought the kind of depth to their relationship that he has with Guinan if they'd actually showed it), and not much else comes to mind.

I remember Sirtis was shocked that First Contact's bar scene successfully made Troi funny, which she'd long since given up on.