Star Trek: The Next Generation is the best of the 5 series. It encompasses all of what Star Trek is about, good and bad. It created characters that were realistic and idealistic at the same time and all were truly loveable. It expanded on Roddenberry's concept and was the real template for all of the other series to follow.
But it almost wasn't. People probably think I despise Gene Roddenberry, but I don't. Star Trek was his brain child after all. But if a person is being honest, they have to admit that his vision was very limited and narrow. The first two seasons of TNG were painful to watch. When they weren't essentially remaking episodes of TOS, they were becoming belligerent with the liberal ideology I complained about in the last entry. It wasn't even disguised anymore - blame Earth/humans = blame America. Never once stopping to consider this question: if humans had reached a perfect utopia where we were uber tolerant and beyond primitive things like religion and money, why exactly were we still being featured even more strongly than ever as the ones that need to learn a lesson? Especially in the 80's when all barriers were broken and the sky was the limit. Shame on American enterprise (greed), confidence (bullies of the world), and freedom (equal outcome is more fair than equal opportunity.) If America were to develop self esteem we could never be subjugated to a socialist movement that eventually leads to a tyrannical rule, so the guilt trips were being laid on pretty thick in the 80's from all angles of Hollywood and it's such a shame. But people can only absorb so much negativity and senseless brow-beating for so long and had Roddenberry lived, I don't know if the show would've lasted 7 years. After his death the writers began to be creative and explore more modern issues. And, towards the end, a variety of viewpoints were being showcased, even more conservative ones. They all had to abdicate to the superiority of liberal ideology, but at least they were being shown and not always as evil or entirely wrong. Roddenberry would probably not have approved.
Favorites? It's hard to say. Obviously I loved Data. I'm sure he's the most popular character in this cast. I also loved Q though. The more he was in it, the better his character was, and the more they could break the rules of science fiction, the standards of which had been raised quite a bit since the olden days of stories that were written before the science had caught up to the fiction. My least favorite was Wesley, but not because of Will Wheaton. I blame the writers entirely for the character of Wesley. He actually had a lot of potential and then he just became a throw away character that I personally couldn't relate to, although I've seen that a lot of people in our age group considered him inspirational. But Wheaton played the part as perfectly as one could want from that kind of character. Other things to love about this incarnation of Trek was the bigger budget for better effects and leeway for character and culture development. That's where my real love for Star Trek lies. You can pretty much keep all the "messages" it preaches. The creative writing process was set free with this series and just kept spiraling and branching out and sprouting new life. They ended up retooling a lot of material from the first couple seasons and improving on it as well as improving on concepts from TOS instead of just remaking them. Every individual had their own significance and story with no one character overshadowing another. And the reoccurring and secondary characters became indispensable parts of the body of work. Superb, superb writing!
Star Trek TNG is obviously my favorite of the 5 series and I can't wait to start reviewing episode one by one. I just have to get organized.
No comments:
Post a Comment