Slashdot Mirror
No Need For Trek Anymore
dcsmith writes "In an article at the LA Times, Orson Scott Card says 'So they've gone and killed Star Trek. And it's about time.' SciFi blasphemy? Not really. Card makes several good observations about the growth of SciFi over the past 30+ years. The article also comments on several other genre gems, including Joss Whedon's Firefly." From the article: "...the hungry fans called their friends and they watched it faithfully. They memorized the episodes. I swear I've heard of people who quit their jobs and moved just so they could live in a city that had Star Trek running every day."
I use to have a crush on Wesley Crusher.
Everythings become so staid or stupid in StarTrek. They need to get name authors to pen plotlines if they ever want to do Trek again. Perhaps if they set everything in the Mirror Universe, it would be good. Afterall, how many TV series set out to be evil all the time?
The worst stuff just drags on and on, rehashing the same tired prejudices and routines with regularity until it's mercifully cancelled. You're not normally supposed to hate the protagonists and root for the end of humanity by raging alien hordes, but each Star Trek has gotten better at inspiring this kind of "hope".
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
It's almost like he learned nothing from Rodenberry's secular humanist vision of the future. No wonder he's glad to see Trek go. And no wonder he's got all kinds of other reasons to say he's glad. He probably doesn't even realize he's lying - that's one of the most effective characteristics of his cohort in America.
--
make install -not war
Part of what makes this country great is the (unfortunately declining) encouragement to tolerate people that are wrong. The alternative is worse.
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
Star Trek gave many people a vision of a future much more peaceful and prosperous than the present day, and awakened who knows how many minds to the potential and wonder of the universe and science.
...etc.etc...
:-)
The vision of the future in Star Trek is called ideal socialism: no currency (because everything is so well managed that no one needs to pay for anything, since it's essentially free), no personal possessions apart from the few toys and artworks found in rooms onboard the enterprise, a very flattened organization in terms of social ranks, despite the actual ranks onboard (i.e. Wesley Crusher can address the captain more or less freely despite being just a little brat)
Not that there's anything wrong with socialism, aside from being a complete utopia
I'm in the sciences today because of it.
I'm sure there are a lot of people at Nokia who got inspired by the communicator thing. And I'm quite sure there are a lot of people who went into the toupet-making business and the gay fashion industry after watching late ST1 episodes with Shattner.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Last Trek: May 13
Last Star Wars: May 19
Homer is great because he captured Greek culture and managed to pass down to posterity a story that express the goals, hopes and dreams of that culture. The Illiad is the closest the Greeks have to a Bible, and it is brilliant.
Perhaps you read a bad translation. Try Lattimore. You might also want to try a good commentary (although, I haven't used this particular one). For other suggestions on what else you might read to really appreciate Homer, try The New Lifetime Reading Plan which suggests good translations and sources for literary criticism, historical background, and other information.The New Lifetime Reading Plan is - without question - the most important book I have ever owned. It can help you to appreciate Homer just at it helped me to read what I thought was unreadable - James Joyces' Ulysses. The key tip is that Ulysses should be read with the help of Stuart Gilbert.
The Slashdot article suggests Card makes some good points about the development of SciFi over the last 30+ years. I'm not entirely sure, because based on what Card holds up as paragons of good SciFi, it's pretty clear to me that his definition of SciFi doesn't match mine. (Another poster echoed this sentiment, stating that many "examples" were more Fantasy than SciFi.)
To be clear: Science Fiction is fiction in which, when you remove the science element, it no longer makes sense. Science is integral somehow. Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is SciFi; without the premise of reanimation with electricity, it just wouldn't be the same story. (I can just hear the Fantasy apologists chiming in with the "Fantasy is indistinguishable from SciFi" argument, by claiming that magic is indistinguishable from technology. I don't want to get mired in this debate, however. Good fantasy requires some kind of self-consistency on some level, just like good SciFi, but fantasy doesn't have to square with conventional reality in any way. Even "far out" SciFi concepts are usually extrapolations of current ideas or trends or technologies.)
By this definition, most space opera is not SciFi. Star Wars, minus the SciFi trappings of spaceships and futuristic weaponry and droids, would be a Western with some metaphysical overtones. Now, it's true that Star Trek was sold to NBC as a "wagon train to the stars." This was because Westerns were the popular milieu of the day; most of the successful TV shows at the time were Westerns. But there were still stories being told against that backdrop that had real science fiction in them.
Orson Scott Card's LA Times article does a lot of name dropping. He mentions Larry Niven and Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison. And yet, many of these writers wrote episodes for Star Trek. (Ellison's script won an award, even though Roddenberry rewrote it for the screen. The episode was "City on the Edge of Forever," and won a Hugo. Ellison's original script won a Writers Guild of America award. Niven wrote for the animated series.) Some young SciFi authors got their start because of Star Trek -- remember David Gerrold? He wrote "The Trouble with Tribbles," and is now a respected SF author in his own right.
What is Card's problem with 1930's SciFi? Not all of it was episodic pulp crap or low-budget moviehouse serials. Some of the best SciFi I've read has come from the 1930's and 1940's.
He's right that later incarnations of Star Trek were better acted, and wrong that the content stagnated. At least with ST:TNG, many thought provoking stories were told, and would actually qualify as "real" SciFi by my test above, providing you're willing to forgive Star Trek physics and some of its consistent inconsistencies with real physics. Even the mundane backdrop trappings of the Star Trek universe were the subject of fascinating books.
I will grant that Card's right about one thing: Star Trek popularized Science Fiction. Some would say Trek diluted the pool of good stuff by filling the airwaves with mediocre material. This is an opinion I do not share.
I would also argue that Card's wrong about the quality of modern SciFi on television and film; I disagree that it's every bit as good as what's in print, if only because there are many things that can only be approximated with special effects, things that the human imagination is much more adept at rendering. (But then, I have long believed that Card simply doesn't "get it," and wouldn't recognize truly good SciFi if it bit him on the ass.)
While the recent incarnations of Trek have been painful to watch (with season 4 of Enterprise being what the show should have been all along, but too little, too late), I don't think the "need" for Trek has diminished. Trek was more than just a vehicle for telling stories in a SciFi milieu. Trek was more
Star Trek has been soul food for people with open minds. It's always been a story of moral questions, even if it was under the guise of scientific mumbo-jumbo. Unlike Star Wars, where the adolescent view of evil dark side and the good light side fight, Star Trek always probed the grey areas where good/evil don't really make sense. It was always about how to be human when faced with radically new circumstances. Holographic doctors treated with dignity, just like the rest of the crew, fighting the Borg collective that thinks it's perfect, and it only gets anywhere by assimilating, never creating something from scratch. You name it .. if that's not food for thought, than I don't know what is. The new scifi series, like Andromeda or Stargate fall back to the adolescent posturing, and zero challenge to your moral views. I guess the establishment had enough of free thinkers, now it's time to make everybody dumb and controllable by peer pressure - welcome Apprentice, Survivor, Americal Idol, Fear Factor.
I'm not trying to troll. I would think that this is apparent in the fact that I have done my best to carry on the discussion that I started. (I had no idea it would be like this though)
Mormonism does not add a layer to Christianity-- adding but not subtracting. I would posit that it alters the very core of Christianity and this is why I object to the lack of a distinction between the two. Here is why I think so.
I think this goes beyond just adding. But I truly am not trolling. I am taken aback by the number of vehement responses I've generated. I am searching for the why in this. Why my saying mormonism and what has been called Christianity for the last couple thousand years are different is such a big deal.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Lost is sci-fi in that it has an element of the supernatural, etc. I mean, it really depends on your definition of sci-fi too. Some people would look at X-Files and say "Not Sci-Fi", and under a classical definition it is not. But then in many ways it is. It is all on your point of view.
As far as being good. That is your own taste. I think it is VERY well written. The fact that each character was pretty much defined by a different person has made the show pretty interesting. The way their paths crossed before the island is interesting. And just overall what is going on is fascinating. I think it is one of the best shows on TV (regardless if you think it is Sci-Fi or not).
RonB
PS - We are up to episode 20, and we still don't know what the thing in the jungle is.
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
For my own viewpoint, one of the best SciFi movies ever made was "Contact" starring Jodi Foster. It was also an incredible improvement over the book, which IMHO is a pile of political activism and dribble that I expected better from a professional scientist like Carl Sagan. The book was fair on science but poor on the English and character development.
Occasionally you see some good SF come around and an attempt to make it into a movie, but it is a difficult task. Most good SF authors have some section of their book where a narrator of some sort (sometimes written into the dialog of the characters, but often simply described by a narrator or an entry in "Encyclopedia Galactica") where the hard science is explained. To a reader this is good background material, but in a movie this is either very boring or slows down the flow of the movie to the point that it has to be cut out and removed.
The only person I've seen to successfully put in a "galactic guide" entry into film was Douglas Adams... in part because HHGG is humorous and these entries had a life of their own as another character on screen. Even then, it only worked because the guide was the focus of the entire production. (I'm speaking about the TV series BTW... as I have yet to see the movie. I hope they've captured at least some of the guide in the movie in a somewhat similar fashion).
The other problem with producing SF into film is that the people who make movies in Hollywood (or Baliwood) simply are not SF fans to start with. You get some people like George Lucas or Robert Rodriguez that are familar with SciFi movies done in the past, but aren't exactly fans of classic SF books like Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, or Bradbury. The movie "I, Robot" starring Will Smith is a good example of SciFi taking over done by SciFi fans and not the hard SF fans... particularly where the shortcuts were made to make the movie flow.