I don't think that Star Trek needs to die, I think Rick Berman does. He is a scheming Machiavellian BASTARD who has systematically dismantled Gene Roddenberry's cerebral, and thus sometimes commercially unviable, dream of the future and twisted it into an insipid mockery of cogency and wit, all for the sake of corporate profits and lining his own pockets. Since Season One of TNG, he has manipulated people and events to elevate him to supreme dictater of a multi-billion dollar franchise. I've read interviews with many Star Trek staff and cast members (read the interview with brilliant artist/designer Andrew Probert) and the consensus is that Rick Berman is an EPIC asshole and is the ROOT CAUSE for Star Trek's decline. Of course, corporate boneheads complicit with Berman are to blame as well, but the real creative engine and Captain at the helm, so to speak, of Star Trek was not one Gene, but two. Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon, were the wellspring from which Star Trek grew and flourished. Though Gene L. Coon died shortly after the cancellation of TOS, Gene Roddenberry continued, more or less, to exert his inimitable influence over his creation. Alas, as he is now dead, I can say that without a similarly brilliant, polemic, and progressive storyteller with a hatred of corporate management, Star Trek will remain no more than a pathetic effigy of a great man's vision. In short, a new Roddenberry is needed to usurp the tyrannical dictatorship of Berman et al, and reinvent Star Trek, that is to say, to genuinely shock and disturb people with the sight of an ALIEN reality where conventional thought is constantly challenged. Hey, I just had an idea. Somebody should start a petition asking Paul Allen, (the world's richest Trekkie, right?) to BUY Start Trek from Viacom. Perhaps, under Paul's auspices (benevolent or no), ST might recieve the vital creative directorship that it requires? I don't know. Regardless of how, Star Trek needs to be completely remade, or else it will stay as it is now: Dead with Gene.
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Portable nuclear batteries? Rad!!! Oh, wait...
I don't think that Star Trek needs to die, I think Rick Berman does. He is a scheming Machiavellian BASTARD who has systematically dismantled Gene Roddenberry's cerebral, and thus sometimes commercially unviable, dream of the future and twisted it into an insipid mockery of cogency and wit, all for the sake of corporate profits and lining his own pockets. Since Season One of TNG, he has manipulated people and events to elevate him to supreme dictater of a multi-billion dollar franchise. I've read interviews with many Star Trek staff and cast members (read the interview with brilliant artist/designer Andrew Probert) and the consensus is that Rick Berman is an EPIC asshole and is the ROOT CAUSE for Star Trek's decline. Of course, corporate boneheads complicit with Berman are to blame as well, but the real creative engine and Captain at the helm, so to speak, of Star Trek was not one Gene, but two. Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon, were the wellspring from which Star Trek grew and flourished. Though Gene L. Coon died shortly after the cancellation of TOS, Gene Roddenberry continued, more or less, to exert his inimitable influence over his creation. Alas, as he is now dead, I can say that without a similarly brilliant, polemic, and progressive storyteller with a hatred of corporate management, Star Trek will remain no more than a pathetic effigy of a great man's vision. In short, a new Roddenberry is needed to usurp the tyrannical dictatorship of Berman et al, and reinvent Star Trek, that is to say, to genuinely shock and disturb people with the sight of an ALIEN reality where conventional thought is constantly challenged. Hey, I just had an idea. Somebody should start a petition asking Paul Allen, (the world's richest Trekkie, right?) to BUY Start Trek from Viacom. Perhaps, under Paul's auspices (benevolent or no), ST might recieve the vital creative directorship that it requires? I don't know. Regardless of how, Star Trek needs to be completely remade, or else it will stay as it is now: Dead with Gene.