Gene Roddenberry's vision vs. New Trek

[LongTomH]

This is partly in response to an earlier post asking whether we would watch a proposed reboot of the original series. Thom Hartmann is one of the people who understood Gene and his vision of the future: If Gene Roddenberry is right.

In case you don’t know who Gene Roddenberry is or was, he was a visionary, an emissary for the betterment of humankind and he was the creator of the Star Trek franchise of TV shows and movies. Yes, they were set in space and involved difference races from many different planets, but they were more so about the human condition and interaction of people. The only reason the alien races were important was to show the bigotry, bias and pettiness that we now seem to hold so dear. In his future, all these things are gone from the earth’s population, at least in most and completely in the government and any political action or platform.

f any form of his vision is to come to be, many radical changes have to come about. These changes must be social, economical and political. The order of which stage of this change is up for debate, but I believe that it will really be a combination of social and political. The reason I say this dates back to the 1960’s. There was a social movement that became political in the way of black/white relations. Even today this battle is still raging.

.................//snip

Are we, as a race, too petty to embrace our differences and combine them to help make the whole more than the parts? I hope not, but if we are, we are doomed! We are killing the planet and killing ourselves.

Embrace a higher intellect and turn our backs of the baser nature of mankind, the beast or brute side. We are beyond the jungle and survival of the fittest is not a factor. We don’t have to be the strongest or the most ruthless, only use our brains and be smarter. To paraphase Captain Kirk, I am a savage, but not today. Today I will be better.

Thom gets it. The producers and writers of the two Trek movie 'reboots' didn't, and I'm certain the producers of the proposed CBS series don't.

Nothing that resembles Gene's humanistic vision would be allowed on TV screens today. What we would get would be a militarized Starfleet, a lot of technobabble and, of course, great special effects; perfect for the action figure market.

[jakeXT]

1. I think I want to see the documentary done by his son

One thing I never got in the Star Trek universe was the economy without money.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Money

[LongTomH]

2. I think Gene considered the implications of an economy based on devices like the replicator......

.....that could meet any need. A lot of what they were implying was Gene's reaction to late 20th Century materialism.

[Frank Cannon]

3. Not only the replicators, but an entire galaxy at one's disposal.

There is no scarcity in a time when, thanks to warp drive, anyone can go just about anywhere and do anything they want or find anything they need.

The crew of the Enterprise are all very self-actualized. They don't have to worry about what (or if) they're going to eat today or how they're going to pay their medical bills. I think Gene Roddenberry thought that would be a great state for us all to get to, and he was right.

[jakeXT]

4. Definitely not Scotch

[hunter]

7. I think could get rid of money now if we chose to.

We'd start with something like a minimum income which would represent a "share" in the overall economy. In effect everyone would become a "trust fund" kid simply because they are human. This income would provide a very basic standard of living -- healthy food, appropriate medical care, safe comfortable shelter, free education, and many forms of entertainment and recreation with negligible or even positive environmental impacts.

We'd aim for an economy that is not measured by any single metric of "money." Money would be allowed to exist, even various forms of money, Gold, BitCoins, dollars, what-not, but it would would no longer be the primary means of directing or measuring economic activity.

Currently "economic productivity" is measured in dollars, but this "productivity" is destroying the environment which supports humans, and forcing people to live and die in deplorable conditions, which means it's not truly any sort of "productivity" at all.

[jakeXT]

5. Looks like it started earlier with the whole torture/war on terror concept

[LongTomH]

6. OK, just to set things straight......

From the beginning, meaning the original series, Gene wanted Trek to deal with serious issues, all in the context of a future society that had learned from its mistakes.

If even a part of Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future is correct, the republican party as we know it will go the way of the dinosaur. With a unified earth build on equality to all and a government dedicated to increasing knowledge, not profit, the party we know today cannot exist. For now, forget about the space travel part and meeting different races from distant planets, but look at the way people are viewed.

..............//snip

Roddenberry saw a world filled with people willing to work together, not fight and die just to prove they were correct, smarter or stronger.

That humanistic, optimistic view of the future is what makes Trek unique in the annals of television entertainment. Gene actually saw us continuing to progress, albeit with interruptions (the Eugenics Wars, World Wars).

I continue to want to scream when someone tries to tell me that other SF series (Babylon 5, Battlestar) were Trek's successor. Babylon 5 was based, even from the design level, as a tiered society, with a 'down-below' for the lower classes. Battlestar Galactica? That was a militaristic, violent society, with no ties to any human future. Actually, it's supposed to be somewhere in our past. Yes, both series did, sometimes use scripts based on existing social problems, transposed to their universe; but, that doesn't really change what their societies represented, extensions of our own, sometimes of our worst traits.

If you're still struggling with Trek and its deeper meanings, may I recommend: Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore, or library.

[MicaelS]

8. Roddenberry's single biggest flaw...

Was that he was hung up on the Enterprise meets God trope. The Enterprise meets someone who claims to be God, or a god or the Devil, or a devil, or some being looking for their Creator, or some being with "supernatural" powers. This allowed him to oh-so cleverly (sarcasm) comment on illogical, and irrationality of religious belief. In other words he was proselyting (yes I used that word deliberately) for Atheism.

That trope really sucked with ST:TMP. All the bullshit involved with the making of that film, especially how he fucked over British screenwriters Chris Bryant's and Allan Scott's Planet of the Titans script, and all Roddenberry did was recycle ST:TOS "The Changeling" into Earth IIs "Robots Return" into Star Trek Phase IIs "In they Image" into TMP.

Star Trek really didn't take off again until he was removed from full creative control. In fact, IMO, the best Star Trek EVER made was the The Wrath of Khan, and that was so because Roddenberry was forced to keep his hands off.

Of course when he created TNG there he was again with his petulant god shtick with "Q".

I liked the fact that after he was dead, they basically took his Atheism and threw it out the window. Practically every race and civilization EXCEPT Earth humans had a religious faith, and devoted a great deal of effort to it. And they were the technological and sociological equal of Earth Humans. So it made Earth Humans look like the oddballs in a galaxy of believers. I bet Roddenberry would have hated DS9 with it's explicit religious themes, and outright godheads.

Roddenberry was like George Lucas. They both had great ideas, but when they both had total and direct control over their creation, they screwed it up.