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At Sister Love's - Norman T. Ray
27 février 2015

Star Trek the Next Generation : "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times"

1986: Star Trek 4 is a triumph at the American box-office. The Leonard Nimoy movie manages to gather fans of Star Trek but also viewers that were not especially invested in the saga. It’s been 7 years now that the franchise has been revitalized on the big screen, after having been envisioned originally as another tv show: Star Trek Phase 2, which would have seen all the classical actors back, with the exception, precisely, of Leonard Nimoy (another Vulcan would have replaced Spock). Now the problem for Paramount is what to do next. The original series actors aren’t getting younger, so it would be interesting to launch something else one way or the other, especially since the popularity of Star Trek is at its highest. The Harve Bennett movie project about the young years of Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy is shelved because of the fans’ reactions, and deemed too risky (which is really ironical considering the success of JJ Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek, which features exactly this). Paramount decides to hire again Gene Roddenberry, who had been largely left out the movies after Star Trek the Motion Picture in 1979, to create another show, destined to the syndication market. He surrounds himself at the beginning with veterans of the original tv show, like Robert Justman, Dorothy Fontana and David Gerrold.

But things are not the same than in the sixties anymore. Star Trek has become a worldwide phenomenon and Gene Roddenberry a true star, considered (wrongly) as the one and only true genius responsible for the vision for what is Star Trek at this time. But this vision owns as much, if not more in certain areas, to the skills of Dorothy Fontana and of the late Gene Coon for example, which helped elevate the original series to cult status, or to the skills of Nicholas Meyer for the movies. To his credit, Roddenberry didn’t just transpose the old characters from the 60ies. Aware that the “utopic future” is a huge part of the Star Trek appeal, he decides to reinforce this aspect. From now on, no conflict is authorized among the members of the crew. Symptomatic of this will, the creation of the android Data. Of course, he shares with Mr Spock the fact that he can comment human reactions from an outsider’s point of view, but when Spock had to fight permanently to keep his emotions in check, there’s no such conflict in Data, because by definition, he’s simply unable to experiment any emotion at all! Impressed by the Vazquez character from Aliens, Roddenberry decides to create a feminine Hispanic security chief character, Macha Hernandez, who should have been played by Marina Sirtis, Denise Crosby was to play the ship’s counsellor. Ultimately, when he saw the two actresses, he decided to invert their parts. He recycles some ideas from the Phase 2 series, as the previous relationship between the First Officer and a crew member. Indeed, the relationship between Riker and Troi is very much alike the one of Decker and Ilia in the first movie. The captain will be French. Roddenberry even considers calling him Cousteau, but will eventually settle on Jean-Luc Picard, played by the Englishman Patrick Stewart, who only accepted the part because his friends told him it wouldn’t last! To show the evolution of the series’ universe, A Klingon character is added to the crew, who’s only at the beginning a glorified extra, situation which is about to change quickly. Nobody puts a bet on the series’ success, like for example Leonard Nimoy, who declares that it’s impossible to capture “lightning in a bottle twice”.

The new rules implemented by Gene Roddenberry are far from being embraced by his long-time co-workers. All will leave the ship more or less rapidly, upset by Roddenberry’s stubbornness. He’s notoriously reluctant to conflict, and more often than not sends his personal lawyer to relay his decisions! A huge turnover would ensue backstage, while before the cameras some have trouble finding their footing. Denise Crosby eventually gives up in the middle of the first season, as Patrick Stewart must face a true cultural shock, he being a most serious Shakespearian actor, having to face the relaxed attitude of his American colleagues. From his own account, he was a “pain in the ass”, who didn’t hesitate to reprimand his fellow actors during meetings he ordered. He will have eventually a true change of mind, and will ultimately adopt himself the relaxed attitude of his colleagues who will become true friends, and still are some 30 years later. The set will soon acquire the reputation of being the most undisciplined of all the United States! On the Crusher mother and son front, the mother is fired before season 2 to come back from season 3 onward. Her replacement, Doctor Pulaski, didn’t catch up. Too acerbic, like McCoy, she would have been more fitted to the original series, and where Spock had the means of defending himself verbally against the remarks McCoy made, Data is helpless to counter Pulaski’s venom. As for the Crusher son, he became perhaps the most hated Star Trek character ever! It’s not Wil Wheaton’s fault, but the writer’s fault. To justify his constant presence on the bridge, they make of him an annoying genius, and a teenager written as a 7-year old boy. He will stay 4 seasons before quitting, a bittersweet decision he will later admit hadn’t necessarily been retrospectively wise... Today Wil Wheaton is one of the most important internet personalities of the “geek” world.

Backstage, the declining health of Gene Roddenberry forces him to delegate more and more to his protégé, Rick Berman who, if he’s very competent in this area, will lack in the long term of his mentor’s vision. The production crew becomes more stable only after the first two chaotic seasons, with the arrival of Michael Piller on the show. The series finds its cruising speed during seasons 3 to 6. Michael Piller seems to find the perfect balance between respecting Roddenberry’s vision (the “Roddenberry's Box”, as he called it) and the constraints of a modern show. Star Trek is a very demanding series as scenarios are concerned, because even if it uses recurring characters, the format is more that of an anthology, with completely different stories each week. It will thus be one of those rare shows to accept material from outside the professional world. Few episodes will eventually come from this policy, but there’s for example the extraordinary episode “Clues”. The no-conflict rule among the crew members is also a problem for the writers, as well as the advanced technology on the ship, but it’s ultimately what sets The Next Generation apart from its successors. It is to this day, with the original series, the most well regarded show among the Trekkers, and this for good reasons. The most accomplished of art is sometimes born from constraints.

Gene Roddenberry dies in 1991, when Star Trek 6 is released in theaters, the last movie to feature the complete original series crew, with Michael Dorn playing the part of Worf’s grandfather... From now on, it seems that both Rick Berman and Michael Piller want to get away from some of the rules imposed by the creator of Star Trek. A recurring character with an attitude joins the crew during season 5, Ro Laren, played by Michelle Forbes. The Maquis is created. It’s a group of Federation Human dissidents, in war with the Cardassians because the Federation proved unable to help them, a situation that the old Gene would never have approved of, since he had tried without success to oppose the dissident officers introduced in Star Trek 6. Worse, the episode “Homeward” (season 7) shows the crew of the Enterprise witnessing a planet on the verge of destroying itself with all its inhabitants... arms crossed, in respect for the Starfleet Prime Directive of non-intervention! It’s interesting to compare this episode to “Pen Pals” from season 2, so still at this time operating firmly under Roddenberry’s rules, where the crew actively searches for solutions to solve the ecological problem that threatens the planet... Roddenberry was a humanist, certainly not a lawyer. I very much doubt that the Prime Directive (that by the way he didn’t create) was an absolute rule in his mind, more important than the welfare of people. So much so that it will be ignored many times with his blessing, beginning with Kirk... For me “Homeward” is the worst episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, much more than the infamous second-season clip-show “Shades of Grey”, which generally wins this sad competition.

In short, Star Trek the Next Generation is the last hurrah of the future as dreamed by Gene Roddenberry, who wanted originally to do with Star Trek another Gulliver’s Travels as did Jonathan Swift, meaning another way to look at our world’s problems seen through a twisted mirror, that of the future. After the ending of the Next Generation, the dream slowly dissipates. The Next Generation movies are action flicks (it’s interesting to compare the attitude of Jean-Luc Picard in the episode “I, Borg” and in the “First Contact” movie, which is not bad by any means. But is this really the same man?), Deep Space Nine ended up getting rid of Michael Piller (the production team feeling limitated by what had become the “Piller's Box”), to better concentrate on a war (thanks to Babylon 5, which to my eyes will be forever superior), Voyager will try to get rid of the universes of previous show, to no avail (the quasi-Klingons named Kazons will soon leave place for the more familiar Borgs), and Enterprise will be the nail in the coffin, making Vulcans as kings of hypocrites. Star Trek finally seems to have ended its course, in spite of the electric shocks that are the two Abrams movie, which to this date don’t seem to spawn long-term effects.

Star Trek the Next Generation should be celebrated as what would be the highest point in Gene Roddenberry’s dream, the man who achieved, not alone but still, to capture “lighting in a bottle twice”. A geologist friend of mine said to me that during a meeting at the headquarter of a big company, the CEO interrupted the meeting to put on the tv, where aired an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, only to go back to the meeting thereafter as if nothing had happened.

But it marks also the end of a dream, the cynicism and “realism” ending up destroying the innocence which was the base of a unique universe, which lost in the process a lot of its identity. Today JJ Abrams can make a “Star Wars Trek” without anybody, except the most rabid fans, seeming to care anymore. What Star Trek would need is another visionary to be reborn, but does another Gene Roddenberry even exist in this world?

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At Sister Love's - Norman T. Ray
  • Author of the electronic novel Who Is Sister Love?, Norman T. Ray created this blog to write about the adventure of this ebook. Welcome! Pour la version française, voici le lien : http://normantrayfr.canalblog.com
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