Orson Scott Card: There's just no need for 'Star Trek' anymore.

[Queasy]

Link - Yeah. He's gonna get some hate mail.

So they've gone and killed "Star Trek." And it's about time.

They tried it before, remember. The network flushed William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy down into the great septic tank of broadcast waste, from which no traveler?. No, wait, let's get this right: from which rotting ideas and aging actors return with depressing regularity.

It was the fans who saved "Star Trek" from oblivion. They just wouldn't let go.

This was in the days before VCRs, and way before DVDs. You couldn't go out and buy the boxed set of all three seasons. When a show was canceled, the only way you could see it again was if some local station picked it up in syndication.

A few stations did just that. And 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.

And then the madness really got underway.

They started making costumes and wearing pointy ears. They wrote messages in Klingon, they wrote their own stories about the characters, filling in what was left out ? including, in one truly specialized subgenre, the "Kirk-Spock" stories in which their relationship was not as platonic and emotionless as the TV show depicted it.

Mostly, though, they wrote and wrote and wrote letters. To the networks. To the production company. To the stars and minor characters and guest stars and grips of the series, inviting them to attend conventions and speak about the events on the series as if they had really happened, instead of being filmed on a tatty little set with cheesy special effects.

So out of the ashes the series rose again. Here's the question: Why?

The original "Star Trek," created by Gene Roddenberry, was, with a few exceptions, bad in every way that a science fiction television show could be bad. Nimoy was the only charismatic actor in the cast and, ironically, he played the only character not allowed to register emotion.

This was in the days before series characters were allowed to grow and change, before episodic television was allowed to have a through line. So it didn't matter which episode you might be watching, from which year ? the characters were exactly the same.

As science fiction, the series was trapped in the 1930s ? a throwback to spaceship adventure stories with little regard for science or deeper ideas. It was sci-fi as seen by Hollywood: all spectacle, no substance.

Which was a shame, because science fiction writing was incredibly fertile at the time, with writers like Harlan Ellison and Ursula LeGuin, Robert Silverberg and Larry Niven, Brian W. Aldiss and Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke creating so many different kinds of excellent science fiction that no one reader could keep track of it all.

Little of this seeped into the original "Star Trek." The later spinoffs were much better performed, but the content continued to be stuck in Roddenberry's rut. So why did the Trekkies throw themselves into this poorly imagined, weakly written, badly acted television series with such commitment and dedication? Why did it last so long?

Here's what I think: Most people weren't reading all that brilliant science fiction. Most people weren't reading at all. So when they saw "Star Trek," primitive as it was, it was their first glimpse of science fiction. It was grade school for those who had let the whole science fiction revolution pass them by.

Now we finally have first-rate science fiction film and television that are every bit as good as anything going on in print.

Charlie Kaufman created the two finest science fiction films of all time so far: "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof have created "Lost," the finest television science fiction series of all time ? so far.

Through-line series like Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Alfred Gough's and Miles Millar's "Smallville" have raised our expectations of what episodic sci-fi and fantasy ought to be. Whedon's "Firefly" showed us that even 1930s sci-fi can be well acted and tell a compelling long-term story.

Screen sci-fi has finally caught up with written science fiction. We're in college now. High school is over. There's just no need for "Star Trek" anymore.

 

[MaxDepth]

Oh, yeah. And the Sci-fi channel is giving us all that fine and great science fiction like cube, cube2, and infomercials because their business model doesn't have enough viewership to rate higher commercial airtime sales during primetime.


And just as a small rebuttal, since I know Orson, how many books can one person write using one character and not appear as a one trick pony? ("Ender" ring a bell?)

 

[geecee]

:Q

Though he does make a few good points. Still,

:shocked:

 

[Spydermag68]

I liked the original 4 Ender books and read the first two of the Shadow books. I cannot read another book of super children by Orson Scott Card.

 

[PingSpike]

He makes some good points, but then he goes and holds up Buffy the Vampire Slayer as some beacon of forward thinking and quite a few other hokey shows that really just rely on tits and ass, not science fiction stories, to sell. So its hard to take his point seriously.

And for the record, I rather enjoyed the first cube movie and I liked the scifi channels farscape series for some reason. (Didn't think I could get into a show with muppets, but I really got sucked into that one.)

But man, wtf is the scifi channel doing lately? Every night its some really terrible low budget 60s style monster movie like "BeeMan Island" on. I didn't think there were that many of those terrible movies made, much less that anyone would bother trying to tackle the task of showing them all. Old Incredible Hulk reruns are more entertaining than that trash.

Its true that the original treks characters were kind of generic and had little development. But I thought a lot of the stories were pretty good.

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
He makes some good points, but then he goes and holds up Buffy the Vampire Slayer as some beacon of forward thinking and quite a few other hokey shows that really just rely on tits and ass, not science fiction stories, to sell. So its hard to take his point seriously.

And for the record, I rather enjoyed the first cube movie and I liked the scifi channels farscape series for some reason. (Didn't think I could get into a show with muppets, but I really got sucked into that one.)

But man, wtf is the scifi channel doing lately? Every night its some really terrible low budget 60s style monster movie like "BeeMan Island" on. I didn't think there were that many of those terrible movies made, much less that anyone would bother trying to tackle the task of showing them all. Old Incredible Hulk reruns are more entertaining than that trash.

Stargate.
Battlestar Galactica.

 

[torpid]

Well if orson scott card, writer of one of the most overrated science fiction series of all time, says it, it must be true.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: PingSpike
He makes some good points, but then he goes and holds up Buffy the Vampire Slayer as some beacon of forward thinking and quite a few other hokey shows that really just rely on tits and ass, not science fiction stories, to sell. So its hard to take his point seriously.

And for the record, I rather enjoyed the first cube movie and I liked the scifi channels farscape series for some reason. (Didn't think I could get into a show with muppets, but I really got sucked into that one.)

But man, wtf is the scifi channel doing lately? Every night its some really terrible low budget 60s style monster movie like "BeeMan Island" on. I didn't think there were that many of those terrible movies made, much less that anyone would bother trying to tackle the task of showing them all. Old Incredible Hulk reruns are more entertaining than that trash.

Stargate.
Battlestar Galactica.

Yeah, those are solid series. I haven't really gotten into either though. That doesn't excuse those horrible movies, they should just play reruns of farscape and other series that are pretty popular. Have you actually watched any of those movies I'm talking about? God damn.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: PingSpike
He makes some good points, but then he goes and holds up Buffy the Vampire Slayer as some beacon of forward thinking and quite a few other hokey shows that really just rely on tits and ass, not science fiction stories, to sell. So its hard to take his point seriously.

And for the record, I rather enjoyed the first cube movie and I liked the scifi channels farscape series for some reason. (Didn't think I could get into a show with muppets, but I really got sucked into that one.)

But man, wtf is the scifi channel doing lately? Every night its some really terrible low budget 60s style monster movie like "BeeMan Island" on. I didn't think there were that many of those terrible movies made, much less that anyone would bother trying to tackle the task of showing them all. Old Incredible Hulk reruns are more entertaining than that trash.

Stargate.
Battlestar Galactica.

Yeah, those are solid series. I haven't really gotten into either though. That doesn't excuse those horrible movies, they should just play reruns of farscape and other series that are pretty popular. Have you actually watched any of those movies I'm talking about? God damn.

They are pretty bad, but just think, they are only a degree worse than the crap we end up paying to watch in the theaters. At least they are more open about the suckiness, because the commercials make them look bad too.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
He makes some good points, but then he goes and holds up Buffy the Vampire Slayer as some beacon of forward thinking and quite a few other hokey shows that really just rely on tits and ass, not science fiction stories, to sell. So its hard to take his point seriously.

I think the main point of him discussing Buffy is the fact that characters grew and developed over the seasons.

 

[Electric Amish]

Now we finally have first-rate science fiction film and television that are every bit as good as anything going on in print.

Charlie Kaufman created the two finest science fiction films of all time so far: "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof have created "Lost," the finest television science fiction series of all time ? so far.

Through-line series like Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Alfred Gough's and Miles Millar's "Smallville" have raised our expectations of what episodic sci-fi and fantasy ought to be. Whedon's "Firefly" showed us that even 1930s sci-fi can be well acted and tell a compelling long-term story.

What a bunch of crap!! Every show he uses as an example is a heaping pile of crap that I wouldn't expend the energy required to press the power button on my remote so I could watch it.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog

Originally posted by: PingSpike
He makes some good points, but then he goes and holds up Buffy the Vampire Slayer as some beacon of forward thinking and quite a few other hokey shows that really just rely on tits and ass, not science fiction stories, to sell. So its hard to take his point seriously.

I think the main point of him discussing Buffy is the fact that characters grew and developed over the seasons.

That happens in soap operas too. He's just going the other direction, character development doesn't make a good science fiction story unless its got good science fiction in it in the first place. He should be pointing out some examples where they did everything right, not just the other half of the equation.

This comic sort of sums up my feelings on this nicely. You're throwing a couple lasers or aliens into a soap opera and putting the scifi stamp on it, it doesn't make it a science fiction masterpiece.

 

[cjchaps]

Buffy was an excellent series, and has a growing fan base from that I can tell. They are still releasing new merchandise from the series even.

 

[nakedfrog]

Does anyone else remember Cleopatra 2525?

 

[CPA]

I don't know who this guy is, but Star Trek does suck. Big Time.

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: PingSpike
He makes some good points, but then he goes and holds up Buffy the Vampire Slayer as some beacon of forward thinking and quite a few other hokey shows that really just rely on tits and ass, not science fiction stories, to sell. So its hard to take his point seriously.

And for the record, I rather enjoyed the first cube movie and I liked the scifi channels farscape series for some reason. (Didn't think I could get into a show with muppets, but I really got sucked into that one.)

But man, wtf is the scifi channel doing lately? Every night its some really terrible low budget 60s style monster movie like "BeeMan Island" on. I didn't think there were that many of those terrible movies made, much less that anyone would bother trying to tackle the task of showing them all. Old Incredible Hulk reruns are more entertaining than that trash.

Stargate.
Battlestar Galactica.

Yeah, those are solid series. I haven't really gotten into either though. That doesn't excuse those horrible movies, they should just play reruns of farscape and other series that are pretty popular. Have you actually watched any of those movies I'm talking about? God damn.

They are pretty bad, but just think, they are only a degree worse than the crap we end up paying to watch in the theaters. At least they are more open about the suckiness, because the commercials make them look bad too.

I rarely come out of a theatre and think "Damn, I just wasted two hours of my life on complete crap" unlike the Scifi channel movies.

Then again, I'm somewhat selective about what I see in theatres.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Does anyone else remember Cleopatra 2525?

Ahhh that show was spectacularly bad. Gina Torres was looking hot in it though.

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: CPA
I don't know who this guy is, but Star Trek does suck. Big Time.

I enjoyed TNG and DS9. original sucked and i'll prolly avoid Voyager and Enterprise.

We like to buy the dvd seasons. What scifi is available that way that's as good as DS9?

 

[Actaeon]

Ender's Game is the best.