8) Gene Roddenberry banned stories about warfare with Romulans or Klingons. He also wanted no stories about Vulcans, whatsoever, according to the original March 1987 Writers/Directors Guide (PDF). Other standard tropes from the Original Series that Roddenberry banned from TNG: "stories about psi-forces or psychic powers," "swords and sorcery," "mad scientists, or stories in which technology is considered the villain." He also never wanted to see the crew violating the Prime Directive, or "toppling cultures that we don't approve of." And no stories in which the ship is put in danger because the technology fails, or the crew makes a dumb mistake.
The original series bible (which is a fascinating read), also says Picard and Riker have a "father-son relationship," and Picard often pretends to think France is "the only true civilization on Earth." Also, the phrase "fully functional" is underlined when discussing Data. And Tasha Yar is obsessed with Wesley Crusher, who's her "beau ideal" and the childhood friend she never had. Also, Picard "cannot help noticing that Beverly Crusher's natural walk resembles that of a striptease queen." Source: Original Bible.
Wow.
"Bible, Wrath of Khan, what's the difference?"
Stan - South Park
That last one "And no stories in which the ship is put in danger because the technology fails..." means the show would have lasted 3 seasons.
"All this has happened before --"
"But it doesn't have to happen again. Not if we make up our minds to change. Take a different path. Right here, right now."
9) Star Trek Without Starships? Early on in the planning of TNG, the creators went through a few different concepts, including setting the show 150 years after the Original Series instead of just 78 years later, and setting it on the Enterprise-G. And they also considered getting rid of the Enterprise altogether — because Transporter technology would have advanced so far, the crew could just teleport from planet to planet, instead of flying in a ship. Source: Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual.
Nothing it will never come. Death before defeat. I don’t bend or break. I end, if I meet a foe capable of it. Victory is in forcing the opponent to back down. I do not. There is no defeat.
Heard the striptease queen thing before, gotta love the 80s.
TNG was really talked about during the first season or two as "the Star Trek Gene would have made in the first place if he could do it exactly how he wanted". He took his ideas about people being "more evolved" and really ran with it... unfortunately somewhat to the detriment of the series. I love that Gene brought us Trek, but when you look into it he wasn't actually responsibly for most of the best aspects of Trek and he was actually quite... misguided, in some ways.
Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...
I don't know if I would call his ideas "misguided" as such. Rather, I would say that his idealism failed to be tempered by a sense of practicality. (You know, like his ideas about how cheating on his wife was OK because love should be free, or he really wanted to, or some other hippie BS.)
I can't stand nothing dull
I got the high gloss luster
I'll massacre your ass as fast
as Bull offed Custer
Mikey wrote:I don't know if I would call his ideas "misguided" as such. Rather, I would say that his idealism failed to be tempered by a sense of practicality. (You know, like his ideas about how cheating on his wife was OK because love should be free, or he really wanted to, or some other hippie BS.)
Yeah, I was trying to be polite about it. A more accurate way of putting it is that basically Gene was kind of a dick in many ways.
Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...
He was. More to the point at hand, though, was that he seemed to have a very hard time tempering his idealistic artistic vision with the fact that his medium didn't exist in a vacuum - and that his audience needed to see some sort of tension, some crack in the rose-colored glasses, some actual kernel of random, sucky, pessimistic reality. Sometimes, as the quote that served as my sig for a bit said, "The Should-land High football team gets their optimistic asses handed to them by their cross-town rivals at Reality Check Tech."
I can't stand nothing dull
I got the high gloss luster
I'll massacre your ass as fast
as Bull offed Custer
the part about mad scientist, part reminded me of the episode where data in the first of second seaason of TNG met Ira Graves and he 'put his soul' into data before he 'died' and there
was a 'personality' conflict between them data being passive graves being dominant. remember how that episode finished? does it kinda remind you of frankenstien a bit?
as for the Tasha Yar/Wesley think, that's just creepy.
Harold: Dude, we're so high right now!
Kumar: We're not low!
