10 Times Gene Roddenberry Hated Star Trek
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- Опубликовано: 11 июл 2024
- Gene Roddenberry was very proud of the universe he created, but also very protective.
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I think it's a bit of an understatement to say Majel Barret voiced a number of computers on TNG. She voiced all computer interactions across all of the series (including Enterprise) and video games and associated media. I think it's more fair to say she is regarded as the unequivocal voice of Star Trek
To be fair they sensibly chose someone else to do the voice for DS9. Her voice doesn't appear until 11001001, and you'd think it would be after what the Bynars did which would be a cool thing, they upgraded it and added her voice but no, she can be heard before they do their thing 😒
And the First Lady
Also in the TOS episode "Tomorrow is Yesterday"! 🙂But TAS cemented her role as tradition.
She's also the recorded voice at a railroad station in Missouri.
She's under-apprciated. If she were the voice of a smart phone, I'd be more likely to get one.
Wasn't it a stitch when the normal computer voice was replaced by the husky, horny voice in "Mudd's Women?"
Also a lot of people don't know that Roddenberry also thought Patrick Stewart wasnt the right person to play Captain Picard initially. He thought Patrick Stewart was too old and didn't have the right charisma to be a Captain. Im so glad that the producers and the others around him convinced Gene otherwise. Even if you dont like the Picard TV series there is no denying trek wouldnt be what it is today and the TNG era definately wouldnt have been as good without Patrick Stewart being Captain of the Enterprise-D and E.
The actor that The Great Bird originally wanted for the Picard role was Stephen Macht, but he turned the role down in order to focus on his movie career. In an interesting twist, Macht later appeared on Deep Space 9 as General Krim in the Season 2 episodes "The Circle" and "The Siege." 🖖😎👍
I agree with him.
I knew this... 😏
As a TOS fan, I just never found TNG nearly so compelling, despite the often stellar writing, good acting, and special effects. For me, it came down to characters, and I just didn’t find most of the TNG characters interesting. Picard, specifically, was just too cerebral and, frankly, dull.
@@Willpower-74205 The ridiculous thing is that Patrick was considered "too old", but Stephen is only a year younger! Leads me to conclude it wasn't about being old, but looking older because he is bald ,& went grey prematurely.
I feel a lot of people look over how antiwar Gene was and brush it off ad part of his utopian vision or the thing of the 60s. You have to remember that this man was a Crew member of a B-17 during WWII seeing horrendous acts against his fellow airmen as Bombers were shot down, men shot in their parachutes, Bombers having their payloads explode from flak while still inside the aircraft instantly destroying the plane and probably seeing many crew of his own Bomber die right in front of him if not maybe even in his arms during humanity's at the time largest and most deadly conflict and possibly had PTSD.
No one is more anti-war than a thinking man who has seen it personally.
@@Mark73 exactly
Well, who wrote the part in City on the edge of forever which had peace at the wrong time? That doesn't sound like someone who's "anti-war", but that it is a necessary evil at times. I don't think it was Ellison.
He also flew for pan am as a co pilot on the b314 clipper. He was an OSS agent while flying for pan am
Eh, he never saw that sort of stuff. He saw combat in the South Pacific, then spent the last 2 or 3 years Stateside. And those last 3 years where the worst years.
If Gene had completely creative control all along, we wouldn't be talking about Star Trek today. People like Gene Coon, DC Fontana and so many others in the early days improved upon his original creation. That's why I just laugh at people who say "But this isn't what Roddenberry envisioned". Much of Star Trek isn't! Thankfully!
Roddenberry and Lucas: two geniuses who succeeded despite themselves.
Gene Roddenberry created and established the general tenor of Star Trek as evidenced by The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before! Gene Coon, DC Fontana, Samuel Peeples and others, including Herb Solow and Robert Justman, were also invaluable!
So true
Roddenberry had a rotten attorney, essentially an evil Back-To-Earthling, who viciously RUINED his client's involvement with the "Voyages."
THAT attorney should have been DISBARRED, and at that, YEARS ago.
@@white-dragon4424 Visionaries?
I take your point, but I want a better word if my first pick was wrong.
I always thought the strength of Star Trek was that it showed humankind had learned better strategies of conflict resolution & decided that the advantages of cooperation over competition would allow people to follow their passions which would alleviate violent tendencies in society. If nobody had to struggle/resort to violence to survive & was able to fully pursue their talents or interests & seek self fulfillment/excellence or service, that would go a long way to alleviating social agression. But that doesn't mean that there is no more interpersonal conflict. People will always have disagreements, resentments, rivalries, hurt feelings, wounded pride, jealousies both romantic & professinal. Just because it's the future & there is no more war on Earth doesn't mean humans have become robotic & conflict free. It's how they resolve the conflict that makes Star Trek drama Star Trek.
IDK like if you had potentially any job and any partner available through interstellar travel or just transporters, and expect to live well into your hundreds, I could see a lot of even that pettiness go away and any that remains be promptly dealt with through a societal program of routine psychiatric help. Like there are literally billions of fish in that metaphorical sea out there. Getting bummed about this one seems like a waste of time to a well developed citizen of the Federation. Mainly cause their fiction probably aren't selling ads or impossible lives to model themselves on like finding a one true love. Disagreements I agree because you can only look at a situation in the eyes your life experience has given you and those will be different.
Well, it's really difficult though to write that and find areas of conflict.
I think deep Space nine did that when they had Bashir faking his history of being genetically modified. Because the Federation is a meritocracy. I could imagine someone cheating to get ahead.
_TAS_ is Grade A Trek. Yeah, they cut every corner they could when it came to VFX and voice acting (see: Nimoy, legend that he is, threatening to walk when they planned not to bring back Nichols and Takei and Doohan voicing every incidental role), but the plots take full advantage of the medium and have the Enterprise exploring new worlds so strange that not even modern CGI could have rendered them in a satisfying way.
I love TAS. It was written by much of the original series writers, and it shows. The stories are great Star Trek, with the advantage of being able to do things that were not practical in live action.
Okay, not all the stories were great. But the original series had not great stories also. The important thing is they stayed true to the spirit of Trek.
Roddenberry was a great promoter of Star Trek, but never had the best ideas for it. That's where Gene Coons, DC Fontana, and many others made it good
Nope.
"fan favorite Lwaxana Troi...." ummm... WHAT?????
Gene was an egomaniac. He went behind people's backs putting his name to scripts he didn't write, and literally writing lyrics to Alexander Courage's theme so that Gene could even get residuals for when the theme is played (even though the lyrics weren't used). Frankly, a lot more of the Star Trek that we do have is in spite of Gene than because of him. Gene Coons other producers on the show, and also studio executives reigning in some of Gene's crazy.
Most prominent figures are egomaniacs. Hard work and talent will only go so far. If you really want to be know you need to shamelessly self promote. This is much easier with egomaniacs.
He was a flawed human being, but still inspired people to do good. So, just put it in context.
@@caracticusthirdaisi2986 Explicitly, he surrounded himself by people who pushed back against his worst impulses. Yeah, sometimes people had to go over his head or do things behind his back, but a narcissist would have either fired those people or walked away entirely--bear in mind that Roddenberry was involved in Trek right up until the end, even as his influence waned along with his health. That takes more than an ego--it takes a true acceptance that this thing you've brought into the world is bigger than you.
I think he has some great points that we are ignoring to our peril. We shouldn't care about Klingons unless they tell us something about ourselves. We shouldn't have a game of thrones where we care about who's in charge of the Klingon empire. The wrath of Khan is a simplistic revenge story which is in itself not interesting. It is tied to this sci-fi Genesis device which also is not particularly interesting.
And Amok Time time was stupid, I was as was Star Trek 5 but we all agreed to that.
The problem is people fell in love with Star Trek because of its ideas and messages and morals and then they decided that what they needed to do was learn more about the world of Star Trek instead of the ideas. And that's a mistake. And we shouldn't be having these season long battles with enemies like some stupid Buck Rogers movie.
Reining.
With due respect to Gene ... despite what he said, Starfleet was obviously always military. Starfleet is the primary defense of the Federation and the main vector of its foreign policies. That's not something 'explorers' do.
They're more like a combination of the Coast Guard, merchant marine ships and exploratory/science vessels (think Jacques Cousteau), it depends on their assignment and class.
I've always said that Starfleet is the military arm of the Federation.
No. Starfleet is a combination of ESA and NATO. It's main purpose is space exploration and diplomacy. The military aspect is due to the fact that these ships are out there alone and have to defend itself or group together to defend a member of the Federation (which is like the European Union today).
That's the point. He was trying to re-define what explorers are.
What's the best Wesley episode? The First Duty. The one where Wesley makes a mistake. The one where Wesley is a sympathetic character. The one where the audience sees Wesley struggle with a decision and hope he makes the right one. If we had had more of than and less of...well everything else, Wesley would probably be in the same league as Nog in terms of a character we got to see grow up and become a great man.
Copy in this vid did specify Season 1, though. First Duty is Season 5.
Funny, though: just as we're hearing that he made no mistakes in Season 1, his cartwheeling leads to him stumbling and destroying property. I'd say that qualifies as a mistake in gymnastic technique and/or spatial orientation.
Was Wesley a Gary Stu then...?
@@evertonporter7887 Unfortunately, yes, especially since Gene made Wesley to be himself as a teenager.
And Peecaahd's raahnteeng aahnd raaaveenng aahbaauht haauw zee FAAAHHST doooteey eez too zee TRRHHOOOOZZZZH--
(And Picard's ranting and raving about how the FIRST duty is to the TRUTH--)
--effectively RUINED it ALL!!!
Since Picard will NEVER be a MAN, no matter HOW old or decrepit he becomes, he will NEVER be able to appreciate that ALL things have a ZEROTH duty, which that first duty is intended to supplement and implement, and that zeroth duty is to the "ENTERPRISE!!!"
By allowing Wesley to enroll in ANY Academy ground campus was a DEFIANCE of the "Enterprise" that PICARD committed ARROGANTLY and UNREPENTANTLY!!!
Sorry to burst your bubble, but "The First Duty" was ACTUALLY one of the WORST stories to feature Wesley, for Picard, who has always been basically a stupid progeriac BOY, up and UPSTAGED him something ATROCIOUS!!!
@@evertonporter7887 Consider this: Gene's full name was Eugene Wesley Roddenberry.
I would LOVE it if someone redid the graphics for the Animated Series with modern animation. Some of the stories were very good. D.C. Fontana episodes especially.
Roddenberry's child, and like a child it grows from interaction with many things/people becoming it's own thing.
Exactly. "Children grow older". They differentiate into themselves and join the universe as themselves, not something Mom or Dad re-live their lives through. I thought we all knew that.
Or, even better, stop trying to destroy Roddenberry's vision of a utopian future.
It's a good thing he wasn't around for DS9. There would definitely have been legal battles involved. This video could have been "The 10 things Roddenberry didn't hate about DS9".
Gene Roddenberry: I like to think of Star Trek as Horatio Hornblower in space.
Nicholas Meyers: Sweet. That means we can load torpedoes like cannons right?... Right?...
Love the Genesis Device pun at 1:50
2:54 He "argued" that WHY?
Is the phasing out of sibling rivalry, etc., a premise of nature or nurture? Are humans evolved to be more peaceable? Or is it more that major cultural reforms happen so everyone knows how to raise cool-headed kids?
Gene Roddenberry may have been brilliant for creating one of the greatest shows in history, but as a long time fan myself, Im not afraid to call him out on being a huge hypcrite.
why... thks
He wasn't a hypocrite. Roddenberry was trying to show people a vision of a utopian future. Doing this is not an easy task. People want Star Trek to be futuristic, chaotic, and easy. Completely defeats the purpose of Roddenberry making it in the first place.
Well unfortunately, there are cracks in that vision. Utopias are never a reality because if you are going to enforce them on others without their consent, that's an example of totalitarianism.
One of the issues is that everyone's version of "utopia" is different. As an example, not having an ego-driven producer/creator perving on all the female cast members of shows, to the point where they literally called Rodenberry a perv in the 60s. As a female fan of ST, I'd like to imagine a future where men like that learn to control themselves. Part of my utopia. I'm actually not trying to bash on him too much--he was a WWII vet and saved lives quite heroically during a plane crash--but it's a little silly to imagine a utopia where people are all good when the man himself was, to be frank, not even capable of matching his own ideals. But he did create ST, despite others being the ones to make sure it survived.
I'm surprised that Undiscovered Country wasn't listed. GR criticized the use of the Klingons in the story since they were used more as the "villain of thee week". Much later, both Nimoy and Meyer agreed that the use of the Klingons should have been better.
I've always theorized that Roddenberry saw Star Trek as purely a statement rather than cohesive story. A grand, monolithic almost message of a brighter future and he saw things like drama, in universe logic and continuity, and even analysis or critique of Star Trek's core themes and concepts to be a far distant second to maintaining the core message...like some sort of ideal to follow.
I want to say he meant well and he probably did, but obviously like the video and many comments here have said...that kind of thing doesn't necessarily translate to well written media. This aversion he seemed to have to anything relatable like brothers fighting or PTSD was particularly strange, as well as a brighter future he seemed to indulge in this post-human idea of humanity where we're beyond well....everything I suppose.
I'd argue for sure that the value of a concept that's unrelatable, and that you can't even take apart of hold to some scrutiny is weak...but maybe that's just the DS9 fan in me (which he obviously would have absolutely hated.). I don't want to be too down on the guy though he was a visionary, just maybe not the best at writing relatable. That's why though that it's important for us to remember that successful media like this is often a collaborative effort of different creatives, even if we have a tendency to attach a single face to it. He might have created it, but others' ideas helped bring out the concept's potential.
What a lot of people don't realize is that this attitude developed only after the series was off the air and Star Trek conventions, etc. became big. Basically he started believing his own press and the people fawning over him about Star Trek's vision of the future. When making it, he saw the show as action-adventure with a dash of social commentary, but he came to flip that ratio around.
Making a story relatable makes it easier to digest. Roddenberry's vision was never supposed to be easy to digest.
We all called the Motion Picture "Star Trek: The Motion Sickness". If the flashing lights didn't get you, the flipping between the various plotlines stolen from episodes of the Original Series and the Animated Series that made it gave us vertigo. (1. The Changeling 2. One of Our Planets Is Missing 3. The Immunity Syndrome and maybe a couple more stuck in the corners)
It wasn't entirely Wesley's fault that we all hated him. We hated him because he was a horrible filler plot device during a writers strike. It was at a pivotal time in the series, and the strike almost destroyed it. But Gene had a trunk full of scripts he'd written himself, which he hauled out to save the day. Most of those scripts were Wesley stories, of course.
By the time the strike was over, we despised the hyperprecocious little shit. If he wasn't nearly getting the ship vaporized by aliens because he'd fallen in a flowerbed, he was screwing up on a school assignment and creating a new species.
And we had to watch Picard grovel before Wesley's nanite species, and have them call US "arrogant". So of course we all wanted to shut up Wesley...in an airtight box.
It always stood out to me how Ilia does a short monologue about her oath of celibacy and how she expects her intercultural relations to go. Seemed like a significant Chekov's Gun that never fired.
Was the longest time before I found out why. She was written to be a regular character in the new Star Trek TV series they were working on! Later episodes would have had her coping with the galaxy's various temptations.
*"Most of those scripts were Wesley stories, of course."*
Likely more precisely, most of those were autobiographs, as Roddenberry was clear Wesley was supposed to be him as a precocious teenager. Apparently, Roddenberry liked to write about himself as hero.
We called it "The Motion(less) Picture. The DC was referred to by the addition of "NOW, even LONGER!!!!"
It was great that deep Space nine was able to show that StarTek could write great child characters like Jake and Nog.
@@nathanaelculver5308 well, Roddenberry's middle name WAS "Wesley"...
"STRANGE NEW WORLDS" has reparked my love of STAR TREK, although there have been few others that "follow the beat" to mention iterations like "DISCOVERY"...
Was Roddenberry sheltered growing up? I have a sister, and we have dozens of fights. Human nature doesn't die out.
No he was a fighter pilot during the second World War, he was stationed on either York Town or the Enterpriise
That's career info, @@chrisedmund335
The question was about how sheltered his upbringing was, and if that explains his belief that sibling rivalry could be phased out in the future, somehow. Wiki says he was raised in El Paso, then L.A. So I'd call that a definite maybe.
Another question: was he an only child? My search results on this are largely about his other family members. I don't see a clear "yes, he had no siblings," but I'd expect to have seen them mentioned if he did.
Roddenberry had said that STAR TREK V and VI were apocryphal. But if Paramount produced it, it counts. Same for the Animated Series!
THAT WHY REDDENBERRY IS A LIAR! STAR TREK IS FOREVER NOT RODDENBERRY CRAZY WHITE SAVIOR FETISH!
V is epic in scope, yet something of a nonevent that one can skip. You don't watch later Trek and ask Sybok's deal since he's not mentioned again. Film starts with shore-leave and ends with end of leave.
VI would be a far harder sell for de-canonization. Someone watching TOS and then TNG might well ask to know more about peace with the Klingons. You'd guess such a viewer skipped VI.
What happened in the animated series that's consequential?
I love the character of Wesley crusher because he always seemed interesting to me personally. Humans no longer arguing with each other is a childish idea, it doesn’t matter whether you argue with someone or not what matters is how do you solve the issue
What always got me when i first watched the behind the scenes in the TNG dvd set, was Gene's comment that in the 24th century children don't mourn the death of their parents. Sorry i don't think any amount of emotional evolution will ever get us past the most intense primal emotions
that's one of the reasons I like The Orville, the crew acts like real people not like a bunch of emotionally suppressed do gooders!
real people argue, and get frustrated, whilst the quasi military structure of Starfleet would offset that, a thousand people in an enclosed space for months/years are going to fight!
smh at these comments. It is actually quite depressing to imagine people in the future being as emotional and small-minded as people today and not evolving - yes, evolving - beyond petty, indoctrinated, small-minded emotions, "ideologies", mentalities, etc. I completely understand Gene's idea of adult siblings not coming to physical blows in an argument in the future. The question is how long does it take for humanity to evolve into a better version of itself? I am aware of the need to conflict in storytelling. For example, every Trek movie must have an evil person or faction, and must be an action movie. It wouldn't work otherwise. I am also aware that the audience of today needs to be inherently interested in the characters of a futuristic series, therefore the need for characters to argue and fight.
@@louisalectube Humans have been around for at least 200,000 years and we haven't evolved into super calm non egotistical beings, so it's very unlikely to happen in the next 300 or so years, if anything after the Eugenics war and third world war, Romulan and Klingon wars we'd probably be even more aggresive simply to survive!
@@andreww2098 We were primitive cave people for most of that time. In the past few hundred years alone we've expanded our understanding of everything and existence in ways a caveman would never conceive of. I am not a Roddenberry cheerleader and I disagree w/ many of the hippy notions that I've heard of him as they went into making TNG. Many times his hippy notions simply were not good for storytelling or conflicts in a show or movie.
Holy cow, Commander Brie is back! Welcome back, you were missed
The technology one is funny to me considering how often Kirk "talked" computers to death. "The Changeling", "The Ultimate Computer"' "I , Mudd", "The Return of the Archons" and a couple more. Also... The many times Kirk had to fight enemies in military fashion with phasers and torpedoes. Many right in the first season too. Sheesh.
Imagine being a supercomputer and you are being talked into submission...These Computers found out what being a husband feels like :D
@@NashmanNash LOL
My favorite computer science tip from TOS: if you surmise deep fakery has been perpetrated, open the suspect device's stock chess game. Set it to highest difficulty level. If it's still too easy to beat, you have evidence the CPU has been taxed heavily in the process of fabricating video. 😉
So I think TNG is different than TOS, I really disagree with Roddenberry about not having crew conflicts and disagree about the replicators and probably that as well.
Let’s not forget TOS episodes like “The Doomsday Machine”, which is literally about an automated planet-blaster just traipsing towards the heart of the galaxy, nomming on planets for fuel
"Gene's Vision" has always been the biggest albatross around the neck of the franchise.
I disagree. Hear me out: all of his objections in this video are rigid and dumb, not denying that, but in spite of that every show of the run from Next Gen to Enterprise blatantly disregarded all these criticisms in favour of character development, drama, dangerous technology and man's willingness to exploit it for power, war, semi-serialized storytelling, interpersonal fighting, etc, so it's a moot point. I don't think it's necessarily an albatross, not if the only evidence of that is some people's aversion to Discovery or Picard on the basis that it doesn't always 'feel' like Star Trek.
The less power and say he ultimately had the more people were willing and capable of ignoring Gene, and the better it turned out. An idealized future doesn't have to result in one dimensional, unrealistically perfect characters.
His biggest flaw in thinking was no conflict between Starfleet officers. Conflict is basic story telling.
@@joerider3769 Or just working with people; I mean, he obviously had some drag out arguments with people, over far smaller stakes- he thinks Picard and Riker will just totally agree on how to solve this problem, with a ticking clock, that decides the fate of several billion people...? Yes, they'll just have a calm, rational discussion and reason out what is the bes- "FIRE ON THE ROMULANS NOW, DAMMIT!" "MR. WORF, BEL-" pew pew pew. "Sorry sir, someone said I get to f*** up some Romulans, what were you saying?"
especially due to him being a huge pervert who hated Jews and Feminists
Also...
A lot of people who crow about "Gene's Vision" are talking about the wrong Gene; a good deal of what made Star Trek what we know and love came from the mind of Gene Coon.
As for the albatross...
Roddenberry had become so enamored of his idea of the Perfect World that he wanted to set his stories in his Perfect World as though it had already been accomplished, completely ignoring that it is the struggle to create the perfect world that makes it a story worth telling; that makes it a story at all.
Those of us who remember when Star Trek III was released can attest to how shocking and emotional it was when Enterprise was destroyed. Now it’s a joke in the franchise. Younger viewers probably don’t appreciate that moment for how grand and shocking it was.
As much as I respect Gene and his idea of a peaceful future, the fact is that people are complicated wether it’s in the future or now
GR deserves a tremendous amount of credit for creating the basic concepts behind Star Trek, but (in my opinion) Star Trek did not truly become great (or at the very least consistently good) until Rick Berman was officially running things. The problem with GR's idealized future utopia that he imagined the Federation to be is that it would be impossible to achieve. Humans will never be as united as GR imagined we could be, and new technologies will always have drawbacks as well as benefits. Science fiction works best when its stories are tempered with just the right amount of realism to make us think that maybe something like those stories could actually happen some day. Rick Berman and many of the various writers and producers who have followed him understand that.
Rick Berman was maybe good television producer, however not so good writer. Also its public knowladge, that he did not get along well with writers, even actors, mainly actresses. He is the reason why Terry Farrell left the DS9, other like Jeri Ryan or Jolene Blalock hate this cat suit, same goes for Marina Sirtis which was glad that they finally gave here proper uniform. Because of him left lot of writers, mainly Ronald D. Moore, Michael Piller, they simply did not want work with him. But as televison producer, he was good as voice which you need when you doing any tv show, and really we could give him credit, that he was able to produced 4 tv shows and 4 movies, which was not easy during this time.
So we don't strive for it because you deem it impossible? Huh?
Barman was a hack who hated Star Trek. He hated the idea of the federation and created the most Conservative minded trek ever. Yes it was popular under him, but not because of him. See Jessie Gender or Renegade Cut for further info on this.
@@RHCole We should always strive to be better. But we must also acknowledge that a "perfect" utopian future will never exist.
It is just my opinion, but I feel Gene had too much 'Pulp Sci-Fi' background.
Within this genre the main character would be an individual that stands head and shoulders above everyone else. They will be a charismatic, strong, wise, flexible, fortitude, smart, male... oh, and have a sense of morality that matches the readers of course. They will always have the correct answer for the situation, and ultimately never fail because they are the party you are meant to be rooting for. This type of storytelling was just so limiting in that many of the stories became shallow 'hero-worship the good guys' type ordeals, but it was what Gene grew up reading.
All gene did was take this pulp sci-fi concept and made a whole group out of it, the federation.
I'm sure that the Great Bird of The Galaxy would have loved this video. Amazing job. Regards from Brasil! *
Bree! So glad to hear you back.
He didn't like evil technology but yet had V'Ger, Landru, and all that shit lmfao. Evil AI were common in TOS. I don't get this guy sometimes lmao
That is what I was thinking. How can he make an episode like Changeling and the Ultimate Computer and hate technology is evil stories so much. Maybe it was the other creators fault.
V'Ger wasn't evil. It was just trying to find its way home, collecting data along the way.
I loved the animated series when I was a kid. It was the Star Trek we kids of the 70s could consider "our" Star Trek since we were basically too little to remember TOS.
I barely remember TOS, except that the Enterprise-hard to believe now- scared me to death. TAS helped me get over that fear and introduced me to the crew
he was both the greatest thing for it and in other ways the worst enemy of it and the worst thing to happen to it. like you said, without him we wouln't have any of it but also if they followed his ideas he would have ruined the show and we wouldn't have what we do today
Would you say the same about Edgar Allen Poe's work? Or Tesla's revolutionary work? I don't think so.
Commander Brie, yaaaaas! Great to see you again!!🖖🏾🖖🏾
she's visiting from Warp 359
Ha! I'm loving that nod to Genesis on the Genesis Device screen. I wish David hadn't switched it off though. He needs to turn it on again.
Okay, I have to say that Gene was right about Star Trek V it was the pits. I also really liked STAS. It was pretty cool. I have a fun cross-over fan theory. The Travelers are from the Last Avatar universe. They are the ultimate benders. They are reality Benders. That is what that world evolves into.
Gene didn't hate TAS...and HE DID NOT make TAS non-canon. He couldn't even make it 'non-canon' if he wanted to. As the co-author of the official guide to TAS this lack of research makes me want to scream.
TAS was never not canon. There were times when Paramount didn’t want writers to use TAS characters because Filmation was dissolving and Larry Niven Was discussing doing an RPG with his known space characters, ones that he used for The Slaver Weapon”-They preferred to not end up having to settle right issues in court, even though they would win. Gene also had his lawyer whispering in his ear that no one would take him seriously if he was connected with a cartoon. Ironic since that lawyer also got paid about $1,500 1973 dollars per episode. But Gene could say Spock wasn’t cannon and it really wouldn’t matter because he wasn’t who decided what was "canon". Aside from all of that he never said it wasn't canon. Dorothy Fontana told me she had no idea how that story got started but it wasn't true.
So essentially it was just convenient for them not to mention TAS for a chunk of time. As soon all the assets of Filmation we’re settled TAS references started popping back up into shows and books.
Interesting stuff 👍
Thanks for the actual backstory. Very interesting to hear the behind the scenes info versus what somebody pulled off Wikipedia in about 10 mins. These vids are so lazy it hurts.
@@youcantalwaysgetwhatyouwan8419 The problem is that misinformation has been repeated so many times (like they use pink because the art director was color blind) that the Trek community has taken them as fact. You do have to go beyond Memory Alpha sometimes.
Thank you for setting us straight on that. I was beginning to think that Looper made this video, there was so little research actually performed.
@@GeekFilter As the editor of this video I watched the DVD bonus documentary on TAS whilst looking for clips as well as cross referencing the likes of Memory Alpha and yeah there's certainly differences. The pink got example was explained in the doc as a choice of the guy doing the filling in, much to the dismay of the rest of the staff. And it was because he liked those colours, no mention of colourblindness.
I still love the CAGE till this day,a mighty FINE pilot,IMO. Have some friends who HATE-Star Trek/Star Wars( Yes,there are people out there who hate both entities!!!) came over to the crib one day,bribed them with free pizzas and hot-wings !!! LOL. I asked them to watch an old tv show with me-SILENCE-so I forged ahead anyway.Popped on the CAGE,more SILENCE. After it ended-they asked for more of this strangely entertaining show-Star Trek !!! We end up viewing at least 6 straight episodes of TOS and had a BALL !!! LOL. NOW,they LOVE Star Trek and bought most of the old trek series-TNG-DS9-Voyager. LIVE LONG and PROSPER
I had a similar experience with Firefly:
Them: "This show can't be any good! It was cancelled after only eleven episodes!"
Me: "There were fourteen..."
Them: "Ya see? They didn't even show three of them! Boy, that thing has to suck!"
Me: "Have you seen it?"
Them: "Hell, no!"
Me: "Well, come on, then!"
[THREE EPISODES LATER]
Them: "How could those f(naughty word)ing idiots cancel this show! it f(naughty word)ing ROCKS!"
It (mostly) aged surprisingly well. There was an early review of _SNW_ that looked back at "The Cage" and decided it wasn't a failed pilot--it was just one that took six decades to make it to series.
The Enterprise A was not built to replace the original. It was the Yorktown in for a refit and was renamed Enterprise.
NO!!!
This "Yorktown" was NOT in for a refit; it had been built ENTIRELY NEW, from the KEEL UP!
Its Naval Construction Contract number had NOT been officially REGISTERED, that was all.
11:35 :.......okay.......anybody have a source for all this stuff in the 'End Credits'?
It looks interesting (and Hilarious ^_^), and I can't believe I haven't seen any of it after all this time.
It's from the documentary Trekkies 👍
The reason the studio didn't want Majel Barrett is because they didn't want to give Gene a vehicle in which to hang out with his mistress every day, since she was to be a main character. As Chapel, she was a part timer at best.
He was still married to his wife when he was loading his torpedo in her tube.
😂
NBC was actually quite progressive even in those days, though they had their limits. As Roddenberry himself once said, "The network told me to get rid of Number One, the woman first lieutenant, and also to get rid of 'that Martian fellow,' meaning, of course, Spock. I knew I couldn't keep both, so I gave the stoicism of the female officer to Spock, and married the actress who played Number One. Thank God it wasn't the other way around. I mean Leonard's cute, but...." 😁
He was also dating Nichelle Nichols.
@@tetravega567 I remember reading something about her breaking it off because "I didn't want to be the Other Woman to the Other Woman."
I have to say that I was surprised that the actual creator of Star Trek dislike the Wrath of Khan and the animated series of the original series.
Just based on this, I feel like Gene Roddenberry would have a lot of the same objections about Discovery that the rest of us do.
Yeah, we're advancing humanity and technology... retroactively? He was anti-retread, specifically calling out Klingons as overdone in a galaxy with billions of star systems. Why can we not have a new character without relating her to a classic one? Couldn't agree more, Gene.
His flaws and limitations have been pointed out, a lot, but the vision was beautiful, and I think new writers and producers still have a lot to learn from it.
What I've learned from this is that while Gene Roddenberry had wonderful ideas, an excellent taste for optimistic worldbuilding and a solid idea of what he wanted, he really wasn't much for actually writing a show. Serialized storytelling might have worked in the 60s but if the show never evolved it would not have been very popular, in my opinion. Also his optimism of the future in that machines could never be evil or that war would be gone seems nice on paper, but he went about it with a strange aggressiveness. We owe him our fandom, but based on his ideals I wouldn't actually want him to be leading any Trek projects if he was around nowadays.
While there was a lot of things he was great at, he also had a difficult time understanding people as shown by several of his "quirks" in views of the future. The family one was just part of it...he also thought that humanity would abandon grief and a LOT of other things.
Some of Roddenberry's Have Gun - Will Travel episodes are really good. I actually like his writing on that show more than many of his Star Trek episodes.
The "what does God need with a starship" line IA a classic that still holds true nowadays.
Growing up, I heard about God loved EVERYONE. There were absolutely No exceptions. Nowadays, it leads me back to that time on Star Trek and begs me to ask 'why?' Especially when (to add in a bit of George Carlin in as well) the people who claim to be talking 'for Him' are just not worth listening to in the first place.
Sorry to say it, but it's true. There were some things Gene might not had wished to see done in/with Star Trek, but turned out to be needed in the show and beyond.
The way I view The Animated Series is that it's someone's retelling of those adventures years later after having grown up with their parent telling them the mission reports, or something to that effect. Maybe even the animated children's stories that Riker, Geordi, etc grew up with. As if it should come with the label "Inspired by the adventures of James T. Kirk and the Enterprise crew" everyone understanding that the writers took great liberties. For example of this in real life, Shakespeare's Histories are fictionalized tellings of what happened in those events, allowing us to understand these events in an entertaining way, even if not everything is historic cannon.
Bones isn't there to tour the Enterprise. They're transporting him.
Refresh our memories? Where are they taking him?
Roddenberry's, like Lucas', best work was when others ran the show. ;)
Somebody (I've forgotten who) commented on another video that "Gene Roddenberry created a great foundation."
I replied that "Gene Roddenberry may have built a great foundation, but Herb Solow, Bob Justman, John D.F. Black and a bunch of others built the house. And Dorothy Fontana made that house a home."
My favorite alternative Title for Star Trek 1 is:
The Slow Motion Picture.
8: Ehm, okay... no TOS characters in TNG? Mission Farpoint, Dr. 'Bones' McCoy.
2: Whesley Crusher is a Mary-Sue?! Ok that explains a lot
5:18 "Partner" is a nice way of saying Mistress
Ya, Roddenberry's rejection of the animated series was just silly. As you said, there were some good stories and a lot of it has been referenced in subsequent series. Especially the Kzinti.
Animated Star Trek... I remember watching the first episode... Yesteryear... and being blown away by it!
Also... somebody's been doing animated versions of Voyager and Next Generation using the same style! Hilarious stuff.
Summary:
Roddenberry hated a lot of the movies.
And episodes.
And he was TOTALLY wrong about "Family" and "Redemption". Two of the best TNG episodes.
(P.S. My late grandfather [Larry Silverman] was one of the animators on The Animated Series. When I once asked him about working on it, he didn't remember much, only that it didn't mean much to him and it had just been another animation job at the time.)
How cool about your grandfather!
I still find GR's vision a worthy aspiration. I appreciate his sticking to his guns, so to speak, but his failure was not showing the how and why humanity would be so improved. And following show runners, writers and directors, often cannot recognize or envision a world that shapes stable, resilient, and morally grounded human beings. Having said that, I don't think we would ever be perfect, and technology is certainly not a purely altruistic force, just like it isn't malign either. Those are attributes we bring in our application of technology. And no matter how well we shape our environment and society, we will have to remain vigilant that we do not succumb to baser selves.
I guess the point of Trek is humanity chose to improve itself and through that their works like technology are invariably benign as they are designed and implemented by benign folks.
Boomers and Zoomers just can't comprehend optimism. They'd rather murder everyone than be happy.
Would have been nice to mention that Michael Piller, who was head writer of TNG and show runner/creator with DS9 and VOY actually defended Gene Roddenberry's guidelines, called "The Roddenberry Box". He wrote a chapter about it in his book "Fade In" about writing the script for "Insurrection": "Most writers would have thrown Roddenberry's Box out of the window, but because of this Box, Star Trek worked. And it forced writers to think outside of the box and not use the usual tropes for story telling but find new ways to tell a dramatic story."
As for Technology, I was an Interior Communications Electrician and was fully aware of being able to tap or bang equipment to get it to work again. Will it ever stop being that way? I have troubleshot and designed systems that were made to withstand the worst possible use but optimistic and realistic. It is better now but banging usually makes it stop working.
Love the ‘I Can’t Dance’ Genesis device!
That last statement is probably the best way to decide in any franchise if something is canon.
Did the creator get a paycheck for it?
1:32 "Paint my like one of ya French girls, Jim."
😂
If Roddenberry were alive, I'm sure the JJ movies and all the new series would be on that list.
The battle of “what 359“? It sounded like you said warp or worf. I couldn't make it out. Wolf-359 is the name of the battle.
Is nobody else getting the visual gags that Trek Culture put into the video clips?
The God Thing had me in hysterics.
What where the 3 holograms dancing above the genesis display? And what is the message inside the wake of the crashing enterprise?
I couldn't replay these enough to work it out.
Humanitys salvation... An alcoholic drink,. Brilliant.
Wesley appears less and less. Nicely done.
Glad you noticed them 👍😂 holograms were from the music video for I Can't Dance by..... Genesis 😂
@@ashedarke groan. That makes sense now. Ha ha.
@@FirstDan2000 I appreciate the comment. I put a lot of little things in for people to spot. There's also some on going ones that I try to put in every video that so far no one has spotted 😂 still waiting on those ones.
Gene Roddenberry is like George Lucas. They both came up with great concepts for their creations, but they were lousy writers. TOS was good because of another Gene, Gene Coon. The TOS movies only became good after Roddenberry was removed. And TNG got better once Roddenberry’s health deteriorated. In addition to hating some of the best things in Star Trek, he also introduced some of the dumbest ideas. Children on the Enterprise, a therapist on the bridge, etc.
Jesus this sounds awful when you think about it just saying
I agree that TNG got better when Roddenberry was involved in the day-to-day running of the show, but Roddenberry was not a lousy writer. Check out some of his Have Gun - Will Travel episodes, like "The Posse," "Incident in Laredo," etc.
@@VonWenk I remember reading a retrospective in which an interviewee said "When Gene was on his game, he was very good." It's just that, when TNG came about, he was...tired.
Gene wrote lyrics that can accompany Alexander Courage's theme music (optionally) just so his name would be on the song and he'd get royalties when it was played.
Do we say those lyrics are somehow canonical just because of that?
I went to a convention where Melinda Snodgrass, the writer of Measure of a Man, was the guest of honor. In one of the panels I saw her speak in she said Gene strongly objected to the very premise of the episode because he didn't think there would be lawyers in the future. The episode got produced when Gene went on a trip and wasn't around to stop the producers from green lighting it.
I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, Measure Of A Man is a classic episode and it was very foolish of him to oppose it, that being said, I find it quite funny that he thought it was impossible to include lawyers in a perfect world.
The future's so perfect, citizens won't need anyone to secure their rights?
@@VonWenk well for some reason the man who had no problem with spaceships, transporters, holodecks, and replicators, thought that the idea of good moral lawyers was too far fetched...
@@chrischan2395 Especially since Gene Roddenberry was reportedly unable to do anything without the advice of Leonard Maizlish - his lawyer.
@@chrischan2395 because in a perfect world, piece of shit losers like lawyers won't exist. You psycho Trump loving freaks will be outlawed. Your insane, murderous Conservative ways will be literally too lowly for the future to consider.
It's not that odd the think that when evil is gone, that malice will leave as well.
According to Peter McWilliams, in Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society, Roddenberry wanted Majel Barret fo be the captain on TOS. Meanwhile, cigarette companies that were sponsoring the show wanted it to dipict futuristic smoking. Roddenberry felt that people wouldn't smoke anymore in the future, and it would be a bad example to children watching. The cigarette companies gave him an ultimatum: either include smoking or make the captain a man.
I’ve just never been able to get past Picard being allowed anywhere near Starfleet again after his assimilation.
Whether or not Starfleet forgave Picard for what he did as Locutus, he had been assimilated, had given the Borg his detailed knowledge of Starfleet, and had led an attack that killed perhaps thousands of Starfleet personnel and destroyed dozens of Starfleet vessels. Picard would forever be damaged goods. But Starfleet handed him his ship back as if nothing had happened. There’s no way Picard could ever be trusted again.
Fair point. A major way Discovery loses me is the idea they'd take a ruthless extra-dimensional Empress and give her a position in secret service. One aspires to consistent standards, so I'll consider that about Picard.
@@alm2187 even the crew of Discovery was surprised by the empress.
You seriously missed the point of the episode.
How you morons even get introduced to Trek is beyond me.
Go back to your Jersey Shore or whatever you Neanderthals call entertainment.
I love Picard, to this day I still think he's the best captain in the franchise... but I will admit I was kind of looking forward to the show continuing without him. It would have done something Trek had not done before. There was so much potential in watching Riker doing his best to fill the captain's chair, to seeing the crew adjust. It just would have been an amazing risk for ST to take.
@Sakura Twister Whether by choice or not, he was compromised.
*"He was restored back to his human self."*
There’s no way to know he truly was. He might be assigned some sort of desk job at SF HQ, but he will forever be a security risk. At the very least he would require years of psychological observation before being re-certified. The mere fact that he bore the psychological scars of being the instrument of the death of thousands of Star Fleet officers for the rest of his life means his command judgments could never again be trusted.
Having him walk from the operating room practically straight back into the captain’s chair is impossible.
Damn it I have such a crush on Brie lol. Great vid!
In cheese rolling competition, Brie crushes you!
The animated series is non-canon... except for finding out that the T in Jamed T Kirk stands for Tiberius. And of course, Captain Robert April. Oh, and let us not forget there were races we could see in the animated series that we would never have seen in TOS simply because of either technology or budget.
I love some of the ideas gene had and obviously without his influence the show would have never came to be. However i do think he held it back in so many ways. The whole militarization thing actually makes it more plausible and likeable imo, i love the naval influence.
The only reason Roddenberry thought Worf wasn't a strong character was because of his policy to show Worf getting his butt kicked constantly.
The truth is that the Great Bird of the Galaxy often pooped on himself.
Personally I think if left to Roddenberry startrek would have ended with season 1 of TNG
Yes
kinda surprised that Gene's hatred for Star Trek 6 went unmentioned.
Really? I thought the idea of the Federation and Klingon Empire making peace would have been a highlight for him.
Or was his issue that Federation officers were trying to sabotage this?
@robert, I think it was how the movie depicted so many Starfleet officers as racist.
@@thecaptain6730
Yea, Kirk's son was killed by some Klingons, therefore Kirk hates all Klingons. Gene maintained that Kirk knew better. Was there anything else?
The characterization does seem inconsistent. He once chewed out an officer for insinuations about Spock when they just found out Romulans look like him.
Far as that being a collective trait in the future, we need to know more. If bigotry is somehow a thing of the past, why did Kirk have to enforce anti-bigotry ideals on that occasion?
OR does that answer that? Is it a bigotry-free society because ideals are so efficiently enforced?
Surprised the reason for #8 isn't more about literally astronomical odds. It's not improbable they'd seek a dignitary from the flagship line to give the new one a sendoff, and it's reasonable that McCoy would have the know-how to still be alive. Yet, in the course of one seven-year voyage, they have occasion to rescue the old Engineer and offer extraction to the old Vulcan. At the end of that, the captains meet.
Big galaxy, I thought. So what are the chances?
Poor Gene, his baby grew up and rejected him during the baby's teenage years. It happens to all of us.
Maybe his baby just grew up...but not in the way he imagined it would be.
Technology as villain was also used a bit in the original Trek as well. "The Ultimate Computer" to name one. And anytime Harry Mudd showed up. Or times Kirk talked an A.I. into 'offing' itself.
Not long after Star Trek was cancelled, Roddenberry approached Paramount and let them know he was interested in buying the complete rights to the franchise. Paramount crunched the numbers and told him he could have the rights for $150,000. With two ex-wives to support and with other financial issues he just couldn't afford the price.
I always longed for the TNG episode, "Wesley Gets Shoved Out An Airlock." Alas.
10:51
I think what you mean is the original series had less self-consistency, at least in this respect. We need a full analysis of travel times in TOS before we can say TNG-era ships are slower.
Wesley is an even more true reason why you don't do a Mary Sue character.
I can definitely see people complaining Worf is not a good lead character. He is the universe's punching bag most of the time.
I'm always thankful for the ideas that Gene has gifted us with, but behind the scenes he wasn't perfect as I discovered much later in life. The man hated Wrath of Khan and kept pitching for a story idea where Spock travels back in time and shoots JFK instead. If Gene always got his way, we wouldn't have the Trek we all know and love today.
Let`s face it: if Gene Roddenberry had got his way; that is, if anybody ever decided to make a version of Star Trek that exactly matched Gene Roddenberry`s original concept in every way, nobody would recognize it.
(Example: There is no Federation - that was Gene Coon`s idea; and the ship is not called Enterprise. Instead, the Yorktown is an Earth ship; her crew is entirely human, with no extraterrestrials among her crew. Even Spock, the devil-faced, red-skinned Martian - with a spade-tipped tail - has a human ancestor. I could go on, but you get the picture.)
@@willmfrank yes, we got the picture. The Motion Picture. 😁
lmfao yea I can make up shit too, watch:
Toko Furse has a highschool diploma.
See how easy it is to make things up about people?
By the way, finish your GED you dipshit Zoomer.
The main problem NBC had with Number One wasn't the character, it was the fact that Roddenberry had cast his mistress as the female lead. I'll let everyone else do the math from there.
Re: The Animated Series. The real reason for the exclusion of TAS was more likely due to the matter of ownership of the show. Paramount didn't produce it, Filmation did; Paramount just distributed it. So, for legal reasons, TAS was off limits, but rather than admit that he had no control over TAS at that time, Roddenberry just told folks that he just didn't like it anymore (he never told that to Bjo Trimble, though, and TAS is a major part of the Star Trek Concordance). Meanwhile, the lawyers hashed things out, and in the early 90's, everything was sorted, TAS was quietly back in the fold, references started cropping up onscreen, and most notable, when the DVD set came out, it was on CBS Home Video, not under the Filmation banner. BTW, I ran this scenario by David Gerrold himself, and he said, yeah, that sounds about right.
Gene Roddenberry really disliked conflict, and if to get out of an awkward situation, he had the choice of a complicated explanation that left him a bit exposed or a simple lie that reinforced his authority, he'd easily choose the lie.
I just watched the episode The Practical Joker of the TAS. It has the first use of a holodeck on the Enterprise... 14 years before TNG. GR must've liked some parts of the TAS
*Starts weight lifting program
"That sure is one hollow gram!"
@@tetravega567 You win the "Dad Joke of the Day" award!
But they were then called "visicons," NOT "holodecks."
They were essentially supposed to be "holographic environmental simulators," which is what a "holodeck" technically is.
Wait...Roddenberry wrote Wesley as a version of himself? I guess that explains his uncanny favoritism for the character. My family recently rewatched TNG. We only saw it once in the original run. Though he is a little annoying, Wesley wasn't quite is bad as I remembered. I guess all of those "shut up Wesley" memes tainted my memory a bit. LOL
Star Trek V- that one time the fans and Roddenberry kind of agreed with each other.
Trek V > Trek VI. Fight me.
@@GSBarlev You're entitled to your very wrong opinion
@@Sephiroth144 That's what I love about real Trekkies--willing to take the IDIC* concept to heart and accept and welcome people of all wrong opinions. ♥
*Idiotic Dumb$$$ery in Infinite Combinations
"the battle of WARP 359?" 2:20 It also says that in the CC. WOLF 359
3:22 good choice since all three would crossover into TNG
The thing people miss is that is by following his rules more often than not it makes those moments when they are broken special. It's like eating cake after a week of dieting - That feels so much more rewarding and pleasing than eating cake every day. And the same is true for all the SFX. We are spoiled on Disco Picard and SNW, and it makes all that expensive work pretty mundane and not special at all. They really shouldn't bother.
Meanwhile back in the 90's you really had to earn those epic battles and despite their age they all still feel a million times more special than anything on the new shows.
I have to point out, the Enterprise-A was NOT CONSTRUCTED as the Enterprise-A.
Books and the studios have confirmed that the Enterprise-A was the the USS Tai Chi, recommissioned as the Enterprise NCC-1701A.
Love your stuff as it's usually spot on accurate, kinda surprised you missed this
It had been Naval Experiment 2001 "Ti-Ho," and was ABOUT to be registered as "Yorktown" when James Kirk pleaded guilty on behalf of his entire command crew only to have all charges except one, petty insubordination, dismissed. His penalty was to be involuntarily relieved as Chief Of Operations and demoted from admiral to captain, then be assigned command of what immediately became the "Enterprise II."
The "Enterprise II" initially launched with short-lived rigging du jour that quickly failed, and it needed to be reinstated to full condition of spaceworthiness on its way to Nimbus III, which it was.
Didn't Rick Berman make TAS canon by fiat? You should make a video about points where the three Great Birds (Roddenberry, Berman and Kurtzman) overrule and contradict each other.
Here's a tip for how to spot a bad Trek episode: if they beam down to a planet and find that the residents (colonists, pirates, escaped convicts, whatever) are living in a set that features a lot of scaffolding, skip it. "Damn, another f**king scaffolding episode!"
"...destroying countless ships at the battle of Worf 359..."
me: wait, what
Now I watch Star Trek original series.
I also watched some of the full movies in the series.
But the original TV series are over 60 years old. It's normal for them to be visual ridiculous by today's standards. Still, I respect them. Without them, many of today's ideas would not exist. So Star Trek : Original is beautiful in its own right. But his ideas are fascinating. Also, his ideas can be seen in almost every modern sci-fi TV Series or full movies. So I can't wait to continue my Star Trek journey and to see where it will take me.
"Family" is the 3rd part to "Best of Both Worlds".
Thank you for this