On Sat, 22 Feb 2003, Jose J. Ortiz-Carlo wrote: > TOS is embedded in the collective consciousness in a way TNG can never even > aspire to be. I remember working as IT in San Juan's Public Works Dept. I > used to have ERTL's NCC1701-A model
Ahhh...I had the 1701 ERTL model for a long time - I still have a die-cast TOS Enterprise that shoots little yellow round photon torpedos and has a detachable shuttle. I bought it from Sears in the seventies with a $20 bill I found lying on the ground in the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. > proudly displayed next to my server as > an in-joke with my programmers, since we used to call the old server > "Enterprise". On one occasion, one of the carpenters from the department > was working on an addition to my office, and the minute he walks in, he > stares at the model, and he goes, "Wait.. isn't that Captain Kirk's ship? > >From "Star Trek?". Needless to say, I was very pleasantly surprised. > That's how far TOS has traveled; if the Enterprise has gone all the way into > the minds of people from all levels of society and all walks of life > exchange points of view about science fiction and its' impact, then it > really *has* gone where no man has gone before. Cool! > The magic of Star Trek: TOS is in no small part due to, in the words of Nick > Meyer, "those characters". TOS works due to the familiarity of its' > characters with the audience. TNG, nor Voyager, nor DS9, nor Enterprise (I > did get to see my first episode wednesday!!) have been able to reproduce the > chemistry found between Kirk and company. > > One of my favorite episodes of DS9 is "Trials and Tribbleations". Guess > why. :) In the opening sequences of this episode, the writers try, in > vain, to introduce a concept in DS9 which is almost unfamiliar to DS9: > banter in the bridge. A vain attempt to imitate the spirit of familiarity > that we found in TOS, but it falls flat. This can never be duplicated. I've wondered if putting a truly accomplished actor like Patrick Stewart at the helm ruined things in this regard. Gravitas tends to kill familiarity, and it seems to me that as long as the commanding officer's prime requisite is the ability to project an air of august wisdom and authority - which Avery Brooks and Kate Mulgrew tried to re-create, I think - the surrounding characters are likely to fade into the background. Lots of TNG fans like to point out what a better actor Stewart is compared to Shatner - but I've never heard anyone argue that Picard/Crusher/X (X being Riker or Data or Troi or Worf or ..?) made a better core ensemble than Kirk/Spock/McCoy. The more I think about it, the more the TOS cast feels like a group of sort of blue-collar colleagues. It feels as though, in off hours, you could expect Kirk to kick back with some redshirts and smoke a cigarette and practice judo moves. Picard is by contrast an aristocrat, isolated not just by rank but by manners and breeding from the relative commoners beneath him. Kirk is uncomfortable as an admiral, a fish out of water, whereas Picard sometimes seems like he's slumming (which Stewart was, technically, but oh well) by condescending to command just one starship at a time. > Also, the scripts of TOS were written, in great part, by great SciFi writers > (Ellison, et al) and great SciFi minds like Gene Coon and Rodenberry who > understood what SciFi was all about. TNG's Ron Moore and Brannon Braga, who > have written or edited almost all of the episodes of TNG and its' > re-incarnations, in no way compare to the minds behind TOS. Michael Piller > did pen some great moments of TNG, but he eventually ended up relinquished > to a second or third place in the staff. > > Star Trek is now a franchise. I liked it better when it was a VERY good TV > show, with provocative ideas that stimulated the minds of its' viewers. If > TNG and its' predecessors could emulate, or duplicate, that effect, I swear > to you I would NEVER turn off my TV set. Interesting. I tend to think of TOS as being (mostly) good SF that happened to be on TV; by contrast, I think of TNG as being (mostly) good TV that happened to incorporate a certain amount of SF - hence its longevity but also its recurring bouts of fluffiness. > I've also seen comments in this thread related to Star Trek 5, and I'd like > to say something about it as well. <snip> Huh! I might actually have to watch it again from this perspective. Marvin Long Austin, Texas Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Poindexter & Ashcroft, LLP (Formerly the USA) http://www.breakyourchains.org/john_poindexter.htm _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
