Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 15:55:09 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Orson Scott Card takes a flamethrower to Trek
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 06:49 AM 5/5/05 -0700, Drew Bittner wrote:
>
>It's a good point. The medium has moved on. Star Trek
>wasn't designed to be anything more than
>entertainment-- the 'gravitas' of the show is
>something the fans piled onto it years afterward.

The first two seasons were definitely just entertainment.  The third
season, perhaps in an attempt to kill the series (successfully apparently,
at least for a while) tried to include a lot of "social relevance" stuff.
Racism, war, political differences, etc..

As for the "every show stands alone" thing, that was true for the original
series, but most of the rest, made decades later after network rules had
changed, didn't have that.  TNG, Voyager, DS9 and Enterprise all had
frequent references to prior shows in the series, with the later three
having very definite "through-lines" of plot that lasted whole seasons, or
even for the whole series (getting home for Voyager, with smaller
multi-show lines about Ocampa, Borg Queen, etc..  The whole Cardasian war
and shape changer thing culminating in the big space battle at the end of
one season for DS9.  The "Xindi expanse" shows for Enterprise where the
whole season was one long plot with everything else hung on it like
decorations).

>Yeah, the episodes often had something to say-- but it
>didn't mean they aspired to be Shakespeare. Sheesh.
>Get a life, Orson.

Very true.  Nothing on TV aspires to be Shakespeare.  Not even when they
swipe a plot from him and rework it.

-- Mike B.
--
"Football has as much to do with Education as Bullfighting does with
Agriculture." -- Veblen