It’s been a while since my last blog entry. I’ve been busy with work and some personal things needed attending. I also wanted to spend more time honing my flying skills—got to stay practiced or you could have a very bad landing.
I also started to read the book These Are The Voyages: TOS Season One by Marc Crushman and Susan Osbourn. It’s a historical recounting and detailed analysis of how Gene Roddenbury created the original Star Trek episodes back in the ‘60s. Bottom line—this book is required reading for those who want to write science fiction books or movies.
His caustic treatment of the many Star Trek episode writers notwithstanding, I find Gene Roddenbury to be a genius who arrived on the scene sooner then perhaps he should. What makes him great is his ability to find the right balance between classic humankind tragedies like power, jealousy, love, hate and technical gadgetry like phasers, transporters and tricorders.
Despite all the technology of Star Trek, the show is nothing more than a futuristic western or, as Roddenbury puts it, a “wagon train to the stars.” Until now, I always wanted to see the techie stuff and not wallow in the tear jerking heartfelt pansy of human tragedies—yuk!! Show me more Spielberg special effects, was my mantra. Give me more spaceships flying at warp speed through space, more battles with photon torpedoes, tractor beams and cloaking devices. BTW, you know you’re not a Trekie, if you don’t know anything about those things.
About a quarter of the way through These Are The Voyages: TOS Season One, I started to have a change of heart about this shoot’em up only mantra. I still want plenty of special effects stuff mind you, but now I want to see more of what’s going on inside the minds and hearts of the characters to better understand what drives them to do battle.
What do you think?
