| A strange loop.
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| A strange loop.
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A Reason to Watch Star Trek Again?Two of my favorite science fiction TV series are Babylon 5 and Star Trek.
Babylon 5 is one of the best TV shows ever done, set in one of the most compelling science fiction universes ever created, with some of the most interesting characters ever put on TV. Yes, it's science fiction, but that's almost beside the point: the story is universal. Despite being set in space, in the future, with magical new technologies and thoroughly alien races, the story was real - it was plausible. The characters acted like people really act, and the events of the plot interacted with the personalities in believable ways.
Star Trek also created a compelling science fiction universe, though it always suffered from shallow characterizations. The original series had some excellent shows, exploring themes of race (Let This be Your Last Battlefield) and human relationships (The City on the Edge of Forever) and unintended consequences (A Piece of the Action) and so on in a very entertaining way. With the arrival of Star Trek: the Next Generation and its follow-ons, the stories got progressively less interesting, though, and even the universe got boring. (The Cardassians and Bajorans? Please! How unimaginative!) The preaching got out of hand as well, such as in the Next Generation, where at one point religion of all kinds was simply mocked out of hand. I have an idea, let's insult our viewers! That would make us really cool!
I watched exactly two episodes of Voyager and only one of Enterprise. They were interesting ideas, crippled by the insipid writing, unimaginative stories, retreads of past plots and utterly uninteresting characters and situations. It had become unreal - unbelievable - plastic.
If anything can revive Star Trek at this point, it is the creation of compelling story lines in an interesting universe with characters we can care about and events that don't always turn out for the best. If anyone can revive Star Trek, that person would be the creator of Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski.
(hat tip: Peeve Farm)
Posted by Jeff at June 23, 2004 04:25 PM | Link CosmosYou didn't mention Deep Space Nine, the best of the series. It's "Star Trek Blue Collar" with a three year long war in seasons 5-7. Have you watched any of it?
Posted by: john on June 24, 2004 11:10 AMActually, I watched a fair amount of DS9. It was in some ways better than the other series other than TOS: it at least tried to present more human situations and characters. It never really grabbed me overall, but there were some pretty good episodes, and I like the fact that they followed a long story-arc near the end.
Posted by: Jeff on June 24, 2004 05:43 PM