This coming Friday, *Star Trek: Enterprise*, the sorely misconcieved prequel to the original *Star Trek* series, will air its final first-run episode. What went wrong — with *Enterprise* and *Star Trek* in general — has been a hot topic among the writers I know. Being a closet Trekkie and having co-written an episode of *Next Generation*, it’s something I’ve been thinking about, too.<\/p>\n
Finding the flaws in *Enterprise* is a bit like shooting Changelings in a bucket — the casting, the “where everybody has gone before” problem, and so on — but the roots of *Enterprise*’s failure in fact date back to some of Gene Roddenberry’s prescriptions for the *Next Generation* series, specifically his belief in the perfectability of mankind and his insistence that *Star Trek* present a vision of a “hopeful” future.<\/p>\n
I met Gene a few times. Beth Slick (then Woods) and I worked directly with him on the *TNG* episode. I admired his faith in humanity’s future — I believe it was absolutely genuine — and his determination to see *his* vision of *Star Trek* realized *his* way.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I think Gene sometimes missed the point of what he had created. *Trek*’s uniqueness wasn’t the “hopeful future” concept. That was mostly a hook manufactured by reporters trying to explain the devotion of the fans.<\/p>\n
The uniqueness of *Star Trek* is that it was a television show — let me repeat that: a television show <\/em>— that dealt in *ideas*.<\/p>\n Illusion versus reality, logic versus emotion, the sanitizing of war, alternate realities, man’s relationship to technology — *big stuff*, enormous themes that, yes, were sometimes handled clumsily, but which the rest of television never even approached. You forgave the spotty special effects, the cheap sets, and Captain Kirk’s tendency to bloviate, because the scope of the stories was so compelling.<\/p>\n And the characters *reacted* to what was going on around them — with wonder, with compassion, with anger, with lust — you know, like human beings with actual *personalities*?<\/p>\n Beginning with *Next Generation*, the reservoir of wonder and passion sprang a leak. The final frontier and its denizens were becoming commonplace — not to viewers (yet), but, unforgivably, *to the characters themselves*. The stories got smaller. Debating grand ideas was replaced by endless niggling over minutiae, not how whole societies worked but how one subsystem of the ship worked. It was like watching the Lincoln-Douglas debates degenerate into an SDS meeting.<\/p>\n The conceptual shrinkage reached its inevitable conclusion with the *Enterprise* title sequence and its theme song, the alternately unctuous and self-pitying “Faith of the Heart.” Its message? “They’re not gonna hold *me* down no more.” “Goin’ where *my* heart will take me.” “*I* can do anything.” “*I* can reach any star.”<\/p>\n The song is an affirmation, and a lame one at that, set to music. It redefines the final frontier as me, me, me.<\/p>\n Join Starfleet: We’ve Got a Massive Hard-on for Ourselves.<\/p>\n I suppose there’s a place for unconditional self-congratulation, probably in a shrink’s office in Beverly Hills. But, as the Organians once pointed out, it’s somehow inappropriate on a mission to explore strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations. For that job, curiosity might work better. Along with a dash of humility. Oh, and maybe a willingness to reassess one’s own beliefs and values on a regular basis.<\/p>\n Anyway, the audience finally tuned out, and now *Star Trek* is going away for a while. Personally, I think that’s a good idea. Give it a rest. Give people a chance to miss it. And, a couple of years from now, let a new crew of writers and producers, burdened with fewer preconceptions, take whack at making Gene Roddenberry’s universe interesting again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This coming Friday, *Star Trek: Enterprise*, the sorely misconcieved prequel to the original *Star Trek* series, will air its final first-run episode. What went wrong — with *Enterprise* and *Star Trek* in general — has been a hot topic among the writers I know. Being a closet Trekkie and having co-written an episode of *Next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}