Using the panel discussions of the most
recent World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City in August 2016 (to which
I was invited and had a friend pay my membership! [Thanks, Paul!] but was
unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail
against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy
of the Program Guide. This is event #2153. The link is provided below…
50 Years of Star
Trek Part 1: How has Star Trek changed and developed as a franchise. Everything
from writing styles, special effects, characters, ethics, social norms, toys,
and more will be considered. Dave Creek, Randy Henderson (M), Ms. Melinda
Snodgrass, David Gerrold, Shanna Swendson
Dave Creek – an ANALOG
regular
Randy Henderson
(M) – an experienced fantasy author
Ms. Melinda
Snodgrass – REALLY??? She wrote several episodes of Star Trek: The Next
Generation while serving as the series' story editor during its second and
third seasons!
David Gerrold –
REALLY??? This is the name I remember immediately after Gene Rodenberry’s when
it comes to script-writing. Not DC Fontana or any of the others. THIS one!
Shanna Swendson –
an experienced fantasy writer
So, the panel was
possibly dominated by comments from the most relevant comments from Gerrold and
Snodgrass, but I’ve no doubt that in the others chimed in.
Onward, then. The
subject: “How has Star Trek changed and developed as a franchise? Everything
from writing styles, special effects, characters, ethics, social norms, toys,
and more will be considered.”
I don’t know that
you could possibly have any discussion regarding the special effects…the
difference between painting phaser beams on celluloid and tipping the camera
for returned phaser fire and filming glitter dropping through water and
Computer Generated Images boggles the mind and is more an historical curiosity
than anything else. I won’t bother with that.
As for writing
styles, TOS used “real” science fiction writers several times. Later series
less so – Harlan Ellison (famously and legendarily!); Richard Matheson, Theodore
Sturgeon, Peter S. Beagle, Robert Bloch, Norman Spinrad, JeromeBixby, Diane
Duane, David Bishoff, Nick Sagan (both author and son of astronomer Carl
Sagan), Judith and Garfield
Reeves-Stevens, and even Larry Niven. The novels – that’s a different story.
According to Amazon, there are some 3000 paperback STAR TREK books from authors
both famous and unknown, like Vonda N. McIntyre, Alan Dean Foster, James Blish,
Joe Haldeman, Jack C. Haldeman II, James Gunn, Pamela Sargent, Keith R. DeCandido and Greg Cox – to someone
named Tony Isabella who co-wrote one book.
These are wildly different, ranging from the weak to the fantastic.
The characters…well, those are endlessly debatable, appealing to
different people at different times. Most universally loathed was Wesley
Crusher (as far as I can tell); most universally adored (again as far as I can
tell) would be Q and Jean-Luc Picard. I still think they should have a movie
where Q is the villain/hero.
Ethics, social norms, and toys…whew. There’s a lot here. I suppose that’s
why they needed different parts to cover them. I’ll vent on ethics and social
norms next time. As far as “toys” go, I will only mention here that I made
countless TOS phasers out of wood and I have the sound-effects page in one of
favorites files. I still thrill to the sound of TOS photon torpedoes launching!
(This entry took me two hours to write because I got totally lost in the
websites finding the information above – looking at the writer lists for all
the show episodes…)
Resources: http://www.thewrap.com/all-39-star-trek-main-characters-ranked-from-spock-to-wesley-photos/54/
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