Star Trek : TNG

I saw the Canadian-produced/funded documentary 'Chaos on the Bridge' about the first fractious season of ST:TNG and it got me to re-watch the first two seasons of the series. There seemed to be such universal consensus about how atrocious that first season was that I began to suspect the opposite - might the first season actually be better than later seasons because of the rawness and input from Gene Roddenberry (whose deteriorating health would sideline then kill him).

'Encounter at Farpoint' has always been a favorite of mine and now that I understand it was two separate plots crudely sandwiched together (one by DC Fountana & one by Roddenberry) to make a 2-hour pilot I understand its odd disjointed flow. The 'Mad Max' courtroom run by Q was a defining moment of my youth, with older eyes I can it is Roddenberry, an ex-police officer, telling us how the Federation (i.e. the Western World) is much better than Eastern despotism and populism as signified by gongs, a dwarf, Oriental dress and unwashed mobs. This is a old Imperial/Cold War trope but I still like Tasha Yar yelling that Q isn't fit to lick the boots of a Federation officer because she knows how bad social anarchy like this really is, perhaps I've had too many years teaching Criminology. The best part of the episode is Q, his mobile throne, and the guard he kills. That guard - chain-mail power-armour, forearm-mounted machine-gun, a nose-tube full of stimulants (Witness Me!), everything I wanted as a teenager. Q is just an updated 'Trelane' from the old Star Trek episode - but having a demiurge (aka god of the local universe) put humanity on trial is a personal favorite since the Book of Job. de Lacie is great during the first few seasons, sometimes it feels like you have to put up with the Enterprise crew to finally get back to Q.



This episode also features a clear anti-militarism message - an often ambiguous topic on a liberal-ish show centered on the adventures of space battleship.

"But you can't deny, captain, that you are still a dangerous, savage child race."

"Most certainly, I deny it. I agree we still were, when Humans wore costumes like that four hundred years ago."

"At which time you slaughtered millions in silly arguments about how to divide the resources of your little world.
And four hundred years before that, you were murdering each other in quarrels over tribal god images.
Since then, there has been no indication that Humans will ever change."

The next episode I couldn't get through. The crew gets 'space drunk' from some virus and all the women become space vixens and the guys gets slightly cranky. It was unbearable to watch and a complete waste as the 2nd episode. It might have been bearable as a late season relief, a campy episode to poke fun at the pretentiousness of the stone-faced crew, but as the second episode ever it is nonsensical. This episode is where the 'fully functional' Data hooks-up with Yar, a scene seared into my teenage mind, but I had blanked out that Yar propositions Data right after describing her childhood dodging "rape gangs". I believe TVtropes call it 'Squick'. I could understand a whole episode where Yar gets involved with Data because her traumatic past leaves her unable to trust human males, but the way it is done is unbearable.

[Plus - Are Data's gentials even human-ish? Are they male genitals? Did Noonan model Data's genitals after his own? ]

Roddenberry has a salacious edge to him. Partly because he slept around despite being married to Majel Barret (aka Nurse Chapel/Voice of the Computer/Troi's Mom) - 'Chaos on the Bridge' has him having an affair with a secretary, and I've seen an interview with Troi where she says he propositioned her. And this prurience seems to rub off on many ST episodes (new and old) because 80% of females (any species) are some form of space vixen. 'Star Trek the Motion Picture' has been described as a 2-hour long cosmic sexual encounter. Maybe Roddenberry was a cop seduced to the liberal side by the 60s' siren-call of free-love and remained a true believer? Who knows?

This is not to tar Roddenberry as a 'dirty old man', there was a strange veneer of idealism to his sexism that prevents that, but it does make for some really bad episodes and ideas.

http://aminoapps.com/page/star-trek/9072840/angel-one-worst-episode-ever

[Star Trek writer Micheal] Rhodes whimsically agrees that the show was sexist, and recalls how oblivious to this Roddenberry was. But then, Roddenberry in his ‘politically correct’ mode had always been oblivious to his own failings, especially in regard to the exploitation of women as sex objects in a vaguely adolescent, slyly leering manner.

Patrick Stewart observed that there was still considerable sexism in the scripts for Star Trek: TNG, a fact that disturbed him. Eventually he and Jonathan Frakes protested, along with Marina Sirtis and others.

I'm sure that there is far more to it than the quote above - but it gives the basics.

Last night I read that the Betazoids were originally imagined by Roddenberry as having 4 breasts. Roddenberry also insisted that both men and women wear skirts (or 'skants').



According to the book The Art of Star Trek, "the skirt design for men 'skant' was a logical development, given the total equality of the sexes presumed to exist in the 24th century."

Roddenberry also wanted the pleasure planet of Risa to be a soft-core porn set as is documented in 'Chaos on the Bridge'

io9.gizmodo.com

"And in one hilarious bit, writer Ira Steven Behr recounts telling Roddenberry about his plans for the pleasure planet Risa, which led to Roddenberry saying it should be full of women making out and fondling each other."

But that biased summary leaves out what Behr actually said Roddenberry said - so I will transcribe it here: "I like the idea of a pleasure planet. I want it to be a place where you see woman fondling and kissing other women, and men hugging and holding hands and kissing. We can imply that they are having sex in the background"

There is plenty of debate in the documentary about whether Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek was a help or a hindrance. Writers seem to chafed under Roddenberry's beleif that in the future human wouldn't be the neurotic nests of repression and aggression because that was the main source of their drama-writing skills. Yet I firmly come down on Roddenberry's side, surely there are sources of drama outside of character's arguing? And perhaps, Roddenberry's vision of cosmic orgasms and unisex eroticism should have been fully embraced as an antidote to his own "vaguely adolescent, slyly leering manner." Slash fiction was born in Star Trek fandom so we know that fans want it. I think can actually see the appeal of slash fiction for the first time in my life!

I can remember to this day the moment my teenage love of ST:NG ended. It was a stupid episode about stupid Worf and his stupid repressed feeling for stupid Troi (add in his stupid kid to the mix). Ever at that tender age I know that any future that ended up mired with humans (and Klingons) still mired in this pathetic bourgeois garbage was not worth fighting to get to.

Given the choice between 4-breasted telepathic Betazoids on poly-sexual pleasure planets and everyone in skants or the banal Worf-Riker-Troi triangle - I know my choice. Have Data sleep with all the command crew with his mysterious genitals, hint at holodeck orgies (were the holo-programs limited to pre-1950 environments?), have the male crew get as aroused as the females when the 'space virus' gets them.

Perhaps a more erotically open Star Trek (with nothing more explicit than was on the show) would have prevented the reliance on rape scenarios faced by Troi, Crusher and Yar. Perversity is a prophylactic against banal sins.

I guess my perfect ST:NG would have featured a emotionally-adjusted crew that all got along and casual mentions of weekly pan-sexual holodeck orgies. Plus more Q, ethical dilemmas, sentient silicon life-forms, space hulks and derelict space stations, telepathy and crew from different species. Crank the transhumanism, drop the soap opera, full-speed ahead.

Some Star Trek origins:

The Enterprise was a Steampunk Blimp
Roddenberry's original idea was "about a multi-ethnic crew on an airship travelling the world, based on the 1961 film 'Master of the World'." That film was itself an adaption of two Jules Verne novels 'Robur the Conqueror' and 'Master of the World' about a steampunk-y dirigible "huge, battery-powered, multirotor gyrodyne" (according to Wikipedia), sort of a Captain Nemo is an airship.



Two other obvious movie sources

The 1961 Sci-Fi film 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' inspired by the 1958 passage of the nuclear-powered USS Nautilus over the North Pole, a so-called  "a voyage to the top of the world." This film inspired a TV series that is very TOS-ish, naval crews on a bridge staring at giant monsters through scopes and screens.



Another influence is classic 1956 'Forbidden Planet' with it naval bridge crew and away teams exploring strange planets full of kooks and their daughters



Westerns

Roddenberry's [url=leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Star_Trek/1_Original_Series/Star_Trek_Pitch.pdf]original pitch[/url] for the show describes it as a "'Wagon Train' concept" referring to the Western series that ran from 1957–65 about a wagon train going from Missouri to California. This series was based on the 1950 film 'Wagon Master' directed by John Ford and the whole genre of 'wagon' adventures from the 1930s onwards.



"English Naval Captains"

This first pitch describes the captain as like the fictional Brisith Naval officer Horatio Hornblower (himself a composite of real Napoleonic Wars era Royal Navy officers like Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson). Patrick Stewart said that Roddenberry gave him a stack of Hornblower novels to read when he took the role of TNG captain. The captain is further compared to "Drake, Cook, Bougainville and Scott."

The ship, originally called the SS Yorktown, is described as resembling "English warships at the turn of the century" in the Star Trek Writers/Directors Guide (1964). This guide then lists the possible adventures of such ships:

Writer's Guide (1967) wrote:"As you recall, in those days vessels of the major powers were assigned to sectors of various oceans, where they represented their government there. Out of contact with the Admiralty for long periods, the captains of such vessels had broad discretionary powers in regulating trade, bush wars, putting down slavery, assisting scientific investigations and geological surveys, even to becoming involved in relatively minor items like searching for a lost explorer or school mistress."

I've always wonder about the awkward of phrasing of a ship "putting down slavery" as you usually "put down" uprising and revolts. Considering the 'Writer's Guide' available on the net is listed as the "Third Revision" I wonder if something like "putting down slave-revolts" wasn't the originally wording. This may sound crazy but it is worth recalling this exchange from the Star Trek pilot 'The Cage' where Captain Pike ponders a change in job:

'The Cage' script wrote:Cpt. PIKE: You bet I'm tired. You bet. I'm tired of being responsible for two hundred and three lives. I'm tired of deciding which mission is too risky and which isn't, and who's going on the landing party and who doesn't, and who lives and who dies. Boy, I've had it, Phil.
'Bones' BOYCE: To the point of finally taking my advice, a rest leave?
PIKE: To the point of considering resigning.
BOYCE: And do what?
PIKE: Well, for one thing, go home. Nice little town with fifty miles of parkland around it. Remember I told you I had two horses, and we used to take some food and ride out all day.
BOYCE: Ah, that sounds exciting. Ride out with a picnic lunch every day.
PIKE: I said that's one place I might go. I might go into business on Regulus or on the Orion colony.
BOYCE: You, an Orion trader, dealing in green animal women, slaves?
PIKE: The point is this isn't the only life available. There's a whole galaxy of things to choose from.
BOYCE: Not for you. A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on, and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.
PIKE: Now you're beginning to talk like a doctor, bartender.

And here is Lord Horatio Nelson on the slave trade:

[quote="Dispatches and Letters vol 6 p.450. "]"I have ever been and shall die a firm friend to our colonial system. I was bred as you know in the good old school, and taught to appreciate the value of our West India possessions, and neither in the field nor in the senate, shall their interest be infringed while I have an arm to fight in their defence or a tongue to launch my voice against the damnable and cursed doctrine of [anti-slave trade advocate] Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies who would certainly cause the murder of all our friends and fellow subjects in the colonies."[/quote]

Let's just say that Roddenberry was an Anglophile and suffered from that common attraction/repulsion to slavery that haunts many pulp sci-fi and fantasy stories.

<- Robert M April  Christopher Pike James Kirk

Satans

The original second in command was... I'll let Roddenberry do the talking: "almost mysteriously female, in fact -- slim and dark in a Nile Valley way, age uncertain."  A strange combination of TNG's Guinan, Moby Dick's Fellah, David Bowie's wife Iman... and Riker as she was to be known only as "Number One".

<-- IMAN

Moby Dick's Fedallah was Captain Ahab's mysterious, ageless advisior described as "tall and swart, with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff [...] the companions of this figure were of that vivid, tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of the Manillas;—a race notorious for a certain diabolism of subtilty, and by some honest white mariners supposed to be the paid spies and secret confidential agents on the water of the devil, their lord, whose counting-room they suppose to be elsewhere"



"Mr. Spock" is first described a "half-Martian" with "reddish complexion", "semi-pointed ears" and having "a face so heavily-lidded and satanic you might expect him to have a forked tail."

<-- SPOCK

I think Roddenberry got off on these Satanic character and I see Q in this tradition.

MONGOLS (+Swamp Creatures and Fu Man Chu)
The Klingons were first simply described as "Oriental, hard-faced". When Greek-Canadian actor John Colicos was rushed from Toronto to L.A to play them he suggested "a kind of Genghis Khan visage, the "vaguely Asian, Tartar appearance" of a past legendary warrior."



A look that reminds me of Jack Palance's Attila (from 1954's Sign of the Pagan)

As the makeup procedures for the Romulans were too costly for that species to be featured on a regular basis (despite the Romulans having been meant as an ongoing villain), the Klingons – much cheaper to create – replaced them as the show's chief antagonists. (Star Trek: Aliens & Artifacts, p. 42)

Colicos also took inspiration from Fu Manchu as an influence on his look as Kor. He instructed the makeup department, "Spray my hair black, give me a kind of swamp creature green olivey mud reptilian make-up, and we'll borrow some stuff from Fu Manchu, and put a long moustache and eyebrows on me." ("The Sword of Colicos", Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Official Poster Magazine, No.

The makeup scheme was therefore actually a combination of a wide variety of sources, Colicos advising the makeup team, "Make me a little touch of Fu Man Chu, and a little touch of Slavic Russian, and a little touch of everything." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 28, No. 4/5, p. 59) He later remembered, "Within two hours, this thing emerged and that was it." (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 40)

The swarthy appearance of the Klingon faces was actually created with a dark brown cream base, which was applied to the actors' faces. (Star Trek: Aliens & Artifacts, p. 42) Rick Stratton, who was part of a small team of young makeup artists enlisted by Fred Phillips to work with him on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, uncertainly recollected, "I think the makeup was called 'Mexican #1 or #2.' That was the name of the original makeup foundation – they actually had kind of racist names at the time, like 'Negro #1' and 'Mexican #2' – which was the basis for the original Star Trek makeups." (Star Trek Magazine issue 172, p. 59)

ROMANS

The Romulans were Romans

[quote="Memory Alpha"]Paul Schneider modeled the Romulans on the ancient Romans, naming the species' homeworlds after the mythical founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. "It was a matter of developing a good Romanesque set of admirable antagonists that were worthy of Kirk," Schneider related. "I came up with the concept of the Romulans which was an extension of the Roman civilization to the point of space travel, and it turned out quite well." (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 34)

Gene Roddenberry, interested in ancient Rome himself, approved of the initial depiction of the Romulan species. "He loved Paul's having endowed the enemy-Romulans with the militaristic character of the ancient Romans," wrote John D.F. Black and Mary Black. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 11, p. 19)

COLD WAR COMMUNISTS
THE FOLLOWING IS MOSTLY FROM
http://www.stwww.com/papers/coldwar.html
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Depicting_Klingons

The Federation is a democratic/representative type of government similar in structure to the United Nations. Each member of the Federation ends a delegate to the Federation council and each has an active voice in the proceedings.

Roddenberry's original concept of the Romulans, however, was that they represented 1960s' Chinese Communists. The Chinese, like their science-fiction counter parts the Romulans, are seen as a secretive and xenophobic people, strange in their ways and non welcoming to outsiders.

The Klingon are Russian Communists. Gene Coon primarily modeled the Klingons, metaphorically, on contemporary Russians, making the standoff between the species and the Federation representative of that between the Russians and the Americans during the then-ongoing Cold War. (Star Trek: The Original Series 365, p. 139) This view of the Klingons had their sociology theoretically aimed at "the collective good" rather than "individuality," as pointed out by Kor actor John Colicos. (The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine, Vol. 15, pp. 16-17) The Klingon Empire was also a metaphor for Communist China and its allies in the Vietnam War, namely North Vietnam and North Korea. (These Are the Voyages: TOS Season One) David A. McIntee explained, "There is some suggestion that the Klingons represent a Cold Warrior's view of China in the 1960s – swarthy, brutally repressive." (Star Trek Magazine issue 153, p. 66)

The founder of the Klingon Empire's warrior society, Kahless, was responsible for bringing the Klingon culture together. He and Stalin can be seen as mirror images of each other,

The Sino-Soviet Alliance of 1949, which allied the Soviets and the Chinese in defense against Japan and any of her allies can be compared to the alliance between the Romulans and the Klingons. Both the Klingons and the Soviets extended military aid the other power (the Romulans and the Chinese) which was to be repaid in full, and both treaties were ended prematurely, the Sino-Soviet treaty with the death of Stalin on 1953 and the Klingon-Romulan treaty in a war. The first showing of the Klingon-Romulan military pact was in the episode The Enterprise Incident, which showed a Klingon ship manned by a Romulan crew.

This war between the Klingons and Romulans closely resembles the problems between the Soviets and the Chinese following the death of Stalin.

In the episode entitled "A Private Little War," in which the Klingons have given weapons technology to one faction on a planet and Starfleet upgrades the other faction to keep both sides at a status quo, where they had been for years. This type of cultural contamination relates to various places on the globe where the Soviets attempted to aid governments in their attempts to become Communist nations. Like Vietnam.

WWII

DC Fontana speculated. "And I think he was basing a lot of it on the kind of attitude of the Japanese in World War II, the Nazis in World War II, because Gene was a World War II veteran marine and he really took all this to heart. And as a result, he modeled them on the worst villains he knew." ("Errand of Mercy" Starfleet Access, TOS Season 1 Blu-ray) McIntee concurred, "The Klingons with their conquests and military structure echo the Axis forces of World War Two as much as the Communist powers in Vietnam." (Star Trek Magazine issue 153, p. 66)