Both doctors from the bastard children of Star Trek ruled. Phlox and the Doctor saved those shows for me. They were entertaining and brought dimension to their characters.
It seemed, to me anyway, that many of the characters of Voyager and Enterprise were flat. Reed was such a cool character but so one-dimensional even when they brought in the whole connection with Section 31. Mayweather was…well…did he even have any lines? Harry Kim, great in ‘Timeless’ but just a whiny brat the rest of the time. I mean in 7 seasons did anyone change as much as any character from one season of BSG? For both Voyager and Enterprise, character development was to be desired. Wouldn’t it have been interesting if the Marquis had actually taken over Voyager for a season/forever? What if the Enterprise crew went to a planet and unleashed some nasty bug from Earth and wiped out the populace? No Prime Directive or Federation? Where be the law?
I totally agree, Talos. It seems like the humanization of the “other”–whether it be a Vulcan (Spock, T’Pol), Borg (7 o’ 9), or non-organic (Data, the Doctor) is the most significant character development that takes place in Trek. Yes, that’s probably overstating it, because if it were that bad, would I love it so much? But it does feel formulaic, especially when you look at it in terms of what happens when the “other” becomes too human: we get Search for Spock (which, granted sets up the priceless neo-Spock of Voyage Home), we get Seven taking over for the Doctor as student of humanity; we get B4.
I guess that was one of the things I found most disappointing about Nemesis. What to do to bring the (movie) franchise back to its former glory in true even-numbered style? Pull a Wrath of Khan-like act of self-sacrifice by the “other” who is really no longer “other” and reset to default with a (not-really) new character.
Nemesis just threw gas on an already burning house. The TNG films for me are a cookie-cut script. The names and events change but the story is the same.
If they wanted to go in an innovative direction, the Scimitar should have got to Earth and destroyed it about 15 minutes into the film. Think how much more powerful Picard’s dilemma would be if his clone destroyed Earth. You could throw in some kinda commentary on the toll that the Dominion War, the Romulan Senate downfall, and the destruction of Earth would have on the Star Trek universe from the perspective of the crew. It would have resonated with a culture that just witness the destruction of the Twin Towers, the paranoia, and war on terror.
But I’m monday morning quarterbacking. Obviously that’s what RDM and David Eick did with BSG.
What’s interesting to me, in terms of BSG, revisting all of the STs after my obsessive watching of BSG, is how one dimensional all of the ST characters really were. I loved them at the time, particulary, as I’ve stated ad nauseum, on Voyager, but then Ron Moore showed me the way, and it’s just not working at the same level. BSG has some serious tension, real, in your face, survival on a daily basis, kind of tension, and that just doesn’t exist in the ST universe. They’re all just trying “to better themselves,” and discover for the sake of discovery. Nothing wrong with that, and I love it, but the best ST movies do seem to be the ones where the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. Everyone comes to life then.
Having said that, I’ll make an Enterprise exception - Season 3, when Captain Bakula starts falling apart, it just gets bad…even the set designs and the makeup on the Andorean start to show signs of wear and tear and overuse…though, I will forever love the Captain’s battle with the Andorean where he gets out of killing him by cutting off one of his tentacles…
BSG is real military - Starfleet is like a New Age echo of that. Ok, I’ll stop with the comparisons, but suffice it to say that the foundational uncertainty of BSG makes for better drama.
I think the most important reason why nothing seemed to change on Voyager is that they didn’t commit themselves to long story arcs like in DS9. In a lot of respects, Voyager was like TOS: the planet of the week, the species of the week, the spatial anomaly of the week, etc. - from a story writing perspective, that constituted a step backwards. TNG brought us A- and B- storylines, DS9 introduced long story arcs into Star Trek and Voyager just went back to the TOS formula, which worked fine in the 60s but bored the hell out of people in 2000. They had a real chance to do something cool with “Year of Hell,” but they wasted it.
I don’t want to split hairs over this, but I think what you’re describing is less a humanization of the “other” (nicely put, by the way, I immediately thought of Caliban in The Tempest as the Ur-Alien:)), it’s more a very thorough investigation into what it means to be an individual, all the characters representing the “other” have issues with developing from a hive background into an individual being… Data, on the other hand, has no background at all, other than three or four centuries of computer technology, which in a way also constitutes a kind of hive - or does the Enterprise computer have individuality? And the Vulcans, at least to me, seem to be a far more collective society than humankind, and their cultural practices seem rather in-human (pardon the pun), but there’s not a single Vulcan we’ve met who has successfully rebelled against the indoctrination they receive as children (Sybok tried, but eventually failed). I mean, if the Vulcans really were as educated and sophisticated as they are shown to us, they would respect the right of the individual to CHOOSE whether he/she wants to deny his/her emotions or not, and they wouldn’t force them to. But they’re coercing their will and their rules and their belief system on children and the children have to conform to those rules. That’s a pretty authoritarian society to me, right there.
Well, just as obviously, there’s got to be a whole lot more about BSG, because the show is successful not only in the one culture you’re describing, but internationally. Moreover, one could as well argue that BSG’s symbolism of destruction and apocalypse do not have any connection to our present whatsoever (and that we or you just have constructed this connection because that’s the way you perceive the show), but that it rather plugs into our collective subconscious and into the perennial concepts of total destruction that mankind has been carrying around with itself for millennia, e.g. Ragnarök, Noah’s Arc, Götterdämmerung, etc.
I would ascribe the (what’s the word? monodimensionality? unidimensionality?) of the characters to Gene Roddenberry’s influence. In his vision, there was no friction or tension between people and everybody would get along just fine. And he fought for this up until his death in 91?/92? and was shoved out of the way more and more during the production of TNG, because the writers had other ideas about where to take the show. And of course, when you don’t have trouble or tensions, there’s no need for the characters to develop, they can just stay the way they are. That’s why DS9 had some of the deepest characters and most profound character changes in all of Star Trek (I’m thinking of Nog here, for example), because it was a space station, they couldn’t just turn on the warp drive and escape from whatever troubled planet they had just visited, no they had to stay right where they were, make the station work and deal with their lives and the situations they were in without a quick way out.
I concur, great analysis, however, I do NOT miss grad school. Every day I wake up and say to myself, no tests, no orals, no essays, no data inputs, no econometrics, blah blah blah, and so it is a good day.
As you’ve both completed grad school already, keep your fingers crossed for me, my master’s exams are in March (written exams) and April through June (oral exams) and I’m studying like hell now. The thesis is already finished and I got an A for it, so that’s one less thing to worry about.
I agree. I didn’t mean to sound like a wave-flagging, we are the center of the universe, overweight, red-white-and-blue blooded American. I perceive the show as using universal archetypes that penetrate every human’s lives, past, present and future.
that’s the beauty of universal archetypes. you can make them fit pretty much any circumstance you find yourself in. where you see in BSG a metaphor for 9/11, a Chinese regular Joe could see it as a metaphor for his village being torn down to make way for a gigantic dam or something…
Do you really, Hybrid Master? Is it really a daily relief to you to realize you’re not in school anymore? The reason I ask is this: at least once a week I dream that I’m still in school and that I’ve enrolled in a class–and it’s always the same class with the same professor–and I’ve very uncharacteristically done none of the reading and none of the work. And now it’s finals, and I wake up in a panic until I realize it’s been many years since I graduated. I dream this so often and in such detail that I’m not sure anymore if it’s based on a real class or not. So, am I nuts?
“I was the one who pushed to get Wesley out of the Academy and send him off with the Traveler. I felt that there was a built-in contradiction in a character that we’d said was like Mozart in his appreciation of higher mathematics and physics, yet was just on the same career path as any Starfleet cadet. I didn’t get it – if Wes is truly special and gifted, what the hell is he doing at the Helm? It seemed like he was only going to the Academy to live up to the memory of his father and the expectations of Picard, not because it was his best destiny. “Journey’s End” also seemed like an opportunity to see someone walk away from Starfleet with their head held high and just say “It’s cool, but not for me.” I was tired of everyone in the 24th century saying, “All I want to do is wear the uniform and serve on a starship.” Hey, it’s cool, but it’s not for everyone. So I pushed to have Wes realize his destiny was elsewhere and have him walk away.”
