Star Trek, Romance Novels and Fringe...
Dec. 3rd, 2011 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Watching Trek Universe - there's an interesting bit with George Lucas.
"Star Trek and Star Wars are not reality shows, they are imagination shows. The story is really the thing that makes it work. In the beginning that's all there was with Star Trek, story, and that's what made it compelling."
Budget constraints limited the scale and focused story.
"What I was doing was more 'space opera' than science fiction. Star Trek was more intellectual mystery wasn't really action oriented. Star Wars was more action oriented."
Roddenberry: "I enjoyed Star Wars. It was young Arthur growing up and killing the big empire...it's fun. You should be able to have fun. Not everything needs to be about a philosophy."
Lucas: "Star Wars was basically about the son redeeming the father - that was the ultimate point of it."
Interesting. Thinking about it. As a child and teen, I preferred Star Wars. As an adult? I prefer Star Trek - which has more to it, has more to say. More depth.
But both serve their purpose. In some ways Star Wars played on emotion more, while Trek played with the intellect.
And this bit regarding Star Trek Next Generation (which Roddenberry had complete control over)...Picard, Riker, and Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher) - were the three versions of Gene Roddenberry.
Roddenberry: "You think I make these for you? No, I make them for me."
It was at the end of the fourth season that Roddenberry stopped having control, because his health began failing. He died in 1981, while Star Trek Next Generation was still on the air. The question was what would Star Trek look like without Gene?
Rick Berman entered the picture. Berman took Gene's views seriously and wouldn't let the other writers play outside the bounds of Gene's vision for Star Trek. They'd fight him on it. Ron Moore was one of them. Berman fought to stay true to what Roddenberry wanted.
The son realizes that Star Trek was really about the search for knowledge.
Gene Roddenberry - Too many people think science fiction is about aliens and technology and blinking gadgets and they forget the key - which is science fiction is in reality about humanity. It's the last place we can truly philosophize. (Which explains in a nutshell, why science fiction remains my favorite of all the genres, mystery, fantasy, horror, romance, but of them all - science fiction does philosophy and intellectual thought the best.)
I say I'm not a Trekkie - because never been to a fan convention, never collected anything, never wrote or read fanfic. But I did watch almost all the episodes of all the seasons of the series, up to and including the first season of Enterprise. Saw all the films (even the bad ones). My parents watched almost all of them, as did my brother. So...you be the judge.
2. Still on this romance novel binge, and beginning to notice a couple of trends emerging. Because my brain is a pattern making machine that can't stop, that's why.
In the five that I've read...the guy manipulates the gal into either marrying him or committing to him, while she resists fearful she'll be giving up who she is, her independence, her job. She trades her independence for great sex and financial security.
It's interesting, because these are all contemporary romances. But it is also interesting if you look at what is happening in the world, and in the US...
In NY 42% of the population is single women between 24-50. There are more single women in the US than married or men. Women are struggling to find a mate or significant other more so now than twenty years ago, in part because women no longer need the financial security or marriage to get sex - and women are not willing to play the traditional role - give up that career or that independence. But we feel lonely, like something is lacking...or missing. Can you have it all? Do you have to give up a part of yourself? Can you be a feminist and get married, be a wife, be a mother? It's not clear-cut. The romance novelist much like other genre novelists is exploring that territory and her own fantasies and compulsions regarding it. She's also struggling against a society that is telling her who she has to be. I remember my mother screaming at Phil Donahue on the TV set for putting down housewives and mothers - my mother had given up her career to be a mother and housewife. She was there when I got home. She got up every morning, before my father, to get breakfast and wake us up. She supported him and us. Went to every game. Every PTA meeting or parent teacher conference, etc. No scheduling conflicts. I admire her for it, but it was not a life I wanted, and one my brother struggled to not inflict on his wife, because my mother got depressed at times and felt she'd given up a part of herself to do it.
The romance novels all without exception reflect this fear, this frustration, this anger at the man for doing it to them. He's goregous. A hunk. The sex is great. But is it worth it? Is he? The novelists don't appear to know the answer. Each book ends with sex...but doesn't answer the question.
The other trend emerging? Cheap e-books aren't exactly the best written. Unfortunately. ;-) Still haven't read one that I feel comfortable rec'ing or writing a review of. The current one that I'm reading "Don't Make Me Make You Browies" has been a bit of a disappointment. The heroine is doing nothing but making him brownies.
Talk about false advertising. Also the reviews said the sex was funny and barely there? Not true. Very much there and not funny at all.
3. Started watching S3 of Fringe and beginning to understand the fan love of this incredibly inventive and imaginative series. It thinks outside the box, examines things others haven't and actually does a parallel universe. Olivia journies to both universes. The show is split into two - we follow Olivia in the RedVerse with her Fringe team - Lincoln, Charlie, Broyles and Mr. Secretary (Walternate) and Olivia in the BlueVerse with Peter, Walter Bishop, Astrid, and Broyles. Plus we get great guest stars, Butters from The Wire, and Sebastian Roche. This show is worth watching if only for this season. You can skip S1, watch the last five episodes of S2, and follow it well enough. First three to four episodes are amongst the best of the series to date.
"Star Trek and Star Wars are not reality shows, they are imagination shows. The story is really the thing that makes it work. In the beginning that's all there was with Star Trek, story, and that's what made it compelling."
Budget constraints limited the scale and focused story.
"What I was doing was more 'space opera' than science fiction. Star Trek was more intellectual mystery wasn't really action oriented. Star Wars was more action oriented."
Roddenberry: "I enjoyed Star Wars. It was young Arthur growing up and killing the big empire...it's fun. You should be able to have fun. Not everything needs to be about a philosophy."
Lucas: "Star Wars was basically about the son redeeming the father - that was the ultimate point of it."
Interesting. Thinking about it. As a child and teen, I preferred Star Wars. As an adult? I prefer Star Trek - which has more to it, has more to say. More depth.
But both serve their purpose. In some ways Star Wars played on emotion more, while Trek played with the intellect.
And this bit regarding Star Trek Next Generation (which Roddenberry had complete control over)...Picard, Riker, and Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher) - were the three versions of Gene Roddenberry.
Roddenberry: "You think I make these for you? No, I make them for me."
It was at the end of the fourth season that Roddenberry stopped having control, because his health began failing. He died in 1981, while Star Trek Next Generation was still on the air. The question was what would Star Trek look like without Gene?
Rick Berman entered the picture. Berman took Gene's views seriously and wouldn't let the other writers play outside the bounds of Gene's vision for Star Trek. They'd fight him on it. Ron Moore was one of them. Berman fought to stay true to what Roddenberry wanted.
The son realizes that Star Trek was really about the search for knowledge.
Gene Roddenberry - Too many people think science fiction is about aliens and technology and blinking gadgets and they forget the key - which is science fiction is in reality about humanity. It's the last place we can truly philosophize. (Which explains in a nutshell, why science fiction remains my favorite of all the genres, mystery, fantasy, horror, romance, but of them all - science fiction does philosophy and intellectual thought the best.)
I say I'm not a Trekkie - because never been to a fan convention, never collected anything, never wrote or read fanfic. But I did watch almost all the episodes of all the seasons of the series, up to and including the first season of Enterprise. Saw all the films (even the bad ones). My parents watched almost all of them, as did my brother. So...you be the judge.
2. Still on this romance novel binge, and beginning to notice a couple of trends emerging. Because my brain is a pattern making machine that can't stop, that's why.
In the five that I've read...the guy manipulates the gal into either marrying him or committing to him, while she resists fearful she'll be giving up who she is, her independence, her job. She trades her independence for great sex and financial security.
It's interesting, because these are all contemporary romances. But it is also interesting if you look at what is happening in the world, and in the US...
In NY 42% of the population is single women between 24-50. There are more single women in the US than married or men. Women are struggling to find a mate or significant other more so now than twenty years ago, in part because women no longer need the financial security or marriage to get sex - and women are not willing to play the traditional role - give up that career or that independence. But we feel lonely, like something is lacking...or missing. Can you have it all? Do you have to give up a part of yourself? Can you be a feminist and get married, be a wife, be a mother? It's not clear-cut. The romance novelist much like other genre novelists is exploring that territory and her own fantasies and compulsions regarding it. She's also struggling against a society that is telling her who she has to be. I remember my mother screaming at Phil Donahue on the TV set for putting down housewives and mothers - my mother had given up her career to be a mother and housewife. She was there when I got home. She got up every morning, before my father, to get breakfast and wake us up. She supported him and us. Went to every game. Every PTA meeting or parent teacher conference, etc. No scheduling conflicts. I admire her for it, but it was not a life I wanted, and one my brother struggled to not inflict on his wife, because my mother got depressed at times and felt she'd given up a part of herself to do it.
The romance novels all without exception reflect this fear, this frustration, this anger at the man for doing it to them. He's goregous. A hunk. The sex is great. But is it worth it? Is he? The novelists don't appear to know the answer. Each book ends with sex...but doesn't answer the question.
The other trend emerging? Cheap e-books aren't exactly the best written. Unfortunately. ;-) Still haven't read one that I feel comfortable rec'ing or writing a review of. The current one that I'm reading "Don't Make Me Make You Browies" has been a bit of a disappointment. The heroine is doing nothing but making him brownies.
Talk about false advertising. Also the reviews said the sex was funny and barely there? Not true. Very much there and not funny at all.
3. Started watching S3 of Fringe and beginning to understand the fan love of this incredibly inventive and imaginative series. It thinks outside the box, examines things others haven't and actually does a parallel universe. Olivia journies to both universes. The show is split into two - we follow Olivia in the RedVerse with her Fringe team - Lincoln, Charlie, Broyles and Mr. Secretary (Walternate) and Olivia in the BlueVerse with Peter, Walter Bishop, Astrid, and Broyles. Plus we get great guest stars, Butters from The Wire, and Sebastian Roche. This show is worth watching if only for this season. You can skip S1, watch the last five episodes of S2, and follow it well enough. First three to four episodes are amongst the best of the series to date.
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Date: 2011-12-04 04:32 am (UTC)and I was deeply sad when it was finally cancelled. I never became a Trekkie, but my big sister definitely was one... and I was very sympathetic to her feelings on the subject (we both loved Leonard Nemoy).
And I saw Star Wars when it was first run in a huge theater in Denver (I was 27 years old and married at the time, luckily my ex liked Sci-fi movies). I loved the movie, but not as big of a fan as I was about Star Trek. I wanted to live on board the Enterprise and get Mr. Spock to like me (not romantically... well maybe a little... LOL). I didn't for a second want to live on board the Millennium Falcon (living w/a Wookie was not appealing to me!).
Of course TV shows could always explore themes more deeply than movies.... And besides, I think Roddenberry was actually a deeper thinking than Lucas.
I'm enjoying your thoughts about Romance novels, and it is possible that the reason I've always preferred Regency Romances is because men being chauvinistic and patronizing annoy me less when it is set 300 years ago (in my own time I find it really annoying). Basically I see romance as fantasy, how sad is that?
*sigh*
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Date: 2011-12-04 03:15 pm (UTC)Not really. I think it is for most women or most of us. It is for me. In most romances...it ends happily, the relationship is perfect, life is rosy. I remember my Aunt, who is dead now, used to read the end of books - specifically romance novels before she'd buy them, because if they didn't end the way she wanted, there was no point.
And it's really no different than how many people view westerns, adventure fiction, science fiction space operas (STar Wars)...all
fantasies too.
The one I just finished "Don't Make Me Make You Brownies" - ends with the guy confessing about how he loved her before he even met her from her sisters stories about her, that he knew when he met her, that after he (tricked her into marrying him) - he loved her even more...and he's willing to do whatever she wants just to be with her. He'll move his daughter to California, they can stay in Texas...and of course his five year old daughter loves her and is not a pest at all. It's a complete fantasy - at different points, I thought...okay that so would not happen in reality and if it did, it would end differently.
Also the sex? Always great. But come on - she's five-foot six, and he has a giant dick? It had to hurt. LOL!
But...the heroine's dilemma throughout the novel is her fear of this manly-man that she's turned on by. She wants what he offers, but she is terrified of losing who she is. "Don't turn me into a Bunco playing, scrap-book making Stepford Wife!" She screams at him at one point. Because that is her fear. There's a subplot about his ex-wife, who is bi-polar schizophrenic - and kept accusing him of turning her into just that...who when she's forced to be on her meds, she loses herself, and at the end is off to France to dry herbal treatments that may be less severe. Both tales remind me a little of Sylvia Plath's the Bell Jar and the short story The Yellow Wallpaper...about the female fear of being driven crazy of losing her mind...as the dull housewife of an endless suburban landscape. Revolutionary Road also delved into that. And Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott (who never married) wrote about the same fantasies and fears. Is there a way, they all seem to be asking, of marrying the man of our dreams without giving up everything we love most about ourselves? How much will we have change to meet their needs?
Of course TV shows could always explore themes more deeply than movies.... And besides, I think Roddenberry was actually a deeper thinking than Lucas.
From the documentary...I think Lucas and Roddenberry would both agree with you. Lucas shrugged off most of Roddenberry Jr's questions. Stating that he wasn't trying to do Star Trek - Trek did influence him, but he was mainly interested in doing a space opera.
I saw Star Trek in reruns and first associated it with scary monsters (those were the episodes I ran into (S3 was creature of the week) and I was about 7 at the time..so...). So I hated it. (But I was also only 7 or 8 years of age - it was too scary for me. Yet no where near as bad as Space 1999). It was re-run heavily in the 1970s and 80s. I think by the end of 1985-1986, I'd seen the original series about five times.
Star Wars - as a child - was a revelation. But I saw it at the age of 9 or 10. Prior to Star Wars - I thought all science fiction stories were horror tales with monsters. Small wonder - my exposure up to that point was: Star Trek (Monsters of the Week in third season), Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Various 1950s and 1960s sci fi horror films, Doctor Who (also creature of the week), Space 1999 (which had a huge Spider monster one week and plant monsters the next). Star Wars...was fun - perfect for a 9 or 10 year old. I have no idea how I would have related to it - if I'd been older.
And we were amongst the first kids on our block to see it. Star Wars really was a film made for kids. While Star Trek was made for adults.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-04 11:19 pm (UTC)BTW you tempt me to try Fringe (starting, as you say, toward the end of season 2).
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Date: 2011-12-04 04:42 am (UTC)