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Hello there. I am arguing with somebody online and I want to grab that old quote from Mr. Behr where he says something about how the views of the liberal fringe who look up to Mr. Roddenberry are not always compatible with what the majority of fans fell in love with for ST? It's been a long time since I saw it, I barely remember, so I'd like my memory refreshed as well. I could borderline guarantee I got that wrong.

Thanks if you could provide it!

Couldn't find either, but found these gems:

Hey Armin, so happy to see that the years of therapy have worked and you can now acknowledge (albeit sheepishly and at arm’s length) Profit and Lace.
One day I hope to be healed enough to say the words Let He Who Is Without Sin... without wincing.

People are still even writing that we only presented ‘one side’ in “Past Tense” and that we should have presented ‘both sides’ and not just the ‘liberal’ point of view - and I’m still trying to think what that means. In other words, we should have showed the positive aspects of putting the homeless into concentration camps? And I do admit we probably failed in that - we really did not show the many, many wonderful aspects of life without money and living in over-crowded camps.

I'll be more specific. It is something about how Star Trek was never as liberal as the fans think it was, IIRC?

Captain Crimson wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:04 am I'll be more specific. It is something about how Star Trek was never as liberal as the fans think it was, IIRC?

I mean it's not liberal, it's socialist.

True enough, but I had tried to google the quote, and couldn't find it.

I'd say the major divide in Trek isn't liberal/socialist/conservative outlooks and more split between the Gene Roddenberry's spirit of "Mankind pulled itself together, evolved into perfection and can now preen about without the flaws I personally hate in human nature" and Gene Coon's spirit of "Mankind has exorcised a lot of its demons, but is still very much flawed, yet eager to seek to be better than what it'll always be as it makes mistakes along the way".

In that, one can see the divide throughout Trek up until Enterprise and Nemesis.

TMP, early TNG, Voyager and Enterprise were of the Roddenberry mold while The Wrath of Khan, the follow on movies (Even Final Frontier in spirit), later TNG and DS9 were of the Coon mold.

The issue is Roddenberry's spirit has too much wish fulfillment in it and is poison to drama. Mankind had to be perfect to him just as Janeway and Archer later were right even when they were clearly, maddeningly in the wrong.

Coon's accepted Mankind's humanity and allowed for the flaws to generate interesting conflict and drama, both against antagonists and among the protagonists. That resulted in more nuance in the movies as well as TNG later on and culminated in DS9. DS9 I find shared more of the sentiment of TOS in places like A Taste of Armageddon where Kirk openly acknowledges himself as still a barbarian, but it's better to be one than what the aliens he's run into have reduced themselves to.

I think the worst thing about Trek is assuming it is Roddenberry's baby as everyone sees it and ignoring the influence of Coon and everyone else in laying the groundwork.

I wasn't even focusing on the sociopolitical divide, just looking for that old quote.

I think a humanity without flaw, is no longer part of the human race.

Captain Crimson wrote: ↑Fri Apr 30, 2021 1:31 am I wasn't even focusing on the sociopolitical divide, just looking for that old quote.

I know, but why let that get in the way of continuing a good digression!?

Thebestoftherest wrote: ↑Fri Apr 30, 2021 1:16 pm I think a humanity without flaw, is no longer part of the human race.

Which then gets into what Roddenberry was exactly up to. I think he began to stray away from actually making a proper TV show and was getting into this weird "I hate the world is, so I'll comfort myself creating a fictional one that works the way I feel it should" territory.

I know we all do that creating fiction to some extent, but by TNG he'd gone a little too.

Beastro wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 10:40 pmI think the worst thing about Trek is assuming it is Roddenberry's baby as everyone sees it and ignoring the influence of Coon and everyone else in laying the groundwork.

Trek doesn't have a divisive fanbase as far as I can tell. It's much more Abrahamic by this point, and is already at heart a modernist show attempting to show a good faith post-religious take on society.

The classic Trek fans don't exhibit any kind of iron grip on the series as far as I've seen. It's like comparing The Hobbit to Lord of the Rings, where the former is specifically less grand and epic.