Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

[Beastro]

OTOH, some might say that Gene was a man just taking advantage of a system that took advantage of him.

It all depends on your perspective.

The issue is Gene did the same thing in other areas. The gulf between his Trek ideals of sexual equality and how he actually treated women is in line with his other views like this.

The best that can be said of him is that he knew what he was and seemed to loath those sides of himself. It brings to mind some of Hemingway's work that had a similar reviling of his own real life behaviour.

[McAvoy]

OTOH, some might say that Gene was a man just taking advantage of a system that took advantage of him.

It all depends on your perspective.

The issue is Gene did the same thing in other areas. The gulf between his Trek ideals of sexual equality and how he actually treated women is in line with his other views like this.

The best that can be said of him is that he knew what he was and seemed to loath those sides of himself. It brings to mind some of Hemingway's work that had a similar reviling of his own real life behaviour.

I have to wonder if his other projects or ideas shared anything in common with his personality or opposite of it.

Trek might have been just a case study of his underlying issues with himself. Specifically TNG of course. All of the anti-Gene ideas really comes about with TNG.

[Beastro]

Trek might have been just a case study of his underlying issues with himself. Specifically TNG of course. All of the anti-Gene ideas really comes about with TNG.

That makes sense. Early TNG was really when he had full control. TOS never was and others, especially Coon added to balance out his extremes.

Trek, like Star Wars were never one man works. As Chuck's revealed with the latter, it was many minds and many hearts than made them great and so often both have been tainted by a single person having too much control.

It's interesting that in those cases it's that way while in others, like Tolkien's work, it's the opposite. It could be different aspects between written and visual mediums.

[McAvoy]

Trek might have been just a case study of his underlying issues with himself. Specifically TNG of course. All of the anti-Gene ideas really comes about with TNG.

That makes sense. Early TNG was really when he had full control. TOS never was and others, especially Coon added to balance out his extremes.

Trek, like Star Wars were never one man works. As Chuck's revealed with the latter, it was many minds and many hearts than made them great and so often both have been tainted by a single person having too much control.

It's interesting that in those cases it's that way while in others, like Tolkien's work, it's the opposite. It could be different aspects between written and visual mediums.

Well we know that Gene during the TOS period did alot of stuff like trying to get main credit for scripts that he didn't write but he edited. Or added lyrics to the original opening, to other stuff. Then stuff like adding Majel into the series between the pilot or the series and then calling it a sexist thing or whatever.

The major things that happened with TOS wasn't really Gene himself. Some of the worse episodes was Gene himself writing the episodes. Gene Coon really doing some of the major heavy lifting.

Then you get TNG where it's his directives that made season 1 and 2.

It's a view of two Gene Roddenberrys really.

To me, he was just an idea guy that everyone else bounced off of and expanded on. He ain't no Tolkien or even George Lucas. Though those two have something in common.

[Madner Kami]

To me, he was just an idea guy that everyone else bounced off of and expanded on. He ain't no Tolkien or even George Lucas. Though those two have something in common.

I think that's the takeaway we should all get. Forget about Roddenberry, remember the idea of a utopia and the many people who made this utopia work, both in a meta-sense as well as in-universe meaning of the words.

[Deledrius]

To me, he was just an idea guy that everyone else bounced off of and expanded on. He ain't no Tolkien or even George Lucas. Though those two have something in common.

I think that's the takeaway we should all get. Forget about Roddenberry, remember the idea of a utopia and the many people who made this utopia work, both in a meta-sense as well as in-universe meaning of the words.

That's what I do. The central, recurring primary themes and tone are Star Trek.

"Roddenberry" is at best a reductive euphemism for those things, accurate or not.

[Frustration]

It's interesting that in those cases it's that way while in others, like Tolkien's work, it's the opposite. It could be different aspects between written and visual mediums.

That's a very polite speculation, but it seems more likely that some collaborations allow for personal flaws of specific individuals to be compensated for by others, while people whose flaws don't impact the work can work alone.

I would never suggest that Tolkien had no flaws. But those he had largely didn't turn up in the work. Roddenberry's flaws seem to manifest themselves in his works, and so working with others made it possible for the deficiencies to be made up for. His 'vision' still largely informs the things he made, but not in all ways. The limits of Tolkien's vision don't seem to have presented difficulties with making good stories, so others weren't needed.

[McAvoy]

It's interesting that in those cases it's that way while in others, like Tolkien's work, it's the opposite. It could be different aspects between written and visual mediums.

That's a very polite speculation, but it seems more likely that some collaborations allow for personal flaws of specific individuals to be compensated for by others, while people whose flaws don't impact the work can work alone.

I would never suggest that Tolkien had no flaws. But those he had largely didn't turn up in the work. Roddenberry's flaws seem to manifest themselves in his works, and so working with others made it possible for the deficiencies to be made up for. His 'vision' still largely informs the things he made, but not in all ways. The limits of Tolkien's vision don't seem to have presented difficulties with making good stories, so others weren't needed.

I would suggest that Tolkien's flaw that does show up in the books is his general lack of experience or knowledge of how to write a proper novel. That's me though. It's been 20 years since I read the trilogy. He was really all about world building.

Roddenberry just came up with the initial concepts. His own scripts that he actually wrote were not that good.

George Lucas is something in between Tolkien and Roddenberry IMO.

[Beastro]

It's interesting that in those cases it's that way while in others, like Tolkien's work, it's the opposite. It could be different aspects between written and visual mediums.

That's a very polite speculation, but it seems more likely that some collaborations allow for personal flaws of specific individuals to be compensated for by others, while people whose flaws don't impact the work can work alone.

I would never suggest that Tolkien had no flaws. But those he had largely didn't turn up in the work. Roddenberry's flaws seem to manifest themselves in his works, and so working with others made it possible for the deficiencies to be made up for. His 'vision' still largely informs the things he made, but not in all ways. The limits of Tolkien's vision don't seem to have presented difficulties with making good stories, so others weren't needed.

I would suggest that Tolkien's flaw that does show up in the books is his general lack of experience or knowledge of how to write a proper novel. That's me though. It's been 20 years since I read the trilogy. He was really all about world building.

Roddenberry just came up with the initial concepts. His own scripts that he actually wrote were not that good.

George Lucas is something in between Tolkien and Roddenberry IMO.

One has to keep in mind what kind of books Tolkien was trying to imitate in each of his works. LOTR is notorious for being rather dry and the characters lacking distinct personalities, but he was seeking to recreate a work similar to Beowulf which itself is notorious for those exact same things. (Even then, there is more personality there than people think. The only problem is it changes in places and fades as the book goes on. Take Aragorn in the beginning, he teases and tests the hobbits prejudices as Strider showing an open down to earthness that fades by the time they get to Weathertop.)

The Hobbit had more characterization to it and far more "liveliness" to the prose in keeping with its fairy-tale/child's story setting while the Similarillion's beginning (The rest is a patchwork from notes) is very much drawing from Genesis and has a more detached, "commanding" tone as the early Bible has.

TBH, the worst issue I've seen with LOTR rereading it was the major plot dumps Tolkien has Gandalf do at the beginning and after returning as the White because he simply can't fit them in elsewhere. The second plot dump is the worst because it takes everything away from Saruman. People complain he got cut out of the movies, but he got cut out of the novel as well being in the plot more directly, but not in the distant, "off screen" was as Sauron.

The thing is even Lucas needed others (Tolkien too, I'll get to that later). The first two movies worked because of that, but he came to dislike having less reach over the production of the second. Decline came with RotJ precisely because of him trying to grasp for more control which led to.... the prequels.

Even with Tolkien his work was a project involving three main people: his son, CS Lewis and himself. CS Lewis helped him through the 30s and 40s, especially with LOTR, but once the novel began to get wrapped up their collaboration (and friendship) began to die. It wasn't helped either by Tolkien falling into a slum of depression in '48 which ran against Lewis' more open personality. After that, Lewis' place as collaborator and sounding board switch to his son Christopher through the 50s and onward until he took over as keeper, editor (and second author though he refused the title; good amounts of stuff the published posthumously had many blank holes Christopher had to fill in with his own writing) of his father's work.

I would never suggest that Tolkien had no flaws. But those he had largely didn't turn up in the work. Roddenberry's flaws seem to manifest themselves in his works, and so working with others made it possible for the deficiencies to be made up for. His 'vision' still largely informs the things he made, but not in all ways. The limits of Tolkien's vision don't seem to have presented difficulties with making good stories, so others weren't needed.

The limits of his vision are what made his work so good. He established clear, defining rules for his world in it's essence and built everything up from it. You look into it and you realize he made his Legendarium upon philosophical and religious reflection which permeates everything in the stories. Everything he wrote about is a reflection on the concept of power: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_131

[Frustration]

I don't perceive any of those things as "limits of his vision". One point where I DO think Tolkien had a failure of vision was his later insistence that Middle Earth had to be our world and its history had to conform to realistic scientific knowledge, and tried to rewrite what would later become the Silmarillion to make it consistent with astronomy, geology, and similar fields of knowledge.

This, from the man who wrote about the power of adjectives to free the mind and fantasy, using "green sun" as an example. (There can't be green suns, certainly not naturally, because of the nature of the blackbody radiation curve - I suppose a sufficiently advanced society might find a way to color a sun's light green.)