Friday, May 6th, 2005
‘Star Trek’
In this commentary Strange New World: No ‘Star Trek’ Orson Scott Card claims ‘Star Trek’ was “poorly imagined, weakly written, badly acted” and questions “Why did it last so long?”. He goes on to speculate that most people weren’t reading good science fiction. When they saw ‘Star Trek’ it was their first initiation into the science fiction world. While there may be some truth to that I was in fact reading science fiction by all the good writers he mentions. The more likely explanation is ‘Star Trek’ was the first good visualization of science fiction on TV. I found it fascinating at the time. Sure one can go back and pick at the “cheesy special effects” but at the time they were not bad for TV. The problem with ‘Star Trek’ now is the poor writing and direction given it by the present handlers. There is still a place for ‘Star Trek’ but it’s going to need better writing and acting.