In a recent editorial in the L.A. Times, Card is found dancing on the grave of Star Trek. He writes (EXCERPTS):
So they’ve gone and killed "Star Trek." And it’s about time.
The original "Star Trek," created by Gene Roddenberry, was, with a few exceptions, bad in every way that a science fiction television show could be bad.
This was in the days before series characters were allowed to grow and change, before episodic television was allowed to have a through line. So it didn’t matter which episode you might be watching, from which year — the characters were exactly the same.
As science fiction, the series was trapped in the 1930s — a throwback to spaceship adventure stories with little regard for science or deeper ideas. It was sci-fi as seen by Hollywood: all spectacle, no substance.
Which was a shame, because science fiction writing was incredibly fertile at the time, with writers like Harlan Ellison and Ursula LeGuin, Robert Silverberg and Larry Niven, Brian W. Aldiss and Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke creating so many different kinds of excellent science fiction that no one reader could keep track of it all.
Little of this seeped into the original "Star Trek." The later spinoffs were much better performed, but the content continued to be stuck in Roddenberry’s rut. So why did the Trekkies throw themselves into this poorly imagined, weakly written, badly acted television series with such commitment and dedication? Why did it last so long?
Here’s what I think: Most people weren’t reading all that brilliant science fiction. Most people weren’t reading at all. So when they saw "Star Trek," primitive as it was, it was their first glimpse of science fiction. It was grade school for those who had let the whole science fiction revolution pass them by.
Now we finally have first-rate science fiction film and television that are every bit as good as anything going on in print.
Charlie Kaufman created the two finest science fiction films of all time so far: "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof have created "Lost," the finest television science fiction series of all time … so far.
Through-line series like Joss Whedon’s "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Alfred Gough’s and Miles Millar’s "Smallville" have raised our expectations of what episodic sci-fi and fantasy ought to be. Whedon’s "Firefly" showed us that even 1930s sci-fi can be well acted and tell a compelling long-term story.
Screen sci-fi has finally caught up with written science fiction. We’re in college now. High school is over. There’s just no need for "Star Trek" anymore.
In dismissing Star Trek in this fashion, Card is wrong.
First, it is out of place to fault a series for not having changing characters if "[t]his was in the days before series characters were allowed to grow and change."
One can fault more recent Star Trek series if they follow this rule too closely since it no longer applies on television–and so I do fault it–but much of TV is still significantly encumbered by this rule. There is still, even today, not enough room for character development on most shows, though mercifully there is more room than when TOS was on the air.
His remark
As science fiction, the series was trapped in the 1930s — a throwback to spaceship adventure stories with little regard for science or deeper ideas.
is simple chronological snobbery.
It doens’t matter that Star Trek resembled the print sci-fi of 30 years earlier. You couldn’t get away with cutting-edge contemporary sci-fi on television in 1967. No network was going to plunk down the change to do a serious episodic sci-fi series. They insisted on imposing contemporary television standards on the series they produced. Just say the word "Starlost" around Harlan Ellison and see the reaction you get. You therefore can’t hold a 1960s TV series up to standards that it was impossible for such a series to meet at time.
Further, what’s with being so utterly dismissive of 1930s sci-fi? It’s true that there was a mountainous load of junk published in the ’30s, but there was also good stuff being done. H. P. Lovecraft did his best work in the ’30s.
The factors that Card mentions about ’30s sci-fi–that the stories were set on space-ships, that they had little regard for science or "deeper ideas" (presumably moral/social ones)–may be true, but how much of an intrinsic aesthetic problem is this?
Space-ships take people to new places, but that increases story potential rather than decreasing it. I don’t see anything intrinsically inaesthetic about basing a story cycle on a ship that takes the characters new places. Homer seems to have gotten rather a lot of mileage out of that concept (pun intended). He used it for, oh, one of the most prestigious works of literature of all time.
As to having little regard for science, this can have to meanings: (1) The show doesn’t deliberately develop a focus on matters of known science, or (2) it violates what seem to be rules established by known science.
If Card means (1) then he is simply expressing a preference for "hard" science fiction that focuses on issues of whether the specific gravity or average wind velocity of a particular planet creates the potential for a specific plot situation. Nothing about general human aesthetics requires a focus of science-oriented stories (rather than plot- or character- or atmosphere-oriented stories). Therefore, it would be parochial at best to mandate a preference for stories of this type.
If Card means (2) then a different problem is created. It’s true that Star Trek violates a bunch of scientific laws, but so what? A very large amount of sci-fi (and other forms of speculative fiction) does this, and as long as it’s in the service of the story, it’s not a problem. It only becomes a problem when it starts to infringe on the audience’s suspension of disbelief.
The Lord of the Rings is the greatest piece of literature the 20th century produced, but it is not a work of hard SF.
One may have a personal preference for hard sci-fi where no or few laws get broken, but that’s a personal aesthetic and not an objective judgement about literature. To apply that ethic thorouhly would push one back into realistic fiction and out of speculative fiction altogether.
Further, among of the primordial creations of the human race was mythology and folklore, in which natural law is broken right and left. Unless you want to say that these are intrinsically unworthy enterprises–forming as they do the primordial ground of and constant inspiration for the corpus of human literature–then you’re going to have to allow the existence of varying degrees of departure from science as permissible in fiction.
The selection of any particular degree of departure (e.g., alternate history, hard SF, science fantasy, pure fantasy) is simply a matter of personal taste.
As to the original Star Trek not having an interest in "deeper issues," this is just false. Card apparently hasn’t watched Star Trek in so long that he’s forgotten all the episodes.
Not every episode may have had a deep issue at its core, but the series regularly explored concepts like the existence and nature of God, the necessity of human freedom, war and peace, racial discrimination, and numerous others. I might not like all of the answers Roddenberry and his colleagues proposed for these questions, but you can’t say that they weren’t interested in them.
The most preposterous claim Card makes, though, is right at the end. Having griped about the failings of The Original Series exclusively in his article, he then lumps all the subsequent series in with it as if they all were of similar quality. (They ain’t.) Having tarred all incarnations of Star Trek with the same brush, he then says:
Screen sci-fi has finally caught up with written science fiction. We’re in college now. High school is over. There’s just no need for "Star Trek" anymore.
Right.
This is why there are no Star Trek fans anymore. They have all become devotees of Being John Malkovitch and Eternal Sunshine. Instead of calling themselves "Trekkers" they’re now calling themselves "John Malkovitches" and holding conventions with "This Space For Rent" written on their foreheads and filling the Internet with countless fanfic stories about Eternal Sunshine.
Not!
Now don’t get me wrong. I agree with Philip J. Fry’s assessment of the original Star Trek: "Made 78 episodes–about a third of them good." There was a lot of stupid, stupid stuff in those shows, and a number of episodes are simply painful to watch.
But to be as dismissive of the whole corpus of Star Trek as Card is reveals a writer who, now that he has graduated from "high school" is in the process of proving how mature he is in "college" and so takes himself waaaay too seriously and has a restricted scope of aesthetic appreciation. He’s afraid to let himself enjoy sophomoric things anymore lest it take away from the gravitas he wants himself to have as a college man.
But y’know what? After college you start having kids. And then you have the fun of reading them bedtime stories and watching cartoons with them. And you realize: "Y’know, these are better than I thought." And you start to enjoy "childish" things all over again.
Because you no longer have to prove how grown up you are.
Orson Scott Card ought to know this because, in reality, he is an adult with several children of his own, but then he’s also a sci-fi author and they don’t get no respect from literary types, so it’s understandable if he wants to prove how "serious" a field sci-fi can be.
But he goes too far in this case.
For all its numerous flaws, Star Trek in its various incarnations really spoke to folks. It wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did without that happening. I find it as annoying as anybody else when I’m watching a Star Trek episode and hit something that painfully takes me out of the story because it’s so implausible. But the idea that Star Trek as a whole is worthless is just wrong. Many episodes of Next Gen and DS9 and even the original series were worthwhile entertainment, however unscientific or "unconcerned" with deeper issues they were.
Orson, lemme know when you’re out of "college" and aren’t trying to prove yourself anymore.
I’ve got some cartoon and childrens’ book recommendations that might come in handy.
My Dad always called it Star Dreck. I have a hard time disagreeing with that sentiment.
ZING! Dead on Jimmy! Card’s juvenile comment about high school and college reveals how totally bankrupt his thesis is.
Reminds me of a conversation I recently had in another forum, where the subject of Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles came up. Someone said, “I loved the Prydain Chronicles when I was in grade school. Then in high school I graduated to Stephen Lawhead.”
My response: “Yes, I too went from reading Alexander in grade school to Lawhead in high school. Now that I’m over 35, I find that I prefer Alexander again.”
I also love Pixar!
Oh, and Star Trek.
I’ve never been a Star Trek viewer (not out of any antipathy, though, just never got around to it), but I have to say I agree with your assessment.
One thing: The Odyssey. Only 4 of the 24 books are the “sailing around & having adventures” stuff, and they are told as a flashback at a dinner party. In fact, the more serial style – “first they went here, and this happened; then they went there, and that happened….” etc. – which was presumably used in some of the other poems in the Epic Cycle, as well as in some later epics (like Apollonius’ Argonautica) is specifically condemned by Aristotle for lacking unity. The fact that Homer did not do this sort of thing was one of the reasons that he was considered so much better than all the other epicists.
This doesn’t really affect your point about Star Trek and 1960’s television, though.
Although I don’t agree with Card’s assessment of Star Trek, I think you guys are a little too harsh on him. He himself is a skilled writer (and not at all of the hard-sf school, so I’m at a little bit of a loss to understand his “no attention to science” complaint). Unless he’s taken an odd turn in the past few years, I have to regard this particular article as a little out of character for him.
I don’t think Jimmy is hard on Card generally (see his last post, “Orson Scott Card Is Right!”). Just the thesis of this piece.
De gustibus non disputandum est!
The Lord of the Rings is the greatest piece of literature the 20th century produced, but it is not a work of hard SF.
The Lord of the Rings isn’t science fiction at all. People generally don’t expect fantasy stories to conform to real-world scientific laws. There’s an entirely different set of expectations.
Some stories (say, Star Wars) are good enough that one can overlook their scientific flaws. By and large Star Trek isn’t one of them.
Yes, I do prefer “hard” SF to space opera!!
Jimmy, isn’t there a blogrule of some sort stating that when you do a fisking of an article that is twice as long as the article itself, you’re being defensive?
The main point of Card’s article is that Star Trek possessed an audience far out of scale with its imagination and significance, owing mainly to the fact that it was on TV. That’s something you can’t and don’t dispute. Another point you don’t really address is that the vast majority of trekkies actually weren’t interested in sci-fi and space travel in general, but more in the specific phenomenon of Star Trek itself.
At the last point you attack Card’s motives and claim that he is taking himself too seriously, that he wants to prove himself. Orson Scott Card? You can’t be serious! This is the guy who went from writing the bestseller and critically acclaimed Ender’s Game to a much simpler, far less nebula-friendly “Alvin, journeyman” series. Pulitzer chaser and celebrity whore Card is not. He has nothing to fear about his own credentials.
Thanks for posting on this, Jimmy. I saw this last week & thought Card was way off base on this one, too. He’s one to talk, considering the disbelief he expects his readers to suspend for some of his work – no matter how reality-based it might seem to be; &, yes, I’m a fan of much of his work (not the overtly Mormon stuff, though). The time travel aspects of Card’s Ender books, to my mind, act in much the same way as the Enterprise in ST, effectively making those books “spaceship adventure stories,” although significantly better-written than most of ST:TOS. After a while, it’s a device, a literary trick (albeit an engaging one) that allows the discussion of the “science or deeper ideas” Card seems to demand of his SF. Just because spaceship adventure stories tend not to be as deep (at least not for TV or film), does not mean they can’t be in the hands of the right writer. Card’s own fiction has shown that.
Mankind ruled by philosophical materialism, no economic freedom, no private property, no religion, the entire population works for the government. Bah. Who wants that?
For what’s it’s worth, Steven, I like Lawhead AND Alexander, although I have to admit Lawhead is on the top at the moment for his Song of Albion trilogy.
I think my system just entered the Twilight Zone. Be that as it may…
I stopped reading Science Fiction years ago. Orson Scott Card was one of the last authors I encountered in my search for something tasty to read.
I miss it … the good stuff that is.
I am suspicious. Is his criticism sour grapes? The Roddenberry/Star Trek franchise is far more successful than Card will ever be, (IMHO.) So he criticises that which he will never attain as being unworthy. *sniff*
I should also note that currently Orson Scott Card is writing an IRON MAN comic book. I think he enjoys “more juvenile” work just fine.
Lawhead’s okay, but I can’t believe anyone would seriously think he’s anywhere near as good a writer as Lloyd Alexander.
Especially since I doubt that Lloyd Alexander on his worst day ever wrote and published the equal to the following piece of dialogue:
“Ha, ha, ha! Hee, hee, hee! Ho, ho, ho!” laughed the evil wizard.
Yes, I know Lawhead was young and his editor stupid. But I wasn’t that young in 1st grade, friends.
I’m not a sci fi person but what I find boring is when it focuses on technology and gadgets, rather than universal themes of human existence.
People who would rather have “character development” are just navel gazers. Give me an grand sweeping story which addresses the angst, joy, travails, sufferings and triumphs of mankind anyday.
That’s why LOTR is great. And someone rightly pointed out that it’s not sci fi or fantasy. It’s EPIC!
Sorry, I’m with Card when it comes to the original series. It had spaceships, so that made it “cool” to my childish eyes, but everything else was largely forgettable.
Almost all the plots were poor retreads of someone else’s better ideas (helloooo, George Lucas). Yes, there were “deep issues” explored, but they were examined in plagiarized settings, dumbed down with soap-opera writing. The best thing that can be said about the pedestrian direction is that it was dated and uncreative, and when they paired William Shatner with Joan Collins, the acting abandoned “simply bad” and became actually abusive. But what really can you say about a show where the least incompetent acting was accomplished by someone portraying a character who supressed all emotion?
For such a would-be “revolutionary” show, the alleged pluralism was mostly tokenism with forced, self-serving, lessons, driven home with all the subtlety and nuance of a brick to the back of the head. And the sexism was flat-out unbelievable, with women relegated to a few, stereotypical roles. You could pick waitress, glorified telephone operator, seductive villain in disguise, or tragic figure, destined to die. But no matter what two-dimensional character the women had to play, they usually had to be able to pull it off in an absurd minidress and go-go boots or they were simply not welcome on the set. Seven of Nine carried on this tradition well in ST:Voyager, but at least she had something to her character besides the obligatory T&A.
You can try to assert that criticizing something for being a product of its time is invalid, but that’s silly when you’re talking about science fiction. One of the foundational points of good science fiction is to see beyond the cultural structures and restrictions of the time. ST:TOS failed miserably at that.
I don’t agree with Card lumping them all together. I thought TNG was exceptionally good, particularly the episodes: “The Inner Light” and “Chain of Command.” DS9 was whiny and annoying, but politically astute; and Voyager was suitably introspective, and IMO, achieved the most satisfying series finale the ST universe has had. Enterprise, well, seemed DOA, loaded as it was with repeat characters and that horrifying, horrifying theme song. I just couldn’t make myself watch it after four or five weeks.
After returning to the Catholic faith I re-watched TNG, and was pretty annoyed with a lot of it. It seemed so different with my new viewpoint. I still love Star Trek anyway, nice mindless entertainment, I just don’t get my philosophy/theology questions answered there.
I’d also like to admit publicly that I LOVE the boots/hair/mini-dresses from TOS!
I suspect Card’s trying in part to be provocative, to stimulate discussion, and he may also have been one of those who felt badly burnt by post-Piller Voyager (I know I did: first Jeri Taylor’s idiot “Mary Sue” handling of Janeway, then Brannon Braga’s nasty, misogynistic parody of Taylor’s approach to Janeway, to say nothing of Seven-mania) and the middle of Enterprise’s run (booooring).
He does give due credit to its characterization skills, at its few rare high points, and he is essentially correct in his characterization of its sf concepts as out of date relative to written sf. However, I think this latter is pretty much inevitable in sf tv. TOS was lucky to be only ten or so years behind the times, being sporadically written by sf pros, TNG maybe fifteen years behind on a good day, B5 was almost exactly 20 yrs out of sync w/ written sf (if you consider it as a novel or series of novels, it would have made a respectable second-tier contemporary to “Mote in God’s Eye”). DS9 was even worse in that respect (20 years behind when channelling Philip K. Dick; more than that on everything else), though it was actually somewhat prescient politically: often seeming to be wrestling with post-9/11 issues back in the Clinton era. Voyager was all over the map: again Philip K. Dick at its most cutting edge, but at its next most cutting edge when doing 40s pulp homages! That’s how retrograde it was (its writing and acting were, incidentally, crap in most other respects).
The best “genre” shows on television today are probably Lost and Battlestar Galactica. Lost is more like tv producers channeling August Derleth channeling H. P. Lovecraft than anything else; BSG carries on the DS9 tradition of packaging socio-political-psychodrama and the odd attack of Philip K. Dick in an old-fashioned space-opera wrapper. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I guess I’m puzzled as to why a writer whose opinion I generally respect thinks genre tv has “grown out of” the Star Trek approach.
LotR is definitely high fantasy. I don’t think that’s often called into question.
Maureen, have you read Song of Albion? I’m guessing that line of dialogue you quote is from the Dragon King trilogy which is, indeed, subpar, even if the second and third books had their moments. The Song of Albion is one of the best things I’ve ever read.
As a long-time fan of Card’s Uncle Orson Reviews Everything columns, I’d like to make a couple of points.
“The Lord of the Rings is the greatest piece of literature the 20th century produced…” I think Card would agree with that. A book of tribute essays published when the first movie came out included a long essay by Card, praising LOTR to the skies and criticizing its critics–he believes the people who were appalled that LOTR topped that best books of the 20th century list are snobs.
Which brings me to my second point. When you suggest Card is a snob by saying that he’s trying to prove to others how mature and intellectual sf can be, you are off-base. In his reviews, Card again and again fulminates against this kind of snobbery. Not only does he oppose anti-genre snobbery and anti-what-the-masses-like snobbery, but he has said multiple times that he believes some of the best sf/f writing being done today period is being done for YA books. So when he says ST is inferior to the sf/f shows on TV today, he means just that; FWIW, he has made a similar point about television in general–he thinks the quality of shows today is higher than ever, despite nostalgia for a supposed golden age of TV. While we may agree or disagree with his assessment of ST, I don’t think it is likely that his opinion proceeds from intellectual snobbery or a sense of needing to prove himself a big boy.
I also think it’s wrong to say that Card has limited his area of aesthetic appreciation. It is a bit of a leap to take that from the piece in question. But his review columns over the years really make it hard for anyone to suggest he only likes hard-sf (or any other kind of sf). He has a great love of fantasy, for starters; also going by the reviews, he seems to like more than one kind of sf, plus he enjoys mysteries and nonfiction, especially works of history. Also in his how-to book mentioned here, he talked about how different sf/f books were trying to do different things–some exploring milieu, some character, etc.–and says it is misguided to hold a story about one thing to the standards of a different kind of story. (A non-sf example of what he meant might be taking Agatha Christie to task because her characters are so thin, when Christie’s stories were never about deep character development to start with, but about the puzzle.) So I think Card has a broad enough aesthethic sense to allow for different kinds of stories.
I don’t say any of this because I am a rabid Card fan. I’m not. I’ve enjoyed the novels and short stories of his I’ve read, but I’ve read less than half of them. I enjoy his review columns and trust his opinion on books implicitly–if he says a book is worth reading, it is worth reading–but I find his movie reviews questionable. (The man’s an Adam Sandler fan, for goodness’ sake!) Also he’s a highly opinionated man, and I don’t agree with all of his opinions–the whole Mormonism thing, for instance. I just think some of the things said about him here were wrong. But at least you’re politer about it than I expect some of the trekkers will be at the next con he visits.
He’s a big Stephen King fan, FWIW. (So am I.)
Deeper ideas in Star Wars and Star Trek
1
2a.
2b
You pays your money and you makes your choice.
Orson has been slashdotted- and they ain’t happy with OSC.
LOL, y’all! Aren’t some folks here taking the original Star Trek just a tiny tad too seriously? It was a cartoon, folks. Even the garish palette was reminiscent of cartoon colors. Heck, look close, and you’da seen the dot pattern. 😀
The plots were predictable jokes, but that was half the fun. The expendable ensigns. The buxom babes with big hair, paired romantically with tubby Captian Kirk. The silly, contrived sparring between Scotty and McCoy.
It was never meant to be Art. It was a lark, thass all. Cain’t we just enjoy it for what it was–half-unintentional camp? 😉
Diane who knows absolutely nothing about sci-fi and has never heard of this Card guy but who has actually dreamed about tribbles
Brin is, IMO, waaaay of base in the piece Mary links in #1 above. Sheesh, Dave – talk about taking things too seriously! It’s all about knights of the Round Table, not “demi-gods” & an “elitist tradition of princes and wizards who rule by divine or mystical right.” Divine right? Who does he think are actually in power in Lucas’ movies? It’s not the Jedi, AOTC proves that. And Queen Amidala was elected (yeah, I know) & later becomes a senator so where’s the “royal figure” ruling the plebeian masses there? I just don’t see what Brin’s seeing.
Gee, Dave, sorry ST & SW are just not . . . deep enough for you. Maybe you should stick to reading your own books. I’ve never read any of them but this piece doesn’t make me wanna start.
Thanks for saving me the waste of time, Mary!
LOTR is about as fantasy as The Iliad and The Odyssey. It’s more than that.
The Illiad and the Oddyssey are set in the real world, with supernatural forces that (arguably) many Greeks believed in.
LotR takes place in a made up world with made-up races, magic, places, history, etc., which by default puts it in the fantasy genre. Fantasy shouldn’t be taken as anything juvenile or demeaning–I believe that it’s the most powerful form of literature, personally. But the Lord of the Rings, a novel, fits within that literary genre, and is credited as a milestone within the genre.
Glad to be of service. . .
The 2. has a number of articles on Star Wars. I just picked one. They’re all interesting. (He has a number of interesting things.)
Enter A New Champion.
Awhile ago I posted my counter-rant to Orson Scott Card’s editorial that was saying that Star Trek should be left to die and that it’s fans should grow up and “watch some good Sci-Fi for a change.” (note: that was not a direct quote, but it was put in …
Looks as though someone puts a lot of value in OSC.