In which I diss Star Wars AND Star Trek

[Evil Captor]

And diss them both for doing something, not badly, but well.

What Star Wars and Star Trek have done is combined to give the future a "look and feel." They've actually formatted our vision of the future. We "know" what starships will look like. We "know" what settlements on othe worlds will look like. And it's all very much the same -- wealthy interstellar societies will have huge megastructures in space (the Death Star, the space dockyards in Trek I) huge metropolises on the ground, and plenty of cheap air transportation (Lucas' vision is arguably well ahead of everyone else's in this regard).

To understand what I'm talking about, take a look at an SF series or SF movies that predate them: there just is no unified vision of the future, or what the future might be. "The Outer Limits" anthology TV series is what got me thinking about this: their eps are often more powerful because they have no fixed vision of what the future might be, what aliens might be like, what other planets might be like. They have that "sense of wonder" to a much greater degree than ST or SW because you have the sense that the aliens might turn out to be anything, the monsters might be anything (in this respect, Outer Limits was far ahead of movie SF with its endless parade of big radioactive thisnthats) and a strange new planet is exactly that, rather than just another iteration on a familiar pattern of colonies/alien empires/primitive planets, etc.

Written SF presents the same problem because modern stories rely on familiar "furniture" established by SF tradition. It's harder and harder to get to the mind-bursting explosions of wonder created by stories like "Microcosmic God" and "Nightfall."

Don't get me wrong. A lot of the written SF of that era, and some Outer Limits episodes, were crap, pure and simple. But mixed in with that crap was a suprisingly high number of stories where the writer had snagged on to a chunk of the Unknown, had had a vision that significantly altered the sense of what the universe might be like, or what being human might actually mean, or some combination of the two that really gave you the viewer (or reader) a sense of wonder. I think that's what gave SF its incredible energy as a genre from the 30s through the 60s.

You still see flashes of the original sense of wonder in some writers. I think William Gibson captured some of it in his stories. Vernor Vinge, too. And maybe John Varley more than the others, especially in his story "Persistence of Vision."

But I think the familiarity of the future as portrayed on SW and ST mitigates against that. I suspect that if you want to recapture the old sense of wonder, you have to either explore some new and little known tech's possibilities, and follow them to the logical conclusions (Greg Bear did this with nanotech) rather than think along conventional lines, or perhaps go back to the old stories and see if you can use them to spark some entirely new line of thought that will produce a new wonder.

That'd be worth doing.

[Frylock]

Try Hyperion by Dan Simmons (and at least its first sequel),
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge,
And the Dune books contain the kind of thing you're looking for, as well, I believe.
The movie "The American Astronaut" presents a very "different" vision of the future in several senses. Though it is probably self-consciously responding to the cookie-cutter vision of the future which you've referenced. It's really not at all what you're looking for, now that I think of it. Still, watch the movie: it's fun. :)

-FrL-

[2lazy2pee]

FWIW, George Lucas weaseled around this by setting Star Wars "Long ago in a galaxy far, far away." I do see your point, though.

[Turek]

And maybe John Varley more than the others, especially in his story "Persistence of Vision."

I love Varley, but I don't consider that story to be science fiction.

[Subway Prophet]

I think landing on the moon had about the same effect - it both broadened our horizons while tightly defining what technological progress meant. Ditto for the Space Shuttle, cloning, personal computers and bionic implants.

Regarding Star Wars and Star Trek - aside from the setting and the hardware, I don't think they present much actual science fiction (though ST has done some marvelous stuff from time to time.) Change the backdrops and props and the names, and suddenly you're watching a Tom Clancy movie. Sheer escapist fantasy (though often better made than Clancy can do IMHO.)

This may sound obvious, but for the classic "sense of wonder" feeling, you really need to go back to the early stuff by the masters: Niven and Heinlein, Asimov, some others. I've found that a lot of it is still quite current.

I also think that, for exploring really new modern themes, you can't beat short fiction. The books that tend to stay on my shelf are the sci-fi anthologies. The Full Specrum series is still a favorite, as are many of the World's Best Science Fiction volumes (edited by Gardner Dozois). There have been some other anthologies edited by Orson Scott Card that have been good, but the titles escape me.

I also agree with the OP, there are just a few modern sci-fi authors who can capture that feeling - Vernor Vinge and Greg Bear are among them, as are Terry Bisson, Greg Benford, David Brin and a few others. (Why yes, I do find myself in the "B" section more often than not.)

[Evil Captor]

Try Hyperion by Dan Simmons (and at least its first sequel),
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge,
And the Dune books contain the kind of thing you're looking for, as well, I believe.
The movie "The American Astronaut" presents a very "different" vision of the future in several senses. Though it is probably self-consciously responding to the cookie-cutter vision of the future which you've referenced. It's really not at all what you're looking for, now that I think of it. Still, watch the movie: it's fun. :)

-FrL-

Never liked Dune or Hyperion. Tried 'em both of course, but I was turned off big time by their rampant religiosity. Also, I extremely disliked Arab culture, even before 9/11, and since Dune is heavily based on Arab culture, I found myself snorting and rolling my eyes a LOT when I read it. Not too crazy about Catholicism either, and there's a LOT of that underneath Hyperion. So it's prolly just me on those scores.

I didn't feel either story brought anything new to SF in the area of sense of wonder, would be interested to know your thoughts on the topic. Could be I missed something.

Completely with you on Vinge though.

[Evil Captor]

I love Varley, but I don't consider that story to be science fiction.

I think what makes it science fiction is that it takes a science fictional approach to its subject. Varley has imagined what we all think of as a disability and reimagined it as a different but still powerful way of experiencing the universe. I would consider it the pure-dee, full-strength, balls-to-the-walls sense of wonder SF stuff. None better. And some of his stories in "Steel Beach" come close to it.

[Evil Captor]

I think landing on the moon had about the same effect - it both broadened our horizons while tightly defining what technological progress meant. Ditto for the Space Shuttle, cloning, personal computers and bionic implants.

Yes, knowing how things actually look in space gave the moviemakers the chance to create more "realistic" spacecraft on the one hand, and limited them in terms of how they'd imagine spacecraft on the other hand (though it's not too hard to come up with original ideas if you put even a LITTLE effort into it -- in my novel Karg I have a spaceship shaped like a child's bead bracelet, with the ion drive supsended in the middle. I have other spaceships built by AIs devised by humans but far beyond human intelligence, that look like nothing a human would or could device. But so many spaceships in the movies look like boxy things cobbled from model kits.)

Regarding Star Wars and Star Trek - aside from the setting and the hardware, I don't think they present much actual science fiction (though ST has done some marvelous stuff from time to time.) Change the backdrops and props and the names, and suddenly you're watching a Tom Clancy movie. Sheer escapist fantasy (though often better made than Clancy can do IMHO.)

Well, with ST you're all over the map, but Star Wars while it has some original ideas, is basically medieval fantasy set in space.

This may sound obvious, but for the classic "sense of wonder" feeling, you really need to go back to the early stuff by the masters: Niven and Heinlein, Asimov, some others. I've found that a lot of it is still quite current.

Actually, some of the stuff dating from 1910-1950 is full of sense of wonder, even if the understanding of science is a little vague. OK, in many instances, a LOT vague. 1919's The Girl In the Golden Atom (http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue21/atom1.html) is a great example. A little handwaving about the infinite nature of space, and pretty soon you have scientists finding tiny, very pretty girls taking showers inside scratches on their wedding bands. The City of the Singing Flame (http://www.eldritchdark.com/wri/short/cityofthesingingflame.html) has a similar wild "anything could happen" feel to it.

I also think that, for exploring really new modern themes, you can't beat short fiction. The books that tend to stay on my shelf are the sci-fi anthologies. The Full Specrum series is still a favorite, as are many of the World's Best Science Fiction volumes (edited by Gardner Dozois). There have been some other anthologies edited by Orson Scott Card that have been good, but the titles escape me.

You are problably right, though I haven't been keeping up with short stories for a long time. Last one I read was Aldiss' "Galactic Empires" volumes 1 and 2, which were great fun, but not a lot of modern stuff in them.

I also agree with the OP, there are just a few modern sci-fi authors who can capture that feeling - Vernor Vinge and Greg Bear are among them, as are Terry Bisson, Greg Benford, David Brin and a few others. (Why yes, I do find myself in the "B" section more often than not.)

Add Iain Banks to that "B" list of writers. Kinda interesting ... I've noticed the same clustering. Wonder what's up with that.

[Little Nemo]

Evil, I recommend you check out Robert Charles Wilson. Read his latest novel Spin and it'll dump a truckload of sense of wonder on your head.

[Evil Captor]

Evil, I recommend you check out Robert Charles Wilson. Read his latest novel Spin and it'll dump a truckload of sense of wonder on your head.

Well, his last name starts with "W" not "B" but I'm broad-minded about this sort of thing.

[Tuckerfan]

While I think that your argument does have some merit, I think that the situation isn't quite as cut and dried as you make it out to be. Star Trek has always presented us with a clean and rather sterile vision of the future. Star Wars has a slightly grubbier look to it (which is one of it's selling points, IMHO), but even then, it's morality is clear-cut. Contrast that with a film like Blade Runner where the future's dirty and one's moral actions aren't quite so clear-cut. Mind you, I haven't read much science fiction since Robert Heinlein died and then what I've read has been primarily Philip K. Dick, but I don't think that Star Wars and Star Trek have any greater impact on things that some of the stuff which appeared in the past.

When A Princess of Mars and The Skylark of Space first appeared in print, both of them had a huge impact on the science fiction of the day, some of which can still be seen today. Eventually, though, the influence faded, and we saw a flurishing of other forms of science fiction.

[Little Nemo]

Well, his last name starts with "W" not "B" but I'm broad-minded about this sort of thing.
His friends call him Bob.

[Frylock]

Never liked Dune or Hyperion. Tried 'em both of course, but I was turned off big time by their rampant religiosity. Also, I extremely disliked Arab culture, even before 9/11, and since Dune is heavily based on Arab culture, I found myself snorting and rolling my eyes a LOT when I read it. Not too crazy about Catholicism either, and there's a LOT of that underneath Hyperion. So it's prolly just me on those scores.

I didn't feel either story brought anything new to SF in the area of sense of wonder, would be interested to know your thoughts on the topic. Could be I missed something.



Yeah... I'd say you're missing something, but I don't think you're going to be able to "get it" when it comes to these books if you couldn't get past the fact that there are groups in these books which subscribe to cultural systems you don't like.

When you talk about Dune's "rampant religiosity," do you mean to say it seems to you that the book is fundamentally religious? Or rather, do you mean to say it deals with religious themes? The latter I would agree with, but would not be able to understand how this constitutes a criticism. The former I would disagree with.

-FrL-

[Little Nemo]

I'd also suggest that Dune, which was published forty-one years ago, is hardly an example of a recent work of science fiction. Hyperion, for that matter, was published seventeen years ago.

[Frylock]

I'd also suggest that Dune, which was published forty-one years ago, is hardly an example of a recent work of science fiction. Hyperion, for that matter, was published seventeen years ago.

I wasn't trying to give examples of recent science fiction.

-FrL-

[Alessan]

Yeah... I'd say you're missing something, but I don't think you're going to be able to "get it" when it comes to these books if you couldn't get past the fact that there are groups in these books which subscribe to cultural systems you don't like.

When you talk about Dune's "rampant religiosity," do you mean to say it seems to you that the book is fundamentally religious? Or rather, do you mean to say it deals with religious themes? The latter I would agree with, but would not be able to understand how this constitutes a criticism. The former I would disagree with.

-FrL-

I suspect that EC suscribes to the very Trekkie belief that religion will no longer exist in The Future. Simmons and Herbert take a different view on the matter; to say, however, that the writers are themselves pro-religion (at least in an orthodox sense) indicates a lack of familiarity with the material - for instance, the idea that Dan Simmons is in any way a fan of the Catholic church is patently absurd.

Anyway to each his own. I find Ian Banks and David Brin practically unreadable, myself. A science fiction writer is first and foremost a writer, and if he or she can't write prose, characters or plot, I don't care how good their ideas are.

[Voyager]

Star Wars and Star Trek are two very specific types of sf. Star Wars is a great cinematic version of '40s science fiction. It's no accident that Lucas got Leigh Brackett to work on Empire - the monster in the asteroid sequence is just right out of '40s space opera.

Star Trek was as close to Analog style hard sf as TV would allow. Analog ran a very complimentary article on it while TOS was still running. TOS was the first sf series to have anything like a believable universe. It was the first sf series you could live in, which I think explains fandom. I like Outer Limits when it was on, but they were short stories and not a novel - and TOS was more like a novel, or a continuing series, where you could get into the characters.

So, neither were particularly original, but gave viewers the kind of experience we got from the Lensmen series of Heinlein's future history, or Foundation. I don't think they block other universes, except for taking up a godawful amount of space on the shelves.

BTW, I never much liked Dune either, and relgion had nothing to do with it. I've found Herbert an awful writer, even for sf.

[Odesio]

I suspect that EC suscribes to the very Trekkie belief that religion will no longer exist in The Future.


Religion exist in the Trekverse so long as you're not talking about mainstream western religions like Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. They devoted at least one episode of Voyager to Chacotay's proselytizing of his animist beliefs as well as many episodes that featured alien religions some of which even showed those religions to be based on fact (ie. worm hole aliens and Kahless the Klingon).

Marc

[Alessan]

Ture. However, in the examples given, Simmons portrays a future in which Catholicism, Judaism and Islam still exist, albeit as minority religions alongside invented faiths, while Herbert deals extensively with a belief system clearly based on Sufi Islam.

Incidentally, the series' approach to religion is one of the reasons I loved Babylon 5. Does anyone remember the episode in the first season where each culture on the station was supposed to give a presentation of its religious beliefs - and how Earth handled the obvious problems?

[aegypt]

Never liked Dune or Hyperion. Tried 'em both of course, but I was turned off big time by their rampant religiosity. Also, I extremely disliked Arab culture, even before 9/11, and since Dune is heavily based on Arab culture, I found myself snorting and rolling my eyes a LOT when I read it. Not too crazy about Catholicism either, and there's a LOT of that underneath Hyperion. So it's prolly just me on those scores.
I'll just make the observation that some great SF is set in cultures that no reader from our era could possibly like. It makes for some interesting stories. A lot of good litterature is set in cultures whose values we can't possibly agree with - you don't need to go any further back than to the 19th century, or even the 1950s for some of us - but that doesn't automatically make these works any less enjoyable.

If you only read books about agreeable characters and cultures, there isn't exactly a great deal to chose from. Dystopias in SF outnumber utopias and it's not hard to see why. They're simply more interesting.

Besides, Dune and Hyperion are not religious books. They contain religious characters and cultures, but the message is not a pious one. You'll find a more religious message in the works of C.S. Lewis, for instance. And how could you possibly write an epic story without touching on these subjects in any way? Even in contemporary American society religion is extremely important for many.

[Terrifel]

To understand what I'm talking about, take a look at an SF series or SF movies that predate them: there just is no unified vision of the future, or what the future might be. I was under the impression that before Star Trek, it was pretty much a given in SF that humans would be traveling the galaxy in chromed-over V2 rockets, while aliens would favor saucer-shaped craft. Earth would be covered in Art Deco skyscrapers, while domed structures would be considered more fashionable on the Moon and Mars. In fact I have several coffee-table books' worth of SF art that appear to falsify the argument that there was no unified "look" for the future before Star Trek. If you're looking for a scapegoat for lack of originality in SF design, you probably need to make Alex Raymond your whipping boy.

[Subway Prophet]

I suspect that EC suscribes to the very Trekkie belief that religion will no longer exist in The Future. Simmons and Herbert take a different view on the matter; to say, however, that the writers are themselves pro-religion (at least in an orthodox sense) indicates a lack of familiarity with the material - for instance, the idea that Dan Simmons is in any way a fan of the Catholic church is patently absurd.

Yeah, the OP's statements about Dune and Hyperion botherd me all night, and I got up early today (but apparently not early enough!) to post about it. These books go out of their way to describe how religion is a tool for the elite to control the masses. Not exactly cheerleading Catholic or Islamic ideals, there.

But the primary objective about fiction is for entertainment, and if the OP is put off by reading about religious people, then that's his decision.

I'm a fairly religious guy myself, and if someone were to go on a diatribe about how my religion is bogus and constructed to keep the sheep in line, I'd shut them out pretty quick. But put it in fiction, and I'll happily indulge in it, along with silvery spaceships and green-skinned women. IOW, let me pick the message I take with me.

BTW, both Dune and Hyperion Cantos (comprising both Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion) are permanant hardcover fixtures in my library at home. Excellent stuff, and I get something new out of them every time.

[Evil Captor]

While I think that your argument does have some merit, I think that the situation isn't quite as cut and dried as you make it out to be. Star Trek has always presented us with a clean and rather sterile vision of the future. Star Wars has a slightly grubbier look to it (which is one of it's selling points, IMHO), but even then, it's morality is clear-cut. Contrast that with a film like Blade Runner where the future's dirty and one's moral actions aren't quite so clear-cut. Mind you, I haven't read much science fiction since Robert Heinlein died and then what I've read has been primarily Philip K. Dick, but I don't think that Star Wars and Star Trek have any greater impact on things that some of the stuff which appeared in the past.

Blade Runner had a visual influence all right -- filmmakers realized that if you kept things dark and dingy in your film, you didn't need to spend so much on sets and special effects. A lot of cheap SF movies got made that way. Everybody else went with the ST/SW look. Espeically TV. Battlestar Galactica (all iterations). Buck Rogers. And especially the Star Trek TV series ... shameless imitators of themselves, every one.

When A Princess of Mars and The Skylark of Space first appeared in print, both of them had a huge impact on the science fiction of the day, some of which can still be seen today. Eventually, though, the influence faded, and we saw a flurishing of other forms of science fiction.

I agree that Princess of Mars had a huge influence on the SF of the day, especially the visual stuff -- it's obvious that the folks who made Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers glommed on to Burroughs' fantastic adventure concept big time, not to mention the makers of those relatively obscure Republic serials like Radio Men from the Moon.

[Evil Captor]

Yeah... I'd say you're missing something, but I don't think you're going to be able to "get it" when it comes to these books if you couldn't get past the fact that there are groups in these books which subscribe to cultural systems you don't like.

When you talk about Dune's "rampant religiosity," do you mean to say it seems to you that the book is fundamentally religious? Or rather, do you mean to say it deals with religious themes? The latter I would agree with, but would not be able to understand how this constitutes a criticism. The former I would disagree with.

-FrL-

I mean it has religious themes. But it's mostly the medieval Arab culture in space that I dislike. I read it all the way through, and thought medieval Arab culture in space was an original idea, especially as opposed to medieval European culture in space that's way too commonplace but as for sequels, pfui. One medieval culture -- whether European, Arabic or Japanese -- is about as stupid as another.

[Evil Captor]

I suspect that EC suscribes to the very Trekkie belief that religion will no longer exist in The Future.[quote]

No, I'm just a hardcore atheist. I have no idea whether religion will survive in the future, though I hope it doesn't. If it does, I'd hope it would be something a lot less obviously stupid than the current batch of Great Sky Fairies. But I don't hold it as an article of faith that any such thing will happen. So long as you have ignorant people, you'll probably have religion.

[quote]Simmons and Herbert take a different view on the matter; to say, however, that the writers are themselves pro-religion (at least in an orthodox sense) indicates a lack of familiarity with the material - for instance, the idea that Dan Simmons is in any way a fan of the Catholic church is patently absurd.

You don't have to be pro-religious to suffuse your stuff with religious influence. There are a lot of lapsed Catholic writers whose worldview is profoundly Catholic. It's boring to me. I mean, imagine that you're a rational atheist and you lived in a world where everyone believed the universe was carried on the back of the Green Dinosaur who Knows All, and that all wisdom derived from that Green Dinosaur and was carried into the world by the Great Parrot (i.e, it's really obvious bullshit) and even people who professed not to believe in them wrote in metaphors about the Great Parrot and the Green Dinosaur and their many homilies and sayings that unites them. After awhile, you'd be sick of it, if you didn't share their beliefs. So while Hyperion isn't exactly a clarion call to Catholic faith, it's so full of the Green Dinosaur and so forth that ... ech.

Anyway to each his own. I find Ian Banks and David Brin practically unreadable, myself. A science fiction writer is first and foremost a writer, and if he or she can't write prose, characters or plot, I don't care how good their ideas are.

Brin's a weak writer. Banks is as good as they come. Has had considerable success in the mainstream as well as SF.

[scotandrsn]

What Star Wars and Star Trek have done is combined to give the future a "look and feel." They've actually formatted our vision of the future. We "know" what starships will look like. We "know" what settlements on othe worlds will look like. And it's all very much the same -- wealthy interstellar societies will have huge megastructures in space (the Death Star, the space dockyards in Trek I) huge metropolises on the ground, and plenty of cheap air transportation (Lucas' vision is arguably well ahead of everyone else's in this regard).

The starships we see in ST and SW are variations of the ships we saw for decades before that, going back at least to Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon comic books. Beasts with some sense of a direction of "down" for which there has been no excuse for about a half-century now, at least where long-term interstellar travel is concerned.

As far as huge metropolises on the ground with cheap air travel, have you seen, oh, I don't know, Metropolis?

I'm not trying to diss your preferences, just trying to frame the discussion here. The specific things you describe have been the trappings of immensely popular sci-fi for the better part of a century. ST and SW may have given a more solid vision to those trappings than has existed before, but they really weren't presenting us with anything all that new.

You just don't like the mainstream.

[Evil Captor]

So, neither were particularly original, but gave viewers the kind of experience we got from the Lensmen series of Heinlein's future history, or Foundation. I don't think they block other universes, except for taking up a godawful amount of space on the shelves.

I don't know what you mean by "block other universes" but I do think a lot of filmmakers looked at SW and ST and said, "I want my spaceships/future cities, etc., to look kinda like that." And they do. Of course, some of it might be Industrial Light and Magic recycling sets and props and so forth for filmmaker clients.

[Lust4Life]

the things that i disliked about st (sw`s didn`t expect to be taken seriously on a moral level so i wont be slagging them off lol !) were firstly that even though it was set many years into the future the moral values were those totally of 20th cent american ,middle class liberals ,sickeningly naive and sentimental at times , secondly that the "aliens" ,apart from looking incredibly similar to earthlings !used the same gestures ,had the same emotional attributes as humans : laughter ,smiles , kissing,sadness etc. and those that didn`t secretly aspired to having human emotions , including members of the borg !you just KNOW that spock secretly wanted a sense of humour and as for that android "uncle tom " data his ass kiss ing around humans was just nauseating ! for cliffs sake show a bit of pride in your robot heritage humanoid ! my third and second to last moan is that the "space " experience ,the boldly going into the unknown with all its dangers and hardships was totally sanitised and as a result there was very little sense of adventure ,(i`m excluding voyager from this particular criticism ) using the transporter to go planet side! , being able to have instantaneous face to face conversations with people back on earth(let alone other ships ) without any static,visual distortion etc. recreating anywhere in the universe in the holo deck for your entertainment ! unlimited food and drink of any kinds in the known universe available to you ! absaloutly huge suites of cabins for apparently all crew members !add to that the shirt sleeve enviroment (nary a space suit in sight ) it gives you more the impression of a cruise on a luxury liner then roughing it on a dangerous mission into the unknown ,that is if you can imagine it to be in space at all ,they certainly live a much more comfortable life style then i do back on earth ! and lastly (you`ll be glad to hear lol !) the way in which the senior officer after giving an ORDER is quite happy when junior crew members have a little chat about the order with him /her giving their opinion on the order .....if they approved or disaproved ,little ways it could be improved or if they were strongly against it arguing for its countermanding and sulking if it wasn`t !all without any apparent fear of disciplinary action ,rightly so as they mostly didn`t get any (though in very,very serious !one might say mutinous cases even ) they could be sent to their cabins for a little while . such egalitarianism seems just a wee bit out of place in a highly trained , disciplined military force ,particulary as they are operating on the frontiers of the unknown where every command has a life or death aspect to it . yep !that feels REALLY good now that i`ve got all that off of my chest ! yes sireeee!

[astro]

Oh Evil Captor... you just need a hug (http://img47.imageshack.us/img47/8940/startrekgayrickberman2hx9.jpg).

[Evil Captor]

the things that i disliked about st (sw`s didn`t expect to be taken seriously on a moral level so i wont be slagging them off lol !) were firstly that even though it was set many years into the future the moral values were those totally of 20th cent american ,middle class liberals ,sickeningly naive and sentimental at times , secondly that the "aliens" ,apart from looking incredibly similar to earthlings !used the same gestures ,had the same emotional attributes as humans : laughter ,smiles , kissing,sadness etc. and those that didn`t secretly aspired to having human emotions , including members of the borg !

I agree with your criticism, but it's very hard to get too far away from the culture of your audience and still have an audience. Remember, TV is a mass medium and America is a very insular country. I do think some well-thought-out nonhuman cultures with their own sets of behaviors would have been good, but I'm not all that upset that they didn't achieve as much there as they did in other respects.

you just KNOW that spock secretly wanted a sense of humour and as for that android "uncle tom " data his ass kiss ing around humans was just nauseating ! for cliffs sake show a bit of pride in your robot heritage humanoid !

Yeah, Pinocchio syndrome sucks. Happens almost anytime a robot character occurs in any movie or TV show. I'm with you on this one.

my third and second to last moan is that the "space " experience ,the boldly going into the unknown with all its dangers and hardships was totally sanitised and as a result there was very little sense of adventure ,(i`m excluding voyager from this particular criticism ) using the transporter to go planet side! , being able to have instantaneous face to face conversations with people back on earth(let alone other ships ) without any static,visual distortion etc. recreating anywhere in the universe in the holo deck for your entertainment ! unlimited food and drink of any kinds in the known universe available to you ! absaloutly huge suites of cabins for apparently all crew members !add to that the shirt sleeve enviroment (nary a space suit in sight ) it gives you more the impression of a cruise on a luxury liner then roughing it on a dangerous mission into the unknown ,that is if you can imagine it to be in space at all ,they certainly live a much more comfortable life style then i do back on earth !

I'm not with you on this one. As a general rule, the tendency in ships is to be larger and have larger accommodations for the crew, including creature comforts, is the way things have happened historically. Columbus discovered America in a set of what we'd now consider three slightly oversized rowboats with sails. More advanced tech of the future may well include stuff like holo decks and food assemblers and whatnot. There's no telling what the economics of interstellar spacecraft and habitat manufacturing will be like in the future, or what the necessities of attack and defense will lead to in terms of ship size and construction, but it seems that giant ships with plenty of room for the crew may be one valid outcome.

and lastly (you`ll be glad to hear lol !) the way in which the senior officer after giving an ORDER is quite happy when junior crew members have a little chat about the order with him /her giving their opinion on the order .....if they approved or disaproved ,little ways it could be improved or if they were strongly against it arguing for its countermanding and sulking if it wasn`t !all without any apparent fear of disciplinary action ,rightly so as they mostly didn`t get any (though in very,very serious !one might say mutinous cases even ) they could be sent to their cabins for a little while . such egalitarianism seems just a wee bit out of place in a highly trained , disciplined military force ,particulary as they are operating on the frontiers of the unknown where every command has a life or death aspect to it . yep !that feels REALLY good now that i`ve got all that off of my chest ! yes sireeee!

I'd say that might be the product of advances in social engineering in the future. Just because it worked for Rome and the armies of World War II doesn't mean it's the best or only way to run a military.

[Evil Captor]

Oh Evil Captor... you just need a hug (http://img47.imageshack.us/img47/8940/startrekgayrickberman2hx9.jpg).

Gee, thanks. Sometimes you'd think the people who made TOS knew slash would happen one day.