Eruditorum Press

Pounded in the butt by dialectical materialism.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Book Launch Redemption

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Vaka Rangi Volume 3: Star Trek: The Next Generation (Seasons 2-5) is now available! Or if it’s not yet, it will be presently.

This volume covers the years 1988-1992, framed (to borrow/paraphrase a bit from Jack) in terms of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “Fall and Rise”. Although the young Star Trek had ended the 1987-88 television season a popular, critical and ratings success, Leonard Maizlish’s authoritarian micromanaging and Gene Roddenberry’s failure to properly communicate his ideas to his staff drove the creative team away in droves. Worse still, one of the worst Writer’s Guild Strikes of all time hit in 1988, absolutely crippling producer Maurice Hurley’s attempts to do his job for the entire year. But Hurley made enemies and mistakes of his own, and by the time the Writer’s Guild Strike finally lifted he was gone, and with him all remnants of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s original creative team. Come 1989 the entire studio had been completely turned over, and an incoming motley crew of veteran TV producers and ambitious young freelancers were faced with the seemingly impossible challenge of keeping Star Trek: The Next Generation not just on course, but above water.

And yet somehow, against all odds and in spite of week-to-week quality during this period that can be charitably described as changeable, Star Trek: The Next Generation only continued to grow in fame and popularity. Its 1990 season finale became a landmark in television history, it came back in the fall with its highest rated episode ever since its pilot and a year after that would host the 25th Anniversary of the entire Star Trek franchise. And then, rumours began to circulate that Star Trek: The Next Generation might even be getting a sister show.

This book attempts to tell a story about how this television miracle happened. Each chapter is a heavily revised and expanded version of a blog post that appeared as part of the original Vaka Rangi blog project, and in some cases whole essays have been rewritten from the ground up entirely. Every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s second, third, fourth and fifth seasons is examined in detail, as well as the motion picture Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. This book version also includes a new set of “Totemic Artefacts” essays on the AMT/ERTL Star Trek: The Next Generation model kits released between 1988 and 1991 and an essay on Rick Sternbach and Mike Okuda’s Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual. Here’s some of what else you can look forward to inside:

 

  • Learn how The Borg came to be, and how the way they appeared in “Q Who” and “The Best of Both Worlds” was not the way they were originally intended to appear.
  • Learn the true meaning of the secret connection between Star Trek: The Next Generation and Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and in particular that between Captain Picard and Princess Nausicaä.
  • Find out how the consensus-worst Star Trek movie ever once had the very real potential to be the best.
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“Picture yourself in a boat on a river”: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

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I’ll be perfectly blunt. I’m *not* thrilled to be back with the Original Series cast here. The world has changed under their feet, and even though 1986 was only two years ago it seems more like an eternity. Having them slot themselves into Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s summer hiatus feels presumptuous, redundant and really, a bit tragically out of style: The Original Series no longer has its hands on the pulse of Star Trek, and one sort of wishes this crew world butt out and retire with dignity, especially considering how absolutely perfect an ending to their story Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was.

If there’s one aspect of Star Trek’s media artefact wing that demonstrates how incestuous Star Trek fandom is, it’s unquestionably the Original Series and its associated characters, as, no matter what the generation, Trekkers are frustratingly unwilling (or unable) to move beyond them. This has to be something stronger than fealty to the original work or simple nostalgia, because this is a phenomenon that spans several different age groups and, more to the point, *doesn’t* happen with any other franchise of comparable scope. Nobody privileges the William Hartnell era of Doctor Who above all else, for example, and while the original three Star Wars movies are considered the best, that’s only because Star Wars fans are far more critical of their own franchise and will readily admit the original films hold that position merely by virtue of being slightly less shit than the others.

I’m not entirely certain what the reason for this is myself, but, either due to someone’s deliberate intent or purely through a particularly horrific example of the fan-industrial complex, Star Trek: The Next Generation and its ilk have utterly failed to take substantial root in the pop consciousness such that it’s the Original Star Trek, and *only* the Original Star Trek, that remains universally beloved, embraced and affectionately quoted and memified. This will be an unending sore spot for those of us (like, oh I don’t know, me, for example) for whom Star Trek actually does mean Star Trek: The Next Generation, because we’ll forever feel like our memories and feelings will never be considered legitimate by an *overwhelming majority* of the contemporary discourse.

The reason why this is relevant to the topic du jour is, aside from the obvious “I really, really don’t want to be writing about the Original Series at the moment”, is because Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is a movie that very plainly would not exist if not for the curious gravity the Original Star Trek exerts over the rest of the franchise. It was put into production essentially as a favour to William Shatner thanking him for bothering to show up for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, because he almost didn’t given he was A. getting too big for Paramount to afford and B. understandably dissatisfied with the anemic and fannish Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.…

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