Re: [OT] Trek once more

At 07:01  1/05/02 +0100, Adam wrote:
>>> My understanding is that if Rodenberry had survived the 
Federation would have died, only for Captain Hunt of the Enterprise to 
try and resurrect it centuries later. <<<

On 5/2/02 7:38 AM, "Derek Fulton" <derekfulton@bigpond.com> wrote:
>> Quite possibly. Roddenberry always seemed to be prepared to burn 
everything down to start again. ST:TNG was to have NO Klingons or 
Romulans or any aliens from ST:TOS. It was only the clever introduction 
of Worf (a guest spot for a few episodes that expanded to one of the 
better characters) that saved the Klingon Empire and the other original 
Star Trek races from Roddenberry's desire to start afresh ;) <<

I don't think that Gene was so fascinated with burning things down as 
with moving on to something new. The point of replacing the TOS 
Klingons and Romulans with the Ferengi (as originally described, 
rather than as the comedy relief they became) and whoever else might 
have been created -- the Cardassians, for instance -- was that TNG was 
75-100 years later than TOS, and the Federation was that much bigger; 
starships were reaching out further into the galaxy, and so Roddenberry 
wanted new and different aliens for the good guys to deal with. They'd 
_done_ the Kingons and Romulans and he didn't want to re-hash old 
material (nobody mention the recycled plots, okay? Consider the point 
taken). At least one early description of the series actually had the 
Klingon Empire as a self-governing sub-state within the Federation!

I've never before heard of the idea of ST Andromeda, but it fits in 
with Roddenberry's philosophy as expressed in his shows. After all, 
Andromeda is basically a space-going version of the other "Dylan 
Hunt" series -- Genesis II/Planet Earth. He might also have approved of 
the concept (rather than the execution) of Voyager.

Schoon wrote:
> Actually, this reminds me that SJG (in association with ADB) is 
coming out with GURPS: Prime Directive in about 2-4 months. <

> I'm looking forward to it.

I'm dubious, though less so than I was before I looked at the website. 
PD was pretty militaristic, but the GURPS version seems less so (and I 
was amused to see a Prime Team described as a group of 
"command-scientist-diplomats" -- diplomacy was _not_ a major focus of 
PD in my experience). The main worry in my mind is whether the rules 
will insist on using the horrible SFU timeline, which is probably the 
worst thing about that universe.

And I'll be interested to see whether (and _how_) they tackle the 
problem of TOS vs TMP/TNG et seq. Klingons... <g>

Phil
----
"We gotta get out into Space / If it's the last thing we ever do!"  
   -- Return to the Forbidden Planet