| >> | 1590524545412.jpg -(18662B / 18.22KB, 474x421) Thumbnail displayed, click image for full size. ![]() >>70301
>>70282
I second this emotion
I genuinely believe TOS helped fuel the first steps into space, at least on the American side of the space race. Its popularity and its forward-thinking optimistic outlook for the future in space was truly inspiring. I think TNG continued this and DS9 is where the ball was dropped. Its not so much that DS9 couldn't show the darker side of the future, it's that at the end of DS9 we have no epilogue to remind you there's a better future coming, where Cardassia and Ferenginar both join the Federation eventually.. what would have been really nice would have been a short scene from a few years later, perhaps only involving Julian and Garak, just to leave you with a bit of positivity. I think that between that missing piece, Generations killing both Kirk and the Ent-D for basically no reason other than shock value, and Voyager's unprofessional staff structure and shit-tier writing staff, Star Trek was doomed.. but that isn't to say we could have gotten a lot more before the franchise inevitably ran out of steam. All good things indeed do come to an end. Perhaps there's still a new trek out there waiting in the Platonic heaven of ideas, but like others have said, we won't be seeing it anytime soon. Media has to evolve back into something that could accommodate trek, right now it's too stupid and shallow, because that is what the viewers have largely become.
I'm thankful for what we got, almost 40 years of quality, something like a solid month's worth of screentime. Trek inspired the flip-phone, the smart-phone, tablets, and plenty of other inventions. Perhaps many of these things have been a double-edged sword, but it is undeniable that Trek helped shape the modern world. Furthermore, it's amazing that it managed to outlive its creator by a solid decade before falling apart, without really losing his vision. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here when I say that Star Trek had a positive effect on my life, and making newer and ever-more shitty treks doesn't take that away, it just calcifies the memories more and makes those wonderful halcyon days where you could tune in to watch a new episode of star trek seem impossibly far away, shrouded by the mists of time.
Pic is Pluto. We launched this probe around when Nemesis came out, when Pluto was still a planet and there was still some underlying impetus to explore the solar system, it took a solid decade to get to that frozen pebble, and for the first time we laid eyes upon that world which had been a mystery for my entire life. I wonder if we would have ever gotten so far without the vision Gene Roddenberry accidentally created when he tried to make a cheesy space western ripoff of Lost Planet. I think without Star Trek, mankind would have never reached so far. And if we fail to ever reach further, so be it. Dammit we tried, and better to try and to fail than to resign ourselves to the inevitable. And it's my hope that the fire of exploration, the thirst for discovery will yet deliver us to new worlds and to seek out other civilizations. And even if it becomes a forgotten footnote, Star Trek will have been the impetus. |
