Ten years ago I ran into a Star Trek fan who said something I had never heard before, "In my opinion, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is more than the Best Star Trek, it's the Best Sc-fi series ever to appear on television!".
After three days of discussions - he convinced me .
No other Star Trek series can touch DS9's depth of character development, nor the complexities of relationships between the Bajorans, the Cardassians and the Federation.
The growing distance between Benjamin Sisko and his son Jake was heartbreaking - yet rang true to the way family relationships evolve.
Check out my friend, Dave Cullen. See if you agree with his observations. Some of my favorite online discussions involve people who don't agree with Dave because their contrary points of view are equally valid!
Every week I'm caught up in the online war over Star Trek and what has happened to the franchise. In my opinion, the entertainment industry has run out of science fiction fans that spend most of their time with the printed page.
Gene Roddenberry, like his contemporaries, were graduates from The Golden Age of Sci-Fi, the 1930's through the 1960's. By the time I came along in 1957, the wonderful world of radio sci-fi dramas was dissapperaing fast.
In 1999, National Public Radio (NPR), re-broadcast a series of the most popular Sci-Fi dramas from the late 1940's to the 1950's, and I was blown away by how excellent the storytelling was.
By contrast, television in the 1960's was actually a rather poor medium for science fiction because of the, "Bonanza Effect". Remember, for NBC, the network that ran Bonanza for 14 seasons, the "formula western" was the gold standard for television entertainment. All sci-fi shows, including Star Trek, were molded by the networks into "cowboys in space" regardless of the objections from creators like Gene Roddenberry.
While Bonanza poisioned the minds of TV executives in the 60's - Star Wars has poisioned the minds of Hollywood today, except todays creators never experienced the vast possibilities of radio sci-fi. Both Star Wars and Star Trek have become cliche shortcuts for poorly organized writers and management that doesn't care to review the final product before distribution.
Gene Roddenberry wasn't perfect but he was from that generation who grew up in an era of wonderful stories performed by some of the 20th century's most talented actors. That classroom no longer exists.
