The Cheapening of Star Trek
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Cheapening of Star Trek |
| Creator: | Ed Dahlheimer |
| Date(s): | Sept/Oct 1973 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: TOS, Star Trek: TAS |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Cheapening of Star Trek is a 1973 essay by Ed Dahlheimer.
It was printed in Hailing Frequency #4 with this introduction: "The author is Associate Editor of THE MIRROR, official newspaper of the Catholic Church in the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese (southern third of Missouri), and writes a weekly column, A Mirror of Movies and TV, which appears in that publication."
Some Topics Discussed
- unhappiness that Star Trek: The Animated Series was made as it cheapens and demeans the show, as well as its original audience
- science fiction and its fans already have an uphill battle to be accepted and respected, and the animated series ruins whatever gains Star Trek had made in this genre
- Star Trek had a message of "subtle and profound messages"
- there's always hope, includes a description of a scene from a Marlon Brando movie about Emiliano Zapato's death and the sight of his prancing white horse as a message of optimism for the common people
- a brief description of fan fervor and activities after the cancellation of the original show
- Gene Roddenberry sold out for money
- "We think that perhaps the memory of the STAR TREK would be better than this cartoonifying
of it."
From the Essay
The Starship Enterprise and its crew are now, indeed, truly "going where no man has gone before" — into the Saturday morning world of TV cartoons. They won't (hopefully) have to battle the squeeky-voiced witches and ogres and duh-duh-talking giants that all the other characters on Saturday morning eventually encounter, but the program will be effectively surrounded by them, and, by the same token, surrounded and infiltrated by the assinine [sic] commercials which the powers-that-be seem to think are at a level appropriate to the viewing youngster's intelligence — for which the viewing youngster ought to kick in the screen and go take a walk in the sun.
Yes, STAR TREK, the mighty and (rarest of things in TV) meaningful series which has imaginatively graced the airwaves for several years, including, even up to the present time, re-runs on those channels whose management was perceptive enough to schedule the show, has now become a cartoon series. How terrific.
And the thing is being touted widely as "good news for STAR TREK fans! In our view, it's probably the ultimate in bad news for STAR TREK fans, and for "fans" of any truly worthwhile Enterprise surviving in its original form on the tube, without manipulation and degradation by the characters at the top.
To a multitude of devoted viewers, the cancellation of this series some years back was in itself tantamount to sacrilege; now its so-called "return" in animated form on that weekly feast day of the goblins, will probably go on record, among those who care, as one of the greatest slaps in the face to artistry and creativity in the annals of television. (Some walking vegetables at the network think all kids go for goblins; and worse, the same walking vegetables think - and this is only because they never watched and/or understood the original series - that STAR TREK is mainly for kids in the first place, which it never was.)
STAR TREK was not only a cut above the rest of the genre, but we'll to say several cuts above. It also contained subtle and profound messages -- about brotherhood, about common sense, about the straightening out of some twisted values in our own present-day world, all meandering through a coherently and consistently created world of the future and personified in a cast of believable and reality-founded characters -- portrayed by human actors. The weekly episodes weren't just good vehicles to hang the messages on; they were stories of good -- and often great -- quality in their own right.