A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 1983, 2004 WGBH Boston The Series On Tuesday, October 4, 1983, PBS stations across the U.S. aired Roots of a War (1945-1953) , the first of 13 parts of Vietnam: A Television History. Co-produced by WGBH, Boston's PBS station, with Britain's Central Independent Television/UK and France's Antenne-2 in association with  LRE Productions, this documentary miniseries was an in-depth look at America's "lost crusade" in Vietnam, starting with France's failed attempt to reassert its colonial authority after World War II and ending with America's withdrawal from Southeast Asia and the North Vietnamese capture of Saigon, South Vietnam's capital. The series - as the New York Times' reviewer wrote in 1983 - was "a landmark of television journalism" because it attempted to " tell us what things were, not what we might have liked them to be."  The conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal called it "an extraordinary film...

Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Two   Background: Capt. Picard:  There's still much to do; still so much to learn. Mr. La Forge - engage!   –“The Neutral Zone” (Season One  finale) Star Trek: The Next Generation’s  (ST-TNG) first season officially ended with these optimistic words on May 16, 1988. On that date, many television stations broadcast  The Neutral Zone,  the 26th and last first-run episode of the syndicated show’s premiere season. Created by Gene Roddenberry at the insistence of Paramount Pictures,  ST-TNG  was a daring concept for its time. Intended to be a sequel to the canceled  Star Trek  TV series that aired on NBC  in the late 1960s, The Next Generation  was one of the first direct-to-syndication series produced. Paramount had shopped the show’s concept to ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, but – to the studio’s relief – was turned down. Paramount Television and Roddenberry were secretly glad about the big net...

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Season One       Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship  Enterprise.  Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.       Background   In the summer of 1986, Paramount Pictures was on a collective “high” about  Star Trek.   Much to the studio’s surprise, Gene Roddenberry’s sci-fi TV show was now the company’s crown jewel franchise. It survived cancellation by the NBC TV network in 1969 by becoming a hit in syndication. In 1973,  Star Trek  returned briefly to network television via Filmation’s   Star Trek: The Animated Series .  Plans for theatrical films and TV movies came and went, but by 1977, plans were underway to launch an updated version of the show as the flagship of the Paramount Television Service.  The new series,  Star Tre...