Posts

Showing posts with the label James Sloyan

TV Episode Review: 'Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Defector'

Image
Pros:  Solid script. Great performance by James Sloyan.  Gripping Cold War-style tale Cons:  A few plot holes and other minor errors Although Gene Roddenberry did not conceive  Star Trek  as a "space war" action-adventure series when he pitched it to the Big Three networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) in the mid-1960s, he realized that if he wanted his show to be an outlet for socio-cultural commentary on American and world society he would need to create interstellar adversaries to his United Federation of Planets. Because in storytelling terms the Federation is a 23rd Century "America-in-futuristic-avatar," Roddenberry and the  Star Trek  writers created two different stand-ins for the now-vanished Soviet Union: the Romulan Star Empire and the Klingon Empire. a In  Star Trek: The Original Series  and its six feature film spin-offs ,  the Klingon Empire was the predominant "Soviet" stand-in, appearing in seven episodes of the 1960s TV series and s