A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

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

The Arsenal of Freedom   Stardate 41798.2 (Earth Calendar Year 2364)   Original Air Date: April 11, 1988   Written by Richard Manning and Hans Beimler   Story by Maurice Hurley and Robert Lewin   Directed by Les Landau       On stardate 41798.2, the  Galaxy- class  Starship USS Enterprise  (NCC-1701-D), under the command of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), arrives at Minos, a Class M world located in the Lorenze Cluster.  Her assignment: to find any trace of the missing  USS Drake  (NCC-20381), a Federation starship of the  Wambundu  class commanded by Capt. Paul Rice (Marco Rodriguez).  For the  Enterprise’s  First Officer, Commander Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes), the disappearance of the  Drake  is of interest on both a professional and personal level, for not only is Capt. Rice a friend of Riker’s from their Academy days, but Riker had been offered command of the  Drake , an assignment he had turned down to serve aboard the  Enterprise.   The  Enterprise  scans Minos for li

In 1991, the  Star Trek  franchise celebrated its 25th Anniversary.  Although the feature films which starred the cast from  The Original Series (TOS)  had lost some momentum due to the lackluster performance of  Star Trek V: The Final Frontier,  Paramount Pictures greenlit writer-director Nicholas Meyer’s  Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country  and scheduled its release date for early December of 1991.  Although  Star Trek VI  had a few plot points and one crossover appearance by actor Michael Dorn, the  TNG  producers came up with a clever concept: why not have an episode set in the  TNG era  that obliquely referred to the events of  The Undiscovered Country  which would star Leonard Nimoy as Spock?  For  TNG’s  executive producer Rick Berman, Gene Roddenberry’s chosen “heir” to produce  TNG  and any possible spinoffs, this idea had a lot of appeal.  An episode which featured Spock in a major way would excite the fans and give the show great ratings, while at the same time

1991 – the same year in which a U.S.-led coalition forced Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to retreat from Kuwait and the world witnessed the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union – was particularly noteworthy for  Star Trek  fans.  In September, the franchise celebrated its Silver Anniversary; 25 years before (on Sept. 8, 1966),  Star Trek: The Original Series  had had its premiere on NBC and won over an initially modest but loyal fan base which embraced the spacefaring adventures of the  Starship Enterprise  and her crew.  Though  Star Trek  was never a Nielsen ratings champ and lacked a great deal of support from either NBC or Paramount, it was kept on the air (barely) by the fans who wanted to see Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner), First Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Dr. McCoy carry out the  Enterprise’s  five-year mission “to explore strange new worlds.  To seek out new life and new civilizations.  To boldly go where no man has gone before.”  (Alas, the f