A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

“Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season One” In the fall of 1986, following the success of “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”,  Paramount Pictures’ television division convinced  Gene Roddenberry to create a new Star Trek series. Roddenberry agreed after the studio agreed to give him creative control of the series, a condition he set because Paramount had placed Harve Bennett in charge of the post-”Star Trek: The Motion Picture” feature films several years before. The veteran “Star Trek” creator  reunited most of the Original Series’ brain trust, including D.C. Fontana, Robert H. Justman, Edward Milkis, and David Gerrold, and came up with a new concept built on the foundation of the 1966-1969 TV series and its movie spin-offs and yet stood on its own storytelling merits.     The new show was set almost 100 years after Captain James T. Kirk’s original five-year mission and featured a new Starship Enterprise. Given the Starfleet registry number NCC-1701-D, the   Galaxy- cla

I don’t know if anyone reading this remembers Connections, a British TV import hosted by the congenial writer and commentator James Burke that was broadcast here in the U.S. by the Public Broadcasting System in the early 1980s. This 10-part miniseries explored the intricate and seemingly strange connections between individual scientific discoveries and simple inventions.  It also showed how those links forged the chain of our modern technological society.   Considering its theme and scope, Connections could have been about as exciting as watching paint dry, but Burke’s wit and effervescence made it both fascinating and indelible. I mention this seemingly irrelevant tidbit because after I watched that series while I was in high school, I became more aware that history and historical events don’t just “happen” and leave no lasting legacy.  After all, if this were the case, there would have been no Second World War 21 years after the end of the First World War. However, as