The end of a sci-fi era:
/Film -
Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, died today of leukemia at her home in Bel-Air at the age of 76. She went peacefully and was surrounded by her son Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry Jr and family friends.
Majel Barrett has appeared in every incarnation of the popular science fiction series and is sometimes referred to as “the First Lady of Star Trek”.
There are some great, rare photos of the original series including Majel here.
In spite of the fact that the original Star Trek and especially Star Trek: TNG were solidly utopian socialist, I always enjoyed the shows. I wish the world could be as Roddenberry dreamed it could be.
Hmm, I never knew she played Troi’s mom. That’s neat.
What irked me was how the shows got more liberal as time went on. Whereas Kirk was willing to kill people and supported capital punishment, you eventually heard Janeway mention that the Federation had banned executions. Janeway even stood willing to sacrifice her whole crew just to keep from turning over a Species 8472 to some hunters who wanted to kill it. Argh!
“What irked me was how the shows got more liberal as time went on.”
Agreed, and I think this was the death knell to all the different versions of the series…and since there aren’t anymore of the ST shows running anymore (other than syndication)…
…interestingly enough, the last show that stopped production on TV was a prequel, and the next movie will also be a prequel.
The whole prequel premise is so annoying (and overdone!) that I never felt the desire to get into that latest series. But I did see a couple episodes of it recently, and it was fairly watchable. The Vulcan woman wasn’t real likeable, though. Supposedly Enterprise was the first series since the original to get cancelled due to low ratings.
I’ll probably go see that new movie, but like I said, the whole prequel thing is getting really old! I guess they just figure that with the Borg and the Dominion and all the other advanced races and wars, they’ve kind of exhausted the modern universe.
I predict that in about 15 years they will create a sixth series, and it will take place 50 years after Deep Space Nine left off. Until then, we’ll be stuck with prequel movies if anything.