From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Tue Mar 06 2001 - 14:53:39 MST
At 11:28am -0500 3/5/01, michael.bast@convergys.com wrote:
>Rodenberry was notoriously anti-genetic engineering. One of the classic
>shows was about Khan, an enhanced tyrant, and Andromeda (another show based
>on his musings) has a race of engineered bad-guys. Trekkies call themselves
>pro-tech, but they're very anti any technology which does more than make
>their lives more entertaining, it seems to me.
I think Roddenberry was an extreme humanist. He was very
pro-technology and pro-human. However, anything that threatened to
change the state of our humanity was banned. The M-5 computer was
evil because it replaced human captains. Khan was evil because he
was engineered beyond human. Dr. Corbitt was evil because he was an
android upload. Androids always failed. Data wanted to turn human.
Anybody who developed super powers beyond human either
self-destructed or transcended out of our universe. No human
advancement or change was ever allowed or considered as a good thing.
Even perfect utopian societies were shown to be evil if humans didn't
retain their control.
I don't think Star Trek was anti-technology. It just didn't take
technology to the extremes of enhancing humanity. Star Trek was so
pro-human, that they refused to consider that maybe humans could be
improved in some way. All human improvements were seen as evil human
tampering.
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com>
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