The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek

I had to come to IMDb to determine the proper order of the episodes.

This is basically a longer version of William Shatner's great movie, "Chaos on the Bridge"

I was aware of the fact that Gene Roddenberry had been relegated to practically a fan of his own show after his failed interference with The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan.

And I never knew that Gene had a substance-abuse problem, it makes me relate to him a lot more, I know how terrible that can be.

This is a man who single-handedly created one of the largest television franchises ever, and then he was kicked out of it, and cheated out of his well earned royalty monies.

And he has a remarkable success story in how he clawed his way back not only his well deserved royalties but also to being in charge of Star Trek the Next Generation, through the machinations of Leonard Maislish, as told in the episode "Queue for Q". As despicable as the man appeared to be, he is responsible for one thing that we can all be thankful for: he brought John De Lancie in to play Q.

But what was good for Gene Roddenberry was not good for Star Trek the Next Generation, and we get to hear all about that in this series.

Gene personally wrote "The Cage", "The Menagerie", "The Omega Glory", some of the best episodes of the original series. And it even appears as if the original series when renewed for its third season at 10 o'clock Friday night, Lost a lot when Gene stepped down as Producer... so we can't really completely blame the horrible Friday night death slot, but also the fact that the show's main driving force was no longer involved in making the show.

But in this series, we learn about Gene's inability to write a movie script of any worth. Granted, he was a brilliant television producer and television writer. But he wrote script after script for proposed movies, and also the proposed "phase 2" television show which never happened, all miserable failures.

I could not understand how such a brilliant man could fail in this way.

But he made a big comeback for TNG, he was given back all, er, most of the authority that he lost. But he never really wrote any more episodes for television or elsewhere other than half of "Encounter at Farpoint", stepping on DC Fontana's toes in the process.

I was glad that they interviewed Diana Muldaur for this. I always thought that she had deliberately played Dr. Pulaski as if she were a female Doctor McCoy, and I always thought she was brilliant in that role. But I find it sad that she did not like working on the show, especially after adding so much to it.

Every television show has its dark spots, Trek has had its share.

It just goes to show that the cast and crew of this franchise are human beings, nothing more.

This is a brilliant and brutally honest series, expanding upon William Shatner's revelations from "Chaos on the Bridge".

But if you are watching this on Prime, come back to IMDb to find out the proper order of the episodes because they choked the duck, totally mixing up the order of the episodes so that the narrative makes no sense. I actually had to stop playback and come here to find out what was missing.

I can't say that I'm happy with my assessment and I'm sure most others won't be as well, but the pace and editing of this first episode are so bad that I'm having trouble finishing it and may not watch the other three I've recorded.

In Philadelphia, there is the Franklin Institute, a center for science, scientific history, science demonstrations, and industrial scientific testing. It's quite a place and I've gone there since I was very young. It's been a while since I visited, but the last time I was there, drinking in the exhibits around me, I watched as schoolchildren too immature to understand what they were seeing absolutely raced from exhibit to exhibit trying to find the button to push to make the display do something. They would rush up to it, frantically hammer away at whatever initiated the demo, and hunted to see what would happen. If it moved, lit up, make a sound or whatever, they watched for five seconds. If pushing the button didn't result in an INSTANT payoff...two seconds, then on to the next exhibit. Nobody stopped to look, wonder, read, or try to understand what was happening.

I am sure that the editor of this series was one of those kids.

Hyper-fast cuts, contributors flashed on the screen for so short a time that you can see what they look like, what their name is, or what they are saying, pick any two, cut-ins of scenes from shows that might well be funny but go by so quickly that they are blips...this bears all the hallmarks of someone too young to know how to edit for an audience who is seeing the material for the first time, not someone who has been spending hours with each scene. It's an absolute mess. No attention span whatsoever. No depth of examination. No desire to discover, just to get to the next bullet point.

I'm going to boldly go back to the TV now. I think there may be 15 painful minutes left of the fist episode. There are other "history of Star Trek" films and videos that are not frenetic and juvenile that tell the same story.

Harlan Ellison; story of how unhappy he was with the rewrite of, "City on the Edge of Forever" is mentioned. I can only imagine how irate he' d be if he was around to see this mess.

I was born in the late 60s, my dad liked Star Trek TOS when I was a youngster in the 70s and so mum was ok with me watching it too. I really enjoyed the animated series at the time but quickly forgot it as when I was 11 The Motion Picture turned up. Since then there have been a succession of films and series and there's been something new in terms of Star Trek for most of my life.

Having watched now the first 5 episodes it has been wonderful to revisit the beginning, the talented and creative people and real world things that happened. Disputes, tight deadlines and plan B, C or D situations that still somehow came together to create something that has always been really special in my life and that if so many others.

It's been so interesting to see archive footage of some of the team who aren't with us anymore and also learn so many things already (only half way through) that I didn't know before.

Overall it had a lot of ground to cover so kudos there. I did not care for the short takes and goofy approach - whoever decided to take that tack I think a bit over used.

One thing that I noticed after the last episode was besides mentioning the music themes was the lack of the music scoring in general - specifically TOS incidental music - name any show you can recall the music during the episodes (maybe outside of Mission Impossible) that you can, years later, recall the music... Klingon theme, Doomsday/Immunity Syndrome theme, 'spore' music, etc.

Other than that not addressed, it was a decent show. Gates did good job narrating.

And yes Enterprise theme stunk - made me not want to watch.

There's a great documentary about the history of Star Trek to be made but this ain't it. There are some good interviewees -- writers, producers, cast members, and others actually involved with the show -- but there's just as much or more useless stuff from people who just sound like superfans reciting history which should have instead been in the narration. If these people actually do have real expertise/in-depth knowledge, it's not made plain by their onscreen identifications. One is billed as "professor of sociology". So what? Does he teach a Trek class? Has he written a book? Why is he being interviewed instead of some other professor? If you want me to care what he has to say, how about telling me his actual credentials on the subject matter? Another is said to be a "writer and producer". Writer of what? Producer of what? Those who actually worked on Trek shows are identified as such, so who is this guy and why should I care about his opinions?

As for the actual narration, instead of an informative voice we get Gates McFadden doing her best to sound like she's saying interesting things--and regularly being forced to repeat herself because this is designed with ad breaks in mind--often in an inappropriately silly/jokey way. Her disembodied voice sometimes literally "interacts" with the interviewees, which I found to be a distractingly awful stylistic choice.

Worst of all is what's onscreen when it's not interviews or snippets from the shows/movies themselves. Every time D. C. Fontana is mentioned, they trot out the exact same picture -- a weird glamour shot from when she was very young. Roddenberry is represented by three, maybe four, repeatedly recycled photos. They endlessly reuse two photos of Robert Wise but only one of him actually on set of The Motion Picture. At some point, it becomes embarrassing how little effort the producers of this spent researching archival materials. And there's also absolutely moronic cutaway inserts of things like film being placed into a can, pointless stock footage and, in one particularly cringeworthy moment somebody's disembodied hands pounding on a table because an interviewee is telling a story which ends that way. Much of these--particularly the stock footgae--get repeated many times as well. These are the choices of people who have no business making documentaries and/or greedy Paramount executives who want to promote the cash-cow they've been milking for gazillions of dollars in the cheapest way possible, with no actual respect for the people who produced it for them.