Farah 🖖🏼🧶🏳️🌈Did they ever give Le Guin credit for that one episode of Strange New Worlds? #StarTrek
Darth Hideout 🏳️🌈I haven't seen it & didn't know, but it doesn't look like it:
@darth_hideout Thats such a tech bro behavior
What bugs me about long-running franchises like this:
By contrast, everything in the orbit of Tolkien that wasn't produced by JRRT himself is fan fiction. Fine, but quite distinct.
All the way back to "The Cage," there were dozens of ppl involved in #StarTrek from the outset, a number of whom are still around. But the only real continuity & what makes it Star Trek is corporate ownership of IP. In the end, it devolves into nothing at all but a corp product.
AlsoPaisleyCat 🇨🇦I have to take you on regarding Tolkien. He specifically said quite the opposite. You can have your view but the author himself has a very different one and went to the effort to publish it.
In the preface to one of the editions of the *Lord of the Rings*, one that I bought in the 1970s, there is a lengthy essay by Tolkien. This was an edition printed in Canada so I don’t necessarily expect that it was in the US ones as there were copyright issues with the US in that period.
In this essay, Tolkien as a Roman Catholic, goes on at length about the difference between God’s creation and his own ‘sub creation’ in world building a fictional history. He sets us a theological justification for the creation of fantasy literature for a Catholic Christian.
He goes on to say that the underlying history that he has created can be told differently from different perspectives and by different authors. And that it will be different than what he has written.
He says that the *Lord of the Rings* is just one literary version of the tale, based on a history written long after the fact by Merry and passed down in the Red Book. It is not necessarily accurate to the underlying fictional history.
More, Tolkien goes on to say that he hoped that other artists will interpret the underlying fictional history in visual arts, poetry and drama/theatre. He specifically said that their versions of the story would be different and could be understood as relying on different historical source documents than Merry’s book.
All to say, that Tolkien anticipated that works based on his fictional ‘sub creation’ would alter major facts and events and quite literally gave this his theological and philosophical support.
You can of course have your own view but it doesn’t reflect the express direction of the original creator that’s being maintained through his estate.
Mason Loring Bliss@AlsoPaisleyCat @darth_hideout @farah Do you still have that book? I'd love to read his essay.
I agree with @darth_hideout about subsequent treatments of Middle-earth being fanfic. I'm inclined to agree with his son Christopher's take on the Jackson movies, for instance. They're extractive.
Both Tolkien's works and Star Trek are flawed creations. I love both regardless.
I'm curious about the Le Guin reference. I haven't read enough of her work. What story of hers was used for what episode?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas
The episode, I believe, was "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach."
I keep thinking:
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
"Or the one."
@darth_hideout @AlsoPaisleyCat @farah Ah, yes, I remember that now. Le Guin was also pilfered for The Giver.
@mason @darth_hideout @AlsoPaisleyCat I thought that was Lois Lowry’s book. Actually I adore that whole giver quartet
@farah @darth_hideout @AlsoPaisleyCat Yeah, but The Giver also derives from Le Guin, I'm saying.
I didn't realize there were sequels to The Giver. I want to read them now. I was annoyed by the vagueness of The Giver's ending.
@farah @darth_hideout @AlsoPaisleyCat Oh, hm. Looks like the sequel doesn't follow the same character. Does the series return to him ever? If it doesn't I might hold off on getting them for now.
@mason
I don’t like saying ‘pilfered’.
There’s such a long history of reworking narratives and myths in drama and comedy. Shakespeare did it — we know where he lifted many of his stories from — and then his plays were repeatedly reworked to fit other media, be it opera or film.
The question is not whether a narrative is reused or adapted to another media, the question is whether it works as its own thing in the new format.
My aunt was a high-school English teacher in the 80s & hated Nick Lowe's "Cruel to Be Kind." She called it plagiarism. I think probably the reason was that her teenage students had no clue about Shakespeare. To some degree the onus was on her to explain to them the otherwise obvious reference. When ever recognizes the source, it's an homage, not plagiarism.
With Kurtzman, one wonders if the lack of acknowledgment is to avoid royalties.
*Omelas* was first published in 1973. It would have been off copyright. It’s also been referenced in many other popular adaptations, not least Discovery season 3.
When Shakespeare took Italian theatre del arte plays and other tales and reworked them, no one outside the theatre community knew them. So, by your test, it was plagiarism? right?
No, I don’t buy it.
And all those attempting to make this point — as a critique that the most recent era of Trek is somehow ‘less original’ — should do some research on where Roddenberry lifted his stories for TOS. Much of what younger fans (and I include younger GenX in that) think was original was nothing of the sort.
Nor did we ever see Roddenberry formally credit his source material. It was only much later in convention panels that he talked about being ’inspired by’ other works.
The original pilot ‘The Cage’ draws significantly from the 1955 MGM movie *Forbidden Planet* which itself drew on Shakespeare’s *The Tempest*. Much of the production design was also taken from that movie — the most expensive film ever made to date — and Roddenberry directly cited it in his pitches to get the pilot made.
*The Balance of Terror* drew very transparently from two classic 1950s submarine movies *The Enemy Below* and *Run Silent, Run Deep.*
There are many more examples…
@AlsoPaisleyCat @darth_hideout @farah 1973 wouldn't be off copyright yet, would it?
https://www.gov.uk/copyright/how-long-copyright-lasts
That said, copyright doesn't cover ideas.
Anyway, back to Tolkien... We can love his work without agreeing with him about what people do with it, or liking what they do with it. My feeling is that he struck so close to perfection that any deviation loses something significant. I also think people have turned his genius into a cash cow.
I guess I was the 1st to change the subject & bring in Tolkien. So my bad.
I've seen none of NuTrek at all & haven't read Omelas. Had no idea what the OP was about. Found the Reddit thread. No real opinion here.
The thing about "Cruel to Be Kind" was intended to support APC's argument that there's a difference btw plagiarism & derivation. CtBK is not plagiarism. Not sure where to draw the line or even a good example of outright plagiarism.
That's all I got.
Gareth 🏴@darth_hideout I can’t speak for the LeGuin stuff, but remember, that episode is a prequel. Maybe it’s one of the defining events in Spock’s life that led him towards that philosophy.
It was presumably easier for him as a Vulcan heading towards middle age (?) to make that decision for himself than it was for the child on that planet. But the child DID do it, and maybe remembering that gave Spock the strength to do what he needed to save the ship.
I’ve always found Trek inconsistent on the “Needs of the Many” type situations. Presumably because they can be very ethically challenging.
Yeah, when the convo started last night, I just kept thinking that as I drifted off to sleep. I haven't seen the SNW ep nor really read a synopsis. I haven't read the LeGuin story either, but am more familiar with the premise.
Spock's self-sacrifice is not comparable to a captive child tortured for the benefit of others against their will. And words, words. It's a simplistic idea that can be twisted around in lots of ways.