DBWI: What If "To The Stars" (1958-1964) Had Never Been Broadcast?

As we all know the series To The Stars (NBC-TV) was initially created by science-fiction author by L. Ron Hubbard in 1958 until 1964. With the series celebrating its 50th anniversary, J.J. Abrams is planning a To The Stars film which will be the first film of the franchise, since the 1994 film. Apparently it will show the first meeting between Captain Johnnie "Goodboy" Tyler and the Xenu, with Tom Cruise as the popular captain. Apparently John Travolta will play the evil Xenu Captain Terl. As such, what are your thought son the series? What affect has this had on history?
 
I've seen the movie of "To The Stars" they made in 1968, and it just looks like cheap schlock SF to me. Yes, I know it was popular at the time, but it's INCREDIBLY white-bread and cliche. Maybe it's unfair to compare "To The Stars" with "Starship Constellation" (SC being made after TTS), but Captain Pike does beat the hell out of Captain Tyler. And at least SC had some ethnic diversity with Ortegas, Uhura and Dr Sulu.

(OOC: "Starship Constellation" is TTL's "Star Trek". The Enterprise is the SS Constellation. Incidentally, Ortegas is the Latino navigator who ended up becoming Tyler in "The Cage", and Sulu is the ship's biologist as he was in "Where No Man Has Gone Before")
 
I've seen the movie of "To The Stars" they made in 1968, and it just looks like cheap schlock SF to me. Yes, I know it was popular at the time, but it's INCREDIBLY white-bread and cliche. Maybe it's unfair to compare "To The Stars" with "Starship Constellation" (SC being made after TTS), but Captain Pike does beat the hell out of Captain Tyler. And at least SC had some ethnic diversity with Ortegas, Uhura and Dr Sulu.

(OOC: "Starship Constellation" is TTL's "Star Trek". The Enterprise is the SS Constellation. Incidentally, Ortegas is the Latino navigator who ended up becoming Tyler in "The Cage", and Sulu is the ship's biologist as he was in "Where No Man Has Gone Before")
I am not so sure about the issue of diversity. With the series To The Stars: The Next Generation, starting in 1979, you had Lt. Macha Hernandez play to the stereotypes of Latina/Chicana women in the worst ways (OOC: The role Marina Sirtis originally auditioned for). The relationship between Commander William "Will" Decker and Lieutenant Ilia served to alienate enough feminists that the National Organization of Women (NOW) with the protest in 1982. The character of Lieutenant Xon (David Gaitreaux) was so dull, that he was "killed of" and replaced with Sonak.
 
I am not so sure about the issue of diversity. With the series To The Stars: The Next Generation, starting in 1979, you had Lt. Macha Hernandez play to the stereotypes of Latina/Chicana women in the worst ways (OOC: The role Marina Sirtis originally auditioned for). The relationship between Commander William "Will" Decker and Lieutenant Ilia served to alienate enough feminists that the National Organization of Women (NOW) with the protest in 1982. The character of Lieutenant Xon (David Gaitreaux) was so dull, that he was "killed of" and replaced with Sonak.
(OOC: Okay, you've fucked up in several ways here:
1. "To The Stars" and "Starship Constellation" are two separate TV shows. They're not linked. One is L Ron Hubbard's show, the other is Gene Roddenberry's show. So why do you have Star Trek characters in the show that isn't the ATL Star Trek?
2. Lt Macha Hernandez wasn't created until 1986 or 1987 for ST:TNG, and even then she was basically copied from Vasquez from "Aliens". Having Hernandez around in 1979 is anachronistic.
3. For that matter, the idea of a "The Next Generation" is anachronistic as well. It makes absolutely no sense why they'd want to make a spinoff series of "Starship Constellation" with new characters in 1979. Maybe a spinoff of "To The Stars" makes sense though.
4. David Gautreaux is a good actor.

So I'm just going to fake around what you've said so it makes some kind of sense. Basically I'll ignore the character and actor names you gave.)

See, that's the thing - "Starship Constellation" did diversity well by not making the characters into stereotypes (well, maybe Scotty was a bit of a Scotsman stereotype, but Uhura wasn't some stereotypical black woman, Sulu wasn't a stereotypical Asian man, and Ortegas was deliberately conceived as being in opposition to the steretypical Latino man in being completely socially awkward). When "To The Stars" tried to inject some diversity into their spinoff they completely screwed up.

Makes me wonder how this new "To The Stars" movie ever got the green light, really. Still, the whole thing has been very secret, and there have been all these "reboot" rumours...
 
Just to add on to my previous thoughts:

Having thought about it, it's actually kinda obvious how "To The Stars" (2008) ended up getting greenlit: it's an "ALL-STAR REMAKE!" I mean, it's got Tom Cruise and John Travolta in it. John Travolta as Captain Terl? If you were going to seriously cast anyone to play the role of Tyler's arch-nemesis, it'd be someone like Andreas Katsulas (only, y'know, not so dead). This is probably going to be another "Starsky and Hutch".
 
(OOC: Okay, you've fucked up in several ways here:
1. "To The Stars" and "Starship Constellation" are two separate TV shows. They're not linked. One is L Ron Hubbard's show, the other is Gene Roddenberry's show. So why do you have Star Trek characters in the show that isn't the ATL Star Trek?
2. Lt Macha Hernandez wasn't created until 1986 or 1987 for ST:TNG, and even then she was basically copied from Vasquez from "Aliens". Having Hernandez around in 1979 is anachronistic.
3. For that matter, the idea of a "The Next Generation" is anachronistic as well. It makes absolutely no sense why they'd want to make a spinoff series of "Starship Constellation" with new characters in 1979. Maybe a spinoff of "To The Stars" makes sense though.
4. David Gautreaux is a good actor.

So I'm just going to fake around what you've said so it makes some kind of sense. Basically I'll ignore the character and actor names you gave.)

See, that's the thing - "Starship Constellation" did diversity well by not making the characters into stereotypes (well, maybe Scotty was a bit of a Scotsman stereotype, but Uhura wasn't some stereotypical black woman, Sulu wasn't a stereotypical Asian man, and Ortegas was deliberately conceived as being in opposition to the steretypical Latino man in being completely socially awkward). When "To The Stars" tried to inject some diversity into their spinoff they completely screwed up.

Makes me wonder how this new "To The Stars" movie ever got the green light, really. Still, the whole thing has been very secret, and there have been all these "reboot" rumours...

OOC: The supposed problems can actually be explained in the idea that the To The Stars: The Next Generation was a blind and half-@#$$'d attempt to cash in on the "diversity index" of other science fiction franchises. As for the character names, I would simply point to the many similarities between Babylon 5 and Star Trek: DS9 which caused J. Michael Stracyzinski to consider a lawsuit. The novel To The Stars was a "world-ship" which was trying to find a new home for humanity, thus explaining why it could be a "new generation" of ship's crew..

IC: Well, personally, I hope that it is at least better than the remake of Lost in Space:The New Voyages (FOX-TV) fraturing Heather Graham and Matt Le Blanc from Friends (NBC-TV). The fact that they were able to make it last 3 seasons before someone pulled the plug is truly disturbing...
 
OOC: The supposed problems can actually be explained in the idea that the To The Stars: The Next Generation was a blind and half-@#$$'d attempt to cash in on the "diversity index" of other science fiction franchises. As for the character names, I would simply point to the many similarities between Babylon 5 and Star Trek: DS9 which caused J. Michael Stracyzinski to consider a lawsuit.

(OOC: Sorry. The thing is you said "To The Stars" and then you started talking about Star Trek characters, so it looked like you'd blended the two together for some reason. "To The Stars: The Next Generation" does make perfect sense on its own, as do the diversity problems - the only thing that doesn't work is the characters in question being Hernandez, Ilia, Decker and Xon. By the way, your excuse about the names isn't very good.)

Heather Graham was OK, but I agree that Matt LeBlanc stank - so did that kid who played Will Robinson.

Anyway, maybe we should actually get on topic d'you think? :D A world without "To The Stars"... it's entirely possible that "Starship Constellation" would never have been made. It did get greenlit off the popularity of "To The Stars", and the network was willing to look past its more highbrow material in order to snag it as a suitable successor show. Without "To The Stars", if "Starship Constellation" gets greenlit at all you can say goodbye to Number One, Uhura, and probably Ortegas too.

Here's something I'll bet you don't know: "Starship Constellation" was originally called "Star Trek" (sounds rather South African, doesn't it?) but they were ordered to change it because it sounded too similar to "To The Stars". That's also why the ship was called "Constellation" - before the title change, it was going to be called the "Yorktown".
 
(OOC: Sorry. The thing is you said "To The Stars" and then you started talking about Star Trek characters, so it looked like you'd blended the two together for some reason. "To The Stars: The Next Generation" does make perfect sense on its own, as do the diversity problems - the only thing that doesn't work is the characters in question being Hernandez, Ilia, Decker and Xon. By the way, your excuse about the names isn't very good.)

Heather Graham was OK, but I agree that Matt LeBlanc stank - so did that kid who played Will Robinson.

Anyway, maybe we should actually get on topic d'you think? :D A world without "To The Stars"... it's entirely possible that "Starship Constellation" would never have been made. It did get greenlit off the popularity of "To The Stars", and the network was willing to look past its more highbrow material in order to snag it as a suitable successor show. Without "To The Stars", if "Starship Constellation" gets greenlit at all you can say goodbye to Number One, Uhura, and probably Ortegas too.

Here's something I'll bet you don't know: "Starship Constellation" was originally called "Star Trek" (sounds rather South African, doesn't it?) but they were ordered to change it because it sounded too similar to "To The Stars". That's also why the ship was called "Constellation" - before the title change, it was going to be called the "Yorktown".

OOC: With the characters of Xon and Ilia, consider them "appropriations" by Glen A. Larsen and L. Ron Hubbard. There are aliens who joined the crew of the ship after a situation like in Space:1999 or Star Trek: Voyager, where the ship happens to pick up "hitchhiking aliens" along its journey...

IC: Personally David Gaitreaux was a pretty bad actor. Notice that after he left the series Gaitreaux was often stuck in those horrible films with Michael Bienh and Jeff Fahey thoughout the 1980s. Last year (2007) he was on The Surreal Life (VH-1).

As for life without the series To The Stars, I doubt that science fiction would have been taken seriously as a genre. Just remember that it was a genre that was often relegated to the likes of children's shows such as Lost in Space or Thunderbirds. I seriously doubt the serious political messages of the "New Frontier" would have been utilized in the series. Why do you think that Kennedy's speech of "Going to the Moon.." in1962, was featured so prominantly in the trailer for the 2008 film. My guess is that Starship Constellation would have been trapped in the language of the LBJ and Nixon eras, creating a less optimistic vision of the future...
 
OOC: With the characters of Xon and Ilia, consider them "appropriations" by Glen A. Larsen and L. Ron Hubbard. There are aliens who joined the crew of the ship after a situation like in Space:1999 or Star Trek: Voyager, where the ship happens to pick up "hitchhiking aliens" along its journey...
(OOC: Assuming they haven't been butterflied away...)
Personally David Gaitreaux was a pretty bad actor. Notice that after he left the series Gaitreaux was often stuck in those horrible films with Michael Bienh and Jeff Fahey thoughout the 1980s. Last year (2007) he was on The Surreal Life (VH-1).
It's Gautreaux, not Gaitreaux. And most of his work has been in theatre ever since "To The Stars: The Next Generation" ended.
As for life without the series To The Stars, I doubt that science fiction would have been taken seriously as a genre. Just remember that it was a genre that was often relegated to the likes of children's shows such as Lost in Space or Thunderbirds. I seriously doubt the serious political messages of the "New Frontier" would have been utilized in the series. Why do you think that Kennedy's speech of "Going to the Moon.." in1962, was featured so prominantly in the trailer for the 2008 film. My guess is that Starship Constellation would have been trapped in the language of the LBJ and Nixon eras, creating a less optimistic vision of the future...
"To The Stars" was pretty cheap and B-movie-ish as well, looking back. I doubt it was taken seriously either - rather, it was just viewed as cheap entertainment. Science fiction on screen wasn't really taken seriously until "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Gene Roddenberry did say that one of his main intentions in creating "Starship Constellation" was to put forth political messages and thought-provoking discussion within a fantastical medium (as opposed to a realistic medium, like his previous show "The Lieutenant" which was cancelled for being too controversial). And Roddenberry was a utopian so I very much doubt the tone would be very different.

"To The Stars" was much more spiritual than political in its commentary, I think (with all that weird stuff about reincarnation and becoming "clear of all engrams"...)
 
Well TTS is practically a religion amongst the nerds and rejects of the world today. Without Hubbard's work to look up to where would they be? On the streets? I shudder to think! :p
 
It's Gautreaux, not Gaitreaux. And most of his work has been in theatre ever since "To The Stars: The Next Generation" ended.

That still doesn't change the fact that Gautreaux is mainly known for his appearence in "grindhouse" films such as The Philadelphia Experiment 2, The Return of the Living Dead, and The Hat Squad. While he has certainly worked on some Tony-Award winning productions, he is definitely more remembered for the bad films of the 1980s, much like David Hasselhoff...

"To The Stars" was pretty cheap and B-movie-ish as well, looking back. I doubt it was taken seriously either - rather, it was just viewed as cheap entertainment. Science fiction on screen wasn't really taken seriously until "2001: A Space Odyssey".

I wouldn't be so sure. You certainly had Robert Heinlein and Harlan Ellison write many of the scripts for the series. Just look at the episodes such as "The Iressistable Mr. Podakyne", "Have Space Suit- Will Travel!" or "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistresss", which had some interesting political viewpoints. Also the 1950s and 1960s wouldn't be complete without the phrase "grok" being used as a insult. According to the series guides, apparently Hubbard and Heinlein clashed over the direction of the series many times....

(OOC: This one's for Berra)


Gene Roddenberry did say that one of his main intentions in creating "Starship Constellation" was to put forth political messages and thought-provoking discussion within a fantastical medium (as opposed to a realistic medium, like his previous show "The Lieutenant" which was cancelled for being too controversial). And Roddenberry was a utopian so I very much doubt the tone would be very different.

"To The Stars" was much more spiritual than political in its commentary, I think (with all that weird stuff about reincarnation and becoming "clear of all engrams"...)
Well Hubbard was often a very spiritual man, and was certainly influenced by the pentecostal preaching of people in his home state of Louisiana. His ongoing conflict between "theta" (good) and "entheta" (bad), certainly had Biblical overtones.

Admittedly, the Marcab Confederacy clearly had Cold War overtones with its idea that Marcab Confederacy invented income tax as a means of punishment, with the death penalty imposed for making even the slightest mistake in returns — "one comma wrong and it's 'dead forever'." The Marcabians also appear to have been distinctly socialistic, having "had plan balanced economies" (presumably some form of planned economy). Even today, many antitax leaders use "Marcab" as an insult....

As to the rumors of "To The Stars" being a basis for religion, that would seem to be an ASB stretch. Who could take a religion based on stories rejected by Amazing Stories seriously as religious text? (OOC: That's for Leej)
 
That thread about the Hubbard Religion (Scientism?) is over in the ASB forum I think.

In his autobiography Hubbard went into how he had worked for years on the "To The Stars" concept, interestingly similar to how much work JRR Tolkien had put into his works.
 
That thread about the Hubbard Religion (Scientism?) is over in the ASB forum I think.

In his autobiography Hubbard went into how he had worked for years on the "To The Stars" concept, interestingly similar to how much work JRR Tolkien had put into his works.
But L. Ron Hubbard still needed writers like Issac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold, and Harlan Ellison in an effort to make a semi-decent television series. The fact that Hubbard's estate hasn't released any other books outside of the To the Stars franchise is a sign of how much talent he actually had....
 
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