Harlan seemed like the kind of guy who'd sue you for looking at you funny. Of course he should've also known a script with drug pushing as part of the plot wouldn't make it past Standards intact.
He was an edgelord before there was a name for it. Though if there had been a name for it, he would claimed he invented it and sued anyone for using it.
Actually, Roddenberry's objection was that he truly believed that 200-250 years in the future, mankind would be living in a kind of utopia and nobody would be a drug addict, and there would be no illegal drug market. Harlan -- correctly, I think -- pointed out that there were Vietnam soldiers who were selling and using drugs overseas, and felt this tied into that. Harlan could actually be a very kind, loyal friend, and did several favors for me over the years that helped me immensely. (But I also helped him win $250,000 in the "Brillo" lawsuit, so I was in a good position overall.)
They did allow for the series a proper close off. If you liked it, you might like the Spanish show El ministerio del tiempo - Wikipedia which, supposedly, Timeless was ripped off from.
Gunbuster (anime OAV). Time traveling is via time dilation when, if you get close to the speed of light time passes slower for you than for those back home, so you end up taking a leap into the future. Without spoiling too much, on one mission they are assigned to investigate a ship that is traveling close to the speed of light. They manage to check out the ship but they spend 10 seconds too long before dropping out of near-light speed. As a result, when they returned home it was 6 months later than when they should have returned.
I am glad they were able to wrap up the series, but it all happened way too fast. I wish they could have split the wrap up in maybe three, two hour movies.
He always struck me as a fierce friend but also called things as they were. I only met him one time speaking with him for about an hour or so and I always admired his endless curiosity and creativity. Just a single snapshot captured in a moment in time but, as a fan and someone who wanted to write, it was a big deal. His kindness did not go unnoticed and was appreciated. He didn’t have to give me his time or advice but he gave both freely.
I know that "Utopia" came up by the time of TNG. But with TOS, there were plenty of bad apples in Starfleet on TOS, or even on the Enterprise. You had people building Nazi societies or having their men slaughtered by Roman doppelgangers, and those guys were supposed to be on Kirk's side! The bad guy in The Omega Glory was pretty bad, and I think Roddenberry wrote that one. I read Ellison's version. I didn't think the drug dealer character added any value. A character that doesn't add any value has got to go. The replacement of McCoy accidently injecting himself with drugs, then becoming temporarily insane, is kludgy and far less than ideal, it's true. The drug dealer character is less awkward, as he has reason to flee. But... the character just wasn't worth the emotional heft he wound up carrying. It's a one shot character, not a likable character. Putting the weight of the universe on that character's shoulders just didn't work.
I'm speaking mainly of TNG, but Roddenberry vetoed quite a few things that would have added more conflict to the show. In particular, he also disliked the "humorous" episodes like "The Trouble with Tribbles," and reportedly longtime producer Gene Coon left the show at the end of the second season because of arguments about "tone" in Star Trek. Harlan has said many times that the core of what he had written for "City on the Edge of Forever" was the WWI soldier, who had some philosophical musings that added to the anti-war sentiment of what was going on. I think Roddenberry, D.C. Fontana, and Coon all felt it slowed down the episode too much, so they jettisoned the character and reused some of the dialogue with the other characters. An entire book has been written on Harlan's original script and it goes into tremendous detail about what was changed and what survived. While Ellison spoke out against the show quite a few times and his longtime feud with Roddenberry, I know he was pleased on some level that his episode was regarded as the best the series ever did, and he was very proud of winning the WGA for his original script (and not the rewritten script). There was a period of Gene's life where he could be very kind and generous, and on the two occasions I met him in the 1970s, he was terrific and very nice. But if you watch the documentary Chaos on the Bridge, you'll see that his life took a tragic turn in the 1980s, and TNG really went off the rails for awhile, as Roddenberry's health deteriorated and there was a big power struggle on the show.
Frequency.. Dennis Quaid. Interesting time - travel film 1969-1990. End credits tune, a bit soppy for my liking.
Some decent stories from the Voyager franchise of Star Trek Star Trek Voyager: Year of Hell Pt 1 & 2 Kurtwood Smith plays a serious villain attempting to both eradicate an entire species from the galaxy and restore his wife from the dead. Star Trek Voyager: Living Witness The holographic doctor wakes up hundreds of years in the future to find that his ship's history has been inaccurately recreated in an alien museum portraying the crew as merciless killers Star Trek Voyager: Timeless Two of the Voyager crew members travel back in time to stop the ship from being destroyed Star Trek Voyager: Relativity A time ship in the 29th century repeatedly pulls a crew member to defuse a temporal bomb before it can destory the ship in the 24th century, only to find that a future version of the timeship's Captain planted the bomb, as revenge for Voyager causing him to once spend 30 years in the 20th century Star Trek Voyager: Shattered When the ship encounters a temporal anomaly, that causes the different sections to exist in different points in time, only the first officer is able to pass between the different time barriers. Star Trek Voyager: Endgame The Captain travels back in time to help the ship get back to Earth without certain crewmembers having to die along the way
Time Trap 2017 A Netflix movie about an archeology professor and his students who discover a cave where time passes at different speeds. Didn't get great reviews, but I enjoyed it for what it was.
Dark made my brain hurt...not for the way the subtitled constantly differed from the English dubbing...but because it would have been easier to follow with a family chart, so you could recognize the different actors playing the same characters, quicker.
Yeah, I had a hard time following all of that by the time season three came along. I found a chart/tree online that helped a lot.
I can't help coming to the conclusion that American viewers just aren't that smart, if somebody had to go through all the trouble of creating one. There is one on their Wikipedia entry, for instance. For some reason, I found the world-to-world transitions in the series Fringe, to be a lot easier for instant-re-orientation, due to the consistent coloring of the scenes in different worlds. There was a little of that in Dark as well, but perhaps more subtle. The extra complexity of so many different aged actors for the same characters, was a real challenge, that could have perhaps been easier to take, if the series itself had provided some sort of a warning (you don't need to give up the surprises in the narrative, just give the audience a heads-up that they might need to pay extra care to the settings and different actors, so you can actually follow the storyline, instead of constantly focusing on where you are, and who you're watching).
I would disagree about the ending scenes. Garth Brooks recording perfectly adds to those scenes that show how everything changed for the better with the time travel changes. After everything that came before, it really (for me) is a tear up moment...
Primer is one of the best time travel movies ever made, considering there's no special effects. Even though it created by and for math and science geeks, Primer assumes the viewer is smart enough to understand what's going on. It usually requires multiple viewings but luckily the film is short. I really like how the two protagonists' moral and ethical reservations (always a decisive point in any good time travel narrative) just go out the window once they've passed the threshold.
The 1969 period setting was effective ( rock bands music ) .. the films villain reminded me of Al Pacino, Serpico.
