Society for Aesthetic Deletions

I have to question Card's taste. As much as I enjoy Lost, it's hardly the "finest television science fiction series of all time". Also, he must not have seen much of the current season of Smallville, because...well we'll just leave it at that.

And I say this as someone who never liked much Star Trek after TNG.

He actually does have nice things to say about Smallville and Firefly just after that Lost quote...

But to say that the original Trek ignored Ellison when, in fact, Ellison wrote one of the best episodes (albeit with many changes before broadcast) is just silly.

I know he said nice things about Smallville, which is why I commented the way I did - fourth season has been terrible in my opinion :)

Ahh... I've never watched it (didn't like the first 2 eps, found other things to do with my time), so I didn't catch the sarcasm.

Ghoul makes a good point, but it's worse than he thinks - a quick browse of Trek Nation's episode guide turned up the following SF writers who all contributed to ST:TOS:

"What Are Little Girls Made Of", "Catspaw", "Wolf in the Fold" - written by Robert Bloch

"Shore Leave", "Amok Time" - written by Theodore Sturgeon

"The City on the Edge of Forever" - written by Harlan Ellison

"The Doomsday Machine" - written by Norman Spinrad

Bloch is probably better known for horror than for SF, but he's also done Lovecraftian SF, so even if it's not your cup of tea, I still believe it counts. And this doesn't even include David Gerrold, who basically started his SF writing career with Star Trek.

Of course, the presence of Sturgeon on the list reminds me of his eponymous Law - 90% of SF is crap, but then, 90% of everything is crap.

Card's wrong on one point. Folks didn't flock to ST:TOS because they "weren't reading all that brilliant science fiction" out there. They flocked to it because it was *the only game in town.*

SF, to that point, and not counting anthologies like TZ and OL, was basically Irwin Allen's wasteland -- Time Tunnel and Lost in Space and VttBotS. Compared to those, ST:TOS was like Citizen Kane (and remained the gold standard until the (literal) Next Generation came along).

Yes, plenty of crap on TOS -- and plenty of very enjoyable bits, too (even some of the godawful episodes, from an SF standpoint, had some fun points). And it showed that SF could be relevant to the real world -- more than just ray guns and rubber masks and gritty adventure (though it had those), but with (thinly disguised and oft times clumsy) social commentary, too.

That said -- yes, it's probably time to retire the STU for a while. Let a new generation bring it back, with a fresh outlook, and a new direction for the stories.