Monday, May 23, 1994

Damn it Jim, I'm Only an Editor

You'll have to excuse me if I seem even more distracted than usual this week but last Wednesday I took one on the head for my softball team. Now my forehead is the size of a Ferengi's. I was playing second base, runner on first, grounder to short, I prepared myself for the throw, positioning my feet to turn two. Gary the shortstop was about six feet away and I expected an underhanded toss. Instead he threw a bullet right between the eyes. Knocked my socks off, ingrained the stitches of the ball on my head, and filled the heavens with stars. Ouch. But as long as I'm up here in the ozone...


For the past one hundred weeks it has been my duty (and privilege) to produce our company newsletter. It's been a lot of work and quite frankly I'm amazed we've lasted this long and that every week we have gotten something out. While settling into a routine has made some of the work easier, it has remained a difficult task coming up with something that's worth reading. We don't want to repeat ourselves, want to remain fresh, but at the same time we have to be consistent so people know what to expect, and can look forward(?) to each new issue.


This comes to mind with the ending of the TV version of ST:TNG. The series definitely hit its peak a few years back and has been running recently only on impulse power. As editor I can relate. They have done more episodes this year on similar themes (i.e. dreams). This is not unusual for American television. The trick is to come up with a group of characters people will respond to; put those characters through a variety of different situations without getting too far out (it all happened while Bobby was taking a shower); and watch as they react in a consistent manner while still allowing room for growth. All this happens on a tightrope, ideas become more and more recycled as the characters become more and more predictable. If anything happens too fast or too radically (see the evolution of Hot Lips to Margaret) you lose your credibility and believability.


In a way it's the same with friendships. You present yourself to another and hope they accept you as well as see potential for growth. As time goes by the relationship changes, and if the consistencies are compatible with the growth, the friendship is allowed to reach different stages. There is nothing quite like an old friend, and when that friendship is finally gone, the size of the hole becomes apparent as you truly miss what over the years you began to take for granted.


So another friend departs. My first memory? My parents gave my older sister Joan a cassette recorder back when I was a wee, impressionable lad. I remember being amazed at the technology that allowed her to hear and play back history. One of the first things she taped was the Star Trek episode, "Trouble with Tribbles" the dialogue of which all of us kids had memorized within days.


To this day during stressful times, when it feels like there are tribble sized objects falling all around me, I remember Kirk's bewildered look as he muttered, "Who put the tribbles in the Quatro-triticale?" and things don't seem so serious. I thought I outgrew Star Trek at one point. When TNG began, I had no interest in watching it. To me it was either going to be a clone, or they were going to do something sacrilegious. Plus it was a syndicated show, putting it on par with say Saved by the Bell.


But old friends have a way of reappearing even if time has changed them. Joan's son, Nathan become hooked on ST:TNG. It was all he could talk about for awhile. And wanting to stay in touch with and be able to talk with today's youth, I began to watch the show so I knew what Nate was talking about. To my surprise I immediately liked the show better than the original. On the first show, while it was admirable what they tried to do, that they were actually trying to say something, too often they slipped into easy moralizing, a simplistic solution to the human condition. TNG seemed to be smarter, hipper and more mature.


The last few years however, it has become more of a habit to watch the show, something to pass time (which explains some of the frustration I felt whenever they did a time travel episode), rather than something I had to watch every week. It's easy to be critical of something so popular and something that so easily lends itself to geekdom. If truth be known, the only characters I liked were Picard, Data, Geordi and Bev. I always wished they had killed Riker. There have been times this year when my groans have been louder than the forced dialogue. But when the original episodes stop, and the old friend turns into mere reruns, I for one, will fondly recall and wistfully long for the days when the tribbles fell from up above, and wish I could hear that unforgettable command: "make it so..." just one more time.

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