My Impression of the First Script

The first episode was titled "Destruction Imminent" and revolved around the station's computer suffering freak malfunctions, ultimately threatening the station. The glitches are finally traced to a sabotage program and, thanks to me, the station is saved. The identity of the saboteur is left unanswered but the episode sets up a nice little story dynamic for the future. Mixed in with the crazy computer is all sorts of Character stuff. We meet Commander Jefferson and his mentally unstable wife. We learn that Lt.Beauchamp is the daughter of a disgraced former-Admiral of the Galactic Star Republic. Professor Qian is a mental giant with social skill problems in addition to his language difficulties. My character, Riker, is an annoying civilian employee of the station, primarily tasked with fixing computer and engineering problems. And Lt.Crosby, well he's basically just there for comic relief.

I actually found myself liking the idea for the show, but the way it was being written, well... You see, thrown in with the action and adventure and the kooky characters there was a lot of philosophical crap. I mean, for instance, the computer's breakdown where it demands a fair wage, it was supposed to symbolize the inherently unfair nature of capitolism. Ok, fine. I got no problem with somebody wanting to make some kind of social statement, but when we finally got to pg.17 in the script and I saw that two page long speech the computer gives, my jaw dropped. Symbolism is great, as long as it stays symbolic. But Charlie the computer was spouting out a whole neo-Marxist manifesto. And not in a good way either. I mean, it read like a neo- Marxist manifesto and that's never a very entertaining kind of read.

And then, the Commander's over-the-top verbal duel with the computer, well that just made the whole thing even worse than it already was. And I kept thinking, who wrote this crap? Later on of course I would meet the writers, two guys named Eddie and Chuck. Well at least all that godforsaken speechifying made my save of the station even more dramatic than it already was - I mean, hey, after spending the last five minutes listening to Marx and Voltaire duke it out, who wouldn't be looking forward to me blowing up the sabotaged computer brain-circuit?

1. But I quickly realized that this show had more problems than just the writing...

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