Worst Writer of the Day: Armond White

Or it’s television—like Gene Roddenberry’s now-legendary 1966-1969 television series Star Trek, which uncannily simulated pop culture conformity. Rigid sets, contrived futurism and made-up aliens offered a cast that was “multi-culti” avant la lettre, while domesticating the sci-fi genre.

Rigid sets? As opposed to flexible sets, I presume. Made-up aliens? What other kind is there? Did Armond White expect Gene Roddenberry to find actual ETs to play the aliens? What the hell is White talking about? And the use of "avant la lettre" is just a pretentious way of saying trendy.

Why people are going to see the new Star Trek film

Any TV program, by virtue of its repetition, partakes of ritual. Quiz-show and sit-
com, newscast and episodic drama, talk-show and sports show, each establishes a format
and rhythm, enhanced by repetitive theme music, which creates a particular signature. A
prime pleasure of television viewing is to sync in with the ritualistic repetitions of each
favored program, surrendering to the (usually narrow) spectrum of responses that the
program dependably, predictably elicits. A successful program achieves its own defined
space, which it repeats and repeats and repeats. Thus each program is, in an archetypal
sense, a kind of Mass, with its own particular and peculiar Communion. You know
what’s going to happen before you get there, though you don’t exactly know--and this
knowing-but-not-quite-knowing sustains both the comfort level and the interest.

Michael Ventura

Star Trek: The Conversation

I dare say we've already established that the six original Star Trek films couldn't have left any real cinematic mark, since there's very little that's actually "cinematic" about them in the first place, except in the most superficial sense of the term. They're all shot on film and shown in cinemas, yes, but is there anything aesthetically cinematic about their style, their cinematography, their approach to this material? If anything, these films helped to bring indifferent television aesthetics to the big screen, treating film and TV as interchangeable media. These films are ultimately little more than really long TV shows; sometimes enjoyable, sometimes not, but rarely all that interesting as films.

A surprisingly engrossing discussion of the first six Star Trek films by Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard. I only stumbled upon this discussion because it was linked at this site, which I discovered while searching for information about B-movie producer Burt Topper.