Why is it so hard to tell a good story?

Rob and I discuss that in this episode of the ROADTRIPPIN' Podcast. Rob, of course, is not happy with the way Star Trek (and to a significant degree, Star Wars) stories are being handled by the "corporate minders" who have taken over our favorite franchises after their creators have moved on. It's easy to dismiss the problem as having people who "don't care" running the show - but may I suggest that there may be other forces at work here?

It's a fairly established fact that, for people who write, the easiest things to write are things you know. Experiences. Feelings. Situations. Characters. Places. If you've been there, done that, loved it, hated it ... you can rely on those feelings and experiences to inform the way you craft descriptions, express dialog, etc.

For genres used, primarily, to relay relatable stories (or, as they referred to them in the early days of Star Trek ... morality plays) through a fantastical setting, a writer often needs to work outside his or her immediate area of expertise. After all, if you're going to write about struggling to stay alive on Mars, you can't go there to experience it first-hand, can you?

In fact, in the case of science fiction, you have to have a certain level of intellectual curiosity that makes you learn new things about new ideas. You have to be inquisitive. And most of all, you have to be okay with not ever getting a complete or correct answer.

It's easy to write "we're going to science the shit out of this" when your protagonist has to figure out how to grow potatoes out of his own waste in order to survive alone on the surface of Mars, but if you don't know anything about agriculture, Martian weather, hydrology or space flight, you're going to have a really hard time writing the scenes that need to come before (to set up the line) or after (to pay it off).

You have to be intellectually curious. And sometimes that can be uncomfortable.

So, back to our subject. Why should we be concerned about a possible "content crisis" when it comes to producing TV and motion pictures? Because because the ever-increasing rate of demand (it's not quite Moore's Law steep, but it's definitely trending up, up and away) means we'll need more people to create, write and produce more content. And if those creators, writers and producers are not the intellectually curious type, we'll get unimaginative, uncreative, and, quite frankly, dangerously stupid content that will be with us for at least the better part of a generation.

And the probem is ...?

Look at how we're reaping the benefits of a generation that grew up on Beverly Hills 90210, The CW, and reality television. Donald Trump got elected, not because of his superior reputation for international statesmanship or acumen for civil discourse, but for the opposite - and, most of all, because he was a recognized, reality television celebrity.

Like him or not, you can't deny that if you diagrammed his sentences or did a basic fact-check of nearly any claim he made, he was either unintelligible, fast-and-loose with fact or both. And while that makes good reality television, it can cause real problems in the real world.

Am I saying poorly written Star Trek will ruin our future? No. But as consumers of entertainment, our indifference to the quality of the stories told could.

As consumers of content ... and, frankly, as a people, we should demand better from our storytellers. But will we?

That story has yet to be written.

I invite you to listen in on my weekday conversations with my friend and business partner, Robert Meyer Burnett, as we talk about the things we love: great movies, inspiring television programming, nostalgic genre entertainment, and pop culture.

- Mike Bawden, co-host of the ROADTRIPPIN' Podcast

This is an original show produced for the PGS podcast network and was recorded on April 16, 2022.