>>20177
>But the insane vision of one man usually has more character than a "properly" produced series with the "correct" oversight.
That's often the case, yes. Hell, that's why I can still have a soft spot for TMP despite it being such a lackluster movie. It's bad, but it's an earnest, dedicated kind of bad, and you can see Roddenberry's dedication and autism shining through. You do bring up good points about the rape gangs and Planet Dindu Funny how those ended up being different worlds. It's true that those kinds of things, or those weird tunic/skirt uniforms for the men, wouldn't make it out of a sterile written-by-committee show, but the interesting thing about early TNG is that much of the greater world had that same feeling to it anyways, despite being a product of Roddenberry's socialist autism. I think this is partially a result of Roddenberry's own dreams about the future having a certain bland quality to them--he wanted the 24th century to be this idyllic utopia where there was no money, almost no crime, no poverty, social and legal equality between the sexes (female officers getting called 'sir', and the aforementioned skirt uniform), and everyone had abandoned personal greed in favor of getting along. And this utopia, because it has no conflict, also has very few interesting things going on. Because of this, the Federation of TNG seasons 1 and 2 ends up taking on the sterile appearance of committee-written setting despite being the earnest fantasies of a single hippie.