by Diana Black
Television auteurs? Can that be? Doesn’t the medium of TV by its very nature force everything presented on it to be “collaborative,” with the collaboration totally controlled behind the scenes by TV executives?
And yet – does anyone remember a fellow by the name of Gene Roddenberry? He certainly ruled the original Star Trek with an iron fist. And what about Joss Whedon and his control over Buffy the Vampire Slayer and, more importantly, the ultimate genre classic, Firefly?
Think about it. Both Star Trek and Firefly went ‘cult’ on a global scale. Star Trek has not only become deeply entrenched in pop culture over the last forty-five years, and the ‘Prime Directive’ is, according to Aaron Miller, recognizable in current US foreign policy.