A Modest Proposal: The Star Trek Multiverse

I watched every new beginning for Star Trek since "Encounter at Farpoint" first aired on BBC2. I was a wee 6-year-old then, but I still remember running across the room, my arms looped in a childish facsimile of the starship Enterprise, in time with the opening theme (must've driven my family mad). Then I watched "Emissary" on Sky One as a somewhat cynical 9-year-old, who initially lamented about a Star Trek that didn't have a spaceship to go off and Explore Strange New Worlds, before being taken in by the station's distinct appeal. I was an 11-year-old bona-fide Trekkie when me & my family got together to watch "Caretaker" when it aired here: Star Trek was arguably at its peak media saturation, with three distinct crews across film and television. Between then and the return of Trek to television in "Broken Bow," I collected the Star Trek Fact Files, amassed a collection of Star Trek games, was fluent in technobabble, fought ruthlessly in The Eternal War, and was in the final four of a quiz at Glasgow's Contagion Star Trek convention one year.

And every single time, for every single new beginning, fellow Trekkies asked: has Star Trek lost its way? First TNG dared to be Star Trek without the original ship & crew; then DS9 dared to eschew the very concept of a Wagon Train to the Stars. At least those were bold new directions, though: for Voyager, the question was whether Trek was succumbing to rehashing TNG, and Enterprise was literally a backwards step in time - both were also criticised for catering to the lowest common denominator. The less said about the new films - and I've said far too much as it is - the better.

So we come to Star Trek Discovery. Much like the new films, it's a reboot that's desperately pretending it isn't a reboot, but a perfectly faithful & compatible continuation of the Prime Timeline. Thing is, there's an incredibly easy way to reconcile Discovery with the Prime Timeline - you just have to change what you mean by that phrase.

Fan Entitlement vs Fan Passion

(Once again, many apologies for the dearth of posts recently.)

As a fan of many things, one has to wonder at times where the distinction between tasteful understated nerdrage and entitled whining lies. Being a fan means enjoying things, but unfortunately that amount of enjoyment can sometimes lead to an equal and opposite dislike of things when it eclipses, disreputes, or is otherwise perceived to threaten the thing you like.

Scott Mendelson has chosen the somewhat unusual forum of the Forbes website to discuss what he terms Fan Entitlement Syndrome:

Current fandom doesn’t just get upset when their favorite shows get cancelled, their preferred films flop, or casting choices for their favorite projects go awry. They take to the Internet to absolutely demand that they get their way as a matter of moral principle, damn the business logistics or any other logical obstacles in their way. They swear up and down that not only was John Carter a great movie (debatable) but that it absolutely was a financially successful film that absolutely deserves a sequel. Never mind that it earned $282 million on a $250m budget and lost Disney around $200m, it was merely misunderstood and this time will be totally different. They clamor for sequels to MacGruber, an amusing action-film spoof that couldn’t even match its $10m budget at the worldwide box office. They start online petitions demanding Dredd 2 even though distributor Lionsgate and producer Reliance Big Pictures lost out when the $45m Dredd grossed just $35m at the global box office. I adore Speed Racer, but I and others like me don’t run around pretending that it wasn’t a costly flop that doesn’t justify a sequel. Sometimes one is enough and we should be thankful we got that one. 

Despite Mendelson's tone getting my heckles up a bit, I think it's worth examining a few things.

A Scottish Barbarian in Arizona: Phoenix Comicon, Day 2

Another successful day! Today I'll discuss more artists, comics, and Star Trek! Lots of videos, so be warned.

Not as successful a night, however: I slept soundly until about 3, when I woke up, to my horror, covered in sweat. Fearing the worst, I checked the air conditioner. It showed 75! I was surprised, that's normally nice and cool. I didn't know what was wrong, but if it was 75, I daren't go any further. So for pretty much the rest of the night until 5 or 6, I kept getting up and doused myself in water, having a drink whenever I felt I needed to.

Next time I woke up, it was 8. Completely parched and sweating again. Great, I was hoping to mosey down gently. What was the culprit? The fan had been set to low. So what we got was one corner of the room nice and cool, the rest of it - particularly the beds - unchanged. Well I could've boiled the kettle without even getting mad.  I dearly hope changing it to high would make things better: I wouldn't be able to stand another night of that heat. Of course, my poor entourage tutted about the centre being cold - evidently the radiating human heat that was frying me alive ignored them.

Scotland Into Darkness, and other thoughts on Star Wars

“(Star Trek) always felt like a silly, campy thing. I remember appreciating it, but feeling like I didn’t get it. I felt it didn’t give me a way in. There was a captain, there was this first officer, they were talking a lot about adventures and not having them as much as I would’ve liked. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough”

“"I had no idea there had been 10 movies! I still haven't seen them all. I didn't want to become a student of Star Trek. I felt that was actually one of the few advantages I had. I was trying to make a movie, not trying to make a Trek movie." ”  

 - J.J. Abrams - just as well he isn't making any Star Trek films, right?

I had some other thoughts on it.  I could do the Energiser Bunny on this with my criticisms, but I'll just keep it to this post. If I think of anything else, I'll just add it here, and not clutter up the rest of the blog.

Star Wars Into Darkness

No Darth Vader, though.

So I've given you my thoughts on the previous Star Wars film, and since I've now seen Star Wars Into Darkness, I think it'd be fun if I did a review of it.

... This was a Star Wars movie, right?

That Star Trek Film Wot Came Out A While Back

 C'est la vie.

"How do we know that your 'correct history' is the right one? The best one?"
"Because, Jim, here in your timeline, billions of people are dead."
 - Star Trek: Phase II, "In Harm's Way" (which you can watch here and here)

Hey, it's May the Fourth! Let's talk about that beloved science fiction franchise which has inspired and delighted a generation since its debut all those decades ago - that's right, Star Trek!

I'm a Trekkie.*  I'm also a fan of Star Trek: Phase II, which is easily the best Trek we've had this entire millennium.  So when I learned that the astoundingly high-quality fan series would continue their tradition of adapting lost Star Trek scripts with Norman Spinrad's "He Walked Among Us," I was over the moon.

But then, CBS put the kibosh on this...

... after news of Spinrad’s discovery spread rapidly around the Internet, CBS set its phasers to “meddling threats of litigation,” sending a cease-and-desist letter to Spinrad that demanded he remove the script from the web and immediately scrap all plans to adapt it, given that it still legally belongs to the studio.

Spinrad complied and has said little on the matter since, other than posting a clearly lawyer-prepared statement noting that he is not allowed to comment further and that CBS is now “considering opportunities to offer licensed copies of the work”—but not, however, considering allowing Phase II to go ahead with producing it, even if it’s had little problem with the group’s not-for-profit homages before. As the New York Times notes, Phase II has even been allowed to adapt another shelved Star Trek screenplay in the past (David Gerrold’s “Blood And Fire”), leaving Spinrad to drop some pretty strong hints that much of CBS’s recent change of heart has to do with pressure from J.J. Abrams to not allow the production of any Star Trek material that could possibly interfere with his own.

It's unclear just why CBS would stamp this out when they've turned the controversial "Blood & Fire" (aka The Gay Episode) into a fully-fledged episode that's better than 75% of official Star Trek episodes considering they also technically claimed copyright, but it seems Abrams may have a part in it:

For what it’s worth, Spinrad only makes this connection indirectly—responding to a fan’s assertion that “maybe J.J. isn’t to blame after all” with “I didn’t say that,” then continuing, “But I am not legally bound not to say that I found J.J. Abrams' first Star Trek film quite inferior to the Phase II videos and his cavalier attitude towards the decades-long legacy of what Star Trek has come to mean to the general culture quite reprehensible, and indeed artistically counterproductive.” So, that definitely seems sort of telling.

Now, I'm aware that lots of people liked 2009's Star Trek.  Other people loved it.  I - horror of horrors! - liked it too.  It was a well-designed, fun action adventure with some phenomenal acting from Karl Urban (who I'm convinced performed a seance prior to filming to summon the spirit of DeForest Kelly, or at least just watched everything the man's ever been in up to and including Night of the Lepus). I had a great time at the cinema oohing and aahing at the explosions and pretty starships. I enjoyed all the little in-jokes and nods that were put in for guys like me. And whatever happened, it worked. It obviously gave Star Trek the shot in the arm Viacom wanted after the massive over saturation of the late '90s/early 2000s, and you could argue the association would have drawn a new generation of fans to the original series. I certainly wonder if we'd be enjoying the super-duper remastered Star Trek: The Next Generation blu-rays without the proof that the Star Trek brand was profitable, because brand equity's all some executives tend to care about.

On the other hand, I had serious problems with the film : most of the complaints were made by others, and I really wasn't in the mood to engage with Strawmen on the issue ("You didn't like it because it wasn't full of pseudo-scientific drivel!" "You didn't like it because it had young actors instead of old fogeys!" "You didn't like it because it's hip and mainstream instead of weird and underground!")  And the Children of the Straw were out in force.  You got sites like The Onion making what seems to pass for biting, insightful satire by making the (entirely jocular and not at all serious) claim that classic Trekkies don't like the film because it's "fun," "action-packed" or all those other things that apparently preclude it from being Trek.  Now, I'm not criticising The Onion for their parody - that's what The Onion is for - but I do criticise those who feel that it's a reflection of the truth. Even reviewers I admire were far more forgiving than I was willing to be, especially the legendarily scathing Red Letter Media and SFDebris. It can be frustrating, since it seems many people cannot understand that you can like a thing and still acknowledge its shortcomings.

So if you liked 2009's Star Trek, then by gumbo that's just dandy, I'm glad you did - so did I. However, I hope you'll note that I'm not legally bound not to punch the air at Mr Spinrad's remarks all the same.

The Blog That Time Forgot, Bite-Sized: SFX Fantasy - The Ultimate Celebration, Fantasy Author Favourites, and Martin vs Tolkien

(I have a post regarding the comic launch in the works, but until then, here's a quick post)

On a whim, I decided to pick this up back in March:

I guess with John Carter and fantasy/science fiction adaptations being on my mind of late, I wondered what they would have to say about the film before the John Carter Is The Biggest Flop Of All Time meme really went into overdrive. Turns out... not a lot.  And frankly, there's not a lot of many great fantasy authors for a supposed Ultimate Celebration.

Star Trek just isn't as expansive as Star Wars, according to Robot Chicken

I kind of like Robot Chicken.  It seems incredibly self-indulgent, a bunch of nerds making a bunch of nerdy sketches that only other nerds would get, but it has its moments every so often.  Plus the use of action figures adds a certain charm to it.

I think, however, that their Star Wars specials take things too far.  The whole episode felt less like an attempt at sketch humour, and more like a bunch of pals snarking and commenting on their favourite movies.  Family Guy did the same thing, and I can't fathom how these things are getting releases. However, Family Guy attempted to do the same thing with Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, but Paramount shot that down. Apparently, Robot Chicken aren't even interested in doing something on not just TWoK, but Trek in general. Their explanation is somewhat bizarre.

Phase II Settles NuTrek's Hash

Just so you know I haven't forgotten about my post on Abrams' Trek, I came across this delightfully playful little video.  Acme solves everything!

This is why I have the "What In Blazes" tag

What we have here is a pornographic parody of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

What we also have here is one of the most logic-defying situations I can think of: a pornographic motion picture with a plot that sounds more interesting than the last three official Star Trek films combined.

Watch the video: despite it being ostensibly for a pornographic film, it's completely worksafe.  I have no idea how that happened.

Arnold Might Return

LOS ANGELES (BNO NEWS) -- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday hinted on a possible return to the big screen after recently meeting with the director of the "Terminator."

Schwarzenegger, 63, will be leaving office next week as he is unable to seek re-election for a third term as governor. On Tuesday, Schwarzenegger wrote on Twitter that he recently met with award-winning movie director and writer James Cameron.

Last week, Schwarzenegger was asked if he would return to the big screen after leaving office. "It depends," he said. "If someone comes with a great script, with a great idea. Will I still have the patience to sit on the set and do a movie for three months? I don't know," said Schwarzenegger, who has also expressed interest in writing a book.

My response to the inevitable "He Should Totally Make King Conan: Crown of Iron" rumours

This is not about revenge-

"Liar!"

-this is about saving the future of Conan!

"Al, let Arnold return to the damn role!"



I will not sacrifice a true Conan film. We've made too many compromises already, too many concessions. They make Conan the Destroyer, and we fall back. They make Conan the Adventurer, and we fall back.



And I will make them pay for what they've done to Conan!

(Disclaimer: if you can't see the humour in the above post, then I can't help you)