Peter David and the art of the tie-in novel

Novelist and comic book writer Peter David died this past weekend. His work had been a part of my life since I was in grade school and any eulogy seems inadequate at conveying the breadth of his work and the impact it had on thousands, if not millions of fans. In seeing other tributes, I've noted that alongside some obvious overlaps, every fan of Peter seemed to have their own distinct favorites among his giant body of work.

Having already championed his brilliant work on the DC comic YOUNG JUSTICE in this Bluesky thread, I want to take a few paragraphs and talk about how he helped bring respectability to a somewhat misunderstood and maligned area of writing - the tie-in novels.

Many of the most popular film and TV franchises have a series of novels set in their respective continuities. STAR TREK and STAR WARS almost certainly account for the largest of these, but over the years, plenty of novels have been set in the worlds of ALIEN, THE X-FILES, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, QUANTUM LEAP, UNDERWORLD, TERMINATOR, even TRANSFORMERS. For a long time these had a reputation as quickly churned out product intended to capitalize on the franchise's popularity. The impression I have is that it wasn't cool in writers' circles to say "I write BUFFY and STAR TREK novels." To a serious author, it sounded like the work of fan fiction.

Flashback to the early 90s, when the STAR TREK books were coming out at a pace of about one a month via Pocket Books and occupied multiple shelves of a bookcase at the local Waldenbooks. I had just gotten into STAR TREK and was becoming aware of these books. It was an era when the books were operating on a tighter set of guidelines from Roddenberry's office. Some of these handcuffs have passed into legend among fans, but the gist of it is, writers weren't allowed to write stories that made sweeping changes to the world or the characters.

This isn't unusual for licensed tie-ins for a simple reason - no matter how they market it, no matter what they tell you, THE BOOKS ARE NOT CANON. A novel can't reveal that Uhura is in a secret marriage because that contradicts what we know of her on-screen, and the on-screen canon viewed by millions will never be held hostage by the books that have about 1% of that audience. Strong writers can tell compelling stories within this but during a time when it was hard to get approval for anything that brushed near the lines, the books tended to stick to safe and soft premises. There were a lot of planet-of-the-week stories, middle of the road stuff that would have resembled "filler" eps of the TV show.

That changed for me when I visited the book store at some point in the Summer of 1991 to find a STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION novel called VENDETTA. Seeing Picard and Guinan flanking a Borg on the cover got my attention immediately.

A sequel to The Best of Both Worlds? This wasn't just another novel about the Enterprise running across a new alien species with strange beliefs. This was the kind of story the fans WANTED to see. And that was the kind of story Peter soon had a reputation for. In IMZADI, he told us the backstory of Riker and Troi's courtship. In Q-IN-LAW, he gave us a meeting between TNG's most popular recurring characters - the omnipotent Q and the irrepressible Lwaxana Troi. (Legend has it that Roddenberry's assistant denied approval for that novel and so Peter slipped a copy to Majel Barrett Roddenberry (i.e. both Mrs. Troi and Mrs. Roddenberry), who loved it so much she insisted it be published.

Those high concept premises led to his critics sometimes undervaluing him as a "fannish" writer. And yes, a number of the premises can sound like fan fiction to an uncharitable cynic, but Peter executed these stories at the highest level, while displaying a great love and understanding of the characters. He knew his continuity forwards and backwards too, using it to tie together unrelated pieces of the lore so deftly that it felt like those connections were always intended.

And he was funny. Few STAR TREK works have made me laugh as deeply as a Peter David work. And in his best moments, the humor all came from character, such as when an elderly Spock and McCoy are reunited in the TNG timeframe on the Enterprise-D and immediately resume their friendly bickering in THE MODALA IMPERATIVE. A more satisfying meeting of the generations than the TNG episode "Unification" (released just months later) was, Peter envisioned Spock and Data challenging each other to a chess match... with the boards existing only in their minds!

It was clear these books were never a "paycheck" job to Peter. They were a labor of love. His works were popular enough that he got to push some of the boundaries, and he had the good fortune to be a golden boy in the Trek office as many of the restrictions were relaxed and rescinded. 

By 1997, Pocket Books was publishing two new STAR TREK novels a month, spanning the 4 extant series. They were ready to try an experiment - a book-only STAR TREK series under the control of a single author. Naturally, they turned to one of their most popular novelists, Peter David, to conceive of this. The result was STAR TREK: NEW FRONTIER, set aboard a Federation starship assigned to a previously unrevealed region of space, with a new captain and several members of the crew who had been introduced in TNG episodes. The idea was to tell stories where everything didn't have to be reset at the end, where characters could change, die, get promoted and get replaced in ways that the other novels were prohibited from.

NEW FRONTIER ultimately accounts for the majority of Peter's TREK novels, 23 in all. It came of age as TNG, DS9, and VOYAGER were all winding down their onscreen journeys. With no new on-screen canon to restrict the authors, Pocket Books was free to commission novels set after those series and loosen most of the few remaining constraints on canon. This made NEW FRONTIER feel a little less special, but the benefit was the entire novel line felt fresh and a far cry from the "assembly line" it sometimes had been accused of being.

What I learned from Peter David's work (and the work of a number of others) is that these licensed product jobs are what you make of them. Good, even great work can be done in these universes, even with the most fanfiction-y of premises. None of these would be mistaken for the works of a hack, and they were a joy to reread many times over the years. He was an unabashed fan of the worlds he wrote in. He took them seriously and the characters equally seriously, even when plunging them into excessive flights of whimsy.

I can't believe there will never be another new Peter David Star Trek story. Farewell, Peter. You'll be missed.

Being unsure if you're a success story or a cautionary tale?

 "I'm never sure if I'm supposed to be the success story or the cautionary tale."

From time to time, I'm asked to speak to students or recent graduates from my alma mater, Denison University, and this is typically how I begin the conversation. I like to make sure everyone understand that "Yes, I'm a TV writer with four produced episode credits to his name and two seasons on staff... but it also took me 18 years to get there. Are you prepared to spend 18 years getting to where you want to be?"

I moved out to L.A. on November 1, 2002. My WGA card arrived in the mail on October 31, 2020. So when I say it was eighteen years of work to get to that moment, I mean it was 18 years exactly. I wasn't the only one of my friends to come out here soon after graduation in pursuit of similar dreams. But I can tell you this - of probably about a dozen classmates from my year or the year after, I'm the only one left. Some lasted almost 15 years, others five. There were a couple that were gone in as short as six months. The ones I'm in touch with all are happy with their lives now. They all hit a point where they decided they couldn't keep chasing that dream and get what else they wanted out of life.

To be sure, there were a great many wins along the way to that achievement - both personal and professional. My wife and I have been together 18 years and I'm certain one of the biggest reasons any career lows didn't send me either spiraling or running entirely from this business is the fact that I had her. I don't think you're built to sustain both a demoralizing work life AND a demoralizing social life. Because of this, another piece of advice I open with is to pursue fulfilment outside your career.

This has been on my mind a lot lately as I've seen the business go through one of the worst dry patches in remembered history. That's not just me saying that. I've had many a conversation with people whose professional credits go back to the 90s and they say it's never been this bad before. I again point at those 18 years and remind you it has never been easy. Is it even responsible to give any kind of hope for people who are still trying to break in at this point?

My story is just that, one story. A guy who graduated from Denison two years ahead of me, Robert Levine, ended up on the same path but got there much faster than me. Three years after he graduated, he was an office PA on JUDGING AMY. About a year later, he moved up to Showrunner's Assistant and during that season, he got his first writing credit - just in time for the show to be cancelled. But his boss, Carol Barbee, moved on to JERICHO a year later and put him on staff. He's worked pretty steadily ever since, with his credits including co-creating and co-showrunning BLACK SAILS and THE OLD MAN.

The assistant-to-staff-writer path used to be a pretty reliable path. I took a modified version of that, now for me, I didn't get that first Writer PA job until 2015. It wasn't a wasted decade-plus for me. Six months after I moved out here I was working for Lakeshore Entertainment as an Office PA and let me tell you, going to work every day on the Paramount Lot is a great way to convince yourself you're on your way to making it in LA. That pretty quickly led to me becoming a Development Assistant and in time the pivot to being a script reader for several companies.

For six years.

It wasn't a totally wasted sideline. Those years gave me the material that led to me starting this blog and my Twitter feed and you can draw a straight line from my Twitter networking to ever TV job I've ever had:

- I met Jeff Lieber in part through Twitter and two and a half years later he hired me on NCIS: NEW ORLEANS.

- I got to know Matt Federman for something like three years over Twitter before he hired me as the Writers' Assistant on BLOOD & TREASURE.

- Twitter connected me with Greg Berlanti and a year after a general meeting with him, I got hired on SUPERMAN & LOIS.

When I tell this story to people who ask me how they can become a TV writer, I underline two details of that path:

1) Networking rarely shows immediate results. You've gotta be patient and that also means you can't see anyone as just a means to an end. You're building a relationship and some of those contacts aren't gonna lead anywhere. If they do, it could be years - so don't think you're one meeting away from that staff job you want.

2) You might have figured out that my specific hacks to break in - blogs, Twitter - won't work in the same way today. You've gotta figure out your own version of that. The good news? When I started trying to break in, that path didn't exist as a proven one either!

If you're a recent graduate, the specific way you will break in probably hasn't been invented yet.

Is that alone reason enough to discourage people from pursuing dreams of being a screenwriter or TV writer? No, but let's look at the numbers.

According to the most recent WGA Writer Employment Snapshot, there were 1,819 television writing jobs during the 2023-24 television season. That represented a 42% drop from the season before.

You want me to make that number scarier? In the entire NFL, there are 1,696 players. In 2023-24, it was about as hard to get a job in TV writing as it was to get into the NFL. 

Now I'm gonna make it even more bleak -- because even if you just limit your competition to people who were employed for the 2022-23 season, that means there are 1,319 writers with more experience than you ALSO fighting for those 1800+ slots next season.

There are almost as many recently experienced pros out of work as there are working. Almost TWO union TV writers for every job available!

I don't have hard data for this next claim, but plenty of anecdotal experience. There is about a decade's worth of the assistant class that have been trapped at the support staff levels much longer than they used to. Smaller rooms, shorter seasons, longer gaps between seasons and fewer shows being renewed all have conspired to make it very difficult for support staff to get their chances to move up. This is especially true with streaming shows.

I would bet there is a not-insignificant number of career support staffers who in another life would be upper level writers.

You can't underestimate the impact the loss of the CW also has on this. There were 10-12 one hour shows, most of which ran 22 eps a season. Writers stayed on through production, they got to produce their episodes and gain skills they'd need as the next generation of showrunners. Assistants got scripts, could afford to stick with the same show for enough seasons until a slot opened up to staff them. People built entire careers at the CW and the loss of that network is devastating to the future of TV writing.

So, not a great time for TV writing in general. To recap:

- This job is as rare as playing for the NFL.

- There is almost an entire NFL's worth of career writers ready to replace the employed TV writers at a moment's notice.

- You're also competing with an assistant class that hasn't gotten out of the way yet.

And you're at the very bottom of the ladder.

I again repeat -- EIGHTEEN YEARS.

If you start counting from my first job in TV in 2015 to my WGA card, that's only five years. But even putting aside how I got the job, was the guy I was in 2003 as likely to be as ready to move up as the guy in 2015 was? Probably not.

And again, this is where the decade's worth of assistant careers standing still becomes relevant.

To return to the topic of the hypothetical recent graduates, I don't know what to tell them about breaking in because right now, I can't imagine what "breaking in" looks like -- aside from a lot of sweat, a lot of waiting, a lot of career uncertainty and more than a lot of competition.

Juliana James and I talk about our time on SUPERMAN & LOIS on the Missing Frames podcast

With the new SUPERMAN movie coming out this summer, there's a lot of hype in the air for the Man of Steel. I've already done a few podcast interviews focused on my time on SUPERMAN & LOIS and I'm always leery of doing too many podcasts. I'm not Kevin Smith - I don't have enough stories to fill multiple 90-minute slots without repeating myself.

But when Shawn Eastridge reached out to me about appearing on Missing Frames as part of his "Celebrating Superman" series, he mentioned some of the other Superman figures who were participating. I decided I couldn't be the guy to tell him "no" when so many other people I'd grown up idolizing were saying "yes."

To keep things interesting for people who may have heard me already on The Superman & Lois Tapes and All-Star Superfan Podcast, I invited my friend and fellow S&L writer Juliana James along, thereby insuring that at least 50% of the conversation would be unique for listeners.

The result was a fun conversation that we enjoyed so much it seemed to fly by. 

If the embed above doesn't work, you can listen to it here and on Apple Podcasts here.

Also, I made an appearance last month on "It All Comes Back To Superman," talking with Michael Bailey about three unmade Superman projects: Superman Reborn, the infamous Kevin Smith/Tim Burton project Superman Lives, and J.J. Abrams's Superman Flyby.

You can listen to that episode here and on Apple Podcasts here.

I'm the featured guest this week on HOMICIDE: LIFE ON REPEAT with Reed Diamond and Kyle Secor!

HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET wasn't quite my first taste of what we later came to call "Prestige TV" but it might have been the first show I loved that passionately. I wasn't there from the start - though the show debuted in January 1993, it wasn't until almost exactly three years later that I became a serious viewer of the series. By that point, I was already a regular viewer of ER and THE X-FILES, both of which were redefining how network TV looked and felt. I also was an occasional, if not regular viewer, of LAW & ORDER.

Nothing makes me feel older than having to explain that this was a time when network TV drama felt truly groundbreaking and cinematic to a degree that it hadn't before. This was pre-SOPRANOS, before HBO launched what generally gets credited as the start of Prestige TV. It's not hard to see why that's where most tellings of TV history start there. HBO's pedigree for writer-driven, cinematic, elevated television is probably unmatched. There's also a certain romance to framing the most remarkable TV as being the product of premium cable - as opposed to broadcast television, where the major networks were free to all the unwashed masses.

You're paying a premium for cable TV, so you need to believe that HBO is giving you a superior kind of product, right? As much truth as there is to that, at least two of those HBO shows - THE WIRE and OZ -  have a direct lineage to HOMICIDE.

The things that made HOMICIDE so innovated on network TV in the 90s have all long since been absorbed by premium cable series, prestige streaming series and even current network television. Handheld camerawork, morally ambiguous heroes, downer endings, and controversial storytelling now practically form the Peak TV Starter Pack. Maybe the only technique that still feels truly unique to HOMICIDE is the editing - specifically the jump cuts and the triple takes. In just about every other way, HOMICIDE feels like a show that could have premiered today.

And to the younger generation, HOMICIDE might as well have just debuted. Though the series got a DVD release, it's barely been syndicated in the last 20 years and it had long been absent from streaming. This year, that was finally redressed, as an HD remastered release came to Peacock. Converted to widescreen and HD, the show doesn't look EXACTLY how it appeared in the 90s, but it holds up well, even though a concession to get the show out there resulted in almost all of the iconic music cues being replaced by material cheaper to license.

As a concession to get the show to a new audience, I'll accept it. This was one of the shows that made me want to be a TV writer. It's the show I found myself emulating often in my early writing. Though it often gets lumped in with other cop procedurals, it's much more character-driven than any other procedural. The emphasis is on the characters more than the cases they work. A case is frequently merely a catalyst to force a character to deal with a personal challenge or to provoke a different side of their personality.

A hallmark of the show was the intense interrogation scenes, with the most powerful of those going to Andre Braugher as Frank Pembleton. He'd get inside a suspect's head, break them down psychologically and more often than not, get a confession out of them. It was riveting character drama that just as often would be balanced by quirky humor and idiosyncratic characters like Richard Belzer's Detective Munch. It did things I didn't know could happen on TV - the heroes didn't get their man everytime. Some cases never got closed, the dead going unavenged.

One hour kicks off with the discovery of Detective Crosetti's body, forcing the unit to confront the likelihood he killed himself. Everyone deals with it differently - his partner Lewis insists it couldn't have been suicide and goes as far as trying to interfere in Detective Bolander's investigation into Crosetti's death. Frank and Tim are sent to plan the memorial service, allowing for some dark humor about the cost of cookies. Lt. Giardello is stuck with department politics over how bad it looks to have another suicide. 

All of this leads to a moment I've discussed before - Lewis and Bolander coming to a head over their conflict, only to have the moment interrupted by the autopsy report. The official finding: suicide. Watching Lewis spiral as his denial finally runs out and then fully break down as Bolander pulls him into a bear hug is one of those TV moments that has stayed with me ever since.

Years later I was running a TV drama series for my college campus TV network and I attempted to do a storyline with similar emotional impact. This being 2001, when I shared the script with everyone, they all assumed I was inspired by the equally gut-punching BUFFY episode "The Body." The truth was I'd had the intent for this episode before "The Body" even aired and my direct inspiration was "Crosetti."

Another trope that turned up in a lot of my early work were interrogation scenes. At least three times while in college, I found an excuse to work an interrogation into something I filmed, and it came up in more than one script. The perfect culmination to all of this nearly happened when one of my SUPERMAN & LOIS episodes would have called for what was essentially an interrogation between Lois Lane and an antagonist. Alas, a rebreak of the story ended up denying me the moment that seemingly my entire career was building towards.

As is evident, HOMICIDE made a meaningful impact on me as a creator and an audience member. Over the years, I've paid tribute to it before, broken down the pilot, and reexamined one of the show's most controversial moments - the Luther Mahoney shooting. Thanks to a Twitter conversation, I even connected with and later went out to drinks with Reed Diamond, who played Detective Kellerman. We sorta became whatever you call an internet friendship these days. (Pen-pals? Digital friends?) Which brings me to the real point of this post...

At almost the same time HOMICIDE launched on Peacock, Reed and one of his surviving co-stars, Kyle Secor (Detective Tim Bayliss), launched their rewatch podcast HOMICIDE: LIFE ON REPEAT. Every week, Reed and Kyle recap another HOMICIDE episode, delving into their recollections of making it and sharing their perspectives on the series with three decades of hindsight.

They also usually welcome a guest, typically a writer, director or fellow cast member, but on occasion the guest is someone with no professional connection to the series. If you somehow missed the post title, by now you've probably intuited the reason for this long preamble is because *I* am this week's guest.

I can't tell you what a thrill it was to be "in the Box" with "Kellerman & Bayliss" for a little over an hour. The topic of the show was Season 1, episode 8, "And The Rocket's Dead Glare," but we veer into other topics. I haven't heard the edited episode yet, but I talk about what scenes in David Simon's HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS directly inspired a subplot in this episode, and we even got into a brief discussion of copaganda.

I've done more than a few podcasts and this was easily the most fun I've ever had on a show. Reed and Kyle were great and I just loved the energy I was feeling while we recorded it. Hopefully some of that joy comes across in this week's installment.

The direct YouTube link to this week's episode is here.

You can find it on Apple Podcasts here.

You can find the main site for the podcast here.

All episodes are uploaded - with video - to YouTube here.

And if you're interested in the New York Magazine that discusses the misconduct that many of the Baltimore cops who inspired the show are accused of, you can find it here: David Simon Made Baltimore Detectives Famous. Now Their Cases Are Falling Apart.

SUPER/MAN is a tribute to not just Christopher Reeve, but his entire family

Early on in the Christopher Reeve documentary SUPER/MAN, we hear Reeve's own voice in an archival interview, discussing how he took extra care during "the Superman years." He dreaded doing something that would lead to a New York Post headline like "Superman hit by bus." The observation reinforces how aware he was that his image and his on-screen alter ego would always be entwined.

And that certainly was prescient. For nearly a decade after the riding accident that left him a quadriplegic, it seemed no reporter could cover Chistopher Reeve without using some version of "He played Superman and now he IS a super-man." (Heck, I even noted that in my own tribute to Reeve in a piece I wrote commemorating the fifth anniversary of his death. Reading it now, it's exactly the kind of tribute this documentary avoids being, to its benefit) 

Certainly even in death, the advocacy he strove for in life has cast a long shadow. Reeve says himself in an archival interview that "People want to believe in a hero." And so, through a combination of his iconic role, some truly bad luck, and his bravery in putting his recovery process on the public stage, Reeve morphed from being the custodian of an inspirational figure, to a source of inspiration himself.

Hope can be a powerful thing. At one point in the documentary, we're told that when faced with a critic who accused Reeve of peddling "false hope," Christopher shot back, "There is no false hope. There is only hope."

No one can decide to be an inspirational figure, as inspiration is ultimately about what people take from you. It's a power that resides with the audience, though it's also dependent on what that figure is willing to give of themselves. For me, that's what a great deal of this documentary is about, how Christopher put aside his ego and allowed the world to see him as disabled during a time when people like him were treated as invisible. A lesser film would have succumbed to a trite and obvious way of telling this story, giving only empty "inspiration porn" to assure us that heroes of untold virtue are among us. 

But what I saw in this film is that the hope that Christopher Reeve represented could not have existed without his family around him. And so this loss of privacy and inviting the public into a private tragedy is not just Christopher's, but a toll paid by everyone in his circle. While the movie never gets as far as explicitly stating that, that feeling runs through much of the narrative.

As obvious as it is that the Christopher Reeve documentary is called SUPER/MAN, by the time it was done, I felt like it could have just as accurately been called SUPER/MAN & SUPER/WOMAN, in tribute to Dana Reeve. Dana's presence permeates this entire story, even though she tragically is no longer with us to tell her part of it. She is a constant presence in all the post-accident footage, including many private home movies shared by the Reeve family.

In archival recordings, Christopher credits Dana with saving his life twice, the second being in the immediate aftermath of the accident that left him paralyzed. He was facing the reality of never moving his arms and legs for the rest of his life, pondering that it might be best for everyone if he just died. Dana looked at him and said with conviction, "You're still you, and I love you." 

That completely changed how he looked at the new life that lay ahead of him. The movie doesn't sugarcoat what she lost alongside Christopher that tragic day, and throughout the narrative we understand the emotional toll she felt mostly in private. That she died less than two years after Christopher is an incredibly unfair loss. Were this a fictional narrative, it would have felt like screenwriter hackery, designed to manipulate more tears out of an already exhausted audience. Here, it's just a reminder that life is under no obligation to give happy endings to those who would have seemed to earn them many times over.

This film also easily could have justified the title SUPER/FAMILY, for while Christopher Reeve's story is the spine of the movie, the picture of Chris that emerges would not be complete without the voices of his children and many family friends. This especially is where the more complete picture of Chris emerges, thanks to their willingness to be frank and open about some of their most private moments. It's easy to take that for granted as an audience member, but throughout my viewing it became the lens through which I took in everything. Unpacking this will require you to indulge me for a brief tangent.

I think you understand grief in a different way after you've lost a parent. There's a different burden that comes with losing someone that close to you as opposed to an uncle, a friend, a grandparent. In those cases, you generally get to deal with that loss on your own terms. But when it's a parent, a spouse, a child... that relationship means that you become everyone else's vessel for closure with the departed.

And - whether or not this is the intention of the other mourners - the effect is such that you end up taking on their grief. Though they come to console you, the strange nature of this interaction means that you find yourself consoling them, that in this exchange they get closure. Sometimes it means that they feel useful in passing on, "your father was so proud of you. He talked about you all the time." In other instances it's simply a matter of them intending to help with your grief but well before they have managed their own. 

You end up hearing a lot of people talk about how much your father meant to them. Which is nice, until you find yourself enduring it ten times in a row - while you're getting a handle on your own feelings. While realizing the obligation of this encounter means the other party must walk away assured they have done A Good Thing. I mean no disrespect to any close family and friends when I say that some of the best conversations I had about losing my father were with people who never knew him and were able to be there just for me.

For most of us dealing with loss, this is something that persists across weeks, perhaps months. When your father was someone like Christopher Reeve, I don't know if that ever ends.

I thought of that often as the film frequently returned to Reeve's children as its narrators. Matthew and Alexandra are from Christopher's relationship with British model Gae Exton, while the younger Will (now a correspondent with ABC News) is Christopher and Dana's child. Among the many voices that contribute to the documentary, their perspective is the most potent.

It was impossible not to think about how over the last nearly 30 years since Chris's accident, these three have had to play the role of giving closure to those who admired and were inspired by their parents. Matthew Reeve and I are less than a month apart in age, a connection that makes it impossible for me not to think about what it would have been like for me to deal with this burden at the age I was at the time of Chris's accident and later his death. 

I vividly remember reading the news of Chris's accident the same weekend that I was at a cousin's wedding. It was just before of the end of my 9th grade year, during a summer where I was working as a swim lesson aide and spending many, many days at the local pool. The contrast between my summer and what that summer must have looked like for the Reeve family is rather stark. I can't imagine dealing with a tragedy that enormous, let alone doing it so publicly.

We eventually learn that following Chris and Dana's deaths, Matthew stepped up at the age of 26 to fill in as a surrogate parent to his younger brother Will. Matthew was dealing with that obligation thrust upon him when I was somewhere between writing coverage for agents and sharing an apartment with two roommates.

You don't always get to chose the moments and experiences that define your life for you. Sometimes those come from moments that belong to other people. From what we see here, the Reeve siblings have an incredible amount of grace in accepting what their lives became and how they chose to share some of that with us.

I lost my own father four years ago, an experience I commemorated in this post that I've never quite been able to revisit in full. In that case, the public display of mourning helped, though I'm still not sure I fully grasp that other people have actually read it. Not long after that, I paid him tribute in a story I wrote for the SUPERMAN & LOIS comic. It was another public display, but one where I felt in control of how I presented my feelings, and thus, and experience I was comfortable with. 

But not every instance in which I've been asked to tap into those feelings of loss has been cathartic. I've not always had the opportunity to revisit those feelings on my own terms, and sometimes that's resulted in less pleasant experiences. Throughout Matthew, Alexandra and Will's interviews, I couldn't help but think about how much this documentary appeared on their terms, and if the necessity of promoting it via weeks of media interviews was at all more of a burden to endure.

I wondered if this documentary in some ways was how their whole family reclaims the narrative of Christopher Reeve from the "he played Superman, then he became a super-man" distillation. The movie doesn't hold back from pointing out less admirable moments in Reeve's life. It also takes time to explain how he clashed with some in the disabled community. It rarely dwells long on these particulars (we're kept at a respectful distance from some of the inner-family conflicts while still told enough to infer what need not be made explicit), but they're given enough spotlight to keep the film clear of any charges of hagiography

It's to the film's credit that it's able to tell Christopher Reeve's story in ways that feel fresh even to the Superman fan who's seen every special feature pertaining to the movies. His work as Superman gets about as much focus as necessary, but through perspectives not usually employed. The story of how he was cast usually falls to director Richard Donner or casting director Lynn Stalmaster. Both men passed in 2021, before this project was shot (though a few archival interviews with Donner are briefly integrated.) Instead, it's Jeff Daniels, who was in a play with Chris when he went to screen-test for the part, who tells us about those days in Reeve's life. 

Some interviews with Reeve also augment that portion. There were moments where I found myself mentally adding what would have been Margot Kidder's stories about working with Reeve, but in general, it's wise that the voice of the film comes from people who knew Reeve as a person before they ever knew him as Superman.

In showing us Reeve's faults and lesser moments alongside his successes, the film somehow becomes more inspirational than it might have otherwise been. A person doesn't have to be defined by their relationship with their distant domineering father, any more than not having a great example of a marriage precludes them from eventually discovering the kind of love that changes your perspective on romance.

We think we need Christopher Reeve to be Superman, but in exposing his human frailties, it highlights that any one of us has the power to be an inspiration to someone. Without Dana Reeve, Christopher might not have seen the final nine years of his life. Certainly it's hard to imagine Christopher being a public face for paralysis without the love and support of his wife. Could he have had so many positive days without his children rallying around him? You need people there to give you the kind of life you want to live for.

This is as much the story of what Christopher Reeve achieved as it is the story about the love around him that made that possible. In opening themselves up to tell that story, I hope the Reeve family has found peace. May they receive at least as much grace and love that they have put out into the world.

Why all three seasons of PICARD were necessary to Jean-Luc Picard's journey after the end of TNG

I did another rewatch of the two-part finale of STAR TREK: PICARD and between that and some things from Patrick Stewart's memoir swimming in my head, I'm left with some thoughts about Picard, both the man and the series.

When PS was approached for the new series, he was the one who set down the mandates that distanced it from TNG. He didn't want any of the original cast. He didn't want to be in Starfleet or wear a uniform. If they were bringing back Picard, it had to say something new about him rather than re-explore old ground. I actually think there was a lot of merit to these stances, even if all we really wanted was a TNG reunion, which we eventually got. But I don't think S3's reunion undermines the rest of the show, nor do I see it as a retreat. It's a necessary conclusion for Picard.

Think about where Picard was at the end of TNG. He just had his Christmas Carol-like jaunt through time and came out realizing he needed to change the nature of his relationship with his crew. He joins the poker game. He's on his way to becoming less distant. He's opening up... And then what happens six months later in GENERATIONS? His brother and nephew are killed. He's the LAST Picard. There IS no biological family left for him.

And then what else happens? He meets Starfleet's greatest, James T. Kirk. And what's the retired Kirk's firm advice?

"Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do ANYTHING.... that takes you off the bridge of that ship because while you're THERE.... you can make a difference."

Taken together, we see how this pretty much cements the crew of the D as his family.

And over the course of the movies, that changes. It can't last forever. Worf leaves the nest and moves on for a time. Will and Deanna get married and go off on their own. Data DIES. Beverly leaves.

Then comes the whole Romulan crisis and then the android revolt. Picard's at the center of that crisis and Starfleet fails him. After an android sabotage of the shipyards built to evacuate the Romulans, Starfleet scraps the whole project and makes artificial life illegal in the Federation. It goes against everything Picard has fought for. By then, most of his "kids" have moved on. He took Kirk's advice. He stayed devoted to Starfleet and it fucked him in the end. So he quits in protest.

He doesn't recognize Starfleet. Problem is, without Picard - who had no bones about standing up to them in cases like INSURRECTION - Starfleet loses its moral way too. And that's where PICARD the series picks up. Picard's lost his family and the thing that was supposed to matter.

When he has to go on a new adventure, he's determined to do it without getting in the way of the old crew's new lives. This is JLP in his "Wings" phase. (The Enterprise D/E era being his "Beatles".) And look, Wings was a fine band. But they weren't the Beatles.

But step by step, PICARD shows us its title character putting things right. The android ban is lifted. He goes back to Starfleet, beginning to restore its moral center. S2 at first glance, can be mistaken as a bit of a sidequest. Q messes with history to create a timeline where Starfleet is a totalitarian conqueror, which forces Picard to go back in time and try to put things right.

Eventually it's revealed that history hinges on one of Picard's ancestors going on a crucial space mission. The ripple effect of her not going is what would result in the imperialistic Starfleet. What this means is that the moral fibre of Starfleet is inextricably linked with the Picard bloodline. Starfleet and Picard inform each other.

Just as The Sisko is of Bajor, Picard is of Starfleet.  Starfleet is what it is because of the Picard family. In Starfleet, Picard found his family - both in spiritual and literally biological terms by the end of the third season. That is the lesson that Q is trying to teach in season 2. Why else show him that?  

Picard needed to rediscover Starfleet as being core to his destiny so that on the final adventure, it plays out the only way it can for Picard to truly come full circle. The lesson he's been learning for 30 years finally is achieved.

His old crew IS his family. Of course they are the ones he ultimately has to take this last ride with. And for his full restoration, is there ANY other ending that could be more perfect than him leading the charge to save all of Starfleet with those people by his side?

And if you're putting all The Beatles on stage together, what madman would do that and NOT having them perform?

Kirk insisted that on "the bridge of that ship.... you can make a difference." It HAD to be the Enterprise-D. These seven people had to be by each other's sides one last time, willing to die for each other because if not, what were the last 35 years even for?

For Picard's arc since the series - the man who lost his blood family, lost his ship, lost his friend Data, lost his faith in the institution that was supposed to be his life - he gets a new family. He gets back the ship and the friend that he lost and he restores it all. Yes, I know.... every brick on that road was laid individually, with no real plan of it leading all the way to this path for much of it. But when you look back with hindsight, it all makes so much sense. PICARD S1 and 2 had to happen to make 3 the earned ending to EVERYTHING.

And that's why STAR TREK: PICARD was my favorite show this year. It wasn't a mere farewell tour that played the easy crowd pleasing hits.... it was an ending, one where each of those gracenotes had a purpose in the narrative and MATTERED.

Podcast appearances on The Writers Panel and Children of Tendu

In a complete coincidence I had two podcast appearances drop on the same day this week.

First, my friend Ben Blacker had me on The Writers' Panel to discuss my thoughts on networking on the picket line. We're in the nineth week of picketing and I've met something like fifty writers while picketing. And as I mention in this podcast, I also met Brandon Routh (SUPERMAN RETURNS) and his wife Courtney Ford (LEGENDS OF TOMORROW.)

Listen to The Writers' Panel here.

And then I got to fulfill a nearly decade-long dream by appearing on a podcast hosted by another two of my friends and former co-workers, Javier Grillo-Marxauch and Jose Molina. Their show Children of Tendu is one of the greatest resources for an up-and-coming TV writer and it was an honor to speak with them about my path from internet guy to assistant to staff writer.

The episode I'm on is called "Live from the Strike Line."

Listen to Children of Tendu on Stitcher here.

Listen to Children of Tendu on Apple Podcasts here. 

Listen to Children of Tendu and download the ep as an MP3 here.