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.

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.

Crossing the stream(ing service)s

This is probably gonna come off as one of those old man "get off my lawn" rants, but I've been thinking a lot about the cost of streaming services. I've had Netflix since before it WAS a streaming service. I've been an Amazon Prime subscriber for about three years now, but that was mostly for the free shipping and until recently they've never had any original programming that enticed me.

Hulu's been a thing, but until this year I never felt any pressing need to subscribe. As I'd never purchased a service JUST for the original programming, there wasn't motivation to start now. The fact that no real Hulu show had broken into the zeitgeist also lessened any urgency I might have felt.

This year felt like a real sea change, brought about by two factors: The Handmaid's Tale and the explosion of other streaming services. I want to be clear here - I think Netflix did the heavy lifting of legitimizing original content on streaming services, but when you already have that service for unrelated reasons, you don't really feel the shift as much. It still felt like the game was: Netflix - and then everyone else.

Let's take stock of the major players in that "everyone else," and their subscription fees:

Here are the monthly fees for the more notable streaming services:

Netflix - $7.99 (no HD), $9.99 HD, $11.99 HDX
Amazon - $8.99
Hulu - $7.99
YouTube Red - $9.99
HBO Now - $15
Showtime - $10.99
Starz - $8.99
CBS All Access - $5.99, $9.99 no ads
FX - $5.99
AMC Premiere - $4.99

The days of Netflix being a good one-stop shop for a deep library of content are numbered. As each of these networks and more launch their own services, they'll likely be taking back their content from other sites. It's the only way to add value to their product. Are you prepared to pay all of this and more a month?

Let's put the library aside for a while and focus on the value of original content. This is a list of all the Netflix shows which I watched in the past 12 months that I can expect another season of within the next 12 months or so:

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Master of None
13 Reasons Why
Love
Stranger Things
Grace & Frankie
Glow
House of Cards
One Day at a Time

That's nine shows right there. You can also add the next season of Arrested Development to that for AT LEAST 10 originals that I'll watch. Marvel also typically has 2 shows in a 12 month cycle. This past year I skipped Iron Fist, didn't finish Luke Cage and plan on watching The Defenders. Odds are I'll watch at least one of whatever they offer, so let's bump the total to 11. My wife watched Fuller House, so adding that gives us an even dozen original shows in the next year.

Or we could use last year as a baseline. These are the one-off seasons that I watched in addition to the shows in the last list:

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
Girlboss
MST3K: The Return
The Seekers

So that supports the notion of about a dozen original series a year. At $9.99/month I feel pretty good about that value even before you account for binge-watching any of the licensed library, or the many Netflix documentaries and acquired features, of which there are a lot. Even with some of the licenses rotating out now and then, overall I feel really good about paying ten bucks a month for access.

CBS All-Access has two tiers. $5.99 a month for limited commercial interruption and $9.99 a month for no ads. They also don't follow the Netflix model of dropping all the new episodes in a season at once. This is important because if you want to see each new episode in a 13 episode season as it comes out, you MUST subscribe for four months. If you're paying for no ads, that means that new season is costing you $40, assuming that's the only thing drawing you to the service during those months.

By next year, they will have TWO original shows: The Good Fight and Star Trek: Discovery.

I've been a Star Trek fan since I was ten. I own most of TOS on blu, all of TNG on blu and all of DS9 on DVD, along with at least half of the films on blu, DVD or both. I've watched every new season as it's come out since 1991. Hell, I even own a ton of the novels and behind the scenes books. I'm laying all this out to make it clear that I am fairly representative of the audience that CBS is chasing when they used the Star Trek IP to launch this service.

I will not be subscribing to CBS All-Access. There are 15 episodes in the season, so we're talking about four months of subscription. At the cheap rate, that's $24 for one show. The economics of that don't work out for me, as that's how much the bluray will probably be. I'd rather just wait for the physical copy and buy something I'd actually own.

When a service's exclusive originals are so sparse, it falls to the library to be even more valuable. I can see the case being made, "We're the home for ALL the Star Trek archive!" You might see the problem brewing though - long-time Trek fans are collectors. Like me, they probably already OWN most of those hours of television in some kind of physical format, so there's no incentive there to subscribe for that. The service also includes all of CBS's current programming (99% of which I don't watch), and older CBS/Paramount shows like Cheers, CSI, MacGyver, and so on. For some people, maybe that's enough to get their fee. (I doubt it, but I want to put the possibility out.)

I'll also allow that for new fans who come into the Trek tent with Discovery, it's not a bad idea to have the entire rest of the franchise at their fingertips to binge. Having said that, with only two new shows, the odds of total TREK virgins buying CBS All Access and sampling Discovery seems pretty low.

And this is just the beginning. FX announced this week they're starting their own streaming service, featuring their catalog at $5.99/month and there's AMC Premiere for $4.99/month. Of course, for now they don't have any original programming that will be exclusive to those services, so the incentive to buy that to watch, say, Better Call Saul is rather low. (At least until that's the only streaming service where the entire series is available.) As cable declines the cost of these a la carte services will become more important. I don't know how keen I am to pay $6/month per basic cable channel, essentially. There's a certain point where that cost would easily exceed the cable bill total for all those bundled channels and more.

But it's inevitable.

I'm curious how some of you feel about this. Which streaming channels are essential and what is your calculus for the value of a monthly fee?

16 Great TV Shows, Part 3: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Part 1: The Wonder Years
Part 2: The Simpsons

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine helped me recognize the authoritarianism of the Bush Administration for what it was.

That's quite a feat considering when the show left the airwaves, Bill Clinton was still in office, but by that time, DS9 (created by Michael Piller and Rick Berman) had devoted at least half of its seven-year run to storylines about ethics during wartime. I've already written two posts about how a 1996 two-parter called Homefront/Paradise Lost dealt with the debate of security from terrorism versus individual liberty. Produced during peacetime, it was easy to see that the right answer ALWAYS is "Side with your principles. Never embrace any fascist security policies against your own people in the name of fighting the enemy because then they've already destroyed you." It was all about how paranoia and fear can be misused by power-mongers for their own purpose.

I guarantee you that if this episode was produced in 2004, it would have been attacked by all manner of conservative media and Fox News for being "unpatriotic." It absolutely feels like a pointed and direct criticism of post 9/11 America, even though it preceded the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks by almost six full years. That is the power of storytelling, to confront social issues in a way that keeps them relevant even decades removed from the context that inspired them. Wartime ethics was such a focus of DS9 during the Dominion arc that it became surreal to see the same sorts of questions emerge about the Iraq War and the hunt for Bin Laden. I already knew which side I was on because the storytelling forced me to examine my own values years later.

And yet, one of my favorite episodes is "In The Pale Moonlight," where the message is almost unquestionably "The ends justify the means." At this point in the series, the Federation is getting hammered in the Dominion War. Captain Sisko realizes that their only chance might be to convince the Romulans to abandon their non-aggression pact with the Dominion and join the Federation and the Klingons in the fight against them. He hopes he can convince them that the Dominion is just biding their time and will eventually turn on the Romulans after crushing their other foes. And he's probably right. Problem: all efforts to turn up evidence of this plot come to naught.

So with the help of Garak - a Cardassian former spy-turned-tailor - Sisko produces fake evidence of the plans and arranges for a Romulan senator to visit the station in secret. There he offers his argument and a fake recording of a Dominion meeting where they discuss the invasion of Romulus. One problem: the Senator figures out it's fake and plans to go back to his government with the news that the Federation attempted to deceive them. If that happens, they might enter the war AGAINST Starfleet and the Klingons.

Fortunately Garak has a solution. He plants a bomb on the Senator's shuttle and blows it up, killing five people. Sisko's incensed when he finds out and confronts Garak, but Garak says that it's worked out perfectly. The Senator's meeting was secret, and so the Romulans will assume the hit came from the DOMINION. Better still, when they recover the data rod with the fake recording, they'll assume anything imperfect about the recording will be the result of the explosion. It will look like the Senator uncovered vital intel and was killed for it, adding to its authenticity. And aside from those lives, all it cost "was the self-respect of ONE Starfleet officer."

He's right. The Romulans join the Klingons and Federation, and their forces are enough to turn the tide. Because of this, the Dominion stands a better chance of being defeated.

Over the course of the episode, to make this scheme happen, Sisko has been a party to bribery, extortion, forgery and assassination. And as he tells us at the end. "I can live with it."

This never would have happened on Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the only lead character to come even close to making morally questionable choices was Worf. On TNG, either Picard would have swayed the Romulans with an unrealistically persuasive speech, or there would have been a last-minute recovery of a real recording. The Enterprise crew were good guys who never had to get their hands TOO dirty. Morality on Picard's ship is black and white, while Sisko lives in a world full of shades of grey.

And that's what made DS9 more fascinating to me as a teenager. It seemed determined to test the boundaries of what Star Trek could be, both inside and outside the narrative. Characters sometimes made horrible choices and weren't always exonerated by their circumstances. They failed, they learned, they grew. It made them feel more like people rather than stiff representatives of a point of view who rarely changed week-to-week. As a long-time viewer, it was rewarding to see long-term stories build. Seemingly disconnected threads would come together in a tapestry that eventually used the backdrop of the Dominion War to explore all sides of their characters.

Don't get me wrong. I love TNG. It has some of my favorite hours of TV. But if we're talking about the show that made me go, "Damn, I'd like to write THAT," it's Deep Space Nine all the way. Over the years, the show explored issues like terrorism, faith, religious fundamentalism, homosexuality, and much more.

DS9 also stoked my TV writing interest in another way. One of the writers, Ronald D. Moore, used to answer fan questions on an AOL discussion board on a fairly regular basis. It's hard to remember this in the age of Twitter, where every writer and writers' room has their own twitter account, but there didn't used to be this sort of ongoing dialogue with TV creators. Moore was one of the few, and DS9's Robert Hewitt Wolfe was one of the others. Beyond that, there weren't many peeks behind the curtain outside of magazine articles.

Moore ended up answering a lot of questions about the process of writing and producing TV. I learned a lot about breaking and developing story from those Q and As, lessons I applied a few years later when I started producing my own half-hour drama series in college. I wrote Ron Moore a fan letter at that point and was stunned a few weeks later when he tracked me down to call me at home. That full story is here if you want to read it.

And of course, Moore went on to create the revival of Battlestar Galactica, a show with absolutely became a commentary on Bush-era politics, this time intentionally. It's hard not to see BSG as a descendant of DS9, and a reaction to Star Trek: Voyager.

Deep Space Nine will always be a big part of my journey to becoming a writer. It's just great drama dealing with great ideas. Star Trek has never produced anything else like it.

Part 4: Seinfeld

Part 5: The John Larroquette Show

Part 6: ER

Part 7: Newsradio

Part 8: The X-Files

Part 9: Law & Order

Part 10: Homicide: Life on the Street

Part 11: Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Part 12: Gilmore Girls

Part 13: Everwood

Part 14: The Office

Part 15: Breaking Bad

Part 16: 13 Reasons Why

Film School Rejects post: "If The Internet Had Existed when Wrath of Khan Hit Theatres"

I've got a post up on Film School Rejects.  It's called "If The Internet Had Existed when Wrath of Khan Hit Theatres."

Author’s Note: While on a survey mission, Al Gore is sucked into a giant hole in the ozone that deposits him in the past. Stranded, he uses his knowledge of the future to invent the internet decades sooner than he did in his original timeline. By the 1980s, the internet has evolved to what it became by the early 21st century, dragging fan culture with it. This is one such review that I obtained from our alternate past.

Reviewed: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Is a Slap in the Face to Fans!

By: GeneGeneTheRodenberryMachine

Spock dies!

I’m sorry. I took some heat for posting that as the headline in my earlier screening report, but the fact is that it’s impossible to discuss this movie without discussing that salient point. Let’s also get to what’s really important – Nick Meyer, Harve Bennett AND Leonard Nimoy all lied throughout production when they refused to confirm the rumors of Spock’s death. It was ridiculous, as this had to be the worst kept secret in Hollywood. Everyone knew about this beforehand, so I don’t know why some of my critical brethren are kissing Paramount’s ass by pretending we all didn’t know the ending.
Read the rest over at Film School Rejects.

How STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS gives us the Kirk we deserve

It's no accident that the opening sequence of Star Trek Into Darkness involves Captain Kirk doing something he's done time and again in earlier incarnations - breaking the rules to get the job done.  What IS surprising is that this time, the event is used as a catalyst to provoke some real character work in the young captain.

William Shatner's Captain Kirk was a product of the Kennedy era, a charismatic leader who inspired those around him to greater things by taking chances that no one else would have taken.  He broke the rules in an era where that was celebrated, and displayed wisdom that salvaged calamities that might have gone horribly wrong under another leader.  Yes, Shatner's Kirk had swagger, but it was tempered by experience.

Chris Pine's Kirk is - by design - very different in some respects.  He's got the strut, but its unearned.  Where Shatner's Kirk rose through the ranks and (presumably) got knocked down enough to temper his cockiness, Pine's Kirk lacks that experience.  Instead, he was arguably rewarded for it, being accelerated straight to captain out of the Academy.  It's easy to understand the logic at work there - Kirk saved Earth from a madman who devastated an entire fleet and destroyed Vulcan.  His leadership - doing what no one else could have done - is the reason Starfleet and the human race survive.  It's not hard to imagine Starfleet heads recognizing the PR value of their new golden boy.

Into Darkness feels partly like an effort to address critics who felt that Kirk wasn't ready for the captain's chair at the end of the first film.  It's a tense thrill-ride designed to knock the ego out of the man with the devil-may-care attitude and put him on the path to being the leader he's meant to be, and viewed through that lens, it's largely effective.

The opening scene I alluded to earlier involves the Enterprise crew trying to stop an volcano from erupting and destroying all life on this planet.  Problem: the civilization there is very primitive, so the Prime Directive applies - Starfleet cannot interfere in the natural order.  Spock executes a daring plan to set off a device inside the volcano that will stop the magma, but in the process he's stranded inside.  To save him, Kirk will have to order the Enterprise to leave its hiding spot in the ocean, thus exposing the primitive inhabitants of the planet to evidence of life - or a higher power - beyond their own world.  This, of course, is a direct violation of one of Starfleet's most sacred principles.

So naturally Kirk exposes the ship and saves Spock, despite his first officer's own reminder that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."  This lands him in hot water back at Starfleet, exacerbated by the fact that he filed a false report omitting the offending details, only to be busted when Spock's report details the truth in full.  Kirk's threatened with being sent back to the Academy, but Admiral Pike steps in and manages to get that reduced to a mere reduction in rank to first officer of the Enterprise.

(I want to underline something here - Kirk is disciplined not only for exposing the ship to save Spock, but for taking on the rescue mission in the first place.  Yes, Starfleet orders dictated that even if the mission had gone undetected, Kirk was in the wrong for saving a civilization that would have otherwise died.  As out of whack as those priorities sound, it's consistent with how the Prime Directive was applied in two TNG eps, "Pen Pals" and "Homeward."  Though Kirk may have too much passion, Starfleet's rigidity has its own failings too.)

The first film might have been about Kirk getting the captain's char, but this film is about him truly earning the seat, and he starts as soon as he's busted down in rank.  One of Kirk's traits is that he's too easily governed by his passions.  He acts before he thinks.  Following a terrorist attack on a Starfleet installation in London, and emergency meeting of ranking officers is called.  Kirk is the only one to figure out - just in time to be too late - that immediately reacting this way according to procedure is exactly what their adversary is counting on.  And indeed, the meeting is attacked, with most of the officers killed, including Admiral Pike.

Though Kirk doesn't prevent the attack, it's notable that it's the first time we see him really thinking about a situation and not intuitively reacting to it.  Right after that, Admiral Marcus gives Kirk the Enterprise back and sends him after the terrorist on a mission of revenge. This is complicated by the fact they've traced the terrorist into Klingon space and tensions with everyone's favorite bumpy-foreheaded race are so high that war seems inevitable.

So to that end, Marcus has the Enterprise equipped with long-range torpedoes and gives Kirk orders to fire them from outside Klingon space. The terrorist is not to be taken alive.  Kirk's too blinded by revenge to question the unprincipled nature of these orders - or more likely, they give him an excuse to do what he wants to do any way.  Others around him aren't so swayed.  Scotty resigns in protest, and both McCoy and Spock push back so hard that Kirk embraces a more difficult plan to make an incursion into Klingon space and bring the terrorist into custody.

I like this a lot for what it does with Kirk's character.  Shatner's Kirk was more or less fully formed and the original films rarely tried to achieve any real growth in his character.  The lone exception might be his hatred of the Klingons in Star Trek VI and how he's forced to get past that.  Even there, Shatner's Kirk handles things maturely despite finding his mission repugnant.  Put Pine's Kirk in that film and he'd have openly insulted the Klingon Chancellor before the salad course was served at their dinner.

By the end of the film, Kirk has become a wiser, more mature commander.  I like the note that the film ends on, essentially bringing Kirk's characterization more in line with the TV series-era Shatner.  I feel like some of that is getting lost amid the nitpicking and arguments about canon.

I guess I can't get out of this without addressing some of the more hot-button issues in the film, so I'll touch on them in brief.  Bigger spoilers await below, so don't say you weren't warned.

The Admiral's plot - It's one of the bigger weak points for me.  We're never really given reason to understand why Admiral Marcus so badly wants a war with the Klingons.  The province that Kirk's attack is supposed to target is uninhabited, so unless the torpedoes were secretly programmed with other targets, I don't see this working as a Pearl Harbor-like first-strike to cripple the enemy.  Maybe a better solution would have been to make it appear that the Klingons were working in collusion with John Harrison, thus giving Starfleet apparent justification for a real preemptive strike.

The Klingons - Some fans argued that the marketing should have played up the Klingons.  Having seen the film, I understand why they didn't.  Their screentime is very limited and is little more than a plot device.  If they had played up the Klingons in the trailers, those same fans would be arguing that J.J. Abrams mislead everyone into thinking the Klingons were a major part of the story.  Having said that, I would have liked a little more depth to the background of the Klingon conflict.

John Harrison - I liked the Khan reveal and I like that he was used in an entirely different way here.  It makes total sense to me that Section 31 would become more aggressive following the death of Vulcan.  The fact that they tried to recruit Bashir in an episode of DS9 also suggests they see the value in genetically-enhanced operatives.  Them seeking out Khan makes sense to me under those terms.  They're arrogant enough to think they can control him, and Khan's smart enough to outmaneuver that.  It's a good use of the character without merely retreading his two previous appearances.

The in-jokes and allusions to other Trek - I liked seeing Sulu get to play Captain briefly.  Arguably that laid more groundwork for the character's eventual path to command than anything the original series did.  The scene that invoked "New Vulcan" was a nice touch too.  And hey, it was fun to see a Tribble, even if their appearance here is yet another divergence from the old timeline.  But I guess this is also the most appropriate place to discuss one of the climactic moments....

Even with spoiler warnings, I'm loathe to get too in-depth here.  I think the sequence I'm alluding to does a nice job of reinventing a moment from an earlier film and making it relevant to the journeys of all involved characters.  A more superficial viewer might call it a ripoff, but here it's put into a context that gives the scene a different meaning that allows it to stand on its own.  The emotional impact almost certainly is deepened by recognizing the callback, but I don't believe it's essential.

Basically, it's an homage done with purpose and for me, that elevates it beyond being a rip-off or in-joke.  (That said, the line spoken - or rather, shouted - at the end of the scene might be a case of pushing things too far. I'm not sure it's totally earned.)

Bottom line: I liked the film a lot and I'll be eager to see it again.  My wife is a near-total stranger to Trek and she loved the first Abrams film, so I'm hoping to coax her into being my "control group" for this one.

An open letter to the assholes who can't stop spoiling STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

Warning to all who venture into the comments - despite this post explicitly indicating a desire for people to stop spoiling the film, internet dickbags just gotta be dickbags, I guess.  Spoilers are in the comments, so if you want to go in fresh, stay out of there.

There's been a curious trend lately.  People in the know seem to be incapable of keeping their damn mouths shut when it comes to spoilers for STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS.  Normally, you'd think I'd be targeting inconsiderate moviegoers who pull a "Homer Simpson exiting Empire Strikes Back" and can't help blowing a major plot point for those mere hours behind them in viewing something.  Those people exist.  I don't watch Mad Men or Game of Thrones, but every Sunday my Twitter feed explodes with people angry at other tweeters from ruining plot points for them.

But this isn't a rant at the general public.  This one is targeted largely at the last people who should need this lecture - critics.

A not-insignificant number of critics and web journalists are basically acting like J.J. Abrams is that hot girl who dumped them and as such, they are taking every chance they can to foam at the mouth about how much he sucks.  Specifically, it feels like they resent his "mystery box" method of keeping too many spoilers from prying eyes.  One such individual with a tie to the Trek franchise went on a Twitter binge lashing out at J.J. for keeping too many secrets - and he wasn't alone.  I don't follow most of the others on twitter, but retweets kept pulling some of those conversations into my feed, and it was bizarrely fascinating to watch.

The detractors lashed out at INTO DARKNESS because J.J.'s mystery box resulted in concealing some large elements of Trek mythology that said critics felt should have been used in the marketing campaign.  Problem - in going off on angry rants about what should and should not have been put out to the audience prior to release, these individuals naturally exposed those elements.  So the joy of being surprised by the plot twists was taken away by a whining critic's need to pre-emptively bitch about a marketing campaign.

It's a little like having someone rip open your Christmas presents for you on December 23 to demonstrate that the box size and wrapping paper were offering an inaccurate picture of what awaited you under the tree.

A couple thoughts here:

* WTF difference does the marketing campaign make with regard to the quality of the film? Ten years from now, none of the conversation about the film will be about how it was marketed and all of it will be about the artistry of the project itself.

* The movie was still two weeks away from being released domestically when the bitching started up.  How the hell are we to know if the marketing was a success or a failure?  Who are we to make that call before release?  If it lays an egg opening weekend, then yes, by all means do an autopsy and tell Abrams he should have known better.

*It bears repeating - the movie was JUST released today!  Why do I even have to explain why openly tweeting plot points is fucking inconsiderate, no matter what your reasons are?  (Discussing in reviews is fair, so long as there are adequate spoiler warnings.)

* In several cases, the critics attacking J.J. are also among the people most vocally antagonistic to Abrams' first film.  Yes, big shock - the people who've spent four years bitching about how Abrams' Trek is a betrayal of everything Star Trek stands for ended up loathing every minute of the sequel.

I don't understand why it's a bad thing that some people are going to see Star Trek Into Darkness without knowing every plot twist in advance.  I also cannot get sheer glee some of these haters are getting from deliberately robbing those viewers of their spoiler virginity.  If your problem with a movie is that the trailer was too cryptic for you to know everything up to the third act, you really need to (in the words of the great William Shatner) "Get a life, will you, people?"

So what's this really about?  Why do so many web critics seem to have their knives out for this film?

I truly believe a lot of this is about web hits.  A lot of these guys work for sites that subsist on the traffic from movie spoilers.  The more J.J. withholds, the fewer stories these guys can write, and thus the less link bait they can post.  A lot of filmmakers play ball.  Usually when you see "EXCLUSIVE," you can safely translate that as "I was fed this by a studio publicist."  So costume photos, set stills, and sneak-peak clips become the currency that allows both the websites and the marketing departments to win.

But Abrams doesn't play ball.  And so it seems he must be punished for that.

Seriously, if you're going to write a negative review of Into Darkness and your focus is more on the secrets the film kept until release rather than the merits of the film as a work of entertainment itself, then you've lived far too long inside the 310-323-818 fishbowl my friends.  Take your petty resentments of the leaks Abrams plugged, the denials and the "no comments" and shove it.  Most people don't care about this inside baseball shit.  Hell, I wouldn't even care about it if it wasn't threatening to ruin my Trek experience.

If the film really sucks, then it shouldn't be a problem to write a thoughtful essay decrying it on its own merits.  My problem is that I feel like many critics are taking perverse pleasure in undermining the experience for others, making the audience collateral damage in a firefight with the film's director.

Deep Space Nine's wartime morality plays show that good writing is timeless - Part II

Part I

Following on from yesterday, when the Deep Space Nine episode "Paradise Lost" initially aired, I remember being a bit disappointed to find out that the attack on the Earth's power grid wasn't part of a Changeling plot.  I wanted to see the Changeling threat at last boil over and instead was treated to a story about how an Admiral's paranoia mixed with his best intentions put him and Starfleet on a path to compromising their own principles for what they believed to be stronger security.  I didn't think it was a bad episode - I just wanted action and instead I got a morality play.


In retrospect, this was one of the early examples of how DS9 would use the Changling threat and the later Dominion War to great effect.  The emphasis was not on space battles, but rather on morality during wartime.  Time and again, we were reminded that this war might not cost human lives, but also the very principles of those seemingly fighting for righteousness.


I find this compelling because those storylines rendered the series almost more timely ten years after it aired than it was when those episodes were first produced.  If the episodes had been written in a post-9/11 setting, surely some critics would say that the writing was too on-the-nose and too much of a direct exploration of 21st Century events.  Yet the DS9 writing staff couldn't have intended their work would be more relevant years after the series ceased production.


Writing ages well when it deals with big ideas and also universal ideas.  The morality plays of the original Star Trek still can be potent today, and the war stories of Deep Space Nine are timeless not because they deal with specific events, but because those "big events" are used to explore the characters and their conditions.  Writing that's about big ideas can resonate longer than stories that are just about flash and explosions.

The excellent (and extremely comprehensive) book Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion by Terry J. Erdmann has a behind-the-scenes look at this episode, with some interesting quotes from the writing staff.  Writer/producer Ronald D. Moore, who's own Battlestar Galactica would also heavily explore wartime morality, recalls that this two-parter began life as a story about the Changlings turning Starfleet and the Vulcans against each other.  When attempts to follow that concept proved unsatisfactory, the writers changed course.

"We started talking about a military coup of the Federation by Starfleet, ala Seven Days in May.  We thought that was actually more interesting, and more unexpected in the Star Trek universe - that Starfleet would take over the government out of fear and paranoia.  What the fear of the other, of an enemy, could drive even Starfleet to do."

Episode co-writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe confirms that they hoped to draw the audience into the paranoia as well.  "We wanted to make people think we were doing a different story.  The whole thing is a misdirection.  Part I is a total misdirection of Part II."

If anything in these two episodes disappoints me, it's that the ending of Part II is a bit too pat.  As you might expect, Sisko thwarts the coup.  In the process, he narrowly prevents one Starfleet ship from destroying another.  Though he gets the corrupt Admiral to resign, it's hard to overlook the fact that everything the Admiral and Sisko were saying about the Changling threat in Part I still applies.  With their new security measures rescinded, that means that the Federation is no closer to halting the infiltration than they were at the start of the story.

And yet the tone of the ending doesn't totally acknowledge that. It's made somewhat clear that the real Changling threat is to foster enough fear and paranoia so that the Federation essentially destroys itself.  However, the final scenes of the episode don't play quite foreboding enough.  Sisko should be disturbed and uneasy that a man he respected would so easily toss aside his principles for a cause that he believed was righteous.  This should be treated as the first major salvo in what would turn into full-blown war down the line.  Instead the show raises a lot of really strong issues, takes them to a head, but leaves them jarringly unresolved.  Had the final scenes conveyed that "unresolved" feeling, sold the sense that things will soon get a lot worse, it would have made for a more powerful ending.  Oddly all the pieces are there that should make for this kind of ending.  The issue seems to be more one of execution. Later seasons would be more effective at dealing with that conflict.


I remember sitting in a college ethics class a few years after these episodes aired.  The topic of morality and principles during wartime came up (again, it was prescient because this was pre-9/11) and I distinctly recall being able to apply no fewer than a half-dozen DS9 storylines to some of the issues we discussed.  In fact, I was probably better able to develop and articulate my own moral stances in the class discussions specifically because my exposure to DS9 had already forced me to confront where I stood on those sorts of issues.


We aren't always lucky enough to deal with such grand ideas in our own writing, but if the opportunity presents itself, don't shy away from it.  Even if your story feels like it could be action-driven, see if there's a way to use that action to force your characters to confront something in themselves - something that challenges their own beliefs.

Deep Space Nine's wartime morality plays show that good writing is timeless

Pretty much since its inception back in the mid-sixties, Star Trek has often told stories within its far-future setting that are an allegory on events in our own time.  It was Gene Roddenberry's way of telling provocative (and in the context of the time, perhaps subversive) stories under the guise of being simple science-fiction.  In one of the more infamous examples, he tackled the idiocy of racism by showing a race of people with two classes.  Both classes had faces that were white on one profile and black on the other, though those whose right profiles were black despised those who were their mirror images.  Likewise, those whose faces were white on the right side were equally devoted to destroying their alternate cousins.  It's a conflict that comes at a terrible cost.



Of course to the viewer, this war would have seemed stupid.  "Both these aliens have half-black and half-white faces, why would they fight over such a thing?"  Hopefully, that's the point where the light bulb goes off and the viewer realizes "So why exactly should whites and blacks on Earth be at odds."  A trifle clunky, I admit, but it was the sixties.  Throughout its history, Trek has made use of even defter metaphors.

With that in mind, what if I pitched you a Star Trek story like this:  The Federation is facing an enemy that might have infiltrated them at the highest levels.  They've got hidden agents on the Federation's homeworld - Earth.  They can blend into the population and they've recently pulled off an attack on a diplomatic conference on Earth that left psychological damage at least as bad as physical.  With tensions high, Starfleet security demands more authority to implement stricter, more invasive security measures.  The Federation President is reluctant to give the military that authority, but when the planet's entire power grid is taken out - leaving Earth defenseless - he has little choice but to give the Starfleet admiral the authority he wants.

But soon we learn that the destruction of the power grid was actually engineered by the corrupt admiral, intent on manufacturing a crisis so that he could seize power.  Essentially, this admiral will have used the paranoia to pull off an overreach of authority.

I have a feeling that if this episode were produced today - and especially if it had been made during the Bush Administration - there would be a lot of voices on the right decrying liberal Hollywood for such a pointed attack on George W. Bush.  But here's the kicker - that's actually the plot of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that aired in early 1996!  It was a two-parter contained in the episodes "Homeland" and "Paradise Lost," written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe.

(If you're so inclined, these episodes are available on Netflix Instant, in the 4th season.)

The enemy at that point were the shape-shifting Changlings, aliens with the ability to look like anyone.  They had declared their intent to infiltrate the Federation and had already used their powers to lure the Romulans and the Cardassian fleets into a horrible defeat.  Starfleet had never faced an enemy so able to slip within their own ranks. 

"Homeland" focused on the aftermath of the attack on the conference, with Captain Sisko recalled to Earth to help develop new security measures against the Changlings.  In a sneaky bit of plotting, the viewer is actually made to sympathize with Sisko and Admiral Leyton as their proposals are met with resistance from the Federation President.  Because we - the viewers - have seen just how dangerous the Changelings are, we're frustrated when the President pushes back against tests that only seem reasonable.

The President isn't the only opposition.  Captain Sisko's own father is greatly offended and resistant when he's told that as a relative of a Starfleet officer, he must consent to a blood-screening (purportedly the only way to expose a Changling imposter.)  Of course, his refusal to take the test only makes him look suspicious.  After all, why should an innocent man have any reason to oppose this sort of compulsory search-and-seizure?  Surely if he resists, he must have something to hide and be viewed with suspicsion, right?  As it turns out, he isn't an infiltrator - though he offers one of the episodes more resonant lines: "There's no test a smart man can't find his way around." 

The first episode ends with the President finally giving in in the face of a planet-wide power outage.  In fact, it's Captain Sisko who delivers the critical line: "Give us the authority we need, Mr. President, and we will take care of the rest."  It's a line that feels far more chilling than in 1996, just like Mr. Sisko's warning about tests. And yet, it was written in a world where a trip to the airport didn't necessitate full-body scans and invasive searches and pat-downs; A world where the Patriot Act sounded more like something from the mind of George Orwell than anything that would could ever become real.

With a cliffhanger that featured martial law being imposed, most viewers expected that Part II would be a tense action-packed hour of our heroes taking on the Changelings.  But that's not what Trekkers got, as we will explore tomorrow.

Part II

Friday Free-For-All: Deep Space Nine's "Plain and Simple Garak" on root beer and crying wolf

I've long been of the opinion that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the best series of the franchise, and one of those reasons is the character of Garak, played by Andrew Robinson. From his first appearance in the second episode of the series, Garak announced himself to be just "plain and simple Garak." In fact, that was far from the truth.

Deep Space Nine was a space station abandoned by the Cardassians, a race in a state of truce with the Federation, after they were finally forced off of the planet Bajor by the revolt of the populace. Basically, think of the Cardassian Military as the SS and Bajor as WWII-era Poland. Thus, the Cardassians weren't too popular on Bajor or Deep Space Nine after the evacuation - making Garak's continued residency an oddity that immediately made one wonder about his history.

Beyond that, Garak was often a good source of the sorts of "outsider" observations and often dark lines that some of the other characters couldn't get away with. There's also the fact that he so often bent the truth that eventually everyone stopped taking anything he says at face value. In this clip from Season 3's "Improbable Cause," Dr. Bashir uses "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" as an analogy for why no one trusts Garak when he seems to be in danger. Garak - in one of my all-time favorite lines of dialogue - offers a different interpretation. (The teleplay is credited to Rene Echevarria.)



Another excellent Garak scene is this exchange between him and Quark in Season 4's "The Way of the Warrior." Here, root beer is used as a surprisingly deft metaphor for the Federation. This episode was written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe

Plot holes vs. nitpicks - Ferris Bueller's dog and weak screenwriting

UPDATE: Again, I swear Scott and I don't plan these sort of tag-team bits (except for when we do) but he's got a GITS post today on emotional logic, which deals with many of the same kinds of issues I talk about below. Check it out, won't you?

Last week I found myself watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off in its entirety for the first time in quite a while. This was one of my favorite movies when I was growing up and still is. Teen movies have changed so much since the days of John Hughes that as I was watching, I couldn't help but wonder how the film would be received if it came out today.

I thought of another film of that era, Back to the Future, which is often cited as a textbook example of how to set-up and payoff every single moment in the film. If you watch the first act, there's hardly a line of dialogue in there that doesn't resonate later in the film in some fashion, whether it's the way that the lightning bolt at the clock tower is set-up, or the reasons for Marty to hold onto the flyer announcing that event. There's also the backstory of Marty's parents meeting, George McFly's dynamic with Biff and even little details like the "Twin Pines Mall" and Marty later running over one of Old Man Peabody's dual pines.

As this was banging through my head, the film reached the classic scene where school dean Ed Rooney breaks into Ferris's house and has a confrontation with Ferris's dog... and it hit me! This is the first time we're seeing Ferris's dog and it's more than an hour into the film! You'd think conventional screenwriting wisdom would have dictated a scene earlier in the movie establishing the pooch's presence before Ferris left, and yet... no.

This struck me because it wasn't that long ago I saw the divide among fans of Super 8. There were those who nitpicked every last detail of the film as proof it was crap, while plenty of other viewers who were touched by the movie basically adopted the "la la la... not listening" approach to the holes. I didn't think it was a perfect film, myself. I even admit there are some details that don't quite fit... but some of the critiques crossed the line into really anal nitpicking. It was almost as if these viewers were looking for a fight with the film and were blasting it for not having any faith in their ability to connect the dots off-screen.

There's an excellent comment thread from Go Into The Story that deals with this. Also, the review by the usually excellent Auditors found here contains a number of examples of the latter. Just to pick two of them:

1. Why was the Air Force moving the Cloverfield Jr. monster EAST across the country to more heavily populated areas? There’s a reason why Area 51 is in the middle of fucking nowhere; only accessible via AIRCRAFT; it’s GREAT FOR HIDING STUFF!

It's not explained, but I don't particularly think it needs to be. They had it in captivity for a long time and obviously they had their reasons for moving it. Maybe they were taking it to the East Coast to put it on a barge to the Arctic. Does it really matter? Is this really a plot hole?

2. Why didn’t the Cloverfield Jr. monster simply escape previously while on the train? This is a HUGE plot hole that everyone just simply (and stupidly) accepts without any logic. The Cloverfield Jr. monster is capable of manipulating metal objects to a great degree, and can apparently also interfere with computers/mechanics/electrical systems. So why didn’t IT just stop the train itself, or just kick open the cargo door like it did when it escaped after the train derailed?

The monster had been held in captivity for decades, ergo, they clearly had some method of countering its powers. Maybe they drugged it, or maybe binding it kept it mostly docile and it wasn't able to escape until the train derailed. This is another instance where the on-screen evidence offers a clue that one can reasonably extrapolate an explanation from.

So if those two points and others like them bothered you in Super 8, you're probably the type of person who'd be pissed that John Hughes didn't respect his audience enough to establish the dog.

So what makes us nitpick some movies and let others off for similar flaws? (And don't think I'm setting up a false dichotomy of either "you must nitpick EVERYTHING or you must question NOTHING.") I'd wager it has to do with the emotional engagement between film and audience. People who gave Super 8 a pass on some logic issues tended to be those who were touched by the film on a deeper level. Conversely, a lot of the people who delivered laundry lists of plot holes probably were viewers looking for chinks in J.J. Abrams' armor.

If you want an even better example, take a look at the reaction J.J. Abram's Star Trek. I've been pretty open in that I think it's one of the best, if not the best of the ten films, and perhaps one of the most emotionally engaging Trek projects in the entire franchise. The vast majority of viewers - heck, even the vast majority of Trekkers - who saw it, liked it... but there was also an extremely vocal minority of Trek fans who are so venomous on the subject of this movie, you'd think it screwed their girlfriends right in front of them.

As a lurker on a few Trek boards, I saw several examples of these individuals as early as a year before the release. Before shooting was even complete on the film, they were already calling it the worst thing since Howard the Duck and were preemptively listing all the things that made working on this movie tanatmount to a war crime. That's why I wasn't too surprised to see these haters offering the following evidence that the film sucked:

"The Stardates are completely inconsistent with Trek standard at that point! They had no respect for the fans or the franchise and that's why this movie sucks!"

"Stars don't just go supernova without warning! They have no respect for scientific accuracy and that's why this movie sucks!"

"The mentally-deranged villain has a crazy revenge scheme that doesn't adhere to cold, dispassionate logic!"

Comments like this amuse me because you can look at ANY Trek film - including the highly regarded Treks II and VI - and find a comparable laundry list of issues. Anyone who cited scientific accuracy as a reason to bash Abrams' Trek has to be willing to concede that there's just as much implausible science in Wrath of Khan. (To wit: the Reliant crew's inability to count planets in the Ceti Alpha system and notice one is missing; anything and EVERYTHING connected to the Genesis Project, including the complete implausibility of its detonation forming a planet and star out of the Mutara Nebula.)

So why for these Trekkers was Wrath of Khan "Trek done right" while Abrams' film couldn't do anything right? Possibly because they didn't give the film a fair chance and were looking for reasons why it was bad. Possibly because the very idea of the film offended them so much that they couldn't give themselves over to its world, and thus, couldn't stop looking for details that reminded them it was a construct.

I'm not saying it's a folly to point out plot holes - but I also think that there comes a point where nitpicking can become a bit too obsessive.

It comes down to this: if you think Ferris Bueller is a stupid film, you probably hate the fact Ferris's dog isn't established sooner. If everything else in that movie works for you, what does it matter if the dog shows up out of nowhere? If Super 8 worked for you emotionally, do you really need to find out why the alien was being moved?

Fade In: The Making of Star Trek: Insurrection - Michael Piller's personal account on the writing of a feature film

Part One

Continuing from where we left off yesterday, Michael Piller spent a few weeks mulling over ideas for the ninth Star Trek film. He and producer Rick Berman agreed that since the previous film First Contact had been so dark and featured an incredibly formidable villain in the Borg, it would probably be best to go in another direction.

They began with the idea of finding a public domain story to adapt into the Trek universe. Then, one morning Piller was making his daily application of Rogaine when it hit him that a fountain of youth story might be the right way to go. Wedding it to an adaptation of Heart of Darkness, he pitched an idea that had Picard sent on a mission to track down an old friend who has seemingly gone rogue. When he discovers his friend's hiding place, he's shocked to find the man looking as young as he did at the Academy.

It soon becomes evident that this friend is actually defending the natives of that planet, and as the story evolved, it turned into a battle of principles. The planet is to be ceeded to the Romulans via a treaty and Picard learns there's much more to this mission than his superiors have told him. The planet is almost entirely composed a rare mineral that the Federation desperately needs. It also has regenerative qualities that gradually make anyone on the planet younger. Starfleet knows that and struck a deal with the Romulans - we'll give you the planet, you relocate the people, we share the ore.

Picard, recognizing this as an end run around Federation principles and a trick to get the Romulans to do the dirty work for them, resigns in disgust and joins his friend on the planet. Getting younger and younger until he reaches the age of 25 he defends the planet against the Romulans, eventually defeating them and exposing the matter to the public.

Sounds exciting, no?

The problem is that Berman hated it, and he had strong words for Piller: "Picard’s an old man who doesn’t get to buckle his swash until the planet makes him young again. But he’s our hero. When the movie’s over and he’s back to normal again, he needs to be a vital man of action. Patrick will hate this. He’ll never do it... You’re telling our star he’s an old man!”

Back to the drawing board. Piller makes changes. The old Academy friend is replaced by Data, and at one point Picard is forced to kill a malfunctioning Data to stop him, only to later realize that Data was defending the natives from a worse attack. The fountain of youth idea is discarded and we're left with a plot not terribly dissimilar from Avatar, with Picard making a stand to protect natives from those who want to destroy their planet in order to harvest an ore.

Piller's treatment - reprinted in full in the book - reads well. It's exciting and full of political intrigue. It also offers a heavy amount of action and seems to give Picard a compelling moral dilemma and an interesting conflict when he turns his back on Starfleet and the crew. Obviously he's exonerated in the end, but it's a hard-fought victory.

The treatment goes to the Paramount execs. They love it, including Sherry Lansing, then-chairman of Paramount Pictures. Smooth-sailing, right? Wrong.

But there was one more voice at the studio to be heard from and it belonged to Jonathan Dolgen, Chairman of Viacom Entertainment Group, the chief operating officer of the company. As a rule, Dolgen doesn’t involve himself in creative decisions. But he breaks that rule for Star Trek. And it’s not (just) the money. He happens to be a huge fan. Dare I say, a Trekker?
[...]
He thought the idea of people being exploited for natural resources was old hat and that Picard needed a bigger challenge. He didn’t feel there was enough action for Picard in space. He complained the story had too much internal Star Trek intellectualism and thought the countervailing argument by the Federation conspirators made a great deal of sense. Picard might be perceived as being on the wrong side of the issue.

Rick and I were discussing how to respond to the Dolgen notes when we received a call from Australia. We’d also sent a copy of the story to Patrick Stewart.

Patrick hated the story even more than Jonathan Dolgen. (p. 95-96)

Stewart's correspondence with the producers is reproduced in full in the book. He hates virtually everything about the idea. Most of all, he feels it retreads a lot of ideas they'd done before on the series. Proving that the job is more than a paycheck to him, he actually cites several specific episodes by name, as deftly as any hard-core Trekkie would.

Piller tries to argue his case and eventually sees that the only way to accommodate Patrick's notes, salvage their hard work and most importantly - get this film in theatres by its predetermined release date - is by going back to the fountain of youth idea. When Berman calls Stewart, he barely gets that pitch out before Patrick enthusiastically approves of the idea.

I think that's where I'll leave this, but there's much more to this story in the book. After Piller completes his first draft we see the notes sent to him by the studio and it's an intriguing look at how they analyze the script. And again, there's a surprising knowledge of Trek lore in their suggestions and concerns. They're not out to make a quick buck, they're looking to protect the integrity of the francise and its mythology. Most interestingly of all, they hit on virtually every failing that eventually makes the final film a less than satisfying experience.

Why don't all those problems get solved if they were identified? Short answer - not enough time, not enough money.

There are also reproductions of memos sent from actor Brent Spiner, whose nitpicking of such details also reads like it could have come from an online Trek fan debate:

- Why do the Ba’ku look twelve?
- Do they procreate?
- Are there any real children?
- Why do our crew’s appearances change “subtly” but their behaviors change “drastically”?
- And if our people act like children, how are the Ba’ku “children” acting like adults?
- The Ba’ku don’t behave like children. Why do our people’s behavior change?
- Does the ore make people younger or just appear younger? Or does it make them behave younger?
- Do the Son’i reproduce?
- How old are they?
- Why are they coming back now? Did they take some ore with them and are just now running out?
- Why don’t they just ask their relatives for some more ore?
- Why doesn’t anyone on the Federation Council say this plan is a violation of the Prime Directive?
- Does the Federation know the Ba’ku and the Son’i are related?
- Why aren’t the Federation leaders punished at the end?
(p. 130-131)

In other words, he gives Piller all the notes he's hoping not to get. But they're all insanely logical questions and reasonable ones under the premise.

How does Piller answer all of these notes? In the words of a Time-Life commercial from my youth: "Read the book." Piller has left not just Trek fans, but aspiring screenwriters everywhere a great legacy in Fade In: The Making of Star Trek: Insurrection.

A tribute to Star Trek's Michael Piller

"Mr. Worf... Fire!"

A generic line that could be quoting any one of a hundred and seventy-eight episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, or the line of dialogue that changed everything for Trek fans?

We'll come back to that in a minute, but here's a hint: it's the latter.

That line of dialogue was authored by Michael Piller, and it was the final line spoken in the third season of TNG (his first season as show-runner.) Piller is the writer often credited with truly defining the Trek sequel. Though the first two seasons had a number of high points, the shows were still largely plot-driven and many of the main characters were barely fleshed out at the start of the third season.

Adding to the problem was creator and executive producer Gene Roddenbury's edit that humans were perfect in the 24th century. There was no greed, no avarice, no hatred among those from Earth, and certainly not among those in Starfleet. That's a nice vision of the future, but any writer will tell you what the problem is with using that as the basis for your series.

There's no conflict. If everyone from Earth is perfect and gets along with each other, then you're not going to have interpersonal conflict among the human Starfleet officers. That means that all conflict in a TNG either had to be external - or come from one of the two non-human characters, the android or the Klingon.

Gene's rigid rules contributed greatly to the high turnover in the writing staff during the first two years. The original show-runner hired for year three also left before production even began on the first episode - which lead executive producers Rick Berman and Roddenberry to turn to the writer who'd been the second choice for the job and who fortunately had agreed to write a freelance episode (against the advice of his agent): Michael Piller.

How can one tell interesting stories under those rules? Piller found a way. During his first year, Piller worked hard to define the still-thinly developed characters on the Enterprise. He also instituted a policy where every single unsolicited spec script sent to the show was read. Most of them were unusable, but in his first month there he uncovered a spec from a promising young writer named Ron Moore. Moore would later spend five years each on the staffs of TNG and its spin-off Deep Space Nine before going onto several other shows, most notably the relaunched Battlestar Galactica. As it would turn out, Moore was just the first of many young writers whom Piller would discover and nurture over the years.

And indeed, you can feel the difference in TNG once Piller found his legs in season three, and come the season's end, he had a big hand in getting the series out from under the shadow of its big brother. The season finale boasted the return of the Borg, a race of seemingly unstoppable cybernetic zombies who can adapt to any attack. Their Collective mind seems unbeatable, and when the Enterprise is sent to intercept them, Captain Picard is captured.

First Officer Riker is left in command and when an away team manages to get aboard the Borg ship, they make a shocking discovery. Captain Picard has been altered and absorbed into the hive mind as a Borg himself. They return to the ship just as Riker is informed that their one-in-a-million chance weapon is ready. With the Borg about to launch into warp, Riker has to make the call. Does he open fire with a weapon certain to destroy the Borg ship, and his transformed captain, or does he hestitate - likely dooming humanity.

That line I quoted at the start of this entry? That's how the episode ended, followed by the words "To Be Continued...."

All summer Trekkers speculated on how Starfleet would get out of this. Would Picard be killed? Was Patrick Stewart being written out of the show? If not, how would Starfleet defeat the Borg?

Another person who wanted to know the answer to those questions was Piller himself. He wrote the cliffhanger not having any idea how it would be resolved. That seems unfathomable when one studies Piller's own philosophies of writing, the pride he takes in ensuring that each story he writes strive for deeper meaning or deeper exploration of the characters.

But the gambit worked. The cliffhanger held fans in anticipation all summer, and drew in new audiences. Even today, that episode, entitled "The Best of Both Worlds" lands on Top Ten Best Cliffhanger lists. Somehow he came up with a conclusion mere days before the next season's opener was to go into production.

Piller would work on the rest of TNG and co-create the two subsequent series Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and then after a few years away from the Trek universe, he was asked to come back and write the ninth film in the series. There was just one problem - he didn't have an idea.

"Where do ideas come from? I’m asked all the time. The only suggestion I give to young writers is to listen to the universe. The ideas are all around you – in newspapers and magazines, television, stories people tell you and most often in your very own life experiences. Sooner or later, something will resonate."

That's a quote from Piller's unpublished book Fade In: The Making of Star Trek: Insurrection. Back when he was working on the movie, he'd pitch the book as a unique look inside the writing process of a single feature film. We'd be right there with him as he wrote the treatment, struggled to refine the idea, got notes from the actors and the studio, and eventually went all the way to the final draft.

There was just one problem. Once the book was done, someone at Paramount killed the project. Time passed. Piller died of cancer in November 2005. The market for nonfiction Trek books fell apart, and it seemed that the book would never be deemed profitable enough to see publication.

Cue the good folks at Trek Core, who have been offering Piller's unpublished manuscript for free at this link. It's an amazingly candid look at the process of writing a feature film, from a perspective rarely addressed in such depth for any movie. This is not a book for Trekkies - this is a book for writers.

Maybe you hate Star Trek. Maybe you've never seen Star Trek. Or perhaps you have but you haven't seen Insurrection. Or maybe you hate Insurrection. It doesn't matter - this is a must-read.

If my introduction of Piller as a writer fails to impress you, then perhaps this tantalizing tidbit will make you curious enough to check out at least some of this book.

As I approach a new project, my process always begins with the question: what is it about? Here’s one answer that might apply to a Star Trek movie...

I want it to be about the most horrible, treacherous aliens ever known to man who are about to destroy life as we know it, leading to the most spectacular thrill ride of an adventure with fantastic space battles and huge explosions and great special effects -- a white knuckle ride for the movie audience.

Yeah, but what’s it about?

I can write space battles with the best of them, but what makes that space battle interesting to me is: why are they fighting? What are the stakes? What does the hero lose if he loses? And what does he win if he wins? Why should we care?


Tomorrow - the journey to making the audience care. Lessons from Fade In: The Making of Star Trek: Insurrection.

The Five Worst Series Finales

As with yesterday's season finale list, I have decided to confine this list to shows within my lifetime. Like I said yesterday, this is a purely subjective list, and hopefully it will spur some of you to comment with your own picks that I missed.

In retracing all the TV finales I've watched over the years, I've realized there are a lot of final episodes that range from "meh" to "okay." Most shows manage to turn out a sendoff that is at least passable. In the cases where there's greater pressure on a finale to wrap up a major epic, or a more demanding premise, that's usually where you'll see shows fall on their face.

With that in mind, it's not surprising that there are few sitcoms on this list. In a lot of ways the bar is lower for them. Most of the episodes on this list are ones that provoked epic amounts of "Fan rage" upon their original airings.

5) Quantum Leap: "Mirror Image" - I debated if this one was fair, as the creators shot it when the future of their series was in doubt. Still, this was intended as a launching pad into the next season and they had supposedly been warned it could be the final episode. The episode is a bizarre bore that has Sam leaping into his own adult body and finding himself in a strange metaphysical bar on the exact day of his birth. Others in the bar appear to be either leapers or odd echos of previous leaps, along with a bartender who might be the God/Time/Whoever that sends Sam on his leaps. There's a nice moment near the end where Sam uses his one "free leap" to fix things for Al rather than go home, but then the episode concludes with the biggest middle finger to fans it could have had: a caption reading "Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home."

4) Enterprise: "These Are the Voyagers" - Poor Scott Bakula. He's a great actor but is the star of two of the worst finales of all-time. This episode was a slap in the face to the Enterprise cast, as the whole story is framed as a holograph simulation being played by Next Generation's Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) in a segment that's meant to take place during TNG's seventh season episode "The Pegasus." The regulars play second-fiddle in their own finale with an utterly boring story that pointlessly kills off Engineer Tucker, and then denies the audience any real closure by neglecting to show a historic speech the captain is supposedly fated to give.

3) 7th Heaven: "Goodbye and Thank You" - I didn't watch the show regularly, but I couldn't resist tuning in for this trainwreck. Not only does all the interesting stuff happen off-screen (such as a bride and groom canceling their wedding while at the altar). Not only does the show eat up time with three badly staged, acted and written fantasy scenes that seem to be there only to incorporate Jessica Biel into the show. Not only does the twist that all three Camden couples are pregnant with twins cause eye-rolling of epic proportions. But the ratings for this episode (no doubt from people like me who came to dance on this show's grave) were high enough to motivate the CW to bring the show back for yet another year. The casualty: Everwood.

(I know the mere fact that this wasn't really the end should disqualify it from this list, but it's MY list and it was fully intended as the end right up until the week after it aired. I say it counts.)

2) Star Trek: Voyager: "Endgame" - The entire premise of the show was about a Starfleet ship, stranded decades from home. For seven seasons, we watched as the crew struggled to find a faster way back, even as they pulled together. I could have forgiven the time-travel cheat that sends them home 17 years ahead of schedule, essentially amounting to a deus ex machina. I could have looked past yet another use of the Borg, a once-threatening enemy that Voyager declawed through overuse. I even could have looked past the complete lack of sacrifice or consequence here. What I can't ignore is that the audience waited seven years to see what would happen when the crew made it back - and the show fades to ending credits before Voyager reaches Earth orbit.

And the Worst Finale of All-Time (in my humble opinion)....

1) The X-Files: "The Truth" - The only thing the show got right here was bringing back David Duchovney. To really explain everything wrong with the finale would probably mean discussing what went wrong with this series as a whole. Suffice to say that at least half - if not more - of the episode is taken up with a trial that serves only to lecture to the audience about what they already know of the alien conspiracy. The main character is passive, sitting there while everyone else is stuck rehashing old territory (not unlike the Seinfeld finale, actually.)

Worse, though the episode was advertised as explaining everything, it's clear the writers can't fold all their red herrings into a single coherent conspiracy explanation. The one bit of the conspiracy that never made sense to me was the whole super-soldier plot, which emerged from thin air in season eight. The trial scenes attempt to skirt this, but it's clear those twists can't be made to work with the bees, the black oil, the alien embryos and all the other malarkey we were asked to swallow for nine years.

With "The Truth" as its valedictory address, The X-Files makes an excellent case for why one shouldn't follow a series that's based on a never-ending circle jerk of mysteries and conspiracies - or at the very least, why one shouldn't expect any satisfaction out of the ending. After being burned on this show, I watched the first two seasons of Lost, always on guard that nothing would ever make sense. I finally quit during the third season when I realized that not only was I completely indifferent to the mysteries, but that I actively hated 2/3 of the characters.

I know there are people who would argue that Seinfeld's finale deserves to be on this list. My feeling is that Seinfeld never had anything it needed to resolve. That last episode was surely a disappointment, but it feels so unlike a normal episode that it's easy for me to divorce it from the series. It doesn't taint the rest of the series for me.

What are your picks?