Crossover with other franchises?

[Greg Cox]

Dibs on the Star Trek/Xena crossover!

Hey, they both fought Greek gods!

[Timewalker]

Therin of Andor wrote:

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As mentioned, "Ishmael" crosses over with "Here Come the Brides". As that TV show was a Paramount venture, the Pocket editor of the day didn't panic too much when she realised it was an unofficial crossover, then discovered the rights had passed to a new owner and Pocket had to scramble to clear it.

There are humorous cameos as well: characters from "Bonanza", "Have Gun, Will Travel", "Maverick", "Doctor Who" and "Battlestar Galactica".

The use of Larry Niven's kzinti (from his "Known Space" books and the "Ringworld" series) in Filmation's TAS has meant the kzinti also made a cameo in Diane Carey's "Battlestations!" They were intended to play a major role in "The Captains' Honor", but were changed to the felinoid M'dok at the last minute.

Incidentally, the character Picard faces off against in "The Captain's Honor", Lucius Aelius Sejanus of Magna Roma (the "Bread and Circuses" planet), is supposedly inspired by Patrick Stewart's Sejanus in "I, Claudius".

That made me . It didn't impress me as "clever" - just silly.

That said, I do appreciate clever crossovers that are respectful to the characters, history, and overall tone of both sides. It's not easy to do - I know, because I've tried. My own efforts (both currently in progress) involve crossovers between Sliders and Xena: Warrior Princess and Sliders and The Handmaid's Tale. While the Sliders/Xena is a lot more fun and campy, the Sliders/Handmaid's Tale is easier (albeit really grim). I think I've got a decent grip on being true to all the different participants, while creating a harmonious whole.

I'm also assembling some notes and ideas for a Highlander/I, Claudius crossover, in hopes of tackling it for this coming year's NaNoWriMo.

Years ago I saw that someone had written a bunch of Star Trek/Highlander crossover stories (based on the TV series, not the movie). I didn't read them, since the main character was Richie - obviously the stories had been written before that character's on-screen death.

I've read quite a few Doctor Who/Star Trek crossovers, and in my opinion, they're not easy to do right. A lot depends on which Doctor and Companions get used, as that would have a greater effect on what kind of story can be told.

Greg Cox wrote:

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Dibs on the Star Trek/Xena crossover!

A friend of mine tried one. I won't say any more than that (so as not to mess up anybody here), but it was pretty good, and I wish she'd finished it.

[Christopher]

The problem with crossovers between SF/fantasy universes, even aside from licensing issues, is that they can really only work as "imaginary stories." It's one thing to cross over two present-day series like, say, Cheers and St. Elsewhere, or Law & Order and Homicide, since they're set in essentially the same reality. But different science fiction universes tend to make different assumptions on a fundamental level: the way the laws of physics work, the way history unfolds, what alien species exist and on what planets, how the geography of the galaxy or universe is laid out, things like that. For instance, there's no way to do a legitimate, in-continuity crossover of Star Trek with anything where first contact with aliens was overtly made before 2063, such as Alien Nation or V. Nor could you cross over a universe like Star Trek or Babylon 5 that has faster-than-light travel with one like Firefly where it doesn't exist, or cross over ST's alien-rich galaxy with the humans-only galaxy of Asimov's Foundation universe or the 2004 Battlestar Galactica. And how do you cope with something like the original Galactica, where the cosmology was so ignorantly handled that ships travelling below the speed of light could travel across multiple galaxies in under one year? There's no way to even attempt to reconcile something that fanciful with any universe that pays even a moderate amount of attention to astronomy and physics.

So the only way to do it is by fudging the inconsistencies, ignoring whole huge swaths of worldbuilding and history in both universes -- which I consider cheating, since those worldbuilding details and backgrounds are fundamental parts of what make SF universes what they are. Such stories can be entertaining artifacts, amusing exercises, but I can't really take them as legitimate parts of either universe.

A crossover between SF universes could really work in cases where the physics, history, and other aspects of worldbuilding are compatible. For instance, I choose to believe that Roddenberry's pilot The Questor Tapes takes place in the Trek universe, because there's nothing about it that fundamentally conflicts with anything ST has established (and Assignment: Eternity implied that Gary Seven had helped ensure Questor's "birth," while Immortal Coil has a certain scientist adopt the name of Questor's inventor as an alias, suggesting he may have learned robotics from Questor himself). But I don't count Genesis II/Planet Earth as part of Trek history because its version of WWIII and its aftermath is incompatible with the timing of those events in Trek (although I do consider it an alternate timeline where the Eugenics Wars became a full-fledged global nuclear war). I would've loved to incorporate Alien Nation (the TV series, not the mediocre movie) into Trek history, since they were thematically similar in the ideas and issues they explored, but there was just no way to reconcile them. SF universes that are compatible with one another are very rare, because the whole nature of SF entails creating whole universes with their own distinct rules and identity.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Wormhole wrote:

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There definately won't a Trek/Doctor Who novel crossover

O RLY?

Okay, it wasn't a full length novel, but come on.

Seriously though, I would totally love to see how the DTI would deal with the Doctor.

Indeed, isn't there a TARDIS locked up in the Eridian Vault?

[Timewalker]

Christopher wrote:

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The problem with crossovers between SF/fantasy universes, even aside from licensing issues, is that they can really only work as "imaginary stories."

Aren't all stories basically imaginary?

But different science fiction universes tend to make different assumptions on a fundamental level: the way the laws of physics work, the way history unfolds, what alien species exist and on what planets, how the geography of the galaxy or universe is laid out, things like that.

Agreed. That's why I NEVER want to see a Star Trek/Star Wars crossover. I can only enjoy Star Wars as a strict fantasy; there isn't a shred of actual SCIENCE in it anywhere. Some argue the same is true of Star Trek, but I disagree. Some of the Star Trek episodes have been inspired by real science, and some of them have gone on to inspire future real science. And at least Star Trek never used the word "parsec" as a unit of time!

The only way I could even begin to make my Sliders/Xena crossover make sense was to have an AU where Alexander the Great didn't die young, but made it all the way across Asia and over to North America. And since the time setting of Xena skips around from biblical to current year with NO attempt to explain the discrepancy, I figured I didn't need to worry too much about the Xenaverse showing up in modern-day California instead of ancient Greece.

I didn't have the same problem at all with my Sliders/Handmaid's Tale story, as it's all AU in the near-future. For me the challenge is handling a double set of Sliders characters, plus getting the right "voices" for the Atwood-created characters.

I read a Star Trek/Dune crossover awhile back, where an older Federation starship (circa Captain Pike's era) ran afoul of an anomaly of some kind and ended up in the Dune universe, just prior to the events of the first of Frank Herbert's novels. None of the canon ST characters were in it, which was refreshing. What made this so much better than most Dune fanfic I've read was that the people of the Imperium were freaking out about the starship's computers (since computers are considered anathema in the Dune novels). And then the Guild noticed they no longer had a monopoly on FTL and they freaked out. So right away the Star Trek characters had an awful lot of people upset with them just for existing, let alone before they'd had a chance to do anything.

So you can combine unlikely SF universes if you anticipate the problems and come up with a creative, in-universe solution instead of either ignoring it, using technobabble, or sneering that the readers "just don't understand" (Kevin J. Anderson's M.O. when he's called on his mistakes).

[Christopher]

Timewalker wrote:

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Aren't all stories basically imaginary?

That's what Alan Moore said...

("Imaginary story" was the term used by DC Comics in the '50s through the '70s for out-of-continuity stories about situations that weren't intended to be "real" within the series' main continuity, like Superman dying or getting married -- the same sort of thing Marvel did in What If...? The greatest "imaginary story" was "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" by Alan Moore, which came out at the time that DC's whole continuity was being rebooted and was basically the final adventure of the Bronze Age or "pre-Crisis" Superman. Moore's narration contained the classic line, "This is an imaginary story... but aren't they all?")

Agreed. That's why I NEVER want to see a Star Trek/Star Wars crossover. I can only enjoy Star Wars as a strict fantasy; there isn't a shred of actual SCIENCE in it anywhere. Some argue the same is true of Star Trek, but I disagree. Some of the Star Trek episodes have been inspired by real science, and some of them have gone on to inspire future real science. And at least Star Trek never used the word "parsec" as a unit of time!

Star Trek was meant to be science fiction in the vein of the prose works of the '50s and '60s. Star Wars was meant to be "space fantasy" in the vein of Flash Gordon and John Carter of Mars. ST hasn't always lived up to its aspirations of credibility, but SW has never had any to begin with, being essentially a sword-and-sorcery epic dressed up with space-opera trappings.

The only way I could even begin to make my Sliders/Xena crossover make sense was to have an AU where Alexander the Great didn't die young, but made it all the way across Asia and over to North America. And since the time setting of Xena skips around from biblical to current year with NO attempt to explain the discrepancy, I figured I didn't need to worry too much about the Xenaverse showing up in modern-day California instead of ancient Greece.

Well, as long as you're treating the Hercules/Xena universe as the "home" universe, you can accommodate just about anything, since those shows embraced their origins in mythology and folklore and often basically admitted that they were pure fiction, playing fast and loose with reality and blurring the lines between reality and fiction.

Although you could borrow the conceit from the Sliders episode "The Guardian" that time flows at different rates on some worlds, so that even though it's technically the present, events on that world might be very far behind where they are on "our" Earth.

Conversely, you could play off the Xena clip shows that had clones or reincarnations of the main characters existing in the present day (in fact, in a present day where Xena is a TV show).

So you can combine unlikely SF universes if you anticipate the problems and come up with a creative, in-universe solution...

Yeah, it helps gloss over the historical differences if you go the alternate-universes route, although it's harder to use that to justify the whole geography and alien population of the galaxy being completely different (I don't remember there being any Vulcans or Klingons in the universe of Arrakis), let alone the laws of physics being different. Ideally I'd prefer a case where you can just do an honest crossover and treat shows as part of the same reality and timeline. But that's very hard to find in science fiction.

[Timewalker]

Christopher wrote:

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That's what Alan Moore said...

("Imaginary story" was the term used by DC Comics in the '50s through the '70s for out-of-continuity stories about situations that weren't intended to be "real" within the series' main continuity, like Superman dying or getting married -- the same sort of thing Marvel did in What If...? The greatest "imaginary story" was "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" by Alan Moore, which came out at the time that DC's whole continuity was being rebooted and was basically the final adventure of the Bronze Age or "pre-Crisis" Superman. Moore's narration contained the classic line, "This is an imaginary story... but aren't they all?")

I'll have to take your word for all of this, since I've never read any of that. In the '60s I read Archie and Disney and Casper comics, and in the '70s I was into Westerns (ie. Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt).

Christopher wrote:

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Well, as long as you're treating the Hercules/Xena universe as the "home" universe, you can accommodate just about anything, since those shows embraced their origins in mythology and folklore and often basically admitted that they were pure fiction, playing fast and loose with reality and blurring the lines between reality and fiction.

Although you could borrow the conceit from the Sliders episode "The Guardian" that time flows at different rates on some worlds, so that even though it's technically the present, events on that world might be very far behind where they are on "our" Earth.

I could, but that's too easy. Granted, that one particular Sliders episode was rather good, but ultimately it's just a gimmick like the Earth where time flowed backward.

Conversely, you could play off the Xena clip shows that had clones or reincarnations of the main characters existing in the present day (in fact, in a present day where Xena is a TV show).

I don't really like clip shows in general, and I LOATHED the cutesy-pie modern-day reincarnation episodes.

Nope, I'm using a really implausible, but not impossible twist on history, and I'm in good company in that. At least two SF authors have written stories where the Roman Empire never fell, just because Drusus became Emperor instead of Tiberius. If Robert Silverberg can do wacky history, why can't I?

Christopher wrote:

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...it helps gloss over the historical differences if you go the alternate-universes route, although it's harder to use that to justify the whole geography and alien population of the galaxy being completely different (I don't remember there being any Vulcans or Klingons in the universe of Arrakis), let alone the laws of physics being different. Ideally I'd prefer a case where you can just do an honest crossover and treat shows as part of the same reality and timeline. But that's very hard to find in science fiction.

Of course there aren't any Klingons or Vulcans in the Dune universe. Frank Herbert never had any sentient aliens in that series. Even the Tleilaxu are considered a form of humanity, and Guild Navigators start their lives as humans before they mutate. The difficulty with crossing Dune with anything is partly because it happens over 20,000 years in the future, and the whole anti-computer thing is a religious taboo that only the Bene Gesserit dare break - and not until after Leto II is safely dead, if I recall correctly. But the fanfic I read tackled these issues head-on, which was good. Nothing was swept aside with a bunch of technobabble.

[Lonemagpie]

Oddly enough, since somebody mentioned Highlander and Xena, the one crossover I *really* would have loved to see on screen is Highlander/Buffy...

[FreddyE]

Another way would probably be to have one of both universes be fiction inside the other..and then something happens. For example: There is nothing to say that at least the old Dr. Who series did not exist in Trek universe (the new show would not have existed since its creation would fall right into WWIII if I´m not mistaken). Since Paris is already fascinated with old scifi shows he could come across Dr. Who and make a holo novel. "Something" happens to make that holonovel "real". Of course you would have to find a new and innovative way to do that....something other then the usual "trapped on the holodeck". Maybe thery finally find a way to convert holomatter into regular matter. An experiment with the conversion technology goes out of control and converts the entire running holodeck programm.

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

The Wormhole wrote:

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There definately won't a Trek/Doctor Who novel crossover

Oh, but there was, albeit illegally published without the author's permission: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doc...the_Enterprise

[Christopher]

FreddyE wrote:

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Another way would probably be to have one of both universes be fiction inside the other..and then something happens. For example: There is nothing to say that at least the old Dr. Who series did not exist in Trek universe (the new show would not have existed since its creation would fall right into WWIII if I´m not mistaken).

No, Trek's WWIII is still several decades in our future.

We do know that Star Trek exists as fiction in the canonical Doctor Who universe. "The Empty Child" had Rose referring to the Doctor as "Spock," and there have been various other Trek allusions in the following seasons of DW and The Sarah Jane Adventures. (Which makes the current IDW Trek/Who crossover miniseries problematical with respect to DW continuity -- but then, DW has never had much continuity or logic anyway.)

There's never been a canonical reference to DW as fiction within the Trek universe, but the novel My Enemy, My Ally featured Uhura and Lt. Freeman converting Tom Baker episodes to holographic format (although the clip "shown" in the book is not a scene that actually occurs in any real DW episode).

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Christopher wrote:

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Although you could borrow the conceit from the Sliders episode "The Guardian" that time flows at different rates on some worlds

Actually, Otherworld got there first.

[Christopher]

^Err, I was referring specifically to the other poster's attempt to write a Sliders/Xena crossover, hence I was suggesting justifications that came from within those two specific continuities.

[Greg Cox]

Lonemagpie wrote:

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Oddly enough, since somebody mentioned Highlander and Xena, the one crossover I *really* would have loved to see on screen is Highlander/Buffy...

There can be only one . . . Slayer.

[Timewalker]

FreddyE wrote:

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For example: There is nothing to say that at least the old Dr. Who series did not exist in Trek universe (the new show would not have existed since its creation would fall right into WWIII if I´m not mistaken).

Say what? You must never have seen one of the classic Doctor Who episodes: "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" - the First Doctor, with companions Susan, Ian, and Barbara. It states that in 2164, the Daleks had taken over Earth, and the humans still alive were either slaves to the Daleks, or rebels trying to overthrow them. I don't recall 22nd-century Earth in the Star Trek universe being under the control of cybernetic aliens from the planet Skaro. And some of the Jon Pertwee-era UNIT material was set later in the 20th century than the 1970s, since there were time-traveling Daleks involved.