NV/P2: Why was "Kilkenny Cats" shelved?

[Phantom]

All my checking was only able to find that it had been shelved, but not why.

I suspect I know at least part of it. The Kzinti would have been a tough stretch to achieve on a fanfilm budget.

Can anyone from P2 comment?

 

[GSchnitzer]

All my checking was only able to find that it had been shelved, but not why.

I suspect I know at least part of it. The Kzinti would have been a tough stretch to achieve on a fanfilm budget.

Can anyone from P2 comment?

Thanks for your interest in our shelved "Killkenny Cats" episode. There were actually a number of reasons for shelving this episode.

To recap, folks might recall that "Killkenny Cats" was a story focusing on the Kzinti (as seen in the Star Trek animated episode "The Slaver Weapon"). The story was written by Jimmy Diggs and was being penciled in as a possible fifth season episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. After Enterprise was cancelled, Jimmy Diggs approached our Star Trek New Voyages/Phase II production team, suggesting that "Killkenny Cats" could be revised somewhat to place it into the TOS Captain Kirk era, instead of the Enterprise Captain Archer era.

To make a long story short, the vision and movie rights to the Kzinti characters were sold by their creator Larry Niven some years ago--and the new IP holder was reluctant to make them available to us. We toyed with simply calling the antagonist race the Kytheri and making them a weird hybrid of cats and gorillas. But not being able to do a story about the actual Kzinti was decidedly less cool--no matter how exciting our Kytheri story might be.

More significantly, Jimmy Diggs and his team were hopeful that all the shooting for the episode could be done in Southern California somehow. There seemed little incentive for "Mohammed to come to the mountain;" I think the expectation was that Phase II would move the mountain closer to Mohammed.

And you're right: it would have been an expensive episode to produce. How do you do the Kytheri--CGI? Puppets? Elaborate makeup?

In the end, it was all shaping up to be an expensive episode about the Kytheri, filmed and produced in Southern California somehow by Jimmy Diggs and his hand-picked team (i.e., the "House of Diggs Productions" production company), rather than a Kzinti episode filmed and produced by the Phase II team in Upstate New York. The logistical problems and competing expectation just couldn't be overcome--and any costs associated with trying to overcome those challenges would have come at the cost of other episodes we wanted to produce in the future.

 

[Phantom]

^Thanks for replying. I didn't know Niven had sold his rights. That right there would have been a deal-breaker even if the other issues were resolvable.

Too bad. I always wanted more Kzinti...

 

[GSchnitzer]

^Thanks for replying. I didn't know Niven had sold his rights. That right there would have been a deal-breaker even if the other issues were resolvable.

Too bad. I always wanted more Kzinti...

Well, like I say: we toyed with just calling the felinoid aliens something besides Kzinti--which wouldn't really affect the content of the story. Also compare Court Jones' Kytheri artwork in my post above with his original Kzinti artwork. Note his more cat-like face with the bat-like ears.

 

[JES]

Well, I suppose that it would've been bittersweet at best if it was a new felinoid race, and NOT the Kzinti.

Still, I'd like to think that maybe the new rights owners could be cooperative?

And yeah, I suppose that CGI might be the cheaper alternative.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

To make a long story short, the vision and movie rights to the Kzinti characters were sold by their creator Larry Niven some years ago--and the new IP holder was reluctant to make them available to us.

I guess that explains why Star Trek online changed the Kzintis' name to Ferasan and made them look like recolored Caitians with fangs.

 

[GSchnitzer]

To make a long story short, the vision and movie rights to the Kzinti characters were sold by their creator Larry Niven some years ago--and the new IP holder was reluctant to make them available to us.

I guess that explains why Star Trek online changed the Kzintis' name to Ferasan and made them look like recolored Caitians with fangs.

A bit more about our aborted "Killkenny Cats" (before it was aborted) can be found in Issue 5 of our eMagazine from back in 2008. The "Cats" article starts on Page 25.

http://gordonwaynewatts.com/StarTrek/STP2_eMag_005.pdf