Barclay Stops the Banishment from the Garden of Eden

[5billionof5billion]

Keep in mind that the Five Doctors story was aired in 1983, which was four years before TNG premiered. Also keep in mind that there's a considerable difference between Classic Doctor Who (1963-1996) and nuWho (2005-present). Classic Cybermen and modern Cybermen are not the same. And you shouldn't read too much into the Raston Warrior Robot, as that's something that (to the best of my recollection) only appeared in that one story, in very specific circumstances.


Welcome to the club. I had to write essays and term papers in my college English courses. It's part of every kind of English class, and I recall that the exams in my creative writing course in high school included essay questions about poetry and short stories.

By the way, one of my favorite Canadian authors is Margaret Atwood. My first exposure to her writing was in a college course on essay-writing. She's not only a fantastic novelist, but she's also an excellent essayist.


Exactly. And they wail and stomp if you give them a fair review and tell them that they could benefit from a writing class or, at the very least, a competent beta reader.

I don't care how interesting the initial story idea might be; if the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and formatting drive me up the wall inside of the first three paragraphs, I won't bother to read the rest of it.

Actually, they required me to turn in term papers; and someone else helped me out by pretty much doing them for me. The first one I did was on Dave Crockett, and I remember reading a lot about him. If I took a course in English now and had the money and the know how, I'd pay for all the term papers and hand them in. I'll be happy to do my own research when it comes to writing something that's fictional based on something that's real or fictional with a small dosage of reality in it. For instance, if it's possible, I'd like to do a stories where Barclay uses the holodeck to interact with Tom Fitzgerald, who is known as the Great Brain. I've been told that the stories are fictional but loosely based on John Fitzgerald's money-loving older brother. I wouldn't say the writing I'm planning would be appropriate for young readers who love the Great Brain books. I never use profanity when I write unlike other writers whose names I probably shouldn't mention, but I heard a lewd joke in a barber shop once that I'm planning to use in regards to the second teacher the kids had in that series named Mr. Standish. I remember the Great Brain books themselves were known to have the d word used once in a while.

We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
God bless, Jason Irelan

 

[Sgt_G]

someone else helped me out by pretty much doing them for me

No, they didn't help you at all. They helped themselves to your money and that was it. YOU need to do the writing yourself to learn how to do it right, how much time you need to invest, how much self-editing you have to do, and all the other things that go into becoming a better writer. Reading a lot will help you see and understand what is good, what is great, and what is total drek. But the only way to truly find out if you have it in you is to do it yourself and not pay someone else for a paper just to get the grade.

 

[Timewalker]

If I took a course in English now and had the money and the know how, I'd pay for all the term papers and hand them in.

So you admit that if you had the money, you'd just take the lazy, dishonest way out and cheat.

You wouldn't have learned a thing, and whatever grade, credits, or degree you ended up getting (assuming you weren't expelled, because instructors nowadays have ways to catch cheaters who do this) would be completely worthless.

I used to have a home typing business, and most of my clients were college and university students. Only twice did someone offer to pay me to write their assignment for them... and I tore a strip off them up one side and down the other, in both cases.

First of all, it was amazingly stupid of one of them to offer me $25 to write his paper... in front of the Student Association secretary. It was so amazingly stupid that my family wondered if it weren't a trap designed to see if I was one of the people who was selling term papers and enabling students to cheat. He could have offered ten times that amount and I wouldn't have taken it.

The second person offered me money to write an English essay for him. I lost every shred of respect for this person, who was also part of the science fiction club I was running on the campus.

One of my clients asked me, "Do you guarantee an 'A' on this assignment?" I told her that my only guarantee was that I would do the very best job I possibly could to make sure her term paper was typed without errors, in the correct format, and that it would be done by the time we agreed on. What grade she ended up getting would be between her and the instructor, and while I'd fix spelling errors, I would not, under any circumstances, write original material for my clients. If they forgot to include a thesis statement (as one person did, and asked me to make one up for them), too bad.

That must have satisfied this person, as she stuck with me for the next two years and recommended me to her friends and classmates.

I don't respect cheaters.

 

[5billionof5billion]

Well the only reason I feel I'm being criticized for the story I started to write here on this board is because there are too many people who don't feel the universe would've been better if the first human female never would've taken a bite out of the fruit and that it's impossible for an all-powerful God to start a world with two people who could produce a gene pool that was stable enough.

We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
God bless, Jason Irelan

 

[Spot261]

You could always continue the story...

 

[Sgt_G]

No, it's because Barclay's actions make no logical sense at all. He's trying to pull off the ultimate "I killed my own grandfather" time paradox by eliminating the entire human existence. He will never have lived to be able to go back in time and stop it all. He knows this. It's standard Star Fleet training.

And why do you think the universe would be a better place without Earthlings?

Humans were the heart and soul of the Federation. Without humans, there would be no United Federation of Planets. There would be no one to stand up to the Romulans or Klingons. Eventually, the only two races left standing would be the Borg and the Founders, neither able to completely defeat the other, neither willing to give in for a compromise of any sort.

As to your assertion about what others believe / don't believe, the two ideas you presents are in direct conflict. If one believes "it's impossible for an all-powerful God to start a world with two people", then one would not believe in the literal truth of biblical stories to include Adam & Eve and the apple.

However, I for one do believe it IS possible for God to populate the world, but not necessarily word for word how the story goes. When I said up-topic that I believe God created evolution, I wasn't being flippant. I was and still am serious about that. There is too much evidence showing that evolution works to ignore, but it doesn't make sense that evolution "just happened". Ergo, the only two explanations are either God created evolution as His tool to populate the world, or the Devil planted all the false evidence of evolution (i.e., the dinosaurs never walked the planet 100 million years ago) to lead us away from God's true word. I don't want to give the Devil that much credit, so I choose to believe God created and used evolution as His tool to build the world we know today.

 

[Timewalker]

Well the only reason I feel I'm being criticized for the story I started to write here on this board is because there are too many people who don't feel the universe would've been better if the first human female never would've taken a bite out of the fruit and that it's impossible for an all-powerful God to start a world with two people who could produce a gene pool that was stable enough.

We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
God bless, Jason Irelan

When a species gets down to just two, it's extremely unlikely that it's going to do anything other than go extinct. That's why people are so concerned about some of the endangered species that are being decimated by disease, pollution, overfishing, hunting, and poaching. You know how many white rhinos are still alive in the wild? THREE. That species will be extinct within my lifetime, and I'm over 50.

Okay, here are my reasons why I don't like your story.

First: Your theme isn't one I prefer. I'm atheist, and I really dislike religious preaching in the fiction I read. It's one thing if you write an allegorical or metaphorical story, and some of Star Trek's best stories do just that. But shoving the Old Testament in peoples' faces and mangling what we already know about the origins of the universe, Earth, and humans is not helping.

Second: You are committing what has been called (at least in fanfic circles; I'm not sure if this is also a term used by mainstream fiction authors) "characterization rape." You're forcing Barclay to say, believe, and do things that are absolutely not in keeping with the Reginald Barclay we've known all these years of episodes, novels, and other authorized Star Trek fiction.

Third: You don't appear to have any idea how to actually write a story. You admit that if you could, you would cheat on writing assignments by paying other people to do them for you.

Fourth: Your attitude is one of "I want money for whatever I write, no matter how bad it is, and I don't want to bother learning how to make it better."

Fifth: You don't appear to respect the fact that Star Trek is an owned intellectual property from which fanfic authors are absolutely not allowed to profit.

It's one thing for people like Greg Cox or Christopher (two TrekBBS members who are Star Trek novelists) to write and receive payment for their Star Trek stories. They are professional authors, and they are authorized to write Star Trek stories.

You're not. So you're free to post your story on some site like fanfiction.net, but you must include a disclaimer that you don't own Star Trek and that you have no intention of infringing on any copyrights held by CBS, Paramount, or anyone else. And you have to accept that nobody is going to pay you to write fanfic. Ever. That's not how it works.

 

[Sgt_G]

The preferred term is "character assassination". Please don't ever use that other term again. Thanks.

 

[Timewalker]

The preferred term is "character assassination". Please don't ever use that other term again. Thanks.

The term I used has been around since at least the 1970s, so take your objection to the editors of Best of Trek, where I first read it. One of them passed away years ago, but the other might still be alive.

 

[Sgt_G]

That term fell out of favor over fifteen years ago.

 

[Timewalker]

Many terms are out of favor. I used the one I was familiar with from reading an essay about fanfic writing and how to avoid common pitfalls when writing for already-established characters.

 

[Spot261]

In fairness I think the point remains

 

[Timewalker]

Whatever. The point is that the character of Barclay, in this story, is written in a twisted, distorted way that has no canonical basis.

The OP should have used an original character instead... not that it would have fixed the rest of the problems.

 

[5billionof5billion]

No, it's because Barclay's actions make no logical sense at all. He's trying to pull off the ultimate "I killed my own grandfather" time paradox by eliminating the entire human existence. He will never have lived to be able to go back in time and stop it all. He knows this. It's standard Star Fleet training.

And why do you think the universe would be a better place without Earthlings?

Humans were the heart and soul of the Federation. Without humans, there would be no United Federation of Planets. There would be no one to stand up to the Romulans or Klingons. Eventually, the only two races left standing would be the Borg and the Founders, neither able to completely defeat the other, neither willing to give in for a compromise of any sort.

As to your assertion about what others believe / don't believe, the two ideas you presents are in direct conflict. If one believes "it's impossible for an all-powerful God to start a world with two people", then one would not believe in the literal truth of biblical stories to include Adam & Eve and the apple.

However, I for one do believe it IS possible for God to populate the world, but not necessarily word for word how the story goes. When I said up-topic that I believe God created evolution, I wasn't being flippant. I was and still am serious about that. There is too much evidence showing that evolution works to ignore, but it doesn't make sense that evolution "just happened". Ergo, the only two explanations are either God created evolution as His tool to populate the world, or the Devil planted all the false evidence of evolution (i.e., the dinosaurs never walked the planet 100 million years ago) to lead us away from God's true word. I don't want to give the Devil that much credit, so I choose to believe God created and used evolution as His tool to build the world we know today.

Well I have sent holodeck scenarios in the past when they had the contest going and never even got an honorable mention. Once in a while I'd do a biblical one where I'd complete twist the story by getting more people on the ark in the holodeck and having the ones who don't make it go away in an easier way by just being eliminated. Nobody did any writing of them for me or nothing. Others have been about things I remembered from school and based them from findings recorded in the Guardian of Forever.

I can't get them to let me be a moderator for neither love nor money, so please don't ask me why the universe would be a better place without earthlings. If I had the chance, I'd go back and do it just to avoid the risk of an encounter with Africanized honey bees if I could since I haven't heard of any breakthrough reports of any food replicators to rely on for us and to avoid all the other wars that have occurred over the years. I will just say that I believe that Earth would be safe from the Borg and the Founders, which are only real in the Star Trek universe because there's no reason God couldn't protect people from them.

From now on the character will be Arnold Mackenzie who is known to have little patience for entities that are irritating and might be known to break a rule if he thought it was better for the needs of the many, and I have a plan to use him in the story I'm wanting to write part of in the Star Trek Taxi cross-over story. If someone could please restart the story for me and get Jim Ignetalski and the taxi, that would be nice. I don't have a plan to conclude the story, but I have ideas for the character to say some things that make him seem stupid. I've never seen the episode itself that my brother was telling me about, but he had said that he used to be smart before he got into drugs.

We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
God bless, Jason Irelan

 

[Timewalker]

I can't get them to let me be a moderator for neither love nor money, so please don't ask me why the universe would be a better place without earthlings.

What does your wanting to be a moderator have to do with any of this?

On most forums, it's considered extremely ill-mannered to campaign for a moderator position for yourself, and this is one of them. I don't see how it would benefit you anyway, since moderators don't get special fanfic privileges that would let them bypass the legal issues that you seem determined to ignore.

 

[5billionof5billion]

The story's a fun to write fan fiction story nothing more. I don't own any of the Star Trek characters in it. Data, Odo, Q, and a young Picard will be the only ones, aside from a reference to Sisko; and Q's already made his appearance. I'd just like to finish it with no criticism and without having to worry about the story being close down or too many spamming warnings that could lead to a banning. Right now, I'm thinking about buying the new Star Trek: Strange New Worlds anthology for full price; but if I get banned, Pocket will make no money from me for that book or any of the others. I'm a little picky about how I like my Trek, which is why I'm having a discussion on one of the boards.

I did one where there was a tornado drill at my school. I haven't sent it in, but I'm wanting to. Is it safe to assume tornadoes are possible in the holodecks on Star Trek whether or not the safety functions are working. They are in the story, but I'm just wondering.

We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
God bless, Jason Irelan

 

[Sgt_G]

I'd just like to finish it with no criticism

You're going to get criticism, good or bad, not matter what. If you meant "without interruption", then you should write it all off-line before posting it.

without having to worry about the story being close down or too many spamming warnings that could lead to a banning.

If you mean due to too many consecutive postings, this board allows you to post multi-part fiction stories in separate postings. I've done that, as most other writers have, and nobody ever blinked. It is considered poor etiquette to post more than two messages in a row in normal discussion topics.

I don't understand why, if you should get banned, you would not buy a book from Pocket. They have nothing to do with running Trek-BBS. By the way, from what I've seen, it takes a lot more to get banned from Trek-BBS than breaking a minor etiquette rule. Unless you're posting outright spam, you have to push a lot of buttons to get kicked out.

 

[5billionof5billion]

Okay, but I don't want anyone saying that I'm using Barclay anymore because I'm not. The character's Arnold MacKenzie, and he has more of an attitude problem. Consider it a speculative fiction about the possibility that God may have started the universe, since there are too many people who have to find out the hard way. If someone helps me out with the Taxi Trek crossover, it'd be nice. Somehow I want Troi and Riker to sit in the back seat of that taxi that they think is empty and Jim looks up. Maybe instead of saying something about why they thought the taxi was empty, which doesn't sound like him, he can say, "Where to?" I want him to bring the subject up somehow about Star Trek, and name a certain character or two like Spock, who is probably the most familiar one at the time the episodes where was in them aired; and I'm having a hard time coming up with a way for him to bring that up. I'd like him to list the wrong names in front of Riker and maybe talk about some of the episodes, so that he'll feel he has no choice but to have him and possibly the taxi beamed on board the Enterprise along with him and Troi.

No one will be too upset when the taxi has an accident in the transporter, but there will be in incident where Troi will start to have one of her emotional freak outs as only she can do, and MacKenzie will lose his temper right in front of her in a way that'll make her go away even though she outranks him by a little bit. I have an idea of how to play out the bit of drama with it.

Also, as far as spamming goes, I've seen a mod bug me about a spamming thread when I feel I was only starting a thread that one of their "special" friends had already started. I feel that the writers responsible for writing books will be able to post because they're writers, so I'll feel that this will be my way of depriving them money. By the way, would it be possible to make money off a Trek crossover with the Great Brain story if I use a disclaimer saying I don't own the Great Brain characters too? I've been working on one where Barclay pretends to be a kid about the same age as the title character and pulls an ornery prank on the teacher that none of the kids like at first because of his disciplinary ways.

Here's the continuation of the story.

"Another thing they'll say is that dinosaurs went extinct millions of years ago and that they didn't exist at the same time people did and that the Bible has fairy tales in it. Would you be able to show Earth millions of years ago?"

"Negative."

"Now as to some of the fairy tales that people say can you show Moses parting the Red Sea and leading people across?"

Just then the image on the Guardian showed it happening.

 

[Timewalker]

I thought I explained it clearly enough before: You, as someone who has not been authorized by CBS, Paramount, Pocket Books, or any of the other companies that publish Star Trek fiction in whatever formats (ie. games and comics), are NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE MONEY OFF SOMEONE ELSE'S COPYRIGHTED PROPERTY. Period.

If you want to boycott the pro authors, that's your own business. I boycott a couple of them, for reasons that are good enough for me. But boycotting them because a moderator on this forum got after you for something doesn't make sense. The pro authors aren't the people who own this site, and they certainly don't run it. And posting your fanfic isn't going to deprive them of money, either, because there are many people who read both kinds of Star Trek fiction. I've got a whole bookshelf full of old fanzines from the '60s-'90s. I've got another bookshelf full of pro Trek novels, anthologies, and reference books.


About your latest idea: Since Star Trek the TV show isn't part of the in-universe Star Trek history, bringing up the TV show with Riker and Troi is just going to elicit a "Huh? What are you talking about?" reaction.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

By the way, would it be possible to make money off a Trek crossover with the Great Brain story if I use a disclaimer saying I don't own the Great Brain characters too?

Unless you receive permission from both the owners of Star Trek and Great Brain to do so then the answer would be "no". If you seriously want to pursue writing as a career I suggest you find yourself an agent ASAP, they may be able to better explain what you can and can't do with regards to established franchises.

If you really want to go down the route of telling sci-fi/biblical tales, then you'd be best to create your own universe in which to do so, one that has nothing to do with Trek. For example, you could have the adventurous explorer John Smith out searching for the said to be mythcial "Portal of Time" (or the "Well of Yesterdays" or whatever you want to call it), in order to travel back through the past to understand/alter the events of the Bible. Making it your own universe and characters would give you far greater control and ownership of the premise and its direction.