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What are your favorite 'Retread' or 'Rehash' episodes?

Alien abduction stories are a stable on Trek. "The Cage" and "The Empath" are my favorites. "Allegiance" is good fun and much better than "Schisms".
 
TNG's "A Matter of Perspective" and Voyager's "Ex Post Facto", which were the same damn story retooled.
Actually, you really want to get bad, go outside the franchise for a moment. The Stargate SG-1 episode Collateral Damage more or less is just Ex Post Facto re-done with just the character names changed. An exaggeration, yes, but not much of one.
 
Actually, you really want to get bad, go outside the franchise for a moment. The Stargate SG-1 episode Collateral Damage more or less is just Ex Post Facto re-done with just the character names changed. An exaggeration, yes, but not much of one.

Continuing outside the franchise, the end of Voyager's The Gift was pretty much stolen wholesale from Babylon 5's Mind War.
 
Nobody steals in the artworld you get sued.

It's more complicated than that. You can't copyright an "idea." Just characters and other specific details, but not a general premise.

Heck, pretty much every TV show eventually does a variation on "Ten Little Indians" or "The Most Dangerous Game" or (more recently) "Groundhog Day." Heck, "The Enemy Within" is arguably a sci-fi variation on "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde." And STAR TREK was inspired by FORBIDDEN PLANET,which was inspired by Shakespeare's "The Tempest." :)

Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution that matters.
 
TNG's "A Matter of Perspective" and Voyager's "Ex Post Facto", which were the same damn story retooled.
That's a good one!

Similarities:
  • A bored, unhappy, beautiful wife married to an older scientist obsessed with his work
  • Husband is murdered
  • Riker/Paris was allegedly engaged in a dishonorable affair with wife
  • Riker/Paris is exonerated at the end
Differences:
  • Riker is accused of Murder, and an extradition hearing follows to determine if Riker will stand trial on the planet's surface while Tom has already been convicted and Sentence carried out.
  • Riker maintains his complete innocence, while Paris doesn't remember anything at all.
  • In AMoP, the wife solicits Riker. In EPF, Paris is the scoundrel. The wife is not interested at first, and even warns him that he'll regret getting involved.
  • In AMoP, the Husband kills himself, and was worried that Starfleet would discover his secret. In EPF, it's the wife who uses Tom in a conspiracy to kill her husband, and get away with it.
And then thematically, they're very different. A Matter of Perspective is a "courtroom drama" and uses the holodeck to recreate events, each from a different perspective of the witnesses. Ex Post Facto has a deep Noir tone where an Investigator(Tuvok)goes around gathering clues. They're also in the middle of a war, and the scientist is a weapons designer. The enemy race is involved in the conspiracy.

Oh, and the opening scene in TNG, is a funny bit with Picard painting naked women, and Data dissing his painting skills. In Voy, the opening scene is black and white, with Paris stabbing you, and followed by a very cool noir scene of Ensign Kim laying on the sickbay bed recalling his interrogation to the captain.
 
It's more complicated than that. You can't copyright an "idea." Just characters and other specific details, but not a general premise.

Heck, pretty much every TV show eventually does a variation on "Ten Little Indians" or "The Most Dangerous Game" or (more recently) "Groundhog Day." Heck, "The Enemy Within" is arguably a sci-fi variation on "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde." And STAR TREK was inspired by FORBIDDEN PLANET,which was inspired by Shakespeare's "The Tempest." :)

Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution that matters.
Yes you can I've copyrighted hundreds with the Writers Guild, Greg. Ideas aren't a dime a dozen either not if you haven't got any they're worth quite a bit.
 
Well, there are some concepts which are universal. It all depends on how you execute them. "Same basic premise" is a lot different from "copies dialogue almost word for word", unless it's an homage.
 
Well, there are some concepts which are universal. It all depends on how you execute them. "Same basic premise" is a lot different from "copies dialogue almost word for word", unless it's an homage.
You can sue for misappropriation of an idea. Paramount had hundreds of story concepts held for years. Jame Cameron had the idea for Avatar for years before he worked on it. I've had my pc hacked and one idea misappropriated and turned into a recent very successful album title.
 
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