I was watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture the other day and noticed Alan Dean Foster's name in the credits. He has written many novelizations that I have enjoyed through the years. Anyways, I was surprised to see his name in the credits because I thought Roddenberry and Harold Livingston were the credited screenwriters of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Come to find out, Alan Dean Foster was initially involved. It didn't end well. There's a new book about Robert Wise, and in the book, Foster spills some interesting details about what really happened behind the scenes.
Alan Dean Foster and Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- Thread starter Gina Taylor
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Foster wrote "In Thy Image," the pilot for the Star Trek: Phase II TV revival that was being developed for Paramount's startup "fourth network" in the late 1970s. When the Paramount network fell through, they decided to bring back ST as a feature film instead, and "In Thy Image," since it was already movie-length, was used as the basis for TMP's script.
By the way, while Foster does have a ton of movie and TV novelizations to his name, he's also written a considerable amount of original science fiction of his own, primarily in his Humanx Commonwealth universe. If you like his writing, you might want to check some of it out: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?142
By the way, while Foster does have a ton of movie and TV novelizations to his name, he's also written a considerable amount of original science fiction of his own, primarily in his Humanx Commonwealth universe. If you like his writing, you might want to check some of it out: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?142
Alan Dean Foster is one of my favourite movie novelisers (is that a word?). He seems able to capture the feel of them movie while still offering a more in depth look at the characters. Interestingly though, I never felt his Star Trek Logs (based on the animated series) were particularly satisfying. While he did significantly extended takes on the episodes, I never felt he managed to capture the Star Trek characters in the way that James Blish (superb writer that he was) managed, even in the shortened form his stories took.
Which in turn was based on the Roddenberry story "Robot's Return" for Genesis II which in turn is similar to "The Changeling" from TOS.
People always point that out, but "similar" is not proof of deliberate imitation. Back in the '90s when I tried doing spec scripts and pitches for the Trek shows, there were three or four instances where one of my proposals happened to be coincidentally similar to something they were already doing, even though I only pitched to them a few times. Every story is going to be "similar" to some other story.
Heck, for a long time, I noticed that TMP had a lot of similarities to the TAS episode "One of Our Planets is Missing" -- the Enterprise faces a giant cloud entity approaching a populated planet, the ship travels through its innards to its brain, Kirk orders Scotty to prepare for self-destruct to kill it, but a Spock mind meld with the entity lets them communicate with it and send it on its way. Heck, if anything, those similarities are a lot stronger than the "Changeling" ones everyone has incessantly harped on for 40 years. And since Alan Dean Foster novelized TAS, I always figured he was influenced by OOOPIM when he wrote "In Thy Image." But when I actually read "In Thy Image," it turned out that it didn't have any of those similarities to the animated episode, that they were all added later in Harold Livingston's and others' drafts of TMP. The similarity was just a coincidence after all. So it's best not to read too much into similarity.
AFAIK, Foster only wrote a story outline for "In Thy Image," not a full pilot script, which was done by Harold Livingston. Memory Alpha says the same. Had he done a script, given how WGA assigns credits, the credits would probably have read "Story by Alan Dean Foster, Screenplay by Alan Dean Foster and Harold Livingston."
I'm pretty sure that Foster has said his outline was derived from "Robot's Return."
I'm not disputing that part, just the "Changeling" part that's been spouted with tedious regularity for 4 decades. Everyone assumes the similarity was intentional, but I don't think I've ever heard actual confirmation that it was. As I keep pointing out, stories accidentally resemble each other all the time, so mere resemblance isn't proof. Do we actually know that "Robot's Return" and/or "In Thy Image" was intended as a riff on "The Changeling," rather than just happening to employ a similar premise? Is there any documented statement to that effect from Roddenberry, Foster, or anyone else?
I'm sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you were disputing that "In Thy Image" was derived from "Robot's Return."
I've never seen any documentation that "Robot's Return" was derived from "The Changeling." Personally, I think the similarity is a coincidence more than anything, considering that "In Thy Image" came out of an idea that wasn't a Star Trek idea and was refashioned into a Star Trek idea, which would highlight the similarities between the two stories since now they're directly comparable.
During the writing stage, Livingston was not very kind to Foster. He said some things I found to be very surprising.
It's difficult to say exactly what "Robot's Return" was like as it's only been described second hand, but in it a huge space vessel from the outer solar system brings humanoid robots who are following an ancient map in an attempt to discover their origins. They basically mistake Dylan Hunt for God or some sort or Messiah, so it's "Changeling"-like in that aspect.
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What book?
Probably this one, as it's the newest one out there as far as I see:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34496594-robert-wise?from_search=true
That's inaccurate. Here's the description of "Robots Return" [sic] from an old Lincoln Enterprises catalog I still have (undated, but probably from 1983 or so, since it only covers material up to TWOK):
The advanced computer and sophisticated machinery left on a moon of Jupiter by a 1992 NASA expedition have evolved into a new form of robot life and visit Earth in search of the "GOD" which created their life. They meet Dylan Hunt, formerly of NASA and consider him a messiah.
So the "huge space vessel from another solar system" angle was added later for "In Thy Image."
As for the "Changeling" similarities, they're tenuous. Nomad wasn't an evolved AI species, but a single individual created by an accident. And while Nomad was looking for its creator, there was no "God" angle to it, since 1960s TV censorship would've probably discouraged that. I suppose it's possible that Roddenberry was thinking in terms of getting to explore the religious angle he wasn't able to explore with "The Changeling," but conjecture isn't proof.
The mention of Jupiter suggests that Roddenberry was inspired by Pioneer 10, the first space probe to fly by Jupiter in 1973, the same year Genesis II came out (it was launched in 1972). With a NASA robot probe to Jupiter in the news at the time, and with Roddenberry developing a show whose hero was a NASA scientist, it made sense that he would've looked at Pioneer 10, thought "How do I get a story out of that?", and come up with the idea of a later, more advanced robot probe to Jupiter (or rather, a computer system left there by human explorers) developing into androids that would come back to Earth. Now, that part of the story was dictated by the show's Earthbound format -- Dylan couldn't go to them, so they had to come to him. And since the idea would've been to tie into his NASA history, having the androids descended from NASA tech latch onto him as their "god" was a natural outgrowth of the premise. It's conceivable that "The Changeling" was in the back of Roddenberry's mind when he thought up that aspect of the story, but given the Jupiter focus and the timing, it seems logical that Pioneer 10 was his primary inspiration.
After all, this is a time when Roddenberry was trying to grow beyond Star Trek, to create the next big thing he could use to grow his career and his reputation. His hope for Genesis II and the other series premises he was developing at the time was that one or more of them would be a greater success than Star Trek was. After all, at the time, Star Trek was just a show that got cancelled after 3 years and was never likely to come back except as a cartoon. So he wouldn't have just been trying to tell stories that reminded people of that old, cancelled show. He would've been looking for new stories to tell, stories inspired by current events and new scientific advances like Jupiter probes. Stories that tackled themes he wasn't allowed to tackle in the '60s, like religion. If "The Changeling" entered his thoughts at all, it was probably as an example of something to surpass.
Anyone have a copy of the "Robot's Return" story? It's apparently not for sale anymore, but copies should be floating around somewhere...
I've heard TMP being similar to "The Changeling" "The Doomsday Machine" and even "The Immunity Syndrome". But I agree with Christopher. At most, maybe elements of those episodes provided some inspiration to some aspects of the story, but I wouldn't characterize it as copying any of those stories. And I certainly wouldn't use it as a criticism against TMP.
I have noticed it brought up less these days then the past. Probably because since then hundreds of hours of Star Trek has been created (thousands even). A lot of episodes have similar elements to other elements. Ditto for novels. I think the same would apply there. In some cases someone may have been inspired by aspects of an earlier work, but more times then not it's probably a coincidence.
I've noted before TMP is my favorite Star Trek film. I loved the story and honestly I can't really say much of it reminds me of any of the episodes. It felt totally different to me in almost every way except for some very basic elements. If I had not read about them I probably would not have even given it much thought.
Re: Foster I did enjoy his novelizations of Star Trek (2009) and STID. It's too bad they never did one for Beyond. I have heard allegations that he shadow wrote TMP though I think that's been largely debunked, even by Foster himself if I remember correctly. I'd guess that maybe people were thinking of "In Thy Image" and projecting more then what was there.
I have noticed it brought up less these days then the past. Probably because since then hundreds of hours of Star Trek has been created (thousands even). A lot of episodes have similar elements to other elements. Ditto for novels. I think the same would apply there. In some cases someone may have been inspired by aspects of an earlier work, but more times then not it's probably a coincidence.
I've noted before TMP is my favorite Star Trek film. I loved the story and honestly I can't really say much of it reminds me of any of the episodes. It felt totally different to me in almost every way except for some very basic elements. If I had not read about them I probably would not have even given it much thought.
Re: Foster I did enjoy his novelizations of Star Trek (2009) and STID. It's too bad they never did one for Beyond. I have heard allegations that he shadow wrote TMP though I think that's been largely debunked, even by Foster himself if I remember correctly. I'd guess that maybe people were thinking of "In Thy Image" and projecting more then what was there.
I think there are two main factors behind that myth. One is that a foreign (French?) translation of the novelization mistakenly left off Gene Roddenberry's and Harold Livingston's credits and listed Foster as the sole writer. The other, probably, is that Foster did ghost-write the "George Lucas" Star Wars novelization two years earlier, and people got the two mixed up.
But to anyone who's read the TMP novelization and is at all familiar with Foster's work, it's obviously not by him. It has an awkward writing style that feels very much like the work of a career scriptwriter tackling prose for the first time, with script-like properties like heavy use of emphasis on descriptions of important actions or attributes, and with a very Roddenberry-like preoccupation with both futurism and sexuality.
Some years ago I asked Foster directly about the rumors that he ghost-wrote the TMP novelization. He said that he was aware of the rumors, they weren't true, and his only involvement was to write a story treatment for Phase II that Livingston and Roddenberry used for the film.
I think that Christopher's explanation for how the rumor arose is correct.
Yeah, I heard much the same thing, esp. him debunking the rumor that he was a ghost writer. And Christopher's explanation makes sense.
Well, he was a ghost writer sometimes, just not on that particular book.
If anyone has a copy, I'd be very interested in seeing this.
Thank you! I wonder if this is any good...
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