It's time to call a halt to all of this "okey-doke," as Harlan Ellison would say.
Speak for yourself, and don't presume to speak for others.
Many people want copies of all kinds of things to own for themselves, regardless of what is free to look at.
At least you've finally let the cat out of the bag that it was mostly about the money all along.
When this all first started, it was my intention to share ALL of the special material right here on the BBS. That's what the project was about to me....sharing the unseen material with the fans. Making people happy and everyone finding out things that they never knew before.
Here we are, two decades later, and what tiny percentage of the rare material has been shared here gratis? What a waste! How many fans have passed away during that time and been deprived of some happiness? All because you two guys have been sitting on the vast majority of the material and letting it languish unshared because you want to make money on it! It's sad and it's sickening!
And then you have the gall to sit up there with Apollo on Mount Olympus and pass judgment on the guy who published the volumes of
These Are The Voyages. It is hypocrisy. You are no better!
Let's call out your other half:
@Capt.Mac
The last time I attempted to address these matters, he claimed that I had an axe to grind, yada, yada, yada. Bull. Time to stop deflecting and diverting attention from the facts at hand.
I never gave a damn about any money involved. I would have been just as happy to break even or even lose some money on a book project. My focus and passion was always about the unseen history and sharing it. That's now obviously why Curt replaced me with you; my goals were not in alignment with his. Yours are. Last time, he offered the feeble excuse that he could not reach me. Horse hockey. My email address never changed over the years.
I should have known something was amiss fairly early on. When he and I put together the nine 8 1/2 x 11 prints of restored rare images to send to Bob Justman, he didn't allow me to see them before he sent them out. He had a number of spelling errors in the text that he added to the images, which I could have corrected, because proofreading was one of my areas of experience. But, he was exerting his control over everything right then and I failed to see it because of the smooth-talking approach that he began with here on the BBS.
I invite anyone/everyone to use wayback to see how this all began, back in 2003-2004, here in the TOS forum. I believe the thread title was Rare Images.
The only "axe to grind" that I have involves the fact that fans are gone who could have had considerable joy in their lives from the rare material.
There is simply no excuse for that.
The focus on money reduces it all to holding the material hostage, for ransom.
Do what you will with your own stuff. That is your choice. But don't do it with
everyone's.
You see, at the very beginning Curt did not have that little disclaimer that all scanned material was his to do with as he saw fit. That came later, after all of my material was already fully scanned into his system.
And: as far as startrekhistory.com and the books, there was no
asking contributors about whether or not they wanted their full names included, for attribution. He just went ahead and used first names and first initial of last names. Don't say you are protecting identities if you never asked folks their wishes.
Everything was lumped in together and no effort was made to keep track of who contributed what. I do remember, on startrekhistory.com, footage from a cut scene of City, in which he thanked some other contributor when it was part of the material that he received from me.
The cut arboretum scene, from Elaan, that was detailed in Star Trek 365 ? The images were from film clips that I contributed and the dialogue came from Bob Justman's personal script that I had acquired. (He had donated it to charity and I had purchased it from those folks....that was a while before our phone conversation, but we did chat about it for a few minutes at that time.)
I call
SHAME on these two guys for handling things in the manner that they have for all these years.
Fans have been
needlessly missing out on a lot of great material and these two have also been hoarding the credit for what little they have released.
Sorry, guys, but you
really could have had a massive, long-running thread here dedicated to all of the rare material. Plenty of books would still have sold. A lot of people want their personal physical copies.
Here is your opportunity to finally step up and make good on this, at least for the fans who are still with us.
How about we start with the photo proofs from The Enemy Within ? I bet a lot of people would get a kick out of seeing the guy with the tape measure in the corridor of the Enterprise. Or how about the costume test with the guy's wristwatch clearly visible? Or how about those shaggy trees? Or....
