Proof! Benny Russell is the author of ALL Star Trek

[Brutal Strudel]

In the TOS episode "The Ultimate Computer," Dr. Daystrom says of the M-5 "I created it!" with almost identical inflection as what Benny gives the line in "FBtS." Wicked coincidence* that, since, like Benny, Daystrom is a frustrated black genius.

Anyway, I like the idea that the ultimate Trek retcon is that all of it was a series of forgotten stories run in pulps during the forties and fifties.

*Though it may not have been coincidence at all--DS9 had the most TOS-loving tone of any of the spin-offs and so the line could well have been a clever call-back.

 

[Kegg]

In the TOS episode "The Ultimate Computer," Dr. Daystrom says of the M-5 "I created it!" with almost identical inflection as what Benny gives the line in "FBtS." Wicked coincidence* that, since, like Benny, Daystrom is a frustrated black genius.

Anyway, I like the idea that the ultimate Trek retcon is that all of it was a series of forgotten stories run in pulps during the forties and fifties.

Not only that, Deep Space Nine was the only part that really mattered. Or maybe Benny Russell had been selling stories about white heroes like Kirk and Picard before he finally got to write what he genuinely wanted to. (With Janeway and Archer dating to his insane asylum period... IT ALL MAKES SENSE!)

*Though it may not have been coincidence at all--DS9 had the most TOS-loving tone of any of the spin-offs and so the line could well have been a clever call-back.

Well, given the whole TNG Leah Brahms mix-up, I'm willing to bet coincidence. Or maybe the editor forced Benny Russell to change Leah, as a genius scientist black woman was too much for him to swallow.

 

[backstept]

I was just reading the Shadows and Symbols entry on Memory Alpha and I learned something new: The writing on Benny's cell walls was the episode summaries of all prior episodes
it wasn't just random crap to fill space!

I just thought that was cool

 

[Agenda]

Does that include the animated series?

 

[Michael]

Wait a minute, does that mean he wrote TNG's horrible Code of Honor, too?

 

[The Badger]

^He wrote that as a critique of European and American imperialism, but executive meddling turned the aliens into a racist caricature.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Either that or he was suffering from a bad case of the self-hates that day.

 

[Sci]

Wait a minute, does that mean he wrote TNG's horrible Code of Honor, too?

All prior DS9 episodes, not all prior Trek episodes.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

All of it, I tell you! It is reeeeeeeaaaaaaal! It's in in his mind! He created it! Your four mighty starships...

Oops, wrong issue.

 

[Michael]

Wait a minute, does that mean he wrote TNG's horrible Code of Honor, too?

All prior DS9 episodes, not all prior Trek episodes.

Oh, I got that. I was just joking. If Benny Russel was REEEEEEEAAL!!! he probably wouldn't want to come anywhere near the pile of shit that was Code of Honor. Plus, there are two people before me in this thread (among them the original poster) who already made the same (apparently jocular) proposition. So I'm a bit unsure why you are singling out me.

 

[Bones2]

Code of Honor's not so awful.

 

[Sci]

Wait a minute, does that mean he wrote TNG's horrible Code of Honor, too?

All prior DS9 episodes, not all prior Trek episodes.

Oh, I got that. I was just joking. If Benny Russel was REEEEEEEAAL!!! he probably wouldn't want to come anywhere near the pile of shit that was Code of Honor. Plus, there are two people before me in this thread (among them the original poster) who already made the same (apparently jocular) proposition. So I'm a bit unsure why you are singling out me.

No particular reason, yours just seemed the most quickly quotable one to use to specify that the walls only had prior DS9 episodes. I wasn't even all that concerned with the content of "Code of Honor."

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Code of Honor's not so awful.

The hell it ain't. D.W. Griffith--working with David Duke--would be hard-pressed to come up with something more offensive.

 

[JarodRussell]

Mwuha, I think he's the author of TOS, TNG, DS9 and VOY, but not of ENT or nuTrek.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

ENT amd NuTrek are to the Benny Russell originals as NuDune is to the Frank Herbert originals? I can dig that. (Though I suspect Benny let some of the other writers in the office write most of TNG and Voyager, much as Harlan Ellison invited his friends to write stories about Medea.)

 

[I am not Spock]

Yeah, and with nu-Trek, Benny Russell had a bout of amnesia, and wrote alt-universe versions of his Kirk and Spock characters. And gave Uhura, a black lady, a more prominent role in the story.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I'd rather think NuTrek is a post-modern revival from the 1970s, written by the Bennyverse equivalent of Philip Jose Farmer and published in Omni or Interzone.

Of course, that assumes that all of the movie's legion of idiocies were deliberate, post-modern riffs on the pulp origins of the material...

 

[Myasishchev]

ENT amd NuTrek are to the Benny Russell originals as NuDune is to the Frank Herbert originals? I can dig that. (Though I suspect Benny let some of the other writers in the office write most of TNG and Voyager, much as Harlan Ellison invited his friends to write stories about Medea.)

I was about to say, Russell was a prolific SOB if he wrote all of Star Trek. Code of Honor and other wretched tales (which would be a great name for a DVD collection) could be explained as a case of the brannonitis.

I do rather like the metafictional aspect of the proposal that Russell was the author of the Trek universe, or at least DS9. Really wish they'd called back more to Russell than they did--it might have given the final pagh wraiths/prophets storyline the punch and meaning and interest it so, so direly needed.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Everyone please direct your complaints about Trek continuity to Mr. Russell.

 

[Mr. Scott]

I always thought that Star Trek was invented by a white guy who was a middling, mediocre screenplay writer who was a nobody and an outsider in the business before finding the formula called Star Trek. An old school guy with a hot wife and a black mistress trying to make a living in Hollywood and basking in the sunshine.

Really and truly, Roddenberry was lucky in many ways. He was just a regular guy, a highway cop in the 1950's who sent in screenplays and scripts and even created some pilot episodes, but nothing came of it until Star Trek, and even the old show only lasted three years. TNG was not a good show the first season, when Roddenberry moved into the background and lot others write for the show, it got much better.

DS9 was the best show of them all, however many things that made DS9 great are things that Roddenberry would not have allowed, such as religion and people having families and relationships on duty.