TAS... Sigh

[Christopher]

My information on Richard Arnold is secondhand, but I've heard about it from a lot of authors who did deal with him directly. For example, Peter David has a ton of stories that he tells at conventions.

And Therin apparently knows Arnold personally, so he's got insights from both sides of the issue.

 

[plynch]

My information on Richard Arnold is secondhand, but I've heard about it from a lot of authors who did deal with him directly. For example, Peter David has a ton of stories that he tells at conventions.

And Therin apparently knows Arnold personally, so he's got insights from both sides of the issue.

Thank you.

After several years here, I really still have a hard time inferring who is what. Therin knows a lot about canon, I know that. Is he a toiler in the grove of Trek in some way? Anybody else on the board? I'm really tempted to start using my real name like you and Timo, just as a protest against the anonymity of the 'net (and the nastiness it can breed). Be well, O novelist.

Say, since I'm on the line, if you were among TPTB, would you cast your vote for TAS as canon? (I am pointedly avoiding the whole oxymoronic "personal canon" phrase, note.)

 

[Christopher]

Say, since I'm on the line, if you were among TPTB, would you cast your vote for TAS as canon? (I am pointedly avoiding the whole oxymoronic "personal canon" phrase, note.)

There's no need to cast a vote. Effectively, it was never excluded from canon. Canon is material that the current producers choose to draw on as part of the series' backstory. TNG: "Unification" referenced material from "Yesteryear." There have been nods to names and places from TAS in DS9, VGR, and ENT: the Klothos, Edosian orchids, Vulcan's Forge, etc. And the scenes of Spock's childhood in the 2009 film were practically a remake of the equivalent scenes from "Yesteryear." So the makers of the shows and films have never actually been forbidden from referencing TAS. Roddenberry's memo restricted the licensees -- novels, comics, other tie-ins -- from referencing it, but evidently not the shows. And that memo ceased to have any weight anyway once he died. Licensed novels, comics, etc. have made extensive reference to TAS in the past decade.

So really, the idea that "TAS isn't canon" is a myth. Anyone who wants to reference it in a Trek story, on screen or off, is free to do so and has been for a long time.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I've had some fairly extensive exchanges, mainly with Bjo and David Gerrold, regarding the status of TAS and just how big an annoying prat Richard Arnold really is.

As for TAS references, they didn't start cropping up until the business with Filmation had been resolved to everyone's satisfaction, which unfortunately wasn't until GR had passed (which is why the first ones don't show up until DS9), so he never had the chance to rescind that memo and make RA look like the presumptuous fool that he is.

Speaking of DS9, GR and Berman actually had very extensive discussions about the concept and the early development, meetings which RA was not privy to, or possibly even aware of. In other words, it wasn't just a "bon chance, bon voyage" from a dying old man based on a cocktail napkin sketch as RA tends to portray it. Roddenberry was not one to green light a vague concept when the legacy of his brainchild was involved.

 

[WillsBabe]

Late to the thread, but I wanted to pop in to say how much I am enjoying TAS. I haven't seen the episodes since they aired on UK tv on Saturday mornings (I seem to recall) in the 70s. Oh, what a treat it has been working my way through the dvd set! I'm surprised at how "adult" the story-telling is, and so many of the episodes would make good live action episodes. I wish I hadn't waited so long to catch up on them, but I'm glad that I finally did.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I am not writing this in a challenging tone, but a curious one.

You could follow the links in my profile. My name is Ian McLean, I was Vice President, then President of the oldest and largest Star Trek Club in the southern hemisphere from 1983-1992 and our 1000-strong Sydney-based club had frequent correspondence with the Roddenberrys (Gene, Majel and Rod), Bjo Trimble, David Gerrold, Susan Sackett and Richard Arnold. We had everyone except Gene and Rod in Australia for conventions, and Richard has been an annual guest at a Brisbane convention since 1988. I first met him in 1983. We've also had John M Ford and DC Fontana at conventions Down Under. So we heard lots of "dirt" on the politics of ST tie-ins, from both sides of the barricades.

When GEnie and Usenet started up (pre Internet), we had a member who used to download boxloads of printouts of posts by the ST authors of the day, especially the tense 1989-1991 period, where a Star Trek Office memo was sent to the licensees after all tie-in contracts had been declared null and void (during the hiatus between Seasons One and Two of TNG) and had to be renegotiated.

So many of my novel anecdotes of those days are based on personal memories of those old BBS posts (a few extracts about Andorians quoted in my "Andor Files" blog, old ST newsletters, Roddenberry press releases (Gene used to send letters out to all the clubs who had him as an honorary member), and question-and-answer sessions at conventions.

The Peter David/Richard Arnold anecdotes can be found peppered through the omnibus volume of "But I Digress..." articles by Peter David. Hilarious!

As for TAS references, they didn't start cropping up until the business with Filmation had been resolved to everyone's satisfaction, which unfortunately wasn't until GR had passed (which is why the first ones don't show up until DS9)

The first reappearance of TAS after the 1989 memo would be Jeri Taylor mentioning the Phylosians in her "Unification" novelization, which ironically, was the TNG episode dedicated to Gene Roddenberry's passing.

But "that memo" was aimed at the licensed tie-ins. The writers of each ST TV series and movie were fully entitled to reference TAS if they so chose.

Effectively, it was never excluded from canon. Canon is material that the current producers choose to draw on as part of the series' backstory.

Yep. It was put "off limits" only to the licensed ST tie-in proposals and final manuscripts between 1989-1991, in a bid to ensure that the tie-ins drew from the live action, as aired, source material.

 

[Christopher]

We really need to work to expunge this myth about TAS being banned from canon. It's part and parcel of a larger misconception fans seem to have, that canon is something imposed upon the producers of Star Trek by some unspecified higher power, rather than something defined by those producers as a consequence of what they produce. The makers of a show are free to reinvent or reinterpret it as they wish; you'll rarely find any long-running franchise that doesn't contradict, reinterpret, or ignore elements of its past in order to generate new stories. There have been shows that have retconned entire past seasons out of existence (Dallas's "It was all a dream"), shows that have drastically retooled their continuities without explanation (War of the Worlds: The Series's second season), and shows that have simply not bothered much with cohesive continuity at all (M*A*S*H taking 11 years to cover a 3-year war and actually jumping its time references backwards from 1953 to 1951 about midway through the series). So canon is whatever a show's creators choose it to be at the moment, and nothing's stopping them from disregarding past canon -- or reincluding past canon that their predecessors have disregarded. Canon is not a formal doctrine they must obey; it's simply a description of what they've actually done.

The only people who are actually bound by canon are the creators of tie-ins. We have to stay consistent with everything in the canon. Where contradictions exist, we have to find a way to reconcile them, or at least avoid them. We don't have the freedom of reinvention that the creators -- or the authors of fanfiction -- have. (So I count myself grateful that I don't write M*A*S*H tie-in fiction. That would be a continuity nightmare.)

 

[plynch]

Thanks. I did go looking, Therin, actually. I appreciate your candor. (The pseudonymity of the net is starting to strike me as creepy.)

But I don't have time or energy to look up everyone's profile, of those who seem to be in the know. Plus I'm just nosey if there are others on the board who are actor/writer/producer etc.

2. Christopher, may you contradict TAS?

Be well.

 

[Kail]

Late to the thread, but I wanted to pop in to say how much I am enjoying TAS. I haven't seen the episodes since they aired on UK tv on Saturday mornings (I seem to recall) in the 70s. Oh, what a treat it has been working my way through the dvd set! I'm surprised at how "adult" the story-telling is, and so many of the episodes would make good live action episodes. I wish I hadn't waited so long to catch up on them, but I'm glad that I finally did.

Glad you are enjoying TAS WillsBabe! Please visit my website for lots more TAS fun!

 

[Christopher]

2. Christopher, may you contradict TAS?

Some things already have. TNG made it clear from the start that the level of holographic technology shown in "The Practical Joker" didn't exist until the mid-24th century (though later productions blurred the issue by hinting that holodecks had been around longer than early TNG implied). DS9 and VGR established that it takes decades to cross the galaxy without a wormhole or other shortcut, and TNG: "The Nth Degree" established that it required highly advanced technology to reach the center of the galaxy in less than several decades, so they all contradict "The Magicks of Megas-tu," as well as ST V. And the references in "Megas-tu" to the outmoded continuous-creation theory of cosmology have been contradicted by the numerous references to the Big Bang in subsequent Trek productions, as is only sensible. As I said, the makers of canon are free to contradict past canon. In such an instance, I'd say that tie-in authors are expected to conform to the more recent interpretation of the universe's rules -- or to find a way to reconcile the contradiction.

There have been novels in the past that disregarded TAS, even before the '89 memo; I think some authors simply weren't familiar with it. For instance, Yesterday's Son doesn't acknowledge that "Yesteryear" ever happened or that Commodore Wesley retired to become a planetary governor as in "One of Our Planets is Missing." But I'm not sure whether that could be done today. It probably couldn't with regard to "Yesteryear," since that episode is somewhat reinforced by references to elements from it in "Unification," the ENT Vulcan trilogy, and the 2009 movie. As for other episodes, I don't know. I'm not sure there's ever been a test case. Are there any Trek novelists around today who'd want to directly contradict TAS? If there were, I guess it would depend on the judgment of the CBS Licensing person responsible for approving Trek fiction, currently John Van Citters. And maybe on whether there were a legitimate story reason for it. Or on what's being contradicted. Some of the outmoded or questionable science in TAS has already been contradicted, so it might be fairer game. But if I, say, claimed that there had never been a Caitian communications officer aboard the Enterprise, that would be more likely to get a note. Or so I'd speculate.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Glad you are enjoying TAS WillsBabe! Please visit my website for lots more TAS fun!

I would definitely second that to everyone. Kail's site's terrific!

 

[PikeFan]

I have TAS, watched them all. Wished there was a Pike tale in there... a "Flashback" for Spock maybe, I digress. I can't funny get into them, but I am intrigued by 3 armed Arex.

 

[WillsBabe]

Glad you are enjoying TAS WillsBabe! Please visit my website for lots more TAS fun!

Hey, thanks for reminding me. I used to have your site bookmarked on my old laptop.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Last night I watched "The Counter-Clock Incident" and am therefore now finished with my personal rerun of TAS. There have been fantastic episodes ("Yesteryear", "One of Our Planets is Missing", "The Slaver Weapon", "The Eye of the Beholder", etc.), and really bad episodes ("The Lorelei Signal", "The Infinite Vulcan"). all in all it was a terrific show.

I look forward to seeing Arex and M'Ress again in "Phase II".

 

[Therin of Andor]

I am intrigued by 3 armed Arex.

My brothers and I first saw Saturday morning TAS in glorious b/w because Australia didn't get colour TV till September 1975.

In late '75, TAS was featured on midweek breakfast TV ("The Super Flying Fun Show"), and we were fascinated to watch 'em all again in colour. We really hung out to see what colours Mr Arex (and everyone) would turn during the Auroral Plague of "Albatross".

I don't think I'd really noticed that Arex had three legs until buying the "ST Concordance" in 1980, although I'd definitely seen "The Terratin Incident" (in which Arex walks across the screen). And I loved how he had custom-made stocks in "The Magicks of Megas-Tu".

Both times in the 70s, "The Pirates of Orion" was always shown in Sydney with segments 2 and 3 in reverse order. Someone must have spliced the reels incorrectly, or mislabeled them. By repeats in the 90s, the problem had been fixed. My ST club was very grateful to our Perth colleagues; TAS had shown there in the mid 80s, when family homes had VCRs. We hadn't managed to see everything, and they had about half of the series on video. But their recording of "The Slaver Weapon" ended just before the climactic explosion! We had to wait for the local 90s screening to see what happened.

 

[Christopher]

But their recording of "The Slaver Weapon" ended just before the climactic explosion! We had to wait for the local 90s screening to see what happened.

Or you could've tracked down Larry Niven's collection Neutron Star and read "The Soft Weapon" in there. It's essentially the same story. The human man and woman are a married couple, their alien companion is Nessus the Pierson's Puppeteer instead of Spock, the titular weapon actually belonged to the Slavers' rebelling slave race the Tnuctipun (and had a few more features, I think), and they had spacesuits instead of force-field belts, but otherwise it's pretty much an exact adaptation, right down to the ending. (Which is probably why "The Slaver Weapon" is unique in TAS, and rare in Filmation's entire body of work, in that it features actual character deaths within the story.)

 

[Redfern]

Also having read "The Soft Weapon" (though years after I watched Filmation's adaptation), I'm pleasantly surprised how much of the central ideas and motivations remained intact despite all the "superficial" changes. Chuft-Captain is equally shamed by Spock's attack as he was by the Puppeteer, Nessus, because both are perceived as pacifistic herbivores, effectively "grazing beasts" in the Kzinti's eyes.

One thing the animated version did omit (because on a whole, western society considers it even more horrid than death) was the amputation and eating of the woman's arm, but ultimately, that didn't really affect the narrative. It was merely Niven's way to illustrate just how serious the Kzin were about getting the device. But it didn't really change the outcome, other than the wife was thoroughly traumatized and angry at her husband for letting her suffer like that.

Hmm, Uhura with a cyber-arm... Has possibilities.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Therin of Andor]

Or you could've tracked down Larry Niven's collection Neutron Star and read "The Soft Weapon" in there.

Well, I did, of course, plus Alan Dean Foster's adaptation.

But imagine at our charity fund-raising event, showing about eight TAS episodes in the late 80s, that no one in our audience had ever seen, and warning, "Now, this one is missing its ending..."

People said, "Play it anyway."

They are loving it, and then the tape ends abruptly, and I say, "Um, I understand there's a big explosion..."