We need a special site for pictures of new species and other things?

[MatthiasRussell]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

Maybe not a book, but a Ships-of-the-Line-style alien of the month calender would be cool. Something where the artists make visual representations of nonhumanoid races. With Drexler's background in make-up, he'd probably like the idea.

 

[Yevetha]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

Can we make it happen?

We would also need some trivia and make it CONSISTENT WITH OTHER NOVELS.

 

[MatthiasRussell]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

I've kind of lost hope in my ability to make things happen in the franchise. The creative minds in the franchise I've interated with have all been great and love the fans but the people at the top are kind of apathetic. Plus the fan base is often fractured about products they want.

If you would like to see something like this happen, go to Drex-files and contact Drexler. he really is a great guy and is just as enthusiast about trek as we are.

BTW, I saw on David Mack's facebook page that the cover of the 2013 SOTL calender is the Vanguard cover picture with the Sagittarius fighting a Klingon battle cruiser.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

I've kind of lost hope in my ability to make things happen in the franchise. The creative minds in the franchise I've interated with have all been great and love the fans but the people at the top are kind of apathetic.

How many people "at the top" have you met? They probably got there by being strongly focused, and if/when they feel the need to call in the opinions of advisors, they'll call in those in whom they already have great faith. Is that "apathetic"?

The ST fans campaigned successfully to get the NASA space shuttle renamed Enterprise. But that meant lobbying NASA, , not Paramount. They achieved a US postage stamp, but that meant lobbying the US post office, not Paramount. They achieved a Captain Calhoun action figure, but that meant lobbying Playmates Toys and the Official Fan Club.

Who is "at the top" at the relevant section of the franchise rein-holders that can grant your need/wish? Creative people will have their own ideas to pitch, so they are really the ones to lobby. And you'd need an agent yourself to pitch to Pocket.

 

[Starfury]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

I occasionally pop into the Fan Art room to look for items exactly such as this, but it's always all ships. Blah.

The last good selection I remember is Geoff Thorne's illustrations of Star Trek: Titan characters. As Therin wisely points out, not everyone agreed on how they should look considering they were lit-only species, but many of them were excellent.

Here's the thread: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=94498

.

Well, I did a few New Frontiers and Vanguard characters in my art thread, in case you are interested. Here's the link: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=106000

 

[MatthiasRussell]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

Therin, the examples you cite are all well in the past. When have the fans made so great a difference in recent years? We couldn't even get enough votes to have the Star Trek theme played to wake up the astronauts on Discovery's final mission. That honor went to Big Head Todd who had more voting fans than Trek.

Friends of mine and I have spoken to individuals at CBS Consumer Products and made the case for certain trek products or asked that the startrek.com website receive some needed attention and have been met with apathy. It exists.

BTW, you left out how fans got a 3rd season of TOS.

 

[JD]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

I still don't understand why the people who want to do this stuff don't just add it to Memory Beta? This kind of stuff is precisely what the wikis are for.

 

[Christopher]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

^As I think was mentioned before, Memory Beta is a wiki for licensed tie-in material, so fan art doesn't quite fit its bailiwick. The farthest they've gone in that direction is the concept art that Geoffrey Thorne and I have done for some of our characters. (And in at least one case, illustrations from Star Trek Magazine's book excerpts, but those are licensed.)

 

[JD]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

Yeah, but 8of5 said here that user created images are allowed if there aren't any official ones yet.

I don't know what the current policy is, I've not been active there for a while, but they certainly used to have a "supplemental images" system to add illustrations of things there isn't anything official for yet. Some of the author illustrations are dotted about there, and a few user created ones too.

So yeah, Memory Beta is the place you want, and if you dont find it there, add it

 

[MatthiasRussell]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

I would like to see Titan do what New Frontier did in books 5 and 6- have two book covers that join to make a group photo of the crew which would allow us a licensed picture of all those weird Titan species. Of course, this would also require 2 Titan books published in quick succession, but I'd love to see more Titan so that makes the idea more appealing to me.

A Typhon Pact novel could do the same thing- have a cover that shows the member races of the Pact.

Then the questions are- How much would such cover artwork cost? Would the publishers be willing to fork out the investment? Would the creative minds involved in the franchise rather leave the appearance of these species to our imaginations?

 

[MichaelS]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

Wrong Michael. The Stargazer website and its illustrations were Michael Schuster's doing.

Ah, mea culpa. Did the two Michael's discuss the material for the website? Like, did MJF provide suggestions and MS flesh it out?

As I recall (it's been a while, though), Mike and I did talk a bit about the look of various characters, but only in general terms. For instance, I remember him telling me that Vigo was "big and blue" ...

When I did the illustrations, I concentrated mainly on the human characters, but a few alien crewmembers did get drawn, like Obal and Jiterica (though that one is a bit of a cheat ). As far as I know, all the illustrations I did are up on MB.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

When have the fans made so great a difference in recent years?

Well, I dunno. I've been (quietly?) lobbying for a regular or semi-regular prominent Andorian character for decades - and along came Shar and then Shran. When there was a suggestion that Shran may be added to the main cast for a fifth season of ENT, I was beside myself. (Is that too far in the past, too?)

Might I add that my Andorian fixation won me three references to Therin Park, a role as my character's own father in a fan film, a name drop in "Ex Machina" and a recent reveal that New Therin Park has been established on post-Borg Andor.

How about ThinkGeek's recent iPhone 4 covers, and the new TOS communications wall panel doorbell alarm prop? Licensed products selling extremely well, suggested by fans. Ditto the retro Mego TOS figures. Sculpted by fans for DST.

How about the recent extended soundtrack releases on CD of STs II, III, IV, V and (very soon) XI? Again, a group of fans taking affirmative action, seeking a license and doing the necessary paperwork and red tape.

We couldn't even get enough votes to have the Star Trek theme played to wake up the astronauts on Discovery's final mission. That honor went to Big Head Todd who had more voting fans than Trek.

Win some, lose some. Might have been a different result the week JJ's ST premiered.

Friends of mine and I have spoken to individuals at CBS Consumer Products and made the case for certain trek products or asked that the startrek.com website receive some needed attention and have been met with apathy. It exists.

Of course it does. IIRC, the startrek.com website is licensed to an outside body. Are you offering to supply material to them, or merely demanding that they spend money for an upgrade that may not attract new traffic to sell more advertising space?

And, IIRC, CBS Consumer Products doesn't go out beyond the office conjuring up potential ST products, they merely approve, help modify, or reject incoming licensing applications.

So you're pitching your ideas to the wrong ears.

Paula M Block worked with TrekBBS fans to gain exclusive pics for "Star Trek 365" (Abrams Publishing) and the upcoming "TNG 365" and I've been sending loads of rare pics to Bob Greenberger and Scott Pearson for their upcoming "Unofficial History of ST" tome.

BTW, you left out how fans got a 3rd season of TOS.

On purpose. It seemed rather obvious. And the fans campaigned successfully for TOS's second season, too, IIRC. For that one they even had Harlan Ellison on side, and many of his contributions/suggestions were judged to be highly successful.

 

[Christopher]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

BTW, you left out how fans got a 3rd season of TOS.

On purpose. It seemed rather obvious. And the fans campaigned successfully for TOS's second season, too, IIRC. For that one they even had Harlan Ellison on side, and many of his contributions/suggestions were judged to be highly successful.

And it's been overstated anyway. Fan interest alone isn't enough to convince a network to produce a show; they still need to be able to afford making it. ST was renewed despite low ratings because its spectacular full-color visuals promoted sales of color television sets, the patent for which was owned by NBC's parent company RCA. So the parent company was making money from ST even though the network was losing money on ST, and it balanced out. Also there was strong support for the show among network executives (despite Roddenberry's later claims), so they were glad to keep it on the air as long as they could, until the financial cost of the show's expensive production values and low ratings became too much to bear.

In fact, it isn't even clear that NBC had any intention of cancelling the show after the 2nd season at all. There may have been some uncertainty about its renewal, as there is for a lot of "bubble" shows, but that doesn't mean they'd actually decided to cancel it at any point. The announcement that was broadcast about the third-season renewal, which has generally been interpreted to mean "All right, fans, your letters have changed our minds so we're renewing the show," was actually just saying, "Listen, we've already renewed the show, so please stop spamming our mailroom" (pardon the anachronism).

Also, it's a myth that the letter-writing campaign was a spontaneous grassroots effort by the fanbase. Roddenberry was quietly orchestrating the whole thing behind the scenes. He was always good at manipulating the fanbase, and creating the myth in their minds that they'd saved the show from the eebil network was one of his most successful long-term manipulations.

Which isn't to say that mobilizing Trek fandom into activism never worked. Fan letter campaigns have occasionally achieved some things, like getting the prototype space shuttle named Enterprise (though I think they jumped the gun on that, since the prototype never made it into space -- they should've saved it for the first working orbiter) and raising funds for charity. Though the space shuttle thing wasn't that great an act of persuasion, since it didn't require NASA to change any of its policies and plans and it didn't cost that much to paint a different name on the hull, and the publicity did them good. However, I recall Bjo Trimble writing a number of columns in Starlog in the late '80s saying that then-Vice President Bush (Sr.) was likely to be the next president (like it or not) and so Trek/SF fans should write to him encouraging him to support the space program -- and then he became president and actively supported the space program. True, correlation doesn't prove causation, but I've often wondered. (And by the way, SF fans should really mobilize to write their Congresspeople and ask them not to pass the crippling and unnecessary cuts to NASA funding in the President's latest budget proposal.)

 

[Yevetha]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

Wrong Michael. The Stargazer website and its illustrations were Michael Schuster's doing.

Ah, mea culpa. Did the two Michael's discuss the material for the website? Like, did MJF provide suggestions and MS flesh it out?

As I recall (it's been a while, though), Mike and I did talk a bit about the look of various characters, but only in general terms. For instance, I remember him telling me that Vigo was "big and blue" ...

When I did the illustrations, I concentrated mainly on the human characters, but a few alien crewmembers did get drawn, like Obal and Jiterica (though that one is a bit of a cheat ). As far as I know, all the illustrations I did are up on MB.

Too bad the images werent colored.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

Also, it's a myth that the letter-writing campaign was a spontaneous grassroots effort by the fanbase. Roddenberry was quietly orchestrating the whole thing behind the scenes.

IIRC, one of Ellison's contributions was to encourage Bjo Trimble to make use of an economical communications device known as the "telephone tree", that was previously used to promote science fiction literary convention news. A telephone tree worked by the same principle as pyramid selling: having one person ring five to ten people, who rang five to ten people, and so on. It limits the cost to each person to only five to ten phone calls, but passes the message on to potentially thousands in a very short time.

 

[Paper Moon]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

BTW, you left out how fans got a 3rd season of TOS.

On purpose. It seemed rather obvious. And the fans campaigned successfully for TOS's second season, too, IIRC. For that one they even had Harlan Ellison on side, and many of his contributions/suggestions were judged to be highly successful.

And it's been overstated anyway. Fan interest alone isn't enough to convince a network to produce a show; they still need to be able to afford making it. ...

...

Also, it's a myth that the letter-writing campaign was a spontaneous grassroots effort by the fanbase. Roddenberry was quietly orchestrating the whole thing behind the scenes. He was always good at manipulating the fanbase, and creating the myth in their minds that they'd saved the show from the eebil network was one of his most successful long-term manipulations.

Christopher, do you have a source for this? I'd be interested in learning more. It's so easy to put Roddenberry up on a pedestal and forget that Star Trek was, first and foremost, a way for him to pay the bills.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

Christopher, do you have a source for this? I'd be interested in learning more. It's so easy to put Roddenberry up on a pedestal and forget that Star Trek was, first and foremost, a way for him to pay the bills.

Lots of GR mythbusting in "Inside Star Trek: The Real Story" by Justman & Solow.

http://lcarsmemoryalpha.com/wiki/index.php?title=Inside_Star_Trek:_The_Real_Story

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

When have the fans made so great a difference in recent years?

In fan films? It doesn't have an offical CBS stamp, it's rough around the edges and there was some iffy lawyer-baiting stuff going on behind the scenes, but "Of Gods and Men" is a great little TOS epilogue, IMO. And it wouldn't exist without the fans! "New Voyages" had some excellent moments with Walter Koenig and George Takei.

 

[MatthiasRussell]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

I for one am not a fan of OGAM or any of the James Cawley stuff. I applaud them for their fan devotion but I'm not impressed with the writing or acting. I've never been able to complete any of the episodes.

Though the fans are active in expressing their affinity; I was saying we haven't been able to move the franchise and CBS to do more with Trek.

 

[JD]

Re: We need a special site for pictures of new species and other thing

How far did you go? After the first couple episodes they started bringing in writers from the shows, including DC Fontana and David Gerrold.