Crossover with other franchises?

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by FreddyE, Jul 4, 2012.

  1. JoeZhang

    JoeZhang Vice Admiral Admiral

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  2. captcalhoun

    captcalhoun Admiral Admiral

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    Ironside? do you mean McCoy and Ratchet?
     
  3. BritishSeaPower

    BritishSeaPower Captain Captain

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    There's a really cool bit of "Crossovers" in Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes. At one point the grand villain boasts about all the other Time Travellers he's beaten and he takes Kirk and the Legionnaires to a big room full of little easter eggs to other shows. (Stargate, Doctor Who, The Time Machine, Sliders, Hot Tub Time Machine all get a lithe reference. There are a few others I didn't know.) I just got the hardcover of the story. It's pretty good, and I thought it was a novel way to have two series crossover that really don't have too many reasons to. (Though, Vulcans have been seen as GLs in the DC Universe from back when they had the comics license.)
     
  4. Drago-Kazov

    Drago-Kazov Fleet Captain

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    Was there ever any Andromeda crossover?
     
  5. JRoss

    JRoss Commodore Commodore

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    Am I the only one here who views Firefly/Serenity as a prequel to Dune?

    What else could work? Farscape/Lost in Space? Godzilla/Transformers?
     
  6. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    Whut? :vulcan:

    Please explain this... I never saw Firefly/Serenity, but always heard them described as "Wild West" in space. What does this have to do with Dune?
     
  7. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I don't see how they could go together. Firefly/Serenity is devoid of FTL travel or alien life, and Dune has both. The only points of similarity I see offhand are that there are psychic powers in both (a common trait of many SF universes) and that Earth has been destroyed in the Dune universe -- except that happened around 12,800 CE, whereas FF/S established that "Earth was used up" centuries before the series' timeframe of 2517 CE.
     
  8. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    Please refresh my memory as to where you saw this information? And other than the sandworms, what alien life? There's certainly no sentient alien life in Dune.

    And if you mean the robots and cymek crap from the KJA/BH books, no serious Dune fan considers those anything more than really bad fanfic that managed to get published. It was NEVER part of Frank Herbert's vision of the Dune series.
     
  9. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I looked it up on Wikipedia and found a link to a Dune timeline that's defunct but preserved on the Wayback Machine site:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20080802192711/http://www.dunenovels.com/timeline.html

    I haven't read any of the later books, nor have I read the original Herbert ones in decades. I was just trying to find some commonality to the 'Verse, and the absence of an inhabited Earth was the only possibility that presented itself other than the psi powers.

    As for aliens, I thought the Guild Steersmen were aliens. Are they just heavily engineered humans? Anyway, if sandworms exist on Arrakis, there must be a whole ecosystem there; obviously no single species can survive in isolation. At the very least, there are sand plankton.

    And don't give me that "not part of his vision" line. The stuff I've written for Star Trek wasn't part of Roddenberry's vision either. All that matters is whether something is good or bad. Purism is an illegitimate basis for determining quality.
     
  10. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    This is not a credible site, since it's infested with the retconned KJA/BH "prequels/sequels/interquels" stuff that DIRECTLY contradicts the BASIC established tenets that Frank Herbert set down in the 1960s. It was retconned in the Butlerian Jihad trilogy (a KJA/BH travesty that had robots and cymeks fighting a holy war where the original Frank Herbert novels made it plain that it was opposing camps of HUMANS fighting a holy war of IDEAS and PHILOSOPHY regarding computers/"thinking machines"), and in that trilogy Earth was nuked. This did not happen in the FH novels.

    The Guild Steersmen are humans who mutate when exposed to the spice gas that expands their consciousness in such a way that they can find safe passage (using foldspace technology) so as to not come out in the middle of a solid object, for example, when emerging from foldspace. My impression is that one either has the genes that allow for this mutation or one doesn't. It's the Tleilaxu that deliberately genetically engineered themselves to be Face Dancers (able to alter their physical appearance at will). Genetically, however, the Tleilaxu are still considered human.

    Yes, of course there's a whole ecosystem on Arrakis. The only weak point I've ever considered of the way the planet was conceived in FH's mind is the oxygen content of the atmosphere. I really don't get how there could be enough, given the extreme scarcity of photosynthesis going on.

    Read the KJA/BH books and come back and tell me it's not crap. Since I've read them and you haven't - AND I've corresponded with Kevin J. Anderson about them and you haven't, I think I know just a wee bit more about this particular situation than you do.

    BTW, Christopher, if you knew of a group of Star Trek fans who hated your ST books and weren't shy about saying so, would you write blog posts sneering at them and calling them "Talifans" (combination of Taliban and fan)? Would you be as openly disrespectful to Gene Roddenberry's basic ST tenets as KJA has to Frank Herbert?

    Herbert was in the process of writing the final Dune novel when he died. Given the clues we have of the way the story should have gone from the cliffhanger ending of the previous book, KJA/BH decided "to hell with FH; we'll do our own thing and retcon it into the story that EVERYTHING FH wrote in his original six Dune novels is just an in-story propaganda piece and doesn't count because only OUR books are real Dune!"

    Would you do that to Gene Roddenberry? I'm not talking about something like inventing new characters or changing a style of uniform for one of the Starfleet sub-organizations. I'm talking about something as basic as saying the Prime Directive never existed, or that Vulcans are really like Ferengi and everything Roddenberry and authors he signed off on ever wrote about Vulcans was in-story propaganda and therefore NOT real and NOT valid.

    I don't think so. I think you have more integrity than that. Even if you somehow acquired sole rights to all of Star Trek, you wouldn't violate Roddenberry's vision to such an egregious extent.

    Purism is NOT an "illegitimate" basis for determining quality, if it's obvious that the quality is meant to completely spread metaphorical solid organic human waste material all over the original creator's work.
     
  11. JRoss

    JRoss Commodore Commodore

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    Christopher, you are a better writer than KJA and BH put together. Their "Dune" books are utter garbage. KJA is a parasite who obviously never understood the Dune series. AFAIK, there are very few serious Dune fans who give any of their work consideration.

    Firefly and Dune both have: no sentient aliens, psychic powers, a fairly low-tech setting. As for that timeline stuff, well, nobody cares what KJA says. I'm thinking of Firefly taking place thousands of years before Dune, before the invention of FTL drives, and before the Butlerian Jihad. I just kind of see Firefly as when humanity starts to rise from the loss of Earth, and with River and her ilk as precursors of the Bene Gesserit.
     
  12. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    JRoss, I will make a promise: I will try to find an affordable set of Firefly/Serenity DVDs (I have no access to normal online viewing sites), watch them, and then come back and give my opinion on this issue. But please keep in mind the Other Memory lives accessible to Leto and Ghanima in Children of Dune and the whole concept of the mohalata. The Bene Gesserit had roots going back tens of millennia.
     
  13. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Okay, finally a useful answer to the question. I don't know or care about all that other stuff, and I don't want to see the thread derailed by it any further. I don't think it's appropriate to attack authors personally just because you didn't like something they wrote. And Mr. Anderson was kind enough to give me a very positive promotional quote for Only Superhuman, so I don't want anything to do with your hatefest.

    I suppose it's possible that characters in the 'Verse just haven't found alien life or FTL drive yet, but I'm not sure that's consistent with the intent. So I do think it's somewhat forced.
     
  14. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    oooOOOOoooo.... so somebody's pissed off that I'm not agreeing with him just because he's a published author? :rolleyes:

    Bullshit. And Christopher, you just attacked ME, by categorizing my profound distaste for a hack author ruining a classic as a "hatefest." Trust me, what I said is MILD in comparison to what others have said.

    I DID give you useful information - the page you linked to is pure crap that's NOTHING to do with the actual novel Dune.

    You've just lost a reader. Congratulations. And it's nothing to do with your writing. It's because you're being a jerk. And I wouldn't be so proud of an endorsement by KJA. He can churn out quantity, definitely. Too bad not much of it is quality.
     
  15. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Can we please stay on topic? I don't care if you agree with me or not, I just get so sick of people derailing threads so they can rant about their pet peeves. As for the rest, I don't know enough about the Dune series to have an opinion, and I'm sure as hell not going to be convinced by an opinion that's expressed with such anger. If I wanted to have an opinion, I'd read the books and decide for myself. So you're just wasting your time trying to lecture me about what I should think about those books, and you're wasting the time of everyone else who's here to talk about an entirely different subject. That's all I'm saying.
     
  16. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    My pet peeve, as you call it, is with people who decide to write in another individual's original universe without respecting the in-universe rules that individual created or, if they change the rules, without doing so in a way that enhances the story.

    Clear enough? You were operating under misinformation, which I corrected. You perceived that as an "attack" on a fellow author, who is more than capable of standing up for himself. Then you attacked me.

    As for "derailing the thread" - you're not a moderator here, and kindly refrain from dictating to me which facets of crossovers and writing in somebody else's universe I choose to discuss.
     
  17. OmahaStar

    OmahaStar Disrespectful of his betters Admiral

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    Yeah, he has been doing that for years. He lives to needle people and show people up with his "knowledge." He still has no idea why so many people call him Kia behind his back. Who knows? He may even be a halfway-decent writer, but he's such a jerk that he drives potential readers away.

    As for KJA, he's a nice enough guy. I've had the pleasure of meeting him several times now, and he's always friendly and personable - online and in person (some writers could learn from that) - but he does live by quantity over quality.

    Still, I'm looking forward to Stewartquake, the follow-up to Shatnerquake, but featuring Patrick Stewart and his various characters. Would love to see his characters from Jeffrey and Lifeforce having a chat with Picard. It would be a hoot!
     
  18. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    You went way beyond "correcting" it. You took such a vicious attitude that it sounded like you were judging me for my innocent attempt to find some chronological information about the universe. I didn't know what parts were introduced by which author; I was just trying to research the question. And you jumped down my throat for daring to consult a reference that didn't meet with your approval. So hell yes, I felt attacked. Anyone would if they got that kind of vitriol in response to an innocent attempt at research.
     
  19. doubleohfive

    doubleohfive Fleet Admiral

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    :rolleyes: Not cool, man. And wholly unnecessary.
     
  20. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Okay, I think there have been some overreactions on both sides, and I apologize for my harsh words. But I was just trying to help and I had no idea what kind of a reaction my cursory research would provoke. Really, I have no dog in the fight when it comes to Dune, so all this has taken me by surprise, and I reacted badly. But there have been bad reactions on both sides. We really should just take a deep breath, set all this aside, and move on.