Peter David doesn't seem to have been aware of the use of the Brikar and seems to think Prodigy is ripping off Space Cases: "Okay, I've read up on it now. A show about a group of alien kids who discover a ship in space and use it to go on adventures. Wow. I wish I'd come up with a program like that. Oh wait: I did." (Link).
Hmm. This thread is the first I'd even heard of Prodigy. A crew of misfits. Reminds me of the Challenger, from the New Earth book series, the Excalibur, from the New Frontier book series, and (to a certain extent) SCE (more geeks than misfits).
Group finds ship and off they go.. Done hundreds of times in print, tv, movies. No one can claim a copyright.
You should keep an eye on the 'Future of Trek' subforum which is where we discuss upcoming productions that don't have their own subforum yet.
I knew I'd read something recently on this: Starlin, who has made peace with Marvel over Thanos and speaks positively of his relationships there, has another 1970s creation hitting the big screen Sept. 3: Shang-Chi. He notes he hasn’t heard if Disney will be giving him pay beyond the “paltry sum” in his original deal. Says Starlin with a laugh: “Let’s see what happens. You may have me squeaking.”
Ed Brubaker's claims are weak, to my mind, because he didn't create Bucky Barnes, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon did. And yes, he helped create the Winter Soldier persona, but the only reason the character exists and is someone anyone cares about is because he's Bucky Barnes.
Sometimes character creators get defined in a weird way. For instance, the creator credits at the end of Young Justice episodes say "Nightwing created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez" even though Nightwing is Dick Grayson, a character created by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson (and is named in honor of the original Nightwing created by Edmond Hamilton and Curt Swan -- which started out as an alternate identity of Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster).
And when Bart Allen became Kid Flash instead of Impulse, Mark Waid stopped getting royalties. It’s a weird one.
I think this speaks to how the way character evolution over time can erode the very concept of a character with a consistent identity as intellectual property. Like, is Spider-Gwen really the same character as Gwen Stacey just because they share a name and a haircut? At what point should new variations of a character come to be seen as separate intellectual properties?
Today I learned that Space Cases, one of my favourite shows as a child, was created by the guy behind New Frontier and the original Will Robinson.
I think it's a cute juxtaposition that the Brikar, huge and blocky-looking as she is, is actually a preteen girl.
This isn't really a spoiler so I won't code it as such. Assuming that in the NF universe, Brikarians basically look like slightly rocky humanoids (assuming that picture on the cover is Zak Kebron), I assume there's an explanation as to why Rok-Tahk doesn't look like that? Is it just a matter of Rok-Tahk being so young that she will gradually 'shed' that appearance and that as a full grown adult, she'd look more like Kebron? Is there anything in the novels that would suggest this? (I've never read NF so I wouldn't know)
Star Trek has redesigned species with multiple appearances a number of times, so Brikarians looking differently between comics, original covers, German covers and now PRO is par of the course.
So I guess this is just what Brikarians really look like, then? I mean, since Rok-Tahk actually appeared onscreen, we can assume that her appearance is considered definitive, amirite?
I made a joke in another thread once about how Kebron and Rok-Tahk are made out of different types of rock, but that’s probably not too far off - look at the variation we have with the appearance of the Klingons and how wildly divergent they can be from one another.
Even Kebron had varying appearances between the different book covers and comics he appeared in. He was never quite as chunky as Rok-Tahk, but there could be any number of explanations from retcon (kind of), to different ethnicities, to the aging process; remember, for the first part of New Frontier, Kebron was in his adolescence, and molted into adulthood. Maybe pre-teen Brikars are just naturally spiky and gradually smooth over.