Oh, that guy? Ever since the whole desperate Sad Puppy thing crashed and burned he’s been periodically jumping up and down going “Look at me! Look at me!” (these days mostly on YouTube, looks like). There’s little point in doing so.A guy who claims Robert Picardo dared him to make his own Starfleet Academy on twitter, has released an off-brand AI slop book in 4 weeks. How is the release going, you ask?
He's getting absolutely slaughtered for his use of AI in the replies, and people are posting his domestic assault restraining order.
I doubt we're getting an SFA novel in 2026 as I'm pretty sure the three Trek novel that have been announced are all the Trek novel content we're getting for the year. 2027 is the earliest an SFA novel can happen, IMO.
I mean, we did just get Echoes in Eternity announced for November, which means that a December release could still be on the way.
Look, if there's any franchise that calls for optimism and positivity and hoping for good things, it's Star Trek, so even if the odds are slim, let me have this, okay? :P
That was done with most of the series in that era. TNG: Ghost Ship was released about a month after the season 1 finale (keeping in mind that actual release dates would've typically been midway through the month before the listed publication date), but DS9: The Siege, VGR: The Escape, and ENT: By the Book all came out less than 4 months after their respective series premiered.
As I mentioned in the other thread, though, The Siege was the one that had the fewest character and continuity problems among the early novels. I remember The Escape also feeling like a pretty good fit to the final show aside from minor glitches like calling the Doctor "Doc Zimmerman" (which came from the series bible, the producers' original intention that they ended up abandoning).
Oh, absolutely. I started working on both my DS9 and Voyager books before the show even started airing. In the beginning, on both projects, I was working from the series bibles and the scripts for the pilot episode, plus whatever photos and cast interviews I could glean from Starlog magazine and the like.
The whole idea was to hit the ground running, with the book lines launching as soon as the shows debuted.
That's pretty much how I got my foot in the door in the first place. With a third Star Trek book line in the works, Pocket Books needed to expand their stable of Trek writers to accomodate their ever-growing Star Trek book line, back when mass-market paperbacks were still thriving.
The whole idea was to hit the ground running, with the book lines launching as soon as the shows debuted.
That's pretty much how I got my foot in the door in the first place. With a third Star Trek book line in the works, Pocket Books needed to expand their stable of Trek writers to accomodate their ever-growing Star Trek book line, back when mass-market paperbacks were still thriving.
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Didn't some of the early TNG books also have Riker referred to as Bill instead of Will?
Yeah, that was in Ghost Ship. Deanna Troi was the only one who called him that because "Bill" was the Betazoid word for "shaving cream", which reminded her of her childhood.
And in the Encounter at Farpoint novelization, Data was created by a race of alien machines on Kiron III to preserve the knowledge of the dead human colonists.
So did "The Naked Now" and "Haven." Probably because Roddenberry more or less recycled the character name of William T. "Bill" Rice, Gary Lockwood's character from The Lieutenant.
That's basically his intended origin from the season 1 writer's bible (written mainly by David Gerrold, who also wrote the novelization), although the bible didn't specify that they were machines or mention Kiron III, as far as I recall. And it's another Roddenberry rehash, since Data was largely based on Questor from The Questor Tapes, another android built by aliens.
. . . which can be handwaved because of one or two episodes when he was toying with the idea of taking a name.
. . . which was also the in-universe assumption until Lewin and Hurley came up with a better idea.
And of course, the little incident in "The Naked Now," in which Tasha learned that Data (as Denise put it in her convention lectures at the time) "has three speeds," was something Roddenberry had wanted to do in Questor.
Oh, I didn't realize Riker being called Bill actually made it into any episodes, but I admit I'm not always good at telling the difference between "Bill" and "Will" when they're spoken. I have to either listen very, very carefully or see it written in order to figure out which it is.
This one is harder (but obviously not impossible) to handwave...
"Perhaps I'm just like any of you," Zimmerman sighed.
"I'll survive, but I might not be the same. I'll have to deal with the consequences of my...illness. Now I understand the subroutines I am directed to initiate when treating another doctor. We do make the worst patients."
Kes smoothed his hair back from his forehead. "It's not fair for you to have to suffer this way."
(From the novel "Violations")
Those early Voyager novels are also pretty interesting from the perspective of most of them not using the Doctor, reflecting the early idea of him just being a sort of 'drop-in' character, instead of one of Voyager's breakout characters. It's a glimpse into a different version of Voyager by not seeing the Doctor's growth and evolution.
I honestly kinda miss that 'written in the growing pains' period, where the novel writers kinda just gravitate to what is in the series bible and/or initial scripts that interested them, which could mesh or not with the series proper. I think that's the general fascination I have with what if ideas, getting those glimpses into another 'version' of the series or characters.
I honestly kinda miss that 'written in the growing pains' period, where the novel writers kinda just gravitate to what is in the series bible and/or initial scripts that interested them, which could mesh or not with the series proper. I think that's the general fascination I have with what if ideas, getting those glimpses into another 'version' of the series or characters.
I already said that it was in the series bible.
And I question "better idea." The premise of "Datalore" is that Data's origins are a complete mystery, and meanwhile, Noonien Soong was famous as Earth's leading roboticist and the only person seriously researching the exact technology that Data was based on. The story directly contradicts itself. (Although it was retroactively made even more nonsensical in "Brothers" when they cast Spiner as Soong, instead of going with Keye Luke as originally planned.)
Questor does mention being "fully functional" in the novelization, and I believe the line is in the movie too, though I'm not certain.
Also, the beat in "The Royale" where Data uses his android superstrength to reshape a pair of loaded dice in a casino is a direct lift from The Questor Tapes. (Although now that I think about it, I doubt it could actually work. The dice would probably just break under the pressure.)
This, so much. As noted previously, I plotted my Voyager episode long before the show debuted and regretted, afterwards that I had barely used the EMH at all in my outline, since he turned out to be my favorite character once I'd actually seen the show.
As I recall, I did manage to squeeze in an extra scene featuring the EMH, just because.
From one of Roddenberry's convention lectures, immortalized on the 1976 Inside Star Trek album:
Odd (but I guess not out of character) that Roddenberry calls it "my original script." By coincidence, I just came across a second-draft script of The Questor Tapes, which does imply that the Contessa (the early version of Lady Helena) sleeps with Questor off-camera. But it credits the teleplay entirely to Gene L. Coon, with Roddenberry only credited for the story and series concept. They would share joint teleplay billing on the final film, suggesting that Roddenberry wrote or co-wrote the final draft where they didn't sleep together. So the facts don't quite support Roddenberry's version of events, surprise, surprise.
But I can see how one or both Genes incorporated the network execs' reticence into the final film, with Jerry getting upset when he suspects that Questor spent the night with Helena and goes to warn her, despite being unable to tell her what he wants to warn her about.
Although given that the sitcom My Living Doll got made, it seems the suits only objected to a male android sleeping with a woman and not the implied reverse. (See also Metropolis, and for that matter the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea.) No doubt they had no problem with treating women as objects, but feared that a "fully functional" male with machine-like endurance would outcompete them for women's attention. After all, it's not like it's remotely unprecedented for women to use machines for sexual fulfillment. Lady Helena might not have had a problem with it if she'd known.
By the way, reading the draft script clarifies something for me, since it turns out that the added subplot and expanded/rearranged sequence of events in the latter half of D.C. Fontana's novelization were not her own innovations, but came from the draft scripts. Other differences in the draft include the story being set in Geneva and Rome instead of California and London; the Contessa having a smaller role than Lady Helena, without the surveillance center on her estate; and Vaslovik's secretary Allison Sample having a larger role and being a love interest for Jerry. Otherwise, though, Coon's draft is largely the same as the final film.
You've got me. All I have is the LP of the spoken word album to go on (and the YouTube upload that I transcribed above). I think maybe I saw a few minutes of the movie (and I think it was the last few minutes). One of these days . . . is it available on DVD? . . . yes, it is. Interesting: the Blu-Ray is cheaper on Amazon than the DVD (if only I had a functioning Blu-Ray machine) . . . Hmm. Alibris has the DVD for under $10, under $15 after shipping.
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Tubi currently has Genesis II & Planet Earth streaming free with ads (and the dreadful non-Roddenberry third attempt, Strange New World), but Questor doesn't seem to be streaming anywhere.
(weeps for the old 2+/month)
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