Did CBS Steal the Tardigrade Idea?
- Thread starter Prax
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That was really interesting, i'd never heard of this game to be honest. There is a fair bit of evidence to suggest plagiarism was involved at the same time it could be coincidental. There were plenty of articles on Tardigrades popping up in my facebook feed around that time. I could potentially see Bryan Fuller thinking 'I like tardigrades and I like this spore theory that Professor stamets came up with' and him combining the two. Bryan Fuller doesn't strike me as the type to steal ideas, Alex Kurtzman however is a different story. If Alex Kurtzman had come across this game I could see him lifting ideas from it.
Before I pass judgement, I'd want to get the other side of the story from whoever on the Discovery team came up with the idea in the first place. If there is enough evidence to say it was coincidental, cool. However if there is evidence to support plagiarism then they need to pay the creator of the game some cash, or a give him a consultant credit or even a spot on the writing team if he is interested.
I'm not rushing to judgement until I hear CBS's explanation. But they definitely need to give one. If they don't I think that will speak for itself in a bad way.
I'm sorry but the characters don't look alike - picking on passing resemblances to people looking the way they do is silly. The rest is interesting; but also consider what the Tardigrade originally was going to be (Stamet's boss), so something else was going on. Indeed the problem with the tardigrade is that Paul Stamets is probably a big inspiration, and he might have written or suggested much of the elements that may be a common source for both things.
Im not sure, but I wonder if I think I agree with the writing of confirmation bias that people are reasonably with in the game developer's reddit post at https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/778vix/in_2014_i_started_developing_a_game_that_uses/.
Also check out tardigrades in space:
I think the maker is onto something, but it's also resemblances that are being talked up with little analysis, as in the video posted above. It's dodgy sideeye suggestiveness - and basically reading out of the original blog by the maker - rather than any honest investigation.
Im not sure, but I wonder if I think I agree with the writing of confirmation bias that people are reasonably with in the game developer's reddit post at https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/778vix/in_2014_i_started_developing_a_game_that_uses/.
Also check out tardigrades in space:
I think the maker is onto something, but it's also resemblances that are being talked up with little analysis, as in the video posted above. It's dodgy sideeye suggestiveness - and basically reading out of the original blog by the maker - rather than any honest investigation.
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The title wasn't clickbait-y enough. I didn't click on this for a while but probably would have if it was titled "Did Discovery plagarize the Tardigrades?" or something to that effect.
Um no - ST:VOY had dead aliens powering starships if I recall correctly - aliens the Equinox killed (Hence why the living aliens were attacking).
As far as ST: D - Yes, they were injuring the Tartigrade - but Burnham did fight to get that stopped, and Saru ultimately told her: "We have no claim on its soul...Save the Creature's life..." <--- So, no, not quite the same situation here.
I thought this one died, too. I was surprised to see the thread reappear.
I'm terrible at click baiting. I was trying to think of a clever synonym for mystery that rhymed with Tartigrade. Quite impossible, so I settled for "Twister."
If there is a connection, an innocent explanation could be that "Idea men" were scouring the furthest reaches of sci fi looking for concepts, and someone was taken with this idea, and wrote down a rough treatment, then, after the "regime change" someone else was taken with the idea and ran with it.
Or not. If this guy's ideas really were used, my instincts tell me that he will never hear from them about it, and he doesn't much mind anyway.
So here are the key points.
1) Tardigrades look similar from the game and the show. They both involve giant space-travelling Tardigrades.
2) Character descriptions seem like it matches characters in Discovery. That is... One African Female character, One brown gay male, and One white gay male.
Here are the facts:
The Tartigrade was initially going to be a bridge crew member Ephraim who held the rank Lt. Commander.
During production, it turns out that the cost of having a permanent crew being the Tardigrade would be too high.
To justify the budget devoted to Ephraim they had to repurpose the assets in a different way.
So the Tardigrade was never intended to travel alone in space. It was supposed to act as a navigator. We don't know if Lt. Commander Ephraim would have been able to travel alone.
We also know that Bryan Fuller had an interest in how Mycelium works and (real life) Dr. Paul Stamets' research.
In fact, in his previous project Hannibal, he had a mushroom-obsessed serial killer named Eldon Stamets.
Here's a tweet citing his influence. This was way before Star Trek Discovery.
He was so interested in the work that he named a main character in the show after the guy. So this shows that the initial idea stemmed from having a galaxy-wide mycelial network.
We also know that Bryan Fuller had been pushing for diversity for a long time. In 2013, in a hypothetical casting question, he stated: "“I want Angela Bassett to be the captain, that’s who I would love to have, you know Captain Angela Bassett and First Officer Rosario Dawson. I would love to do that version of the show.”"
And of course we know that a significant segment of fandom has been pushing for LGBT representation in Star Trek. Bryan Fuller (being a gay man) would have likely been pushing for it as well. All of the character similarities are completely incidental.
If that's not convincing how about this:
If you were to rip off something, why would you adhere to copying exact characters? It provides no benefits because that is not instrumental to its strength. Would you tell the casting director that you specifically need XYZ in attributes and never deviate from it? Casting doesn't work like that.
It also looks like the story arc of the Tardigrades is done now.
If the key feature of the story is not centered around the Tardigrade, but instead on a galaxy-spanning mycelial network (and the way to travel through it), then it is logical to think that the mycelial network was the genesis of the idea.
It's meant to counter the Klingon's secret weapon of cloaking technology. The Tardigrade was re-purposed because they spent a lot of money on a puppet and digital work.
Ideas don't come from a vacuum. There is a well documented case of 'multiple discoveries' which happen at the same time independently of each other.
1) Tardigrades look similar from the game and the show. They both involve giant space-travelling Tardigrades.
2) Character descriptions seem like it matches characters in Discovery. That is... One African Female character, One brown gay male, and One white gay male.
Here are the facts:
The Tartigrade was initially going to be a bridge crew member Ephraim who held the rank Lt. Commander.
During production, it turns out that the cost of having a permanent crew being the Tardigrade would be too high.
To justify the budget devoted to Ephraim they had to repurpose the assets in a different way.
So the Tardigrade was never intended to travel alone in space. It was supposed to act as a navigator. We don't know if Lt. Commander Ephraim would have been able to travel alone.
We also know that Bryan Fuller had an interest in how Mycelium works and (real life) Dr. Paul Stamets' research.
In fact, in his previous project Hannibal, he had a mushroom-obsessed serial killer named Eldon Stamets.
Here's a tweet citing his influence. This was way before Star Trek Discovery.
He was so interested in the work that he named a main character in the show after the guy. So this shows that the initial idea stemmed from having a galaxy-wide mycelial network.
We also know that Bryan Fuller had been pushing for diversity for a long time. In 2013, in a hypothetical casting question, he stated: "“I want Angela Bassett to be the captain, that’s who I would love to have, you know Captain Angela Bassett and First Officer Rosario Dawson. I would love to do that version of the show.”"
And of course we know that a significant segment of fandom has been pushing for LGBT representation in Star Trek. Bryan Fuller (being a gay man) would have likely been pushing for it as well. All of the character similarities are completely incidental.
If that's not convincing how about this:
If you were to rip off something, why would you adhere to copying exact characters? It provides no benefits because that is not instrumental to its strength. Would you tell the casting director that you specifically need XYZ in attributes and never deviate from it? Casting doesn't work like that.
It also looks like the story arc of the Tardigrades is done now.
If the key feature of the story is not centered around the Tardigrade, but instead on a galaxy-spanning mycelial network (and the way to travel through it), then it is logical to think that the mycelial network was the genesis of the idea.
It's meant to counter the Klingon's secret weapon of cloaking technology. The Tardigrade was re-purposed because they spent a lot of money on a puppet and digital work.
Ideas don't come from a vacuum. There is a well documented case of 'multiple discoveries' which happen at the same time independently of each other.
Was Star Trek Discoverys Tardigrade idea actually a stolen idea from the Tardigrade video game? The concept, visuals, and characters look oddly similar. http://anas-tronaut.blogspot.com/2017/10/star-trek-discovery-tardigrades.html
No.
Tardigrades have been associated with outer space for a long time. In 2014, the new version of the TV show Cosmos made that association explicit in popular culture. This isn't a new idea, and the game has no greater claim on it than the show does.
Furthermore, the imagery and character designs that the game designer has exhibited as evidence bear little or no resemblance to anything we have seen on screen. If we look at the designer's full argument, part of the logic seems to be something like, "I have a black character! So does Discovery! Coincidence??"
What resemblance there is can be chalked up to both being sci-fi. Go look at TNG. Go look at Stargate. Luminous particle effects in space are a common part of the language, I'd say.
When Discovery ends with naked!Stamets leaving Culber for the hot hot embrace of a big blue space Tardigrade, maybe we can have this conversation.
Tardigrades have been associated with outer space for a long time. In 2014, the new version of the TV show Cosmos made that association explicit in popular culture. This isn't a new idea, and the game has no greater claim on it than the show does.
Furthermore, the imagery and character designs that the game designer has exhibited as evidence bear little or no resemblance to anything we have seen on screen. If we look at the designer's full argument, part of the logic seems to be something like, "I have a black character! So does Discovery! Coincidence??"
What resemblance there is can be chalked up to both being sci-fi. Go look at TNG. Go look at Stargate. Luminous particle effects in space are a common part of the language, I'd say.
When Discovery ends with naked!Stamets leaving Culber for the hot hot embrace of a big blue space Tardigrade, maybe we can have this conversation.
So a giant tardigrade being used for intergalactic space travel in a game and a TV show, both being developed at about the same time is just a coincidence
Yes. Given the ongoing public and scientific fascination with the Tardigrade's ability to survive in the vacuum of space, it's not at all surprising that people have thought about it being a space traveler. There is also the fact that the Tardigrade was intended to be a cast member on the bridge but was changed for budgetary reasons; these images are what they came up with when that idea fell through. You wouldn't expect that to be the case if they were stealing someone else's ideas.
There's also the fact that the tardigrade barely appears in the scheme of the show. It's simply not a major concept.
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