So far as I know, none of those people are seasoned writers except for Friedman.
Did they ever release The God Thing?
- Thread starter EnriqueH
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So far as I know, none of those people are seasoned writers except for Friedman.
Back in 2016 I got to hear Michael Jan Friedman (one of the many writers to take a whack at finishing The God Thing) talk about working on the story at Star Trek: Mission New York. As I recall, he basically said that to make it work, he had to change a lot of the plot, and that took it farther away from Roddenberry's original story than Majel Barrett was comfortable with.
But honestly, I just don't think there was much to it. It's not like there's a half-written book by Gene Roddenberry floating around out there that just needs some polishing. He was expanding a screenplay and had only written 60-odd pages of prose. That's not very much.
Exactly. From everything I've heard & read about TGT, it was a half-formed story at best, and basically just an excuse for Roddenberry to go on another tiresome anti-religion screed that wasn't nearly as clever as he thought it was, mixed in with odd Roddenberry fetish stuff, like Kirk oil wrestling three naked alien women. If you've ever heard Roddenberry's "Letter From a Network Censor", you've already heard most of what he had in mind for The God Thing.
Yeah, agreed. It's not some lost treasure. Anything that was worth keeping from TGT went into TMP, and that movie has its own problems. I don't think that "Like TMP, But Worse" is all that great of a selling point.
It occurs to me that a better option might be to simply turn Roddenberry's original script into a graphic novel, as was recently done with Rod Serling's original script for PLANET OF THE APES, or Ellison's original script for "City on the Edge of Forever."
Heck, Salvador Dali's unfilmed script for a hypothetical Marx Bros. movie recently got a graphic-novel adaptation.
Heck, Salvador Dali's unfilmed script for a hypothetical Marx Bros. movie recently got a graphic-novel adaptation.
Walter Koenig has seven writing credits under his name at IMDb. He's also written autobiographies about his Star Trek experiences, novels and comic books. Sounds pretty seasoned to me. Susan Sackett wrote columns for Starlog back in the day, co-wrote at least one episode of TNG with her writing parter, and wrote a book on her ST experiences. I'm not familiar with Alexander's career outside of his Roddenberry book, but anyone who embarks on a massive writing project like that and completes it has my respect.
It's also not just a question of someone saying, "Let's publish this," the Roddenberry estate has to agree to allow it to be published, and it's quite possible that they don't want to, or only want to do so on their own terms, which a publisher may not be interested in.
Especially since three of those four were hand-picked by Roddenberry himself to do the work. Koenig was drafted by Roddenberry after seeing a writing sample, Sackett was his assistant/lover, and Alexander was his hand-picked biographer. And they couldn't make it work......
Let me clarify: I’m not necessarily asking for a novel form.
I’d just be interested in reading what exists.
Just like I was interested in Superman II: Donner Cut, or Bruce Lee’s Game of Death footage restored (without all the theatrical crap they tacked on)
They’re incomplete and always will be.
But I’m curious to read/see what does exist.
I’ve read Koenig’s books as well as Sackett. I enjoyed both of their work.
But if someone is going to “complete it”, I would think someone like Alan Dean Foster could take a tab at it.
Aside from Tolkien, I know Hemingway had a bunch of stuff released after his death that wasn’t completed or what have you.
I’d just be interested in reading what exists.
Just like I was interested in Superman II: Donner Cut, or Bruce Lee’s Game of Death footage restored (without all the theatrical crap they tacked on)
They’re incomplete and always will be.
But I’m curious to read/see what does exist.
I’ve read Koenig’s books as well as Sackett. I enjoyed both of their work.
But if someone is going to “complete it”, I would think someone like Alan Dean Foster could take a tab at it.
Aside from Tolkien, I know Hemingway had a bunch of stuff released after his death that wasn’t completed or what have you.
Gene Roddenberry is legitimately the author of the novelization for The Motion Picture. It's a persistent misconception that ADF ghostwrote that.
Yes, and nobody who was familiar with Foster's writing style and had read the TMP novelization could possibly believe it. It's clearly the work of a far less experienced prose author.
So it is Roddenberry that wrote it?
Yep, Gene wrote the TMP novelization. Not ADF. ADF is a much better writer, IMO.
EnriqueH: You still have the issue of the Roddenberry estate allowing it, and my money's on them not doing so for the simple reason that they haven't yet. Trust me, Lincoln Enterprises has not shied away from doing anything that will make them some coin, so the fact that they haven't just gone ahead and released whatever fragmentary material there is, to me, indicates that they don't want it released as is.
Note to self: Fire your publicist.
Oh well.
Man, this myth will just never die, will it?
Yes. GR carried over certain habits of screenwriting to his TMP novelization, like putting lots of things in italics for emphasis. The intro written in Kirk's voice has stuff like stating that TOS was an exaggerated dramatization of the actual events that happened to the Enterprise crew, and a footnote addressing the K/S slash fiction insistence that Kirk and Spock were lovers, neither of which I can imagine another author getting away with. There's also the uniquely Roddenberrian sexual obsessions like Kirk being named after "my mother's first love instructor", alcoves in the rec deck where crew members can make love, and Kirk getting an erection when Ilia first enters the bridge.
Well, I've only written in two licensed universes to date, Trek and Marvel, and only twice in the latter. Although I have two ongoing original-fiction universes and a smattering of standalone original stories.
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