Good Behind the Scenes Books

[Vagabond Elf]

Yeah, I figured that was probably a factor. Too bad they didn't hire somebody at Lucasfilm to name their dumb aliens for them. I can see where Amaze-arite could take hold as an internal working name, but you don't publish it, knuckleheads. That's some Gold-Key-Comics-level doofussery there.

By which you mean West End Games.

All the modern "canon" names for aliens and planets and whatnot, if not actually mentioned in the film, were created by WEG when they wrote the Star Wars Role-Playing Game. Twi'lek, Rodian, Ithorian, all of that came from WEG. Post Prequels, many character names came from Hasbro when they decided to release a figure based on that character.

Quoting myself from Astromech.net:

In an interview with FanthaTracks, Bill Slavicsek, the Editor-in-Chief of West End Games during the late 80s and early 90s, notes that the WEG RPG supplements “were the first products to add to the Star Wars mythos since the original trilogy had wrapped up three years earlier. And they were the first Star Wars products to give names and back stories to the various aliens that inhabited the background of the films. Suddenly Hammer Head was an Ithorian, Bib Fortuna was a Twi’lek, and Greedo was a Rodian. The universe was more real. Later, novelists and comic book writers and action figure makers and creators of the animated series would use the names I had come up with. But at the time, all I was trying to do was add context and believability to the universe we all loved so much. “ He also notes that “...novelists would call me or reference one of our game products ...” and that “...we wrote the various entries, passed them around the office for comments and review, and eventually sent them to LFL for final approval. “

Link to interview broken out for clarity:

https://www.fanthatracks.com/interviews/vintage-interview-bill-slavicsek-19th-september-2012/

 

[Set Harth]

Too bad they didn't hire somebody at Lucasfilm to name their dumb aliens for them.

Have you... heard some of the names Lucasfilm put out there?

 

[Just a Bill]

Have you... heard some of the names Lucasfilm put out there?

Oh yeah, some are horrible, especially in the extended universe (which I was never a fan of; so much cringe). My comment was really just an off-the-cuff snarky response to David's point about the tendency in the late 70s to try to imitate Star Wars, which made me think, well, at least the alien names known at that time (in the first film) were leaps and bounds better than the stupid ones the TMP soundtrack booklet seemed so proud of.

 

[FredH]

at least the alien names known at that time (in the first film) were leaps and bounds better than the stupid ones the TMP soundtrack booklet seemed so proud of.

Aaamazzarites?
Arcturians?
Betelgeusians?
Kazarites?
Megarites?
Rhaandarites?
Rigellians?
Saurians?
Shamin?
Zaranites?

I’m just curious which ones struck you as stupid, and why. (I could see it for Saurians, but Trek has plenty of descriptive alien names. And I could see it for Shamin, since they’re priests, but I like their costume design.)

 

[Just a Bill]

Aaamazzarites?
Arcturians?
Betelgeusians?
Kazarites?
Megarites?
Rhaandarites?
Rigellians?
Saurians?
Shamin?
Zaranites?

I’m just curious which ones struck you as stupid, and why. (I could see it for Saurians, but Trek has plenty of descriptive alien names. And I could see it for Shamin, since they’re priests, but I like their costume design.)

Well hands-down, Aaamazzarites is mind-numbingly lame. Jamming in extra letters to make something "look alien" is always weak sauce, and it's also weak to make alien names out of overused noise words like "amazing" and "mega." Hey, while we're at it, where are the Coolarites and the Ultimites and the Decimites? It's repetitively unimaginative that so many of these names end in -ites. Additionally, why are so many named for their stars instead of their planets... are we humans called Solarites and do we live on the planet Solan?

Probably we could pick out a few that would sound okay if they were separated from the massive sea of sameness presented in that soundtrack booklet. In isolation, Rhaandarite is not bad, and Rigellian sounds just as Trekish as Orion does. Unfortunately, Rigelians (with one L) were already established in Journey to Babel, and they were supposed to be physically similar to Vulcans. So although the name is good, Fletcher both misspelled and misused the reference. Or worse, he created a completely different alien race with essentially the same name.

And sure, in one sense, Shamin "makes sense" for a race of priests, but it's way too on-the-nose. Again, the lack of imagination (good, craftsmanlike imagination) flies off the page. Alien naming should be done by writers that are good at naming things, not by a costume designer who is not good at naming things (and in my opinion, not great at costume design, either; the vast majority of frocks in this movie have always looked pretty dreadful to me, even when I was a kid who was excited to get brand-new Star Trek until he started seeing how shoddy it was).

YMMV, of course. But that list of aliens sucks. Maybe they were all named by the Suuuckkkxarites.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

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[Maurice]

^^^Good stuff, but 30 years their recollections were sometimes a tad questionable.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Well hands-down, Aaamazzarites is mind-numbingly lame. Jamming in extra letters to make something "look alien" is always weak sauce, and it's also weak to make alien names out of overused noise words like "amazing" and "mega." Hey, while we're at it, where are the Coolarites and the Ultimites and the Decimites? It's repetitively unimaginative that so many of these names end in -ites. Additionally, why are so many named for their stars instead of their planets... are we humans called Solarites and do we live on the planet Solan?

I'm also not a fan of some of the alien names prose writers come up with, where they're overly long, look like the writer's cat just walked across the keyboard, and have a million apostrophes jammed in there. It just gets exhausting to read a name like "Kkkk't'lll'skyll'dwalis'pk'pk" dozens of times over the course of a novel.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

@JonnyQuest037 another for the "Author Habits that annoy you" thread.

 

[Just a Bill]

I'm also not a fan of some of the alien names prose writers come up with, where they're overly long, look like the writer's cat just walked across the keyboard, and have a million apostrophes jammed in there. It just gets exhausting to read a name like "Kkkk't'lll'skyll'dwalis'pk'pk" dozens of times over the course of a novel.

If I can't read a name and know how to pronounce it, I'm annoyed and it takes me out of the story.

Also annoying are those names that are a normal word spelled wacky, especially when most of the audience probably doesn't even know about the weird spelling.

The worst is when you finally learn how the author wants the name pronounced, and it's not compatible with the spelling.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

@JonnyQuest037 another for the "Author Habits that annoy you" thread.

Yeah, I probably will post it over there soon.

 

[DeepSpaceYorks]

Really enjoyed reading through this thread today and it flagged up a couple of books I'd like to buy and reminded me of a couple I used to religiously take out of the library.
Anyway, I wanted to mention this:

REVIEW — Official Guide to STAR TREK’s Animated Series

We dig into the new guidebook to the second STAR TREK television show, the 1970’s-era ANIMATED SERIES!

blog.trekcore.com

It's well worth a position in any discussion of Trek history.