They predominantly write SF and understand its unique requirements.
Lindelof not writing next trek movie?
- Thread starter Gsam
- Start date
Did Duane or Foster write for the show?Aside from Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Theodore Sturgeon, Fredric Brown, Norman Spinrad, Jeremy Bixby, Larry Niven, Diane Duane, Peter Beagle... just off the top of my head.That's exactly what I want. Bring back the real SF writers, and I'll be in Trek heaven.
It's not like Star Trek really had them before.
EDIT: How could I forget Alan Dean Foster?
That makes them prolific science fiction writers. They aren't any more "real" than if I were to sit down, write a story, and call it sci-fi.
Diane Duane loosely adapted her TOS novel, "The Wounded Sky", into a TNG episode, "Where No One Has Gone Before". Her glass spider scientist became the Traveler.
Alan Dean Foster's shelved Klingon two-parter script, written on spec for the abandoned Season Four of TOS, was used to pad out a single TAS episode to novel length for "Star Trek Log Seven". On the strength of his work for Ballantine's adaptations of TAS and his Power Records audio scripts, Foster was asked to adapt "Robot's Return" (a script for "Genesis II") into the premise for "In Thy Image", which would become a Harold Livingston script, and eventually "Star Trek: The Motion Picture".
Old news, since disproven. Orci and Kurtzman are writing again.
Exactly, there are only two people in Hollywood that can write scripts for successful movies.
So that would be no on Duane and almost on Foster. ( assuming one sees TOS and TAS as seperate shows)
Orci: "We are currently talking to Paramount to see if we can make a schedule work where we can remain involved, but again, for example the second movie we teamed with Damon Lindelof, so on the the third film we may do something similar"
is it possible that orci and kurtzman may not be the only people writing the movie and they are working with the writers of thor and xmen first class?
It would be a "no" for both.
Duane wrote for TNG, not TOS.
Foster's TOS script was unproduced - and quite unknown until he mentioned it an essay for the most recent trade reprints of the "Logs" (it was the story about Captain Kumara, Cadet Kirk's former Klingon Exchange Program roommate) - and adapting TAS episodes for books, writing TAS-based audios and a "story by" credit on TMP wouldn't count as writing for TOS either.
Oops. Read it wrong. Some how I thought he had written a TAS episode. Still an almost, since it was written for Season 4 and shelved.
You could also duct tape boxes together and call it a house, but that doesn't make you a carpenter. You could surgically remove your neighbor's spleen but that doesn't make you a doctor. Further, I could write a serious drama with no laughs in it whatsoever and call it a comedy, but calling it that doesn't make it so. "Science fiction" as a genre has several agreed-upon definitions by those who've practiced it (who else should define it?), and most television writers don't write things that fit those definitions. It's not an insult to television writers to define what they do and what they don't do, and it's not to say they can't write good scripts. It's just that I, personally, would like to see Trek bringing back the imaginative SF it used to try to do on occasion by people who do it for a living.
I'm not sure who specified only TOS. I certainly didn't, and a "story by" credit does count for me. I'd be happy with a new Trek series with stories by SF authors being adapted into teleplays by television writers.
If science fiction, as a genre, has several agreed-upon definitions, isn't it also true that most (if not all) of those definitions were applied after the fact, and that not all of those definitions even agree with each other?
It's one thing to define a genre, but the definition itself is nearly always a label applied to a creative work already made - already written, composed or painted. Mozart and Haydn didn't one day decide "I'm going to write a Classical sonata according to this definition of sonata form." No, that label was invented and applied decades later by someone else. Same with science fiction: the stories came first, the label sometime later. The people creating stories and what-have-you are not (and should not be) concerned with how exactly the thing they're making fits any predetermined definition; they should be concerned, first and foremost, with making it function as a story or whatever kind of work it is. The classification and labeling by genre/sub-genre and any further applicable slash/hyphenate hair-splitting is a secondary thing which gets taken care of afterward, by someone other than the creator.
If you're a movie producer, you want to hire a writer - one who can deliver the story you're looking to tell. That is and should be the qualification. Whether that writer is perceived in advance as a "real SF writer" is simply not (IMNSHO) of primary importance. Of the "SF writer" names which keep coming up—Ellison, Matheson, Sturgeon, et al—most wrote in other genres as well, and they did this because they considered themselves writers first; writing is what they did for a living. That they're known as SF writers is mainly because some of the stories people remember best were thus categorized, not because they're any more "real" than any other writer whose story fits at least partially into the SF genre.
No. Because, by definition, carpenters work with wood. I could, however, duct tape a few 2x4s to a couple of panels of plywood, and call myself a carpenter.
This is a false analogy. [Legally] Practicing medicine requires licensing and accredited training. Writing has no such requisite.
In either case, I could offer my services as a carpenter or surgeon to build you a duct & ply house or remove your spleen, but that doesn't mean you have to pay for them.
I could also try to sell you my self-labeled science fiction tale to a science fiction publisher, but they can refuse to buy that too.
As long as YOU think it's funny it does. Otherwise you're just falsely representing it.
But as long as you can justify why you called it comedy, your label is all that matters. Transversely, if I can justify why I called my story science fiction, no one has any right to say otherwise.
But this brings up another interesting point. The definition of "comedy" has changed over the centuries. Why? Because writers have come along over time and said, "'Comedy' isn't just this, this, and this; it can also be this or might sometimes even be this." In other words, the writers defined it and then redefined it. So that, overtime, the "definition" changed. Non the less, that doesn't make Shakespeare's. definition of comedy any more accurate or valid than Mel Brooks's.
Complete bullshit. There is one (not several) specific definition and it's this (from OED):
That's pretty broad and all-encompassing, which is all any definition of an artistic genre or medium should ever be. If those definitions become too specific and rigid, then it's no longer art.
Any television series or film I can think of written in the last half-century by someone who's claimed it to be sci-fi has met the above definition.
Take something like Eureka, or example. People often suggest it's not real science fiction. Paglia and Cosby said it was. And when someone asked them why, they could've just reply with something like, "Well it's a show that deals with futuristic technology in a unique social setting." It's defined and legitimized it and its "science-fictionality" is therefore immune to any and all attacks from interwebz crusaders.
Think of it as the Descartes test. Obviously, a show can't think for itself. Its surrogate has to be those who created it.
And, as I demonstrated above, the label is always changing. Sticking with music, take something as benign as "Classic Rock." Before, it was used to only include groups like Zep, Floyd, and The Who. Now it includes, Nirvana, PJ, and Metallica. Someday, Coldplay, Nickleback and such will no doubt be lopped in there as well.
Or we can broaden the scope and just call it "Rock and Roll." The thing is, what does that even mean any more? Because there are all they genres and sub-genres. And sub- genres of sub-genres! It's changed a lot over the last 60 years--and so have the sub-genres of the sub-genres.
There was a time when The Clash were labeled strictly as English punk (Not to be confused with American punk, electronic punk, fusion punk, techno punk, or alternative punk). Yet, nowadays, the most likely place to hear "London Calling" is on an adult-contemporary, pop station.
Do we define it by the tempo, melodies and tones? By the instruments. If we go by the original 50s definition, Rock and Roll can only be 12-bar Blues, usually I-IV-V (with the occasional vi), with a rockabilly beat, and played with guitar, bass, and drums.
But I would bet just about every instrument in the world has been used in a Rock song at some point or another. Every tempo and rhythm pattern that humans are physically capable of playing (and some that aren't) has been used. And, these days, the I-V-vi-IV (Or vi-IV-I-V if you're feeling spicy.) is the most commonly used chordal progression used in pop music.
So as a listener, it's quite a challenge to label songs/compositions and try to fit them into snug little bubbles. We can only trust they are what their creators say they are. And we have no right to tell them they're wrong.
For example, I could play a song I wrote that sounds eerily a lot like "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" flamenco-style on a nylon guitar and call it a folk lullaby. Most people would probably agree.
I could then turn around play the exact same melody in fifth (power) chords, with an aggressive-staccato 16th note strumming pattern, on a Jackson/Ibanez Superstrat, through a Bad Monkey, into a JCM800, and call it Metal.
Someone else could say it's still a lullaby. Either way, it's for ME to decide.
^
