I thought it was a better use of the line because of the original meaning and the connotations which go with it. In Hamlet, the idea is that no matter how horrible and full of suffering life is, the fear of the unknown after death keeps people living in that suffering. Similarly, no matter how horrible a situation the present, better to keep things the way you're used to than to journey headlong into a future you nothing about and can't control.
Nicholas Meyer's Interpretation of Star Trek
- Thread starter Clark Terrell
- Start date
And Meyer did. He didn't title any of his non-Trek movies "The Undiscovered Country" after all. But do creative people hang onto rejected ideas and recycle them if they get a chance? Sure. Waste not, want not.
Hell, I once sold a rejected Voyager pitch to Farscape. And my Terminator novel is loosely based on a Firefly proposal that never sold.
I have files full of character names and titles and plot gimmicks that aren't attached to specific projects yet. I'll find a use for them some day . . ..
Not an episode, alas. I wrote some FS short stories for the official FARSCAPE magazine back in the day. (I also co-edited the novels.)
But, yeah, I turned a rejected Voyager pitch about Seven of Nine into short story about Aeryn Sun . . . which was easier than you might think!
trevanian
Rear Admiral
The novelization addressed it more fully; I don't know if that is Dillard or just more of the scene as originally conceived.
I definitely see where you're coming from, Mr. C. My views could be colored from my comic book days (granted, not exactly high literature
), where the general idea was that a good Captain America story is not necessarily a good Spider-Man story. Admittedly, this is more theory than practice, in my experience!I'd just hate for story elements to become so plug-and-play that a rejected idea of, say, "Let's make the long-lost brother turn out to be really a robot" turns up in another book as "Let's make the long-lost army buddy turn out to be really a robot".
I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. That's why I'm not a writer, I guess.
(Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe it's the recycled Saavik character of Valeris that bothered me more than I realized...)
trevanian
Rear Admiral
I distinctly remember reading once upon a time (around the time of its release, actually) that Meyer's original title for Star Trek II was Star Trek II: The Undiscovered Country. Little short on ideas, Nicholas?
Man, some people just never can let an idea go.
If something sounds good and appropriate, hell yeah hang onto it. I came up with the title CRITICAL ORBIT when I was 15 and trying to make a medium sized space movie in Super8. A couple years later, when Disney was publicly seeking alternative titles to THE BLACK HOLE, I sent CRITICAL ORBIT to them (I still think they should have used it.)
I made a totally different Space film in the early 80s called CRITICAL ORBIT, but a cast member died and another disappeared so I couldn't finish it. In the LATE 80s I rewrote it as a full-length script, similar universe but with way too much Heinlein-esque practicalmindedness.
When I pitched to TNG at the end of 1990 one of my pitches (which still had a morsel from the early 80s version in it) was also CRITICAL ORBIT.
Then in the early 90s I made it very very different, about themes and 'tudes that really interested me, first as a feature script and then as a whole series of story ideas for CRITICAL ORBIT as a TV series, called CRITICAL ORBITS. (this is around the time I noticed that Kirk actually uses the phrase 'critical orbit' in THE NAKED TIME, which kind of took the wind out of my sails for a bit.)
I still mess with those early 90s versions from time to time ... it really REALLY seems like FIREFLY, but with slightly less vivid characters and much much better science. Had a general outline for whole series, one that would have had a clever little thing ... various guest stars would be filmed seated in something like a Capt's chair in a bit that didn't go into the episode. For the last episode, when things have changed enormously for the characters and they aren't privateers anymore, you were going to see a huge fleet of ships deploying for an extended mission, and see that leftover extra shot for each of these guest stars, who were each commanding one of the ships in this fleet, which is ... man, I gotta sit down and reread all this, I'm getting jazzed thinking about it.
(Now that I wrote that out, I'm wondering if the title is what has jinxed these projects. Had the same name for the main character throughout all this too, except for the early 80s version.)
