Star Trek's unlicensed crossovers

[Extrocomp]

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book series is set in a world where all fiction really happened. Although starting with public domain crossovers, the series eventually moved on to copyrighted characters although it rarely referred to them by name. The last issue of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest has an epilogue set in 2164 AD showing a Dalek invasion fleet heading towards Earth. Mina Murray complains that the war with the Romulans only finished recently and now they have to deal with another invasion. Astro Boy and Lara Croft can be seen in the background and a Martian from the 1953 movie War of the Worlds is preserved in a glass container.

Tales of the Shadowmen is an anthology series released once a year, that usually features crossovers between public domain characters from English and French literature. Occasionally they do sneak in more modern characters. The story "Next!" is about a meeting between the sexy space heroine Barbarella and a starship captain named James who is identified as James T. Kirk in the credits. Barbarella is trying to create a superbeing by gathering DNA from men across the multiverse. After sending Kirk back to his own universe, she considers getting the Dark Knight (Batman), the Man of Bronze (Doc Savage) and the Lord of the Apes (Tarzan). In "Beware the Beasts", Doctor Omega from the French novel of the same name describes a past encounter with Q, which the credits confirm is the same one created by Gene Roddenberry.

Has anyone else read these unofficial crossovers? Are there any others out there that I don't know about?

Just to be clear, I'm asking about professionally published stories, not fan fiction.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Probably the biggest unlicensed ST crossover of all would have to be Barbara Hambly's Ishmael, in which the main plot was a crossover between Star Trek and Here Come the Brides, and which was littered with references to other franchises (including Anderson & Dickson's Hoka stories).

 

[Jinn]

Barely even a crossover, but IIRC David Mack inserted the main characters of The Big Bang Theory and Brooklyn 99 into one of his Vanguard novels and a recent TNG novel.

 

[Kor]

I've never actually read TLoEG comics myself. I tried, but... a little too grim for me. But I thought Moore was always careful about not mentioning copyrighted characters by their full names, and in some case making the visual designs a little different. Even the obvious Fu Manchu stand-in is just called "The Doctor" as the name is under trademark. Were the Daleks referred to by name? I understand the trademark is with the estate of their creator, rather than the BBC.

Kor

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Were the Daleks referred to by name? I understand the trademark is with the estate of their creator, rather than the BBC.

The Terry Nation estate owns the concept of the Daleks, the BBC owns the look.

But I thought Moore was always careful about not mentioning copyrighted characters by their full names, and in some case making the visual designs a little different.

I kicked out with Century, and it was Comics Alliance that called that "Family Guy for smart people." It felt like endless cameo after cameo at the expense of story, and I have no idea how IDW's legal department cleared it for publication. (The villain in Century, btw, was Harry Potter, who kills Alan Quatermain by shooting a lightning bolt from his penis.)

I like the movie, though! It distills the LXG concept down to the important parts -- the characters of 19th-century literature working together as a Victorian Justice League. I quibble with parts of the film -- Tom Sawyer should've been about the same age as Quatermain -- and Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows steals the film's plot (really, Moriarty's scheme is the same in both films), but I like it. It's fun in ways that the similar Van Helsing wasn't.

 

[Christopher]

I like the movie, though! It distills the LXG concept down to the important parts -- the characters of 19th-century literature working together as a Victorian Justice League. I quibble with parts of the film -- Tom Sawyer should've been about the same age as Quatermain -- and Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows steals the film's plot (really, Moriarty's scheme is the same in both films), but I like it. It's fun in ways that the similar Van Helsing wasn't.

I thought the LXG film was pretty goofy, but I give it credit for getting Captain Nemo's ethnicity right and embracing it in the Nautilus's set design, which was fantastic. Also, though it was weird to reinterpret Mr. Hyde as basically the Hulk, I was impressed with the FX technique they used to create the giant Hyde -- instead of going full CGI like Marvel does with the Hulk, they put an actor in prosthetics and digitally enlarged him relative to the scene/other actors, or used forced perspective and similar tricks like the Lord of the Rings films did with Hobbits and dwarves.

The only thing I remember about the Van Helsing movie, beyond it being generally terrible, was the incredibly fakey CGI in a scene of the title character jumping across horses pulling a runaway carriage. This was a stock film stunt that's been done live for generations, one that hardly needed to be CGI except perhaps for safety considerations, so it was an egregious example of overusing CGI unnecessarily, and doing it badly too.

 

[Extrocomp]

Were the Daleks referred to by name?

The Daleks are referred to as "those things from Skaro with the egg-whisks". Their ships strongly resemble the Daleks themselves, so there's no mistaking who they are. The Romulans are referred to by name.

 

[nightwind1]

Probably the biggest unlicensed ST crossover of all would have to be Barbara Hambly's Ishmael, in which the main plot was a crossover between Star Trek and Here Come the Brides, and which was littered with references to other franchises (including Anderson & Dickson's Hoka stories).

And it was a damn entertaining book!

 

[Therin of Andor]

Lots of crossover, parody and pastiche comics here on Mark Martinez's site:
https://www.startrekcomics.info/parodies.html
https://www.startrekcomics.info/pastiches.html