STC's Lolani

[mos6507]

If true, the allegation is just one more nail in the coffin for fan films, and one more reason why making movies should be left to the professionals.

Like professionals don't run into problems?

There are only so many stories under the sun and billions of humans. You're bound to get some duplication.

BTW, if you want to know what's in this thing, poke around using Amazon's search function. If you search for 'sex' you'll see that this book is very graphic and not really like Lolani in actual execution.

 

[YJAGG]

OMG people steal other ideas? NOOOOOO. I doubt anything will come of this one, none of these stand alone details is new by any strech of the imagination, the combination could be a coincidence. But if he wants to go after STC, good luck, I think it's awaste

@ Mos I agree

The Lion King is based upon Hamlet, Hamlet was based on the legend of Amleth.

West Side Story was based on Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet was based on pyramus and thisbe.

How many comedies were based on mistaken identity alone? this goes back to Greek New Comedy 300 BC,

TNG stole how many TOS plots ? not and in TNG's Outrageous Okona had an R&J sub plot going on to..

 

[mos6507]

West Side Story was based on Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet was based on pyramus and thisbe.

And Star Trek is just a mashup of Horatio Hornblower, Forbidden Planet (in turn, The Tempest) and Gulliver's Travels.

 

[Wowbagger]

But, then we should just start hammering the nails ourselves because we'd be assisting in ending all fan films.

Isn't that Karzak's lifelong ambition, though?

One of the themes I see over and over and over again when reading accounts of how official Star Trek gets made is that there are a ton of coincidences. A writer comes in to a pitch session and pitches a story that is, beat-for-beat, already in production. Somebody throws a script over the transom (back when they allowed fan submissions) and, though never actually read by anyone in the upper echelons, it turns out to have startling similarities to an episode independently pitched, written, and produced the following year -- leading to a (short-lived) lawsuit or two. Heck, on my own show, Excelsior, we ran a writing contest this very year. Each contestant was allowed three pitches.

One contestant, Lyndsey Werner, pitched (as her first pitch) a story in which two factions locked in an eternal war set off a bomb on the Excelsior and turned it into a battlefield -- which happens to be the exact premise of "Only Murder," our episode which was just finishing post-production at that time. Her second pitch revolved heavily around Asuka Yubari, her past disgrace in the Starfleet Marine Corps, and her brother Bezu -- which happened to overlap in many details with "Fear Itself," a script pitched to us in 2013 by Joel Jorden and which is now finally going into production (I'm supposed to be writing the last page now, but am procrastinating).

Fortunately, Lyndsey's third pitch was all about a trip to an amusement park planet, and she won the contest with that pitch, leading to "A Day at the Park".

The coincidences between "Lolani" and Taking Liberty are more substantial than any I've seen on Excelsior, but hardly outside the realm of possibility (unlikely as they may seem to somebody who's never seen how easily and frequently story outlines converge). Unless there's some evidence that someone at STC was actually aware of Taking Liberty -- which, as the author notes, is a pretty obscure work in a different sci-fi universe -- I don't think there's much reason to doubt STC's claim to have come up with "Lolani" independently.

All that said, I'll certainly look up this creator's audio series, since we audio folk need to stick together! The Arbiter Chronicles (link) won a Parsec Award in 2007, and, for those of you who don't follow the Parsecs, they are a big deal for fan and non-fan audio dramas alike! (Star Trek: Outpost was the first and only Trek winner of a Parsec, a couple years ago, though Excelsior was once honored to make the finals.) So Arbiter is presumably pretty good!

 

[Astra]

There are so many books, movies and songs out there, one really can't know all of them? How many time travel and time loop episodes and movies are there alone?

Back in Stargate times I wrote a fanfiction about Jack being sucked into the Simpsons universe and mistaken for MacGyver by Patty and Selma. I got the idea from watching the movie Pleasantville. I swear the story was finished when the official Simpsons episode came out, where Richard Dean Anderson voices himself and got kidnapped by Patty and Selma.

Some things are just in the air.

 

[Mr_Homn]

There were plenty of official star trek episodes that essentially "plagiarized" existing stories and re-purposed them in the same way this Lolani episode supposedly did.

Balance of Terror is a fine example.. it is essentially a remake of The Enemy Below. And that TNG episode where Data and Geordi take on Professor Moriarty on the holodeck? Technically plagiarism, because the Sherlock Holmes canon hadn't passed into the public domain yet. Sub Rosa was a rip off of an Ann Rice story. There have been many accusations that Paramount plagiarized J. Michael Straczynski’s concept for Babylon 5. The similarities are glaring. Now keep in mind that those are FOR PROFIT productions, and STC is a fan film that does not profit.

Is this really threadworthy? Could it not have just been posted it in the existing Lolani thread? Smacks of shit-stirring to me.

 

[Michael]

If this is true (and I don't see why it shouldn't) then it's a pretty despicable move by Continues. “Lolani” was a great episode, but using this story as the starting point for your script without at least giving due credit diminishes their work in my eyes. Artistically they have been of pretty high integrity thus far, so I wonder why they would do something like that.

Some of the similarities posted, "Pheromones from the female" for example, were concepts introduced on Enterprise.... other similarities could be coincidence... but maybe not...

Well, he writes he drafted the novel in 1998, so well before Enterprise introduced anything about Orions and pheromones.

 

[Warped9]

^^ Until something more substantial is brought to light there's no reason to automatically assume it's true.

 

[FormerLurker]

^^ Until something more substantial is brought to light there's no reason to automatically assume it's true.

Especially when the whole pheromone thing has been Star Trek lore since the introduction of Ilia back in 1979, during ST:TMP.

There were plenty of official star trek episodes that essentially "plagiarized" existing stories and re-purposed them in the same way this Lolani episode supposedly did.

Balance of Terror is a fine example.. it is essentially a remake of The Enemy Below. And that TNG episode where Data and Geordi take on Professor Moriarty on the holodeck? Technically plagiarism, because the Sherlock Holmes canon hadn't passed into the public domain yet. Sub Rosa was a rip off of an Ann Rice story. There have been many accusations that Paramount plagiarized J. Michael Straczynski’s concept for Babylon 5. The similarities are glaring. Now keep in mind that those are FOR PROFIT productions, and STC is a fan film that does not profit.

Is this really threadworthy? Could it not have just been posted it in the existing Lolani thread? Smacks of shit-stirring to me.

As far as Babylon 5 is concerned, most of the complaints of plagiarism that I heard at the time were about those things that B5 "had" to have taken from DS9, like the young doctor fresh from the Academy, while B5's premiere had an older doctor whose career was winding down. This only happened, of course, because while B5 technically aired first in pilot form, DS9 ran its entire first season while B5 was getting funding to even make theirs.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Did this book have the needlessly longwinded and preachy post-death speech from Lolani in it? If so, case closed, and if not, I'd still say case closed, since that damned speech was more than half of the episode long.

 

[BillJ]

Finally got around to watching "Lolani". It wasn't terrible, but I was bored through most of it. Ferrigno was the most entertaining thing about it.

 

[Michael]

^^ Until something more substantial is brought to light there's no reason to automatically assume it's true.

Especially when the whole pheromone thing has been Star Trek lore since the introduction of Ilia back in 1979, during ST:TMP.

Yeah right, now Star Trek invented pheromones.

 

[Barbreader]

Hmmm.... I have a very select group of films which I feature in my "Quick Pick Treasures." At first, I just chose films that fit many criteria, but as time has gone on I have tried to include at least one film from each of the high-production-values fan filmmakers.

For Continues, I chose "Lolani" because while based on an existing Trek concept, it was more than just a follow-up to an episode, it offered an effective critique of certain Starfleet policies, and it didn't cause me to grind my teeth (as did The White Iris, which, like many New Voyages episodes, tries to redeem the very flawed character of Kirk and his relationships with women. It was the 1960s, and Kirk was James Bond with a spaceship and crew, not Father Knows Best. He is a sailor with a girl in every port, proud of his conquests, not a leader who would promote women... well, maybe those smart enough to sleep with him...)

If really based on another person's work without accreditation, I am disappointed. However, for the time being, I am going to stick with it as my Continues choice.

 

[Amaris]

Finally got around to watching "Lolani". It wasn't terrible, but I was bored through most of it. Ferrigno was the most entertaining thing about it.

Ferrigno was pretty good, yeah. He convinced me as a man who spoke softly, and appeared civilized on the surface, but just underneath was a man who would beat the *yay* out of you for letting his coffee cool.

Honestly, my favorite Continues episode is still "Divided We Stand." It felt really classic Star Trekky, if you'll forgive the subjectivity of that statement.

 

[DCR]

^^ Until something more substantial is brought to light there's no reason to automatically assume it's true.

Exactly, there's no reason to automatically assume it's true. Unfortunately, there's no reason to automatically assume it's false either.

Right now, all we have is a claim which may or may not be true.

 

[SuperSpaceMan]

The one question I did have about Lolani, was, wasn't the Slave Girl sold to a Terrelite? A federation member? one of the founders of the Federation? Wouldn't that kind of make it illegal for him to own her? Wouldn't that basically make her free in Federation territory?

 

[Warped9]

The one question I did have about Lolani, was, wasn't the Slave Girl sold to a Terrelite? A federation member? one of the founders of the Federation? Wouldn't that kind of make it illegal for him to own her? Wouldn't that basically make her free in Federation territory?

This is where it gets murky because the details of that situation are never clarified. This Tellerite could have been a rogue individual with no ties whatsoever to his government and planet anymore. But the fact a Tellerite (a Federation member world) was involved should have given Kirk the thin wedge of lattitude he needed to grant Lolani asylum, at least temporarily.

That Starfleet ordered Kirk to surrender the girl back to the Orion slaver suggests something going on in the background that the audience is never clued in on.

A line or two of dialogue somewhere in the episode could have made things much clearer.

 

[Philip Guyott]

The one question I did have about Lolani, was, wasn't the Slave Girl sold to a Terrelite? A federation member? one of the founders of the Federation? Wouldn't that kind of make it illegal for him to own her? Wouldn't that basically make her free in Federation territory?

This is where it gets murky because the details of that situation are never clarified. This Tellerite could have been a rogue individual with no ties whatsoever to his government and planet anymore. But the fact a Tellerite (a Federation member world) was involved should have given Kirk the thin wedge of lattitude he needed to grant Lolani asylum, at least temporarily.

That Starfleet ordered Kirk to surrender the girl back to the Orion slaver suggests something going on in the background that the audience is never clued in on.

A line or two of dialogue somewhere in the episode could have made things much clearer.

I suppose that it would depend on whether or not they were in Federation space when the Enterprise picked her up.

 

[Steve Roby]

This is where it gets murky because the details of that situation are never clarified. This Tellerite could have been a rogue individual with no ties whatsoever to his government and planet anymore. But the fact a Tellerite (a Federation member world) was involved should have given Kirk the thin wedge of lattitude he needed to grant Lolani asylum, at least temporarily.

That Starfleet ordered Kirk to surrender the girl back to the Orion slaver suggests something going on in the background that the audience is never clued in on.

I've just been watching this one, and while it's pretty well done for the most part, the whole business with Starfleet ordering Kirk to hand Lolani back just doesn't ring true. It feels arbitrary, like something needed to make the plot go the way the writer wants it to. Not unlike the whole business with Jedi tolerating slavery on Tatooine in The Phantom Menace, it keeps the plot moving but raises questions that never get answered. But then the script doesn't seem entirely consistent on how sympathetic a character Lolani's supposed to be, either.

 

[The Transformed Man]

This is where it gets murky because the details of that situation are never clarified. This Tellerite could have been a rogue individual with no ties whatsoever to his government and planet anymore. But the fact a Tellerite (a Federation member world) was involved should have given Kirk the thin wedge of lattitude he needed to grant Lolani asylum, at least temporarily.

That Starfleet ordered Kirk to surrender the girl back to the Orion slaver suggests something going on in the background that the audience is never clued in on.

I've just been watching this one, and while it's pretty well done for the most part, the whole business with Starfleet ordering Kirk to hand Lolani back just doesn't ring true. It feels arbitrary, like something needed to make the plot go the way the writer wants it to. Not unlike the whole business with Jedi tolerating slavery on Tatooine in The Phantom Menace, it keeps the plot moving but raises questions that never get answered. But then the script doesn't seem entirely consistent on how sympathetic a character Lolani's supposed to be, either.

STC is based on 60's Trek. And in TOS the Federation, and various admirals/Federation officials make plenty of arbitrary decisions that place them at loggerheads with Kirk and co, and propel the plot forward. Stories need conflict.