I’m still sorta surprised that there hasn’t been a Star Trek style procedural series commissioned. Like that’s CBS’s BRAND.
That's what Department of Temporal Investigations was.
Suggest anthology themes
- Thread starter Laura Cynthia Chambers
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That's what Department of Temporal Investigations was.
Sure, but they focused on time travel. What about present time criminal investigations? Any time a show had one of those, it was the main character crew who did the solving (for plot reasons).
What the characters investigate is beside the point in the procedural format. Law & Order was a procedural, but so was The X-Files, or Agents of SHIELD in its first season. My specific goal in the DTI series was to do a crime-procedural ensemble drama in the Trek universe. I initially wanted the first book to be titled DTI: Department of Temporal Investigations, echoing the original CSI's title format.
But you have a point -- a Trek mystery series would be an interesting possibility. It was attempted with the novel The Case of the Colonist's Corpse by Tony Isabella & Bob Ingersoll, starring Samuel T. Cogley in a pastiche of a Perry Mason mystery novel, complete with vintage-style red dye on the edges of the paperback pages.
Yeah, you know, who investigates the crimes our main cast characters don't have a stake in?
I get that sometimes, you're far enough away from Fed space/Fed ships that your own crew can't rendezvous with investigators, because time is of the essence, and your own crew can solve it before they would arrive, but you'd think there'd be SCIS agents aflight/awarp on large ships, part of the security dept.
Tales From The Holodeck
Or how about a series of short stories that use iconic devices of Trek (transporters, self-sealing stem bolts, etc) as the theme?
Or how about a series of short stories that use iconic devices of Trek (transporters, self-sealing stem bolts, etc) as the theme?
I'm of the opinion that ST series themselves are, at their best, anthology or quasi-anthology series. (To me, there is a very short list of multi-episode arcs across all the series that couldn't have been better handled in one episode). So the only hypothetical anthology that holds much appeal to me would be a 'lost star trek' collection of 80-100 page faux 'adaptations' of nonexistent TOS episodes, where the writers are given enough license to imagine how the show might have evolved 2, 3, 6 years on. (Just as the Korean War somehow lasted 11 years of M*A*S*H, the "five year mission" of ST would have lasted as many years as the ratings would have justified). Maybe throw in a novelization of one of those actual lost scripts that paramount as sitting in a vault somewhere, for curiosity's sake. ("Rock-a-Bye, Baby-- Or Die!" is too good of a title to let go to waste)
As I'm discovering with most other things in our economy, however, the fact that I would like it is almost a guarantee that there isn't a market for it
As I'm discovering with most other things in our economy, however, the fact that I would like it is almost a guarantee that there isn't a market for it
Some of the delight in watching/reading a mystery is trying to solve it before the characters do; if a Trek-set mystery relies on futuristic knowledge we couldn't glean ourselves, it might be seen as lacking something.
That's a very old objection to science fiction mystery stories that Isaac Asimov faced back in the 1940s-50s when he tackled the genre. Asimov realized that writing SF mysteries was the same as writing any other kind -- it's just a question of playing fair with the audience, making sure that any relevant information the audience needs is seeded earlier in the story rather than revealed for the first time when the solution is given. And Asimov ended up writing dozens of classic SF mysteries.
I mean, it's exactly the same principle in a conventional mystery. If the motive for the murder was a change in the victim's will, then you have to tell the audience ahead of time that the will was changed, rather than keeping it secret until the end. If the murder was committed using teleportation, then you have to tell the audience ahead of time that teleportation exists, rather than keeping it secret until the end. There are always things the audience won't know unless the writer tells them, in a present-day story as well as an SF or fantasy story. So the principle is the same either way. It's the writer's responsibility to make sure the audience knows everything it needs, to show them Chekhov's Gun on the wall.
Look at a movie like The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable. Both films are fantasies with surprise endings, but the surprise is the realization that we were given all the information we needed from the start, just in such a clever way that we didn't realize what it meant. That's exactly how mysteries are supposed to work, by hiding the truth in plain sight, as opposed to hiding it entirely.
Yeah, but I guess if you have a more basic grasp of the things you're surrounded by, as opposed to having to learn something completely foreign to your knowledge (complicated scientific theories, a culture unlike any human one, with all its human motivations, etc) you feel as though it was or would have been easier to solve.
If the mystery hinges on something basic and common, you might already have (by that point) enough exposure to mystery tropes to be able to pick up on it immediately.
If the mystery hinges on something basic and common, you might already have (by that point) enough exposure to mystery tropes to be able to pick up on it immediately.
But again, it's the writer's job to make all that understandable to the reader.
Besides, mysteries aren't supposed to be easy to solve. They should require some thought and effort.
I guess it depends on how smart you are, or think you are.
Mysteries are puzzles. Puzzles are challenges for the mind. That's the point. Being smart is like being strong -- it comes as much from exercise and effort as from any innate potential.
Another idea: character "in memoriam" anthologies about various Trek characters' encounters with/memories of one character. For instance, "Memories of Spock", comprised of short stories in which various characters, major, minor, likely and unlikely, recall their only/most memorable times with Spock.
Remember that Lower Decks episode where they're all trapped in a turbolift and tell stories from the past the others didn't know? There's great potential there for Lower Decks stories with the main casts, from back when they were Lower Deckers.
^ There was an old, pre-IDW comic where Q and Trelane swapped Kirk and Picard. Just Googled it, it was called An Infinite Jest.
IDW also had a more recent one where they mixed and matched all the crews, not just switching the captains.
IDW also had a more recent one where they mixed and matched all the crews, not just switching the captains.
A Starfleet Marines series.
Yes, I said Marines. Deal with it.
I want more DTI novels.
Yes, I said Marines. Deal with it.
I want more DTI novels.
