The new Concordance (again) and ST: Of Gods and Men

[Captain Robert April]

Again, may or may not happen. Biggest obstacle I can think of is the higher number of entires since '76 making that wheel mighty cramped.

In other news, I managed to get my grubbies on original printings of the old fan-produced versions, from '69 and '73, as well as the "color book" that has a boatload of artwork. The clarity of the type and the pictures (especially[/ib] the pictures) puts those shlocky reprints I've been relying on for years to absolute shame. Especially once the pages have been scanned in and the brightness and contrast is tweaked a bit; everything just leaps out at ya.

Work on reconstructing the lexicon continues, currently bouncing around to get all the shorter passages cleaned up and entered. I suppose at some point I need to put together a Powerpoint presentation, in case I get that panel...

 

[RookieBatman]

Okay, I'll bite... for all of us young'ns, what is this wheel?

Here's an image of the cover of the Ballantine Concordance:

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/File:StarTrekConcordance.jpg

Attached to the inside of the cover was a rotating cardboard wheel with text printed on it. You grasp the wheel in the cutout at the right of the cover/front of the saucer and rotate it to put the desired episode title within the "Title" window on the far left, on top of the impulse engines. Next to that is a window showing the call letters, the abbreviation used to represent the episode in the Lexicon and various indices. Above that is a window showing the stardate for the episode, and below is a window showing the page number of the episode listing. So you can look up any episode and quickly find what page it's on.

For instance, I have my Concordance wheel turned to "The Enemy Within," call letters EW, and I see that its stardate is 1672.1 and its entry is on page 39. I turn to page 39 and there's the episode summary! Whee! (Or should I say, wheel!)

Back before electronic calculators and such, there were lots of cardboard calculators of this type, a variant on the slide rule principle, where you'd rotate one wheel inside another and the text or numbers would be printed on the wheel so that they'd align within cutout windows to give you the information you needed. I think there's a TOS episode where Spock is using such a device on the bridge, and it's actually some kind of navigational calculator for aviators.

Cool. I do remember seeing (and being fascinated by) this type of thing back in the day. Pretty nifty usage for it.

I'll just be honest and say that I have no plans to get a concordance, but if I did, I would absolutely like to have a wheel with it. I actually think it might be just as well not to have it on the cover. Of course, if it's detached, there's always the danger of misplacing it...

 

[Christopher]

I'll just be honest and say that I have no plans to get a concordance, but if I did, I would absolutely like to have a wheel with it. I actually think it might be just as well not to have it on the cover. Of course, if it's detached, there's always the danger of misplacing it...

I had my original Concordance copy for a couple of decades, and though it got increasingly worn out, the wheel remained intact and attached. At least, it stayed attached to the front cover. I think the cover itself may have needed to be reattached with tape at some point. (I eventually replaced my Concordance, first-edition Compendium, and The Making of Star Trek with better copies once they'd deteriorated too much.)

 

[RookieBatman]

^Well, he was talking about having an insert that you would take out and assemble yourself (as I understood it), so I was thinking that such a loose wheel might get lost more easily.

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

Feel free to shoot this idea down if you want, but since a book has both a front and back cover maybe you can break down all the info into two separate wheels. The original 79 on one and the animated, movies, and spinoffs appearances on another.

 

[Christopher]

^The original wheel, like the original Concordance, includes both TOS and TAS.

 

[RookieBatman]

So what new items are gonna be on it, then? Didn't someone say that this version of the concordance was still just gonna include the Original crew stuff? (Or did I misread?)

 

[Christopher]

The '90s edition of the Concordance added the TOS movies, Generations, and the TOS characters' guest appearances in TNG and DS9 up through its publication date. The only additional things to include, I think, would be "Trials and Tribble-ations," the last two Kor episodes, "Flashback," and the new movie.

 

[Stevil2001]

"Broken Bow" and First Contact.

 

[Christopher]

"Broken Bow" and First Contact.

That's if you're counting TOS characters, in which case you'd also have to throw in "Rightful Heir" and the ENT episodes featuring Surak and T'Pau. I was referring to episodes and films featuring TOS actors playing their TOS characters.

 

[Stevil2001]

Ah, I didn't realize the Concordance made that distinction. 'Twas before my time.

 

[Christopher]

Well, the revised Concordance includes "Blood Oath," but does not include the Kahless episode "Rightful Heir," which came out earlier. So it apparently only counted return appearances by actors reprising their TOS roles.

And we are talking about a book that came out in 1995 -- how is that before your time?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Ah, I didn't realize the Concordance made that distinction. 'Twas before my time.

Get off Bjo's lawn.

 

[F. King Daniel]

"Broken Bow" and First Contact.

That's if you're counting TOS characters, in which case you'd also have to throw in "Rightful Heir" and the ENT episodes featuring Surak and T'Pau. I was referring to episodes and films featuring TOS actors playing their TOS characters.

What about "In a Mirror, Darkly"? That features the USS Defiant from TOS. Do ships get the same treatment as characters?

 

[Christopher]

I can't think of any such precedents in the 1995 Concordance, so I couldn't say. You'd have to ask Bjo Trimble whether she's broadening her parameters for this edition.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, I sent her a list of items that should be considered for the update, including "Rightful Heir", and those Enterprise episodes that dealt with characters and concepts from TOS, like the Eugenics Wars and Klingon head ridges. So on that front, the ball is in her court.

For now, I'm almost finished with compiling the lexicon, correcting the obvious errors (and there are some real howlers; I'm curious who helped her with the last version), and adding in my own notes on the side for things that need more fleshing out and/or revisiting. Once I've got the last big chunk of text put into place (just have the "S" section to deal with), it'll be time to start fitting in the artwork.

As it is, the lexicon is, as a Word document, sitting at close to 200 pages, with the aforementioned parts yet to be included. I expect the final size of this section to grow another fifty pages or so.

And then there's the synopses.

In other news, it looks like Gabe Koerner will be designing the cover. I'll pass along the idea of having two wheels, that would solve a lot of issues.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I'm curious who helped her with the last version

As explained in the intro to the revised edition, during the editing process they found a few jobs for Katherine Trimble to do, including checking off lists of names had been transposed across from one set of data to another. Katherine, Bjo & John's eldest daughter, was oxygen-starved at birth and is essentially a child in an adult's body and, as the deadline neared, quality control probably waivered considerably. Normally, a copy editor at a larger publisher would catch such errors, but many smaller publishers expect the manuscript to be error-free - almost like vanity press items - and thus there's not enough quality control there either.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I doubt these came from Kat; I'm talking about scene descriptions that are wildly off (a few references to Sylvia turning the food into jewels, when it was actually Korob; Sylvia had yet to make a human appearance), or stuff that flat out didn't happen (anybody here remember Trelane quoting Hamlet? Me neither). And Bjo said on previous occasions that the publishers knew nothing about Star Trek.

And there are a few long standing slips that I'm addressing (like Jimmy Doohan being credited as Trelane's father; nope, that was Bart Larue), and some hair-splitting to resolve apparent conflicts, most notably the matter of Taurus II. Is it a planet in the middle of a quasar and home to ten foot tall cavemen who hate puny humans in strange shuttlecraft that crash land unannounced? Or the home of life-sucking blonde babes that leave all men as dried up husks? I'm explaining that one as Taurus II being the angry caveman planet, while the planet in "The Lorelei Signal" was only ever described in the episode as "the second planet in the Taurean system" and never as "Taurus II", so the planet is now dubbed "Taurean II." A stretch, yes, but well within tolerances.

 

[Mysterion]

There's also a reference in the '95 edition to Sulu having been a communications officer (that I don't recall being substantiated by anything on-screen) that needs to be looked at.

 

[Therin of Andor]

And Bjo said on previous occasions that the publishers knew nothing about Star Trek.

Exactly. I do know that a few glitches entered the Concordance data due to Bjo researching old shooting scripts (and a batch of call sheets she was given between editions). The call sheets answered a number of "actor unknown" queries, but added their own quirks, such as Hollywood stuntmen deliberately working under several names to skirt strict Stunt Guild regulations of the day.

Planet Neural was only ever named in a script, not the final episode.

IIRC, the new edition also claims that Klaa (ST V) appeared subsequently in ST VI, when in fact it was the actor who returned, and wearing a different latex head appliance. Todd Bryant has confirmed at conventions that he wasn't being a demoted Klaa when he was ST VI's Klingon Translator. (And, as a youth, Bryant was an uncredited engineering trainee in ST II.)