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Whence Robert April?

^But you're getting the emphasis wrong. Robert didn't initiate the project, he was hired to create something to the specifications of Majel Roddenberry, Tribune, and others. And Jill's book suggests that the premise of Genesis II transposed into space -- a man named Dylan Hunt waking up after 300 years and finding the Commonwealth fallen -- was already present in what Majel had before Robert was hired. And Robert's Enterprise-K idea was never something he seriously developed, just an idle daydream he thought up at one point, that happened to prove a useful starting point when he was hired to create something along similar lines.

So it's certainly true that Gene Roddenberry's contributions to Andromeda were minimal, but you're talking as though Robert initiated the whole project and dressed it up in a bit of camouflage to make it seem Roddenberry-related, and that's just not accurate. It's not fair to him, because the way you're phrasing it makes him sound like a self-serving credit thief, and it's not fair to Majel Roddenberry and her role as the initiator of the project.

We also don't know just how fleshed out GR's "Starship" concept was, beyond that famous ringship, some internal layouts and the notion that the ship was sentient. There might've been quite a bit there to work with. Don't forget, SAG rules are rather specific as to who gets credit for what, especially with regards to that "Created by.." credit (enough that David Gerrold thought it worth suing Roddenberry over TNG), and Andromeda does have that "Created by Gene Roddenberry" tag on it, with RHW getting the "Developed by" credit.
 
. . . Don't forget, SAG rules are rather specific as to who gets credit for what, especially with regards to that "Created by.." credit. . .
I assume you mean WGA (Writers Guild of America) rules. SAG is the Screen Actors Guild.

Hey, it's not like they're different organizations representing different professions.

Oh wait, they are.

And I've no doubt that he can educate us, based on experience, on what rules apply here and on exactly how those rules are interpreted and applied to the specifics of a television series developed in this manner.

No, actually, I'm sure that he has no idea.
 
Don't forget, SAG rules are rather specific as to who gets credit for what, especially with regards to that "Created by.." credit (enough that David Gerrold thought it worth suing Roddenberry over TNG), and Andromeda does have that "Created by Gene Roddenberry" tag on it, with RHW getting the "Developed by" credit.

"Created by" credit is given to the person whose work originated the project, even if later development changes it into something entirely different. Similarly to how Dave Mack and John Ordover got "Story by" credit for DS9's "It's Only a Paper Moon" even though the final episode had almost nothing in common with the premise they actually sold. But their premise started the chain of associations that led to the idea for that episode, so they got credited -- i.e. compensated -- for their role in bringing the story about. Remember, credits aren't really about who did what, they're about who got paid what.

In this case, it's a little more direct than that. What earns Roddenberry the creator credit is that the basic framework of the concept and the name of the main character -- Dylan Hunt wakes from suspended animation to find his civilization has fallen and sets out to restore it -- was clearly and directly derived from GR's Genesis II. No one could reasonably argue that the show was not recognizably based on GR's creation, therefore he deserved creator credit -- no matter how much or how little of the final work was based on his ideas.

And the "Developed by" credit is used for any show that's derived from a separate work. It doesn't mean the person getting that credit did less work than someone else, it just means they took something that was in one form and developed it for another form. Case in point: the TV series The Middleman was credited "Developed for television by Javier Grillo-Marxuach," because it was adapted from a comic book created by... Javier Grillo-Marxuach. Not only that, but the comic book was based on a TV pilot script by Grillo-Marxuach, a script that was ultimately filmed as the pilot episode of the series. So even though it was entirely JG-M's creation, he got a "Developed by" credit rather than a "Created by" credit because the concept had previously been published as a comic book.

Or look at the current Human Target series. Jonathan E. Steinberg gets a "Developed for television" credit for that because it's based on a comic book character created by Len Wein and Carmine Infantino -- but this incarnation of the show bears virtually no resemblance to Wein and Infantino's character. Basically the only points of commonality are the title and the main character's name; in every other respect it's a completely unrelated show. But Steinberg still gets a developer credit rather than a creator credit because the project is based, however tenuously, on a separate, pre-existing project.

So the fact that someone gets a "Developed by" credit doesn't mean they did a minority of the creative work. It just means that the project originated in some other form.

The process by which Andromeda was developed has been well-documented online and in Jill Sherwin's book. It's easy enough to verify that most of the ideas and characters in the final product didn't come from Roddenberry.
 
. . . Don't forget, SAG rules are rather specific as to who gets credit for what, especially with regards to that "Created by.." credit. . .
I assume you mean WGA (Writers Guild of America) rules. SAG is the Screen Actors Guild.

Hey, it's not like they're different organizations representing different professions.

Oh wait, they are.

And I've no doubt that he can educate us, based on experience, on what rules apply here and on exactly how those rules are interpreted and applied to the specifics of a television series developed in this manner.

No, actually, I'm sure that he has no idea.

:vulcan:

The term "trolling" comes to mind...
 
Was the hypothetical Star Trek idea he'd had about a Han Solo type discovering the sentient Enterprise-K a thousand years after the fall of the Federation ever pitched to Paramount as an idea for the fifth Star Trek television series?
 
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Was the hypothetical Star Trek idea he'd had about a Han Solo type discovering the sentient Enterprise-K a thousand years after the fall of the Federation ever pitched to Paramount as an idea for the fifth Star Trek television series?

He said that it wasn't - it was just an idea that he came up with. As I recall, it went along lines fairly close in some ways to the opening of Andromeda:

  • A future version of the Enterprise is trapped for several centuries at the edge of a black hole
  • During that time, the ship's computer evolves sentience
  • Upon awakening, the captain discovers that the Federation has fallen
  • The Klingons have become a race essentially of pirates, many independent ships preying indiscriminately on vulnerable vessels
  • The Vulcans have become secretive, with a fearsome reputation: leave us alone, don't come looking for us, or we'll give you pain
  • Etc, etc and so forth.





 
Was the hypothetical Star Trek idea he'd had about a Han Solo type discovering the sentient Enterprise-K a thousand years after the fall of the Federation ever pitched to Paramount as an idea for the fifth Star Trek television series?

He said that it wasn't - it was just an idea that he came up with. As I recall, it went along lines fairly close in some ways to the opening of Andromeda:

  • A future version of the Enterprise is trapped for several centuries at the edge of a black hole
  • During that time, the ship's computer evolves sentience
  • Upon awakening, the captain discovers that the Federation has fallen
  • The Klingons have become a race essentially of pirates, many independent ships preying indiscriminately on vulnerable vessels
  • The Vulcans have become secretive, with a fearsome reputation: leave us alone, don't come looking for us, or we'll give you pain
  • Etc, etc and so forth.
Many years ago Harry Knowles' Ain't It Cool web site had a story about the fifth Star Trek series pitches, but I have not been able to verify this information with any other source.
 
Yeah, I can't believe that anyone thought "Starfleet SEALS" would make it with anyone other than hardcore folks who live inside the "Star Trek Universe."

Of course, the Starfleet cadets idea was eventually tremendously successful, but only because the cadets were named Kirk and Spock and Abrams made a brilliant movie. :lol:
 
Millions of moviegoers went to see lens flares and explosions and were content with that, but the vast majority of them knew that all they were seeing was lens flares and explosions and just enough plot to get from one edit to another.

Go back and reread that mountain of positive reviews: Practically all of them acknowledge that it was nothing more than a big, loud, DUMB, romp.
 
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