Why Don't Trek Writers Like "writing battle scenes"?
- Thread starter Dayton3
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You can do that in any kind of scene in prose.
I think you're unfairly generalizing; there are Trek novelists who do great battle scenes, like David Mack and Diane Duane.
Me, I'm a sensitive soul and I don't enjoy writing scenes where the protagonists kill people, regardless of the reason. Life is precious to me and it's unpleasant for me to get into the mindset of characters who value life yet still have to take the lives of others. I want my heroes to strive to preserve life, not end it. Plus I'm more interested in exploring ideas and characters than just writing action.
Also, I don't enjoy writing battle scenes for the same reason I don't enjoy watching them -- because it's boring to watch or read about people or ships shooting at each other and getting killed or blown up. It's repetitive, it's callous toward life, it doesn't advance the story, and it doesn't reveal anything about characters. I'm more entertained by action where the characters are using their ingenuity and courage to solve dangerous problems. For me, the most exciting action scene in all of Star Trek is probably the opening of ENT: "Divergence," where Enterprise is racing out of control at high warp and Columbia has to rendezvous with it and flip upside-down and merge warpfields, and Trip has to climb across a thin cable at high warp... that is just the coolest thing ever. And nobody's using a weapon or trying to kill anybody. (Okay, it's the result of the Klingons trying to kill them, but the Klingons aren't involved in the scene.) It's about people facing a dangerous situation with courage, skill, and imagination, doing daring and clever and heroic things to preserve life. That's the kind of action sequence that thrills me.
You're clearly a person who enjoys martial fiction, war stories, battle scenes, etc. But that's never been what Star Trek is primarily about. The reason you don't get enough battle scenes to satisfy you in Trek fiction is because ST is not a war-driven universe and never has been. War stories have occasionally been part of it, but it's far more eclectic than that. As someone suggested in another thread, there are other lines of fiction that would probably satisfy your tastes more. Maybe something like Battletech or some of the computer game-based lines Pocket publishes.
Because people are different, and like different things.
Which is kinda the basis of the whole Star Trek philosophy.
And just for grins... who are these many writers you've heard this from, or are you just talking about Christopher?
Amen to that.
Well, now you're changing your argument to 'Trek battle scenes are poorly written'. But consider: would you prefer "The vessel was struck once more, and the consoles spat licks of flame?" There only so many times the same sequence can be played out, but space battles in Trek have generally been two ships sitting in space lobbing energy and projectiles at each other, occasionally following 'evasion pattern greek letter' in an attempt to avoid being hit, but that's not the most obvious thing to do with vessels the size of the Galaxy-class or Sovereign-class (Defiant had manoeuvrability, though). Really, spaceship battles in Trek are overblown artillery exchanges, and there's a limit to what you can do with that in prose, where you don't get to see the visual thrill of the SFX.
I'm not a Trek writer, but just for another perspective: I find I greatly enjoy writing scenes of interpersonal combat (hand to hand, hand weapons, even gunslinging to a more limited extent), but much less larger-scale conflicts. There's an inherent narrative challenge to depicting clashes between armies or ships (naval and spaceborne). You can give an overview of the various fronts and exchanges from the point of view of an detached, omniscient narrator, but the downside to that approach is that such scenes will be depersonalized, perhaps harder to relate to at an emotional level. Or you can choose to focus the scene through the eyes of a participant, but in that case 'you' the reader should only be able to see that part of the overall fight the character can, so it's a limited perspective, particularly when you add in the chaos that inevitably comes up in combat and the fact that your character ought to be concentrating on not dying rather than making a detailed account of the action around him or her, and you end up with a scene that may be emotionally gripping but not particularly enlightening as to the overall narrative of the battle. There are ways around these limitations, like having a character be the detached observer, or present a post-mortem of the battle to/from your involved character after he or she is done trying not to die, but those come with their own problems, one of which is that they can't be duplicated too often before becoming flagrant crutches.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
I'm not a Trek writer, but just for another perspective: I find I greatly enjoy writing scenes of interpersonal combat (hand to hand, hand weapons, even gunslinging to a more limited extent), but much less larger-scale conflicts. There's an inherent narrative challenge to depicting clashes between armies or ships (naval and spaceborne). You can give an overview of the various fronts and exchanges from the point of view of an detached, omniscient narrator, but the downside to that approach is that such scenes will be depersonalized, perhaps harder to relate to at an emotional level. Or you can choose to focus the scene through the eyes of a participant, but in that case 'you' the reader should only be able to see that part of the overall fight the character can, so it's a limited perspective, particularly when you add in the chaos that inevitably comes up in combat and the fact that your character ought to be concentrating on not dying rather than making a detailed account of the action around him or her, and you end up with a scene that may be emotionally gripping but not particularly enlightening as to the overall narrative of the battle. There are ways around these limitations, like having a character be the detached observer, or present a post-mortem of the battle to/from your involved character after he or she is done trying not to die, but those come with their own problems, one of which is that they can't be duplicated too often before becoming flagrant crutches.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Hey, a battle scene can be cool at times but as Christopher pointed out and Steve Roby "amen-ded", Star Trek is about discovery, learning and exploring. If you want thrills and danger, well, space is plenty dangerous all by itself-you don't necessarily need a bunch of bloodthirsty aliens shooting at you. Sometimes it happens-but I always liked those episodes where Picard figured out a way to avoid battle. It made moments like Ch'ntoka(spelling?) all the more poignant.
I love battle scenes, but only one of the pitches in with Marco at the moment really has them...
They all come down to how they're handled, really.
They all come down to how they're handled, really.
Because Starfleet isn't a military organization. It's a science and exploration-driven organization with defense capabilities.
I can't speak as to why the writers don't like writing them, but I know why I don't like reading them-- they tend to bore the snot out of me.
I enjoyed Michael Stackpole's Rogue Squadron novels, but would tend to skim the battle scenes lest I fall asleep with the book in my lap.
I enjoyed Michael Stackpole's Rogue Squadron novels, but would tend to skim the battle scenes lest I fall asleep with the book in my lap.
That isn't what has been indicated onscreen
[GalaxyQuest]
Dude, did you even watch the show?
[/GalaxyQuest]
Dude, did you even watch the show?
[/GalaxyQuest]
^ A few months back there was a thread with a lengthy and detailed debate on this topic. The end result is that there is ample conflicting evidence for both positions, and a person who subscribes to one opinion or the other is almost never swayed to change his/her mind.
To one and all who visit this thread, I beseech thee: In the interest of going forward with all of our lives, let's not re-open that can of gagh, please.
To one and all who visit this thread, I beseech thee: In the interest of going forward with all of our lives, let's not re-open that can of gagh, please.
Is Starfleet a military organization? Yes, when it needs to be.
Is Starfleet a research organization? Yes, the rest of the time.
Okay?
Is Starfleet a research organization? Yes, the rest of the time.
Okay?
My only request is to see in battle sequences (whether on the written page or on screen) evidence of the development of Starfleet circuit breakers.
--Mike
--Mike
I hate writing battle scenes. Choreographing space battles in three dimensions is something that just takes me away from the writing for too long, and I feel like I lose the immediacy of the story. And I hate it when writers forget that space battles take place in more than two dimensions. Pet peeve #745,048 of mine.
Fight scenes, however, rock my world. Give me a good swordfight to write any day of the week. But I've also got experience in fight choreography, so it's not as much of a PITA to work through.
I actually addressed that in Orion's Hounds, I think it was. In real life, even with circuit breakers, a high enough voltage (from a lightning strike, say) can cause a current arc to jump over the gap in the breaker. The resistivity of air is about 30,000 volts per centimeter, so if your circuit breaker has a gap of, say, two centimeters, then anything over 60,000 volts is gonna get through unless the gap is in vacuum. And presumably 24th-century energy weapons are powerful enough to fit the bill.
And I kind of agree with Terri (had to happen someday). At least as a viewer, I'm much more interested in watching something like a martial-arts action scene or a chase than in something like a gun battle or ship-to-ship combat. Because then it's about people demonstrating their skill and prowess, and that's interesting to watch. And I find it more enjoyable to write hand-to-hand sorts of action scenes too. It can be fun to choreograph them -- sometimes I act out the moves myself and kind of roll around on the floor, sometimes I get out a couple of old action figures and pit them against each other. Whee, I get to play and call it work! (Although I've also made good use of my Star Trek Micro Machines in plotting out space battles.)
