It’s all over the net (io9, TVSquad, IGN) that Lucasfilm Director of Fan Relations Steve Sansweet suggested that a new animated series would continue the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa.

How, isn’t quite clear yet.

People are kinda confused, to tell you the truth.  Including me – which is why I’m posting [...]]]> Well.

It’s all over the net (io9, TVSquad, IGN) that Lucasfilm Director of Fan Relations Steve Sansweet suggested that a new animated series would continue the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa.

How, isn’t quite clear yet.

People are kinda confused, to tell you the truth.  Including me – which is why I’m posting about this.

The confusion is over what show the guy is talking about.  Is it Seth Green’s new Star Wars comedy?  Or is it something else entirely?

Whichever way it goes, the question now becomes – what about all those novels that’ve been written?

After Return of the Jedi came out, there wasn’t much Star Wars to be had.  There were a couple of different books and that Christmas Special no one likes to talk about.  There was also that Droid cartoon. But nothing substantive.

Enter Timothy Zahn.

I remember it well; I was walking (not loitering) in Manchester Center (a mall in Fresno) and just so happened to pass (Okay, so, maybe I lived there part time) the Waldenbooks (it’s not like they knew me by name or anything) and saw this giant sign (Okay, so, maybe they knew me by name but there’s nothing wrong with that) that said ‘Pre-order your copy of the new Star Wars novel today!’

After they stopped me from humping the sign (that totally never happened), I pre-ordered my copy and spent the next couple of months going, “WHERE THE F*&k IS MY G*# D@#N BOOK?!”

Then the day came.  It was in the store.  A Star Wars book.  A NEW Star Wars book.  It was full of Star Wars stuff.  I was sure there were lightsabers and shit.

I also remember, somewhere, at some point in time, George Lucas saying that he had authorized the books (and then I went, WHA WHA WHA?!  There will be MORE BOOKS?!) because he wasn’t going to go there anymore – he was going to concentrate on other things.

(Like friggin Jar Jar.)

So, after Zahn finished his spectacular trilogy, more books came out, furthering the adventures of Luke, Leia and Han.  Dark Horse picked up on the whole thing and started tying comic books into the ‘new canon’, expanding on it.  More books came and the universe continued to expand and become rich and deep (and sometimes utterly stupid.  Many Bothans died to bring us some stupidity…).

What happens to all of that ‘history’ if a new show goes forward based on those characters?

The only comparable parallel I can draw would be Star Trek.  When Star Trek went off the air the first time (TOS), there were some different incarnations of it that showed up including an animated series, some comic books, even a few novels.

When Pocket Books took over the franchise, the authors involved in the new stories (initially) kept a continuity between novels.  This ended fairly quickly when Pocket Books (Or Paramount, or maybe even Roddenberry himself (who had issues with ‘those damn books!’)) put the kaibosh on the idea of any sort of continuity.  In the beginning of all of that stuff, there wasn’t any sort of official canon policy.

That did change though.

Paramount, via the website StarTrek.com, has said some stuff about canon.  First up:

“Although the Animated Adventures had an undeniable Star Trek-ness to them, they are not considered part of the Star Trek “canon,” or accepted Trek storyline. Almost without exception, it is the live-action series and movies that are considered canon. However, some Star Trek “facts” are actually borrowed from the animated show, i.e. the name of the original U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 captain, Robert April; the surname for Spock’s mother, Amanda “Grayson”; etc.”

Second, when specifically asked, “What is considered Star Trek canon?”, Paramount answered in an FAQ:

“As a rule of thumb, the events that take place within the live action episodes and movies are canon, or official Star Trek facts. Story lines, characters, events, stardates, etc. that take place within the fictional novels, the Animated Adventures, and the various comic lines are not canon.

There are a couple of exceptions to this rule: the Jeri Taylor penned novels “Mosaic” and “Pathways.” Many of the events in these two novels feature background details of the main Star Trek: Voyager characters. (Note: There are a few details from an episode of the Animated Adventures that have entered into the Star Trek canon. The episode “Yesteryear,” written by D.C. Fontana, features some biographical background on Spock.)”

Given this stance on what is and what isn’t canon from the only other comparable series out there, I would lean towards Lucas going the same way as Paramount, which sucks.  It means that all that new history is left to flap in the wind.

I doubt Lucas will be as thoughtful about it as Roddenberry was.  Roddenberry didn’t green light the Star Trek novels the way Lucas did, so he wasn’t very happy with them.  In a letter he was quoted as saying:

“Yes, I dream of how nice it would be if I had been able to own it wholly and control all rights. Many of the present Star Trek novels would never have appeared and probably none of them without some really extensive rewriting. On the other hand, by giving the property my sole attention there would have been many novels I would have written, keeping the entire Star Trek property more cohesive. Certainly it would have been fun to see Earth and Federation civilization of that century better explained. But none of this was possible, as my attitude now is that it has probably worked out as well as it could have happened in this real world that I must live in. And I am grateful for the talent of those who did write those books and stories. Indeed, I am not past hoping that the entire experience is leading me toward something more important, even more more fulfilling.”

I don’t know that Lucas can be quite so magnanimous.

~P

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I think it’s sort of a staple of the genre now.  If you’re going to have a futuristic/scifi [...]]]> If, like me, you’re an avid watcher of tv and movies, and a reader of books, you may have noticed a trend towards the disastrous future.  Apocalypse is in and in big.  I mean, it’s everywhere we look.

I think it’s sort of a staple of the genre now.  If you’re going to have a futuristic/scifi story, it damned well better show us how badly we, as a species, have screwed everything up.  Right now at theaters around the country, we have ‘The Book of Eli’, a post-apocalyptic tale of the future.  On TV we have ‘Dollhouse’ that depicts (in Epitaph One and supposedly, Epitaph Two airing this week), a future where science and technology have caused an apocalypse and the overall destruction of all civilization as we know it.

It’s the end all be all of trends.

So I ask you – where has the positive future gone?

In Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek (rebooted last summer and done so quite successfully), we have a future where yes, bad stuff happened and we humans were the cause, but we’ve moved passed that and are now soaring through the stars exploring strange new worlds and all that jazz.  Kinda positive, right?  But it’s the exception to the rule anymore.  I mean, look at what we’ve seen from Hollywood in the past few years:

Jericho

Post apocalypse America where the folks of a small town struggle to survive after nuclear bomb s have destroyed civilization as we know it.

The City of Ember

Based on the Young Adult novels of Jeanne DuPrau, The City of Ember shows a world that was torn by war, so they built a city underground for protection.

The Road

Another post-apocalyptic tale – this one about a father and his young son across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed all civilization and, apparently, almost all life on earth.

Jeremiah

This series takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where most of the adult population has been wiped out by a deadly virus.

I mean, the list goes on and on.

So I ask you again – where has the positive gone?

Are we done with the feel good adventure tale?  With the bright, shining future of the human race, all full of potential and excitement?

What do you think?

~P

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If you’ve been hanging out here on the blog or on my twitter feed, you know by now that I am a huge comic book geek.  I once had a monthly habit that was the equivalent of a car payment.  Not a nice car.  Not even a good car.  Probably more like an ‘ok’ [...]]]> Comic Books

If you’ve been hanging out here on the blog or on my twitter feed, you know by now that I am a huge comic book geek.  I once had a monthly habit that was the equivalent of a car payment.  Not a nice car.  Not even a good car.  Probably more like an ‘ok’ car, but you get the point – I put the comic book store owner’s kid through college (he actually said that. Bastard.).

Thanks to comics, I learned a great many things; spiders are not only our friends, but, when dosed with certain kinds of radiation, they can pass their powers on to us through a bite, also, if you’re rich enough and determined (or drunk) enough, you can finance your own superhero persona(s), Norse Gods are still around and they like to fight crime, blind men can kick your ass, aliens are here and they like bright, primary colors and earth chicks, when properly focused, speed equals power, being a cop is cool – being a SPACE COP IS FREAKING AWESOME…

Also, people like to build giant robot suits and then fight each other in them, genetic mutations are cool, flying aircraft carriers are also FREAKING AWESOME, you can survive being frozen in ice for decades, thaw out and still kick some butt, if you’re rich enough and insane enough, you can finance your own supervillain persona(s), the kids you pick on in your youth WILL COME BACK and try to take over the world/steal your girl/kill your girl/humiliate you / cause you pain.

When my Grams lived with us, the afternoon was filled with soaps; Guiding Light, Young and the Restless – that sort of thing.  Having had to watch some of that stuff while waiting for the blessed 3pm and with it, Scooby-Doo, I always felt that later on, when I started to read comics, that they shared a certain serial/cliffhanger quality.  Things were rarely ever ‘wrapped’ up, no matter what the hero said at the end of the issue; the bad guy or gal always came back, the drama with their personal life didn’t go away and the cliffhangers kept right on coming.

“You’re not Peter Parker – you’re his CLONE!” DUN DUN DUN! (tell me that doesn’t sound soap operaish!)

That sort of serial drama can be fun to play with in my own writing, so I guess it was a big influence on me.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus

How do I explain this?

I was a computer loving, comic book reading, Star Trek quoting, Dungeons & Dragons playing kid; all I needed was that one last bit of nerdtacular street cred to ensure no girl ever talked to me in high school again.

…and along came Python.

From the first time I saw the Ministry of Silly Walks, I was hooked.  Who the hell were these absurd guys and why were they dressed as women?  A dead parrot?  Really?  A cheese shop that had no cheese?  A man with a tape recorder up his nose?

My sense of humor owes a lot to these guys; it comes through in my twitter feed (I think), here on this blog and most definitely in my writing.

But they were really only the jumping off point.  Thanks to the Python’s, I discovered all sorts of British comedy that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise even known about.  Like the Blues, there’s just something about that type of comedy that appeals to me.  I once wrote a piece that people compared to Douglas Adams and I could not have been more flattered.

There is this kind of absurd intelligence the comes through in British humor; it’s funny, sometimes absolutely ridiculous but at the same time, you realize that a lot of thought went into it – it’s not a pie in the face, it’s a soliloquy of humor that tickles the funny bone and fires those little synapses in the brain that make you laugh and think.

I can’t imagine writing without this sense of humor coming through.

And, to try and bring this week long extravaganza of influence pieces full circle, I really can’t imagine writing without pulling from all of these different influences; the humor, the fantasy, the scifi, the drama, from my own experiences with family and friends.  We are the sum of our parts and our writing reflects that.

…which reminds me, I should probably be writing.

~P

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Probably one of the strongest influences on my life from a very young age was the original Star Trek.

Rerun in syndication almost endlessly, the original Star Trek was huge in my life growing up.  I knew the characters so well you’d think they were family.  I could quote episodes like the [...]]]> Star Trek: The Original Series.

Probably one of the strongest influences on my life from a very young age was the original Star Trek.

Rerun in syndication almost endlessly, the original Star Trek was huge in my life growing up.  I knew the characters so well you’d think they were family.  I could quote episodes like the best convention goer, though I myself had never attended one (and didn’t know such things existed).

For me, Star Trek was equal parts wild imagination and rip-roaring adventure.  I was absolutely in love with that show like no other before or since.  I was a Trekker to my core.

When I discovered that there were novels based on the adventures of the Enterprise crew that took them beyond the show I knew so well, I was floored.  I spent a lot of time and no small amount of money, buying up these books every chance I got.

Bolstering my addiction and my collection, mom would tell people how I read these books often and always cover to cover, sometimes more than once, and so many of them began giving her their own copies for me.  She would come home from work (she was both a waitress and a bartender) with half a french dip wrapped in aluminum foil (which I would greedily take to school for lunch the next day) and a sack full of slightly used Trek novels for me to read.

It was fantastic.

Some of the very first things I wrote were Star Trek fan fiction.  I dreamt of joining the ranks of such wonderful authors as Diane Duane, D.C. Fontana, A.C. Crispin, Vonda N. McIntyre & Howard Weinstein.  I’m here to tell you, I wrote some pretty terrible crap back in the day…  But that’s okay – we have to write crap in order to learn and grow.  I may wince (and groan) today when I look at old, yellowed pages full of Trek fanfic born from my brain, but it was necessary.

This obsession with all things Trek only grew when The Next Generation debuted and, although I loved Star Wars as well (and could essentially quote the movies verbatim), there was just more Trek to be had at the time, so it tended to be forefront on my brain.

Computers (and technology).

A second great influence on my life has been computers and technology.  I used to stare, fascinated, at the scanners on the conveyor belts at the grocery store, trying to figure out how the lasers knew what things were and how much they cost.

Star Trek (and other movies and television shows) painted a universe where computers did things they could not, currently, do.  I wanted in on this.

The first chance I had for any sort of hands-on computer stuff came in the fifth grade, I believe.  My school, a Catholic elementary, was offering a special computer education course for a separate fee (Catholic schools are tuition based).  I begged my mom to let me attend these classes and she relented/agreed/paid for it.

They setup the computers in the library and we went through a lesson plan that taught us BASIC (Beginners All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) and some DOS (Disc Operating System), all on Apple IIE’s.  I want to say that the classes didn’t last very long but I honestly don’t remember.  We did simple things, wrote simple programs, used their software to learn to type – that sort of stuff.  I do remember being hooked.  I liked messing around with these computer things and wanted more.

I didn’t get much ‘more’ until high school, when I took the same essential course on a Radio Shack TRS-80 (which we affectionately called ‘Trash 80’s’).  I also owned my very first home computer, the Radio Shack Color Computer II complete with a 5 and a quarter floppy drive.  I mostly used it to play games, but I also learned a bit more about BASIC, DOS and graphics in general.

Lastly, I took electronics as an elective, which meant I got to learn how these things worked in the first place.

At some point, my mom decided that I needed to work for my uncle so I could be close to his eldest son who, at the time, was heavy into computers and programming.  Through Don, I learned about UNIX and eventually, HTML and the Internet.  I also took my first steps into graphic arts, design, desk top publishing and advertising working for my uncle who, one day, set me down in front of a Macintosh IIcx with Adobe Illustrator and Aldus PageMaker and told me to learn all about them so I could start making flyers and catalogs for the company.

So. Star Trek fed my imagination with a steady diet of scifi and futuristic technologies which lead me to want to know more about these things later on.  I wouldn’t be me without these particular influences in my life and you can see (I believe) how these things have affected my writing (hopefully) today.

Even though these have been huge influences, there’s still more.  (You know what’s coming next…)

…and I’ll talk about that tomorrow.

(you totally saw that coming.)

~P

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Google’s Nexus One phone sparks flood of complaints.

Just eight days after Google opened its online store to sell the new Nexus One smartphone directly to customers, its support forums have been overloaded with complaints [...]]]> Actually spent a little time this evening going through my Google Reader and looking for interesting things to share.

Technology / Science News

Google’s Nexus One phone sparks flood of complaints.

Just eight days after Google opened its online store to sell the new Nexus One smartphone directly to customers, its support forums have been overloaded with complaints on a variety of issues. They stem from coverage and delivery problems, network compatibility, dropped calls and operation woes.

Malware: Android Apps Threaten Mobile Security

Google’s Android Market relies on customers to flag dodgy apps, leaving businesses and other customers’ smartphones open to attack by rogue apps until Google acts, sometimes days later.

Malware banking apps have already been removed from the Android Market, where it seems anyone can post what purports to be a banking application.

The future is here and it’s a damned freaky/scary sex robot (…just, ewwwwww)

At the other trade show in Vegas last week, the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, a company called True Companion threw a coming-out party for Roxxxy, a 5-foot 7-inch, fully functional rubberized “girlfriend” with a personality, of sorts.

Astronaut pee clogs the space station – I can only assume they’re drinking Mellow Yellow and not Mt Dew…

Engineers trouble-shooting a problem with the station’s $250 million water recycling system, which processes urine into clean water for drinking, believe the cause is a high concentration of calcium in the astronauts’ urine, which clogs the system.

The Phoenix Mars Lander may have survived the Martian winter (but not really).

Nasa’s Mars Odyssey orbiter is set to listen for possible radio transmissions from the Phoenix Mars lander, to check if it has survived the Martian winter.

AAAAIIIIGGGHHH!!! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIIIIEEEE!  IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD!!! HOLLYWOOD CALLED IT – IT’S A DANED ASTEROID AND IT”S GOING TO KEEEEEELLLLL US ALLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A weird object that left some observers wondering if it was a piece of space junk is most likely just a small asteroid, and will zoom close by Earth Wednesday, NASA scientists say. It may be visible to seasoned amateur astronomers as it passes harmlessly by the planet.

Oh.  Well.  Never mind then.

Scifi

Star Trek Online enters open beta

The open beta of Star Trek Online begins today and runs through January 26th, a week before the February 2nd launch date.

The channel formerly known as ‘SciFi’ Presents Marathon of 1960s Sci-Fi Cult Classic, The Invaders Monday, January 18

(The former SciFi Channel) is bringing back the 1960s sci-fi cult classic, The Invaders, for a special 11-episode marathon on Monday, January 18, from 8AM-7PM (ET/PT). The series, which starred Roy Thinnes — who claimed to have seen a UFO during the filming of the series — ran for two seasons on ABC from 1967-68.

Weird artist re-creates famous sci-fi scenes—with face paint!

Lucky Batman! All he had to deal with was Two-Face. Who knows whether he’d have been able to handle James Kuhn, a wacky artist with hundreds of faces. Kuhn loves painting his face so much that one day he decided he’d do it up differently every day for a year—and when that wasn’t enough, he did it all over again!

Firefly to live on FOREVER! FOREVER I TELL YOU!  BROWNCOATS REPRESENT!

Joss Whedon’s beloved Firefly/Serenity is long gone, but you can’t stop the signal: Fans can look for more adventures of Capt. Mal Reynolds and the crew of the doughty ship in a series of short stories coming soon from Titan Books.

Oh. Yeah. That too.

I’m done.

~P

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One of the things I wanted to talk about with the whole Star Trek Comics at DC thing, was the treatment of Kirk in the Academy, and his solution to the Kobayashi Maru as detailed in the three issue story arc called ‘Star Crossed’.

In the beginning of Star Trek [...]]]> Star Trek The No-Win Scenario (Star Crossed)

One of the things I wanted to talk about with the whole Star Trek Comics at DC thing, was the treatment of Kirk in the Academy, and his solution to the Kobayashi Maru as detailed in the three issue story arc called ‘Star Crossed’.

In the beginning of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, we see a Vulcan woman in command of the Enterprise.  Sulu is at the helm, Uhura at communications – even Spock and McCoy are there.  The Enterprise is answering a distress call from a ship trapped in the Klingon Neutral zone.  A ship called the Kobayashi Maru.

For the Starfleet Captain, there is a moral imperative to rescue the stranded crew, but doing so violates the terms of the Neutral Zone Treaty with the Klingon Empire.

The Vulcan woman, Saavik, orders the ship into the Neutral Zone to rescue the stranded vessel.  As soon as they are within transporter range, a Klingon armada appears and attacks.

It’s a trap.  The Enterprise is out numbered, out gunned and under attack from a ruthless enemy.

A ‘no win scenario’.  At its heart, this is a test of character, as Kirk explains to the young cadet Saavik.

“May I ask, how did you do?”

“You may ask,” he replies coyly.

“You’re looking at the only cadet to beat the no win scenario,” Bones says with a grin.

When JJ Trek came out on DVD, one of the things that amused me was Abrahms comments about the Kobayashi Maru test.  In one of the special featurette thingies, he said that we had never seen Kirk’s solution for the Kobayashi Maru before, which was why he felt it was a important moment to capture.

Well, he was wrong about having never seen it before (Maybe he just meant on film).  DC gave us three issues in ‘95 that shed a little light on the whole thing.  Starting with issue #73, they took us back to a young Jim Kirk at Starfleet Academy, about to try for the third time to beat the dreaded Kobayashi Maru test.

This three issue story arc gave us a glimpse into Kirk’s past; his relationship with Carol Marcus as it develops over time, his best friend (which apparently didn’t happen in the JJ Trek timeline) Gary Marshall (remember him? He truly went ‘where no one has gone before…’), and the events leading up to the Motion Picture.

The story begins with Kirk at the Academy, frustrated at his ‘failure’ to beat the Kobayashi Maru test.  Not one to accept defeat, he enlists the help of Carol Marcus in reprogramming the simulation, making it possible to defeat the test.

Next, we see him as First Officer on the Eagle, and we watch as the relationship with Carol slowly starts to come apart when she is assigned to the ship but her frustration with Starfleet comes to a head.  She leaves Starfleet and Kirk when she’s two months pregnant with David, a fact Kirk doesn’t know about until he and Gary return to Iowa for a family visit.  When he finds out that Carol has had a baby, he asks her to marry him; she refuses and asks him to stay out of their lives, telling him that she doesn’t want David involved in Starfleet or to know Kirk at all.

Kirk agrees, then takes his first command on the Oxford, which eventually leads him to command of the Enterprise.

By the third issue, #75, we are at the end of the 5-year mission.  Enterprise is ordered in for refit, and the crew is breaking up.  McCoy quits Starfleet, soon followed by Spock, who plans to return home to purge all emotion in the Vulcan discipline of Koh’linar.  Again, Kirk looks to Carol Marcus.

Nothing has changed between them, though, and Carol still doesn’t want David anywhere near Starfleet.  Torn, Kirk has to choose between a family he doesn’t know, the career he’s always wanted, and the promotion to Admiral being offered to him…

Okay – enough synopsis.

First off – the cover art on these issues is absolutely friggin GORGEOUS (click em. Go on. You KNOW you want to)!  The last issue in the arc, #75, was hand painted (I believe) for godsake.  I really admired how the writers wove the two stories together with the canon as we knew it to build a very cohesive and engaging tale, and how they took the ‘no win scenario’ of the Kobayashi Maru, and applied it with a bit more subtlety to Kirk’s choices in life between family and career.

The only other time I know of where Kirk’s Starfleet days, and specifically the Kobayashi Maru test were mentioned, was in the novel, “The Kobayashi Maru”, by Julia Ecklar and Pocket Books (I could be wrong. There could be other versions of it).  That might actually be more difficult to find versus the DC three issue story arc, though (It’s definitely out of print, so your best bet would be a used book store).  Either one would be worth your time, but with the DC comics, you’d get that gorgeous art to stare at.

Whichever way you go, you’ll win…

~P

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…now that the movie [...]]]> One of the things I noticed when I watched last summers blockbuster, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, was that the workers in the undersea MARS facility, seemed to be wearing Deep Space Nine era Starfleet uniforms.  I couldn’t prove it, of course – I didn’t have screen shots from the movie.

…now that the movie is out on DVD, though…

Actually, getting a decent screen shot proved difficult.  Still, I managed.

So – first off, let’s take a look at the DS9 uniform:

That’s courtesy of some costume shop. Here it is actually on the crew:

Essentially, what the costumers did was take the color’s of the Starfleet uniform that we all knew and loved (red, blue, gold) and made them like an under shirt with a black and gray coat over them.  Pips go on the collar, communicator on the chest.

I liked these a lot better than the all in one jumpsuits from the 1st season and even better than the 1-piece uniforms of subsequent TNG seasons.  Very sleek.

Now, let’s take a look at the uniforms worn by the MARS employees in G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra:

That really was the absolute best shot I could’ve gotten.  When these guys go by on screen, it’s so fast, you only catch flashes of the outfit (but it was enough to make me go, hmmm).  In this one, we can see that it’s -very- similar.  Burgundy under shirt with a gray and black overcoat.  Stripes on the shoulders and (vertical) cuffs are different (on DS9, they ring around the cuff), as are the pockets and the zipper.

Another shot shows a slightly different angle and (apparently) different coat:

No pockets on this one that I can see, which leads me to believe there’s a couple versions of the coat.

Did Paramount decide to save a little cash by using the old DS9 uniforms?  Just changing them up a little? I don’t know, maybe.

What do you think?

~P

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