Month: December 2005

Categories
Television & Movies

Mortal Thangs

A TV Guide listing that never appeared.Several months ago, in the last gasp of pre-blog Scribblings, I serialized a Star Trek: The Next Generation spec script I wrote and submitted in 1993 called Mortal Pangs. Until I spent the better part of an evening reformatting the entire script so that it would display properly on a web browser, I hadn’t laid eyes on Mortal Pangs in several years. And after revisiting it?
I’m both really happy with it, and embarrassed beyond all belief. There’s a certain therapeutic element about the whole thing that makes me cringe just a little bit; I’m a bit surprised how much of my own internal turmoil at the time was on display. It may well be something that I really needed to write, just to get it out of my system, but I’m not sure it’s a story that needed to be inflicted upon another living soul.
And at the same time…with the benefit of a little distance, I enjoyed it. There are some plot contrivances in there (that handy comet was almost as convenient as Data having to leave his crewmates to control a bunch of torpedoes), and there are some things that really should have been explored or explained better (like, maybe, that whole freakin’ alien culture there). But for the most part I got a kick out of it. I feel like I got the characters’ voices right, and for some reason I really dig the Crusher/Riker scene. And as contrived as “everybody controlling a torpedo or two” was at the end, it’d be hard to argue that the script didn’t give everybody something to do. (One could argue that the attempts to give everybody something to do in the post-series movies have been at least as plausible.)
Overall, it’s really not extraordinary in any way, and that’s almost certainly why it didn’t go anywhere: even with rose colored glasses and a bit of “parental” pride, I can see that Mortal Pangs had great potential to be…well…a highly average episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It fit in pretty well with the shows that were airing at the time I wrote it: there was some kind of out-of-the-blue return of one of the regulars’ family member with the attendant conflict, an off-the-wall scientific McGuffin B-story, and an alien race with one notable characteristic who we’d never see again. In a way, I can look back now and see that it was a synthesis of quite a few staple elements of the show at that time. With my own anxieties, neuroses and uncertainties tacked on for good measure. (Sorry about that.)
I tried and tried to come up with a decent spec for Deep Space Nine after getting the rejection letter from Paramount for Mortal Pangs, but with the benefit of hindsight, I have to say that nothing I was working on (the best of which was something hinting at a prejudicial social class system determining who got a Trill symbiont, which is an obvious avenue the show explored anyway) would have fit in with the brilliance that was exhibited during DS9’s run. I wouldn’t have stood a chance. Ironically, it wasn’t until Enterprise that I came up with an idea for another spec – and naturally, by then, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga had closed the doors on the unsolicited spec script program for the first time since Michael Piller instituted it in 1989. And that was heartbreaking – watching what Manny Coto was doing with the show in the fourth season, my story would have fit right in perfectly in terms of re-examining existing aspects of Trek stories past; in this case, there would’ve been a solid connection to a Next Generation episode, not a Classic Trek story. (Though to even mention what that connection is would give it away – it’s a no-brainer that also probably would have been done eventually, and hell, it even would’ve justifiably grafted some extra Temporal Cold War crap onto the saga. Why not?)
And despite the show’s end, I’m actually still tinkering with writing it out, in teleplay form, and posting it here for your amusement. I like the teleplay format. I thought about trying to flesh it out in prose and maybe entering it in one of the Pocket Books Strange New Worlds short story contests, but here’s a little secret: I hate my own prose with a passion. There’s a reason I write factual and/or opinion essays and reviews, and not fiction. I don’t like my own handling of fiction. It reads like a mish-mash of other people’s fiction, usually whoever I’ve read most recently. I’d rather just tell the story in dialogue, descriptions and stage directions with the assumption that everyone knows who the heck I’m talking about. (I think this is also why, for the most part, I’ve abandoned the licensed-property-novel ship, even though there’ve been some brilliant ones – i.e. Paul Cornell’s Doctor Who New Adventures, and Kate Orman’s too – that have transcended the usual mandate of a licensed property novel.)
So might my dramatic-comedic-time-twisting mini-epic ever see the light of day? One never knows.… Read more

Categories
Toiling In The Pixel Mines

You can almost taste the asbestos!

Pummeling the Promo Pod.
Pummeling the Promo Pod.So they’re running some new cable here at work, and apparently this is where the cable-running stopped for today. Wow. So…we just leave this hole open, practically exposing my office to the temperature outside, which is pretty low. Normally the equipment in here keeps things pretty toasty; right now, however, I’m wearing the lined denim jacket that you see hanging up in these pictures I took when I first got here.
TV is glamorous business!
Hopefully they’ll fix that light fixture too. It wasn’t like that when I was here last on Friday. While they’re at it, maybe they can keep an eye on my tires for me – both of my car’s front tires were stabbed (but not slashed) last week, according to the folks who patched them up for me on Thursday, and it appears to have happened at work. I guess I really made someone happy during November sweeps. That seems kind of backward if you think about it – if someone is sick and tired of me, why not make it easier for me to go home and leave them alone? They should be filling my tank and airing up my tires, and then, whoever it is, I’ll happily get out of their hair! 😛
Just another thing that gives me a strong feeling it’s time to make a change.… Read more

Categories
Television & Movies

We don’t serve their kind here! and other Star Wars tales

Every saga has a middle filled with peanuts, caramel and creamy nougat.Maybe my ode to Star Wars figures got me thinking about this, but I’ve had a couple of interesting thoughts after watching Episode III and then the original Star Wars back-to-back.
Where are you taking this…thing?: Whatever media handles the years between Sith and Star Wars, I hope they realize that a big part of the story is going to have to be the homogenization of the Empire. In Sith, we see Palpatine with a handful of hangers-on who are decidedly alien; by the time we get to Star Wars (or, if you’re one of those people who must call it this, A New Hope), the Empire has not only become completely human, but it has become unabashedly racist. Chewie is a thing. Imperial officers are all not just male humans, but, if you want to read further into it, white male humans. Neimoidians, Geonosians, Gungans, the Kamino cloners, the various races represented on the Jedi Council in its final years…we never see these folks again. Imperial genocide? Did Palpatine order this, perhaps remembering all that fun he had with his little green friend? (Wait, that sounded incredibly bad.) Did Vader? Why? This could be a huge arc story to cover between trilogies, and it’s so conspicuous that it really needs to be addressed.
Who was his father?: On further reflection, I’m infinitely relieved that the connecting tissue was removed from Sith that would’ve explicitly joined the dots from Darth Plagueis’ experiments in creating life to the “immaculate conception” of Anakin Skywalker. There’s enough there for the folks who have been paying attention to make the connection, but it isn’t spelled out as Star Wars gospel…thank goodness. Here is why that’s a good thing. By coming right out and saying that Anakin was created by the Sith, there is an excuse for his actions that declaws the point of the entire saga. If the clone troopers are all preprogrammed to enact Order 66, there’s the implication that Anakin, if he too was a created being and not a natural born one, could simply have been hard-wired to turn to the dark side. Even that implication tries to absolve him from his actions, and while the saga is, when viewed as a whole from a distance, a story about redemption, it completely loses its teeth when there’s even a hint that “the devil made him do it.” Anakin Skywalker does not deserve to get off that easy after all the lives he’s taken in cold blood. He earned those neato bloodshot yellow contact lenses for a reason (though I’d argue that the moment for that to appear would have been following the killing of the younglings, not the killing of the Separatists, who could hardly be described as innocents…sheesh, George!). Anakin is lied to and manipulated, yes, but he also makes some extraordinarily bad choices, and giving him an out that’s as simple as “maybe he was programmed to do it” doesn’t cut it. I’m glad that was left on the cutting room floor.
Teach you to commune with him, I will: Okay, so Yoda and Obi-Wan have to have some special, arcane knowledge to commune with Qui-Gon, who has become one with the Force and yet retains his identity. That’s good. Now, it practically demands that we ask “How did Qui-Gon contact Yoda in the first place if Yoda wasn’t expecting it?” And that’s a good question, because how can Obi-Wan contact Luke if Luke isn’t expecting it (which he clearly isn’t)? Maybe it’s just that Yoda and Luke are that good because of their concentration of MIDI, chlorine and stuff. But any media that deal with Obi-Wan between Episode III and Star Wars might want to elaborate on this. It seems like the initial contact would have to come about because the deceased makes an extraordinary effort to be heard; the listener can then learn to attune their senses to that contact to make it easier. But…who taught Luke this? (Though it seems like the apparition of Obi-Wan we see after Luke has trained with Yoda is capable of doing more – he moves around, he’s clearly visible, and the conversations are longer and more detailed, so maybe Yoda is now making that communion a standard part of Jedi training. Maybe I just answered my own question there.)
Please understand, my obsessing over little details like this doesn’t mean I’m picking the Star Wars movies to bits because I think Lucas hasn’t done his homework. It’s because the whole saga, whether by design or accident, holds together so well that I even put this kind of thought into it. New chapters of the story are going to be crafted soon, and I think these would be interesting things to address in those chapters. There are stories behind these things, and I’m all about the story. (Well, and any action figures that come out of the story, per yesterday’s blog entry. Which reminds me: it’d be a damn shame for Hasbro to ditch the 3 3/4″ scale before we get to the live-action Star Wars TV series…… Read more

Categories
ToyBox

Back into the blister bubble

Beep...beep? Must be Earth humor.It all started with this little fellow here – well, okay, not this one exactly, but one just like him who wound up getting dropped in a full bathtub somehow; this is the one who replaced him, and believe me, somehow, my mom figured out a way to make him waterproof. But, after a fashion, this was the first Star Wars figure I ever got – heck, I even remember the store where I got him: Service Merchandise at Central Mall in Fort Smith. (That chain no longer exists, and ironically, its space at Central Mall is now occupied by the theater where I stood in line at midnight to see Episode III.) Like any geek-in-training growing up, I got as many of the various characters from the first three movies as I could get my hands on. Years later, when Hasbro revived the range, I was…well…unimpressed by the grotesquely overmuscled depictions of my old friends. (I did spring for Artoo again, however, just for old times’ sake.)
When Hasbro started getting it right, though, it was like I fell off the plastic wagon. And let’s not even talk about the Episode I toys. I was standing in line at midnight in Green Bay for those. I was so grateful for the one guy who roller-skated through the store wearing Jedi robes, blasting Star Wars soundtrack music from a massive jam box on his shoulder. I felt so…….normal when compared to that, what with buying a bunch of new toys in my late 20s.
Between that and Episode II, I got married, and moved back to Arkansas, which severely tightened my budget. (It may or may not have changed since then, but the economy in Green Bay was fantastic, and it’s truly one of the things I miss most about the place.) After my successful (and extremely geeky) push to collect all of the Episode I characters, my Episode II collection paled by comparsion. And the same seemed to be shaping up for the latest movie.
As of the most recent waves of characters, however, I’ve fallen off the wagon again. I did initially pick up some “legacy” characters, so I could chronicle the evolution of Anakin/Vader, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Padme, and so on. But with the umpteenth minor revisions of the various Jedi Knights, I felt a bit irked. I’ve got four Mace Windus already (including the Episode I preview figure that I sent off proofs of purchase for, and one from a Jedi Council Cinema Scene). His look hasn’t changed significantly. Nor has Plo Koon’s, or Kit Fisto’s. I gave up. (You may, of course, feel free to consider this comedy gold from someone who happily picks up every variation of astromech droid that they turn out.) But now that we’ve moved on to less obvious characters – relatively minor characters or folks who aren’t represented in the other films already – I find that I’m snatching up Star Wars figures yet again as budget allows.
At some point, I will give it up (freeing up my cash for all those other collections I have going). I have a feeling that sometime in the next 2-3 years, Hasbro is going to switch to a more modern, larger scale and abandon the 3 3/4″ line, which probably would’ve been abandoned already had it not been grandfathered in by previous generations (literally!) of figures and their owners. At that point, as I did with the Playmates Star Trek toys, I’ll declare victory. Or, perhaps, if you want to look at my check register, defeat. But here’s the thing: I still get such a thrill out of busting these little guys out of the blister bubble. That feeling was always one of my greatest pleasures as a child, and so help me, I still get excited about it, despite Hasbro’s attempts to reduce the experience to sheer frustration by making it approximately 247 times harder to even reach the figures. I’ve found that it’s always a good pick-me-up to go buy one of these things if I’ve had a rough week, open it up, examine it closely, admire the workmanship, put it on the shelf, and then, when no one’s looking, having an all-hands-on-deck lightsaber-duel-palooza.
OK, just kidding on that last part. So far as you know.… Read more