Thursday, October 6, 2016

What's Right With Star Trek

First off, two corrections I must make. The Blue Ray and DVD release of "Star Trek Beyond" won't take place until early next month. Also, there were not three different scripts for the film, rather there were three versions of the same screenplay.

Now, to the good stuff.

The Kelvin timeline is still there, and offers a chance to write good stories. If I were to write one set in that alternate reality, I would ignore the events of the second and third films and pick up where the first one left off.

As I wrote this, a new series titled "Star Trek Discovery" is in pre-production. The initial stated premiere date of mid-January has been revised with a new date of sometime in May of 2017. I'm glad that show  runner Bryan Fuller has decided to take the extra time to make sure he gets it right. Fuller has assembled a dream team of Trek veterans that includes Nicholas Meyer, who directed "Wrath Of Khan" and "The Undiscovered Country".

As far as professionally written novels go, there are some really good ones being released these days. The only thing I don't care for is that many of them are part of a series. I prefer a good stand-alone story that, well, stands on its own. I myself once wrote a complete novel that I intended to submit to Pocket Books. Through an online forum, I found a very nice gentleman who had both a Trek novel and an original novel of his own published. He was kind enough to serve as my editor and he felt the finished novel was good enough to be published.

Not a great book, mind you, but a solid first effort, to be sure. Unfortunately, while I was writing it, Pocket Books adopted and now maintains a policy of not accepting outside submissions, even if done with a licensed agent representing the author.

Also, there are some very good fan films out there. Unfortunately, the actions of one film's producer has caused CBS to issue a set of guidelines of what they do and do not consider acceptable. The guidelines are something that they have a clear legal right to issue and enforce. I do feel that they go a bit too far, including a maximum length of thirty minutes. But, as I say, they have the right to do what they're doing.

As always, these are just my opinions. Thank you for reading and taking the time to consider them,







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