© Retro Film Studios, Cawley Entertainment Company. Star Trek Phase II: Mindsifter shoot
Before I even started this blog, I would occasionally pose a SyFy Question of the Day to my facebook friends. Sometimes, it was directly related to what I was writing, and I really did want some input to help me decide what direction to take with the story. Other times, it was purely fun. Here’s one of my favorites, from March 2011:
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SyFy question of the day: Trek TOS came out before I was born, but I grew up with and loved the reruns. What will the SyFy fans of the future write and dream about when interstellar travel is a reality?
Linda I would say it would be dependent upon the extent of the interstellar travel. In TOS days the next step would have been travel into another quadrant. In the TNG/DS9/Voyager era travel into another quadrant was still only possible because of, in DS9s case, a wormhole, and in Voyager’s case, a superior being flinging them to the Delta quadrant. I would imagine there would always be something more to dream of. Other quadrants, other universes, the potential for alternate timelines. Even traveling where you’ve already gone more quickly (look how much Earth has changed since cars trains and planes came along to get us places faster). JMHO
Al I think they will dream of meeting other intelligent life.
Shawn Quantum Theory is already here but if we have not mastered that at the time we achieve interstellar travel it will be next on the list.
I would love to hear what you think! Even if you are reading this post a year or more after publishing, I hope you will leave a comment with your own ideas on this topic.
The previous SyFy Q of the Day is at http://wp.me/p1qnT4-f0
The shortlink for this post is http://wp.me/p1qnT4-fz
The next SyFy Q of the Day is at http://wp.me/p1qnT4-gR
A note about the photo. Thank you to my friends at Phase II who let me use it for this post! It is nice to love and be loved, and be able to ask “Hey, can I use this?” and get an answer right away!
AmyBeth Inverness 
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They will write about Control. The Band of rebels that wish to go beyond the well ordered constraints which allow the few to dictate over the many. They will long for freedom of thought, freedom of actions, freedom to fail and freedom to fight for it.
Good point! So, whatever society ends up being, they will write for what they don’t have? Whether “they” are the ones who want freedom, or whether “they” are the ones who want control, or if “They” want freedom and control only for themselves, and not for the rest of humanity.
Ones perfection or idea of perfection comes with a certain order of thinking. As the ruling force of 300 solar systems I have order and harmony as long as the trillions of “people” think and act as I see fit. I do want what is best for my people but everytime in the past when I have allowed free will, the masses would begin to bicker among themselves and at times even rise up against my ruling order. Sadly I must crust them, they must fear my rule, in the end it’s what’s best for the greater whole.
It has been a corcern, maybe nothing at all, yet a classified report has just come to me. An older decomissioned star ship is missing. The Fools, no match for a modern class destroyer.
Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series focused on such a ruler. Of course, for the sake of one woman’s love for her Duke, that ruler did not about exactly as various political and religious bodies intended. But even though Maud Dib walked off into the sunset, his son Leto ruled for three thousand years. Leto could see the future, the “Golden Path”, and could make decisions based on that. Sometimes, it seemed like he didn’t care about people and was making things worse, but it was a bigger picture and a greater good he was considering.
Sketchy looking bunch. 😉
Star Trek, Star Wars, Isaac Asimov… it’s all about travelling to the stars of this galaxy, the Milky Way. But none of them talk about other galaxies. I guess that, if it happens that, in the future, humans reach any side of this galaxy, they will dream about what’s in the others.
I wonder how it will play out? I wonder if there will be a huge gap of centuries between being able to explore our own galaxy, and reaching out to others?
Stargate Universe traveled between galaxies. In fact, when they were looking at the ancient starship’s map, plotting a route back to earth, one of the non-scientists asked “What are those points? Planets? Solar Systems?” to which Mathboy replies “Nope… those are galaxies.”
It’s fun thinking about what others might be writting about, When it comes to Star Trek there might only be some 700,000 plots left. Problem is that I feel as if anyone that does a fan based or network Star trek already has a direction they wish to take their work, what would they care what I think.
For me personally I have been working a little closer to home, The plot is about an old and dying alien race that first found earth 700,000 years ago when the human race was very advanced in our solar system. The earth had a major pole shift and the Aliens attempted to save a few humans. Over the next 700,000 years they attempted to have a hand to help restore the human race without much luck.
Then some 20,000 years ago a younger alien race gets involved with Earth, plays God and such until they figure out they can use the people of Earth as sort of a 3rd world country when they discover a life prolonging device which can only be manufactured on earth.
The story begins when our 4 Satellite repair people discover the plot wittness an alien battle, end up with one of the ships and take off to free the earth from Alien control.
Wow! That sounds epic. What stage are you at in your writing?
I wrote the 1st book draft of 3 in 1992-94 that ended-up of course with our heroes blocking access of both the alien races from ever traveling to Earth but also trapping themselves halfway across the galaxy. The problem I felt was when writing is that I am only one person and everyone had the same personality. It’s like playing chess with yourself if you know what I mean.
Back then I was the sole owner of a business, two teen aged girls and a spouse that ran a fairly large bar tab so work was slow. Being an engineer I decided to tear the story apart by each of the characters and rebuild their personalities. Soon after “that stuff” came up and I had to set this whole project aside. Just a hint, never store your work on a 5 1/4 floppy disks, because after 10 plus years of life rebuilding (different story) those disks end up rather blank.
The beginning of this year I felt I was in a place to pick it up again and it seems to be going well except instead of writing it in a book form I’m putting it into an episodes format.
I find it’s best to just crash through the typing as quickly as possible and then go back a couple of weeks latter and work on the message I’m trying to convey.
I do know it’s like to play chess with yourself, and what it’s like to save stuff over and over to a 5 1/4 floppy! Nowadays I save first to my hard drive, but I backup both by sending the file in e-mail to myself, and saving to a dropbox.
The method of crashing through the initial telling, getting all words out, then going back later to edit is a popular one. Although I like it when I’m “In the zone” and writing well, sometimes real life intervenes and I have to just crash through and put words to virtual paper. Later, when I go back, I can fix anything. Usually, it goes through numerous revisions before it’s “ready”.
This was something I tossed together thinking phase 2 might be interested in after they finished up whatever Gene had left them. I thought it would be fun to revisit an episode like “Shore Leave”. It was a light hearted break from the doom and gloom which our heroes often discover in space. Maybe in order to expand the story forward we could start off with the Enterprise on a famous standard survey mission charting rouge asteroids when Uhura receives a odd transmission of music. Spock recognizes the transmission as an old Earth entertainer know as Elvis. Kirk orders the Enterprise to warp to the source of the signal. (The source is the home planet of the Caretakers that built the sophisticated amusement park planets,)
Kirk sends a team to covertly beam down to the planet just to have a look around, but they are quickly captured by the planets amusement creating computer machine which has malfunctioned and taken over the planet. It seems when the amusement creating computer had malfunctioned it’s directive changed to force the population into an endless cycle of “FUN”and entainment. (This computer malfunction was latter discovered to be caused by incompatible signals from an old Earth transmission of a network televised 24 hour Elvis Presley event.)
When the landing party goes missing Kirk opts to send a few probes instead of risking another landing party and discovers the population are all acting out various Elvis stage acts and movie plots. Using the computer database Kirk and another landing party load up a shuttle with all the stage props to put on a Vegas Style Elvis show. They land the shuttle, set up the stage just at the end of town and put on a show which quickly attracts a crowd. Maybe it was Spock’s Vulcan Harp or Kirk’s Elvis but the crowd loves it and that allows Lieutenant Leslie to use his tri-corder to track down the first landing party. Leslie finds the first party, gets on their stage and acting like an M,C, starts inviting people from the crowd to come up to the stage while he directs members of the landing party to one by one leave their computer created Elvis plot and join with the captains.
A couple of the first landing party replaces Kirk and Spock (the crowd doesn’t like them as well) so that they can find the malfunctioning computer. Of course the story wraps up with Kirk and Spock getting past the computer defenses, thanks to Spock’s creative use of the tri-corder to mask their presence, Spock repairs the computer’s ever expanding loop cycle caused by the Earths signals and saves the day. The population thankful to the crew of the Enterprise for saving them from their fate invites the crew down to the planet to enjoy a well deserved Shore Leave in which Spock replies, “Thank you, Thank you very much, No, I have have enough, Shore Leave”
LOL! I love the episodes of both TOS and TNG that have a computer continuing on some kind of directive even though it has long been unnecessary. I’ve heard a few people joke about how to get James in Elvis gear on a Phase II screen, too!
The Man vs Machine, the question if we will ever allow ourselves to become ruled by our own creation.
I would understand if there are reasons behind Phase II not portraying Elvis. Still It would/could/should allow one or two of the lessor known actors to showcase other talents and James seems the type that would wish to do it for that reason alone.
Anyways, it would require a greater person than I to dress it up and present it.
Thanks Much!
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