Some more Memories of the Future edits, for your (and my) amusement.
Here’s the original:
After a bit of exploring, they find themselves in the lab of Data’s creator, Dr. Noonian Soong. Riker, Geordi, and Tasha all join forces to be sort of an Exposition Voltron, informing the audience that Noonian Soong was the Earth’s foremost neuroscientist, until he tried to build Asimov’s positronic brain and failed. Everyone thought he did the walk of shame off the planet, but it turns out he just moved to Omicron Theta to continue his work until he got it right. (Coincidentally, on Omicron Gamma, there’s a group of former Microsoft employees still working on an MP3 player).
And here’s the rewrite, which I must tell you, made me giggle more than it probably should have:
They make their way to the exact spot where Data was discovered: it’s sort of a hollowed out area beneath a bunch of rocks, where Data tells them he was found wearing nothing more than a layer of dust. Before anyone can make a saucy reference about “The Naked Now” to Tasha, Geordi’s VISOR reveals that the rocks aren’t naturally hollow, and the “wall” opens up, revealing a twisty maze of passages, all alike.
After a bit of exploring, they find themselves in the lab of Data’s creator, Dr. Noonian Soong. Riker, Geordi, and Tasha all join forces to be sort of an Exposition Voltron:
Riker: Noonian Soong was Earth’s foremost neuroscientist, until he tried to build Asimov’s positronic brain…
Tasha: Everyone thought he did the walk of shame off the planet, but it turns out he just moved to Omicron Theta to continue his work until he got it right.
Geordi: And I’ll form the head!
And this is essentially unchanged from the original, but it still makes me happy:
Data flees to Sickbay where he meets up with Dr. Crusher and shows her his on/off switch—or, as he describes it, “an android alarm clock.”
Then he smirks, and asks hopefully, “Is that amusing?”
Dr. Crusher slowly shakes her head “no.” It’s the first genuinely laugh-out-loud moment of the episode, and the last time we’ll be laughing with “Datalore” instead of at it.
After a brief encounter with soon-to-be-ex-Chief Engineer Argyle, Dr. Crusher promises Data that she’ll keep the existence of his mysterious off switch to herself. Data asks her if she would want people to know about her off switch, if she had one. She laughs, and nervously glances at a bottle of Jägermeister in her office.
I got my first glimpse of the cover comps earlier this week. I think it’s going to be awesome.
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I’d buy this book at the drop of a hat.
“Any hat,” Tasha said knowingly.
This will be the first of your books that I don’t buy directly out of your hands, because I simply won’t be able to wait long enough. (I giggled, too.)
I definitely snickered more at the second one, but both were pretty funny. I am hoping my wife will buy these books for me (most likely the audio versions) for my birthday next month.
Are you doing the reading on the audiobooks?
When does the book come out, Wil?
I must own this book!
Revising and rewriting are the hardest part of writing for me, but you seem to have them locked down. The new sections really seem to add something, and I laughed like an idiot (at work, thanks for that) envisioning Geordi saying “And I’ll be the head!”
Awesome work, as always, sir.
*groan*
Well played.
+1 Geek points for the “twisty passages” reference.
I am so freaking excited for this book!
If I ever meet LeVar Burton in person, Iĺl make sure to tell him he makes the best head…
Exposition Voltron was good the first time I heard it, but the reworked version with Geordi saying he’ll be the head — FTW.
…i resent the way you make me like myself.
sorry, had to answer the song lyric!
Audiobook? I must have this. When can I have this?
Jägermeister?
Something teenage Whil Wheaton knew or dreamed of? 😉
Ok, I have a shameful question to ask, and it will cost me at least 100 geek points, but can someone explain “And I’ll form the head” to me?
I didn’t watch Voltron as a kid. Not sure why, I guess I just missed out. I watched Transformers, GI JOE, etc… but never caught Voltron.
I know it’s 5 lions that form into a fighting robot, but were they sort of interchangeable, like I could be the left arm today but the right leg tomorrow? Was being the head sort of like calling “Shotgun”? Maybe whoever was most pissed at the bad guys got to be the head?
Sorry for my ignorance. I am deeply ashamed of my lack of nerd-knowledge. Please enlighten me.
It is unfortunate I’d taken a gulp of tea just before I read this! And I’m going to echo everyone else…when does the book come out?
They weren’t interchangeable, but the combining was typically (always?) accompanied by narration by the leader “form feet and legs” etc, ending with him saying “And I’ll form the Head!”. So it’s just kind of iconic. Maybe because of how ritualized it was.
I can’t wait for this one. See, now you can put “eagerly anticipated” in the release announcement!
And what about Omicron Persei 8, and the one called “O’Neil”? Maybe that’s in another episode.
Giggling muchly at “And I’ll form the head!”
That was hands down the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. Has Spiner seen this yet?
Hmmm, this forthcoming book on audio + TNG season 1 on DVD + a bottle of Jäger (or as my Grandma called it “the medicines”)…… naw, no good could come of this
That’s what she said!
That was great. Nice work.
Wil, can you tell us whether this book will have only the reviews you published on TV Squad, or whether you’re writing additional reviews to cover the entire first season?
I’ll be buying the thing first chance I get anyway; I’m just curious. I’d like to read your take on “The Neutral Zone” et al.
I’ve had precisely one sip of Jagermeister, which was followed a nanosecond later by me spitting that foul garbage onto the ground and swearing that I would never again go anywhere near it.
Yeah, Brent read my review of “Justice” and said he thought it was very funny.
I gotta tell you, that made my freakin’ year right there.
Volume one covers Farpoint to Angel One, and Volume two covers the rest of the season.
Volume one comes out VERY SOON, and Volume two comes out later this year.
I split the season in half to keep costs down, and so that each book would be readable, instead of something so large it just sits on a shelf.
I’d love to know what format you’re planning on releasing this in. Paper? Kindle? PDF? Just curious. I will buy it in whatever format I can get it.
I plan to release it as a paperback and as an e-book in every format I can create (or pay someone to create for me). I’m not entirely sure it works as an audiobook, but I may give that a try if there’s enough interest.
There’s lots of interest!
Hearing you read stuff is more entertaining than reading it ourselves!
Do you have long-term plans to continue on after volume two and review the other seasons? At the very least, my wife would be set for what to get me for Christmas for a while to come 🙂
Yeah, I’m going to do at least two volumes per season all the way until season 4 or 5. Once I’m off the show as a regular, though, I don’t think it makes much sense to continue to the end of the series.
Unless I’m making a million dollars per volume. If that’s the case, we’re all going to wish I never started writing these things.
More interest!
The reading of Justice you gave at the 2008 Phoenix Cactus Comicon is still on my Shuffle and gets me more than my fair share of funny looks when I laugh out loud in the middle of the gym.
That’s awesome!
It’s understandable about continuing to the end, but if it’s just about gathering behind the scenes memories, it’d be a good excuse to get together with the rest of the guys and see what stories they’ve got.
Oh, and for the “Shades of Gray” review, I trust you’ll keep things in the spirit of the episode and just refer us to page numbers in the other volumes? 😉
I hope you can include your guest-star episodes somehow. I get the inconsistency if you include all episodes from the first three seasons then start skipping to just “yours”, but your guest episodes were too memorable to leave out.
That’s an excellent idea.
Hahahaha. Oh, I’m going to have fun with that.
/slow dramatic applause
MORE INTEREST!!!
I have Just a Geek and Happiest Days in audio, and LOVE them to pieces. Listening to you sing “Mr. Roboto” in the “Modren Man” chapter makes me laugh heartily *every* time. And I love the little asides throughout as well.
I have Sunken Treasure in hard copy, and love it as well, but wish it was available in audio. So when I heard that Memories of the Future would be coming out soon, I was excited, but also a little disappointed, cuz I figured “there’s no way it’ll be available in audio”.
And so if it *is* in fact available in audio, my fangirl squee will be able to be heard from great distances. In fact, I think I’d have to buy both the audio AND hard copy versions, as a thank you for fulfilling my desperate supplication. 🙂
p.s. If you were ever to do an audio version of Dancing Barefoot, I’d have to set up a shrine in your honor. (Can you tell I’m a little addicted to audiobooks? Why? Well, besides the added artistry of the narrator in telling the story, there’s also the awesome side-effect that I can listen to audiobooks while driving, working, grocery shopping, exercising, etc. It lets me replace otherwise wasted time, with “reading” time… How awesome is that? I’ll tell you: Very.)
I can see why, Spiner’s a funny guy in his own right. I love how he just randomly shows up at conventions and starts screwing with the actors onstage. I saw one where he was talking about how they were selling replicas of Patrick Stewart’s head at a Hamlet production. I don’t even think the audience caught on right away that it was Brent, which made it even funnier.
You, on the other hand, are freaking hilarious with your reviews of TNG episodes. The one you did for Datalore made my face hurt because I was laughing so hard. You and Spiner should do a tour together. Between your sarcastic sense of humor and his dry sense of humor, that would be something I’d pay money to see for sure!
“revealing a twisty maze of passages, all alike”…is that only from the H2G2 game or is it from something else too? I nearly didn’t pass a year of high school cause of that fricken thing! Awesome preview. Thanks Wil. Oh…and Voltron rocks too..Yes we did get it in Australia in the 80’s!!
if you dont like licoriche (no i cannot spell it)
then you would hate Jagermeister.
Primaty flavoring was Anise root.
it was kinda like that. It was the cheese anime hero’s role to say “Hey guys im the leader, back down”
I watched voltron alot as a kid.
since then there has been like 4 versions of the show, the last being a total CG.
I also watched the babylon 5 series, and often compared the betazoids to the members of the Psi-corps. the simularities and the differences.
I watched a lil firefly as well, but had a hard time getting into that series…
ok, i know, that had nothing to do with the topic, but it was a random thought that poped into my head. How much story wise are you involved in the whole PSI theme? I have always wondered what it was like to be able to peer into someones mind and get exact pictures and feelings.
Rather than echos, and whispers that most people can feel or hear now. I guess this is why the topic has always inerested me. Though the whispers are never really comprihensible.
No, not yet. Too soon.
Is this entry’s title a quote from a Mike Doughty song? It took me a few minutes of hearing it sung inside my head before I could place it…I’d love to know if you’re a fellow fan.
I love the Crusher/Jäger joke, but also thoroughly enjoyed the M$ joke. Did you take it out ’cause it’s just too easy or did they threaten legal action?
Yep. I’m a huge fan, starting with Ruby Vroom, going all the way to today.
Sooooo looking forward to this book. Excellent excerpts, Wil.
Do you have a copy of Smofe & Smang, his live album from Minneapolis? If not, I’d be happy to send you one (all above board – it’s not available anywhere, and he’s granted me wink-and-nod permission to burn copies in exchange for donations to Doctors Without Borders).
Oh, and he writes a good blog, too. Very eloquent guy on the web as well as in his lyrics.
Can’t wait to get my hands on these as I absolute love the ones you have posted online!
+10 Interest in audio version. The only way it could be better is if you came to my house and read it to me 😛
I know this is going to be old beyond old but… Wil, I wanted to thank you for turning me onto Zoe Keating a month or two ago. After watching the youtube you linked a couple dozen times I went and downloaded the album and cannot stop listening to it. Easily one of my favorites of all time now.