Category: Books

As you can imagine, the success of this mission is especially important to everyone on Starbase 420.

Posted on By Wil

Well, the most creatively demanding part is over. About an hour ago, I finished the first round of de-blogging, cutting and rewriting on Memories of the Future.

The next step is to take all the individual reviews (which are in their own files) and combine them into one big document so I can see how it all works together. Based on my first round of rewrites, I'll be watching for a few things:

* Duplicated jokes that need to be cut. The original
reviews were written months apart, so I used a few things – like "Bat
Country" – more than once without realizing it. That's forgivable
online, but it doesn't really work in a book.

* Places where I can examine something from Behind the Scenes a little bit more, or places where it's just not that interesting and can be cut out.

* How The Bottom Lines all interact with each other. They should reflect how the series and we who made it evolved and developed over the course of the first season, and I'm not entirely sure I accomplished that in the first draft. I have to make sure it's not repetitive, and that each one truly reflects something unique to the episode and when it first aired. (Yes, this is a very public NOTE TO SELF. Please enjoy it.)

Just to keep with the tradition of posting something from the book with each post, here's a little bit from The Big Goodbye. This is one of those episodes that's actually quite good, so the humor in the recap is entirely different from the humor in, say, The Naked Now's recap:

Picard decides that playtime is over, and it’s time to get back to work, but Dr. Crusher wants to check out his office. Any chance of that being a euphemism is reduced when Data and Whalen tag along. When they get to his office, the euphemism possibility is eliminated completely: Felix Leech, a Peter Lorre-esque hired goon, is waiting for them. With a gun. And he’s pissed.

There’s another great moment here where the gun comes out, and Picard and company all look at each other with this wide-eyed grin, like it’s the coolest thing they’ve ever seen. It’s one of the rare times on TNG when we in the audience feel genuine suspense, too, because we know that gun’s going to go off and someone is going to get hurt. Those of us who are longtime fans also know that, for the purposes of this holodeck program, the part of Ensign Ricky Redshirt will be played by the ship’s 20th-century literature expert Mr. Whalen, who dutifully takes a bullet in the gut from Leech. This leads to another great moment, when everyone realizes that, holy shit, Leech just shot Whalen. Like, for reals.

Dr. Crusher tells them that they have to get Whalen to Sickbay, Picard smacks around Leech, and they can’t get the computer to give them an exit. This is sort of a problem because Whalen is dying, and back in the real world the Jarada will be expecting the Captain to speak to them pretty soon. Just to make things a little more tense, tough guy Cyrus Redblock shows up with Leech and another hired goon. It turns out that Redblock hired Hill to find an “item,” which Hill hasn’t produced. Redblock and his goons intend to help Hill find it, using their guns. After Leech pistol-whips Picard, McNary arrives, and we’ve got ourselves what you could call “a situation.”

Picard tries to talk them out of the situation, using the old “Hey, man, we’re from another world” routine, but Redblock and company ain’t buying. Data tries the well-known, “Hey, man, these characters aren’t even real” line, which all of us actors perfected during years of Star Trek convention appearances. Unfortunately, Data’s effort meets with similar results.

This is so close to being finished, I'm almost ready to go pick out a bottle of Scotch to open when I'm done.

It’s misty and stormy, and other words that are not also stage names for strippers

Posted on By Wil

Remember when you had some huge project due in middle school, and you really didn’t want to do it, so you just kept putting it off? Then, when you finally get to work on it, it’s actually more fun than you thought it would be and you wonder why you didn’t want to work on it in the first place?

Welcome to me, working on The Last Outpost. Yes, the episode is still tedious and the Ferengi are so fucking lame if they were horses we’d have to put them down, but once I decided to just relax and not worry about making the damn thing something it’s incapable of being, I found some amusing bits.

BEHOLD:

Picard asks Troi is she’s sensing anything from the Ferengi ship. That’s good, since it’s kind of her whole job and everything. She says she’s sensing nothing, so maybe they can block their thoughts and emotions. That’s bad.

Data says that we don’t know that much about the Ferengi, which is bad, but we do know a few things about them that seem to be reliable, which is good. Data says the Frogurt is also cursed.

Riker tells Data to just get on with it already, so Data says Ferengi are like Yankee traders from 18th century America. This indicates that, in the 24th century, the traditional practice of using 400 year-old comparisons is still in vogue, like when you’re stuck in traffic on the freeway, and say, “Man, this is just like Vasco de Gama trying to go around the Cape of Good Hope!”

And…

Tasha, Worf, Geordi, Data, and Riker all head to the transporter room, where the writers try to make us believe they’ll be in real danger on the planet, but we know it’s pretty safe when they beam down, unaccompanied by even a single Red Shirt.

The planet looks really cool, and it’s one of the first times we can see the difference in budgets and technologies available to the original series and the Next Generation. It’s misty and stormy, and other words that are not also stage names for strippers. We discover that energy in the atmosphere has messed up the transporter’s coordinates, and Riker’s been beamed down alone. He quickly finds Data, who again uses the word “intriguing” to describe things. He keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

Riker and Data scout around, and find Geordi suspended upside down when – oh! here come the Ferengi! Holy shit! The evil Ferengi! They’re finally here, in person! We can see more than just their moderately scary faces, and they are…uh…short. And bouncy. And they wave their hands over their heads a lot. And they don’t like loud noises. And they carry whips…and wear Ugg boots. Um. Wow. How…intriguing.

Oh, and one more bit, which – I’m not going to lie to you, Marge – was the part I had the most fun writing, for reasons which will reveal themselves momentarily:

Back on the Enterprise, we discover that, like the script, things have gone from bad to worse. The lights are out, the ship’s heating is nearly gone, and Picard has had the remaining power rerouted to the family decks, where he asks Doctor Crusher how Wesley is doing.

Now, listen, fan fiction writers: It’s not because Picard is actually Wesley’s father, as many of you will argue on Usenet over the coming seven years; it’s because Picard knows that Wesley could totally figure a way out of this, and he’s right. Off the top of my head, I can suggest that Wesley would generate some sort of Enterprise-enveloping control field with one of his science projects, using an electro plasma system energy converter, to reverse the polarity of the Navigational Deflector to emit an inverse tachyon pulse through a subspace beacon, while rerouting the power from the impulse engines through the Okuda conduits to the forward sensor array’s antimatter pod, using the auxiliary fusion generator to turn the power back on and save the day.

Sadly, we learn that Dr. Crusher left Wesley in their quarters to stare death in the face alone, without even the benefit of a sedative. Picard reassures her that leaving Wesley alone and fully conscious was great parenting, because he has the right to “meet death awake.” Legions of Trekkies agree, then curse Picard for getting their hopes up.

It truly is one of the most tedious episodes of the first season, but I realized while working on the rewrite that I’d somehow managed to spread some funny bits fairly evenly throughout the synopsis, so even though it’s not slap-your-knee funny, it’s not boring, which was my primary concern.

I don’t include many bits that aren’t in the synopsis, so here’s part The Bottom Line:

TNG’s struggle to find its way continues with this episode. Obviously, it fails spectacularly with its introduction of the Ferengi, who were intended to replace the Klingons as a terrifying and worthy adversary to the Federation, but were a total joke until Armin Shimmerman brought Quark to life on DS9, and repaired much – but not all – of the damage.

However, If you take away how outrageously lame the Ferengi are, this episode has some cool elements to it. The planet looks great, and the effects that lead to the revealing of the Portal, its point of view about itself, and its interaction with Riker are straight out of classic Star Trek. In fact, the entire story of the titular last outpost would have been a very strong one, had the Ferengi not been so weak and laughable. Imagine, for example, the relationship between Kirk and the Romulan Commander in Balance of Terror, and put them into this situation, where they are forced to cooperate.

See? It’s not all jokes and snark. I manage to sneak some semi- thoughtful stuff in there between the facepalms.

When I send this to Andrew, I’m done with the bulk of the work on this book. All that’s left is transcribing some interviews I did with friends from the show so I can include a few of their thoughts (I’m not saying who I talked to, nyahh nyahh) and then I have to put everything together in one big tile and read it all, looking for jokes or phrases that I repeated and areas in the behind the scenes stuff where I can add additional material.

Yep, this is dangerously close to being finished.

Boy, there sure is a lot of pain, and it is painful. For Troi and the audience.

Posted on By Wil

…let me tell you all about the pain.

I've written enough books and things to identify a few milestones along my creative road. When I was … well, I almost said 'still figuring this out', like I have it all figured out, which I don't, so I'll try again: When I had even less figured out than I do now, it would freak me out when I was convinced that something was horrible and I sucked and I was stupid and they were all going to laugh at me and cover me with pig's blood. Now I know that feeling that way is just a landmark on my creative path, and when I feel that way I can recognize it as just part of the birthing process.

This isn't to say that I don't know how to recognize the difference between feeling like something sucks when it actually doesn't, and feeling like something sucks because it really does suck and it's time to let it go and move on to something else. I think it's really important for all artists, especially those of us who work independently, to train the hell out of this skill, and get good editors (or the editor-equivalent) to make sure we use it.

I've recently discovered two new labor pains, and they're driving me crazy: "I hate this and I just want it to be over so I can do something new," and "I hate the sound of my own stupid fucking voice." Unsurprisingly, they arrived together and made a lot of noise until I recognized them for the labor pains that they are.

Speaking of labor pains, I have accepted that the Farpoint entries in Memories of the Future aren't going to be as funny as Justice or Naked Now. I was making myself crazy trying to force into being something hilarious, when all it's going to be is amusing, which was wasting my time and annoying the pig, so I've put the Farpoint entries to bed. Here's a little bit from part two that I think doesn't suck:

Picard bids farewell to the Hood and walks onto the bridge, just in time for Q to appear on the main viewscreen. Worf, full of Klingon piss and blood wine vinegar, leaps to his feet and draws his phaser. Picard whacks Worf on the nose with a newspaper and tells him to put his toys away, because blowing a hole in the viewer isn’t going to get rid of Q any faster. (It is at this very moment that the Big Dumb Stupid Old Worf drinking game is born, one of the few Star Trek drinking games to span multiple series and movies, joining the infamous “Transporter Has Capabilities Never Seen Before Or Since” and “Scene With The Character The Writers Really Hate But The Goddamn Suits Made Us Include” hangover-makers.) Q tells Picard that he needs to solve the Mystery of Farpoint within 24 hours, or he will be summarily judged by Captain Q's Kangaroo Court, where he faces death beneath an avalanche of ping pong balls.

And…

Hey, speaking of things that are lame, here comes Wesley Crusher, who is so busy talking about how awesome the holodeck is, he falls right into some of its totally awesome and entirely realistic water, soaking his awesome brown sweater in the process. Luckily for Wes, he has a closet that is filled with those horrible things, and in the very next scene, we see he's changed into a spiffy green number (which, if I must be honest here, was the sweater I hated wearing the least. Yes, it was ugly as hell, but it was much more comfortable than the other ones, and was nearly baggy and lame enough to pass for something you'd wear if you were 14 in 1987 and had a huge crush on Debbie Gibson. Not that I ever did. The posters were just up there for show, man. And I did the autographs myself with the same marker I used to draw tanks for Ogre. Uh . . . I’ve over-shared again, haven’t I?)

So, it isn't hilarious, but it's amusing, and that's just fine with me, especially because it means I'm nearly finished with all the heavy lifting on Volume One. All I have to do is set a course for The Last Outpost and make the synopsis less tedious (very hard to do because the episode is two things: tedious and more tedious). Once that's done, I go through the whole thing one more time to polish it up and make sure that the behind the scenes stuff is just right.

I'm still on my release schedule (well, maybe a few days behind) but it's all coming together. This is pretty awesome, because on the horizon, I can see my favorite milestone on the creative path: "Holy shit it's done and I finally get to share it with readers."

status updates and a keyboard cat

Posted on By Wil

This gets less funny over time, but it made me laugh really hard the first time I saw it (NSFW language):


There are many more, of varying quality and levels of offensiveness, at Play him off, Keyboard Cat.

Somebody once said that you can’t successfully write a blog and a book at the same time. I am here as supporting evidence for this claim.

Status updates:

Happiest Days Expanded Edition – This would have been turned in to Subterranean Press 6 weeks ago, but OpenOffice totally fucked me on formatting and notes, so my copyeditor and I have had to go back to the old “print it out and mark it up with a red pen” method of editing that takes considerably longer. I may have to get [choke] Word for Mac [gag] [bloat] so this doesn’t happen again. Yes, I am extremely annoyed.

Memories of the Future – Rewrites are almost completely finished. Cover design is pretty much nailed down, and interior design should be finalized shortly. I have to tackle The Last Outpost, which I’m dreading, but if I could make Farpoint entertaining, I’m sure I can do the same with it. I’m still on pace for a late spring/early summer release.

Convert Sunken Treasure to Various eFormats – This is harder than I thought it would be, and is temporarily delayed while I finish the other projects on this list.

Project X – Nothing to see here. Move along.

I’m not going to lie to you, Marge: I’m especially excited about Project X.

(keyboard cat via Fark)

“if you treat her right, she’ll always bring you home.”

Posted on By Wil

On Twitter yesterday, I said, "And now, a useless fact, brought to you by 'I need a break from rewriting Encounter At Farpoint': I loved Mike Tyson's Punchout on NES."

I was flooded with replies that were variations of "WTF? Rewriting Encounter at Farpoint? Why?" I can see how, lacking context, it would appear that I'm actually rewriting the script, instead of the entry that's going into Memories of the Future.

Whoops. My bad. My efforts to clarify my error lead only to further confusion, so I just stopped talking about it, confident that the Internet would quickly turn its attention to something else. I was not disappointed.

Anyway, as if being sick for five days didn't suck up enough of my time, work on Memories of the Future has brought everything else in my creative life to a complete halt. I'm not complaining, because it's been a lot of fun, but holy shit The Last Outpost and Encounter at Farpoint are just killing me. It turns out that there are "so bad they're good" episodes in season one (Justice and Naked Now, for example) that are a lot of fun to write about, but The Last Outpost is so bad it's just … bad. It's an incredible challenge to find humor in it, and I have a new appreciation for what the crew at MST3K did for so many years with some truly horrible films.

Encounter at Farpoint, which I've been working on exclusively for a little over a week now, isn't the best, but it's certainly not the worst. However, it has given me a new appreciation for the challenges inherent to writing a pilot. A pilot's main purpose is to set up the series, and introduce the characters and the world to the audience. There's a lot at stake, because the pilot also has to convince the audience that the show (or in my case, my book) is going to be worth their time.

It's kind of poetic justice that the entry that starts my book, which is one of the most important for me to get just right, is based on an episode that I mock pretty mercilessly for struggling so hard to get it just right. Just like with a pilot, the stakes are really high: It's really important to me that the entry for Farpoint lets the reader know right away that this book is going to be a mixture of memories and insights, wrapped up in a tasty candy shell of snarky humor … and it's not nearly as easy to do that with Farpoint as it is with Hide and Q. There's a ton of pressure to knock this one into the seats, and it makes silencing the ever-present internal voices of dissent more difficult than it usually is. I got some good advice from a good friend today, though, that I'm attempting to embrace. He said that when you're doing creative things, it's really easy to over think it and talk yourself out of doing things, because nothing is as safe as not taking the creative risk at all. He said that we creative people have to push past that, and take the chances over and over again, because even if things don't work out the way we hope, we'll learn something from the process. I guess it's sort of like Gretzky saying that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Well, here's some of the stuff I've been working on lately. It's from Farpoint part one, right after the Enterprise runs into Q's giant computer graphics net thing:

Well, now the Enterprise has a problem: fight, or run away? Lieutenant Commander Bedemere wants to build a large wooden rabbit, but Picard decides that the best way to protect his crew is to do a little of both. He’ll take the ship to maximum warp speed, drive it away from the mysterious net, and separate the saucer section from the stardrive section, because this isn’t your mommy’s Enterprise, bitches. This spaceship comes apart, just like that TIE fighter you got for Christmas in 1979.

All the families head up into the saucer section, which will be commanded by Lt. Worf. (Did we mention that there are families aboard the Enterprise D? Yeah, turns out that there are, because Starfleet did this study and realized that space herpes – also known as Kirk’s Syndrome – spreads considerably slower if its officers have their spouses and children on board their ship. Also, who wouldn't want to drag their entire family with them out into the potentially dangerous and totally unexplored mass of the galaxy? I know, right?!) Meanwhile Picard takes Tasha, Data, and Troi with him into the stardrive section, where he assumes control of the battle bridge, and makes plans for a sexy party, complete with a precious spandex sailor suit.

The mysterious net turns into a mysterious shiny ball that chases the Enterpise at mysteriously fast speeds. After a mysterious minute, Picard orders the emergency saucer separation, a process which, though untested at warp speed and therefore theoretically deadly and dangerous, is made kind of silly by our knowledge as the audience that it's obviously going to work. It doesn’t reach Star Trek: The Motion Picture levels of excess, but it sure comes close, especially when the saucer section pulls away, and the stardrive section makes an actual burning-rubber-hot-rod-racing sound as it turns past the camera and heads back to face off against Q.

Once they get there, Picard surrenders (hey, he isFrench!) and Q transports the crew to a late-21st-century courtroom, where the cast of Time Bandits prepares to watch them stand trial for "the multiple and grievous savageries of the species."

Well, this should be interesting . . . except it really isn't. It's page after page of Q and Picard arguing about mankind. Q says we’re a bunch of assholes, and Picard says that we’re actually pretty awesome once you get to know us. It's not as preachy as some future episodes will be, but it could get to its point much more quickly than it does, and it delays what the audience really wants: getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers while solving real life problems. Eventually, even Q gets bored with the scene, and sends them all back to the battle bridge after declaring that the fate of humanity rests on how Picard handles his encounter at Farpoint. Oh? Is that all? Listen, Q, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but in Starfleet, we're pretty awesome once you get to know us. We save the universe and fuck the green alien chick twice before breakfast, every day. We’ve got this one, dude.

I'm not entirely satisfied, but it's almost there. I wrote the Farpoint posts for TV Squad after I'd already done like 8 or 9 other entries, and there was a real sense of fatigue in them when I grabbed the originals. I took all of the "omg this is so lame just get on with it" stuff out, because that isn't the tone I want for the whole book, and I didn't want someone who starts reading it to think that this is going to be Wil Slags Star Trek for 50,000 words, because it's not that at all. I still need to find more funny in these two specific episodes, but I think I may just have to accept that Farpoint and The Last Outpost aren't going to be as entertaining as some of the other entries in the book. I have to remember not to let perfect be the enemy of good.