Trek XI Script Is Done

Sy Fy Portal has recently reported that the writing duo of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orchi have finished the Trek XI script. This film will dramatize Kirk's earliest missions.

Those who've read my other posts on this subject are aware that I feel it's a mistake to reinvent Kirk and the rest of the original series gang rather than to press ahead with new characters in a new century.

Also, I'm skeptical of director JJ Abrams. When I review his work to date, he starts out with some interesting premises, then jumps to another project rather than stays to develop what he started and take it to another level.

Alias fizzled after the first two seasons and I feel that Lost is losing it. Six Degrees and What About Brian both got cancelled.

And if this one Trek film turns out to be half-way decent, what will Paramount do with the franchise? Rehash Kirk's adventures?

IMHO, Star Trek, unlike Batman, James Bond and other franchises is about the future, which offers a wider tapestry for stories than franchises, which are set in the present.

I'll be curious to see how the films turns out when it's released in Christmas 2008.

Battlestar Galactica Tidbits

Sy Fy Portal recently reported on how actor Michael Hogan is unhappy with the decision of the Galactica producers to turn him and other characters in the Final Five. The Cylon gods.

I share Hogan's view of the direction his character was taken.

I feel that the device of revealing people to be cylons on the show has been over and misused.

That stemmed in part from the writing staff's inability to generate enough dramatic episodes in Season 3 because they had only the humans of the Colonial fleet and the cylons to work with. The ratings in the second half of the third season dropped with the filler episodes.

If aliens were introduced, actor James Olmos (Admiral Adama) would leave.

To work around this, I feel that the Colonial fleet could run into other humans over the course of their quest for Earth. That's a device the original series used with great success in its second season--before it got axed for being too expensive to produce.

I'd love to see what happen if the democratic Colonials, who were searching for another clue to Earth's location, were to wander into a sector of space controlled by an advanced human totalitarian empire that wanted to enslave them.

We'll never know since the fourth season will be the last, and I don't believe that the show's producers will go that route.

Nichevo.

Larry Hodges Critique

This past weekend, I got a critique on my "The Way of the Peacemaker" opus from an emerging fantasy writer, Larry Hodges. Someone whom I met by chance on Critters in 2005 and have had the fortune of dealing with. He's had several short stories published and is working on his first novel. I'm looking forward to seeing what he turns out down the road.

Anywho, Larry pointed out some strengths and bugs that helped me fine tune the story for Critters and Taos before I shoot it off to WOTF. A few small changes, and it's so much better. I feel really good about this draft.

Thanks Larry!

Sit Rep

Let's see...

I've recently finished writing the latest draft of my "The Way of the Peacemaker" short SF story for WOTF.

Woohoo!

It's 7900 words. I feel pretty good about this draft. I've sent it to Critters for critiquing and to Walter Jon Williams as the first story of mine to be read at my upcoming Taos workshop.

I'd also received a summons to report for jury selection on 7-13-07 for possible jury duty during the week of 7-16-07. Thing is the Taos workshop runs from 7-8-07 to 7-21-07.

So I faxed a letter explaining my situation and got in touch with the judge's clerk this morning. I've been rescheduled for either September or October.

Huzzah!

And I'm also coming up on the 3rd week of a 6 week course on how to create my own film production company. Very illuminating.

It's fun to see how one can begin to assemble the pieces of one's own fiction/film corporate entity devoted to one's own material.

Time to go back to the grind now.