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Old 11-09-2020, 03:53 AM
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Lately I've been going through my collection of Trek non-fiction, mostly from the '80s and '90s. Among these are Star Trek Phase II: The Lost Series. I thought I might quote a few sections from the writing guide with my comments. As usual the italics are from the book (copyright Pocket Books 1997, etc.)....


What is a Star Trek Story?

Our stories are about people (who act believably). Star Trek is not about science and gadgetry. All good stories are about people and science fiction is no exception. The more believable the people, the better the story.


This is where Enterprise failed, in my opinion. The people just aren't believable in the roles they hold.



Our regulars are heroes. They believe that their word and their oath is their bond. They believe that there are principles worth a life of discomfort and danger and even carry the "old fashioned" belief that there are things even worth dying for if necessary.

Oh, the Janeway jokes we could compile on this subject.



The Teaser. We open with action, always establishing a strong jeopardy, need, or other "hook".


Even TNG failed with this one a few times. Worf's Klingon measles come to mind immediately.



The U.S.S. Enterprise is a spaceship, official designation "starship class".


Ugh. Maybe in the TOS era you could justify "starship=Constitution Class", however tenuously. By the era of the movies this is patently ridiculous.



Warp factor one is the speed of light...warp factor two is actually eight times the speed of light, warp factor three is twenty-four times the speed of light, warp factor four is sixty-four times the speed of light, and so on.


This is basically the TOS warp scale, except warp three is actually supposed to be twenty-seven times the speed of light. I hope this was just a typo.


Phaser fire can also be set for proximity explosion and act somewhat like "depth charges."


I'm scratching my head on this one. Torpedoes are firmly established in the canon by now, and the differences were a plot point in STTMP.


The entry on Xon tried to differ him from Spock by stating that instead of suppressing his emotions he'll try to find his emotions to better relate to the crew. An interesting twist on Data, if you ask me.



Kirk sometimes refers to [Decker] as "First", which is naval parlance for ship's "First Lieutenant," which would have been Decker's title in the days of sailing ships.


I've discussed army vs. naval ranks before, and this is another holdover of army ranks. Insert rants on Number One, UESPA, etc. here. You do have to admit that "First" makes a bit more sense than "Number One."


McCoy's entry uses "Senior Ship's Surgeon" for his official title. I've remarked on the difference between "ship's surgeon" and "Chief Medical Officer" before. It turns out that the ship's surgeon title has closer ties to the history of navys, as opposed to chief medical officers and the army.



Uhura's entry mentions the African Confederacy, which is weird because the TOS series bible specifically mentions the United States of Africa. You'd think a Phase II series bible would copy-paste the Phase I bible and then make the needed changes. By the time of TNG it's mentioned that Geordi was born in the African Confederation.



Sulu's entry still uses Oriental and Occidental. Insert collar-tugging here. Ahem.



The transporter range is mentioned as still being the TOS-era 16,000 miles. Hmm. A big deal in STTMP was that every system onboard had had a huge upgrade, wasn't it?


It's mentioned that there are seventeen Starbases/Starfleet Command Centers, each with a Commodore. Given the preponderance of Starbases in later eras, it's amazing to think of how much smaller the 23rd-century Federation was.



Starfleet Command isn't mentioned to be in any particular location. It won't be placed in San Francisco until Star Trek IV.


Stardates are established at one unit=one day, except for external factors, of course.



One thing that's interesting is that Enterprise's second five-year mission is specified as being in one sector. The size of a sector was never pinned down (the Writer's Didn't Care), but I think we can all agree that "sector" is the wrong term here. Probably they confused "sector" with the larger "quadrant" (not the one-fourth of a galaxy version, FYI) used in TOS.


We are not aware of "officers" and "enlisted men" categories.

Weird. "Crewman" existed in TOS, we saw them.


We avoid saluting and other annoying medieval leftovers.

Really?


U.S.S. still means "United Space Ship" in the bible.
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