Founding Mother

Travel well, Committee Member Joan Winston.

Who'd have dreamed that a person's editorship of a Star Trek fanzine would be mentioned among their accomplishemts in a New York Times obituary.

Tricks of the Trade

I was up in the attic the other day, looking for things to donate to an upcoming charity auction. (Yes, Highlander fans, this is the same infamous magic attic from which I used to bring forth all those outtakes and behind-the-scenes clips that I showed at conventions, the ones that are now on the DVD sets as "Lost Footage.") I was momentarily confused to find in one of the boxes of Souvenirs/Auction gak a paperback copy of David Gerrold's book, "The Making of The Trouble with Tribbles."

But then I remembered that in my 5-cons-a-year period, I often told the story in my Breaking into Screenwriting or Script to Screen panels of how I, as a youngster, learned about the TV biz. And it was from David Gerrold. His columns in Starlog magazine, "Rumblings" and "Soarings," discussed contemporary movies from a writing standpoint, and it was from him that I learned about MacGuffins. I still remember a column he wrote about the disrespect to the viewer inherent in killing a beloved character, and then resurrecting them, thereby rendering the whole thing an emotional psych-out. And a column in which he took a film to task for its lack of a climax, causing me to examine my own nascent writing and realize I suffered from a similar problem. I had a chance to lavish this praise upon him one time when, at the age of 17, I stood in line for his autograph. Hearing my story, he nudged the fellow sitting next to him at the signing table (if memory serves, it was first-time-novelist David Brin) and teased, "Hey, she says I helped her reach climax!" I turned bright red and fled.

David Gerrold's Inside Star Trek and Making of the Trouble With Tribbles books were invaluable resources for me. The anecdotes he told gave a realistic glimpse into the process of being a TV writer and producing a TV show. He tells a story about having to cut 12 pages out of his Tribbles script after it went through the typing pool and got properly formatted. It was an eye-opening reminder about the realities of production -- the primary goal is to have a certain number of filmed minutes, ones that can be produced in the number of days you have, with the resources you have. Being clever or touching or downright effing brilliant is great, but first you have to have something you can make and show. You might think this is self-evident, but in fact many beginning writers -- and even many employed writers -- don't have that internal radar for how many sets, how many characters, how many pages you can really have. David Gerrold helped me develop mine, before he ever met me.

Today, there are hundreds of resources for getting a glimpse inside the industry. Instead of just a handful of Behind the Scenes memoirs, there are scores of detailed DVD commentaries and insider interviews. There are writers and showrunners that have their own avid fandoms. I've mentioned before my impression that many of today's emerging writers learned their impression of the Way Things Work from reading Buffy insider articles. Because of their ubiquity, the buzzwords that that writing staff used for certain things have become generally accepted terms. It gives newcomers a leg up, I think, when they come in already knowing the concepts of Hanging a Lantern on a problem (my early mentors used a different phrase for the same concept -- our watchword was, if you have a plot hole, Drive A Truck Through It) or using a Placeholder or House Number while searching for a cleverer solution that achieves the desired result.

If you love TV, you're probably reading this kind of article or listening to DVD commentaries for enjoyment. But if you want to make TV, don't underestimate the educational value. Listen to the stories about how an idea took form in the writers room, or about how something was changed at the last minute when a location was unavailable or an actor broke their arm. That's your future. That's the fun part of the job.

And don't forget to share your stories, like David Gerrold did, with a new bunch of kids looking for their own way to reach climax.

Going, Going... Boldly Gone

I was sad to hear that Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton is closing on September 1st. Fortunately for me, I heard about the closing in time to plan a road trip to see the attraction one last time. I'm astonished to learn how many people -- SF Fans, even Trek fans -- had never been, or didn't even know it existed. On the other hand, I didn't know that there was a Trek CON at the Hilton each August, or I might have planned said Road Trip to include it.

In the end, though, heading for Vegas on a Tuesday two weeks before closing proved to be the ideal plan. We had the I-15, and the Experience, largely to ourselves. My companions on this adventure were my college pal Shadow (a game designer/recovering lawyer with one of those mimetic memories that comes in handy when playing Star Trek Trivia games) and my fellow TV writer Lisa Klink (whose years on Voyager make her the ideal companion for debating the sociological implications of replicator technology).

Colloquially known as "The Star Trek Experience" -- a subtle difference, I admit -- the attraction consists of two rides, the original motion-controlled Klingon Encounter that was installed in 1998 and the more recent Borg Invasion in 4-D. (The 4th Dimension apparently being "touch.") There is also a "museum" of props and a timeline of the Trek Universe, which were originally installed to entertain customers during an hour or so of standing in line for the rides. Now that a single ticket is 'ride all day' and the admissions don't cover the electricity costs, according to one employee, there's no line to speak of, but the museum portion is still fun to look at. It's not clear which of the props on display are real and which are replicas, but that doesn't take away from the fun of peering through a case at the "Stone Knives and Bearskins" vacuum-tube-and-tricorder array from City On The Edge of Forever, or at Jean Luc Picard's family scrapbook, fortunately spared from the fiery wreckage of the Enterprise D.

Shadow and I had each visited the attraction years earlier, but neither of us had seen the new Borg ride. Lisa, on the other hand, had written it, so she had her own reasons for indulging in a mid-week weekend to wish it farewell. I'll bet she got a kick out of watching our faces as SPOILER REDACTED and SPOILER REDACTED.


The food at Quark's Bar didn't live up to my memories from my first visit, but these days I don't eat Onion Rings (excuse me, Rings of Betazed) and HamBorgers (hee) as freely as I once did. Reading the silly punny menu was still fun, though. ("James Tea Kirk." Sounds refreshing!) Sadly, the shopping Promenade from DS9 was largely closed -- apparently, most of the merch had been bought out by the Convention two weeks earlier. No sign of the "I'm with Illogical" t-shirt I'd seen on the website. I was able to get the Phaser Water Pistol I wanted, though, so no complaints. It's actually pretty nicely made; it looks great on the shelf at home next to the Han Solo Water Blaster I've had for years. Finally, the Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate can be settled -- with water!

By now, I'd guess they're selling out down to the bare walls -- when Shadow and I came back through Vegas on Friday after continuing our road trip to take in a Shakespeare Festival in the next state over, there was a price tag of $4300 (SOLD) on the Borg Queen statue, and the sort-of-life-sized maquette of the Gorn that had stood outside Quark's on Tuesday had disappeared -- presumably sold as well. I say sort-of-life-sized in that I hope the real Gorn was taller than me. I'm sorry that I failed to get a picture of our little troupe with old greenhead before he got sold. After all, I seem to be responsible for the fact that my friend Darla's 19-month-old daughter knows that the cow says moo, the dog says woof, and the Gorn says RAAR. (Thanks to Kerry for the Beanie Baby Gorn, which I'm now told also came from the ST: Experience shops!)

When we were there, the curving wall behind the shops was completely covered with hand-written letters from people, expressing their sadness that The Experience is closing. Some were from people young enough to have grown up there. Many had traced their hands on the paper in the iconic Vulcan salute. A number of the letter-writers mourned a tradition of visiting yearly with friends. Those touched me particularly, because it's not The Experience, but the experience of visiting The Experience, that those people grieve. It's my favorite aspect of Conventions, the constant reunion with other con-goers, birds of a feather forming lasting attachments for which the event is the excuse, not the reason. It's the same dynamic whether it's Trekkies at The Experience, Dead Heads on the road, Xena Fans coming to Los Angeles en masse this past January to join the WGA picket lines, or James Joyce Scholars spending Bloomsday in Dublin.

Vegas isn't that far from LA. Hotels there are cheap. I find myself wishing we'd taken advantage of The Experience while it stood, had planned yearly rendezvouses there with friends from near and far. I'm glad we at least got there for this farewell visit. Too often, "Hey, we should..." turns into "I wish we had..." It's always nice to actually find the time and motivation and come back saying "I'm glad we did." When it comes to road trip adventures with friends, I don't think I've ever come back saying I wished I hadn't.

Speaking of Gillian Anderson

Yesterday at the Rose Bowl Flea Market, I saw the Barbie & Ken X-Files Collector Set for sale. Okay, I'm proudbarassed to say I recognized Barbie as Scully at 30 yards. The friend I was with wondered what qualified the doll as "Barbie." He had a good point -- she has short red hair and really is more like a 12-inch-doll of Gillian Anderson as Scully, with Barbie branding.

The Barbie & Ken Classic Star Trek set, by contrast, consists of actual Ken and Barbie, in gold command shirt and red minidress respectively, along with a cardboard bridge and cardboard Kirk and Spock to scale. (And yes, the reason I know this is because I own one. What can I say, I have a fascination with clever licensing.)

Being the Marketing Geek that I am, this really has me wondering about the decision process behind these Collector's Editions. Are there different lines at the manufacturer, depending whether the release is a licensed doll or just props and outfits for the existing dolls? I think I personally prefer the latter -- Barbie in that case is a fan like us, with a Star Trek costume and an understanding boyfriend.

Because the "Baywatch" Barbie (and Ken) were in stores while I was working on Baywatch, I have quite a few of them, in their red bathing suits and lifeguard jackets. (As an aside, the Crew Jackets on Baywatch were identical to the wardrobe worn by the characters, with the addition of an embroidered logo on the back. As such, they are so similar to REAL LA County Lifeguard jackets that we were specifically asked NOT to wear them to the beach, to avoid being mistaken for Lifeguards in an emergency.)

My Baywatch Barbie lifeguards are out of their boxes and on display in my guest room, where they get played with frequently by my under-10 visitors. I have both the original and the African-American versions of Baywatch Barbie and Ken, and two beach jeeps for them to ride in. (I recently realized that the plastic jeeps include little plastic seatbelts. Safety first!) Since each doll came with different props, among them they have quite the assemblage of gak -- whistles, binoculars, cameras, sun visors, jetskis, a pith helmet, little tevas, a dolphin (?), and of course the iconic red 'rescue can.' On my trip to the Flea Market, I saw a NIB Baywatch Ken for sale, with a different collection of stuff! So my little lifeguard family is about to get a Frisbee, a boom box, and a wind up Waverunner with "Realistic Motor Sounds." Yeah Baby. Five Bucks well spent.

Ken's Tevas

Welder Needed

Paramount (and apparently Intel) had an interesting game set up at their booth at ComiCon, which I unfortunately didn't discover until Sunday. Paramount's booth was not near the other big studios and not well-marked on the map, but they did have an ad in the program book, which I finally noticed on Saturday night, urging people to come to their booth to form a Construction Crew and win a prize. The gimmick was, they handed out scratch-off cards every hour, which had job titles on them like "Gravity Engineer," "Electrician," etc. If you formed a team of eight, one of each type, you would win Star Trek laptop bags. They had excellent intentions with this game, which ideally would have resulted in people clipping the cards to their badges and spending the weekend scanning other people's ID to put together a team. In this crowd, this could easily have turned into a self-designed LARP, and lifelong friendships could have resulted.

In the event, the real-life result was that people collected stacks of the cards, and if they managed to put together all 8, they grabbed a bunch of friends or passing strangers and collected their prize. All of this was explained to me by a fellow attendee holding a sign that said "Welder Needed," which I thought at first meant he was an exhibitor with a broken display. But no, he needed a virtual welder to help him build an imaginary Enterprise.

I hung around for the card distribution, hoping to get a Welder card for my new friend, but both cards I was given said "Inspector" on them, which seemed appropriate. Then one of the booth staffers explained to me that I could take my photo at a laptop station in the booth and get a construction team ID, and if I did, I'd receive in the mail a 4-part poster for the new Star Trek movie. Considering that around the corner in the other half of the booth people were elbowing one another in the face to collect that very same 4-part poster one piece at a time, I found this hilarious. (I got two yellows and no blue.)

I was gratified to see that the crew chief I'd been chatting with found a Welder in the crowd. He'd worked for it.

Communicator Ettiquette

In the wake of my thorough enjoyment of William Shatner's "Star Trek Memories," audiobook-style, I'm making a little summer project of watching the re-mastered ST:TOS on TV Land. So shiny, so colorful! Of course, I orginally watched most of these episodes on my mother's black & white TV in the 70's, so the saturated colors aren't part of my personal sense memory of the show. And to tell the truth, there are a number of episodes I haven't seen since then, making them practically new to me. I was certainly struck anew by the still-relevant political commentary of "A Taste of Armageddon" the other day. (That's the one where the war is conducted bloodlessly, thus diminishing the incentive to find peace.)

For a certain group of people, inside stories about Star Trek are how we learned how television was made. I credit David Gerrold's "Inside"/"Making Of" books for my earliest understanding of script formatting, the notes process, and production realities. For the current generation, I believe that Buffy fandom served the same purpose of illuminating the process.

So there I am, blissfully watching "Errand of Mercy." And there's Kirk, in the middle of an impassioned plea to the Organian Council, when his communicator beeps. And what does he do? He answers it! Of course, it's only through 21st century hindsight that it seems like poor etiquette, but holy crap, any fool knows you don't answer your cell phone in the middle of a meeting! What a boor!

I try to cast my mind back to the days before cell phones. In a world where a ubiquitous pocket communicator was the stuff of fantasy, it must have seemed perfectly natural that when that thing beeps, it takes priority. And I suppose even today, in a military context, if the line to HQ or from the troops buzzes, you don't let it go to voice mail. Still, it was pretty jarring to see Kirk demonstrate so little respect for the people he was there to "help," that he would leave them hanging while he took a call.