In Print and Available to You: CAT's Contribution to Thrilling Wonder Stories Hits the Stands

So many days it feels like you are beating your head against a brick wall or jumping at an impenetrable glass ceiling. So when something you do actually sees the light of day, it's cause for celebration.

Today I got an exciting package in the mail -- my author copies for the article I wrote in THRILLING WONDER STORIES, volume 2. I was commissioned to write a behind the scenes history of the making of the "World Enough and Time" Internet Star Trek episode we made for Star Trek: New Voyages, which is now called Star Trek: Phase II.

On this blog, you have seen some of my writings about our filming of this episode with a crew of half Hollywood professionals and half Star Trek fans from around the world. This book's article is based on different interviews than the ones I put up on the Net when I was doing publicity for the Premiere of the streaming event. Those were individual interviews which you can find at This Writer Wrote, since the TVGuide.com pages where many of them were originally printed is no more. In this book is a perspective of the entire creation of the episode, so I interviewed a variety of participants, including GEORGE TAKEI.

It was great fun to do these interviews and great fun to write the article and I think you'll have great fun reading it if you choose to go on the journey with me.

And to make it even better, I'm here in the company of accomplished and prestigious Science Fiction and Star Trek writers -- many of whom I've read when I was younger. You can see me listed among them here on the back page, with a description of what I've written. For instance, Diane Duane... I loved reading her first original novel, Door into Fire, an entertaining book I've never forgotten -- how neat is it to be in the company of someone who gave me hours of pleasure many years ago.

This is not the first thing I've had published, but it is a milestone for me anyway, because this is the first time, I've had something like this published. And how cool is it that it is available on Amazon where I buy so many of my own books and DVDs. Hmm, I wonder if I could do a search on my name there and come up with this book -- probably not, since I'm just a contributor, not the editor, who is WINSTON ENGLE.

Restoring the fifties pulp fiction magazine to its former glory was Winston's dream and he has succeeded admirably. This is his second volume and they are both books to be proud of. He did a great job with them and we should all applaud him for it.

If you want to take the journey behind the scenes of making this award-winning, Hugo-and-Nebula-nominated Star Trek episode with me, you can find it here at Amazon or here at Barnes and Noble. You can even find my name mentioned in the product descriptions at both sites. You can also visit the Official Website Winston has set up for his book. I haven't had the opportunity to read the other contributions yet, but considering the heavy-hitters of science fiction that they are, I'm sure their stories are well worth reading. I know I look forward to delving into them.

If you do read my article, please come back and share your thoughts about it as well.

If It's Online, Give Me Mine

That was the rallying cry of some of the actors at the SAG rally today in front of the office building which houses both SAG and AFTRA. The purpose was to show solidarity in the face of AMPTP's stubbornness to negotiate a decent contract with the actors union. And since AFTRA had already signed the contract the AMPTP has been pushing down all the guilds' throats, it was also a rally to encourage the dual cardholders to vote against the contract when it comes up for vote.

The actors were not standing alone. Just like they came out and marched with the writers, many writers returned the favor and came out to march with them

It was an amazing crowd, considering that it was a workday and the writers had already signed their deals, so they would have to be back in the office and typing away on the computers. The sidewalk was crowded with people.

I must admit that as a non-SAG/AFTRA member, I don't know all the issues. I know that one of the main ones concerns residuals for product made-for and streamed online, in new media, when it is ad-supported. In other words, when you view an episode or film for free online, but have to sit through commercials, the studios are making money from showing those commercials in front and within their episode, film, or behind-the-scenes video. The actors feel that they should have a percentage of that revenue, in the same time-honored format as they do for ad-supported reruns on our free television -- residuals. What has contributed to making these negotiations even harder is that this is one of the issues AFTRA yielded on in their negotiation with the AMPTP. Just like they have done each time they have signed contracts poaching shows that SAG says should be under SAG jurisdiction, and would be if AFTRA didn't undercut SAG requirements in order to line union pockets. After all, it is good bottom line for the studios to go after the lowest contract they can get.

To the left is ALAN ROSENBERG, president of SAG exhorting the crowd to vote no on the AFTRA contract with the AMPTP. Love him as an actor, but here he looks very tired. You can tell the negotiations are taking a huge physical toll on the man.

To the right is KEITH CARRADINE who explained what SAG meant to him and his family. His family is a venerable dynasty of actors - patriarch John Carradine, brother Robert Carradine, half-brother David Carradine and Michael Bowen, nieces Ever Carradine and Kansas Carradine, and adopted brother Bruce Carradine. All are long time members of SAG.

Another issue involves actors being forced to hawk products within the scripts of their shows without their agreement. This might seem trivial when it concerns whether the character drinks Coke or Pepsi, but it can affect an aspect of actor's gainful employment. After all, Pepsi is not going to hire an actor to hawk Pepsi, if his popular character is seen drinking Coke on the series.

What's interesting is that I thought there was a law that said they had to use what they hawk, or at least not be against using it. But perhaps that has also been a casualty of our present government.

What is perhaps of greater concern is that without being able to say yea or nay, an actor can be forced to hawk within the confines of a story something he doesn't believe in. Like guns for someone who is for gun control. Or an abortion pill for someone who believes in Right to Life for Fetuses.

The AMPTP wants actors to have to individually negotiate that right at contract signing time, and anyone with a reasonable grasp on reality knows what happens then. If the actor doesn't sign the way the studio wants, they'll just go on to the next actor.

Of course this doesn't apply to big name actors who can dictate their own contracts. But then they aren't the ones that the SAG contracts are designed to protect, because frankly, they don't need them -- they have their own clout to get the provisions they want into their contracts.

To the left here we see actors GEORGE TAKEI and MARG HELGENBERGER listening intently to the words of WGA president PATRIC VERRONE. WGA negotiator DAVID YOUNG also spoke encouragement at the rally.

I congratulated George on his upcoming marriage and then asked something that has been on my mind. If the AFTRA contract was a bad deal, and George assured me that it was, why weren't the 44,000 dual-card holders speaking out against it?

He assures me they were, but they were being shouted down by the other members of AFTRA who weren't actors, but radio performers or broadcasters.

To the right are some of my favorite writers marching in support of SAG: GILLIAN HORVATH and ANTOINETTE STELLA.

DAVID CLENNON is also a favorite actor of mine and he was very intent on today's activities -- talking to people about how he could best help.

He was one of the actors who was out on the picket lines for the WGA Strike as often as he could.

Hopefully, this contract negotiations will get settled soon, for everybody's benefit. People are really hurting here. Many people who got laid off during the writers strike are still not back to work because of this defacto lock-out. And while the union which goes on strike has a Strike Fund to dip into to help out its hurting members, the other unions can not use their Strike Funds to help their members, because they are not on strike. Even though there's no question that their members are affected by a Strike or a Lockout, legalities won't allow them to open up their coffers to help their people. Hence people are losing their homes and jeopardizing everything they own and hold dear.

Pray that both sides come to a fair and equitable deal sooner rather than later.

Reliving the Star Trek Experience in Thrilling Wonder Stories

This August you should be able to buy a very special edition of Thrilling Wonder Stories, because it will have an article written by yours truly here. The publisher of this paperback science fiction anthology, Winston Engle, approached me to write an article which would capture the experience we had making the online webisode "World Enough and Time" for Star Trek New Voyages.

It was great fun to do, for not only did I get to glean from my memories, but I interviewed a few key others who also participated in making the webisode to get their thoughts as well. To give you the full flavor of being there, I chose to talk to Star Trek iconic actor, GEORGE TAKEI, the webisode's co-writer/director MARC SCOTT ZICREE, co-writer MICHAEL REAVES, UPM DON BALDERAMOS, makeup artist/body double KATIA MANGANI, and script supervisor CARLOS PEDRAZA.

George Takei admonished me a tiny bit for calling him an icon, saying that word conjured up for him someone dead or someone soon to be dead, and he planned to live a long time. After all, his grandmother lived to be over 100. So I corrected myself and called him a living icon, which he then teased me about for the rest of the interview.

Thrilling Wonder Stories was a well-known pulp science fiction anthology in the 1950s. An admirer of the pulp magazine, Winston set about acquiring the rights to revive it. The perfect-bound soft-cover paperback has a mixture of reprinted science fiction stories and new stories from such luminaries as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov in the first issue. Prestigious company to be in. The cover art is spectacular -- done by the illustrious Iain McCaig. I don't know what writers or artists will be in the pages of the second volume but I'm eagerly looking forward to finding out.

Our full-length hour webisode has garnered a lot of praise in Hollywood and around the world. It has won a TVGuide.com video award and is currently nominated for a Nebula.

It has been a project I've been proud to work on. And I'm proud of this article I've written. Please check it out when Thrilling Wonder Stories comes out. You'll be able to get it at amazon.com, where the first issue is available now. Then, please come back here and let me know what you thought. If you haven't seen the episode, please go to Star Trek:Phase II. It is well worth viewing. And let me know what you think.

Our Star Trek Webisode Garners an Award & I'm Too Busy on the Strike Line to Say So

As I write this, I'm watching Craig Ferguson's show. I don't usually watch talk shows, except in very rare occasions when I have nothing to do and one of my favorite actors is the guest. Not that I have anything against them, it's just that there's never enough time for me to do all the stuff I need to do, so I'm usually catching up on prime time shows this late at night.

Except that now that David Letterman and World Wide Pants respected writers enough to negotiate a deal with the WGA before coming back to work and they cared enough about all workers to be brave enough to break away from the pack, I'm going to show my support of their shows from now on. I love that both Letterman and Ferguson used the time to showcase the strike. And even more I'm happy to hear that their writers are planning to donate a portion of their salaries to the strike fund dedicated to help those in need due to the strike.

I especially enjoyed when Ferguson was composing a letter to his boss, David Letterman, complaining about bringing him back to work. He went on to say that if any of their writers didn't see the irony in what he was saying, then perhaps they were in the wrong profession... they should try the profession without humor or soul, and become a producer.

The one criticism I have is that he said he spent his strike 'vacation' learning to ski. Craig, you should be on the picket line. This is serious business, not a time to have fun.

However, this post was not intended to be about the strike, but about my life interruptus due to all the strike writing I'm doing and all the walking back and forth on the sidewalk carrying a sign like a street urchin. With pride I'd like to mention that our online webisode of Star Trek: New Voyages, "World Enough and Time", starring George Takei, which I've written about on this site, TVGuide.com and WordPress.com recently won an Online Video Award from TVGuide.

Well, when the nominations first came out and I was linked to vote on the awards, it was our episode "World Enough and Time" that was nominated and it was up against series like Battlestar Galactica, and I can't remember what else. It did seem odd to have a webisode up against series, but we were very proud that our little web episode was up against actual TV episodes which cost around $5 million each. A few weeks later, and I'm sure after many protests, the category was changed so it was the online series Star Trek: New Voyages up against the other series. No doubt that was the right and consistent thing to do, but my objection was that it was done midstream and not everyone who voted for the episode would have voted for the whole series. Many would, but you can't assume all would. You can view all the winners here: http://www.tvguide.com/Special/OnlineVideoAwards/default.aspx

Kudos to everyone who has worked on any of the Star Trek: New Voyages webisodes. You all deserve it for your consummate dedication, love and hard work. And I was very excited to be a part of it. I'm also excited and gratified that our webisode has garnered so much love and support. It's exciting to be part of a winning episode and a winning series. You can see the webisode I and my friends worked so hard on here: http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/

Also, our director, Marc Scott Zicree, wrote a guest column for TVGuide which I suppose serves as an acceptance speech for the award. You can read his thoughts here: http://www.tvguide.com/news/star-trek-voyages/071214-04

Exciting times to be part of an Internet adventure. Especially with the writers strike on. Many writers are looking for new avenues to reach audiences with the storytelling they love rather than submit to the stranglehold the studios would like to have on them. Star Trek: New Voyages and our webisode "World Enough and Time" demonstrates what can be done and how good it can look.

And if we could only get this strike over with, with a fair deal for the writers, then we can all go back to doing what we do best and what we love, and I can be more timely with my posting of these adventures.

On The Bridge of the Starship Enterprise -- Finally!

Four decades after the Starship Enterprise boldly went where no man has gone before, I finally made it to the Bridge of the Starship Enterprise and into the Captain's chair -- at least long enough for a picture.

Well, that's not completely true, I did make it onto the bridge and into Kirk's chair on the Paramount lot once, but it was in the dark and essentially in storage, courtesy of some young publicist who liked me back then, if you know what I mean.

Here, though, is a replica of the Enterprise so detailed and exact in Port Henry, NY that you think you have stepped into a time machine and been transported back to the 1960s. Apparently that has also been the reaction of those of the original cast and crew who have visited the sets of New Voyages in the last few years. "My god, it feels like I've stepped back into the 60s," was their common remark of awe.

New Voyages is the brainstorm of JAMES CAWLEY, a long time fan who started building sets in his grandfather's garage and also interned on one of the ST series in the costume dept. A man who obviously enjoys playing icons, he makes his money as an Elvis impersonator -- much of which he then funnels into making more authentic Star Trek sets and producing full-hour scripted Star Trek: the Original series episodes. I was told by several people during those long hours of filming that his Elvis show is one of the best, and that he tours with a full band and backup singers. And then pours it all back into his lifelong love of Star Trek.

I jumped aboard as script coordinator of this fourth episode when my friends and colleagues, MARC SCOTT ZICREE and MICHAEL REAVES wrote a fantastic script for Sulu called "World Enough... and Time", based on an idea that Michael pitched to Paramount thirty years ago. They wanted to do it back then as part of a second series featuring the non-top-three actors (read less expensive). They changed their minds and decided to do the movies instead. It's kind of like a "City on the Edge of Forever" for Sulu, but this time it's Sulu who has to sacrifice something he holds very dear to right the universe and save the Enterprise.

Not only did I fall in love with the script, but more importantly, GEORGE TAKEI did. With him aboard, several of us made the trek east to blend in with the fans who have been doing this for a pilot and three episodes before us, to lend the project our expertise and play out a fantasy that none of us thought we'd ever live.

I can't tell you how incredible this all felt. For those of us who didn't grow up in Hollywood and didn't know we'd eventually end up here in Hollywood, Star Trek provided us an avenue of expression. Many of us wrote stories, drew artwork, crafted and painted models. The more adventurous of us made song vids, in which images from multiple episodes of the show were married with the lyrics of a favorite song to tell a different story than the one the images came from.

With the digital revolution and the internet fans are now capable of mounting full-length episodes, complete with incredible special effects. I saw a work product DVD of some of the special effects from an earlier episode, and to my merely viewer eye, I couldn't tell the difference from those done by the TV series.

To give something to this incredible enterprise, I came to Port Henry to produce a behind-the-scenes documentary to celebrate this journey. I had great fun running around interviewing as many as the cast and crew as I could pull away from their work and get to sit down to talk to me. I was also planning on directing the shooting of footage, but I ended up needing to do very little of that -- because I had wonderful videographers with me that did most of it without prompting.

I had planned to give you all a running report in this blog -- a day by day account of what we were doing, but... and here's the beginning of our big city collision with rural America: No internet service. Not in any of the places we were. Some people could sit on the library's steps and tie into the library's wireless, but mine wouldn't recognize it. Of course, you could go in and use their computers, but the library functioned on small-town hours that didn't accommodate that we worked from about 10 am in the morning to 5-6 am the next morning. Yes, the glamour of Hollywood and working in TV -- no, no sleep. I was staying in a quaint B&B which didn't have a telephone or a TV in my room let alone internet. For 10 days, the entire world could have collapsed but as long as Port Henry was there, I wouldn't have known it.

So you're probably thinking, no games and no emails, big deal... Well, there are worse glitches than that. Since some of our computers are Macs and some are PCs -- with a variety of software on them, people in the industry are used to using the internet to bridge that incompatibility. My PC doesn't have Mac printer drivers on it but the Internet doesn't care. But here I couldn't just email the script revisions to the guy with the printer, and we couldn’t just tie into the internet to download the appropriate drivers onto my laptop.

But worse than that was the lack of cell phone coverage. Only Cingular and T-Mobile worked; Sprint and Verizon did not. So my cell phone worked and consequently mine got used a lot when we had to find someone or people wanted to check in with the people back home. The main problem though was that our working cell phones didn’t necessarily correspond with our available cars. This of course is not a problem for the actors – their schedules are set by the ADs and cars are always automatically dispatched to get them when they are needed. But the rest of us… it was a challenge to get to set each day. Sometimes, I got someone on set to dispatch a car for me, if people were already on set when I needed to go… sometimes I got the owner of the B&B to drive me and sometimes I prevailed on the generosity of the lady whose house I was supposed to stay in to come pick me and deliver me.

George had warned us that a friend of his had said it was like going into a third-world country to work and he shook his head and said, he’s been to third world countries and they weren’t like this beautiful rustic setting. And to look out the windows of the B&B into the nearby woods, it was beautiful, but I understand how the friend felt… as picturesque as the countryside was and as friendly as the people were, nowadays we are so totally dependent on aspects of technology that it’s difficult to function without them. At the end of the day, when filming is done, people do want to be able to contact their loved ones or go online to see what is happening in the world they left behind.

There were enormous challenges in the work environment. For example, dailies… the idea of dailies is to watch the footage that is shot the day before to make sure you have the coverage you need before you move too far away from the sets and scenes of that day, in case adjustments need to be made or things done over. Well, technology today allows you to look at the footage instantaneously, so that is not a problem, but… we needed to send the dailies to the editor back in LA each day. Except the nearest post office that could do an overnighter was in Fort Ticonderoga which was at least 20 miles away. And even so you’d have to have the package ready on set by about 1 pm to drive it there in time to make the pickup to an even larger post office. Forget FedEx.

And if you ran out of ink cartridges or paper or DVDs or water… that was another huge trek to Wal-Mart – to some degree we lived by Wal-Mart. But for all its challenges, we were making Star Trek. We had a young Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, and Chekov saying dialogue, making gestures, and doing things that were very much the characters we had grown to love with the original actors. And we had an exciting story that was also poignant and heartwarming and gut-wrenching – one that kept you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the footage, but it’s going to look great. The performances are fantastic – the actors really stepping up to the great script. George Takei was incredible. He is a slight man physically, but he seemed to grow in stature for Warrior Sulu – he had such a commanding presence that he seemed to stride larger than life through the corridors. The script also took him through an emotional wringer and he was totally up for the job. He shows his versatility and skill in this role.

Even circumstances played a unique challenge for him. We had a fly problem in the warehouse. And the flies just loved George’s leather and feather warrior outfit. Many times the take had to be done over because flies started buzzing around him. He was even sprayed down with insecticide to get through the takes.

Also of special note is CHRISTINE MOSES, who plays Sulu’s daughter. She does one helluva job and I’m not going to say anything more – you’ll have to just watch it. The special effects are going to be done by some of the best special effects guys in television – guys whose day jobs are doing the special effects for the Battlestar Galactica series.

One of my favorite moments was watching Sulu’s quarters being built. On the original series, Sulu’s quarters was a redressed Kirk’s quarters and the same thing happened here. They brought the walls out of storage, or took them from a different set, some of the walls I believe were from the sickbay set. They slid them into place and within a short period of hammering and painting, walla – we had Sulu’s quarters. What was awesome was how authentic the grid looked between the bed area and the ready room area. And yet, it was merely the grid that hangs over fluorescent lights. I’m sure that back in the day, that’s where they got their props as well – where they could be cheaply optained.

It wasn’t always an easy marriage between the pros that came out to participate in this episode and the fans who’ve been doing them. For the fans, it was totally a labor of love – they took vacation time from their jobs and came to make Trek… they functioned like it was their vacation to some degree – meaning they paid for their lodging, food, transportation, film, ink, incidentals like they would do on any vacation. But for those who came out from LA, it was them doing what they did for work. Even if most of them weren’t getting paid for it, and even if they were doing it for fun, for the most part, we don’t have other jobs to fund our adventure. Consequently, some of the expectations of what would be provided for them were different. But everybody did pull together and at the end of the day… we did make magic. And fulfilled the dreams of everyone who came to Port Henry to be a small part of the legacy of the series we loved and to work with one of the original icons we so admired.