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Copyright 1995, Cyberspace Vanguard Magazine
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| C Y B E R S P A C E |
| V A N G U A R D |
| News and Views of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Universe |
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| cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu Cyberspace Vanguard@1:157/564 |
| PO Box 25704, Garfield Hts., OH 44125 USA |
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| TJ Goldstein, Editor Sarah Alexander, Administrator |
| tlg4@po.cwru.edu au001@po.cwru.edu |
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Volume 3 June 9, 1995 Issue 1
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-! 1 !- Ramblings of a Deranged Editor
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They say that if you aim for nothing, you usually hit it. What
they don't tell you is that if you aim too high, what you usually
hit is your head.
Don't worry, there's a point to this.
Many of you have been waiting, patiently, for the next issue of
Cyberspace Vanguard, and we appreciate that. It's been a
ridiculously long time since the last one. (So long, in fact,
that we won't talk about how long it's been.) Here's why:
As you all know, CV is distributed without charge. As such, it's
not very good at paying the bills, so everyone involved has to
have a full time job. (We're all really fond of eating.)
Personally, Sarah and I have also moved -- twice. This second
time, we moved 1300 miles, from Cleveland to St. Petersberg,
Florida.
The last move was for yours truly to take a job doing interactive
multimedia -- the type of thing we want to do with CV. When I got
here I discovered that what I was trying to do with an artist and
our spare time was being done by a full time staff of 14 people.
Naturally, this prompted a re-think.
So, we have made arrangements for space on the World Wide Web, and
are presently setting up a "starter" site. In the next couple of
months, we'll be putting up interviews with Rene Auberjonios, K
Callan, Geraint Wyn Davies, Mira Furlan, Lisa Mason, Ethan
Phillips ... oh, lots of people.
The URL, if you'd like to pop over and check it out, will be
"http://www.actwin.com/cvanguard". We're still setting up, so have a
little patience, and we'll try to make it all worthwhile.
In the meantime, we bring you MICHAEL PILLER,
co-executive producer of the 3 new STAR TREKS and UPN's
LEGEND, which will be having a special airing following
ST: VOYAGER on June 12 as executives try and decide whether
or not to keep it. (Letters of support can be sent to
LEGEND@paramount.com as well.)
So enjoy! And when you check out our website, drop us a
note and tell us what you think of it. Like CV itself, we want to
make it something you're a part of.
---- TJ Goldstein, Editor
Cyberspace Vanguard Magazine
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-! 2 !- The Old West and the New Future: Michael Piller on saving
LEGEND
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Michael Piller is a busy guy, for the most part.
Besides Executive Producing both of the current STAR TREKs,
he has also created and is producing LEGEND, a "comedy
western" about a writer, played by MACGYVER'S Richard Dean
Anderson) who winds up impersonating his heroic creation
with the help of a nineteenth century mad scientist/genius,
given life by ST alumnus John de Lancie.
LEGEND is what's keeping Mr. Piller busy these days,
even though filming has pretty much wrapped up, because the
show is currently in limbo. Officially, UPN has not decided
whether or not to drop the show along with all of the rest
of it's current lineup (aside from ST:VOYAGER, of course).
"The UPN network," Mr. Piller told CV in a phone interview,
"in response to a really remarkable amount of letters and
wishes from people who like the show, has asked for more
time to make up their minds about the show, so we've
extended the contracts so they can give us some more tryouts
in June. They are going to put us on Monday night June 12th
following VOYAGER. The message is very clear. If we hold
that STAR TREK audience, then we are going to making a big
impression on UPN."
Monday's show will be a new episode, featuring John de
LancieUs character, Janos Bartok. The guest villain in this
tale of the late 1800's will be played by Robert Englund,
perhaps best known for his role as Freddy Kreuger in the
Nightmare on Elm Street films.
Ernest Pratt, the show's main character, and Professor
Bartok will have plenty to fight the villain with, of
course. Mr. Piller describes Bartok as "someone who's ahead
of his time. Somebody who could take steam and turn it into
a moving vehicle. Somebody who could take electricity and
turn it into a stun weapon. Somebody who could do something
with the science that was available in 1876 that was beyond
history, but possibly within the scientific knowledge of the
time."
Of course, all of this creates a challenge for the
writer: how not to let them invent their way out of any
problem that they face. "Well that's an interesting problem
and one that we run into all the time. We don't want to
make it easy for them. They have a great advanage with
these weapons, and their balloon that they travel around in,
and the cars and the wings and the other things that our
hero has invented, so we just have to work hard to put them
into situations where not all of these inventions always
work, creating jeopardy that they can't always easily solve.
And that, in the great tradition of drama, is the writer's
problem."
And, of course, all of this has to be done within the
constraints of 1876 science, or it becomes fantasy. There's
nothing wrong with fantasy, of course, but it's a subject
that has stirred up controversy around the STAR TREK shows
for years.
"From the day I got here, Rick Berman and Gene
Rodenberry made it very clear to me that they felt there was
a very important line between fantasy and science fiction
and that we were to stay on the side of science fiction with
STAR TREK. The difference was that things happen in fantasy
that have no logical explanation. That essentially was our
operating assumption. So if somebody came in with a story
that did not have a basis in science, it was generally
frowned upon. As the years have gone by, I'd say that we
have expanded that line quite a bit, but we still require a
scientific basis for any of the fantastic events that occur
on STAR TREK.
"We are currently developing a story in which one of
the characters on the Voyager finds himself mysteriously back
home where he doesn't belong. He's back on Earth, living a
life he shouldn't be living. When he starts to investigate
he discovers that Voyager is in fact missing, but that he
was never on the crew in the first place, and that in his
place is somebody who wasn't actually on the ship when he
was there. So that's a pretty fantasy based story. But, in
order to make it STAR TREK, or rather to make it fit into
the vision and rules that Gene Rodenberry had worked out for
us, we have created a circumstance involving an alien
culture that explains how this could have happened
scientifically, even though the story we wanted to tell is
... well, pretty Twilight Zone.
"I don't think science is 'very important', I think its
absolutely essential."
And yet the net is full of science-oriented people
ready to pick apart the show whenever it mentions anything
specific.
"I'm not a scientist, so excuse me, but I think when
you deal with speculative science there are interpretations
and subjective opinions that come into the judgments. A lot
of these are things that could possibly occur. I don't
think there are many mistakes that are clear and obvious
mistakes. I can tell you that from day one Gene thought it
was very important to have a science consultant on the show
who read every script and gave notes on the show, and that
this be a legitimate scientist with good credentials. We
currently have a gentleman who holds a Ph.D. with and
astrophysics background and a variety of other degrees who
goes over everything that we do and makes corrections, makes
suggestions, helps us with the science. We never
deliberately violate scientific principles. We're always
trying to make the science something that could conceivably
be the outgrowth of some contemporary science that we're
aware of."
Of course, with the lighthearted nature of LEGEND, the
science seems to be less of an issue.
While Bartok was inspired by turn of the century
scientist and inventor Nicola Tesla, Pratt himself was
inspired by ... well, itUs hard to say. Both Pratt and
Piller are writers who have backgrounds in journalism -- Mr.
Piller started out with CBS news -- but ...
"I can tell you that I am not a womanizer, a drinker,
nor a gambler, but I count many of them among my friends. I
would say that Pratt is much closer to Bill Dial, my
collaborator. But I can tell you what he is. What I tell
all the people who come in to write LEGEND is that he's the
closest thing to us that you'll ever have to write. If you
want to know what's going on in this character's mind, look
inside your own, because he's a writer. He thinks like a
writer. He speaks like a writer. He uses language like a
writer. He uses language as a weapon to disarm his
opponents. These are all things that I think are important
to bring to the character."
So what's a writer to do if he (or she) wants to do
just that? Several years ago ST: THE NEXT GENERATION began
reading unsolicited scripts, as long as they were
accompanied by the proper release forms. ST: DEEP SPACE
NINE continues the tradition. The decision about accepting
scripts for ST: VOYAGER has not been discussed, but Mr.
Piller feels that if LEGEND continues, it is something he
would like to do.
"I think that once a show is on the air and people can
see what we're doing and how we write the shows, they can start
going to their typewriters and word processors and coming up
with ideas. I just feel it's so important to generate ideas
from a wide variety of sources We've gotten so many good
writers this way that even if we get a hundred bad scripts,
it's worth it to me to get the 101st one that gives me an
idea that we'd like to buy, or finds us a writer that we'd
like to develop something with."
Not that writing for LEGEND will be easy. Aside from
the jeopardy issue, there is the genre itself, which seems
to have a hard time finding a mainstream audience.
"It is an unusual genre, a comedy western with
overtones of science, but I believe in the genre. I believe
it can work. It just needs time to find an audience. I
would like it to have the same audience as ST."
As for the future of STAR TREK, "We plan to continue on
how we're going, and not throw any more STAR TREK's on the fire and
dilute the audience any further." The next feature film,
which will feature the cast of TNG, is in the planning
stages, but Mr. Piller is not involved with it.
That's probably just as well, as he seems to have his
hands full trying to save LEGEND.
"The most important thing to communicate is that we are
trying very hard to go to cyberspace to save LEGEND. A
group of people who have never seen each other but who have
a shared experience with a television show have sent
hundreds of letters. A letter from a person who's seen a
show sends a message to an executive, with, of course, the
most important message being the ratings. We've never done
this before but I think we're finally defining a use for the
Internet. I think that with this experiment LEGEND will be
saved. I'm very gratified and hope people keep watching and
will tell everyone else to watch. It will all be decided in
couple of weeks."
His "absolute commitment to saving this show" means
he's reading every piece of e-mail that comes in to him at
LEGEND@paramount.com. (Comments to the United Paramount
Network can also be sent to UPNmail@aol.com.) Of course,
he's not the first producer to come to cyberspace looking
for support, but not everyone agrees with the practice.
"One person said it was unseemly for a producer to be
seen to ask for help in saving his show. Well, if it's
unseemly, then so be it. I think LEGEND is important
because it celebrates history, science, literature; it's
heroes are nonviolent. If we don't work to save shows like
that, we're going to lose them."
--
CYBERSPACE VANGUARD MAGAZINE
News and Views from the Science Fiction Universe
TJ Goldstein, Editor | Send submissions, questions, comments to
tlg4@po.cwru.edu | cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu