I thought I could not let another post go by without a tribute to Leonard Nimoy. I have read many tributes online and don’t feel like I could equal any of them. So, I just thought I’d say how he was an important part of my childhood and I will not forget him. I’m sorry he’s gone, but he will live on in his work.
Here are a few images I found. If interested, you can find more on my Pinterest page.
I am happy to announce that I have two poems coming out in magazines this month and next. “The Incantation” is now available in the February 2015 issue of Trysts of Fate, which you can access here. Trysts of Fate is a paranormal romance magazine which publishes stories, poetry, and articles about the genre. I’ve looked at some of the poems and stories and they are quite good. I’m happy to be associated with this magazine.
My other poem, “The Deserted Playground”, will be in Issue #11 of Literary Hatchet, which will be out in April. This magazine describes itself as follows:
“The Literary Hatchet publishes contemporary short fiction, poetry, prose, photography, cartoons, and humor by established and emerging writers and artists from around the world. Subjects range from mystery, murder, macabre, horror, monsters, ghosts, and things that go bump in the night.”
The Literary Hatchet has both online and print versions of its magazine. The online version is provided as a free pdf, or you can buy the print version. Either can be obtained here.
These are the Voyages — TOS: Season One by Marc Cushman gives an extraordinary amount of detail about Star Trek, starting with a biography of Gene Roddenberry and moving though the production of “Operation: Annihilate”, the last Season 1 episode filmed. I want to recommend it, but with a caveat. The first few chapters are so dense and detailed, I found them hard to read. I had to read one chapter, then set the book aside for a while. After finishing five chapters, I set it aside, not sure if I would pick it up again.
Don’t get me wrong — I enjoyed reading about how Star Trek was conceived and evolved. What dragged me down were things like Lucille’s biography and how Desilu was formed, along with long bios of most of the production staff for the second pilot Where No Man Has Gone Before.
But one day I found myself out of reading material and went back to These are the Voyages. Chapter 6 was about the making of the first pilot, which I found very interesting. Chapter 7 had more bios of staff, but also discussed the selection of the cast (aside from William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, already cast). From there on, almost every chapter dealt with the production of one episode, and I found myself reading two or three chapters at a sitting, instead of just one.
There were several things I found interesting in this book. One was script development, how the scripts were assigned, then written and rewritten, taking into account not only the characters in the series but also how much the episode would cost to produce. Also, production was almost always behind schedule and over budget, and the air order of the episodes was different from production order due to the amount of special effects needed in certain episodes.
Another point of interest for me was the development of a specific character, namely Yeoman Rand. According to the book, Rand was supposed to have a sexual tension with Kirk. Me, I never got that. The only thing bordering on that that I remember was in the episode “Miri”, when Rand confessed that she had wanted the captain to look at her legs while on the bridge. Of course, there was also her attempted rape by him in “The Enemy Within”, but that could have been just random. Frankly, I always found her very distant and was glad when the character was deleted from the series. (Or maybe it was just the hair.)
There were other things I found intriguing, but in the interest of brevity, I want to jump to a discussion on Harlan Ellison and “The City on the Edge of Forever”. Most Star Trek fans know that he was very upset about the rewrite of his script to the point that he wanted to use a pseudonym in the credits. As implied in an earlier paragraph, most writers were heavily rewritten, sometimes by Roddenberry, sometimes by Gene Coon (producer of the show starting mid-first season), and sometimes by a story editor on staff. Sometimes all of the above.
Cushman included a summary of Ellison’s original script, which was excellent and quite different from the script that aired. It was exciting and contained a lot more action than the aired episode. But it also seemed to me that there was enough in there to make a movie, not just a tv show. Many of the changes were for economy, others for Roddenberry’s vision. For instance, he would never have allowed a drug dealer on board the Enterprise. Still, Ellison unfortunately never got over his anger, despite the success of the aired episode. (As of this writing, I have discovered a book that tells the story of Ellison’s original script. It is entitled Harlan Ellison’s The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay and is available on Amazon.)
In conclusion, I would suggest that if you like Star Trek and want to learn more about the little tidbits of how it got on the air, pick up These are the Voyages — TOS: Season One by Marc Cushman. Just realize that you may have to struggle through the first few chapters, and you’ll be fine.
Kiera Cameron has one job — to protect the city of Vancouver in the year 2077. But when she travels back in time to the year 2012, along with a group of terrorists escaping their execution, she has two jobs: (1) to keep the terrorists from changing history and (2) to get back to 2077 and her husband and son.
Continuum is a Canadian science fiction series that I recently discovered on Netflix. At first, I was dismayed by the premise. The protagonist is Kiera Cameron, a “Protector” in 2077, but the Vancouver in this universe is a police state run by big corporations. Keira is outfitted with bionic devices in her eyes and brain that allow her to keep one step ahead of the criminals, as well as a special suit with such abilities as deflecting bullets, emitting electric shocks, and making her invisible. In the first episode, she is seen taking down a man on a subway, telling him to report to a location within 24 hours for punishment. If he doesn’t — well, let’s not go into that here.
The terrorists, on the other hand, want to change the current state of affairs and take down the corporations. Their methods are horrendous; for example, blowing up buildings and killing thousands, but their goals seem right. So who to root for?
Early in the first episode, Kiera and the terrorists are transported to 2012, where she continues hunting them, and in the process makes contact with Alec Sadler, the young computer genius who will, in the future, develop the technology she is currently using. Having already started some of his work, he can talk to Cameron through the device in her head and help her in tracking the terrorists. Later, she forms a relationship with the Vancouver Police, posing as a Federal agent, and helps them fighting this group known as Liber8.
The action on the show switches between the present and flashbacks (flash forwards?) to 2077. From these, we gain more insight into Kiera and her attitudes, the society she was born into, and the reasons she and the terrorists are in the past. In the present, Kiera is getting her first experience with the human rights we now enjoy. Will this change her? If so, and she changes history for the good, her present will change and she may never see her family again.
Continuum is a very engaging series. In addition to Kiera with her allies the VPD, and Liber8, the terrorist group, there are other groups and individuals in the mix, and the viewer is kept guessing as to their motives and whose side they are on. This intricacy of plot, along with excellent writing and acting, is what has kept me watching. There are three seasons now on Netflix, but the fourth and final season is scheduled to be aired sometime this year on Showcase in Canada. The first three seasons also aired on Syfy in the US, but there is no report as to whether they will air Season 4. If not, I hope it will go directly to Netflix, so I can see how it ends. If you’re a scifi fan, Continuum is well worth your time.
Hollow City by Ransom Riggs is the second book in the series Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children. When the book opens up, the children have escaped the island and the wight who tried to kill them. They are in two rowboats, heading toward the Welsh mainland, but their teacher and ymbryne Miss Peregrine is permanently in her bird form. Their goal is to find another loop (a place where the same day is repeated over and over) and get its ymbryne to return Miss Peregrine to her human form. Having left their own loop, they find themselves traveling across World War II Britain – first stop, London. Along the way, they meet other peculiars, as well as wights and other monsters.
Hollow City is a fast-moving adventure, where the children, led by Jacob from the present, learn many things about their peculiar world while on their quest. Above all, Jacob must constantly wrestle with the question of whether to stay with the peculiar children or return to his own world.
As in Riggs’ first book, there are many antique photographs used throughout the book, some from the original and some “new”. These add to the eeriness of the story. The first book was about Jacob, how he discovered the peculiar children, and decided to stay with them. Hollow City is about how he helps them in their quest for safety from the wights, but ultimately about his own decision.
An excellent book, Hollow City should be read at night by a roaring fire. And a talisman to keep the wights away.
Firefly is a wonderful TV series that debuted in 2002 and unfortunately, only ran for 14 weeks. The plot revolves around a crew of space pirates, plus a companion (high-priced call girl), priest, and a fugitive brother and sister. The brother is a doctor, which the ship Serenity really needs, but the sister is really wacked out due to experimentation performed on her by the evil Alliance. The crew consists of Captain Mal Reynolds, pilot Wash Washburne, his wife Zoe, who served with Mal during the civil war against the Alliance, bad boy Jayne Cobb, and mechanic Kaylee.
Kaylee is a naïve, friendly woman played by Jewel Staite (who also played Dr. Jennifer Keller on Stargate Atlantis (a much different role) and is my favorite character. Other actors of note on the series are Nathan Fillion, the captain, who now plays Castle on the series of the same name; Ron Glass of Barney Miller fame playing the priest; and Adam Baldwin as Jayne, who now plays the first officer on The Last Ship (which I reviewed last fall). There were also two appearances by Mark Sheppard, who now plays King of Hell Crowley on Supernatural (which I have also reviewed here). On Firefly, he was a weasley criminal with whom the Serenity crew had business dealings.
The show boasted complex characters, thieves with a conscience, and the promise that none of them might be what they seemed. Although Gene Roddeberry called Star Trek “Wagon Train to the Stars”, Firefly comes much closer to that idea. It also has probably the best them song in sci fi tv history.
When I first learned of the series, I wasn’t sure I could watch it, knowing that there were only 14 episodes, but it was well worth it. The wacked-out girl, River Tam, annoyed me a bit, but that was part of the fun. The action grabbed me, as did the personalities. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it on Netflix. Good times.