Boldly Gone Posting and Discussion

This is the place to discuss the various Star Traks series and stories.
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Re: Boldly Gone Posting and Discussion

Post by b-guy »

Ohh, that was a fun story. I was wondering how you were going to deal with the whole Romulus thing! I loved the way the buck got passed down from the Directors, to the Q, to the Organians, and so on. I kept expecting something terrible to happen towards the end, but wasn't especially dissappointed when everything went as planned. A surprising amount of character time, between Mr. & Mrs Bain and Cabral & Kassie.

I definately giggled at the end with the whole 'Ohhh, I have my own universe to play in, I'm gonna blow up Vulcan!' Helloo, Mr. Abrams!
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Re: Boldly Gone Posting and Discussion

Post by cmdrajd »

Comments on "We'll Always Have Romulus"


(Spoilers to follow)


This story was a real pain in the...posterior region for many many reasons.

After we completed the first two stories, we knew basically what we wanted to happen in the third story (Rosalyn comes aboard. Kasyov is disconnected from the computer.), but we weren't sure exactly what the plot was going to be. I had some vague ideas about Rosalyn getting captured on a mission and Bain rescuing her somehow without finding out that she is with Section 31. Nothing really gelled, though, so I jumped ahead to work on the later stories of the run, which we did have worked out, while Anthony focused on Vexed.

That was...three, possibly four years ago. I slooooooooooooowy made my way through the last three stories of this run, during which time J.J. Abrams' Star Trek film was released. I love the movie. Really I do. But they went and blew up Romulus in the late 24th Century. Um...guys...WE WERE USING THAT!!! Now this isn't the first time that filmed Trek has contradicted something we were doing. Anthony had to go back and rewrite sections of a story that involved Gowron after Deep Space Nine killed Gowron and replaced him with Martok. Of course, for original Star Traks 1-3 to work, you have to imagine that Picard was made an admiral briefly between Generations and First Contact (At least the films left me a gap large enough for that to be possible). But with the 24th Century series and films over and done with, we thought we were safe. We were wrong.

In any case, we were left with two choices: ignore the new movie (which we generally don't like to do, since we want to stick to filmed Trek canon; although, we made exceptions for some elements of Enterprise) or find a way to deal with it. Fortunately, we had a story without a plot waiting to be filled in this run. Next came the challenge of figuring out how we could save Romulus and stick to the events of the film as Spock and Nero experienced them while still fitting in the Rosalyn and Kasyov events that needed to occur. Originally this was made even more difficult by my decision to treat the "Star Trek: Countdown" prequel comics as canon. I soon realized that there was just no way. In "Countdown" Nero interacts with some survivors from Romulus and gets some Borg upgrades for his ship before he chases Spock. That just was not going to work for me. Instead, I focused on the movie. At one point I probably could have delivered Spock's monologue during the mind meld from memory.

Eventually, I found a way to make it all work while still managing to throw in a few gags here and there. And to respond to b-guy, something terrible did happen near the end. By leaving Nero around, Bain and company destroyed the universe, which was why they had to go get Nero too. That whole thing was more of a throwaway joke, though. In the end, this story really ended up being more about plot mechanics from my perspective, which made it the aforementioned pain in the posterior to write. Still there are some things I was happy with. The scene with Audrey and Rosalyn has some nice character moments while finally explaining what happened to Bain and Tovar's previous ship, the Maladventure. Prosak finally got to meet her idol, Spock. And I put the prime universe back the way it was...unlike SOME filmmakers I could mention!
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Re: Boldly Gone Posting and Discussion

Post by borgcrazy »

We'll Always Have Romulus
b-guy wrote:I definately giggled at the end with the whole 'Ohhh, I have my own universe to play in, I'm gonna blow up Vulcan!' Helloo, Mr. Abrams!
So did I; that was a great paragraph to end with.
The rest of the story was great, too. I like how we were kept guessing to the end which "R. Bain" would fix things (well, at least I since it's been established that I'm terrible at guessing plot twists...), though when the Anomaly got ahold of some Red Matter (no, seriously, that's the best they could name it? I'm not even sure which "they" I mean, the writers or the Vulcans, though since the Vulcans were under direct influence of the writers, I mean them. The writers that is, not the... Nevermind.) Ahem. When the Anomaly got ahold of some Red Matter (but really, "Red Matter"? Sorry...) I kinda figured that it'd be Reginald's show.
I do have one confession to make, though; the idea of simply dropping Nero and Spock into, essentially, a pocket universe to save the day seems a bit too easy to me. Then again, that does conveniently explain why Spock was "too late" to stop the untranova (and why the calculations of an entire team of Vulcans were wrong). Those kinds of fixes never really sit right with me for some reason; maybe I've just been too conditioned to the Murphy's Law of storytelling, which is, "Anything that can go wrong SHOULD go wrong to make a more entertaining story." It just seems like if nothing goes wrong at the last moment and isn't fixed with mere seconds to spare, then something isn't right with the story. Stupid social conditioning...
One last thing. When that small anomaly was detected with the parallel universe, my first thought was that Spock had existed in that universe, but was never resurrected on the Genesis planet as in the Prime universe. Wouldn't that have been crazy:
"Spock just saved Romulus!"
"Yea! Go Spock! Wait, I thought he was dead..."
"Well, he just stopped a supernova in a kick-ass ship and he's not dead and he looks hella old, like he's been alive all these years."
"You're crazy; maybe it was his brother Sybok."
"Nah, they look nothing alike."
"Clone, then?"
"You watch too much Star Wars."
"Alternate universe counterpart?"
"Okay, and you read too many comic books. You nerd."
Could have been interesting.
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Re: Boldly Gone Posting and Discussion

Post by cmdrajd »

borgcrazy wrote:I do have one confession to make, though; the idea of simply dropping Nero and Spock into, essentially, a pocket universe to save the day seems a bit too easy to me.
Easy? You call that easy?

Sorry. Went a bit Han Solo there for a second. :)

borgcrazy wrote:Then again, that does conveniently explain why Spock was "too late" to stop the untranova (and why the calculations of an entire team of Vulcans were wrong).
This is one thing that really bugged me about the movie after I stopped to think about it. Spock was late? We're talking about the fate of billions of people here, and he is late? Was traffic bad on the way to Hobus? The whole thing was just way too glossed over. One of my other ideas for this story was that Spock was actually delayed by interference from the 24th Century Section 31, which wanted to get the Romulans out of the way for obvious reasons. However, if Rosalyn and or the Anomaly went back and prevented that from happening, Spock arrives on time, which erases the movie. Grrrrr...

I love your Spock in the alternate universe idea, though. Unfortunately, a few seconds after that you would have had...

"Where did that other ship come from?"
"Looks like an angry sideways pineapple."
"It's attacking Spock."
"And they both just got sucked into the black hole. Oh well. What's else is on?"


One other thing about the movie that bit me as I was trying to write this story is the supernova/ultranova itself. Can anyone explain how it got to Romulus? Or how the red matter helped reverse an explosion? None of that made a bit of sense to me, but it gave me another gag for the story.
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Re: Boldly Gone Posting and Discussion

Post by borgcrazy »

cmdrajd wrote:
borgcrazy wrote:I do have one confession to make, though; the idea of simply dropping Nero and Spock into, essentially, a pocket universe to save the day seems a bit too easy to me.
Easy? You call that easy?

Sorry. Went a bit Han Solo there for a second. :)
Maybe "easy" wasn't the right word. "Convenient" is closer to what I meant.
And I'm no astrophysicist, but the ultranova doesn't seem physically possible. I mean, unless the core of the star was infused with something really nasty, like a cluster of Omega particles or some other nonsense, there's no way I can see a regular star exploding that big. There simply wouldn't be enough mass to fuel such a sustained reaction for that great a time or distance.
Then again, J.J. Abrams pretty much showed how little he understands cosmic physics with his handling of the black holes and warp drive; neither of those concepts work that way. Granted, warp drive is completely fictitious and black holes are still largely theoretical, but both have been explained well enough that the theories behind them are pretty well grounded so as to be nearly fact, especially within the canon of Trek Hell, within the canon of Trek, the theories ARE fact.
The only possible explanation for the ultranova is the core was infused with something "unnatural" or that otherwise shouldn't have been there, to fuel that kind of reaction. That begs the questions then, who did it, why did they do it, what did they use, when did they do it, and will they do it again? I honestly don't expect answers to any of those questions, but my guess would be, given the year of the ultranova going off, the Typhon Pact from the books. I know the books aren't canon, but with the mucking that Abrams was allowed to do with canon, it wouldn't surprise me if (insert most current studio that owns Star Trek here) allowed the books to creep into canon stories.
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Re: Boldly Gone Posting and Discussion

Post by cmdrajd »

borgcrazy wrote:
cmdrajd wrote:
borgcrazy wrote:I do have one confession to make, though; the idea of simply dropping Nero and Spock into, essentially, a pocket universe to save the day seems a bit too easy to me.
Easy? You call that easy?

Sorry. Went a bit Han Solo there for a second. :)
Maybe "easy" wasn't the right word. "Convenient" is closer to what I meant.
:lol: I know. It's so strange when a plan actually goes according to plan. I think we've all been conditioned to expect plans to go off the rails at some point.

In the end, the story ended up being more about shifting the pieces around (or restoring them in the case of Romulus) than anything else, which causes problems in other areas. I just hope that Abrams and company are now completely done mucking about in the prime universe (And I am steadfastly ignoring Star Trek Online's take on things. LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!)

Oh, if you didn't catch it, the name of the Vulcan mountain range housing the secret base may be in the running for my worst name ever.
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Re: Boldly Gone Posting and Discussion

Post by b-guy »

(And I am steadfastly ignoring Star Trek Online's take on things. LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!)
Yes. And Star Trek: Destiny.
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Re: Boldly Gone Posting and Discussion

Post by cmdrajd »

b-guy wrote:
(And I am steadfastly ignoring Star Trek Online's take on things. LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!)
Yes. And Star Trek: Destiny.
Most definitely. As much as I enjoyed that trilogy, I'm not dealing with it. For sanity's sake, filmed Trek is the only canon I worry about.


Not to go off on too much of a tangent about Destiny, I really felt that it was a nice wrap-up for 24th Century Trek for me. I know the novels have continued since then, but I haven't felt any real need to continue along with them. I'll keep reading New Frontier, but I feel pretty good about where Destiny left things.
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Re: Boldly Gone Posting and Discussion

Post by borgcrazy »

Yea, I'll give the Typhon Pact arc an honest chance, but if it goes the way I think it might*, I'll probably devote my energy and funds into finding the older books to fill the gaps in my collection.

*I'm seeing a Star Wars-like rift in the politics of the Alpha Quadrant. Too bad they got rid of the Borg - they would have made excellent Storm Troopers...
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Re: Boldly Gone Posting and Discussion

Post by cmdrajd »

There's no new story this week, but I have finally gotten to work on the Boldly Gone section of the Star Traks Wiki. The main page is in place as well as pages for each story. I'll be going back and putting in the story summaries and author's comments...at some point. Ha! I bet you thought I was going to say "eventually," didn't you? Well, I didn't...because I can't. Anthony's trademarked that as his catch-phrase.
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