I'm not all caught up with the meat of this tl yet, but I've been skipping ahead...

Excellent update, Bin!

I wonder about Desi V's future here. I'm also trying to picture what he looks like, but I keep seeing a slightly Latin Sean Astin...

I want to watch these shows! Also, it looks as if Jorge is DOA in your tl as well. That's good news.

Also, I want to go to Medina in spite of my Islamophilia. Or perhaps because of it. Let's open this club irl!

Sorry for the brevity, I'm using a phone...
 
Well, that's a big spoiler - if you had been a voice actor, and Brainbin a video-game company, the sort of thing that might lose you a job. Of course, Brainbin might be more understanding.;)
Luckily, my job is safe--he'd mentioned it himself before on the thread. ;) The relevant passage:

Excellent point, LordInsane! And yes, whether or not Star Trek gets a screen continuation, we will be covering additional spinoff media before 1986.
 
Luckily, my job is safe--he'd mentioned it himself before on the thread. ;) The relevant passage:
Ah, but that is talking about spinoff media - indeed, Brainbin specifically mentions screen continuations as something separate to it that may or may not happen.;)
 
I wonder what shows my parents were watching on or around that time. (You're getting to (or are or were) around my birth time- literally.)
 
Thank you all for your very gracious and enthusiastic reception to this, my latest update! It feels good to be back in the saddle once again, and I'm hoping that this cycle will prove both punctual and pleasing to read! And now, as always, for my replies to your latest and most thoughtful and considerate comments...

It would be quite hypocritical of me not be patient and understanding about hiatus of less than a month, considering my (theoretical) readers have had to endure hiatus of over a year at times.;)
Indeed so! In fact I think it was more than a year ago at this point that I last asked after A Central East ;)

LordInsane said:
With that said, it is always good to see a new update to That Wacky Redhead, and I'm glad to hear you are confident that May will see more!
Thank you very much for your kind words! I hope you enjoy them all.

Woo!
Just wish I could reply as often ;)
Every little reply helps! That goes for everyone, by the way :)

Is there anything better on a Tuesday night than a new episode of That Wacky Redhead??
In the 1979-80 season? Well, IOTL, ABC had Happy Days, Three's Company, Taxi... :D (But really, you're too kind.)

Andrew T said:
Utterly believable in this world, and, uh, it probably gives new life to Benson's-and-Jessica's banter/catchphrase from the first two seasons. ("You want me to get that?" "If you don't mind.")
It was definitely my thinking that race relations ITTL had moved forward just enough for a provocative show like Soap to muster the courage to go ahead with this storyline, and I'm glad you thought so, too! What tipped the scales was when I researched about Guillaume, his take on Benson, and his relationship with Helmond. That "dignity" quote is my insurance - I think there's a part of him that would love to send up the crushing earnestness of a Guess Who's Coming To Dinner-type story.

Andrew T said:
Given the role that interracial romance has played in the gay rights movement IOTL, I wonder if we're in for a comparable acceleration ITTL. 1979 marks the ten-year anniversary of Stonewall, too....
Funny you should mention that, actually. Mr. Loving, of Loving v. Virginia, is still alive ITTL, as he died in 1975 in a drunk driving accident (in which Mrs. Loving was also injured, though she survived). Together they have four children, as opposed to three (because they, like so many others, said "Let's have one more..." in the early 1970s).

This isn't quite relevant to your point, but I thought I would mention it here, as it's one of those butterflies that I wouldn't likely divulge organically.

Andrew T said:
I suppose that even the great ones are entitled to a teeny little Author Filibuster now and then. :)
That was certainly not an Author Filibuster! It was merely a case of Writer on Board. But don't think I couldn't write a 5,000-word update on the subject! ;)

Andrew T said:
I was wondering when Carlin would get a show, given the rampant success Pryor is enjoying ITTL. Also -- and I say this as a life-long fan of Carlin -- I think you've absolutely nailed George Carlin circa 1979 here.
Thank you. I was worried about how Carlin fans would have perceived this update, but, as you say, someone was bound to give him a chance and, well...

Andrew T said:
Pryor will probably also kick off OTL's Seinfeld-esque tradition of networks looking for vehicles in which to showcase standup comedians a decade or so early, although the networks haven't yet hit upon the idea of sticking a standup comic in a sitcom and watching what happens. Yet.
Technically, it was Roseanne which kicked off the "standup sitcom" tradition; Seinfeld came (slightly) later. Roseanne was an immediate hit upon premiering in the 1988-89 season, and reached #1 - tied with The Cosby Show (in a fitting "passing of the torch" moment for family sitcoms) - the following year. It did not fall out of the Top 5 until the 1994-95 season. Seinfeld cracked the Top 30 only in its fourth season (1992-93), reaching #1 for the first of two non-consecutive seasons in, what do you know, the 1994-95 season (it dipped to #2, below ER, before reclaiming the throne in its final season). But yes, the gist of your point is absolutely correct.

Andrew T said:
Apropos of nothing, David Letterman has been guest-hosting The Tonight Show for a year and a half now, and is signed to that sell-your-soul contract to NBC....
He has? He is? Funny, I don't recall ever mentioning that... :confused:

Andrew T said:
Oh, man. This is, of course, exactly how it would go down. In flames. Of hilarity.
I can't help but laugh at the mental image myself. Carlin definitely wasn't the only person involved in that show's production who was high as a kite, I can assure you. And he isn't used to people laughing at him, but in this case, boy would they ever. And since we're on the topic, I would love to hear someone make a filk song about all this, to the tune of "Poker Face". I've been imagining how the song would go and I can't get it out of my head. "Can't read my, can't read my, no you can't read my Censorface..."

All you need is some vintage late-1970s-era video of Carlin performing, and then tack on a smiley face graphic, et voila! Too bad I'm a writer, not a video editor.

Andrew T said:
One alt-anachronism: I'm not sure that the verb videotape would exist ITTL. :)
Duly noted. Switching to "recorded". Thanks for the advice :)

Andrew T said:
You really convey the love that Guillaume and Helmond had for their art here.
And for each other, as well. Both of them have spoken really fondly of their friendship (which endures to this day!) in interviews, and I wanted to reflect that.

Andrew T said:
So, will the prime-time soap blossom alongside the prime-time soap parody ITTL? Once Texas Tea succeeds, you know the other networks will race to copy it. (IOTL -- as I know all too well -- this led to multiple years of the execrable Falcon Crest being among the Top 10 shows in the country.)
Well, I gave you Soap, so it just wouldn't be right for me to go out on a limb and prevent a *Falcon Crest, especially since that show was a product of the zeitgest, along with Dynasty, not to mention all their various spinoffs - such as Knots Landing, which was the primetime soap my family watched when I was a little boy. As disconcerting as it may seem to a pop culture enthusiast such as myself, I'd actually heard of Knots Landing before I'd heard of Dallas!

Andrew T said:
Does VP Mathias go out and campaign for his fellow moderates? Or is he more in the mold of George H.W. Bush IOTL?
Yes, Mathias pretty actively campaigned for his fellow Rockefeller Republicans in 1978, which played a part. Unlike Bush (and there's no need to specify his middle initials ;)), he doesn't really become a part of Reagan's inner circle, though of course there's no assassination attempt to more-or-less force him into it either.

Andrew T said:
Oooh, highway revolts!
To be fair, a planned rapid transit line to complement this freeway was also completed (as a certain Councilman Takei was instrumental in its passage).

Andrew T said:
Also: does this mean there's no club scene on the Sunset Strip ITTL? :eek:
You are correct, sir! Medina is located near Century City, the commercial area which is served by the completed freeway (and was built with this access in mind).

Andrew T said:
If you really want to freak him out, tell him that within two decades, he'll be playing the voice of "Mister Conductor" on the PBS series Thomas the Tank Engine, aimed at two-to-five year olds. :)
Which, yes, is how I personally first came to be familiar with George Carlin. Sometimes truth really can be stranger than fiction.

Well well well, Brainbin, a very blooming update indeed. :p
Thank you, Dan! And there's plenty more flowers yet to bloom, so be sure to stop and smell the roses! :cool:

The line I quote above made me laugh out loud.

Superb update, just like all the others in this excellent time line.
Glad you're still reading, Flubber, and thank you for the compliment! It always pleases me when people laugh at my silly jokes :)

A variety of [verboten] more than a decade ahead of schedule? Seems to be a bit of a stretch and I don't think they could have the same themes and casting choices as IOTL.

What they really need now is a Star Trek series set at a station in the demilitarised zone between the Federation, Klingons and Romulans as a place for negotiation and diplomacy between the rival nations - with Uhura as the Federation ambassador . . . .

Well, they won't. This one isn't Trek, apparently doesn't become one of the most important places in the Galaxy in the first episode and is made over a decade earlier.

Considering the 'those ships' and 'pretty sure you can’t do any star trekking on a station orbiting a planet' things, that seems... unlikely.

It's pretty emphatically not DS9. It's pretty emphatically not Star Trek at all. It'll have very different themes (both than OTL DS9 and TOS), very different plotlines (ditto), and to avoid endangering anything about the lightning in a bottle money tree that is Star Trek, no connection to it at all.
What they said. This show may have a superficially similar premise to the OTL spinoff series with a similar name, but it will turn out to be very different in execution. Much like an actual OTL show with a superficially similar premise to that spinoff: Babylon 5. This demonstrates that there is room for multiple takes on the same basic story idea.

You know it struck me that with the flop of M*A*S*H, Donald Sutherland probably won't do his turn as Christ in Johnny Got His Gun... In fact, Johnny Got His Gun probably didn't get made.

Damn. :(
Well, Space Oddity, that's what happens when there's no conflict to satirize. Would you rather the US government sinks hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of troops into an overseas quagmire instead? ;) It just goes to show that sometimes art and culture can be the byproducts of quite devastating courses of action.

I do get the argument you and Brainbin have made about Star Trek (call it the "lightning in a bottle" argument), but I think it is a shame to lose the richness that is the larger Star Trek universe. For example, Lawrence Krauss almost certainly doesn't write The Physics of Star Trek ITTL, which is a shame.
Notwithstanding that the book was written after my 1986 cutoff, I don't see anything that outright precludes the possibility of that book being written or published ITTL. There just wouldn't be any references to any of the later OTL series in there, that's all. And that sounds like my kind of reading! :D

I'm not all caught up with the meat of this tl yet, but I've been skipping ahead...
Glad you're still reading, TheInfiniteApe! I look forward to your further thoughts whenever you wish to discuss them.

TheInfiniteApe said:
Excellent update, Bin!
Bin, eh? Haven't gotten that one since high school. If you'd like, you can call me BB; I like that abbreviation a bit better :)

TheInfiniteApe said:
I wonder about Desi V's future here. I'm also trying to picture what he looks like, but I keep seeing a slightly Latin Sean Astin...
Well, Desi Jr./IV took after Desi Sr./III quite strongly in appearance (to the point that he was able to play his father in The Mambo Kings). It's probably a safe bet to assume that the same would be true of Desi V. Here is a photo of Desi IV c. 1962, at nine years old; Desi V would be about the same age on December 31, 1979.

TheInfiniteApe said:
I want to watch these shows! Also, it looks as if Jorge is DOA in your tl as well. That's good news.
Yes, preventing the rise of Jorge was a goal of mine from the outset; which is one of the reasons why I was so intrigued by your timeline, in fact :)

TheInfiniteApe said:
Also, I want to go to Medina in spite of my Islamophilia. Or perhaps because of it. Let's open this club irl!
You know, Medina probably would have a vague-ish Arabian Nights-styled decor, derived from old movies like The Thief of Bagdad. And the... "ladies of the evening" are probably dressed like harem girls. And I have no doubt about there being multiple hookahs in a back room somewhere. But we're definitely looking at the Theme Park Version here.

Considering how sooner or later, we're going to hit 1981, I will love you forever if you allude to this.
Dirty Laundry is an excellent timeline which I must recommend to anyone who enjoys this one. Though I must say, it would be rather ill-advised of me to address Don Henley's solo career without once discussing the wildly popular rock group to which he belonged in the 1970s, wouldn't you say? :p

I wonder what shows my parents were watching on or around that time. (You're getting to (or are or were) around my birth time- literally.)
Well, what did your parents like to watch, exactly? :D

Glad that J.R. Ewing played by Larry Hagman still happens, albeit with a different name and in a different city.
I figured I owed Houston after depriving them of the chance to have the Aeros play in the NHL (especially since, IOTL, the only Texan NHL team plays in... Dallas).

I know Brainbin has something planned for another Trek series ITTL, but he refuses to tell me on the grounds it wouldn't do to spoil all the things for me.
Well, that's a big spoiler - if you had been a voice actor, and Brainbin a video-game company, the sort of thing that might lose you a job. Of course, Brainbin might be more understanding.;)
Luckily, my job is safe--he'd mentioned it himself before on the thread. ;)
Ah, but that is talking about spinoff media - indeed, Brainbin specifically mentions screen continuations as something separate to it that may or may not happen.;)
Having checked through our past conversations, I've said "there is going to be something more after the miniseries", and described it further only as a "mystery project". I was very careful and did not even mention in which medium it would appear. e of pi inferred all by himself that it was going to be another television series, which I will neither confirm nor deny by authorial fiat ;) Which means he didn't spoil anything, and I won't have to fire him. Which is good, because he'll be consulting with me on my very next update!

Which won't be another prank, by the way :cool:
 
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I wonder if some of the aliens in Deep Space would be portrayed with Jim Henson puppets. It would be one way to keep the creative partnership between Desilu and Henson going post-Muppet Show.
 
Great update!

Y'know, I imagine George Carlin could actually come out of this with a career somewhat better than OTL. After all, he could get a lot of mileage by claiming that he was "screwed by the network". Makes the analogies between him and Lenny Bruce even more pronounced.

Now, even though the higher-ups at Desilu nixed a Star Trek crossover, did they ever explicitly announce that Deep Spacewas not set in the Star Trek/Doctor Who continuity? Because if they didn't (and maybe even if they did), it's probably going to become an extremely popular fanon concept here (maybe it'll be the "Spock was the first Vulcan to graduate from Starfleet Academy" of TTL).

I wonder if some of the aliens in Deep Space would be portrayed with Jim Henson puppets. It would be one way to keep the creative partnership between Desilu and Henson going post-Muppet Show.

I second this. :)
 
Now, even though the higher-ups at Desilu nixed a Star Trek crossover, did they ever explicitly announce that Deep Spacewas not set in the Star Trek/Doctor Who continuity? Because if they didn't (and maybe even if they did), it's probably going to become an extremely popular fanon concept here (maybe it'll be the "Spock was the first Vulcan to graduate from Starfleet Academy" of TTL).
I have to admit I had a knee-jerk negative reaction to this because of your mention of the "Star Trek/Doctor Who continuity". There really isn't such a thing. Technically, you can argue that they must take place in the same universe because they crossover, except they (other than that one semi-canon episode) never refer to anything for the other again, and would probably say a lot that would directly contradict each other. I mean, Doctor Who can barely avoid contradicting itself, so...

Anyway, that aside, I think you have a point about Deep Space, and whether it might be embraced by Trek's fandom as a spiritual successor, which would then be apt to see a lot of flow of information or concepts between the two. The question is basically about the character of the show. Deep Space 9, for instance, feels a lot like Trek. You could change the characters, the races, but if you still told DS9's stories it'd have the same feel of a slightly more complex Trek series. On the other hand, you could take Babylon 5, change the race names to be Klingons and Romulans and alter all the makeup and such, but if you still told the same stories as B5, it wouldn't feel like Trek. (An issue I have with several of the later Trek movies, including the reboot.) So which is Deep Space like, similar enough it feels like a spiritual successor, or a radically different product? That's a key question, and one harder to answer without a bit more detail on the show.

According to the Brainbin, Deep Space has more of the feel of remoteness like the first season--it's out in the middle of nowhere, there's no big interstellar politics or whatever, it's just the comings and goings and the characters. This is in contrast to the 4 other seasons of Trek ITTL and the miniseries. However, things like the presence of recurring characters vs a tighter ensemble, or whether there are "major power" aliens like the Klingons and Romulans and if they feel similar in tone to those species from Trek...that's the sort of stuff that could decide if there's substantial numbers of fans interested in considering it "Trek-lite."

Either way, I have Word of God that it's Officially Not Trek. According to Brainbin, while some of the production team are coy about it in the lead up, Solow lays down the law at a Trek convention in 1980, saying explicitly that Deep Space is not set in the Star Trek continuity and will not be telling Star Trek stories. Fanfiction or other fan works may choose to decide that he's wrong, and some of the ideas can make good Trek stories (which, actually, gives me some ideas for my real guest post), but officially the two are wholly separate.
 
I have to admit I had a knee-jerk negative reaction to this because of your mention of the "Star Trek/Doctor Who continuity". There really isn't such a thing. Technically, you can argue that they must take place in the same universe because they crossover, except they (other than that one semi-canon episode) never refer to anything for the other again, and would probably say a lot that would directly contradict each other. I mean, Doctor Who can barely avoid contradicting itself, so...

Well, let me explain my reasoning. The BBC has, as you implied in your post, never officially set a canon policy for Doctor Who. I believe it was Steven Moffat who said doing such a thing would be utterly pointless considering the nature of the show (some dude traveling through space and time, changing stuff around). The show plays a lot with the parallel universe concept, more than Trek ever has.

Given all that, from a technical standpoint, the fact is the Doctor visited the Trek universe at some point here. They may not primarily occupy the same universe, but the same multiverse ("the big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff"), sure. Which would be, technically, canon.

And as far as declaring an episode semi-canon, is there even precedent for that in the Star Trek franchise, IOTL or ITTL? The closest OTL example I can think of to an episode being declared not canon was Voyager's "Threshold".
 
I have to admit I had a knee-jerk negative reaction to this because of your mention of the "Star Trek/Doctor Who continuity". There really isn't such a thing. Technically, you can argue that they must take place in the same universe because they crossover, except they (other than that one semi-canon episode) never refer to anything for the other again, and would probably say a lot that would directly contradict each other. I mean, Doctor Who can barely avoid contradicting itself, so...

Hey, if TTL's Doctor Who is barely avoiding contradicting itself, it's doing a hell of a lot better than OTL's version :)
 
Well, vultan, there's sort of two questions: does Star Trek consider Who canon, and does Who consider Star Trek canon? Trek ITTL is apt to have a slightly different canon policy that OTL (I think it didn't really firm up until TNG, so I guess around the time of the miniseries and the Puritans ITTL it'd have coalesced), but I think Who is probably getting excluded.

From what I can tell from an admitted non-fan, the Who canon policy is kind of like the British constitution--mostly by general agreement than any one document, but definitely present and you'd better not try and cross it too much. Basically, from what I can tell, though, it's "respect what's come before, unless it's too much of a pain." Including a lot of Trek stuff would be a big pain, and would involve a lot of overriding stuff that'd come before, so I think it'll be again mostly left to "yeah, that happened, we don't talk about it, now who's up for some Daleks?"

My assertion of the crossover being semi-canon takes cues from a couple of OTL things--mainly in my mind the OTL epsiode which Who's crossover is sort of styled off of: "Assignment Earth". Like AE, the Who crossover is intended to introduce a new show to the audiences of the other, and the show is more about that than a typical Trek plot. Reading the crossover, it has a lot of the same feel--and I think looking at what Trek canon makes of Gary Seven is useful. Even lacking the massive universe that surrounds the Doctor (and which would make putting the Doctor into any joint continuity difficult), Seven has an appearance in about three novel and a couple short stories, which he has entirely to himself.He's never seen or heard of again in the main continuity. This leads me to believe that the general result was that people who liked him wanted more stories about him, not more stories dealing with Trek canon.

ITTL, with the Doctor in a similar role, they'll have the Who canon in which to get that. You might see them tightly paired in the fandom--a lot of fans of one being fans of the others (my girlfriend references the Superwholock, which is some sort of mutant tumblr group consisting of Who, supernatural, and Sherlock, so that's a thing)--but I think much outright overlap of canon is unlikely. To get back around to topic, I think that it's likely that Deep Space will have some fan overlap as well, and thus might be apt to have sort of the same relationship--a lot of shared fans who're conversant in both, but the mainstream of both don't really want to cross the streams too much, as it were.
 
Well, vultan, there's sort of two questions: does Star Trek consider Who canon, and does Who consider Star Trek canon? Trek ITTL is apt to have a slightly different canon policy that OTL (I think it didn't really firm up until TNG, so I guess around the time of the miniseries and the Puritans ITTL it'd have coalesced), but I think Who is probably getting excluded.

From what I can tell from an admitted non-fan, the Who canon policy is kind of like the British constitution--mostly by general agreement than any one document, but definitely present and you'd better not try and cross it too much. Basically, from what I can tell, though, it's "respect what's come before, unless it's too much of a pain." Including a lot of Trek stuff would be a big pain, and would involve a lot of overriding stuff that'd come before, so I think it'll be again mostly left to "yeah, that happened, we don't talk about it, now who's up for some Daleks?"

That's probably less of a problem for Who than it is for Trek. There have been plenty of settings used for a single Who story and then never referred to again. The crossover episode would be just another one of those. That's why, ITTL, it makes sense to include it in the Doctor Who distribution package.

My assertion of the crossover being semi-canon takes cues from a couple of OTL things--mainly in my mind the OTL epsiode which Who's crossover is sort of styled off of: "Assignment Earth". Like AE, the Who crossover is intended to introduce a new show to the audiences of the other, and the show is more about that than a typical Trek plot. Reading the crossover, it has a lot of the same feel--and I think looking at what Trek canon makes of Gary Seven is useful. Even lacking the massive universe that surrounds the Doctor (and which would make putting the Doctor into any joint continuity difficult), Seven has an appearance in about three novel and a couple short stories, which he has entirely to himself.He's never seen or heard of again in the main continuity. This leads me to believe that the general result was that people who liked him wanted more stories about him, not more stories dealing with Trek canon.

On the other side, the Doctor Who 30th anniversary special, Dimensions in Time is considered to be non-Canon. Interestingly, it is also a crossover story - with the Soap Opera Eastenders. Where Canon refers to it at all (in a couple of books) it is considered to be a nightmare of the Doctor's. in subsequent episodes, both Doctor Who and Eastenders have refered to each other as fictional.

Cheers,
Nigel.
 
e of pi, another thing to consider: what does the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself, Gene Roddenberry, have to say about the matter? He is, after all, the guy who created both Star Trek and Deep Space here (even if most of the actual work in developing it was done by Gene Coon and Brandon Tartikoff, respectively), and a lot of fans are going to base their opinions on this matter on what he says. Now I highly doubt Roddenberry would explicitly try to piss the higher-ups at Desilu by publicly contradicting Solow and saying "yeah, they're in the same universe," so there are two ways this could go down. Either he explicitly says at some convention that "yeah, they're in two different universes", in which case any connection may be a fun fan theory for some, but ultimately few will take it seriously. But if he remains mum on the issue, or even playfully hints at a connection, well, a lot of the so-called "puritans" may consider it even more canon than The New Voyages.

And as for canon policy as a whole, well, let's talk about "Assignment: Earth", you example. While it's true that it was never referenced in other episodes, there's nothing out there that indicates it was ever not considered canon. Therefore, aside from the fact that the two universes would rarely if ever explicitly coincide after the crossover, would there be any concrete reason not to consider DW canon in ST here (bear in mind these are two franchises that make heavy use of time travel, parallel universes, etc)?

Ultimately, there are two mindsets on the issues: "canon until proven not canon", and "not canon until proven canon". Our debate here would probably serve as a microcosm for fan disputes ITTL. ;)

And for the love of all that's good and holy, this needs to be canon in Star Trek. :D
 
:eek:In all honesty, A Central East is most likely dead; I have developed an increasingly negative view of the plausibility of the timeline.
I had a feeling. Well, all I can say is that I enjoyed it, and would love to see a Mark II. I hope to write an early-20th century timeline myself, someday.

I wonder if some of the aliens in Deep Space would be portrayed with Jim Henson puppets. It would be one way to keep the creative partnership between Desilu and Henson going post-Muppet Show.
And how could I possibly rebut this argument? I can't, so I won't. You can consider that canon.

Great update!
Thank you, vultan :)

vultan said:
Y'know, I imagine George Carlin could actually come out of this with a career somewhat better than OTL. After all, he could get a lot of mileage by claiming that he was "screwed by the network". Makes the analogies between him and Lenny Bruce even more pronounced.
I could definitely see Carlin getting some mileage out of trying to make himself a "martyr" for anti-censorship on network television. But at the same time, his pretentious pomposity has taken a major hit. He'll need to engage in some major self-deprecatory damage control (which is certainly not beyond his abilities).

---

And now we get to the meat of the matter, over which my two closest consultants are engaged in a spirited (though very civil) debate. We're touching somewhat on the topics of discussion in the later entries of Appendix A (as it stands right now, we're looking at three more, including e of pi's Actual Guest Post), what with the questions of official continuity and how that defines canon, vs. fanon and alternate universes (something which is obviously near and dear to all of us).

Come 1978, and The Next Voyage, the obvious question of "What Is Canon?" emerges. By this time, Gerrold's been the Head Writer of the Star Trek comic for seven years. Gerrold, of course, also wrote for the miniseries (probably more than anyone except Fontana). Now, the miniseries doesn't really contradict anything in the comics, because they're set during the five-year mission (on the directive of Roddenberry - his one "order" with regards to continuity in this era), but the impression is still very clear after The Next Voyage that the comics are not canon. (How the comics themselves respond to The Next Voyage is a question for Appendix A.)

Meanwhile, we have Doctor Who. Now, despite the protest I've received on this point from certain corners of my readership, those working at the BBC, along with audiences, are going to look back at the Yank Years as a whole with some resentment. There was the good, of course - the much larger budgets during this time (which, sadly for vultan, would butterfly those stop-motion dinosaur scenes :p), but also the bad - NBC and Desilu started exerting a lot more influence on storylines and conceptual ideas, not to mention the tremendous albatross that was Claire Barnett, the "obligatory American". At the very least, there will exist some perception of the BBC having "sold its soul" for more money (not so good when there's a broadcast licence fee to finance production). What ties existed are for all intents and purposes severed, post-1975. Any connections prior to that point are considered winks and nods in and of themselves - D.C. Fontana writing a serial, John Winston appearing as a character entirely different from Mr. Kyle, and what-have-you. Even during the Yank Years, Star Trek is never mentioned again, for the very simple reason that people might expect name-dropping to be a prelude to additional crossovers between the two series. Recall that the first-run of Star Trek does not conclude in the British Isles until 1973. Yes, those in the know are aware that it actually ended in 1971, but the common people were far less informed about that sort of thing back then.

And as for Star Trek, it's obviously never mentioned again during the fifth and final season which follows the crossover. Gerrold (who did not write for the crossover) doesn't care for Doctor Who, as he (like most of the writers) saw it as something foisted on them by Desilu, and therefore he does not include the Doctor Who characters in his post-1971 run; they do make one appearance prior to that, in a comic loosely adapting "Lords of Time and Space". That comic is the only legitimate media depicting the crossover under the Star Trek name, since the episodes are part of the Doctor Who syndication package. Jokes obviously abound in snarkier Trekkie circles that, considering the subpar scripts that comprised the rest of the season (occasional gems like "The Borderland" and "These Were the Voyages" excepted), they probably could have used further gate-crashing appearances by the Doctor. But this is just one of those silly in-jokes, rather akin to Batman being able to defeat any opponent, given sufficient "prep time".

Now, the Puritan perspective (not a crystallized factor until after 1978, obviously) is a curious one. Of course, Gene L. Coon co-wrote the Doctor Who crossover, and as he is the Knox to Roddenberry's Calvin, most Puritans grudgingly accept it as full canon. But they would relegate it to a very dark corner along with all of the other "parallel universes" (the preferred blanket term among Trekkies, originated in "Mirror, Mirror"), with their only significance to the canon being their point(s) of contact with the "primary" universe. Once that contact ceases, so does their relevance. This "tidy" solution has fanon consequences (especially with regard to what we IOTL call the "mirror universe"), but it's one of the few Puritan tenets that enjoys wide currency among the greater Trekkie fanbase (probably because it predates the rise of the Puritan faction). This fundamental principle of the fanon is the key to understanding how it would respond, by default, to Deep Space. As there is no point of contact between Star Trek and Deep Space, then it stands to reason that, even notwithstanding Solow explicitly disclaiming any connection between the two shows, one would not exist anyway, because there's no crossover.

I hope that helps to clear up some of the ambiguity there, without overplaying my hand for the pending Appendix A updates :)
 
Meanwhile, we have Doctor Who. Now, despite the protest I've received on this point from certain corners of my readership, those working at the BBC, along with audiences, are going to look back at the Yank Years as a whole with some resentment. There was the good, of course - the much larger budgets during this time (which, sadly for vultan, would butterfly those stop-motion dinosaur scenes :p), but also the bad - NBC and Desilu started exerting a lot more influence on storylines and conceptual ideas,

I can see some of the writers including carefully hidden (or at least plausably deniable) references in the scripts. There might even be a red-headed villainess introduced somewhat earlier than OTL, though they might not go as far as call her something like "Luball".

... not to mention the tremendous albatross that was Claire Barnett, the "obligatory American".

It's interesting that you have Claire Barnett leave the show at the same time as Jon Pertwee. It was actually fairly unusual in Classic Who for both the Doctor and the companions to change at the same time. Not changing the companions when the Doctor regenerated helped give the show some continuity. Even when Patrick Troughten, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury left the show at the same time, the Brigadier's promotion from occasional appearances to companion provided continuity.

So Claire Barnett's departure at that time probably indicates just how unpopular she was. I suspect that Jim Dale's first season would feature the Brigadier and Unit to a greater extent than Tom Baker's did OTL in order to bridge the continuity gap.

What ties existed are for all intents and purposes severed, post-1975. Any connections prior to that point are considered winks and nods in and of themselves - D.C. Fontana writing a serial, John Winston appearing as a character entirely different from Mr. Kyle, and what-have-you. Even during the Yank Years, Star Trek is never mentioned again, for the very simple reason that people might expect name-dropping to be a prelude to additional crossovers between the two series.

Actually, I don't think that is as likely at that time as it is now-a-days. The Doctor Who stories were much more stand-alone than they are in the new Who series. Backgrounds or characters would be used for a single story (or maybe two) and then never be refered to again. That may well be a feature of the lack of repeats and VCRs - the writers couldn't assume that most of the audience were familiar with every episode of the show (unlike Russel Davis who liked dropping references to sixties episodes).

In particular, there was nothing remarkable about actors playing different roles in different stories. I don't think that an appearance by John Winston would be particularly linked to Mr Kyle. Even in the new Who, both Freema Agyeman and Karen Gillan appeared in episodes before returning as companions.

Cheers,
Nigel.
 
As I mused on the latest update today, a thought struck me: given that Tartikoff did toy with making Deep Space into a Star Trek series, but was denied by Solow, it is entirely possible that, some thirty years later, there will be people in the world That Wacky Redhead wrought using a global electronic network to discuss what would have happened had Solow said yes - perhaps even making stories about it...
 
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