That Wacky Redhead

[Thande]

Good appendix entry. I actually read a few of the Gold Key Star Trek comics from the 1970s at school (those that were collected into annuals). Sometimes they wandered off course a fair amount, but generally they captured the unique feel of the show pretty well, and it's worth looking back on them today. Though not as deep as the show itself they have the same kind of look and aesthetics and...bit hard to describe.

The Marvel Star Trek comics, what few I have read, are more of a 'fan-wanky' production: rather than feeling like Star Trek itself, they're a case of developing the universe as a setting and then doing 'fan-wanky' stories like exploring the details of the Klingon and Romulan societies, etc. Which is fun, but not the sort of thing you'd see in Star Trek itself, whereas the Gold Key comics felt more like actual Star Trek episode stories--well some of them did, others were more what you'd expect to see in Buck Rogers or something.

I also read some of the DC TNG comics, which are interesting--in some ways they feel more like TOS stories than TNG, but then early TNG often felt like it was trying to do TOS stories badly as well, so that's not too surprising. What's also interesting is that they pre-empt a lot of stories that actually showed up in the series itself: there's one early story that features Q being de-powered by the Continuum and having to give himself up for the humans in order to get his powers back again (which happened almost word for word in the later episode "Deja Q") and another which is basically Star Trek Voyager only done a lot better and several years earlier. This ties into something I've discussed with Brainbin before about licensed spinoff media often telling better stories and earlier than the mainstream media form itself.

The Star Trek video game sounds plausible--you're correct both that the phasers and torpedoes dichotomy would considerably broaden games of the period and prefigure a similar style of two weapon combat in shooters, and that a lot of Star Trek games have sparked debate in just how much they qualify as Star Trek rather than 'mindless shooty shooty bang bang that happens to have Kirk and the Enterprise in it'. Of course from our POV, the Asteroids-style unwinnable game where you have to rack up a high score does feel like Star Trek because it evokes the Kobayashi Maru, but that doesn't apply in TTL...

Also no hating on the Adam West Batman show! Camp may be unpopular with the critics nowadays but it continues to have stealth success. There are plenty of people who weren't born in the 1960s (or even the 1970s) whose image of Batman is still more defined by Adam West than by either the Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan films or any other dark interpretation. The reason being, IMO, that the Adam West show simply has more mass appeal and is not something perceived as being tied to a particular age range: a true case of being 'family friendly'. After all, how many shows from the 1960s are still regularly repeated today on mainstream channels? That, Gerry Anderson's works, and Star Trek itself are about it. Annoying I'm sure for those people who want to present Batman as the dark brooding gothic vigilante and have him seen that way, but I'm afraid you're in the minority.

 

[Falkenburg]

Dredd first appeared in the second issue of 2000AD in '77 and was quickly the most popular comic in it within a year or so. The Cursed Earth, the first major Judge Dredd storyline that cemented its fame was '78.

Well aware of that Bil.

Just factoring in a few years to get the characters and 'feel' bedded in and another couple on top for discussions to go round and round (and round) which could easily take us to the end of the period covered ITTL.

All the while blindly ignoring the fact that the property itself would be a poor fit for Desilu, IMO.

Falkenburg

 

[unclepatrick]

Thanks for the latest segment. It was great. Love the use of David Gerold.

I remember playing a "Star Trek" computer game on a Computer at UAH in the late 1970's. You fired Photon Torpedoes at waves of Klingon ships. Think primitive Asteroids. After each wave you were told of the Damage to the Ship by Scotty and the number of crew dead by McCoy in a Text. I remember quitting the game after I lost the Sick bay and no have Bones telling me the number of dead.

 

[vultan]

Brilliant update! It seems the good folks at Desilu are blazing a trail in tie-in marketing that wouldn't be crossed until a little later in real life. I wonder how this affects the other science fiction franchise...

...no, not Star Wars - I'm talking about Planet of the Apes! Prior to 1977, Star Trek and the Apes franchise were the two big sci-fi franchises of the decade, and they both had a lot of tie-in material (if anything, Apes probably had a little more than Trek). With Star Trek far more successful here, until Star Wars comes out (assuming it does), perhaps 20th Century Fox really pushes Planet of the Apes as the big competitor for Star Trek in terms of marketing. This, of course, would have the knock-on effects of having the budget drops in the film series being less precipitous, better production values and more longevity for the TV series...

 

[e of pi]

The American Party campaign was unabashedly populist and nativist; in searching for a symbol for their party, they were aided by an editorial cartoonist, who chose the turkey – which, unlike both the donkey and the elephant, was native to American shores. The turkey was also seen as proud, stubborn, and folksy, much like Wallace. Intended as, at the very least, a ribbing of Wallace's ideals, if not an all-out condemnation, the American Party co-opted the symbol wholeheartedly.

Better late than never, right? As a bit more visible contribution to the TL than some others I've made in the past, here's an attempt at an "official" American Party logo, in the style of the GOP elephant and the Dem Donkey. Note the stars: while the elephant is usually depicted with three stars, the donakey bears three in some versions and four in others. Not to be out-done, the turkey bears five.

 

[NCW8]

It would not, actually! You are where you should be. Both of my readers born in 1964 are (or were) regulars, as well.

Well, I'm still around - just catching up again with this masterpiece.

• Gene Coon wrote four out of the eleven (three as the sole writer, if you don't count his having "adapted" one of them, which he actually didn't). And you wonder why just about the first thing I did for Star Trek ITTL was to keep him on board...
• D.C. Fontana was credited only for one episode, "Journey to Babel", but she also wrote the final revised draft of "The City on the Edge of Forever" (uncredited);
• David Gerrold, of course, wrote that one episode which remains his most famous work, despite an acclaimed career;
• Three episodes were written by established titans of science-fiction (Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, and Theodore Sturgeon).
• And two episodes were written by dependable freelancers: Paul Schneider (who wrote only two episodes: "Balance of Terror" and "The Squire of Gothos") and Jerome Bixby ("Mirror, Mirror" was the best of his solid handful of scripts).

As for directors? Again counting "Journey to Babel" (which was directed by Joseph Pevney):

• Vincent McEveety and James Komack (whose name you should recognize - twice over) directed one episode each.
• Marc Daniels directed three episodes;
• and Joseph Pevney directed the other six.

Would you like to know how many episodes Daniels and Pevney, the show's two most frequent directors, helmed in the Turd Season IOTL? One. (Granted, that one was "Spock's Brain", but hey, Marc Daniels directed for I Love Lucy. Everyone is allowed one off week.) Again, you can see why I arranged for them to stay put ITTL.

Now that is interesting. It's amazing that the influence of a few writers and directors show up so clearly even in such a small sample of votes.

Home computing! So many things could happen here, it was such a free for all in the late 70s and early 80s... The way things turned out are certainly not the way things had to turn out. In terms of video games and home PCs... Like Nintendo almost being introduced to the US through Atari, for one thing, so almost... Not sure where the butterflies take this one, but Atari... Er, Syzygy would have a hard time preempting Commodore's C64 (or the VIC-20 even) because of MOS technologies as others have said. MOS's ability to do remasks just blew everyone else out of the water in terms of production cost, coupled with Jack Tramiel's obsession with competing on price. Now certainly all of these things fall within the POD so are subject to change. So who knows? But given that this isn't the focus of this timeline per say, I guess it all lies with how big of Atari fans Brainbin and his tech advisers are. So many chance decisions affected the course of PC technology at this time that a sneeze somewhere could have us all using Exxon computers today. Yep, Exxon did microcomputers, in the early 80s it was all the rage for everyone to do so after all. I am jealous of tech people who lived through this time, it must have been very exciting. And insane to deal with, I know, but hey exciting insane at least.

Looking back at it, it was. I was an engineering student at the time, so a proto-tech person. I wrote my first computer program on punch-cards ! It seemed like in a couple of short years, computers went from something confined to the computer centre to something that everyone could have in their own room.

The UK had two interesting competitors in the early eighties micro market. The BBC contracted with Acorn to produce the BBC Micro to accompany its Computer Literacy Project. For its time, it was a pretty high-spec machine and a number were purchased by schools. At the other end of the scale were the Sinclair computers, particularly the Spectrum. This was a cheap, low-spec micro using the Zilog Z80. In spite of that, it was fairly versatile.

Edit: The impact of the BBC Micro and the Spectrum were probably greater culturally than technologically as they both increased computer literacy in the UK. I think that the Spectrum was particularly good at that. The operating system and BASIC interpreter together were less than 16K of machine code. You could even buy an annotated decompilation of the whole code, which was a great way of learning how computers work. This is, more or less, what the Raspberry Pi is designed to accomplish.

RPGs (as they were called) were not a market formally exploited by Desilu for quite some time, as they were considered highly niche. Even many Trekkies considered the genre a bridge too far, at least at first. Nonetheless, fan-created systems emerged and, by mid-decade, were being played at numerous conventions, even across the Pond. The problem, however, was one of intricacies; even the “simplest” games would need two systems, one for ship-bound combat and one for landing party combat. In addition, the question of how the characters, at their stations, would interact with the functioning, maintenance, and repair of the Enterprise proved an exceptionally sticky situation. A few particularly clever fans did their best to devise a workable concept, but considering the negligible size of this subset within another subset of the fandom, uniformity was necessary in order for any kind of RPG to achieve critical mass.

The micros of the early eighties allowed the development of another type of game. Related to the RPG, this was the text-based adventure game, which grew out of Zork, developed at MIT in the late seventies. I don't recall if there was a Star Trek version of the game - most examples were Fantasy based. There was a good one for the Spectrum based on The Hobit.

There were also book-based versions of such games, where you took a decision at the end of each short chapter and turned to a different page to continue. There were a number of these "Choose Your Own Adventure" books based on Star Trek.

Edit: Strangely, these books developed after the computer game, although technically there's no reason they couldn't have been written much earlier. Imagine Oliver Twist written as a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book !

Cheers,
Nigel.

 

[Brainbin]

Thank you all for your incredibly enthusiastic responses to my latest update! I had a lot of fun writing this one, and I hope it shows. It was nice to actually pay off on some of the plot threads I've been setting up for a change, as opposed to merely foreshadowing new ones (although there's still plenty of that, of course). Also, you can now understand why I was rather vague with some of the plot details in the previous Atari/Syzygy update. But most importantly, you know now the form in which Star Trek will return!

That's a sure sign your characters have become real...

There's an added wrinkle, of course, in writing historical characters and attempting to be true to them, while factoring in the changes wrought by the POD.

Argh, I am so out of things! One little hurricane and a thesis draft (and now final) due and I am so behind.

And I appreciate you playing catch up, e_wraith

However, video games! Awesome! Home computing! So many things could happen here, it was such a free for all in the late 70s and early 80s... The way things turned out are certainly not the way things had to turn out. In terms of video games and home PCs... Like Nintendo almost being introduced to the US through Atari, for one thing, so almost... Not sure where the butterflies take this one, but Atari... Er, Syzygy would have a hard time preempting Commodore's C64 (or the VIC-20 even) because of MOS technologies as others have said. MOS's ability to do remasks just blew everyone else out of the water in terms of production cost, coupled with Jack Tramiel's obsession with competing on price. Now certainly all of these things fall within the POD so are subject to change. So who knows? But given that this isn't the focus of this timeline per say, I guess it all lies with how big of Atari fans Brainbin and his tech advisers are. So many chance decisions affected the course of PC technology at this time that a sneeze somewhere could have us all using Exxon computers today. Yep, Exxon did microcomputers, in the early 80s it was all the rage for everyone to do so after all.

That's a very excellent overview of the situation. Now I am, of course, too young to have played the Atari in its heyday (I am a Fourth Generation kid through and through, staking my claim on the Nintendo side of that greatest of Console Wars), but interestingly enough, my father owned one of the (as you note) myriad Second Generation consoles, which I got to play in my youth: the Mattel IntelliVision. (Utopia was the best game on there, by the way - and it should not surprise you to learn that I grew to love city-building games). And the question of what will become of Nintendo is going to loom over this topic for quite some time...

I am jealous of tech people who lived through this time, it must have been very exciting. And insane to deal with, I know, but hey exciting insane at least.

This is true of the early years of virtually any medium. When I look back at television in the 1950s, that pioneering spirit and fearless drive of creativity always astounds me. There was a palpable sense that they could do anything. For that reason alone, I've often thought about doing a 1950s timeline; as I've noted before, the advantages to a pre-WWI timeline is that I can focus on the nascent motion picture and radio industries, and I'm already kicking around a few ideas...

So much more to babble about! And I missed top ten Trek episodes, blah. But this must wait until I do a bit more work on my schoolstuff. Yes. Probably. Maybe. Keep up the good work Brainbin and everyone else commenting, this is too interesting a thread, it is dangerous to one's academics! (My not wanting to do my final draft is more dangerous to my academics, but hey, when one can spread the blame around it usually pays to do so.)

I'm really touched that you love this thread so much, and I agree, my commenters are the best Of course, RL must always come first, but fear not, because this thread will still be here when you get back. At which time I would love to read your Top 10 for Star Trek, because I could always use more data points.

See recent events, things may be looking up for the last bastion of Canadian baseball... (Which is little consolation for no hockey, grrrrr... Not that I am Canadian, I just like when teams can actually compete against the Yankees. And hopefully beat them...)

Yes, so I've heard, but Torontonian teams (and Canadian teams in general, but especially Torontonian teams) have a tendency to blow even the surest of sure things

BB, you probably know, but in case you don't, a small head's up thanks to this: Sony got sued, & a 5-4 decision went their way; small butterflies, & VCRs are illegal.

I do indeed know, and I've alluded to that case before, and we will be seeing the technology challenged in the courts, just as IOTL.

Can't really comment on alt-computers but Sysyzyg is a bit more of a mouthful than Atari.

True, but at least we know what all of the Syzygy commercials will be focusing on doing ITTL

Plus do we have any idea for an "Arizona Forde" movie?

Let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet, Professor - he with the flannel and the beard still needs to work on that other pet project of his, first and foremost.

Oh, ho, ho. I had this thought, I wonder if Sega will still create the SG-1000 ITTL. Would it not be interesting if they try to find a North America partner to market it stateside like Nintendo tried with Atari OTL?

A very intriguing possibility, Pyro! Of course, that's not for another several years ITTL, and the question of Japanese involvement in the video game industry is a delicate one, which will also no doubt be controversial, considering my earlier statement that I would not be covering what was then known as "Japanimation".

Aside from the giddy good feeling I get from contemplating what stories Gerrold might have been able to tell in Trek canon (well, a gray area but even if deblessed by Roddenberry, at least more authoritative than random fanon) and of course Tartikoff's miniseries project, the really big thing in this post is the huge 90 percent of the iceberg lurking beneath the surface

Thank you, Shevek, for sharing your giddiness with us Actually, there are a great many things lurking beneath the surface of this latest update.

Star Trek RPG? Hm... more like the OTL late 80s tabletop Star Trek game, or more like the mentioned AD&D?

Excellent question, LordInsane - but there's only one way to find out!

Oh you tease...

Ain't I a stinker?

Still

Sorry, that one's non-negotiable. You should be happy, that all fans of Star Trek can be addressed by a single term ITTL. What about fandom unity?

How did Gold Key, of all choices, get the contract? Or did neither Marvel nor DC even bid?

I doubt that Marvel or DC were remotely interested in Star Trek when the licence was originally sold c. 1966-67. Even if they were, remember that these were the days when Stan Lee was writing for virtually every comic on the Marvel roster; adding one more to that pile would just be asking for trouble. Likewise, Carmine Infantino would not assume editorial control at DC until 1967 - it's very likely that his predecessor lacked his insight or business acumen. Thus, little Gold Key is unchallenged.

Fairly obvious there were no comics buffs on staff, or they'd know Marvel was attracting the same kind of demo "ST" was, largely on the strength of more realistic treatment of characters (a bit of an achilles heel for an "ST" comic, actually) & the use of continuing stories.

This is true, but Marvel was very much about promoting a certain image (headed by "Stan the Man") which the "squares" at Desilu would very likely find somewhat offputting. Lee might have been able to connect with someone like Brandon Tartikoff, but he wasn't installed at the company until 1976.

With David in charge, & allowing you're right about serial stories, this could impact the creation of more than a few of the novels.

Fanon in general is going to owe a lot to the comics, because they're the primary source of "new material" between the end of the original series in 1971, and the upcoming miniseries. This critical incubation period can be compared to the "Three-Year Summer" in Harry Potter fandom - the hiatus between books four and five (2000-03) during which time many of the most enduring fan fictions and fanon tropes were established. Obviously, the internet facilitated that, but as OTL proved, it isn't necessary.

I wonder if the comics, & upcoming miniseries, can't persuade Lucy to persuade Gene to allow ships other than Enterprise to be dealt with: it'd clear up the frankly silly situation of there being more stories told than there are every day of their notional 5-yr mission.

We'll be revisiting deuterocanonical works in a future part of Appendix A, at which time I will address your speculation.

Once DC did the Speedy story that overthrew the CCA, that was becoming less & less true.

New media achieving artistic legitimacy is a very time-consuming process. Though, to be honest, I'm not sure why Roddenberry, a television science-fiction writer, seems to look down his nose at "lesser" media, but Desilu doesn't feel that it's worth overruling him. Remember, ITTL, he's a proven hitmaker for the studio, what with both Star Trek and The Questor Tapes (Re-Genesis having long since been forgotten), and they want to do their best to keep him on their good side.

That would have been a Gold Key decision, not his; Gold Key's Editor in Chief would have governed on the use of single-issue stories, & changing it needed a corporate policy change.

Gerrold went over their head to Desilu, who then pressured them to make the changes. Remember, they have to bend over backwards to keep the studio that owns their meal ticket happy. If that involves editorial changes, then so be it. Maintaining growth in revenues usually involves bumping up your expenses anyway.

I've always counted the Speedy story, & the death of Gwen, right up to the new Xmen, among others, as SA. Not to mention the debut of The Punisher.

For the purposes of this timeline, I'm arbitrarily defining the beginning of the Bronze Age as 1970, the year that Infantino lured Jack Kirby over to DC.

Note the irony of this, & all subsequent "ST" video games: it's completely contrary to Gene's philosophy.

Not all of them, thank you very much. Games such as 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites were very successful in re-capturing the essence of Star Trek.

This is requiring some pretty sophisticated graphics processing, isn't it? Sounds like a really cool game, tho. Reminds me a lot of Zaxxon.

Thank you for the compliment. I did my best to devise a game that people would actually want to play, even divorced from the Star Trek licence.

Gah! The history of ST and RPGs and other tabletop gaming is a long complicated one.

And thank you for sharing it with us, Bil! Welcome aboard

Intriguing as ever, Brainbin.

Thank you, Falkenburg!

It's a shame that the ethos of 2000AD's Judge Dredd is probably a non-starter for Desilu as I'd have loved to see a Company with That Wacky Redhead's standards play a role in developing the brand.
Mind you, by the time Dredd establishes itself this TL may have run its course, so the point is moot.

You do realize that on this side of the Pond, the only thing for which that character is known is the film starring Sylvester Stallone?

Good appendix entry.

Thank you, Thande!

I actually read a few of the Gold Key Star Trek comics from the 1970s at school (those that were collected into annuals). Sometimes they wandered off course a fair amount, but generally they captured the unique feel of the show pretty well, and it's worth looking back on them today. Though not as deep as the show itself they have the same kind of look and aesthetics and...bit hard to describe.

Yes, from what I've heard, the Gold Key comics were actually better than they had any right to be, but given that the show itself was of a higher quality ITTL, the comics (by standing still) will suffer by comparison, allowing for a perceived need to improve them. Enter Gerrold, who works to elevate them to perhaps on par with TAS, relative to the series proper, IOTL. (In many ways, the comics will fill the void left by TAS in the popular imagination, though obviously the matter of canonicity is far less ambiguous).

The Marvel Star Trek comics, what few I have read, are more of a 'fan-wanky' production: rather than feeling like Star Trek itself, they're a case of developing the universe as a setting and then doing 'fan-wanky' stories like exploring the details of the Klingon and Romulan societies, etc. Which is fun, but not the sort of thing you'd see in Star Trek itself, whereas the Gold Key comics felt more like actual Star Trek episode stories--well some of them did, others were more what you'd expect to see in Buck Rogers or something.

Interestingly, the Marvel Comics sound similar to Phase II, which was planning to devote an entire two-parter (entitled "Kitumba", and written by John Meredyth Lucas) to the inner workings of Klingon society. Considering that Phase II evolved into TMP, that isn't terribly surprising - but, in my research, I learned that the Marvel post-TMP comics were specifically prohibited from using characters and concepts introduced in the original series. In other words, they had no choice but to focus on those sorts of stories.

The Star Trek video game sounds plausible--you're correct both that the phasers and torpedoes dichotomy would considerably broaden games of the period and prefigure a similar style of two weapon combat in shooters, and that a lot of Star Trek games have sparked debate in just how much they qualify as Star Trek rather than 'mindless shooty shooty bang bang that happens to have Kirk and the Enterprise in it'. Of course from our POV, the Asteroids-style unwinnable game where you have to rack up a high score does feel like Star Trek because it evokes the Kobayashi Maru, but that doesn't apply in TTL...

Yes, it was serendipitous that the order of things in the 1970s perfectly reflected the Kobayashi Maru. And indeed, the two-button, two-weapon innovation is going to have a major impact on the release of the VCS console. As for which Star Trek games are truly Star Trek? As noted, the technology has to catch up before justice can be done.

Also no hating on the Adam West Batman show! Camp may be unpopular with the critics nowadays but it continues to have stealth success. There are plenty of people who weren't born in the 1960s (or even the 1970s) whose image of Batman is still more defined by Adam West than by either the Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan films or any other dark interpretation. The reason being, IMO, that the Adam West show simply has more mass appeal and is not something perceived as being tied to a particular age range: a true case of being 'family friendly'. After all, how many shows from the 1960s are still regularly repeated today on mainstream channels? That, Gerry Anderson's works, and Star Trek itself are about it. Annoying I'm sure for those people who want to present Batman as the dark brooding gothic vigilante and have him seen that way, but I'm afraid you're in the minority.

Hey, hey, hey! I resent that remark Come now, Thande, you know me. Do I honestly seem the type who would prefer the grim-and-gritty, darker-and-edgier treatment? You should know that the opinions expressed by the narrator do not necessarily reflect those of the author. In fact, I've defended the 1960s Batman series and Adam West on this very thread! (The worst Batman, as everyone knows, is the allegedly Great And Powerful Clooney). The narrator generally speaks from the perspective of the era which he is covering, and during the Bronze Age of Comic Books, Bat-fans wanted to run away from the campy 1960s series as fast as humanly possible. Likewise, the writers of Star Trek had to guard vigilantly against camp because those excesses did eventually capsize both Batman and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. In fact, I often defend Star Trek in exactly the same fashion as you defend Batman (because it, too, is a 1960s series that is regularly repeated today - even though it, and not Batman, is available on DVD).

Thanks for the latest segment. It was great. Love the use of David Gerold.

Thank you! Yes, Gerrold is doing very well for himself with Star Trek ITTL.

Brilliant update!

Thank you, vultan!

It seems the good folks at Desilu are blazing a trail in tie-in marketing that wouldn't be crossed until a little later in real life. I wonder how this affects the other science fiction franchise...

...no, not Star Wars - I'm talking about Planet of the Apes! Prior to 1977, Star Trek and the Apes franchise were the two big sci-fi franchises of the decade, and they both had a lot of tie-in material (if anything, Apes probably had a little more than Trek). With Star Trek far more successful here, until Star Wars comes out (assuming it does), perhaps 20th Century Fox really pushes Planet of the Apes as the big competitor for Star Trek in terms of marketing. This, of course, would have the knock-on effects of having the budget drops in the film series being less precipitous, better production values and more longevity for the TV series...

As always, vultan, an excellent observation. Since there's obviously some interest that topic, then maybe I'll touch on it in a later update.

Better late than never, right? As a bit more visible contribution to the TL than some others I've made in the past, here's an attempt at an "official" American Party logo, in the style of the GOP elephant and the Dem Donkey. Note the stars: while the elephant is usually depicted with three stars, the donakey bears three in some versions and four in others. Not to be out-done, the turkey bears five.

That is a superb illustration of the AIP Turkey - far better than anything I was imagining. Thank you very much, e of pi! Please consider that an official canonical image

Well, I'm still around - just catching up again with this masterpiece.

Thank you for your kind words, Nigel

Now that is interesting. It's amazing that the influence of a few writers and directors show up so clearly even in such a small sample of votes.

I'm actually very happy that my survey has confirmed my choices of creative personnel - but, as you can imagine, not too surprised.

The micros of the early eighties allowed the development of another type of game. Related to the RPG, this was the text-based adventure game, which grew out of Zork, developed at MIT in the late seventies. I don't recall if there was a Star Trek version of the game - most examples were Fantasy based.

Having grown up on graphical adventure games (late enough that nobody made the "graphical" distinction anymore), I will of course cover the origins of the genre when the time comes. With regards to Star Trek, as far as I know, most developers did wait for the advent of graphics, probably because Star Trek games have been graphical from the very beginning (which, ITTL, is even earlier than the "beginning" IOTL). But I do see the adventure game as basically inevitable with the advent of home microcomputers.

There were also book-based versions of such games, where you took a decision at the end of each short chapter and turned to a different page to continue. There were a number of these "Choose Your Own Adventure" books based on Star Trek.

Edit: Strangely, these books developed after the computer game, although technically there's no reason they couldn't have been written much earlier. Imagine Oliver Twist written as a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book !

Funny you should mention that - I specifically researched the "Choose Your Own Adventure" genre as I was writing my video game update, as it too is an example of interactive fiction - but as you point out, it actually post-dates them, and therefore I had to remove it from the final post. In fairness, avant-garde theatre is probably bizarre enough.

Coming up next time, of course, is the customary "More to Come" update! The next two cycles are going to be very busy, so I hope that you'll all come along for the ride!

 

[Falkenburg]

You do realize that on this side of the Pond, the only thing for which that character is known is the film starring Sylvester Stallone?

Don't get me started on that piece of...
<The following tirade has been redacted in the interests of public decency and to prevent contributing to the delinquency of minors>

The Muppets would've made a better job of it than that which Cannon & Co. served up.

Suffice to say, if all you know of Dredd is that travesty, you don't know what you're missing.

I'll do you a deal, you don't mention Stallone's assault upon an iconic character of my youth and I won't mention the V-Word.

I do find it intriguing that you made no reference or reply on the subject of Apes, though.

Falkenburg

 

[Thande]

Yes, from what I've heard, the Gold Key comics were actually better than they had any right to be, but given that the show itself was of a higher quality ITTL, the comics (by standing still) will suffer by comparison, allowing for a perceived need to improve them. Enter Gerrold, who works to elevate them to perhaps on par with TAS, relative to the series proper, IOTL. (In many ways, the comics will fill the void left by TAS in the popular imagination, though obviously the matter of canonicity is far less ambiguous).

Interestingly, the Marvel Comics sound similar to Phase II, which was planning to devote an entire two-parter (entitled "Kitumba", and written by John Meredyth Lucas) to the inner workings of Klingon society. Considering that Phase II evolved into TMP, that isn't terribly surprising - but, in my research, I learned that the Marvel post-TMP comics were specifically prohibited from using characters and concepts introduced in the original series. In other words, they had no choice but to focus on those sorts of stories.

Hmmm, the comparison of Gold Key to TAS and Marvel to Phase II is pretty apt, I agree.

I assume the executive meddling you mention was later revoked, because the Marvel Trek comics I have read do bring up concepts from the original series, such as a sequence about the Mirror Universe, which had a very intriguing take on what that setting would look like in the TOS movie era.

The weird part I find about the Marvel Trek comics (Linkara has also pointed this out in his reviews of some of them) is that they would do series following directly on from each film (Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, etc) surely in the knowledge that a sequel would come along that would continue the story and thus obsolete everything they had written...? It was weird. I mean it's not like Star Wars where there's enough time within the films to fit in external material. It'd be more like if someone had been doing comics in between the releases of the Lord of the Rings films that had Frodo and Sam wandering off to Harad after the end of Fellowship of the Ring and then promptly ignoring all that as soon as Two Towers started and they adapted that.

Hey, hey, hey! I resent that remark Come now, Thande, you know me. Do I honestly seem the type who would prefer the grim-and-gritty, darker-and-edgier treatment? You should know that the opinions expressed by the narrator do not necessarily reflect those of the author. In fact, I've defended the 1960s Batman series and Adam West on this very thread! (The worst Batman, as everyone knows, is the allegedly Great And Powerful Clooney). The narrator generally speaks from the perspective of the era which he is covering, and during the Bronze Age of Comic Books, Bat-fans wanted to run away from the campy 1960s series as fast as humanly possible. Likewise, the writers of Star Trek had to guard vigilantly against camp because those excesses did eventually capsize both Batman and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. In fact, I often defend Star Trek in exactly the same fashion as you defend Batman (because it, too, is a 1960s series that is regularly repeated today - even though it, and not Batman, is able on DVD).

Ah, I did think it didn't sound like you

60s Batman isn't available on DVD? That surprises me. I know the film is...

Which reminds me, sadly not many people seem to have picked up on this (for one example see below), but I was amused at the realisation that the recent Dark Knight Rises film ends in a sequence that seems strangely reminiscent of the "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb" bit from the Adam West film...

 

[phx1138]

That's a very excellent overview of the situation. Now I am, of course, too young to have played the Atari in its heyday (I am a Fourth Generation kid through and through, staking my claim on the Nintendo side of that greatest of Console Wars), but interestingly enough, my father owned one of the (as you note) myriad Second Generation consoles, which I got to play in my youth: the Mattel IntelliVision. (Utopia was the best game on there, by the way - and it should not surprise you to learn that I grew to love city-building games). And the question of what will become of Nintendo is going to loom over this topic for quite some time...

I must have been an outlier a very long time... I vaguely recall seeing these, but don't recall every playing one. (We had an air hockey table for awhile, tho.) I was always much more interested in reading. (I'd have taken the Dune trilogy over Intellivision any day.)

Sorry, that one's non-negotiable.

Noted. Just sayin'.

You should be happy, that all fans of Star Trek can be addressed by a single term ITTL. What about fandom unity?

Did it have to be that one?

I doubt that Marvel or DC were remotely interested in Star Trek when the licence was originally sold c. 1966-67. Even if they were, remember that these were the days when Stan Lee was writing for virtually every comic on the Marvel roster; adding one more to that pile would just be asking for trouble. Likewise, Carmine Infantino would not assume editorial control at DC until 1967 - it's very likely that his predecessor lacked his insight or business acumen. Thus, little Gold Key is unchallenged.

OTOH, those were the two biggest, with very strong original properties; they didn't need tie-ins the way Gold Key or Dell did...

This is true, but Marvel was very much about promoting a certain image (headed by "Stan the Man") which the "squares" at Desilu would very likely find somewhat offputting. Lee might have been able to connect with someone like Brandon Tartikoff, but he wasn't installed at the company until 1976.

Noted, & agreed.

Fanon in general is going to owe a lot to the comics, because they're the primary source of "new material" between the end of the original series in 1971, and the upcoming miniseries.

Less fanon TTL, since these are authorized products. I suspect a lot of the LoCs will generate ideas, tho. (How much these will actually affect the canon stories IDK. I recall some really good material in the IM LCs in the late '70s, & not one bit of it ever showed up. Then again, Captain Confederacy's LC was practically an ongoing design lab.)

We'll be revisiting deuterocanonical works in a future part of Appendix A, at which time I will address your speculation.

If you're addressing it at all, I'm thrilled. Just wanted to be sure you noticed it.

New media achieving artistic legitimacy is a very time-consuming process. Though, to be honest, I'm not sure why Roddenberry, a television science-fiction writer, seems to look down his nose at "lesser" media, but Desilu doesn't feel that it's worth overruling him. Remember, ITTL, he's a proven hitmaker for the studio, what with both Star Trek and The Questor Tapes (Re-Genesis having long since been forgotten), and they want to do their best to keep him on their good side.

Comics have had a really "bottom feeder" rep for a long time, til they started getting respectability with Burton's "Batman". That seems to be because of the perceived audience being nothing but 10yr olds. (Which is why DC recycled story ideas so freely for so long...& why there was a plague of kid sidekicks.)

It really took until the late '60s, when fans started coming into the game, like, frex, Roy Thomas did, for anybody to realize the fandom was getting older--& you could keep them. (There was a trace of that with the EC horror titles, which were mainly aimed at adults, & look how well that turned out...)

By the time "Batman" came out, you had a fanbase that could appreciate Thomas & Starlin's (somewhat engimatic) Mar-Vell, Buckler's Deathlok, Moore's Swamp Thing, or Morrison's crazed DP (if you've ever met anyone who actually understood those, let me know)--& Watchmen, & Dark Knight. You also had publishers addressing the changed demo, & stores able to bypass the CCA restrictions, since the books weren't going on the racks for 10yr olds in the first place. IMO, it's these fans (& the ones that were coming up behind them, among whom I'd count myself) that made Burton's "Batman" possible--& successful.

Gerrold went over their head to Desilu, who then pressured them to make the changes.

I do find that strange, given there are no comics buffs on staff at Desilu. I'm not seeing how they'd even realize it's an issue. (That said, IDK how much research Lucy & Co would do on it; would they even bother reading back issues?)

Remember, they have to bend over backwards to keep the studio that owns their meal ticket happy.

Given the studio demands it, I'll buy that.

For the purposes of this timeline, I'm arbitrarily defining the beginning of the Bronze Age as 1970, the year that Infantino lured Jack Kirby over to DC.

Fair enough. IIRC (without looking it up), you're just after the "drug issue", & before Gwen.

Given the Quagmire ends early, & given you've not actually said anything about it, can I presume Bolan & Punisher don't happen? (Yes, I was, & am, a fan of both--the original Punisher, I should say {not the later of either, nor film version of Punisher.})

Not all of them, thank you very much. Games such as 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites were very successful in re-capturing the essence of Star Trek.

I have never heard of either one. (Needless to say, not a computer gamer much.)

Thank you for the compliment. I did my best to devise a game that people would actually want to play, even divorced from the Star Trek licence.

I think so. Popular as Asteroids & Zaxxon were, I think Syz (as Vanth would say) has a hit with this one.

You do realize that on this side of the Pond, the only thing for which that character is known is the film starring Sylvester Stallone?

The concept fascinated me, but I was never grabbed with the art, much, & never found back issues old enough I could pick up the story. Nor a fan recommending it strongly, which put me back onto Scout--for which I will be forever grateful.

That said, I do wish we'd had better access to the Brit market titles. I'd have loved to be able to read Captain Britain, frex, & it's not like Marvel didn't own the rights to it...

the comics will fill the void left by TAS in the popular imagination

...they had no choice but to focus on those sorts of stories.

Between these two things, if you do them again, you've got the strength of comics to do aliens not limited by budget & casting, ship design & combat not limited by tech, & stories implicitly canon. Instead of just the occasional Catian (Chanur, anyone? {And seriously, could you be less subtle than that name?}) aboard Enterprise, we could see just how broad the Fed really is.

Since there's obviously some interest that topic, then maybe I'll touch on it in a later update.

That film deserved to be buried in the desert. And a remake? (I vaguely recall reading the book, & how this ship, bound for deep space, managed to end up back on Earth was never explained AFAIR.) He should have stuck with Burma. (One more sign mainstream writers should not write SF.)

 

[Lord Insane]

Excellent question, LordInsane - but there's only one way to find out!

Less excellent than it could I been, considering I only now noticed I wrote late 80s instead of the intended late 70s.

 

[Glen]

Good update - sorry, a bit busy at the moment to comment more than that.

 

[Brainbin]

More To Come... Right After These Messages

The "present date" is June 29, 1978 (a Thursday). In London, various celebrities are attending the world premiere of The Man with the Golden Gun, including 007 himself, Michael Billington, as well as director Steven Spielberg; the movie represents their third and second outing, respectively, with the franchise. But the true stalwart has always been the producer, Albert "Cubby" Broccoli. This is the tenth Bond film produced under the auspices of his company, Eon Productions, and it will certainly not be the last.

The remarkable stability in place at Eon is even more impressive considering that the industry is forever in flux - not to mention that James Bond seems something of an anachronism in contrast to the booming New Hollywood movement, despite having poached Spielberg therefrom. These same highs and lows are certainly felt in other industries within the entertainment sector, such as television, where the much greater turnover certainly lends an immediacy to the proceedings. Some producers, such as what remains of the once-untouchable Tandem Productions, are falling hard and fast; others, such as Paramount Television, struggle to maintain even their modest foothold; only a select few, including Desilu Productions, seem to be going from strength to strength. Then again, it doesn't hurt that Desilu has gotten in on the ground floor of a whole new industry, video gaming; the company it is backing, Syzygy, is experiencing phenomenal - and nigh-unprecedented - success, with the release of their Video Computer System for home use.

Though the VCS requires the use of a television set for video and audio output, and therefore could theoretically occupy the attention of viewers when they could be watching their favourite shows during the primetime hours, this does not alarm executives; instead, they find themselves far more concerned with an entirely different technology...

---

So, what can we expect next, and all on account of that wacky redhead?

We'll be taking our usual general overview of the next production and broadcast season: 1977-78.

There will be an in-depth look at that most melodramatic genre of the daytime schedule, and its rise in notoriety and, eventually, influence.

We'll chronicle the development of that bloodiest and messiest of major league sports throughout this decade; slugs and snails to the sugar and spice of soap operas.

Our exploration of pop culture will continue with the proliferation of an entirely new technology which will forever alter the viewing patterns of everyone who watches television.

Appendix A will return once again as we chart the production and reception of the Star Trek miniseries.

And, finally, the long-awaited answer to the frequently-asked question: what is it that he with the flannel and the beard is up to, anyway?

All this and more, coming up on... That Wacky Redhead!

---

Acknowledgements

Now is the time for me to give special thanks to the following consultants, who have provided me with valuable assistance (and may yet continue to do so, if all goes well) over the course of the development of this timeline: Chipperback, e of pi, truth is life, vultan, Electric Monk, Thande, and Andrew T.

But most of all, my sincerest thanks to all of you for your praise, your criticism, your many and varied opinions, and your continued readership!

Remember that you can find a complete list of Official, Canonical Updates on the Alternate History Wiki page for this timeline. I highly recommend it for those of you who suffer from Archive Panic. I've made over 250 posts to this thread, less than one-quarter of which can be considered "content", making the list a valuable time-saver.

 

[NCW8]

Though the VCS requires the use of a television set for video and audio output, and therefore could theoretically occupy the attention of viewers when they could be watching their favourite shows during the primetime hours, this does not alarm executives; instead, they find themselves far more concerned with an entirely different technology...

Ah C30, C60, C90 Go! - and video tapes as well, of course.

Looking forward to it, and especially to Star Trek: The Mini Series.

Since we're up to 1978, can you also drop a hint about whether Blake's 7 gets made ITTL ?

Cheers,
Nigel.

 

[Thande]

I wonder if Betamax (or perhaps an entirely different videotape medium original to this TL) will become the dominant one rather than VHS.

 

[e_wraith]

Well, I'm still around - just catching up again with this masterpiece.

Looking back at it, it was. I was an engineering student at the time, so a proto-tech person. I wrote my first computer program on punch-cards ! It seemed like in a couple of short years, computers went from something confined to the computer centre to something that everyone could have in their own room.

The UK had two interesting competitors in the early eighties micro market. The BBC contracted with Acorn to produce the BBC Micro to accompany its Computer Literacy Project. For its time, it was a pretty high-spec machine and a number were purchased by schools. At the other end of the scale were the Sinclair computers, particularly the Spectrum. This was a cheap, low-spec micro using the Zilog Z80. In spite of that, it was fairly versatile.

Edit: The impact of the BBC Micro and the Spectrum were probably greater culturally than technologically as they both increased computer literacy in the UK. I think that the Spectrum was particularly good at that. The operating system and BASIC interpreter together were less than 16K of machine code. You could even buy an annotated decompilation of the whole code, which was a great way of learning how computers work. This is, more or less, what the Raspberry Pi is designed to accomplish.

Being from the US, I did not have any real exposure to the BBC's computer efforts. And yet I know of them, since Elite came from there. Elite! I experienced it on the C64, which was my uncle's until he figured out that he couldn't do much on it other than play games. My parents thought it would be educational for me, but of course 99% of what I did on it was play games. Elite was an eye opener on what could be done with a game, and to have been done on such low specs! Talk about a game that could capture the exploration part of Trek, at least... Not really the people part, though.

The micros of the early eighties allowed the development of another type of game. Related to the RPG, this was the text-based adventure game, which grew out of Zork, developed at MIT in the late seventies. I don't recall if there was a Star Trek version of the game - most examples were Fantasy based. There was a good one for the Spectrum based on The Hobit.

There were also book-based versions of such games, where you took a decision at the end of each short chapter and turned to a different page to continue. There were a number of these "Choose Your Own Adventure" books based on Star Trek.

Edit: Strangely, these books developed after the computer game, although technically there's no reason they couldn't have been written much earlier. Imagine Oliver Twist written as a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book !

Well here's a large part of my youth, text adventure games and choose your own adventure books. It is odd but true that the choose your own adventures seemed to become popular AFTER the computer adventure games started to get big, there's no reason they could have become popular before this. But I guess people weren't used to that sort of interactivity. I preferred the books to the games, largely, at the time I was really into flightsims and space sims. Later on I would get into RPGs, as well, but my adventure game interest seems to have waned as they got better technologically.

 

[stevep]

Brainbin

Looking forward to it. Presuming like the others that the new 'threat' will be the VCR in some form. Which actually isn't such a threat as mainly used for watching recorded TV programmes, although some threat for cinema possibly as there is the ability to watch films when people want.

Like NCW8 as well as how the mini-series goes I'd be interested in Blake's & and any other details on other SF on TV or elsewhere.

With the mini-series would it be presumably a set of programmes with a continuous plot/theme. That would make possibly much better plot and character development than the one hour episodes.

Steve

 

[e_wraith]

And I appreciate you playing catch up, e_wraith

Slowly but surely... After Friday my final draft is turned in and I can read things other than schoolbooks! (I am on a telecon now, so I can't be doing anything useful in real work or academic terms. Just to be clear to my conscience.)

the Mattel IntelliVision. (Utopia was the best game on there, by the way - and it should not surprise you to learn that I grew to love city-building games). And the question of what will become of Nintendo is going to loom over this topic for quite some time...

IntelliVision! Always wanted one, never got it. My parents were big fans of the Atari VCS, but for some reason never thought that there was anything worth while after that. My sister eventually got an NES, which I played when she was not around to yell at me. Utopia... It can't be the same game as on the PC a million years ago? Building a city on a very brown alien planet. Occasional alien invaders... I played the heck out of that, but on an early PC.

This is true of the early years of virtually any medium. When I look back at television in the 1950s, that pioneering spirit and fearless drive of creativity always astounds me. There was a palpable sense that they could do anything. For that reason alone, I've often thought about doing a 1950s timeline; as I've noted before, the advantages to a pre-WWI timeline is that I can focus on the nascent motion picture and radio industries, and I'm already kicking around a few ideas...

Ignoring for a moment the awesome implications of potential future works, of course, I know what you mean. It is incredible when one is at the start of a medium, and no one has figured out the limitations yet, or at least no one has bothered to start saying things are impossible. It's really awesome to look at societies as a whole when they feel that way, too. It is rather sad when such a time period passes and we look back at the visionaries and either enshrine them as beyond us mere mortals that could never achieve such feats today or as silly fools. Thankfully there's always some more silly fools to dream more dreams eventually. Let's hope we never run out!

I'm really touched that you love this thread so much, and I agree, my commenters are the best Of course, RL must always come first, but fear not, because this thread will still be here when you get back. At which time I would love to read your Top 10 for Star Trek, because I could always use more data points.

RL sucks when you have 7 days of no electricity! When you have never gone more than 2 or 3 without, and that was camping... Not fun times. Work had electricity, at least. Or curses, not sure which. Thankfully back on track and almost done with my masters, which means I have free time again! And I have already started re-watching Trek eps on Netflix, so you can bet that there will be a list eventually.

Yes, so I've heard, but Torontonian teams (and Canadian teams in general, but especially Torontonian teams) have a tendency to blow even the surest of sure things

I'm a Mets fan, we are used to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. In fact, we miss when we used to be able to do that, now we just have defeat. And in the NHL I root for the Rangers, who have their best team in ages! Sitting around doing whatever they do when there's no hockey.

True, but at least we know what all of the Syzygy commercials will be focusing on doing ITTL

Speaking of commercials, will a certain William Shatner still be the face of the Vic-20 from Commodore?

 

[Brainbin]

Suffice to say, if all you know of Dredd is that travesty, you don't know what you're missing.

I actually am aware that the character is originally from a British comic book, the now-delightfully anachronistic 2000 A.D., which I came to learn in a rather indirect fashion; through discovering, in unrelated research (read: trawling through either Wikipedia or TVTropes - it's too long ago to remember which), Sonic the Comic (not to be confused with the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics), which apparently outsold this venerable title for a time in the late 1990s. What a decade...

I'll do you a deal, you don't mention Stallone's assault upon an iconic character of my youth and I won't mention the V-Word.

Consider it done

I do find it intriguing that you made no reference or reply on the subject of Apes, though.

I beg your pardon? I most certainly did!

I'm talking about Planet of the Apes! Prior to 1977, Star Trek and the Apes franchise were the two big sci-fi franchises of the decade, and they both had a lot of tie-in material (if anything, Apes probably had a little more than Trek). With Star Trek far more successful here, until Star Wars comes out (assuming it does), perhaps 20th Century Fox really pushes Planet of the Apes as the big competitor for Star Trek in terms of marketing. This, of course, would have the knock-on effects of having the budget drops in the film series being less precipitous, better production values and more longevity for the TV series...

As always, vultan, an excellent observation. Since there's obviously some interest that topic, then maybe I'll touch on it in a later update.

As you can see, vultan made greater hay of it, so I decided to address him, rather than you, in making my blanket response

I assume the executive meddling you mention was later revoked, because the Marvel Trek comics I have read do bring up concepts from the original series, such as a sequence about the Mirror Universe, which had a very intriguing take on what that setting would look like in the TOS movie era.

The prohibition appears to have applied only to the original, 18-month run of the comics. DC then picked up the licence in 1982, and it was them, not Marvel, who depicted the aftermath of three different movies in succession. (They appear to have finally given up on rebooting and stuck to their own continuity after The Final Frontier came out.)

Ah, I did think it didn't sound like you

Hey, just because I don't write about scientific racism doesn't mean that I can't separate myself from my writing, too

60s Batman isn't available on DVD? That surprises me. I know the film is...

20th Century Fox owns the rights to the series, but Warner Bros. owns the rights to the characters and situations. They can't agree on how to divide the profits.

Did it have to be that one?

It has precedence, and it's charmingly unpretentious. Why wouldn't it be that one?

Less fanon TTL, since these are authorized products. I suspect a lot of the LoCs will generate ideas, tho.

Well, I'm very broadly defining "fanon" here as everything other than the series proper.

I do find that strange, given there are no comics buffs on staff at Desilu. I'm not seeing how they'd even realize it's an issue.

Well, that's what they have Gerrold there for - he is constant communication with Justman (one of his old bosses, remember) throughout his tenure at the studio, and it is he who passes his complaints onto the higher-ups, who in turn impose their demands upon Gold Key, who have little choice but to comply.

Between these two things, if you do them again, you've got the strength of comics to do aliens not limited by budget & casting, ship design & combat not limited by tech, & stories implicitly canon. Instead of just the occasional Catian (Chanur, anyone? {And seriously, could you be less subtle than that name?}) aboard Enterprise, we could see just how broad the Fed really is.

Yes, as with TAS IOTL, there's the obvious advantage of being unlimited by the constraints of practical effects when it comes to designing and depicting otherworldly aliens. That said, the series proper was better at depicting a multiracial Federation ITTL, even if we discount Jim Henson's contributions. There were considerable breakthroughs in makeup, for example, with revamps to the appearances of the Tellarites and the Andorians, among others. (No, not the Klingons.)

Less excellent than it could I been, considering I only now noticed I wrote late 80s instead of the intended late 70s.

Don't worry, LordInsane; I understood what you meant. Besides, I make little mistakes like that all the time, and English is my first language

Good update - sorry, a bit busy at the moment to comment more than that.

Thank you, Glen! I look forward to your eventual thoughts on my latest update(s)

Ah C30, C60, C90 Go!

"This video contains content from EMI, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."

Looking forward to it, and especially to Star Trek: The Mini Series.

Not what I'll be calling it, but I'm glad to hear it, and I can only hope that it lives up to your expectations

Since we're up to 1978, can you also drop a hint about whether Blake's 7 gets made ITTL ?

We'll be revisiting British telly - and British culture in general, for that matter - in the coming cycles. This will be the last mostly-Americentric cycle for quite some time, actually. In fact, we'll be covering events in Europe, along with Africa (!) before the end of the "Me Decade", so be sure to look forward to that.

I wonder if Betamax (or perhaps an entirely different videotape medium original to this TL) will become the dominant one rather than VHS.

Well, really, having *VHS emerge victorious in any format war (and there will be a format war - the technology was way too cluttered for there not to have been one) would be pretty unimaginative, wouldn't you say? But at the same time, our common foe, the dreaded Sony, owns Betamax, so we shall have to see!

Well here's a large part of my youth, text adventure games and choose your own adventure books. It is odd but true that the choose your own adventures seemed to become popular AFTER the computer adventure games started to get big, there's no reason they could have become popular before this. But I guess people weren't used to that sort of interactivity. I preferred the books to the games, largely, at the time I was really into flightsims and space sims. Later on I would get into RPGs, as well, but my adventure game interest seems to have waned as they got better technologically.

Yours and everyone else's, if sales are any indication. Did you know that King's Quest V was the best-selling PC game for five years? (1990-95; replaced by Myst, another adventure game, albeit a far less conventional one). But in this day and age, even a major developer like Double Fine can't produce an adventure game without begging for money on Kickstarter (not that I am in any way denigrating crowdfunding as a source of fundraising; I've been suckered by a few pitches myself, as it happens).

You say you were into flightsims and space sims? Well, then, surely you played the Wing Commander series! I've never actually played them myself (or any non-educational PC games until the late 1990s), but I admire them for taking the now-horrendously-dated FMV craze and really making the most of it. Looking at Wing Commander III and especially Wing Commander IV... you really see the potential there, what could have been. Naturally, as an alternate historian, it greatly appeals to me.

Looking forward to it. Presuming like the others that the new 'threat' will be the VCR in some form. Which actually isn't such a threat as mainly used for watching recorded TV programmes, although some threat for cinema possibly as there is the ability to watch films when people want.

Don't worry, we'll find out about the reaction of the film industry to this new technology in due time!

With the mini-series would it be presumably a set of programmes with a continuous plot/theme. That would make possibly much better plot and character development than the one hour episodes.

Something worth bearing in mind is that, ITTL (and even IOTL, actually), Star Trek broke new ground in terms of continuity for its time. 1960s television was about as episodic as serial storytelling can possibly get, and even into the 1970s and 1980s, continuity was seen as the exclusive province of particular genres. British television, obviously, was less afraid of that sort of thing, which I've touched on in various places; but of course you're right that there is a unique opportunity available here.

Slowly but surely... After Friday my final draft is turned in and I can read things other than schoolbooks! (I am on a telecon now, so I can't be doing anything useful in real work or academic terms. Just to be clear to my conscience.)

Best of luck to you with your post-graduate studies! You have my respect... and your wallet has my sympathies

IntelliVision! Always wanted one, never got it. My parents were big fans of the Atari VCS, but for some reason never thought that there was anything worth while after that. My sister eventually got an NES, which I played when she was not around to yell at me.

Not sure how or why my father got one, really. Apparently he used to have a VCS that was presumably gone by the time I was born - if that's true, I'm not sure why he kept the IntelliVision and not that. My childhood friend's father owned - and still owned, by the time we were kids - a ColecoVision, though I never got the chance to play it. I don't know, were those consoles singularly popular in Canada or something? Anyway, my cousin had the NES, not me (or my father - I guess he didn't go back to gaming after the Crash), and then I got the SNES for my birthday, shortly after it was first released in North America. And I still have it, too, over two decades later, currently sitting not three feet away from me, hooked up to my TV. The outer casing has yellowed somewhat, but other than that, it still works just fine.

Utopia... It can't be the same game as on the PC a million years ago? Building a city on a very brown alien planet. Occasional alien invaders... I played the heck out of that, but on an early PC.

No, this is the game I was talking about. It's so old that it's a bona fide pioneer. This appears to be the one you're remembering, contemporary with SimCity and Populous.

Ignoring for a moment the awesome implications of potential future works, of course, I know what you mean. It is incredible when one is at the start of a medium, and no one has figured out the limitations yet, or at least no one has bothered to start saying things are impossible. It's really awesome to look at societies as a whole when they feel that way, too. It is rather sad when such a time period passes and we look back at the visionaries and either enshrine them as beyond us mere mortals that could never achieve such feats today or as silly fools. Thankfully there's always some more silly fools to dream more dreams eventually. Let's hope we never run out!

Creativity is a process akin to throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks. The unfortunate thing about it is that we'll never know if the creators of the present are able to emerge from the shadows of the past, because by the time we find out, they too will have receded into them, and the whole process repeats itself. Then again, time is the only real judge of staying power that we have. Who knows what future generations will see when they look back at the dawn of the World Wide Web?

RL sucks when you have 7 days of no electricity! When you have never gone more than 2 or 3 without, and that was camping... Not fun times. Work had electricity, at least. Or curses, not sure which. Thankfully back on track and almost done with my masters, which means I have free time again! And I have already started re-watching Trek eps on Netflix, so you can bet that there will be a list eventually.

Great to hear! And I'm also glad to know that you got through that dreadful hurricane in one piece. And I look forward to your list. Since you spoke out so strongly against the Okudagasm "remasterings", I trust that you'll be watching the episodes in their proper, unmodified versions?

I'm a Mets fan, we are used to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. In fact, we miss when we used to be able to do that, now we just have defeat. And in the NHL I root for the Rangers, who have their best team in ages! Sitting around doing whatever they do when there's no hockey.

I'm glad you like hockey, because I've been looking forward to talking about it for quite some time! Though maybe I should wait until the strike ends before I post it...

(As an aside, am I right in assuming that Mets-Rangers fans are quite rare? It was my understanding that Mets fans form a bloc with Islanders fans, and Rangers fans with Yankees fans. I'm wondering if you can shed some light on that, for those of us who only have one sports team from each league in our metro area )

Speaking of commercials, will a certain William Shatner still be the face of the Vic-20 from Commodore?

Now that would be telling

 

[Thande]

I actually am aware that the character is originally from a British comic book, the now-delightfully anachronistic 2000 A.D., which I came to learn in a rather indirect fashion; through discovering, in unrelated research (read: trawling through either Wikipedia or TVTropes - it's too long ago to remember which), Sonic the Comic (not to be confused with the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics), which apparently outsold this venerable title for a time in the late 1990s. What a decade...

I made that article!

It was quite amazing how dark that comic got at times. I didn't understand at the time but now of course I know there was considerable crossover of writers from 2000AD. And for some reason some of the writers REALLY loved taking potshots at Marvel--which I also didn't understand at the time as I had only the shallowest understanding of American superhero comics from secondary media adaptations--they generally weren't sold at ordinary bookshops as they are today and the only place I ever saw them on sale was when I went to the US itself, or Canada.