Pilot Errors

While poking aimlessly through my bookshelves the other day, I leafed through an unassuming title I've had for many years now, "Unsold Television Pilots: 1955 through 1989" by Lee Goldberg. As the title implies, this is an exhaustive reference book of all those pilot projects that are written, cast, filmed, offered to the networks, and sometimes shown on the air, but that the networks ultimately decided to turn down. How many of you out there are old and/or geeky enough to remember I-Man, the sci-fi special (aired as an installment of The Disney Sunday Movie) from 1986 featuring Scott Bakula as a cab driver turned indestructible secret agent after he's exposed to a strange vapor while rescuing a man from a truck crash (and John Anderson -- Kevin Uxbridge from the Star Trek: TNG episode "The Survivors" and Abraham Lincoln from the Voyagers! episode "The Day The Rebs Took Lincoln" -- as the evil madman whose plans he's tasked with foiling)?

Anyway, I happened upon a very interesting coincidence, just a couple of pages past the I-Man entry. There were two sitcom pilots made for CBS during the 1986-87 season, whose entries appear back-to-back in this book (on page 450 for those of you who just might happen to have this tome yourselves) ... and whose casts have not one, but two Trek connections each:

The Family Martinez (airdate 08/02/86) -- Robert Beltran (Star Trek: Voyager's Chakotay) portrays a former gang member who becomes a lawyer and returns to his East L.A. home to live with his wacky artist mother and his 16-year-old sister. Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar from ST:TNG) also starred as a character named Rachael McCann, though it doesn't say how she was involved in the story. If all that weren't enough, this show was created by Tommy Chong (of the comedy duo Cheech & Chong ... and, of course, Leo from That '70s Show).

Home Improvements (never aired) -- Not to be confused with the similarly-titled classic Tim Allen/Patricia Richardson sitcom, this one starred Tony LoBianco as a widower with three kids who marries a divorcée (Tricia O'Neil, the Enterprise-C's Captain Garrett from the ST:TNG episode "Yesterday's Enterprise") with one. Also in the cast, as the widower's eldest daughter who's married and lives next door, was ST:TNG's second-season bright-spot, ensign Sonya Gomez herself, Lycia Naff!

Imagine that ... four actors, all of whom would become involved in Trek, working on sitcom pilots in the same year for the same network! Quite a co-inky-dink, eh? One has to wonder -- especially if The Family Martinez had taken off -- who might have ended up playing Tasha Yar...!

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 11

Well, it's been a wonderfully fun journey, taking you through all the Peter Pan/Power Records Star Trek audio adventures ... and, sadly, we've reached the last one. Fortunately, though, the series goes out on a relatively high note with "The Human Factor" (author unknown). In this episode, a new species, who appear genial and harmless on the outside, shock the Enterprise crew by abducting Lieutenant Uhura for some strange, sinister purpose. What could it be? Listen and find out!

If you really want me to, I'll post the cover art for the two-disc CD collection I made of these adventures soon...!

Weird Gets Raw

For a short while now, William Shatner has been doing this one-on-one talk show called Shatner's Raw Nerve. It airs on the Biography channel, and is also sold on the U.S. iTunes store. The setting is almost artful in its simplicity: just Shatner and one guest -- in his 26 episodes (and counting), he's had people ranging from Scott Baio to Judge Judy to porn star Jenna Jameson to Meat Loaf to Whoopi Goldberg to, inevitably, his Star Trek compatriot Leonard Nimoy -- having an intimate chat with no studio audience.

Recently, his guest of honor was "Weird Al" Yankovic. As you might imagine, a conflux of two of my favorite pop-culture personalities in one place was too much of a temptation to resist. Knowing most of what there is to know about Al, I expected a rather uninformative, somewhat superficial half-hour of little interest. But you can imagine my surprise when I found myself watching something entirely different ... and unexpectedly riveting. I realized that while I know nearly all the facts, of any significance, about Al's life, he's never dropped his Weirdness long enough to let the world in for a real look, not that he's ever "owed" us one (after all, being Weird is his job!).

Shatner isn't afraid to use the title of his show quite literally and broach the touchy subjects -- and with Al it's no exception. He's begun to mellow with fatherhood and with age (though he can still tuck his ankle behind his neck!), and he rarely if ever sheds his "Weird" persona before the press or the cameras, so this is a rare glimpse into the real Al. Whether you have just a passing interest in Al, or have been a lifelong fan as I have, I can guarantee that you've never seen Al as truly human before as he is here, and it's really quite moving. You can buy this episode (and the whole series) on the U.S. iTunes store.

Mail It So

Wandering through the local bookstore a few weeks ago, I found an entire caddy of this "Fold-and-Mail" stationery. A very clever idea, I thought ... one side of the page is a ruled sheet with ample space for a letter, and the other side is formatted with room for an address on one half, and one of five beautiful, full-color Star Trek pictures on the other. Just write your letter, fold it in half, fold over the edges so it forms an envelope, seal it together (with its handy-dandy pre-licky-glued edges), and it's ready to be stamped and mailed! What will they think of next?

Nestled in the assortment of cartoon characters and whatnot (Superman, Wonder Woman, Pixar, Bewitched, Wallace & Gromit) was, of course, a Star Trek version which, of course, I simply had to buy. I certainly won't use them at all, not only because of the collectible potential of the item, but also because I lean toward using the more practical and conventional sort of stationery. If I'd had my wits about me (well, that, and a bit more cash), I probably would have picked up all three or four Star Trek pads I'd seen there, in anticipation of waiting patiently to place them on eBay once their value had begun to rise. But as it was, I only bought one for my own collection.

Fortunately, though, they still appear to be manufacturing this neat-o little bauble, which you can order yourself here. Not only is it an unconventional sort of memorabilia item, but it's handsomely designed ... and the sheer nature of the concept would make any "Treknologist" proud that such innovation came from the early 21st Century!

My Digital Companions

Since Memory Alpha didn't exist ten years ago -- and neither, for that matter, did its "father", Wikipedia -- this pair of digital volumes were quite a nifty and useful resource for us Trek geeks when they were released in 1999. The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion and The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion CD-Roms contain roughly the same episode summaries, guest cast lists, and season overview essays that their trade paperback book counterparts do (which I have and also highly recommend), but these discs take things to a whole new level.

Not only do they have an assortment of color images as well as every episode's original shooting script (which, it should be noted, don't take into account the on-the-fly dialogue changes made by the director during filming -- but can include scenes that were never filmed, or filmed but cut from the final edit of the episode), but also QuickTime movies of the trailers from every episode! As a special treat, here are the trailers from the TNG episode and the DS9 episode I watched just last night.

As fun as they are, though, these pieces of software are showing their age ten years later ... a rarity amongst Star Trek products, but probably inevitable when it comes to the sort used with a computer. The fixed-size interface was made for smaller displays with a lower resolution, so on my 21" LCD it takes up the space of about a 7" diagonal display, and might make you lean in and/or squint in order to read the text. Also, the scrolling is very mouse-sensitive, so even a quick click can scroll five or six lines, they scroll at such a fast rate (apparently, the standard Windows mouse settings don't apply within the program).

Most inconveniently, the document files containing the scripts, although they seem to display like plain text files, are actually saved on the CD-Rom as "*.cxt" files -- and more aggravatingly, Windows doesn't know how to open the files, and neither do I. (Any ideas out there?) Curiously, though, the video files are in the conventional "*.mov" QuickTime format (as evidenced by the links above), and can be viewed outside of the interface. Granted, they're in an early QuickTime codec and as such don't have the smoothness or resolution that more recent codecs provide, but they're fun to watch regardless.

All that leads me to think about how amazing they could do this same sort of software program if they rewrote it for today's computers. Think about it: a single DVD-Rom disc could probably carry a similar program, but encompassing all five Star Trek television series ... greater screen resolutions would provide for easier-to-read text, and dynamic programming language would allow for resizing the interface to fit one's screen ... newer QuickTime codecs would give sharper, bigger pictures, and probably in even smaller file sizes than are on these discs ... not to mention the multitude of other advances in programming that would make for a smoother interactive experience overall.

And why not take it a step further? They could do the same thing with the Star Trek Omnipedia (the software inspired by the Star Trek Encyclopedia), which I now regret having gotten rid of. How about it, Simon & Schuster? What better time to cash in on the fresh wave of Star Trek nostalgia? You'd have one guaranteed sale right here.

Star Trek: The Lost Missions - Episode 10

Whew ... I almost thought I wasn't going to get an entry to you this weekend, since our broadband internet was out for two days and finally came back up just a few hours ago. Better late than never, eh?

Did I say that the previous Peter Pan/Power Records Star Trek audio adventure was the dopiest? Sorry, I meant this one. Not only does it boast (and I use that word lightly) a security officer who sounds like he's doing a crappy James Cagney impression, but the rest of the story ain't much better, as might seem to be indicated by its title, "Dinosaur Planet" (no writer credits again, and as was the case last time, it's probably for the best). Here goes nothin'...!

Happy Birthday, Voyager!

Are you ready to feel old? I sure wasn't, particularly when such a jarring realization came exploding out of the warm-and-fuzzy tidbit of nostalgia that it did, like some macabre jack-in-the-box from the nightmarish Mirror Universe. What am I talking about, specifically? Okay, I might as well at least try to get used to saying it: Today marks the 15th anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek: Voyager. Believe it or not, it's true ... January 16, 1995 saw the auspicious debut of the UPN television network, with its very first program being "Caretaker", the epic two-hour pilot episode of Voyager.

But I really have to stop making this sound like an occasion to mourn ... on the contrary, it's well worth celebrating! I can remember the setting vividly: we were staying in a hotel during our first visit to the Pacific Northwest to find ourselves a new home. My brother and I shared a room, and I had to plead with him to let me watch it since he wasn't, still isn't, and probably never will be, the least bit of a sci-fi or Star Trek fan. Out of the goodness of his heart (two nouns that I had never thought were applicable to him), he allowed me to be part of that landmark occasion in television history.

I can also remember how entertained I was. This was by far the best Star Trek pilot episode ever! It had an interesting premise, a compelling story, and likeable characters. And you know how The Next Generation finally seemed to find its groove in the third season, and Deep Space Nine also took about three years to get its mojo working? Well I felt, right from the beginning, that Voyager had hit the ground running. The cast seemed to fit together and be comfortable with their characters right from the start, and in retrospect that probably had quite a bit to do with how enjoyable the pilot episode was.

It wasn't perfect, of course -- the interpersonal conflict kind-of flew in the face of Gene Roddenberry's "everybody-gets-along-in-the-future" ideal; I wasn't totally keen on the whole sequence of events that brought about the Maquis in the first place; and then there was the biggest plot hole of them all, the idea that people believed a Vulcan (Tuvok) would forsake logic and join the Maquis -- but the greater overall dramatic potential of the show made those nits much less worth picking.

I'm really, really tempted to watch "Caretaker" this very evening, in a true anniversary celebration of its premiere, but I can't bring myself to do it. You see, I've been watching the Star Trek series DVDs in order for several months now, even going to the point of interspersing DS9 episodes at the same point where it originally began running concurrently with TNG, and I'm intent on doing the same with Voyager at the appropriate time. I've only gotten to TNG's early seventh season (DS9's early second season) at this point, so I still have roughly 30 episodes to get through (all the way up to DS9's "Past Tense" two-parter) before I can "legally" start watching Voyager. I want to re-experience the introduction of the Cardassian treaty, the creation of the Demilitarized Zone, and the introduction of the Maquis in the intended order ... it'll help me appreciate it more, as I've appreciated several other firsts in the TNG-era shows that I'd forgotten about in recent years.

As a special bonus on this oh-so-special day, here's a bonus feature from the Voyager Season One DVD set, which shines the spotlight on the unfortunate miscasting of Genevieve Bujold as Captain Janeway, including a real treat -- actual footage from the first two days of shooting, giving us a peek at the captain that almost was. Happy Voyager Day, one and all!