Author Habits That Annoy You

[DonIago]

Actually I liked that about the show, that it was one of the only shows that tried to depict space battles realistically, with the ships too far apart to see more than one except in screen graphics, instead of copying Star Wars's WWII-dogfight version of space battles or The Wrath of Khan's Hornblower-sea-battle version, neither of which is remotely how a space battle would actually work. The only other modern show I can think of that portrays anything like realistic distances in space battles is The Expanse. (The original Star Trek ironically did it better than modern shows because it didn't have the FX capability to show two ships in the same shot most of the time.)

To the assertion that watching graphics on a screen can't be suspenseful, I offer the movie Fail Safe as a counterargument. The fact that the characters were watching a big wall display depicting events happening thousands of miles away beyond their ability to control was a key part of what created the suspense. Alfred Hitchcock and plenty of other filmmakers have always known that what you can't see is a great source of fear and tension.

Of course, having crewed fighters at all in Andromeda was unrealistic and a concession to the Star Wars WWII-pastiche paradigm, even though the slipfighters could function as drones remotely operated by Andromeda herself. Atomic Rockets has a good explanation of why space fighters make no sense: https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fighter.php#id--Why_Fighters_Are_Worthless In short, there's no point wasting the fuel to propel the mass of a pilot and their cockpit and life support when a missile or drone could do the same job.

I think this is where we, for me, draw the line between what makes for a good sense of realism and what makes for good television viewing.

In their defense, IIRC I was also pretty tired at the time I was watching the episode, but I just found the approach they took in that episode to be very hard to follow. It felt like a kind of cheap way to save money by never showing what was actually occurring.

There were a handful of isolated moments in DS9 where they did kind of the same thing, illustrating someone firing weapons by showing them pushing the button, but not showing the action itself.

Is it fair to say that at times NuBSG did the same thing? If so, I'd say they executed it much better.

 

[Christopher]

In their defense, IIRC I was also pretty tired at the time I was watching the episode, but I just found the approach they took in that episode to be very hard to follow. It felt like a kind of cheap way to save money by never showing what was actually occurring.

There were a handful of isolated moments in DS9 where they did kind of the same thing, illustrating someone firing weapons by showing them pushing the button, but not showing the action itself.

Is it fair to say that at times NuBSG did the same thing? If so, I'd say they executed it much better.

It can be underwhelming to audiences accustomed to Star Wars-style sci-fi where they do swooping fighter combat even with capital ships, but my opinion is that that's a ridiculous and vastly overused way of handling space battles, so I welcome more realistic alternatives.

The Expanse did a pretty good job splitting the difference, though. They had realistic distances between spaceships instead of cramming them together as closely as cars on the freeway (I mean, it's called space for a reason, I wish more productions would remember that), but they kept it dynamic by having the cameras do really fast zooms across the intervening space to shift focus from one ship to another, or would follow missiles across the distance between ships. Plus it had those floaty midair holograms that are another unrealistic cliche that really annoys me (what the hell is emitting or reflecting the light???), which gave effective 3D overviews of the battlefields. They were pretty unrealistic about the speed with which large ships could accelerate and change trajectory, but I take that as dramatic shorthand. And they had ships behave pretty realistically for space, rotating around their centers of mass and thrusting to decelerate, rather than banking like fighter planes. So I'm willing to excuse the relatively minor departures from reality since they were at least reasonably accurate about things most productions get ludicrously wrong.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Except Sybok's mother was a "Vulcan princess," whatever that means, so she was unlikely to be as much of a counterculture V'tosh ka'tur type as Sybok.

Indeed. Having married a Human woman, Sarek himself was going against his cultural traditions (albeit not against the basic principle of Kol-Ut-Shan).

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Certain attitudes, personality traits, etc. It need not be what we consider a similarity.

 

[DonIago]

It can be underwhelming to audiences accustomed to Star Wars-style sci-fi where they do swooping fighter combat even with capital ships, but my opinion is that that's a ridiculous and vastly overused way of handling space battles, so I welcome more realistic alternatives.

The Expanse did a pretty good job splitting the difference, though. They had realistic distances between spaceships instead of cramming them together as closely as cars on the freeway (I mean, it's called space for a reason, I wish more productions would remember that), but they kept it dynamic by having the cameras do really fast zooms across the intervening space to shift focus from one ship to another, or would follow missiles across the distance between ships. Plus it had those floaty midair holograms that are another unrealistic cliche that really annoys me (what the hell is emitting or reflecting the light???), which gave effective 3D overviews of the battlefields. They were pretty unrealistic about the speed with which large ships could accelerate and change trajectory, but I take that as dramatic shorthand. And they had ships behave pretty realistically for space, rotating around their centers of mass and thrusting to decelerate, rather than banking like fighter planes. So I'm willing to excuse the relatively minor departures from reality since they were at least reasonably accurate about things most productions get ludicrously wrong.

I haven't gotten to The Expanse yet, but from everything I've heard, I'm looking forward to giving it a spin.

As I tried to convey, I know the 'swooping fighter combat' isn't realistic; but I also think limiting a depiction of combat exclusively to blips on computer screens isn't (usually, there can be exceptions) an effective option for television or film. For me, at least, there needs to be some showing involved. Maybe the showing wouldn't itself be very interesting, but it reminds the viewer that those blips on a screen represent actual ships and people. That things are happening.

Indeed, I just ran a writing panel where someone read an excerpt from a military sci-fi story they're working on, and I encouraged them to make the action less abstract and to do what they could to put the reader more in the action...but that also there could indeed be value to, at times, punching up the abstraction factor for impact, because there's something I find uniquely horrifying about the idea that the deaths of thousands can be reduced to the blinking out of a dot on a screen.

 

[Christopher]

I haven't gotten to The Expanse yet, but from everything I've heard, I'm looking forward to giving it a spin.

I wasn't crazy about the later seasons, which were too much military SF/war stories for my taste, but that's me. And I liked it that they kept the science mostly fairly plausible, except for the midair holograms and those damn magnetic boots which could never possibly work as a substitute for gravity as shown (though that's an unavoidable compromise until we start actually making TV shows in outer space).

As I tried to convey, I know the 'swooping fighter combat' isn't realistic; but I also think limiting a depiction of combat exclusively to blips on computer screens isn't (usually, there can be exceptions) an effective option for television or film. For me, at least, there needs to be some showing involved. Maybe the showing wouldn't itself be very interesting, but it reminds the viewer that those blips on a screen represent actual ships and people. That things are happening.

That's just it, though -- I think it's more important to show the people reacting to things than it is to show miniature/CGI ship models zooming around and shooting flashy lights at each other. The best special effect is an actor's reaction. If the characters react to the blips on the screen with convincing emotion and urgency, that will sell it to the audience.

I mean, when you think about the big dinosaur reveal scene in Jurassic Park, what comes to mind first -- the CGI dinosaurs themselves, or Laura Dern's face as the reality of it sinks in?

Indeed, I just ran a writing panel where someone read an excerpt from a military sci-fi story they're working on, and I encouraged them to make the action less abstract and to do what they could to put the reader more in the action...but that also there could indeed be value to, at times, punching up the abstraction factor for impact, because there's something I find uniquely horrifying about the idea that the deaths of thousands can be reduced to the blinking out of a dot on a screen.

The death of thousands is just as abstract in an exterior shot of a CGI ship blowing up as it is in a shot of blips on a screen. In neither one do you see any actual people. In both cases, it doesn't convey the tragedy unless we see characters reacting to it emotionally, caring about the loss.

 

[JD]

I spoke to DC Fontana about this at a SF convention in New Zealand. She had quite a glint in her eye and congratulated me for noticing. (The line, not the glint.)

It was "Vulcan's Glory" (Feb 1989) and she wrote it when ST V was still in its early stages of production, so Sybok was not-yet-canon. The movie premiered in June 1989. Roddenberry and Fontana had both spoken out publicly about the idea of a half-sibling for Spock being unwise, and DC even quoted her old TOS-era memos warning the 1960s TV writers that giving Spock too many close relatives could water down Spock's uniqueness.

Technically, what DC did was permissable, and just a little bit mischievous. But Paramount could have removed her line (of "Spock is the only son of Sarek") if they wanted to.

I bet Burnham would have really irritated them then, and now we even have Strange New Worlds setting up a possible story arc with Sybok himself.

I haven't gotten to The Expanse yet, but from everything I've heard, I'm looking forward to giving it a spin.

As I tried to convey, I know the 'swooping fighter combat' isn't realistic; but I also think limiting a depiction of combat exclusively to blips on computer screens isn't (usually, there can be exceptions) an effective option for television or film. For me, at least, there needs to be some showing involved. Maybe the showing wouldn't itself be very interesting, but it reminds the viewer that those blips on a screen represent actual ships and people. That things are happening.

Indeed, I just ran a writing panel where someone read an excerpt from a military sci-fi story they're working on, and I encouraged them to make the action less abstract and to do what they could to put the reader more in the action...but that also there could indeed be value to, at times, punching up the abstraction factor for impact, because there's something I find uniquely horrifying about the idea that the deaths of thousands can be reduced to the blinking out of a dot on a screen.

When we're talking about capital ship battles, I'd much rather focus on what's going on inside the ships than seeing what the ships themselves are doing. Since most capital ship battles are the ship more or less sitting sit and shooting at each other under one of them is disables, that can get boring. I find it a lot more interesting to see what's going inside the ships, how people are reacting, what systems are being damaged, who's being hurt, ect.
They might be unrealistic, but fighter dogs fights are fun.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

If you see the ship do something unexpected that you're not supposed to understand until later, when you find out what the people inside are doing

Spoiler: story idea

(imagine a scene where your heroes are bewildered as a villain ship begins shooting the other villain ship, only to learn that the friend you thought was dead for sure had taken control and was flying it)

then that's one good example of how one can lead to the other.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I bet Burnham would have really irritated them then...

Maybe not. Burnham was raised a Vulcan, but wasn't Vulcan. DC Fontana was concerned about the writers getting carried away by the probable popularity of Vulcan relatives of Spock.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I expect those Vulcans who were relatives of Spock were not keen to make it public knowledge back when he was still looked down upon.

 

[Captain Marsh]

I hate to tell you this but many of Trek's writers/authors are suspected of having been or are neurodivergent. That might explain why they write things the way they do. Hell, some have discussed their mental and cognitive issues.

Sources:

Interview with Author David Mack

VENTRELLA: Today I’m pleased to be interviewing David Mack. David is the New York Times bestselling author of 38 novels of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure. His writing credits span several …

michaelaventrella.com

EXCLUSIVE: Una McCormack Interview

Una McCormack has been writing Star Trek fiction professionally for the past ten years. Her new novel, The Crimson Shadow, is the second book in Star Trek: The Fall, a five-book miniseries that includes the universes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. TrekCore’s literature editor Dan...

blog.trekcore.com

 

[Christopher]

I hate to tell you this but many of Trek's writers/authors are suspected of having been or are neurodivergent. That might explain why they write things the way they do. Hell, some have discussed their mental and cognitive issues.

Sources:

https://michaelaventrella.com/2024/02/27/interview-with-author-david-mack

EXCLUSIVE: Una McCormack Interview

Una McCormack has been writing Star Trek fiction professionally for the past ten years. Her new novel, The Crimson Shadow, is the second book in Star Trek: The Fall, a five-book miniseries that includes the universes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. TrekCore’s literature editor Dan...

blog.trekcore.com

I see no discussion of cognitive issues in either of those interviews. Also, the first link isn't working right; there seems to be a stray http tag at the start of your post.

 

[DonIago]

I hate to tell you this but many of Trek's writers/authors are suspected of having been or are neurodivergent. That might explain why they write things the way they do. Hell, some have discussed their mental and cognitive issues.

Sources:

https://michaelaventrella.com/2024/02/27/interview-with-author-david-mack

EXCLUSIVE: Una McCormack Interview

Una McCormack has been writing Star Trek fiction professionally for the past ten years. Her new novel, The Crimson Shadow, is the second book in Star Trek: The Fall, a five-book miniseries that includes the universes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. TrekCore’s literature editor Dan...

blog.trekcore.com

Is this in response to something? Without context, I'm not sure why you would 'hate to tell' us that many Trek writers may be neurodivergent? I would hope we're well past the days...or we should be...where that carries any sort of negative stigma.

Your comment about "why they write things the way they do" might also benefit from additional context, because, to me at least, written the way it is, that sounds like you're implying that because they're neurodivergent their writing is somehow 'lesser'.

Please, clarify your meaning.

 

[Captain Marsh]

Is this in response to something? Without context, I'm not sure why you would 'hate to tell' us that many Trek writers may be neurodivergent? I would hope we're well past the days...or we should be...where that carries any sort of negative stigma.

Your comment about "why they write things the way they do" might also benefit from additional context, because, to me at least, written the way it is, that sounds like you're implying that because they're neurodivergent their writing is somehow 'lesser'.

Please, clarify your meaning.

Let's just say I can spot people who are neurodivergent like myself just by their writing style and by how they move and talk.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I hate to tell you this but many of Trek's writers/authors are suspected of having been or are neurodivergent. That might explain why they write things the way they do. Hell, some have discussed their mental and cognitive issues.

Sources:

https://michaelaventrella.com/2024/02/27/interview-with-author-david-mack

EXCLUSIVE: Una McCormack Interview

Una McCormack has been writing Star Trek fiction professionally for the past ten years. Her new novel, The Crimson Shadow, is the second book in Star Trek: The Fall, a five-book miniseries that includes the universes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. TrekCore’s literature editor Dan...

blog.trekcore.com

@Captain Marsh , I have read both of your "sources", and neither of them appear to support the claim you are making.

I don't know enough about either author personally to know whether or not your claim is true. (And even if it were true, it wouldn't matter.) But both authors are actually members here, and I don't think it is appropriate for someone to make diagnoses about other board members. If members wish to disclose/discuss their own neurodivergence, that that's great! But I don't believe it is your place to discuss the neurodivergence or neurotypicality of other members without their consent. Please refrain from doing so.

ETA: I fixed your one broken link.

 

[Nerys Myk]

That isn't necessarily a contradiction, though, since Sarek disowned Sybok, and therefore no longer considered Sybok his son. As far as other people knew, it would be a true statement. If it was phrased that way, as someone else talking about Spock, it could still be valid if the speaker didn't know better.

A very Vulcan style of of reasoning.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The odd typo doesn't annoy me. I may notice it, but I just continue reading.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Depends on how odd the typo is.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Indeed. The occasional transposed letter or missing word may make me pause, but I don't recall offhand finding one that changed the sentence's meaning, though I have seen other people share such examples online.