To Boldly Go...

Today I went to see the new Star Trek film to see what the buzz was all about. I am not typically a fan of prequels but this was, I think, done exceptionally well. I remember following the original TV series as a child, always enthralled with the adventure as they would go “where no one has gone before”.

The series literally begins with the extraordinary circumstances surrounding James Tiberius Kirk’s birth. The USS Kelvin, the ship Kirk’s father serves on, investigates a lightening storm in space only to find it is an emerging black hole. A massive ship emerges and the Kelvin finds itself cast into an alternative timeline and under attack from this colossal ship. The ship’s captain has transported to the alien ship leaving Kirk’s father to captain his ship. It quickly becomes apparent the only hope for survival they have is to evacuate the ship. The auto pilot is destroyed and Captain Kirk senior must stay aboard the ship to allow the 800 passengers and crew the ability to escape. It is a suicide mission, which he realizes, but Star Fleet is always looking out for the greater good. Seconds before impact the baby is born, Captain Kirk senior and his wife decide to name the baby Jim after her father with a middle name of Tiberius after his father. Kaboom! In the 15 minutes he captained the ship, he literally saved the lives of 800 people - pretty big footsteps for a baby to follow in.

The film does a fabulous job of filling in the details of the back story of each of the regular characters from the show making a very entertaining storyline of how they met the circumstances of how they were assigned to the USS Enterprise and completion of the alternate history story line to bring things up to the original series.

Star Trek has produced many sequels in virtually every form of media there is – spin off TV series, movies, books and tons of promotional items (from action figures to lunchboxes to plush tribbles).

One thing I find intriguing from the Star Trek phenomenon is the number of people that have authored the books for Simon and Schuster. They have an entire set of submission guidelines pertaining specifically to Star Trek books. Amazing.

Are there other book series that encourage a range of authors to pen their tales? It struck me as a unique concept, but perhaps there are others out there. I have not followed the series (books or TV) but wonder if these authors use the same voice or if there are obvious differences. I know there are a lot of fan fiction stories out there for various other series, but I couldn’t think of other series that published multiple authors for profit with the same series such as this. Hmmmmm….

Just a thought...

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