Another Awesome Idea for "Star Trek: Into Darkness"

A member the alternate-history website I have been a member of since high school who wishes to remain anonymous has seen Star Trek: Into Darkness and posted his own "this is how it could have been done better" suggestions. His critiques are very similar to some of mine, like nobody apparently knowing who Khan is. I found them so impressive that I will post them here, since the idea is posted in a part of the forum that only members can access. Let me re-emphasize that this is not my idea:

I'll tell you what would have been cool.

It would have been cool if they actually treated the destruction of Vulcan as a 9/11 moment for the Federation, with Starfleet militarizing and scouring the galaxy for threats, and getting into pissing contests with the Klingons as a result.

It could be cool if they'd started the movie by confronting the Klingons instead of a volcano. That way we'd establish why the Klingons are such a threat that anyone would betray Starfleet over them. We could also establish that Starfleet has a debate much like the debate over the Iraq War - should they use the destruction of Vulcan as an excuse to take out every threat in sight, or should they focus their energies on the actual problem of strange phenomena in unexplored space.

It could have been cool if Section 31 sent the Enterprise on a secret mission to retrieve the Botany Bay in space, rather than having some stupid torpedo plot and taking a shuttle to a Klingon junkyard. That way Kirk, the audience, and everyone gets a proper introduction to who Khan is.

It could have been cool if we saw Khan and the Starfleet hard liners get together, and watch Khan utterly charm them. They think the Federation has become soft and hippie, and long for the good ol' days of the 21st century when people were willing to create elite supersoldiers to take out terrorists. Khan says he and his buddies represent those good ol' days. He says that since it's the 23rd century obviously me and my guys are just a bunch of totally non-threatening hicks amazed by the mighty Federation, but we can show you 21st century methods and you can use them much more wisely than the people of the 21st century could. You will be totally badass and nothing will go wrong.

It could have been cool if we'd seen Khan and the supersoldiers actually employed against the Klingons. As promised they are brutal but effective, and as expected they go rogue pretty fast.

It could have been cool if Khan's big plan was not petty revenge but to start a war between the Federation and the Klingons, simply because war is inherently good for supersoldiers and would-be dictators. He used to be a ruler and he wants to be one again. And if many in Starfleet were actually willing to side with him on that, because they really want to destroy all enemies.

It could have been cool if Kirk actually sided with the Klingons, against Starfleet, to take Khan out.

Think about it. The fundamental debate about the Klingons parallels one with the "war on terror" - should we fight only those who have attacked us, or should we fight everyone who doesn't like us and might pose a threat? Hardliners tend to argue that if someone doesn't like us, they're just a war waiting to happen, so might as well take them out at the first good opportunity.

The Star Trek philosophy, however, is clearly against the "destroy anyone who might be a threat" position. Kirk should realize that peace with the Klingons depends only on whether they can be trusted to honor a treaty, not whether they're nice people. The Klingons may be barbaric and violent, but they also have an extreme code of honor which Federation hard liners simply ignore. If they sign a treaty they will honor it.

It could have been really cool if Kirk working with the Klingons to stop Khan made them respect his personal honor enough to establish a peace treaty for an unexpectedly happy ending.

Very interesting idea. Also, the idea of Khan attempting to use the war with the Klingons to take over the entire Federation with the aid of Starfleet "hardliners" like Admiral Marcus is just the kind of awesome gambit that someone as dangerously clever and charismatic as Khan could credibly pull off.

And you could get into some really heartrending territory.

*Say Admiral Marcus's wife Carol's mother was killed on Vulcan or in San Francisco by Nero during the events of the first film. If Carol sides with Kirk and the Klingons against her own father because he has so totally crossed the line (seriously, trying to make a 21st Century war criminal into the military dictator of humanity and other races is BAD, even if it's in order to ensure nobody could ever pull something like the destruction of Vulcan ever again), that would a far more interesting conflict than what we got in the film.

*And then what if Christopher Pike, Kirk's surrogate father, ends up a dupe of Marcus or Khan? Then you could have the two of THEM in conflict with each other.

A Very, Very Bloody Accident: WWIII In 1983

Today on my message-board I decided to take a look at ABLE ARCHER 83: Timeline of a Third World War in 1983. In real history, the Able Archer military exercise frightened the Soviet leadership into thinking a Western attack was imminent, but nothing ended up happening. Here things get ugly--the Soviets launch a pre-emptive "bolt from the blue" assault on completely unsuspecting NATO forces.

It's really interesting, although it'd be unbelievably horrific to live through if you lived in West Germany and other areas being fought over.. Thus far it's staying conventional and the author is saying it won't end up like the British movie Threads (in which civilization is bombed to hell and gone and only reaches roughly Victorian levels again 20 years later). Some interesting bits:

*The Soviet Union, rather than keeping occupied territory under military government (the most sensible option in my opinion), sends the KGB in almost immediately and starts murdering political opponents, collectivizing economic assets, etc. This could have some interesting consequences--with most of Austria's political elite liquidated, someone suggested Austria might be more inclined to join a united Germany if and when the USSR and its allies are defeated.

*There are Soviet attacks on Alaska in the early days of the conflict and the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk is destroyed off Korea. U.S. forces in the North Pacific bounce back and the Soviet Pacific Fleet pretty much ceases to exist. Some more detail on actual Soviet attacks on the U.S. mainland would have been nice.

*There's also a lot of space-war going on, with Soviet killer-satellites attacking American ones and the U.S. shooting down a Soviet satellite with a modified ballistic missile. And space-mines.

*Given how strong the anti-nuclear/peace movement was in the early 1980s, there are a lot of protesters hanging around military bases when the attack does come. With hundreds of peace activists killed by chemical weapons intended to make airfields and tactical nuclear stockpiles unusable, that pretty much strangles the Western anti-war movement in its crib. Oops.

With the exception of a left-wing Italian member taking offense at Italy's relatively quick capitulation to the Soviets, the depiction of Soviet infiltration of the 1980s peace movement and the trade unions (something that in the former case happened to be true), and acting all incredulous South Africa's black neighbors would attack it (regardless of who attacked whom first, I still think that's possible), the thread hasn't really gotten contentious. The closest thing to an argument that's taken place involved a Finnish member who seems very knowledgeable about the Finnish Cold War military correcting the writer's mistakes in the area. The Austrian issue is touched on (someone claimed the terrain would make much of Austria difficult for the Soviet Union to occupy), but much more briefly.

The timeline is still going. Definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Japanese Biological Attack on Los Angeles, WWII

Here's another interesting alternate timeline, courtesy of AH.com

How Silent Fall The Cherry Blossoms

The gist of it is that the Japanese I-400 submarine aircraft carriers (I kid you not, they were real) are completed in 1944, with a possible point of divergence being an earthquake not happening and/or less interference from Allied bombers. Faced with the American military-industrial freight train heading for the Home Islands, one of the Japanese leaders orders a biological attack on Los Angeles to be launched from these submarines. Aircraft launched from these submarines unleash the evil fruits of the infamous Unit 731, bombs loaded with fleas infested with the plague. The idea is that if the U.S. civilian population is made to suffer enough, people would put pressure on the government to end the war. In real life, the Japanese used biological weapons in China, causing thousands of deaths from the plague. Although the U.S. medical infrastructure is more advanced and the U.S. is not under constant military attack, our own advanced transportation infrastructure will work against us. See below...

As of the most recent update, small-scale outbreaks are occurring in Los Angeles, St. Louis, and now it looks like New York City as well. The ancient "from the plague, oh Lord, deliver us" prayer has been revived in L.A. churches, dark but cool moment. Although the discussion in most of the thread consists of just how screwed Japan is going to be after their inevitable defeat (the U.S. could use poison gas tactically in the Pacific as well as using rice blight as a biological weapon in the Home Islands), one board member points out that the plague could cause the American war effort serious trouble. Think mass absenteeism at war plants due to fear of catching the plague, or outbreaks crippling units slated for deployment. Already medical units intended for the Pacific are being diverted to care for plague victims in Los Angeles. And now it's looking like the Germans are looking into using biological weapons themselves, possibly against the British due to their lack of anything that could reach the U.S. mainland.

It's very interesting so far and has the potential to go into some very dark places. Check it out.

On "Game of Thrones" and White Female Messiahs

I've been followed Saladin Ahmed on Twitter since I heard him make a presentation on the podcast Writing Excuses that helped me find the extremely helpful book series "Daily Life In..." This morning, I found some Tweets from him criticizing the most recent episode "Game of Thrones," in this case the ending featuring the Arab-looking inhabitants of Yunkai all but worshiping the light-skinned Danaerys Targaryen for freeing them from slavery.

Here's one tweet:

aaand the season ends with a bunch of grown-ass brown people calling a white teenager 'Mommy!' It's 2013. Cut that shit out, #gameofthrones!

Here's another:

"You bring war and hissing monsters. You leave behind ruined cities. PLEASE LEAVE, CRAZY WHITE GIRL!" - what ppl would really say to Danerys

I am not so ignorant that I don't recognize how "save the brown people" was used by white countries to justify imperialism and aggression on both the macro scale (one defense of imperialism in Africa was fighting the slave trade) and on the micro scale (I remember a political cartoon from the antebellum area claiming slaves in America were better off than free blacks in Africa), but there is legitimate historical precedent for what Game of Thrones depicts however paternalistic it might seem.

This account of the occupation of Richmond at the tail end of the American Civil War depicts the freed slaves greeting Abraham Lincoln with all kinds of physically affectionate, almost worshipful gestures. They touch him, they kiss his clothes, etc. Is anybody going to call REALITY racist for depicting black slaves hero-worshiping a white man who has freed them?

To be fair, this isn't as over-the-top as what was depicted in the show (see the YouTube clip later), but at the same time, Confederate slavery is not as over-the-top monstrous as slavery in Essos. The slavers of Meereen crucify 163 slaves to thumb their nose at Danaerys, while the way the Unsullied slave-soldiers are created is absolutely murderous and vile. Confederate slavery featured the rape of slave women by masters (why do you suppose African-Americans are generally lighter-skinned than Africans?), but the city of Yunkai specializes in the training and sale of sex slaves. A whole city doing this kind of thing on an industrial scale. Given how the cities of Slaver's Bay are so much more ridiculously evil than the Confederate slavers, the reaction of the people freed from their tyranny would in all likelihood be much more grateful.

And although foreign war is a useful way to rally the population around a dictatorial regime (the Falklands War in Argentina, for example), if a regime is sufficiently brutal and inept, the population may not simply fall for it. Allied forces were greeted as liberators from Mussolini by the people of Naples, for example. Although the Iraqi insurgency began soon after the fall of Saddam, that resulted in a large measure from inept U.S. occupation policies perceived as discrimination against Sunni Muslims, not just knee-jerk "the people dislike foreign invaders and prefer domestic tyrants to them no matter what." The Iraqi people were overjoyed when Saddam fell--they didn't throw themselves at U.S. troops en masse in defense of their regime because the U.S. brought war and frightening, destructive machines (analogous to "hissing monsters"). Obviously there were people who didn't like a long-term occupation of their country by foreigners, but that isn't the same as "we prefer our slavery to your scariness."

Having watched the snippet in question (I had a YouTube link posted, but the video is gone now), I think it's too long and a bit overdone, but considering how unbelievably atrocious Essos's slavery is and the whole "Mother of Dragons" thing, it's plausible.

Trailer For "Hands Off This Girl" (WARNING: DARK)

Here's the trailer for the webseries Hands Off This Girl produced by Kiss The Limit Productions. I've been interning for the company since February and I'm doing my bit by posting the trailer here.

Be ye warned. Hands Off This Girl is intended to raise awareness about the evils of sex trafficking. This is DARK (and could be a trigger for those who've experienced sexual abuse).



If after seeing this trailer you want to support the production of the webseries, here's the FracturedAtlas page you can donate at.

May Writing Contest: The Results

Yesterday was the last day of May and thus the last day of the first month of the writing contest involving my friends Nick, Lauren, Sean, and I. The goal is to write the most fictional words, with the loser buying the winner lunch.

My word count, which I tracked per project per day on an Excel spreadsheet, was 19,154 words spread out across multiple projects. So here goes:

The Thing In The Woods-The word count went from 6,349 to 19,361. The first two chapters are completed, albeit rather short, and some great big hunks of other chapters are written. My plan now is to finish the entire first draft before I start graduate school in late August. It's young adult, so it'll probably be shorter anyway. I'm guessing it's around a third done, 40 percent on the outside. One of the biggest additions is that I've now got a romantic subplot involving the male lead, a rather snobby Buckhead transplant to a small town south of Atlanta that's rapidly turning into a bedroom community, and a local girl who's into theater. Given how my friend James R. Tuck said the big difference between young adult and adult fiction featuring teen protagonists is whether or not they're facing "grown man problems," high-school dating shenanigans will make it "younger."

(Yes, Battle for The Wastelands has a teen romance tidbit too, but it's not nearly as important. What to do about the flirtatious cowgirl Alyssa Carson takes up much less screentime so to speak than the Flesh-Eater threat to the protagonist's hometown, the starvation threat to the Merrill refugee camps, etc.)

The Cybele Incident-I went from 15,817 words to 20,215 words. This is net word count, since I ran the completed chapters through my Kennesaw writing group and they had ideas on what to cut as well as what to add. I wrote a new beginning to make the male lead Lt. Commander Thomas Briggs more sympathetic and more competent and added a new wrinkle to female lead Captain Adhirai Lakhani's battle plan to make her more sneaky-subtle as opposed to simply brutal and "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." She's genetically-engineered to be the next stage in human evolution, so having her act like an unsubtle moron kind of makes the people behind it look inept and stupid. I'm shooting for a shorter word count than Battle for The Wastelands, so I'm probably around a third finished.

The Wastelands Universe-I started writing the manuscript for the third novel in the series just so I could write down a 1,000-odd word sequence in the harem-intrigue subplot that came to me in a burst of inspiration. The second and third novels in the series give the female characters a lot more screentime, in particular the women of the villain Grendel's harem. I also started writing a sequel novella centered around Grendel's daughter Astrid, which would take place chronologically after the fourth, fifth, or possibly the sixth books. Finally, yesterday at the gym I had another burst of inspiration and wrote a 700-odd word scene that elaborates on Alyssa's character a fair bit.

I haven't gotten specific word counts from the others yet, although I'm certain I've beaten at least one of them. This coming month will be a lot tougher, since one will have more free time and the other will be more organized in tracking their word counts. Best not slack off. There are whole stretches of May where I didn't get any fiction writing done at all (15 out of 31 days, nearly half of the month). It'd be easy to blame my paying writing gigs, which have to take priority over my personal writing, but I could have still gotten some stuff done. At the very least, I could have broken 20,000 or even 25,000 words.

"Star Trek" Fan-Fic Plot Idea

On my alternate history message-board, someone presumably inspired by Star Trek: Into Darkness posted a new thread asking what might have happened if Khan Noonien Singh's colony on Ceti Alpha V had survived and prospered instead of suffering an orbital shift that left it a desert wasteland and paved the way for Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan.

There are a lot of possibilities discussed in the thread, but the user whose handle is GuillibleCynic suggested that with the theme of acceptance on display in the Star Trek media, it would be reasonable to see an Augment on the crew of the Enterprise during the Star Trek: The Next Generation period. After all, the Enterprise had Worf, a Klingon despite being an adopted Federation citizen, so an Augment wouldn't be too weird.

I figured that had Khan's colony survived and regained space travel (a realistic possibility, given how the Augments have lifespans of centuries and Khan has memorized the Original Series Enterprise's technical manuals and has Lt. Marla McGivers to assist him), they might petition for membership in the Federation someday. As long as Ceti Alpha V remains an official or unofficial dictatorship of Khan or a successor (be it a child of Khan and McGivers or his lieutenant Joachim), that isn't going to happen, plus the Federation's psychotic Luddism as far as genetic engineering of humans is concerned isn't helping either. However, for realpolitik reasons, I could imagine Ceti Alpha V becoming a Federation protectorate or being placed under some kind of formal Starfleet quarantine to keep Khan groupies (or people who want to kill him because there's no statute of limitations on war crimes) and aspiring Augmentation enthusiasts from visiting or hostile aliens like the Romulans (or Ferengi, who might like the idea of selling Augment slaves) from messing around.

Although Worf and B'Elanna Torres are Federation citizens, the U.S. military allows non-citizens to serve. The son of the Shah of Iran underwent U.S. Air Force training (and when his father abdicated, made a claim to the throne himself), while many aliens serving in the military were formally given citizenship while serving in Iraq. Allowing an Augment to serve might be good PR about how accepting the Federation is, plus said Augment could serve as a hostage for the good behavior of the Ceti Alpha V government if he or she is well-connected.

So here's my challenge for you. Write a Star Trek: TNG (or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or Star Trek Voyager since they take place at the same time) fan-fic featuring a surviving Khanate colony sending its sons or daughters to serve in Starfleet. They would be very effective no doubt, but they would also face prejudice from their brothers (or sisters) at arms and have the whole "superior abilities breed superior ambition" (or as Star Trek: Enterprise put it, inborn aggressive tendencies) flaw to face.

Here's a more specific idea I had. The snippet of the Khan novel To Reign in Hell I read online depicts McGivers not becoming pregnant despite years of marriage to Khan and Khan, rather than cheating on her as she feared, instead grooms Joachim as his successor. If you handwave that situation as being caused by stress from the planet's environmental problems rather than her simply being sterile (or having some other reproductive problem the Augments' limited technology can't fix), this Augment original character could be a child or grandchild of Khan himself. I would imagine "Ensign Singh" would face even more suspicion, especially aboard the successor to the ship that their mother or grandmother betrayed to a war criminal. Plus they might harbor fears that history could repeat itself and they could betray their fellow crew. If you want to center a story around this, have him or her get captured by an enemy like the Romulans, who know their history and send in an attractive Romulan as the carrot to the tortuous stick during interrogation.

Good luck, and keep me posted.

Writing Contest Update and Summer Goals

These last few days I haven't been able to get any work done on my personal writing projects due to paid writing obligations, leaving my current word count for May at 14,000 words. This will give Nick, who has more time commitments than I do but can write the same amount if not more material when he does have time, a good shot at catching up. Hopefully I won't need to buy him lunch this month, although later in the summer it's looking more likely.

(That being said, I've got a week left and my most severe deadlines have passed, so it's back in the saddle again...)

However, regardless of who wins the contest this month or overall, I'm thinking of setting two goals for the summer.

1. Finish the first draft of The Thing In The Woods. It's getting clearer and clearer this is a young-adult novel, so I don't need to worry about it being so short. If I can get it to 60,000 words or so, that'll be fine with me. That being said, Delilah S. Dawson's upcoming young-adult novel is 80K to 90K and Jeff Baker's recently-completed young-adult horror novel (he described it as Harry Potter meets Lovecraft) is 100,400 words, so maybe I need to be careful. My graduate school classes start in late August and I imagine the reading and paper commitments will be extremely challenging, so let's see if I can get it done by August 26. Delilah and James R. Tuck manage to get whole first drafts completed in months and they have much more familial and other real-life responsibilities than I do, so it's time to crack the whip.

2. Finish the "Coil Gun" script. I'm around 85 pages in and the minimum page count for a script to be taken seriously, according to a friend of mine who lives in Los Angeles and writes for Elementary, is 90. I think I could finish that in a week if I really put my nose to the grindstone, since I once wrote 40 pages in a week and I'm adapting one of my own short stories, not devising entirely new material. Then take it to an Alpharetta group I'm in (that I haven't attended in months) that has a monthly screenwriting meeting and register it with the Writer's Guild of America to be safe.

Reblog: Shandra McDonald To Teach Directing Workshop in Atlanta

Here's a blog post I wrote for Kiss The Limit Productions, a film company I intern for. It originally appeared on Hands Off This Girl, the site for the company's planned anti-sex-trafficking webseries:

Kiss The Limit CEO To Provide Directing Workshop

ATLANTA, Ga. — Kiss The Limit Productions President and Award-winning Filmmaker Shandra McDonald will teach a directing workshop June 8.

McDonald, a graduate of Howard University, has taught advanced directing classes at several colleges in the Atlanta area and has won awards for her film projects.

“There’s just such a need for it,” she said. “I think directing is a mystery for a lot of up and coming directors.”

The class will be an intensive, but a very practical intensive. She will be teaching directors how to visualize a scene using floor plans, directing beats, and other important elements. She will also explain how to get to the psychology of the scene, visualize and and break down a scene. 

McDonald feels very strongly that understanding the psychology of a scene is key to knowing which shots to use, camera lenses and other technical aspects of filmmaking. She cited the film “Children of Men” as a film that isn’t overly-shot. A lot of times young directors are taught to start with a wide, then go to medium, then go to close up, but the film uses the wide shot effectively to go to the heart of the scene. McDonald plans to talk about this film and other successful films. 

McDonald will also cover: 

*Theoretical side of directing...

*Working with actors...

*Post Production....

*Analyzing a script....

*Working with a Producer...

“I love directing and I love teaching young directors how to become better directors,” she said.

Directing is a lifetime pursuit. She said Mel Brooks recently spoke about how he has finally been recognized as a director, but it takes a lifetime to nurture one’s craft.

Participants will receive a comprehensive notebook with the tools they can use to continue to grow. It will be a strong entrée into the world of directing. Participants will start understanding the foundations of directing and end learning some advanced techniques. This is a great class for beginning directors who are just getting started, or more advanced directors who are looking to refine some skills that they already have. 

“The goal is to demystify directing,” she said. "It can be extremely effective if done correctly."

Space is limited, so participants are advised to register soon. To find out more information and to buy tickets, go here.

Khan Will Screw With Your Mind...

Apparently Benedict Cumberbatch did some videos from Khan's perspective in which he analyzes the weaknesses of Kirk, Spock, and Uhura. I didn't see any of them until last night.

Here they are, courtesy of YouTube:

Spock



Kirk



Uhura