Recently, I participated in a lively Q&A over at Bookshelf Battle about nearly every pop-cultural topic imaginable: the genesis of Escape from Rikers Island; rumors of the zombie genre’s demise; whether the hero or villain is more crucial to the conflict and meaning of a story; if, in our Era of the Endless Reboot, there are any Hollywood remakes I’d actually endorse; what aspiring screenwriters need to learn (and how they can learn it); and my exclusive, foolproof plan for breaking out of a prison full of flesh-eating undead monsters. To paraphrase Stefon from Saturday Night Live: This conversation has everything!
Rest assured, this only LOOKS hopeless…
I invite you to join in with your thoughts! Feel free to leave a comment on either post—that one or this one—and I will, as always, be delighted to respond.
Please find my discussion with Bookshelf Q. Battler here.
Great interview! As always, you educate and inspire me.
Aw, thanks, Stacey! I’m indebted to Bookshelf Q. Battler, who provides a nice forum to talk seriously — but not humorlessly — about pop culture. I thought he posed some great questions, and I was glad for the opportunity to run with them.
That was a humdinger of an interview, Sean. Lots there I could comment on and, alas, never enough time!
First, let me say that I recall when I first started reading your blog and feeling like, What? I’d read an entire post and say, “I’m a smart guy with a good vocabulary and a fairly broad scope of world knowledge. Am I coming down with something? Whey does so much of this feel like I’m walking through the forest of swirly twirly gumdrops?” But I’d find myself thinking something new each time I visited, and that’s why I kept reading.
Now, I read your posts and interviews and realize that the “code” has been broken. I’m right with you on all points. I pretty much get the Save the Cat! breakdowns by now. I find myself discussing movies and shows in terms of their being “post-narrative.” Funny.
Anyway, my big thought while reading this interview came as a result of BQB’s question about whether the careful development of the protagonist or the antagonist is most important to a strong story. I found myself thinking about my own favorite shows and realizing that what I like most about them perhaps is that there are no clear villains or heroes. In those shows (and stories), every hero is broken and makes decisions we don’t agree with. And every villain has enough backstory and rationale and often even good cause for their deeds to give us empathy for them. There are no Dudley Do-Rights, no Snidely Whiplashes tying Penelope Purehearts to the train tracks. Everyone is a complex and often unpredictable amalgam of both.
Also, while I believe I’ve read every post of yours since I started reading, whenever ago that was, I found you stated (or restated, depending on the reader) some things with more clarity in the interview than even on your posts (e.g., your explanation as to why the Gen-Xers are caught in the reboot loop).
Was that a live interview that was recorded and then transcribed? Or was it done completely through writing? And if the latter, was the conversational flow how it really went (e.g., did you “speak” live through Skype messaging, etc.)? Or were you presented with questions, after which the responses were edited into a conversational flow? (If you can’t answer that here, drop me an email or text, or heck, a call. Just curious about the behind-the-scenes on it.)
Thanks, Erik, for sticking with that whole interview! Admittedly, each answer was like a blog post unto itself!
You know, I was on vacation last week, and I reread David Morrell’s First Blood (which I reviewed here). You would think, going into the book with visions of Sylvester Stallone in mind, that Rambo is the hero and the sheriff that pursues him the antagonist. But the brilliant thing about that novel (that’s since been overshadowed by the cinematic portrayals of Rambo) is that you can’t figure out which one’s the hero and which is the villain! Just when you think you know who you’re meant to empathize with, you begin doubting yourself. Back and forth the pendulum swings, right to the very last page. And what you realize is that both men are sympathetic, in their own way, and both make some really questionable decisions with catastrophic consequences. Which one is the hero and which is the villain? Both of them are. If only all popular fiction were so nuanced.
As we discussed in the comments of a previous post, I view this blog as an intellectual incubator: a “safe space” to try out ideas, see how I feel about them once I’ve put them in writing, and gauge how others respond. As such, many of the responses I offered to BQB’s questions are indeed refined clarifications of things I’ve said elsewhere on this site. In thinking about those issues, and drawing previously unidentified connections between them (unidentified by me, anyway!), I’ve been able to more clearly and concisely express those ideas. But that is why I find blogging so valuable: Rather than treating each post like it needs to be a perfect, self-contained entity unto itself, it’s better utilized as a journal of sorts — a place where you can put down ideas, try to give them some kind of shape, and see which ones “stick” with you. If I hadn’t at some point blogged about all the issues I covered in that Q&A, I would never have been able to articulate them so emphatically.
BQB sent me the questions in an e-mail, and I responded to them one by one. What you read is what was written verbatim — there was no editorial manipulation whatsoever. Having written a lot of naturalistic dialogue for my novel, though, I’m aware of little tricks you can employ in order to make what is effectively a monologue sound a little more conversational. Every once in a while, you throw in a “You know what I’m saying?” Or you needlessly end a sentence on “right?” Or begin one with “I mean…” Or occasionally substitute a “going to” with “gonna.” That way it sounds less like a lecture. (Those are all advanced dialogue techniques — ones I spent years studying and practicing — that I use in my own fiction writing, and they can be very helpful in written interviews, as well.)
I enjoyed the opportunity to express myself fully, and to have a chance to think about my answers in a way you wouldn’t if the interview had been conducted face-to-face, but the downside to this kind of thing is the inability on the interviewer’s part to issue direct responses to something you may have said. My wife read the Q&A and gave me tremendously positive feedback on it, indicating that she would’ve enjoyed further elaboration/discussion on certain points. But if anyone wishes to engage me on any of it here, I’m happy to participate in a dialogue. As I said at the top of this reply, it’s the dialogues these posts provoke that help me refine my own thoughts on the matters at hand, so I’m grateful to all who comment.
Thanks again, Erik! I’m overdue to catch up with both you and your blog, but be patient with me a little while longer while a tie a bow on a few outstanding obligations…
On the last point, Sean, there’s never a need for patience. I, of all people, am not sitting around wondering why so-and-so hasn’t gotten around to reading my posts. I can’t keep up with all the great blogs I used to (not if I’m going to get anything else done)!
Regarding my comments on the interview being even more clear than original posts, though you agree, I was in no way saying that your posts weren’t clear. They have been. But your posts, as you point out, feel like an active “arriving there,” whereas in the interview, you sounded like someone who “had arrived there.” And that is exactly what you explained here.
I mentioned in the interview that there are simply too many good shows to keep up with anymore, and the same is true for all manner of media, including blogs. And that goes to what I talk about a lot: The linear path we used to follow — the one in which we woke up, ate breakfast, read the newspaper on the subway ride to work, put in our eight hours, then came home for dinner and maybe a TV show and a Scotch — simply doesn’t exist anymore. We now live in a hyperlinked reality in which our attention is ever and always being pulled in multiple directions at once — through texts (ping!) and e-mails (ping!) and status updates (ping!) — and, in our futile effort to keep up with the deluge, we can no longer merely funnel our full attention into one thing at a time. We’re in a continually heightened state of alertness “formerly limited to air traffic controllers and 911 emergency operators” (Douglas Rushkoff, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, [New York: Penguin Group, 2013], 99).
When we confront the truth of that observation, we are finally open to acknowledge just how deeply traumatized we are by the extinction of the analog age. We desperately miss the straight-line simplicity of it, and that’s why all our pop culture is stuck in the 1980s, because that was the swan song of the era of linearity. When I look at kids — my own nieces and nephews — who spend every waking moment with their noses in those goddamn iPhones, all I can think is, “Thank Christ I grew up without that stupid technology.” Those analog days may be gone forever, but at least I have memories of what life was like without smartphones…
And I absolutely took your meaning re: the interview comments versus the original posts in which some of those ideas originated! That’s right: The posts represent ideas-in-progress, whereas the Q&A responses reflect a more fully digested, nuanced refinement of those notions. But you can’t get to the latter without having workshopped them via the former, so that’s why I continue to value and utilize this safe creative/intellectual haven.
Yep, yep … and yep.
Best conversation ever! Also thanks to the shout-outs to The Orville, and my second favourite vampire film The Hunger (my favourite is Let The Right One In, which is pretty much like a junior Hunger!)
Hey, thanks, mydangblog! Thanks for both reading the Q&A and taking the time to leave such a lovely comment!
I could go on and on about The Orville, but I’ll just leave it at this: I find it fascinating that in a season that brought us an actual new and official Star Trek television series (the first since Enterprise was mercifully decommissioned in 2005), Seth MacFarlane managed to capture the spirit, intent, and optimism of Gene Roddenberry’s vision in a way the dreary, boring, meandering Star Trek: Discovery has failed to do spectacularly. The Orville would fit right in with the Next Generation-era Trek shows. And bless MacFarlane for creating a TV show that actually has a point to make every week! I’m so worn down by all the never-ending postnarrative television (here’s looking at you, Discovery) that goes on and on, for years on end, to no apparent point. I love The Orville for being old-fashioned (so old-fashioned, in fact, it’s actually subversive!).
The Hunger has certainly become something of a minor classic in the last thirty-five years. I didn’t fully appreciate it when I first saw it — I was too young for it — but it has managed to stay in the cultural consciousness (most films don’t) and achieve cult appreciation. It occurred to me when I cited it in that interview that I’ve never read the original novel by Whitley Strieber, and I’m hoping to correct that oversight in the coming months. Just curious: Have you ever read it…?
I have not seen Let the Right One In (nor have I read that novel, either), but a discussion of the American remake, Let Me In, came up in the comments section of last year’s post “Monster Hunting: Some Recent Movies Worth Watching This Halloween.” I found Let Me In to be a very effective supernatural love story, though my friend Jeff Ritchie assures me it pales in comparison to the Swedish original. Guess I have a lot of backlogged materials to read/watch!
So much to comment on here, Sean. Great interview right from your perspective on the reason to be joyful all the way through EFRI and The Walking Dead and Star Wars and Robocop. Phew. Great humor too. I love learning more about your book and the thoughts behind it. I was also fascinated by your discussion of television’s rise as a creative force.
I’m from the black and white era when TV was either sit-coms, “stage” productions, studio westerns, football, or news. Or that’s what was on the 2-1/2 channels at our house (antenna troubles). Over 500 productions in progress is astonishing. You said you thought it was too much and I’m not sure I agree. I pick out my favorites and watch them like I’m obsessed. And though that may amount to about eight programs with short seasons, they’re probably different ones than my neighbor watches. I love it that there’s so much variety. And I don’t mind the never ending seasons or binge-watching a season over a weekend.
The quality is a mish mosh though, I’ll agree to that. Some shows are amazing and others last about 2 minutes before we groan and turn them off.
And I think you have another reader in BQB, Sean. 🙂 I’m looking forward to reading as well.
Thanks, Diana! Yeah, BQB and I covered a wide range of topics! I daresay we addressed pretty much every subject I actually know something about, so, for all I can say, this may very well be my first and last interview! We covered everything! I got nothin’ left to say! (Yeah — like that would ever happen!) Thanks for sticking with the Q&A through the end…
Having come of age in the early eighties, when one’s TV options consisted of whatever the three networks were offering (The Dukes of Hazzard; Diff’rent Strokes) and then the syndicated reruns on local channels (of I Love Lucy and Bewitched and The Brady Bunch and Star Trek, etc.), I can certainly relate to your own formative televisional experience! (We didn’t get a color TV till the late eighties, or cable till the late nineties; prior to that, our black-and-white box was hooked up to a dubiously reliable antenna on the roof of our Bronx apartment! Hell, I had no idea as a kid that my favorite TV car, the General Lee, was even orange!)
I do hear what you’re saying: With 500 productions, across a multitude of platforms, it’s certainly a viewer’s paradise! There’s something to appeal to all ages, and all tastes, from all eras of television production. In that sense, it’s no different than a library, where you have a wide (nigh limitless) variety of reading options from which to choose. And if something isn’t floating your boat after four or five episodes, you can move on to the next thing. We’re no longer “captive audiences,” which I guess is both a good and bad thing, because prior to these new modes of viewing and new modes of storytelling, whereby your average television episode isn’t a standalone experience unto itself but merely an open-ended chapter in an ongoing narrative, “[w]e always had that cathartic release at the end of each one of these journeys,” observes media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. “In our digital age . . . when we watch things at different times than other people, and years later, we binge-watch an entire series in a weekend, we don’t end up as tolerant of [the Aristotelian story] arc. If a storyteller is putting us in too much anxiety, we change the channel” (Molly Soat, “Digital Disruption and the Death of Storytelling,” Marketing News, April 2015, 44).
I watch so many of these ongoing sagas, from The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones (on television) to Star Wars and The Avengers (feature films), and often find myself asking, “What are these stories even about?” To my view, so many of them are devoid of meaning. And I think that’s owed to the fact that their narratives are designed to keep going, interminably, and never reach a conclusion or a point. I yearn for resolution in fiction — for some insight into the human condition — and those are the kinds of stories I seek out as both a reader and a writer. Like I said in the interview: One way isn’t right and the other wrong — it’s all merely a matter of personal preference (and worldview). Speaking only for myself, I’m a little overwhelmed by the volume of material out there… but, then, I’m an old guy!
Anyway, Diana — thanks for reading and commenting! I’ve spent the past several weeks traveling, beta-reading (for colleagues), and final-stage editing my own manuscript, and have not been very diligent about keeping up with my blogosphere friends, hence the reason I’ve been less active online lately. Hope all has been well by you. Looking forward to resuming a more normal routine in June…
Sean
Hi, Sean. One quick comment on your comment. 🙂 Yes! Many of the “made for TV” viewing options, in particular, do seem devoid of “meaning.” And those are frequently the ones that I turn off or lose interest in, though less so than the ones which are just poorly written – bad to the point that no acting talent can possibly save them.
I can also relate to the cautions about interminably long stories. I think knowing when to stop in a book or film series is extremely important. Mark Lawrence wrote a commentary about why he stopped the Broken Empire series after the third book and I agreed that they story seemed “done.” Then he changed his mind (probably marketing pressure) and added more books, more series on top of the series. I read 1-1/2 more books and lost interest. I’m starting to feel the same way about The Walking Dead (not quite but getting close). I think they need to start planning to wrap the series up before it starts plodding endlessly forward.
Anyway, interesting discussion and I’m certain you’l find something else to shared. 🙂
Interesting about Mark Lawrence; I wasn’t aware of him or the Broken Empire series — I’m less well-versed in high fantasy than other genres (though my wife is a big reader of fantasy) — but I certainly take your meaning. A point that rarely gets raised when discussing the recent Star Wars sequels in that the story arc conclusively and satisfactorily wrapped up with Return of the Jedi in 1983, hence the reason series creator George Lucas pursued prequels when he returned to the franchise fifteen years later. (Whether one likes the prequels or finds them creatively successful is another matter; they simply indicate that Lucas himself didn’t really see a path forward for the franchise beyond the resolution depicted in Jedi.) So, in addition to the criticisms I’ve already expressed on the recent Disney entries, a big beef I have with The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi is that they’ve diminished the sense of closure we previously had by effectively saying, “Oh, yeah, things didn’t end as decisively as you may’ve thought…” And they did so not because there was more story to tell, mind you, but rather because there was more money to be made. And I think we sense that when we watch the new Star Wars movies (even if we happen to be among those who enjoy them): They’re conspicuously superfluous and unnecessary, even if you do happen to find them entertaining in their own right.
The Walking Dead is a show that deserves special consideration. I’ve been a devoted fan of that series, long after the point many of my friends lost patience with it, but even I struggled to find anything positive to say about this most recent season. This is a subject that really deserves its own blog post, but here’s a major problem (though certainly not the only issue) TWD seems to be suffering from: It’s become afflicted with a misguided creative approach known as “blowing up the balloon.”
That is a term Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan uses to describe sequels (or, in this case, subsequent seasons/story arcs) in which a writer simply repeats what he’s done before, but tries to increase the scale by creating bigger action, badder enemies, and higher stakes. (These are sometimes known as “same-plot sequels.”) This was done a lot in the eighties and ninties, in which sequels recycled the plots of the earlier films and simply increased the narrative intensity by “blowing up the balloon”: think Die Hard 2: Die Harder and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Escape from L.A. Same movies as the first ones… only BIGGER.
The other (more sustainable) way to approach a sequel, Nolan suggests, is to shift genres. For example, the Indiana Jones series didn’t go bigger each time out, but rather looked to different story models to tell different kinds of stories: Raiders of the Lost Ark is a Casablanca-esque romantic adventure; Temple of Doom is a horror film; The Last Crusade is a buddy road-trip comedy; Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is science fiction. (Other series that have done this include Rambo, The Hunger Games, and The Bourne Identity.)
So, with that in mind, where I think TWD has made a critical misstep is that it’s felt pressure, with each successive season, to up the ante: There are more characters, more communities, bigger conflicts, meaner and more violent adversaries. You know what I’m saying? And it’s wearisome. To say nothing of the fact that all of that more-ness has crowded out the personal moments between the characters we actually care about (assuming there are any of those left), and little if any of the action/conflict anymore is even zombie-related! It’s just become an endless saga about groups of hopelessly nihilistic, morally compromised people trying to one-up each other. And for what? Surely there must be plenty of available land out there where they can all live their lives and stay out of each other’s way…?
But instead of letting conflict grow organically out of the core group of characters and the particular challenges of their zombie-apocalypse situation, TWD has fallen into this trap of “blowing up the balloon.” And after Negan, I’m not sure how much bigger the narrative can go from there! It’s worn viewers out, quite frankly. So now TWD either needs to find a way to bring the series back to basics (if it isn’t too late), or start wrapping things up. I don’t know what they’re going to do, and I’m still on the fence myself as to whether to rejoin the show when it returns this fall. Sometimes I reach a point with shows — even my once-favorites — where I say, “Yeah, I’ve seen enough.”
As someone who’s written multi-book series yourself, Diana, these are issues I’m sure you’ve given thought to. I’ve never done a series, but I am writing a prequel to a very popular piece of American folklore (akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked), and that gave me a lot of insight into what a prequel requires, and the potential pitfalls it entails. You learn a lot about the craft by having practiced it, I’ve discovered! Thanks for engaging me in a little shoptalk!
Thank you for making me laugh with that interview! I’ll have to check out your book. I like the idea of the sociological factors at work in a prison setting like that. I also love whenever real places appear in fiction for the chance to learn more about that place or imagine it in a different way.
Thanks for reading the Q&A, Sheila, and for taking it in the spirit in which it was intended: a serious — but not humorless — discussion of pop culture! I mean, if you can’t have a little fun discussing zombies, Star Wars, and Planet of the Apes, then what’s the point of any of that stuff?
While Escape from Rikers Island is first and foremost a horror-actioner, inspired in no small part by the exploitation cinema of John Carpenter (Assault on Precinct 13, Escape from New York), I certainly tried to endow it with a measure of social criticism. If a horror story doesn’t try to be about something, than it’s just a bunch of people running from monsters, and how’s that any different, really, from an episode of Scooby-Doo?
My novel is set in New York because I grew up there, and know the streets and the people and the culture intimately, and felt I could authentically represent that experience, even within the framework of an urban fantasy. The real-life locations and complex sociopolitical conditions of the city serve as a vital backdrop to the bizarre events of EFRI; this is in no way a story that could’ve been set in any old prison or city. It’s a New York story, set in a working-class part of New York that I think is often underrepresented in popular culture, which seems to focus almost exclusively on the skyscrapers of Midtown and brownstones of Brooklyn. There’s more to New York than that, and that was a world I was excited to depict and explore in EFRI. It owes just as much a debt to Richard Price (Clockers) and David Milch (NYPD Blue) as it does to Carpenter and Romero. I certainly didn’t want to set the story in some generic, clichéd, or Hollywoodized version of New York or Los Angeles that has no atmospheric authenticity; I wanted EFRI to be set in a part of the city that is absolutely true, but also somewhat unknown or unexpected.
So, ultimately, EFRI is a fantastical story, but one set in a credibly real place, much in the same way as, say, Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby is. I think stories about the supernatural are more interesting — certainly more relatable — if they are set in a recognizable world rather than an imaginary one like Oz or Narnia or even Gotham City. I’ll be eager to hear what an avid reader like yourself thinks of it! Stay tuned here for publication announcements…
I appreciate that you took the time to read and comment on this interview, Sheila!
Nice interview, Sean, and I was glad to hear about your upcoming book! A zombie apocalypse–contained. Straightforward monster in the house. I’ve considered writing one of these, although in my case it would probably be the minotaur in the maze.
But zombies do have one real advantage, like orcs and the original cylons–you can kill as many as you like, and no one minds. Lots of action with few of the moral consequences.
And I’d say of all the reboots, I like the Battlestar Galactica best. They didn’t just rehash the original material–they extended it. They added new character complications and a different aesthetic (the original series was more of a Star Wars knockoff in that respect). Other than that one, and TNG, I’ve really lost patience with the idea of reboots. Tell me a new story.
So I’m really looking forward to yours. Should be fun. 🙂
That’s exactly right, Cathleen — Escape from Rikers Island is a straight-up Monster in the House (though the intentionally pulpy title — a conscious homage to John Carpenter‘s Escape from New York — suggests more of a Golden Fleece adventure, and I suppose there are aspects of that particular story model present in EFRI, though it is decisively MITH).
I wasn’t interested in unleashing a zombie apocalypse that would lend itself to yet another ongoing series à la George Romero and Robert Kirkman. I have nothing against those treatments — I am entertained and inspired by them! — but I always envisioned my thing as a one-and-done. The story is really about the relationship between the hero (the NYPD detective) and the antihero (the shot caller), and how the considerable tensions between them are dangerously exacerbated by the heightened circumstances of a zombie-like outbreak. As I’ve noted in previous posts, EFRI is as much a gritty policier in the vein of Clockers and NYPD Blue as it is a balls-out monster chiller.
You know, I think each kind of archetypal supernatural monster emblemizes a different aspect of the human psyche and/or experience. Vampires have traditionally been about repressed sexuality (notably but far from exclusively in Dracula). Werewolves are about the “beast within” — the primal, animalistic impulses deeply encoded in our DNA that have been suppressed by millennia of social civility (Jack Nicholson’s Wolf is such a great, underrated example). Demons are often used to explore issues of faith (The Exorcist). And zombies are the perfect metaphor for the dehumanization of conformity or tribalism. So, it was for that reason I thought they were the right monster for Escape from Rikers Island, because Rikers Island itself is a place that epitomizes dehumanization. Furthermore, all the social factions in the story, from the cops to the gangs to the undead inmates themselves, represent herd mentality — individuality, and all of its pesky responsibilities, is an endangered characteristic in the world of this story — so the choice of monster underscored the narrative’s thematic preoccupations.
When I’m mulling over a monster story (and I’ve written all kinds), I always ask myself two questions: 1) Have I created a story or set of circumstances that is sufficiently different from the thousands of zombie/werewolf/alien tales that have come before? (In the case of EFRI, I felt the prison break/zombie outbreak mashup qualified.) And then 2) How am I using the monster as a metaphor for the human condition? The choice of monster has to harmonize with the theme of the story itself.
I would agree with you about the Battlestar Galactica reboot. I think the advantage Ronald D. Moore had when he developed it was twofold: 1) The source material wasn’t that great. He had a lot of latitude to cherry-pick the good stuff, toss the rest, and reinvent the whole thing as an allegory for the War on Terror. That gave it a quality that distinguished it from both the original BSG series as well as TNG-era Star Trek (to which Moore contributed extensively).
2) Outside of hardcore sci-fi fans and Xers who grew up with the original BSG, no one really remembered it. There was no real nostalgic fondness for BSG, so, again, that gave Moore a lot of license to reinterpret the material without the same kind of scrutiny more culturally popular franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek are subject to. In that sense, it’s almost always better to remake a project that had potential but didn’t quite work, as opposed to trying to redo something massively successful. I mean, there’s a reason no one’s attempted to remake “perfect” movies like The Godfather and Jaws and Back to the Future. Whereas something like Masters of the Universe or The Great Outdoors (both of which are reportedly in development) make more sense, because those movies didn’t exactly work the first time, but maybe there’s something there if they can be done right. (Not that I’m advocating for more remakes, mind you!)
The Next Generation was in a class by itself. Yes, Roddenberry invoked the same basic formula, but in re-envisioning Star Trek for the small screen, he didn’t rely on Kirk/Spock/McCoy doppelgängers, but instead created new, complex characters (like Picard, Data, and Worf), grappling with new sci-fi dilemmas, relevant to their times. In our current era of “shared fictional universes,” TNG was ahead of its time, existing in a continuity with the original series, and providing a “feedback loop” with the feature films starring the original cast (the way the Enterprise-A in Star Trek IV opened the door for the Enterprise-D, or that Worf’s grandfather appears in Star Trek VI). Honestly, I don’t think there’s been a relevant Star Trek story — feature or episodic — since DS9 went off the air. That Roddenberry captured lightning in a bottle — twice! — with that formula is a cosmic anomaly to rival any spatial phenomenon encountered on Star Trek itself!
Thanks so much for the support, Cathleen, and for contributing to this fun conversation. You have my gratitude…