Daily Archives: May 27, 2009

A Fantasy Life

By Janet Quinn Cornelow

I went to see the new Star Trek movie. It was absolutely wonderful and I’m ready for the next one.

Star Trek of course is science fiction and going back and creating a story that came before means that there is a great deal of history that has accumulated over the years that needs to be followed. Taking an existing world and doing a prequel is always a challenge. The writer has to look at the accumulation of facts and make sure that the story follows those facts. With Star Trek, there is a great store of facts. After forty years, just about every aspect of life has been covered.

That, however, can be limiting as to what the writers want to do with the prequel. Do they want to stay with the type of stories from the original series? How can they make changes? Do they want to tell stories that won’t fit with what happened before? What if they want to put in an illicit love affair? What if they want to kill off a character that hadn’t died before?

This is where the fantasy comes in. Throw in time travel and you can change the timeline and how the characters act. The writers can now change the relationship between characters and make it something it wasn’t before.

That is the one thing a writer always has to think about when writing time travel. If she moves someone backward in time, one little change made by that character can change the entire time line. The results shift and a new ending can be written.

Also, they could bring back Leonard Nimoy as the older Mr. Spock.