Strange New Worlds with Star Trek Author David Mac

Episode Transcript
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Welcome back everybody time for Trek Watch. John Santrasire on
the Word Balloon Network really happy to be welcoming David

(01:29):
Mack to word Balloon. You know the name, wonderful Star
Trek novelist, wrote a couple DS nine episodes as well.
We're going to get into all of that. He has
a brand new book with the Strange New World's cast,
and of course was the co writer on Star Trek Con. So,
without further ado, here's my interview with David Mack. David Mack,

(01:50):
welcome to word Balloon. It's a pleasure to meet you.
And as I was telling you in our Facebook messages,
I'm a longtime fan, so thank you for doing us.
Today's for me here, thanks having me on absolutely ring
a fire brand new book for Strange New Worlds? Is
this your first add up?

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Way?

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Holding it up? Well done? Is this your first book
as far as you know hold it up again because
I had it on speaker mode so people can see
it now. There you go, nice, fantastic, all of our
favorites right there on the cover. Is this your first
Stranger World's book? Yep, excellent. And I got to tell you, man,
you really captured the tone of the show. But of course,

(02:29):
given the amount of Star Trek books, is it easy
to shift from me each show it and then find
that right voice for each show.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
It takes a bit of effort. You have to watch
the show, you have to listen to the characters, but
more to the point, you also have to pay attention
to the big picture, what kind of the show is it.
There's a much different mood at work in Discovery than
you would find in Picard. There's a very different mood
on TG than you would find in the original series.

(03:00):
For instance, the original series is very much a product
of the nineteen sixties Cold War mentality, whereas TG is
very much a product of nineteen eighties post Glass Knost
international relations. It represents this period of time when people
you thought were enemies suddenly don't seem so dangerous anymore.

(03:21):
There's a chance to build bridges. And although that was
hinted at in TOS for instance, there was still a
sense that the rivalry was pretty intense at that time.
So as you approach each series, you have to figure
out what is the personality of the series, what is
the context of it in terms of the Star Trek universe.

(03:44):
And for instance, like with my Picard novel Firewall, it's
almost more of a Voyager sequel than a Picard novel.
It's not really set during much of the time covered
by the Picard TV series. It's more of a backstory
novel about how Seven aim to be a fenerous Ranger. Yes, so, yeah,
so and again. For that, I had to tap into

(04:06):
the mindset of the TG universe and Voyager universe. What
was the mood on Voyager, what was the tenor of
Voyager all about? And then how did that get subverted
for Seven when she came home, how were her expectations
basically chattered and basically forcing her out to find a

(04:28):
new life With Ring of Fire, the task was to
find that sense of action and adventure, but at the
same time keep it light hearted except for when you
need it to sort of veer into something with emotional weight,
because they do both on the show, there's usually moments
of lightheartedness to sort of take the pressure off. But sometimes,

(04:52):
even in an otherwise you know, light episode, you may
have a pretty heavy moment for one of the characters,
like and Benga when you learn about the sort of
dark secrets of his past, and then you also learn
stuff about Laon and the you know, the trauma she
endured when she was young. And then in this story,
of course, I'm building on material from season three that

(05:14):
was touched on but not really explored in depth about
Christopher Pike and his youth, and I tied that together
into what I felt was a cohesive picture of how
his youth basically shaped the man he became, and how
the man he became shaped the choices he made as
a star fleet officer, including some that he regrets.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
No, I really enjoyed hearing about more of his backstory.
I mean, god, ever since they had Jeffrey Hunter in
the cage and we got to see it in Menagerie,
It's like, yeah, what is what is this guy all about?
And Yeah, I've really I've enjoyed Pike's journey. Well, you know,
and I appreciate you saying that each show does have

(05:56):
its own voice. Can you quantify because a lot of
times the different choices that were made in Strange New
Worlds season the season. I gotta be honest, after this
third season, I don't know what the show is other
than you know, the very basics of well, this is
the story of the Enterprise, you know, during the Pike era.

(06:18):
But as you were saying in terms of the characterization
of TOS and TG, well.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
I would say that probably what you're seeing in Strange
New Worlds, it's not just the story of the Enterprise
Preak Kirk. Strange New Worlds is basically about Christopher Pike.
It's about a man who when we first met him
in the first episode of Strange New world we were
seeing the aftermath of a guy who'd gotten beaten up

(06:46):
by his career, who had had some reversals of fortune
and was not ready to go back out there. He
had sort of retreated from that destiny, and we see
some of that intense and some of that pain in
Jeffrey Hunter's performance back in the Cage. And what's interesting
is that Anson Mount channeled that beautifully in the Strange

(07:10):
New World's pilot, because what he's dealing with are things
that Pike encountered during the Discovery TV series when they
had to go into the temple at Boreth, the queen
On Temple with the time crystals, and he gets the
glimpse of his future. What strange New World as a

(07:30):
series I think He's going to eventually prove to be about,
is Christopher Pike going from a guy who had lost
all that hope and had gotten this vision of his
impending doom and had let it defeat him, turning it
around and finding instead the understanding that nothing lasts forever,

(07:51):
that life is fleeting, that our time with our friends
is fleeting, and he, instead of moping, he chooses to
make the best of it. He chooses to embrace hope.
He becomes the warm, paternal father figure at the core
of the Enterprise family in a way that Kirk really
never did. I mean, Kirk was a legendary commander. He

(08:13):
was heroic, he was bold, he was a loyal officer.
He had a lot of great qualities. But what you
don't see a lot of between Kirk and his crew
in the original series is paternal warmth. That is not
part of Kirk's dynamic. He's a very bold and complicated character,

(08:34):
but that's not a facet that he tends to show
to his subordinates. Pike, on the other hand, believes in
a concept called a servant leadership, which is actually a
style of leadership and command taught at military academies, and
the premise behind it. You see it in when Ike

(08:55):
cooks for his officers, when he has personnel into his
quarters which had retrofitted far beyond what regulations should probably
allow to build a chef's hitchen in his quarters, and
he cooks for his crew. He cooks in these beautiful meals,
and this is an aspect of servant leadership where the

(09:16):
person who is in the chief command position puts themselves
in a world where they are serving, where they are
nourishing the people beneath them, because it embraces the concept
that command and leadership and authority is not about power
over others, it's about responsibility for others. The point of

(09:37):
being a captain is not that you have power of
life and death over everybody on your ship. It's that
you have assumed responsibility for the care of everybody under
your command. You are entrusted with this ship, you are
entrusted with this crew. You have a duty to protect
them and to essentially look out for them, to protect
them from forces outside the ship, to protect them from

(09:59):
the bureaucracy, to take the blame when something goes wrong.
The bucks should stop with the CEO, and Pike embodies
this perfectly. He is the warm, caring, loving heart at
the core of this version of Enterprise. And this series,
I think is eventually going to be about seeing Pike
go on this journey where he realizes that exploration for

(10:23):
its own sake is a joy and it's worth doing
up until the last moment when you can't do it anymore.
And of course, what we know that Pike doesn't yet know,
because we've seen the Menagerie, is that what he thinks
is going to be his death or which is going
to be the end of the life that he knew.
He's hasn't realized yet that you know. Eventually what's going

(10:45):
to happen this Spock is going to take him back
to the Telsians, who are going to free him from
the prison of his mind and give him at least
a virtual version of the life he deserves. So it's interesting,
but you get the life that he deserves. Pike is
going to have to learn to let go of depression,
let go of cynicism, let go of you know, resentment,

(11:11):
and it said, embrace the joy of life for every
single minute that you've got it until you don't got it.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
I appreciate those broad strokes. And by the way, I
really I agree with you in terms of I love
the fact that he cooks for his crew. You know,
I had the pleasure of interviewing Celia and Ethan Peck
on a convention panel and I asked them if they
thought Starfleet was a military organization or not. And it

(11:38):
was funny because and I think also to play with me.
You know, first of all, you think gave me this
looked like really we're going to do this, and it's
fantastic that the crowd went ooh, like what's going to happen?
And I'm like, no, no, no, I'm not looking for
an argument. I just want to know what you think
because and I really appreciate what you're saying, David, because honestly,
I have feel sometimes that it's not military enough at

(11:58):
least this iteration, not that in terms of the way
Pike cooks for his crew, but I mean now and
then it just feels like there's a level of, if
not in subordination, a questioning of the captain's call on
something he asked for other opinions, which is great and
I think a good leader should do that and it
shows his shade as opposed to say a Kirk or

(12:19):
something like that. But I do sometimes wonder if the
military kind of gets away from the show. And you'll
forgive me, but I you know, again, I think you
spell a well in your books, and I don't expect
you to, you know, answer for the show necessarily, But.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Well, I can't because I'm not in the room. I
don't know what informs their decisions. I don't know what
conversations they've had about it, So I don't know whether
it's a conscious choice or whether it's simply a reflection of,
you know, what they feel star Trek should feel like.
I'm not going to second guess them because I'm not
in the road. I will say that from my perspective,

(12:55):
even with what we've been shown on Strange New Worlds,
Starfleet is inarguably a military organization. Is its organizational structure
is military. Whatever else you might want to say about it,
that does not mean that it's ethos is militaristic, and
I think the difference that what you're feeling here, it's
not that the organization is not military and structure, it

(13:18):
unmistakably is. They have capital shifts capable of wiping out planets.
They are the sole authorized form of state violence in
defense of the state that's military. They have courts martial,
which by definition can exist only in a military organization
separate from the civilian system of justice. They have the

(13:38):
Starfleet Code of Uniform Justice, which can only exist separate
from a civilian code of law. By definition, they are
a military structured organization. What is different is that they
are not They don't represent the same kind of militaristic
ethos that we see in twentieth and twenty first century

(13:59):
in military on Earth because they are more an exploratory
agency that is charged with national defense. So they have
a national defense role. They have an internal security role
to protect interstellar shipping, to basically watch the border. But
they also have a task a charge that militaries haven't

(14:19):
had really since maybe the seventeenth or eighteenth century on Earth,
which it used to be that the military, along with
the merchant class, shared responsibility for explorations, seeking out new
trade routes, so finding new places to go, new lands,
new islands not yet discovered, braving seas not yet crossed.

(14:40):
This used to be one of the great adventures, and
it used to be that only military vessels with the
backing of governments had the financial resources and the manpower
to undertake these kinds of missions. So what we see
in star Trek is a return to that where although
you have some daring civilian who are very bold and

(15:02):
are willing to go out beyond the edges of the
frontier and find ways to make it happen, a lot
of the exploration that is done by the Federation, A
lot of that the first steps in spreading out is
taken by Starfleet. Starfleet is back in the role that
we saw in Master and Commander. It's back in the
role of people like Magellan who are basically guarding the

(15:26):
way forward for all those who are going to follow them.
So this is more of an exploratory group. These are scientists,
these are explorers, these are diplomats, but they just happen
to have been through a military academy so that they
know how to run a warship. And because they are
on a worship in space, the least forgiving environment known

(15:47):
to human beings. You have to have the hierarchy of command.
Gifts cannot function as democracies. There's a reason why ships
function with a captain and an autocracy and a chain
of command, because if they don't, they go down and
everybody on them dies. That's why. Now, could there be

(16:07):
a more military sounding way to go about a stranging world, Sure,
but that's not what the writers are about. That's not
what the show is about. As again I said, what
the show is about is Pipe of Journey, and his
personality is one that he sort of has a loose
and informal take. He has given up on the pretenses

(16:30):
of the you know, the the bold, untouchable commander. He's
thrown that out the window. That means nothing to him anymore.
That whole sort of captain is above it all persona.
He's dispensed with it. He has no more use for it.
What he wants and what serves his needs emotionally as
a character is to bond with the people around him,

(16:53):
to form relationships, to understand and trust them implicitly. So
that's really you know, he's coming at it like I said,
he's more of the warm, paternal heart at the core
of a family, a found family as it is that
is going out into space in exploration. So in that respect,
the writers I think are taking the approach and it

(17:15):
should feel more like a family of people who are generally,
you know, good natured and generally you aligned in the
same direction and care about one another. But occasionally we'll
come into disagreement or conflict with one another, and they
just don't want the sort of the cold slammed down
of the military. Well, you know that's a subordinate or

(17:38):
you know, you can't question that superior officer that goes
out the window when you approach it as this is
a found family, and what Ike is trying to encourage
among these officers is a sense of camaraderie, a sense
of unity, and a sense of illness. So in that respect,
I can see why, from an aesthetic perspective, why embracing

(18:01):
more military idioms does not serve their storytelling needs.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Okay, I you know I made the point of it
doesn't have to be the Marines. It could be the
coast Guard, and the Coastguard still has the military structure,
and you know that kind of thing and also I
always felt that, especially when it was greater in the sixties,
it was a combination of that and the Peace Corps,
where they were kind of going to undeveloped countries and going, hey,
we can up you a clean water, we can help

(18:26):
you with our resources to make your civilization better, and
that seemed to be the ethos of the original series.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Well, well, the Peace Corps doesn't have sixteen inch guns
and Camp Embardo planning to last for more. But otherwise
I think your meeting sure. But you know, no, I mean,
if you want to have that kind of show, I mean,
if you've got you know, access to Amazon Prime. There's
a great Australian show from about sixteen years ago called
Sea Patrol. Yes, I love Seat Patrol. I was. I

(18:56):
was binging it back at the beginning of the year
when I was writing this. So you'll probably notice, uh,
the characters on the ship that is rescued at the
end of Ring of Fire, they're all named after the
characters from Seat Patrol.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Fantastic. I didn't notice that. That's excellent, man, go.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Through it's all the characters from Sea Patrol.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
That's a great thing, man. That's fun.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
And also trying to drop these Easter eggs in. They're obscure,
but for those who get them, they're fun.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
That's wonderful. It's been a while since I've seen Sea Patrol,
but I definitely watched a bit of it on amazonic oh,
you know, in the last couple of years. So that's great.
And I also, hey, you're you're going through a black hole,
you're going through a strange new world. And I love
the stuff that's happening on the space station as well,
but also the balance of because and I'll be honest,

(19:45):
I'm not crazy about it, but I know it's part
of the show, the inner relationships, and it really does.
There's a lot of you know, Riverdale High kind of
romance going on, and certainly On and Spock and you know,
Pike and Bettel. Right, that's what the show is.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
It is what it is, as as as don't fraternize
with the enlisted personnel.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
But balancing telling the science picture, because honestly, I think
you do it well. I've appreciated in all your books.
And also we're going to get to conf if we can,
because you know you're wrapped up con Oh, why what's.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
The matter with talking con well, I mean it says
you have to get that usually preapproved by CBS publicity.
But as long as we keep in general, we should
be able to talk about it all right.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
But I can't.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
I can't go into any sort of real behind the
scenes stuff because I was there for most.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Of it, Okay, because I mean, yeah I did. I
mean I did have a couple of questions and if
you can't answer, then, but yeah, the balancing the relationships
with the sci fi do is that how does that
work for you?

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Well, obviously they're important to the storytelling on Strange Worlds,
uh be tell you know. But again represents Pike trying
to embrace happiness in the now, and yet the universe
seems to conspire to take it away from him at
every chance. What's interesting about the Spock's storyline, first with

(21:13):
Chapel in season one and two, and then in season
three we had the introduction of him in Laan and
the complication of doctor Roger Corby. What's interesting about this
is specifically the fact that it is during this period
of time, under this warm, paternal, protective environment that is

(21:33):
created by Pike, that Spock feels finally comfortable enough to
explore the human side of his personality. This is in
contrast to the cold, domineering father he had in Sarek,
who basically made him suppress his human side, who at
all times encouraged Spock to embody and reflect only his

(21:57):
Vulcan upbringing and his Vulcan ancestry. And then suddenly you
have Pike. Ike, in a lot of ways, represents a
second father for Spock. He is the human father. He
is the human side of his nature. He is warmth,
he is friendship, he is loved. And so it is
under this different paradigm that Spock has the courage, has

(22:21):
the freedom to explore this other side of himself, to
get to know it, and eventually he's going to choose
a more disciplined Vulcan approach that we're going to see
in place by Tos. But it makes sense to me
that in order to know himself, to know his own mind,
and to make a holistic decision about what is right

(22:42):
for him, he has to know what is my human side,
what is my Vulcan side? Is one dominant? Is the other? Not?
Which one feels more natural to me? Should I explore
my emotions? Should I control them more? Should I control
them less. It is natural that a young man is
going to want to answer these questions through experience, and

(23:04):
the only way to get that experience is to do
things and to have relationships and interact with other people.
So I actually find Spock's journey through this part of
his nature at this point in time completely plausible because
of the second father paradigm he is going with Pike,
which perfectly fits Pike's Hall paradigm. It makes sense to
me in terms of where he is in his life,

(23:26):
who he is under the command of fight and just
like he's a child of two worlds in this respecting
now as a child of two fathers. And this is
why Spock is willing to go to such lengths for
him in the Menagerie, in cos it's not just that
this was his former commanding officer. It's not just that
this was his favorite captain. This is his second father.

(23:48):
This is the father of his human heart. This guy
means the world to spot the world to him. He
will bend every rule, he will break every rule. He
will go to the and to the universe for this guy.
This is his second father.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
I'm hip to that, and I agree with you, but
I know that from where we are in me Nagerie,
and we got a little bit of it what you're
describing in the first season, but I feel like it
hasn't manifested as much as they tried to pay attention
to their characters, which I'm for You're on an ensemble show,
and I think that was one of the problems with Discovery.

(24:24):
And again, David, I apologize because you're not here to
answer for the ethos of the show, but I am
with you, and I just I wish i'd see more
of it in the show. I would assume that you're
putting more of it in your book, though well.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
I have one and a half seasons left to go.
This particular book, Ring of Fire is not necessarily about
that Spocky relationship and that aspect of it. Although if
I had an opportunity to write another strange New World's book,
that might be something I would really want to dig into,
just because I find it to be a fascinating dynamic.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
In the Green Line.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
And while I, you know, appreciate and respect that you
have your your criticisms of the series and maybe other
modern iterations of track, I have a responsibility when I'm
writing as a Talian writer to find what, to find
what it is I love about the property, to embrace
it and to channel it. And also it is not

(25:24):
my place as a Talian writer to second guest the
creative decisions of those who are creating the property on
which my works are based. So while I respect your
right to have critical opinions, don't expect me to echo
them back to you.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
No, man, it's it, And again I agree to disagree,
and then it won't keep me from watching this show. Yeah, man,
it's cool. And but also you know, but in your book,
of course, you've got that great the scenes with Lawn
and Spot discussing their relationship, and you got Spock saying, hey,
this Kirk guy, you know, what's what's up with him?
In la At?

Speaker 1 (26:01):
What were you doing there?

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah? And I can't This is early, so I accept it.
But also there is just like, oh man, I don't
you know again, I get I guess I'm sentimental and
I'm like, I don't want to see my friends that
long and get pissed about a girl and everything, which
is cracking me up. You know again, you'll see I
got to smile on my face, man, you know, so
I disagree but I also have entertained well, it's also.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Because I knew at the time I wrote it, I
had all the scripts for season three, so I knew
where season three.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Was going, okay, and I know that, and I know.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
That by the end of season three, Spock and Kirk
are going to bond, which again makes total sense to me.
I remember back in my youth, way way back when,
when I was like maybe thirteen, fourteen something, that between
eighth grade and start of high school, one of my
buddies who lived like diagonally across the street, his family

(26:50):
hosted a girl from France, French foreign exchange student for
the summer, and she came over. Her name was Karenne Crazy.
I was pretty about Brint. Of course, so was my
other friend, Jimmy. Jim was also crazy about Brink and
we basically both spent the whole summer pursuing her, and
she turned us into into rivals, and whatever I knew

(27:13):
to thought, we would have never spoken to each other again,
except that on the day she leaves, you know, and
we're we both come out like the night before, We're
both like, oh yeah, well yeah, maybe I'll be there,
Maybe I'll see her off. Maybe I want who cares,
you know, And then of course we're both there like
bright and early, like thirty minutes before she's supposed to leave.
We waved goodbye to the car as the family drives
her off to the to the airport, and we sort

(27:35):
of stand there, me and Jimmy in silence, and our
friends driveway, and the car goes around the bend at
the end of the road was gone, and we're silent
for a few seconds, and I go, so, yeah, hungry,
I got them eggs and cheese. We can make an
omelet or something. He goes, yeah, I could eat. And
it was like we went right back where we were
before the girl showed up, and suddenly we were back

(27:56):
to buds and it's like, let's go make an omelet.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
That's hilarious, that's fantastic. The you know, I like Laana
as a character, but that NOONI and Singh thing. Man,
it just again, how do you I mean? That's and
truly another thing with Patel as well, and I listen,
I love that. I think it was a great relationship.
I think, honestly, Melinda or forgive me, and now I'm
forgetting her name. The actress's name Btateel. But she was great,

(28:22):
and she was great. I went on Earth for that
matter as well. Oh yeah, Melanie, Melanie, Melanie, thank you,
Melanie Scraffano. Indeed, so she's great. But again, like we know,
read the phone book. Honestly, I think she was the
MVP of season three. I really do no disrespect to
the others, but really she had a great, clear storyline,

(28:43):
and I know she delivered it well. But you know,
and and of course we had there it's a wonderful
life ten minute you know, montage of what their life
could have been. But it when you know at the
end that the Telosians have this revirtual yeah you you
know where I'm going, man, because and again it's not
their fault because Verna, you know, is there in the

(29:05):
in the in the cage and even in the Discovery episode.
And it's like, well when don't he you can't help
but being a Star Trek fan and go, yeah, how
come she's not how come he's not thinking about Battel
so any thoughts on.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Them, Well, we don't know that he didn't think about Patel.
What we know is that they reunite him with Verna
because she's still there, right, uh, And we know that
he had a bond of some kind with Verna and
he was sad to leave her behind. We don't know
what life they just for all we know they go

(29:37):
into Captivity together as friends, and maybe she has her
imaginary lover and he has his. Maybe they give him
back Totel. We don't know. We weren't there, we didn't
live his life. We don't know. So I'm just gonna
let that one go. And also, because this whole issue
with Mattel and the Wonderful Life sequels, you gotta remember,

(29:58):
although we know Manager is coming, it does not sure. Absolutely,
this is still a very real emotional loss for Pike. Absolutely,
and so I think. But we've still got a season
and a half to go. We don't know what the
crew is going to go through, aside from being turned
into puppets for some reason, which frankly I'm there for.

(30:19):
So I'm ready to take the ride. I don't care.
I'm having fun. I mean maybe i'll you know, the
next New World's book, I'll do. It'll be the muppet
versions of the characters on the book. Per see. I
may ask for I'll probably say no, but I'll ask
hilarious but you know, we don't know what's going to
happen over the next season and a half. We don't

(30:40):
know what journey left, you know, is left for Pike
emotionally between where we've left him at the end of
season three and where we're gonna find him. So there's
there's a lot of game left to play. There's a
lot of game left, fair.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Enough, man, No, And again, I love it. It's fantastic
and really hate Honestly, I liked the way you had
Pike lamenting over Bateell in your book and everything. And
then yeah, and also honestly, I think a great book
can walk between the rain drops, and I think that's
what you're doing with this. And obviously you're saying it

(31:14):
between the Kirk Farragut and first time in command and
what is Starfleet to documentary and everything, and it's like, Okay,
we know where we are.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah. I mean, when I read through all the scripts
for the season, my part of what I was looking
for was a place that had a gap in the
chronology big enough to fit a story, big enough to
fit a novel, because a lot of the continuity on
the new shows is so tight that there's just no
gap between episodes. Sometimes it's like no worry, where you
can sneak something in. So when I found this gap,

(31:47):
I was like, Okay, that's perfect. And then what I
had to do was find out what is the state
of play of the various interpersonal relationships, who's absent, who's there,
who's in conflict, what are the issues? And what I
saw was that at that phase of season three, Spaka
Laan have started. You know, they're together, but they're not

(32:08):
sure where they are. It's starting to get weird, and
part of it is just that Laan is not into
commitment and the weird emotional triangle that's going on with her,
Chapel and Spock. It's not that Chapel still pines for Spock,
or that Spaka even necessarily pines for Chapel. The issue
here is that Chapel is worried that she's hurt Spock's

(32:29):
feelings to the point where she's lost Spock as a
friend at a time when she really would still like
to have his counsel and his trust. So she's worried
that she's lost him as a friend and doesn't know
how to fix that. Laan is worried that Spock is
putting all this pressure on her to create this committed relationship,
but she's not even really sure she wants. It's never
really been her nature to pursue this kind of thing.

(32:53):
And then he doesn't know whether he's supposed to pursue
a committed relationship with Laan or keep it casual with
law On. He doesn't know the ins and outs of
you know, the mating ritual as he might refer to it,
or the social you know, morays, the niceties of it all.
He doesn't know the tricks. It's like he's trying to
speak a language he's never been taught, and he's learning

(33:14):
it on the fly. What is the language of a relationship?
What is a love language? And he doesn't have the
vocabulary yet, So he's working on And so I looked
at all these various elements and this struggle that's going
on between the three of them, which is not really
a love triangle so much as three people who are
continually misunderstanding each other. And then we resolve that by

(33:35):
putting them under crisis together, putting them into action together,
and letting their actions reveal what they feel about each
other by how far they're willing to go for one another.
So that was part of it. And then the fun
bit for anyone who has finished watching the season, if
you've seen four and a half Balkans, there's a scene
near the end where Laan is talking with Una and

(33:58):
Una keeps fading on the spot, what is going on
with you in spot? Why does this feel weird? And
finally you know, Laen costs up. She says, I found
a pair of his socks in my quarters today, and
UNA's like, dirty socks, no, no, clean socks folded in
a drawer. I want to are we those people? Is

(34:19):
he putting socks and drawers? And of course what I
have at the end of my book is I set
up the whole easter egg. If he's trying to find
some grand gesture, some bow jests that will allow him
to non pressure without applying any pressure go on, that
he cares and that he wants to have more of
a relationship, And somebody tells them, well, don't you remember
when you were at the academy they would do leave

(34:41):
behind you leave behind something in the other person's apartment,
and it's a way of sort of marking your territory
and showing it together. So someone said, and he's like,
I know what I will do. I will leave a
pair of clean socks in that empty drawer in her quarters,
and that will be my bow jest. That will go her.
How much I care what she sees is why the
hell is he leaving socks in my apart?

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Yeah, it reminds me of about last Night, the movie
that Madman wrote and everything, and then they and Rob
Low and Demi Moory have that conversation, Wow, a whole drawer.
I can have a drawer. And I mean, come on, man,
we've all been there, We've all had our relationships like that.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Absolutely, man, that transitional phase.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
So no, I I I I get it, and I
appreciate that. That's fantastic, so very very fun. Honestly, man,
I had a lot of fun with that. You got
you got the voice of the show down Man, I'm
telling you, I hear the key is do you hear
the characters in the tie in novels? And truly, David,
I felt that way about a lot of your books.
The Destiny series you did was great. I loved your work.

(35:45):
I loved your work on Coda. Coda was you know,
I'm a comic book guy. I mean this was Crisis
signifinite tracks.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
In the.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
I never read, Oh that's insane, that's it. Well, it
didn't matter because and also the way you guys, it's
brought back those aliens from Time zero, which always had
an interesting idea. It was like, you know, yeah, and
it's like we didn't know enough about him. And I
don't know which of the three it was three of you,
right there, Rod Coda altogether.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yeah, it was me, Dayton Lord and James.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Swallow okay, and you and Dayton I know obviously did
Destiny with a different third writer, I believe right. No,
Destiny was all me. Oh, I beg your pardon excuse me?
Oh you know I wrote all three books. I forget
which other series maybe that you did Vanguard? Oh excuse me?
It was yes, which and also.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Dude, yeah, Vanguard Saga.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Let me tell you, honestly, this is what I think
New Trek needs to do. Let's hear about different people.
You can you can explore the same area and it's
fun to maybe have people pop in and see recognizable characters.
I'm all about a new crew. I think Chris can't well,
it's doing a great job at id W right now,
he's got that Red Shirt series.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
And stuff over there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yeah, and it's like, hey, anything can happen. We don't
know this, we don't know this crew. We don't know
what the hell's gonna happen to this crew. That's another
thing that I think is rough exploring a prequel, you know,
And I'm all about it's not the destination, it's the
journey getting to the destination. So I respect that, but like,
you know, some of the cliff hangars are like, well,
there's plot armor for Scotti and Ahura and other people

(37:20):
that might be under you know, temporary duress until we
get to the first episode of the following season. But
it's like, yeah, everything's going to be life and death.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Life and death is not the only form of dramatically
interesting material. There are other things that can happen to
these characters other than their life is in jeopardy. You
can challenge you can challenge their preconceptions, you can challenge
their morals. You can have them go through loss and heartbreak,
you can have them go through transformative experiences. All of

(37:48):
these are dramatically worthwhile explorations. A character does not have
to be mortally vulnerable within the context of a story
in order to tell an interesting story about the effects
that they or the emotions they experienced as a result
of an experience. So it's there is more to life,

(38:10):
more to storytelling. Then will they live or die?

Speaker 2 (38:14):
All right? That's for I had no idea, And it
is this correct that a couple of Deep Space nine
episodes were based on story pitches of yours.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah, I co wrote two episodes.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, okay, so Starship Down and Starship.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Down with it was bet with John Jay or it
Over and paper Moon right. Paper Moon, which started out
as a very different concept, also pitched by me and
John at the same time we pitched Starship Down. We
pitched both of those at the same time, after the
end of season three, actually, when maybe season three was

(38:49):
wrapping up, we were pitching those and then obviously we
wrote Starship Down for season four, and then the other
one just went through develop and notes for like three
years because they liked the idea that we pitched, but
they weren't sure how to use it. They weren't sure
where it would fit in what they were doing, and

(39:11):
so they did their best with it, and then after
about three years they finally said we could do this
we could do this, we could use it like this
and we could drop it in here. They said, okay,
send it back to mac and Ordover and have them
rewrite the outline. So we get a call from Ron
Moore says, okay, we know you pitched this. Now we
need you to write an outline based on this. We

(39:32):
need four to five pages. We need this. And it's
nog Is, you know, sealed himself inside the Vegas holidack
thing where he insists on doing his rehab whatever. He said, Okay,
why has he chosen to wall himself off in Vic
Fontaine's hollow Suite program for his rehab? And I swear
to god this is Ron Moore's actual answer. How the

(39:55):
hell do I know it's your story? Okay? Sure, so
I go away. And basically it's funny. We John and
I have the written by credit on Storryship Down that
went to but that went through like five in house
rewrites by Redeekavaria before it was approved by the showrunner

(40:17):
and went into production. Very little of our actual work
survived onto the screen, but we still have the writing
credit for a couple of our keen reasons about credit
and producers they want to save their credits for the
episodes that they originate, and this was a freelance episode,
so they figured just give us the credit, right, So

(40:40):
whereas you have then paper Moon where John and I
are credited with story by and teleplays by Ron Moore. Okay,
but it was done very fast, like the need to
turn this thing around, you know, in the middle of
you know, they're trying to wrap up the series and
they need this one done to follow Siege v R.
Five to five eight. And it got turned around very fast,

(41:01):
and as a result, it didn't go through a lot
of heavy rewrites. A lot more of the actual words
that John and I wrote in that outline made it
onto the screen. A lot more of ideas that we
brought to the outline made it onto the screen than
did in the episode where we're credited as written by.
So it's kind of funny even though we only had

(41:22):
story credit, a lot more of our work made it
onto the screen for that episode. So I have a
lot of pride in how that episode turned out. It's
meant a lot to a lot of people who gotten
a lot of emails over the last couple of decades,
a lot of them from Wounded soldiers or soldiers who
would binge watch DS nine while on deployment in Iraq

(41:44):
or Afghanistan because there's nothing else to do. And it
meant a lot because a lot of them who had
friends who had lost limbs in combat and had to
go through stuff like this, understood exactly what the mindset
of Nog is in this episod, And I had some
inkling of it because when I was twenty one, I

(42:04):
was pretty badly hurt in a car accident. I was
a passenger in a car that got t boned on
July fourth, and I ended up, you know, having to
learn to walk again. It took me six months in
therapy to walk. And so I had this you know,
taste of mortality at the age of twenty one. That
sort of you know, showed me. It's like it's very

(42:25):
easy for everything you think you have to get taken
away in a blink. So when we were asked, you know,
to figure out what's going on in Nog's head, I
just wrote back, I just went back to that experience
where you think maybe you're about to die, You're in
a car, you've been hit, you're spinning the whole world
as a blur, and then everything comes to a stop

(42:45):
as your car wraps around a telephone pole and they
have to cut you out with dogs of life and
you can't walk, and I'm like, will I walk again?
I don't know, And so I take that it's like
and suddenly I realized this is what now he's afraid
of these Like if they can blow my leg off today,
they can blow my head off tomorrow. I'm not invulnerable

(43:07):
when you're young, when you're in your twenties, you're a fool,
You're an idiot. Your brain isn't even fully formed yet.
Till you're like twenty six, you think you're invulnerable. You
think you're invincible, you can defeat anything, nothing can touch you.
You're immortal. You think you're immortal. And then something like
this happens. Now gets his leg shot off, or I

(43:28):
get my back screwed up in a car accident, and
suddenly all those illusions go away, they're gone, and you
realize I could have died right there right then. Now,
I's thinking that should have been a little further up,
that had blown my guts out, my whole torso would
be gone. I'd be dead. A little further up they
could take my head off next time, and I got
to go back out there. Everybody's calling me a hero.

(43:50):
I'm not a hero. I'm a kid of that. His
leg got off, and I don't want to go back
out I'm no hero. I don't want to go back
out there, but I have. And this is what I'm
just coping with. He's got major PTSD. And it was
because of the experiences of the research I did for that,
the way that episode was received. A number of years later,

(44:13):
I ended up co writing a book called No Turning
Back with an Iraq war veteran named Brian Anderson. He
was an Army MP. He was driving I think somewhere
and it might have bagged, but it was somewhere in
Iraq and their humby got hit by an ied. He
lost both legs I think above the knee. He lost

(44:37):
most of his left arm. I think, you know, maybe
from like the elbow down. So he was like a
triple AMPT and he was got like eighteen months at
Walter Reid, but he came out with this whole sort
of reinvigorated, you know, you know, lust for life, and
he realized that you know, when you're a triple ampt

(44:57):
you can do stunts on screen nobody else can do,
like simulating limbs being blown off without CGI, And he
realized he wanted to be an actor. He wanted to
be a stuntman. He became a spokesperson for a company
that makes mobility, you know, motorized assisting devices for mobility
so that you can get around. And you know, he

(45:21):
just he made the most of his life. You think that,
you know, what, what can you do something like that?
He learned a snowboard. Yeah, the guy does more daring
stuff after than I've ever done in my life. It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
That's cool.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
So so I wrote this book with him about his
experiences and about what he learned from it and how
other people, even those who have not gone through that
kind of trauma, can learn from his trauma. How to
move through, how to you know, refuse to accept limitation,
how to cope with the loss, how to cope with
the change. Uh So he sort of just he takes

(45:59):
you on his whole journey of denial, of suffering, of anger,
of resentment, and then also finally to acceptance and then
too how to thrive. So yeah, it was really kind
of a lot of that began with the fact that
I had that experience of my own. Then I channeled
it into that episode, and that was what put me

(46:21):
on the radar, that led me to work on that
book with him.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Wow, that's that's an incredible story, and I'm glad the
guy turned what a terrible situation into opportunity and then
really a good life for himself as best as he can.
That's amazing. That's incredible.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
He's a remarkable man.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
And Aaron, my guy just you know, acted the hell
out of your guy's story.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
I mean real, he was beautiful. What a performance. A
toured of course. He and the guy who played Vic Fontaine.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
Oh god, Jimmy Darren, Yes, Jimmy Dearmon is always just fantastic.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah. They were both so great, and it was It
had the distinction as an episode of being the only
one where a pair of recurring players took the a
story and dominated the majority of the episode and the
most of the top line cast just faded into the background.
And it was the strength of the writing that the
DA S nine writers had done over the preceding seven

(47:13):
seasons to develop Nog from punk Kid on the Promenade
to Kid as potential gets sponsored to the Academy by
Benjamin Cisco and becomes a young soldier in wartime officer
on the Rise. What an arc? What an arc? I mean,
Nog has one of the most amazing character arcs. And

(47:34):
he wasn't even above the line passed. He was a
supporting player and he has this amazing story. And it's
a tribute to the strength of the writing on DAS
nine and the strength of its concept that they could
do an episode like that.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
Absolutely, man, Now I'm with you. You know, I got to
interview Andrew Robinson about Garrick. I feel the same way
Jadie Hertzler with Martok, and it is these other characters
that had incredible arcs, and it was so great it
got even the way you owns.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
I mean, yeah, yeah, you.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Know that's what truly. DS nine, of the spinoffs, is
really my favorite, of my favorite evolve them. Do you
have a favorite?

Speaker 1 (48:14):
Oh, dear nine. If I'm choosing from among the TV shows, VS.
Nine will always be my favorite, just because I loved
what it did, how it did it, the complexity, the
nuance of the writing, the virtuosity of the writing team
and the production team, and I mean I'd be lying
if I said I was incightedly biased by the fact
that it's where my career started. My writing career started

(48:36):
on Deep Space Time. That was my first professional credit
as a story writer, as a fiction writer. Wow, that's
my first professional credit was an episode written by on
Star Trek DS nine.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
That's where I started, thirty years ago.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Wow. In fact, it was almost exactly thirty years ago,
but the episode aired.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
That's amazing. That's fantastic. Man, it is insane how time flies.
Star Trek con A, right, A few questions. First of all,
I really enjoyed the story. I really did. And also, again,
like your novels, I think you did a great level
of science fiction and plausible science. I appreciated. And I'm
gonna spoil the you know it came out and.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
The whole story is out there. Go ahead.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Yeah, so and my my, I've been reviewing the episodes
as I've gone on, but I loved that they came
up with an idea to conquer the eels, the worms,
and and it was well, you know, we can we
can make you know, the building blocks of glass, and
we can inject them and they will almost eat themselves alive.
Am I right? Isn't that kind of.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
Well, that idea if you ever had to deal with
bed bugs, that's diet to maxious earth. There you go,
that's what it is, and it's essentially dietamacious earth is
a mechanical insecticide. And the way it works is it's
essentially from these little monocellular organisms called diatoms. They fossilized,
they become the sort of last crystalline which turns into

(50:01):
these microscopic crystalline shards, which is you know, for an
ant or a bed bug or some other things. It's
like trying to walk over broken glass. What happens is
the shattered diatoms spread the outer carapis, the exoskeleton of
the insect, basically destroying it. They just eventually they fall apart,

(50:24):
their carapus falls apart, it gets infected, their spiracles get blocked,
and they die. And the best part about it is
they can't evolve immunity to it. Is it's not a pesticide.
It's not a chemical. It is a mechanical pesticide. It
is essentially a way to grind them down into dirt.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
That's I'm telling you, man, No, that was great, and
that's that's that is flying.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
I learned that because I had to deal with bedbugs.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
On applying science to science fiction. That's wonderful. And that's
sometimes I worry again, I'm sorry TV TV comment. You know,
I worry that sometimes the science fiction isn't there like
it used to be. You know, I didn't know about
the dyce in sphere until the Relics that TNG episode
with Scotty and it's like, oh man, that's a really

(51:13):
and even though that was just you know, the c
story in that or whatever, it's like, no, but that's
a cool concept. And every now and then, you know,
I just feel like in modern Star Trek that the
science fiction is kind of gone and all they you
know that.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
I would disagree, for instance, that last season of Discovery
Please with dealing with the species that they kind of
that they realize is behind all the sort of weirdness.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
I think it was, yes, And they realize that you
have to communicate with it through its all factory sensus.
It communicates through scentse scent transmits ideas and represents concepts.
They have to decode its sent language. It's all factory language.
This is fascinating. This is a species that doesn't communicate

(52:01):
by pulses of light or by sound. It needs stent,
which is just It's a fascinating concept which had never
occurred to me before, and I thought that it was
brilliantly worked out by the characters applying science, applying the
scientific method, thinking like explorers, thinking like people who are
trained to think outside of the box. I think it's

(52:23):
a really awesome science fictional concept, and I thought that
Discovery executed it beautifully in season four. I really loved
what they did with that. It surprised me in a
lot of ways. So I think that that was pretty cool.
I think that, you know, obviously, Picard did some interesting
stuff with the whole synthetic bodies and following up on

(52:44):
the consciousness transfer. That's say, I don't think. I think
I did it better in the Told Equations trilogy, but
that's just me. I'm an egotist, of course. I think
that I like those books. The Cold Equation books are great, man,
I guess, yeah, yeah, I like to think they worked anyway. Yeah,
But the fact that Picard came back to that and
continue to explore that I thought was fascinating. It raised

(53:07):
a lot of interesting ethical questions, a lot of scientific
questions that I think they could have dug into, but
obviously they went in a different direction. So I think,
you know, I don't think that the new shows shy
away from science fictional ideas. I think Strange New Worlds
has also done some fun stuff I don't love, like

(53:28):
the fact that the Gorn feel more like Xena Moors
from the Alien franchise. I feel like, if you wanted
that kind of a creature, sure have that kind of
creature just given another name. Create a new characters, Yes,
new species, but I now have to work with the
fact that this is the Gorn. And here's the funny thing.

(53:48):
If anybody can reccon this stuff together, it's probably me.
If you ever want if you remember watching like TNG
and d Stein back in the nineties, they would always
be referenced the brain. And then if you finally have
to see the Breen with their funny little snout masks,
and there they're weird garbled machine language. And the thing is,

(54:09):
you know, you kept having people say, well, no one's
actually ever seen a brain under their but someone has
and was this And then they say, well, no, it's
actually this. And if you pull all together, all the
different canon descriptions from characters who say they've seen it,
or they know this, or they've personally experienced this, and
you put all the details together, they don't fit. There's

(54:30):
no way that all the things these characters all described
from firsthand experience telling you that you know, no, the
Brain are like this. You put them all together, you go,
those aren't the same species. And eventually I wrote a
book for the Type I Pact mini series called Zero
Sum Game, where I took us inside the Brain Confederacy

(54:53):
and my solution to this set of you know, weird, uh,
you know, mutually elusive, contradictory details about the Breen. Because
people say, well, you know, don't you, as a time writer,
then have to pick which one is true? I said, no,
they're all true. That's the whole point. Look at the

(55:13):
name of their political organization. They're a confederacy. A confederacy,
by its definition, is a whole bunch of independent states
or in this case, planets, which may very likely be
populated by a variety of species. They come together. Breen
is not a species. Breen is a social construct. The

(55:36):
Breen uniforms are created to anonymize They are created to
hide the actual species because they accommodate the features of
any member of the Confederacy, so they're always changing it.
Some of them require refrigerations, some require other things, some
require different gas mixtures, some of them just require armor.

(55:57):
Some of them require mechanical assistance. Why nobody uses all
these different experiences. They're all true, that's the point. They're
all true. But it also creates an opportunity for me
to develop. You know, what is the political strife within
the Confederacy. They have an underground movement. They got people
who don't want to live anonymized. There's this whole notion

(56:19):
of forced equality. They're like a dark vision. I made
them into a dark vision of the Federation, where it's
equality by enforcements, not aspiring to equality, not a quality
of opportunity, not a quality of outcome. But they're getting
a quality of outcome by diminishing everybody to lowest common denominator.

(56:41):
And the inspiration for that was a Vonnegut story called
Harrison Bird ron Sure, where the truly talented people are handicapped.
They're forced to wear headphones that blast noise under their
heads and give them headaches. They're given blinders, so they
can't see as well. They're weighted down so that they
can't be as graceful or as quick, And somehow Harrison

(57:02):
Bergron just manages to throw it all off. And you know,
so that was the expression is I took Harrison Bergron
uh and applied it to a whole culture and developed
this thing about the Breen. So if I can do
that for the brain, give me a little time, I'll
figure out the Gorn. I'll sort that ship right out.

(57:23):
Like people say, oh, why was the Gorn so slow
an arena? I'm like, didn't you hear when the sun
do this thing? They kind of go into sleep dormancy mode. Clearly,
the Metrons put this arena planet in a system where
that starlight was at a frequency that was going to
cause this Gorn to slow down because they knew that
was the only way to give Kirk a fighting chance.
They even the odds by putting them on a planet

(57:46):
that would trigger the dormancy stage for the Gorn. That's
why he's so damn slow.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
That's hilarious, man, Well now you want absolutely man, did
see did they use any of your brain eye discs?
That was seemed uniform and discovery no, no, okay, no, but.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
It's okay because that's nine hundred years later, and who
knows the compatis we could have collapsed. One species could
have taken over as the dominant role and put the
others into subservience. Maybe some sort of genetic engineering program
happened and they fused.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
We don't know.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
Yes, it's nine hundred years later, so what do I care? Well?

Speaker 2 (58:20):
And I respect that, and that's why I don't know
if we're going to get an explanation of the Cardassian
Klingon woman hybrid, but certainly it does open questions as
far as Starfleet Academy goes and what they've shown us.
So I hear you, man, what are you gonna do? Well?
I want to know, and I don't know if you're
able to answer this. But regarding Star Trek Cun, you

(58:41):
guys had a line of dialogue from Leir to Kuvac
regarding the Reliant not missing the count of SETI alpha planets,
and it's in the script where she's like, and I
love this, and I was really hoping that it was
going to be explained in terms of hey, like did
they forget how to count? There are five plants? When

(59:01):
there should be six, So you know we was that
a possible opportunity to have Walter Kanig do a couple
of lines or like, I don't know, are you able
to explain it?

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Yeah? Actually we had a solution all worked out. It
got cut because it didn't serve the plot, and we
had to trim minutes off these episodes wherever we could
sure and it ended up just being one of those
things where the first reason was it didn't serve the plot,
two we needed to trim for time, and three the

(59:33):
explanation really would have worked better in a visual medium
with animation, But we did actually have the mechanics worked out.
We found an actual star system that has been discovered
and been documented that has a phenomenon that tracts perfectly
with this. It's basically got a really unusual set of
orbital patterns for planets that are locked into this weird thing.

(59:57):
What they do is the and outer planet, because they're
so close together, at certain points, they get into each
other's gravitational fields and they whip around each other and
swap orbital tracks. There's actually a system where they documented
that this happens. Now imagine this, You've got steady alpha.
It has X number of planets five and six, our

(01:00:20):
companion planets that are doing this funny little thing where
when they hit the right point in the orbital track,
they swap at a very opportunity point. Puts a lot
of geog of geological stress on the planet. Yeah yeah, yeah,
but it swaps them into different orbital tracks. We can
assume that this swap at some point has occurred after

(01:00:42):
Enterprise is left, but before Seti Alpha six explodes, or
that the explosion of Seti Alpha six happens in a
way that forces five into six's orbital track, so that
when Reliant comes back fifteen seventeen years later, whatever it is,
it's not that they've missed counted the planet. Is that

(01:01:04):
they think five has exploded. They think five is gone.
They don't think six is gone, because there's a planet
in six's orbital track. Six is still there as far
as they know. They're like, yeah, it's in orbital track,
it's around the same eth. Yeah, that's six. And look
where five is a bunch of floating debris. Something happened
to five. And because they weren't supposed to advertise where

(01:01:26):
the hell they had put con because they didn't want
anybody going to find them. There's really not a whole
lot of record. There's no reason why Terrell on the
Reliant would have access to the knowledge. Gechkov might well
know what's down there, but again he knew SETI Alpha five.
He sees, oh, set the off of five has destroyed,
no problem. Oh we're going to set the off of six.

(01:01:47):
No problem. He's in there. No, it's an up, you know,
and he realizes that something's gone hideously wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Damn.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
And it's the five and six swapped orbital track because
I did say con specifically said get the orbit of
this planet. That's what and that's what happened, is when
it's went up, it traded orbital tracks with five because
of this relationship they have. Stix is now gone, but
it's debris is in five's orbital track. Five is still there,

(01:02:23):
but it's on six's orbital track. It's partner is gone,
So the swap no longer occurs because the other body
with the gravitational attraction is no longer there. Five is
now permanently trapped in six's orbital track. Stix's debris is
now permanently trapped spread out in five's orbital track. They
didn't miscount, they simply thought they mistook well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
And I understand all that. I think it would have served.
And you'll forgive me for armshair quarterbacking.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
But I just took five minutes to explain that, and
we and we have video so I can do on
our little finger motions to show you how it works.
I explaining this in pure audio one, not boring the
crap out of an audience.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
You're killing me, man. I think you guys would have
found a dialogue way. And again I thought, for sure,
believe me, we.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
Tried, We wanted to. We Kirson and I worked it
out in detail. I pulled references, we pulled down you know,
like it was aft from the James Webb telescope, just
pulling down actual researching. Here's an example of an actual
star system where this actually happens. This is our I'm like,
this is our basis for the mechanics. We had it

(01:03:28):
all worked out. The problem is again we were told
that we had to trim the episodes of a certain length.
We had certain story needs that we had to meet,
and then even after we did our drafts, they would
still have to go to PARAMU CBS for notes. They
would go to secret high Out for notes that would
be feedback from Nick Meyer as he would evaluate it
against this story concept. We had all these notes, all

(01:03:52):
the notes we had to accommodate at various phases and rewrites.
Then what also happen during production for a number of
reason and stuff that we get cut. And then they said, well,
if we cut that, we need to establish this over here,
we need to move this character here, We need to
take these two characters and Tournam into one. And so
in the midst of all this the decision was made.
I wasn't part of all those rewrites. Kirsten, as the

(01:04:14):
executive producer on the series, handled that. My job was
first draft. He handled revisions. But even at first draft,
I said, you know, can we fit it in here?
She's like, the script's already running along. We're going to
have to cut. And it was decided that we were
more interested in the emotional relationships between the characters and

(01:04:37):
that what was most important about the SETI Alpha six
thing was the Olborian's role in what happened to it
and what their role in its destruction had to do
with their motivations as to why they deal with Khn
and his people the way they do, and why they
tolerate the things they tolerate, and it's because they're all
acting out of guilt. It was determined that that was

(01:05:00):
it's more important to establish than the specific orbital mechanics
of five and six and how Reliant got them mixed
up eighteen years later. While I thought it would have
been cool, and if I'd been writing it as a novel,
I'd have had all the time and space in the world,
and I would definitely have dropped it in if I
were doing it in the novel. Of course, the last
time I person in the novel was Vanguard, and that

(01:05:21):
was just well, we blew it up by mistake. Sorry
this time though, but I mean I would reference the
orbital mechanics to explain not only how did this planet
get destroyed, but also why was it mistaken eight years later? Sure,
but that is the explanation.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
I love it, I truly do. And again I had.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
It, we just didn't have that. We just couldn't fit
in it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
And isn't that interesting, David, Because honestly, I and as
evidence of this conversation, I don't mind going over an hour,
but I obviously saw how regimented the times were for
each episode.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
So well, that's related to production cost and people. Okay, okay,
So that's issues of production costs and production time and
schedule factored into all of that. That's part of why
the episodes had to be kept within certain lengths. While
only the first and finale episodes really go to the
forty three minute mark as opposed to the thirty to

(01:06:16):
thirty four, we were trying to aim for thirty wherever
we could. As it was, we went over you know,
in places. So but yeah, essentially, while you and I
may geek out and love, you know, the whole thing
about the orbital track discussion, and I'm sure there are
a number of fans who would share in, you know,
enjoying the geekery and nepery of it, the problem is

(01:06:38):
that when we're dealing with a mass audience, they're probably not.
We have to think of the broader audience that is
more interested in the character narrative. Then in a discussion
of planetary orbital mechanics.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
Well, I just felt that with Lear's problems with Starfleet,
that this would be another logical and again, you guys,
you guys came up with the solution. You've explained it here,
so I will point people to this podcast if they
if it's because really, again, I really appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
I thought that we didn't know. It was just we
ran that you weren't.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
Able exactly with the constraints of production and everything else.
I get it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
I had to do what we had to do.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
I hear you, man. Was Nick Myer's thing going to
be three two hour movies? Was that kind of mini
Do you know the shape of what the original story
was intended to be when it was considered for live action?

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Yeah? When I well, this is what I remember Pearston
saying on a podcast we did last night. The project
started while she and Nick were both working in the
Discovery writer's room. He conceived it originally as a three
part mini series of two hour films, a total running
time of about six hours with commercials and probably about

(01:07:54):
four and a half hours without. So he had the
basic shape of a story. He had some basic principles
that he wanted. He knew he wanted to cover a
certain amount of time, He wanted to cover certain relationships,
He wanted to establish certain details about CON's time on
SETI Alpha five and he had just a general idea

(01:08:17):
of where he was going. But that mini series, for
a variety of reasons, it was deemed either not marketable,
it didn't fit their plan, there were budgetary concerns, there
were asking issues, there were a lot of issues. They
liked the story, they just weren't sure how to approach it.
So they let him take another stab at it, and

(01:08:40):
it still wasn't getting where they needed it to get to.
So they thought, well, we wanted to branch into audio drama.
Maybe this would be a candidate for that, and he
was game. So he took his concept, took it from
three two hour telefilm movies, and broke it down into
a series of nine half hour audio drama scripts, which

(01:09:03):
would basically have about the same running length of time,
but with fewer commercials. Yeah, so he broke the story
down and he did a first draft in concert with
he had some additional writing and working with a producer
named Mac Rogers who was part of Realm, which is
the company that did the actual audio production of the

(01:09:25):
mini series. So Nick and Mack Rogers had that initial outline.
They did nine scripts as the first pass. I think
they might have even been a second pass on those scripts.
Those gathered a bunch of them. So this was back
like between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three, and
they gathered tons and tons of notes from CBS and

(01:09:46):
Secret Hideout and other sources, and eventually it just it
hit a brick wall where they just did not seem
to get everybody on the same page. And according to Kearston,
this is the point at which Alex Kirtman approached her,
I believe in late twenty twenty three and said, can

(01:10:06):
you take over this project? If you have to go
back to blank page one and just start over, keep
maybe the following elements from Nick's pits that are really
important to him, but try to rebuild this from the
ground up into something that we can actually produce. And
she said, well, I can try, but I'm going to
need help in hand. You might if I bring in

(01:10:28):
Dave back and they said, absolutely sure, bring him in.
She contacted me. I jumped at the chance to work
with her, and we started developing the story ideas we
basically thought we were going to be starting from pure
scratch trends as that wasn't precisely true, but we were
given a chance to sort of craft our version of
the story. Then we had to find a way to

(01:10:51):
marry it to Nick's version of the story, and we
were told which elements were critical and had to carry forward,
and so we rebuilt around that. We redid our outlines again,
and so we finally came up with something that was
generally agreed was okay, this is the shape of the
nine episodes. In general. You guys can now go to
work and start building scripts. And here's something I made,

(01:11:14):
like a little mini writer's room. This would have been
like maybe late twenty twenty three or early twenty twenty four,
somewhere in there, and we were working late at night,
Like she would get home, she would deal with her
family stuff. She's on Pacific time. I'm three hours later
on East Coast time. So we're starting meetings for me
at like eleven o'clock at night, and we're going to
like one or two doing break sessions using a virtual

(01:11:39):
writer's room environment over the web. So we're like seeing
each other's notes as we type, and we're on like
a video call while we do it. And we worked
out our outlines and I would write them up and
I would do the first draft send them to her
and she would do whatever she did to them, and
then they would go to Kurtzman, and they would go

(01:11:59):
to Myer and they would get more notes. After I
finished my first drafts and handed them off to Kirston,
I didn't see them again. The next time I saw
scripts was right before they were about to do production.
They'd already recorded the Levin's line, so cons lines at
that point were untouchable, okay, because they were already in

(01:12:20):
the can, but everything else was a little bit more malleable.
And I had some notes on those final versions of
the scripts, which were not entirely final. There were a
lot of changes from those to what finally made it
out into the world over the last nine weeks. The
broadcast version of the scripts, as they describe it, that's

(01:12:43):
the actual final based on the finished product, the re recordings,
you know, the rewrites in the studio, that sort of thing.
But that was all supervised by Kirston and by Fred Greenhalge,
the director, and I was not part of that, so
I don't really know anything about the casting process. I
don't know anything about the recording process. I don't know

(01:13:06):
about the rewrites or what decisions guided them aside from
you know again what Keearsen has told me.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
Okay, well you know, and again I think Navine was excellent.
I thought Ren was terrific as Marla, the whole cast,
really the guy who played Ivan, I mean, and also
that was the great thing. You guys all gave great
agency to the augments, and then I think, you know,
we really we understood them better and stuff, am I
am I taking too much of your time. We can
rap if you need, if you need to go, okay, good,

(01:13:34):
But honestly, I really felt as a whole it was great,
and truly I hope we get more audio because let's
I mean, my god, you got to k thank God.
Uh you know, I mean, he's getting up there, he's
got fewer days left and we're not trying to curse
him in any way, but that's the reality of a
ninety year old man. And the same thing with Walter

(01:13:54):
being up there as well, and all and all the
all the originals, well the three original series vets that exist,
but also so let's get you know, hel Man, let's
let's get Next Gen and dch based nine and Voyager people. God,
Tim Russ was just wonderful, and again George was great too,
but really Tim had to carry a lot more water
than Georgia did, and everything, and I thought they both

(01:14:14):
were great. And I'm sure that must have been pleasing
to be able to write some you know, at least
ideas if not your finished dialogue. Did a lot of
your dialogue for them? Did it?

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
Did it?

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
Still manage to get in there?

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
Now? Most of my dollars got rewritten.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
Bomber.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
I mean as Heirson explained that she is stimied by
the blank page. The thing she finds hardest is facing
a blank page and just writing scenes from nothing drives
her up a wall. She hates it. She does it,
she's great at it when she does it, she just
doesn't like doing it. But she loves is rewriting if
someone else has already done a draft, and then all

(01:14:51):
she has to do is go in, rip it apart
and redo it. Somehow, she finds this from a creative
standpoint easier, whereas on the opposite, I love to write
that first draft. I loved the blank page, the infinite possibility,
and I create the thing that I love the way,
in the form that I want it to be. But
I hate is when other people go in and tear
myself apart. So my job was to create the version

(01:15:15):
that she was simply going to shred on the way
to creating her version.

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
Now there's a writer whose name escapes me at the moment.
He was a longtime writer on The Simpsons, and he
would describe this process as he would burn through and
just write a full first draft of an episode that
he had to write. He would make himself do it
in one day, like he'd go into his office in
the morning, he would just crank through it. He would

(01:15:40):
write the whole thing and be done with the first
draft in a day. He said it would be absolutely terrible.
It'd be awful. He didn't even bother finding punchlines for
half the jokes. He would just be put in placeholders
that were absolutely awful and unfunny, because the job was
to go in and fix it later on the next draft.
He said, it was as if, you know, some drappy

(01:16:01):
little elf came into my office and wrote this crappy
little draft of the script, and now I get to
fix it. So I realized during the creative process of
con that my role is that I am Kirsten's crappy
little health.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
I wonder if that's Mike Gracie's been on my show.
It's a wonderful Sibisens writer. But regardless, I love that.
That's fantastic. And again I get it, man, and you know, well,
you know your role and everything, and you know, Okay,
I'm sending it in. We'll see what they do with it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
Oh hey, working on this, working on con was a
learning experience extraordinary. First of all, working in a writer's
room environment, even a virtual one with Kirsten, I had
to up my game, like she thinks of a thousand
miles an hour, because she's trained and now she's got
now ten years of experience in Hollywood writers drums. Yeah,
you've got to think fast. You got to write fast.

(01:16:53):
And here's the thing. When you have an idea and
you throw it out there, he said, I'm just pitching
blue Sky in this and you throw it out up.
If it gets shot down, she says, that doesn't work
for me because this and this you don't defend, you
don't double down, you don't dig in ego. Okay, well
we'll let that go. No matter how much you love it,
even if you thought it was brilliant at the time.
If the showrunner says that doesn't work for me, let

(01:17:17):
it go, because you are not there for yourself. You
are there for the showrunner. In this case, she was
the showrunner. My job is to support her vision, to
provide her with what she needs when she needs it,
in the form that she needs it. If she tells
me what she needs is for me to write a
clean first draft, even knowing that most of my stuff
will probably get overwritten, but that she needs that, she

(01:17:39):
needs it done well so that she can go in
and do her thing. Then that's my job. And it's
not my job to say, well, I'd like to see
more of my stuff, say in well, it's not my job.
That's not why I'm there, and that's not why the
project is this, And the project is not there for
my vanity. It's not there to serve my ego. Sure
I would love it. Maybe a little more of my

(01:18:01):
dialog made it through, but that wasn't the job. The
job was break the story with Pearson. Be her sounding board,
you know, be a source of ideas to help her
find the ones that work. Get it all done, you know,
in a linear form. Write the scripts, make them nice,
clean and tight, give her, you know, the foundation that
she can build on and then go in and revise,

(01:18:24):
basically to base. My job is to essentially be the
first draft guy. That's what she needed me for. That's
what I was hired for. That's what I did, and
and I accept that that was my role and my
goal was to do it to the best of my
ability to be useful to my showrunner.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
There you go. Would you want to write any more
audio drama?

Speaker 1 (01:18:47):
Oh? Sure, I'd love to work with I would love
to work with Kirston on one of these again. I
know that she would like to do some more. We're
waiting to see what the metrics are on con We
have no idea come virtually what whether it's been deemed
a success. If so, how big a success. Sure, we
know that the critics have been generally very favorable. Fan

(01:19:09):
response has generally been pretty good. We're happy with the
way it came out. We know that are Superiors a
secret hideout at CBS are also very happy with the
final product. All that matters now is does it turn
a profit? Is the audience there and if so, the
hope is that they will come back to us and

(01:19:29):
ask us to do more, or at the very least
invite us to pitch ideas to do more. I have
a few ideas I'd like to explore. I know Kirston
has a few of our own. We've resisted the urge
to talk about them in too much detail because we
don't want to poison the water for each other right now.
We also don't want to get ahead of ourselves. We
don't want to we don't want to jinx it. So well,

(01:19:50):
you know, we're knocking on wood and yeah, run the
rabbits foot, although you know I don't have a rabbit's
foot anymore because I love rabbits and whatever. Well that's true,
that's right, right, So but I knock on wood and
we'll see what happens. But yeah, I mean, I could
definitely see this as a form where we could tell

(01:20:12):
a variety of very interesting stories about original Star Trek
characters from the Star Trek universe. We could do adaptations
of existing works from other media. There are different types
of stories you can tell, different settings, different environments, different
time periods. If the big universe, it has a lot

(01:20:32):
of potential. I just hope I get a chance to
play with some.

Speaker 2 (01:20:36):
Of the league in Are you listen again? Everybody Strangeer
World's Ring of Fire out now, if you're missing in
jonesing for some more at a boy than it is,
if you're jonesing for more strange the worlds while we
wait for a season for this is a great opportunity
and it's a great book. Are you without spoiling anything,
are you in the process of writing anymore new Star

(01:20:58):
Trek novels? I am.

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
Actually I'm working on something for next year. The contract
is fully signed and executed and whatnot, so it is
officially ago. My outline is officially approved, so that's a go.
Beyond that, I can't really reveal any details before the publisher.
The publisher has to be the one to put the
details out in the world, not me, So that's pretty

(01:21:25):
much all I can say at the moment.

Speaker 2 (01:21:27):
Okay, I I tell everyone I'm not here to fuck
up your marketing plant or the company's marketing plan.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
So no, I'm just I'm aware that both CBS and
Simon and Schuester have snipers that follow me where I go.
I know not to cross the red line.

Speaker 2 (01:21:41):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, man Danger third Rail, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
Little laser Dot, We'll here right here.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
How about non Star Trek books? Are you? Are you
are you writing any other because and also seriously, I mean,
I have tremendous respect for Tian novelists, and I used
to go to sitting. When I go to Comic Con
in San Diego, I try to go to the awards
of that stuff. Max describe awards. Yeah, yes, Max Collins
is a friend. Marv Wolfman is a friend. John Mayberry

(01:22:13):
I've met over the years, and some of the others.
You know, some of your contemporaries John, John Jackson Miller, Oh,
great guy John, and again and listen, uh, Michael jan
Freeman and Robert Freiberger are great friends of mine as well.

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
Yeah. Bob Greenberger and Mike Freeman or old buddies of mine.

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
Talking about next Week actually about his pulp book Have
you ever written any of those thrilling Adventures any Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
Yeah, I was involved, I think the first two.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
Okay, Oh, that's great man man.

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
For some reason, Bob just never called me again. I
guess he wants to keep newday. He likes to have
new names cycle in. He likes to have yes, fresh
talent cycle through.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
So I suspect that, you know, he felt like I
got my two bites at the Apple and he wants
to let you know newer writers, new voices that need
the exposure and get their shot. So I get where
he's coming from.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
The other Star Trek novelists say, you guys kind of
fraternal as far as Keith Candido is a buddy as well.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
You know, Keith I are more than buddies. We go
back like thirty some odd years. We were groomsmen at
each other's weddings.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
Oh, that's great man.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
When his first wife threw him out, he wound up
on my doorstep with his stuff in a pillowcase, live
with me for like six weeks. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah,
it was like the odd couple. But we got along great.
But yeah, Keith and I have been buds. You know,
we're Yeah, we we we've been tight like brothers.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
That's great man.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
No, I I don't know if you ever I don't
know if you've ever heard of the shore Leaf Convention.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
To yes, please tell people.

Speaker 1 (01:23:53):
Used to be down in the Maryland area. Now it's
held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
That is the place where if you are a fan
of Star Trick Tian novels and you want to meet
Star Trek tie in writers, that's the con you go
to because they invite like a a couple dozen of
us every year. I've been going out for twenty some
odd years, ever since my first ear of Star Trek
novels came out. But Mike Friedman's a regular, Bob Greenberger,

(01:24:18):
Peter David used to go every year before he got sick.
But you know, I'm there. Dayton Ward is usually there.
John Jackson Miller's appeared once or twice. We've had writers
from overseas like Nia McCormick and James Swallow, they've they've
come over. I think Diane Dwayne was there one year.

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
Oh nice, man, I'm such a fan.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
Every now and then, rarely Kirsten is able to come
out from LA and join us.

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
Yeah, great, absolutely, man. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
Yeah. So basically this is the play of Christopher L.
Pennett's there, you meet John Jackson Miller. There's usually a
great lineup of Star Trek writers, both classic and you know, current,
and we do signings and we do os, and we
hang out in the bar every night. We drink ourselves stupid.
It's really great. So yeah, that is basically where Star

(01:25:09):
Trek writers of all stripes, particularly novelists, that is where
we bond. We are a very fraternal group. We're a
very uh, you know, very tight knit, and we're very welcoming.
When new scribes, you know, make their breakthrough, we welcome
them in. We make sure that they know, like you know,
they say, well, you know, I'm not a real writer,
like you know, like, did you write something on paper? Yeah,

(01:25:31):
did it get published? Yeah, you get paid? Yeah, congratulations,
you're a writer. You're a professional. Welcome to the club,
the club. Come, let's buy you a drink. And because
that's how Bob Greenberger and Mike Friedman and Peter David
and John Warrenholt those days, that's how they welcome me
and dating in when we made our first sales twenty
years ago. They were like, hey, you guys are part

(01:25:53):
of the fraternity. Now, come on in. We'll buy you
a great join the circle, join the bullshit circle, come
on and tell stories. And we were just welcomed in
just like that. And now you know, thirty years later,
you know me, Dayton, You know, we're the old men.
Now suddenly we're the old veterans. Yeah, here, you man,
we used to be we see the young kirks. Now
we're the old veterans.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
You're describing my broadcast career. Man, I hear what you're saying. Absolutely, man,
that's all right. Time catches up with a time is
the uh whatever which we burn? Thank you, sir, well done.
You see this is.

Speaker 1 (01:26:24):
Why Lord's the old friend who goes with us on
the journey to remind us that all things are impast.

Speaker 2 (01:26:30):
Which which quote is that from?

Speaker 1 (01:26:32):
That's the quote that immediately follows in Generations, The card says,
I prefer to think of Time as an old friend
who goes with us on the journey and reminds us
that all good things end there.

Speaker 2 (01:26:41):
You go, that's fantastic, man. We should ender right there, David. Honestly,
great talk, and you've you've you've softened my blows in
the most positive way, and I appreciate that. And really
no great, great conversation when your new book comes out.

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
But you know, i'll like problem this time next year,
maybe October. I don't know when in October, but I
think it's gonna be out October next year. I also
have an original short story that'll be out hopefully next
year in anthology edited by Henry Hurtz. I don't know
that he's his publisher has announced it. So again, this
is one of those cases where a lot to say more,

(01:27:20):
but it's not even available for pre orders, so what
would be the point. But I'm very proud of that story.
I'm hoping that that anthology will, you know, again, find
an audience. His most recent one, Combat Monsters, has done
really well. That has a story that I wrote in
it called called box Guard's World War Two untild tales
of World War Two featuring various types of monsters and

(01:27:41):
supernatural entities and whatnot. And so I wrote the Bombing
of Nagasaki involving a Kaiju. So I have another story
and another anthology by that editor. I have an original
novel you asked about that. I have one that is
looking for a home at the moment. My agency is
shopping it around. No takers so far, but you know,

(01:28:02):
we have not yet exhausted all of our possibilities. I
am hoping that will find a good home. And also
I over the summer I wrote a feature screenplay with
a friend of mine. Don't have an agent for screenplays.
I have one for books, but I don't have one
for film and TV unfortunately. But I have a producer
friend who's trying to showed around. I'm hoping that will

(01:28:23):
find a home and get sold and again, you know,
get some money in my pocket. So I have irons
in the fire. I have workout in the world. I've
cast my bread upon the waters. I will probably get
back soggy bread, but one can always hope for French toast.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
Would you consider self publishing. I've been asking my author
friends this question because I think the market has changed,
and certainly, David got you've got a star Trek community.
I don't know how much. I don't think beyond it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
I mean, I have some social media presence, but I
don't think that you don't have a self publishing I
don't think self publishing would work out well. I don't
think that I don't think the money would be there
for me right now. I would prefer to stick with
the traditional publishing model, simply because I have a good agent.
I have the opportunity to pitch to traditional publishing houses.

(01:29:15):
Maybe not the Big four, you know, there might be
a smaller mid level press. But you know, if I
can write and get an advance payment and let someone
else handle the distribution in marketing, that would be my preference.
I don't like to deal with distribution. I don't like
to deal with marketing. I'm not a salesman, as I
tell people, like a lot of my friends, a lot
of my fellow writers, they bring stacks and stacks and

(01:29:36):
boxes of books the cons and they pile them up
on the table to do sales, and they work a
table all weekend. And I don't do that, you know,
I commit. I mean, if they if the bookseller has
my books, great, buy them from over there, bring them
to me. You want to bring my books in from home,
I'll sign them. But when the signing period is over,
I'm off. I'm going to do my own thing. I'm
going to wander the dealers. I'm going to goel Or.

(01:29:59):
I'm going to go Or. I'm going to go off
site and find a nice restaurant, and Lennard we take
a few people with me. I'm not going to hang
around the table all day because, as I like to
explain to people, I didn't become a writer so that
I could spend my golden years working retail. I'm with you,
I'm not I'm not a retail salesman. It's not what
I'm in this business because I don't like dealing with people.

Speaker 2 (01:30:20):
That's the whole point.

Speaker 1 (01:30:23):
I work alone and I drink.

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
Well, I'm glad you broke your norms to have this conversation.
So ring a fire, everybody, strange New world out now,
it looks right, and that's exactly what it looks like.
There you go. So and I and I and I
can tell you honestly as I've as I've told David
I am. I'm a fan of his work and I
think he does a great job. He has captured that

(01:30:48):
strange New world's voice in the best way, and I
think you'll enjoy it. So, dude, thanks a lot all
the time. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:54):
Thank you, John, It's been great being

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