Stop the Christie Murder: Death on the Nile and Murder in Mesopotamia, Murder & Affairs

*Spoilers*

I reference the ridiculous murder in Death on the Nile here. It is one of the easiest to prevent since all anyone has to do is not leave the murderer alone when he is supposedly shot (the reason for leaving him alone isn't plausible--one of the other passengers should have gone for the doctor, not taken the accomplice TO the doctor). 

Murder in Mesopotamia is less easy to prevent. Although the particular murder in the book is easily prevented (I don't think anyone should be sticking their head through the bars of windows, anyway), the murderer is fairly remorseless. He would likely try again and succeed. 

The question here is, Could the reason for the murder be prevented? 

I generally ignore motive since murderous intent is (1) not other people's fault; (2) not necessarily based on anything substantial enough to merit intervention, no matter what "crime is the fault of society" folks try to preach. Dorothy Sayers argues in multiple places that figuring out HOW is far more important than WHY since there are too many WHYs: the murderer could be anyone!

However, in both above books, a "stolen" lover and an affair are the direct motivations. Could my intervention detectives stop the events that set everything into motion?

Christie makes clear with Death on the Nile that the instigator is Simon, not Jacqueline or even Linnet. Although Poirot points out to Linnet that she took her friend's lover, he does so to stop her prevaricating. He still pities her (Branagh's version also shows Linnet in a reasonably positive light). 

The problem is Simon who, like Willoughby from Sense & Sensibility, wants love and money. Jacqueline, with a more sensitive conscience, goes along to prevent him messing up the matter. 

I think my prevention detectives could stop the ill-fated marriage between Linnet and Simon. They could point out Simon's avaricious nature using bank records and testimonials (Linnet is fairly hard-headed). They could put pressure on Jacqueline to abandon the plan. They could excoriate Simon, who wouldn't care to see himself as dishonorable. All the parties involved are human enough to be stopped. 

Murder in Mesopotamia would be more difficult but at least one member of the party, Richard Carey, feels guilty enough about the affair to potentially be stopped. 

Here is where motive gets messy, though. Even if the affair was prevented, it is possible that the husband, Dr. Leidner, would still kill his wife. Her betrayal is less physical and more emotional. It isn't that she is having sex with Carey; it is that she has fallen in love with him. 

The prevention investigators would have their job cut out for them. 

I have always been impressed that Agatha Christie, whose first husband left her to marry another woman, was able not only to extend compassion to those embroiled in love affairs but to also see them as differing from each other considerably. 

Her mysteries always come back to character.

Stop the Christie Murder: Hercule Poirot's Christmas

*Spoilers* 

Hercule Poirot's Christmas was one of the first Christies I read and one of my favorites for many years. I still find the family dynamics fresh and interesting. Christie didn't do manor house mysteries as often as people think. When she did, she did them well. She populates the house in this particular book with three distinct couples plus a roguish son, two outliers, and several servants. And she keeps all of them functioning smoothly (as in believably) together. 

The murder is clever but not entirely believable. 

Hercule Poirot's Christmas (also, a Holiday for Murder) is one of those murders that relies on a kind of Rube Goldberg machine series of events--and like with other closely timed murderers, I don't entirely buy it. 

There's a Columbo episode, for instance, in which the murderer relies on a tape recording of his voice during a film, and every time I watch it, I start getting nervous on behalf of the murderer. Not that I want the murderer to succeed and not that I haven't seen the movie a dozen times but--

I keep expecting the tape recorder to eat the tape. It did often enough back in the days when I listened to tapes. I can't even count the number of tapes I had to disentangle from a machine and then rewind manually. 

I feel the same way about Hercule Poirot's Christmas. Maybe the string will break. Maybe the bladder pig toy will fizzle out or someone will declare, That sounds like a bladder pig toy! Maybe the furniture will remain stacked, greeting the family with an obvious set-up when they burst into the room. Maybe the window will get loose and fall on the string/wire...

 And so on. 

Take into account that when Adam and Jamie decided to do a Rube Goldberg machine as a holiday present for viewers they found it nearly impossible to get it to work flawlessly in one (or even twenty) seamless takes. And these are both skilled special effects guys. As Adam nonchalantly and honestly points out, when one is doing a commercial, one doesn't usually film the whole thing in one go. 

(There is a Rube Goldberg machine at the Boston airport--or used to be--I once spent several hours between flights, staring at it--but it clearly is operating entirely on electricity and items placed on tracks.) 

In any case, my prevention inspectors might miss the murder--I'm not sure that people leap to the conclusion that intricate plots are being hatched that involve strings and toys and stacked furniture--but the convoluted coverup would be a giveaway, especially to eyes trained to see it (Poirot doesn't arrive until after the fact).

In terms of prevention, the murder rests on identity: the many legitimate and illegitimate sons of the murder victim who are lurking about the house. If I give my prevention inspectors access to DNA tests (which Poirot, of course, did not have), they could swab every male in the vicinity. 

Even without DNA tests, however, if my prevention inspectors do thorough, in-depth research on the victim starting in his youth up to his current age (an approach Christie would approve since her detectives believe that the solution to a mystery is often discovered through understanding the victim), the identity of the murderous son would reveal itself.

Stop the Christie Murder: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd & Evil Under the Sun

 *Spoilers*

Both mysteries could be stopped by my prevention investigators hanging around where they aren't wanted.

In fact, a tremendous number of fictional murders could be prevented by snoopy, loud, obnoxious characters who ignore social cues and just won't go away! 

The question therefore becomes, Will the murderers try again?

The murder of Roger Ackroyd is entirely dependent on Roger Ackroyd's lady friend not telling him she is being blackmailed before she commits suicide. She sends him a letter instead, and the blackmailer kills him before he can open it. 

A lingering, unwanted guest who rifles through people's mail would take care of that matter in the present. But would that put off the murderer in the long run?

I say, "Yes." Pierre Bayard in Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? makes a strong case that the blackmailer is a weak-willed doofus to begin with, not exactly given to murderous action and not very good at planning. The sister is actually the murderer! 

In either case (sister or brother malefactor), there is a very narrow window before the authorities bear down on the blackmailer and his family and make his life a misery. My prevention investigators simply have to stall the blackmailer and his sister. 

In the second case, Christie presents a couple in which the man is a serial killer and his wife abets him. They could easily be forestalled in the related book--again, my prevention investigators simply have to hang around the victim until she accuses them of stalking her. Or hang around the isolated beach until they annoy any and all visitors. Or hang around the murderer until...he goes after one of them. 

The snag here, of course, is that one person may be saved but the couple will likely keep on killing. Although they ostensibly kill for money, they obviously enjoy the evil thrill of the whole thing. 

Which means that my prevention investigators will either have to catch the murderer in the act or prove he and his wife are responsible for a prior murder; Poirot ends up performing the latter task. 

Evil Under the Sun is one of those mysteries where the mystery itself rests on the utterly implausible notion that nobody but the murderer will check the supposed dead body on the beach for signs of life.

However, aside from this silliness, the overall psychology of the book is quite good. My prevention investigators will have to be clever and on the alert to keep bad stuff from happening in the present and in the future.

I don't think it would be difficult for them to figure out the victim--"eternal and pre-destined," Poirot calls her. The next step is to shadow her continually. When she goes to the beach (stupidly but predictably) to meet the serial killer (hey, there were girls who went off with Bundy though he had to ask quite a number before he "caught" one), they keep her in the nearby cave.

They may not even have to send her back into danger. Once they see what Patrick intends to do--create a false public alarm--they can haul him into the nearest police station for questioning until the prior case is proved.  He will no doubt claim that he and his wife were joking but he also has a short temper. A skilled interrogator could likely trip him up.

Stop the Christie Murder: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde allows characters to enter novels and experience life alongside the characters. 

I suggest that all writers play with the idea of "virtual" literature, simply because we love books and reading so much. 

One idea that I've played with for awhile is a series where "prevention" detectives enter Christie novels to stop the murder. 

They have to stop the murder in keeping with the novel's actions--that is, they can't rewrite the murderer's intentions or the sequence of events. They have to work organically to prevent the death. I allow them to know ahead of time what they are trying to stop, but in truth, the idea would likely work better if they were in the dark and only knew the victim's identity or perhaps the method.

The question, of course, is whether the murder is preventable. Is it a matter of propinquity? Character? Is it inevitable?

So here is the first novel: The Mysterious Affair of Styles, which introduced Poirot. 

*Spoilers! I give away the murderer's identity!*

The novel is classic Christie with supposedly unbreakable alibis, overheard conversations, clues hidden in plain sight, and a very clever use of a medicine's residue. Agatha Christie was working in a pharmacy when she wrote the book (during World War I) and used her knowledge to bring about the murder. 

Hastings and Poirot proving the alibi.

It is also one of those murders that depends on everybody being cleverer than people actually are. The husband of the victim, Alfred Inglethorp, at the contrivance of his lover, Evelyn Howard, wants to be arrested for murder;  his alibi (for when he supposedly bought the poison) will get him off and he can't be tried again. 

Christie isn't the only crime writer to use this trope and I don't buy it. It is waaaay too risky. The police don't like making mistakes, and many detectives agree with "it's always the husband" Lieutenant Provenza, which means that the police would focus on discrediting the alibi rather than saying, "Oops, we made a mistake." The D.A. or equivalent just might follow suit. And whoops, Inglethorp ends up in prison anyway.

After all, it turns out that Inglethorp and Howard are guilty. The alibi is irrelevant since the poison was taken, unsuspectingly, while everyone was absent. 

But my writing problem here is not to warn Inglethorp, "Hey, don't be an idiot!" but to prevent the murder. 

Depending on how much they know, my prevention detectives wouldn't have to do much more than substitute the medicine with the potential lethal dose with a new bottle.

However, if they only know the victim's identity, they will have a more difficult time. Emily Inglethorp is a proud woman who would object to the possibility of anyone trying to murder her. With some people, identity really is everything. See Law & Order UK "Denial." In fact, in the novel, she is aware that her husband has betrayed her, yet she stays in the same house with him. 

Her staying may sound a little too much like suspense novels where the ingenue REMAINS in the haunted house. But her behavior is in keeping with her personality. Even in that first novel, Christie explored how the personality of the victim might inform the character of the murder itself.

My prevention detectives could always kidnap Emily and haul her to safety, but that's not exactly an organic solution. 

And they could always stand guard. However, the method of killing is ingenious enough--kudos, Christie!--they might miss it, at least the first time.

Since books can be read more than once, my prevention detectives would get things right the second time. However, there's no guarantee Alfred and Evie wouldn't try again or that my protagonists would be able to convince Emily that she is in danger. She may end up murdered no matter what. 

And there are other books to get to!

More to come...

Lessons from Fan Fiction: How Useful Star Trek Is In Creating Satire

There's Galaxy Quest, of course, though that is part spoof/part tribute. 

To be more particular, Star Trek is useful for elucidating current issues. In one of the more heavy-handed episodes of  The Original Series, fighting members of a planet come onboard. One is portrayed as passionate yet willing to bully others through incendiary rhetoric. The other is portrayed as a kind of Javert character (they are both played by strong actors). The issue? One member of the race is dark on the one side, light on the other and vice versa.

The message is--well, just try to duck it! (you can't). But the end where the two arrive at their planet to find it utterly destroy...yet are still willing to keep fighting...carries a depth of pathos that is relatively unusual for Star Trek (though not for the 3rd season). 

The point is: sci-fi allows such issues to be explored in a way that political commentary--so busy focusing on the rhetoric and "us versus them" competition--sometimes misses. 

In my Voyager fan-fic, I have a coterie of self-righteous complainers, led by Crewmembers Piyus and Malyce. They aren't consistent in their complaints since they use the rhetoric of so-called diversity to complain about, well, everything: people who are too diverse; people who aren't diverse enough; people who don't behave how they ought; people who get supposedly special privileges; people who don't give them what they want/expect. The complainers disguise bullying with proclamations of sensitivity.

Here's an excerpt I wrote (with its own element of heavy-handedness). Ben, one member of a couple that Piyus and Malyce and their clique have taken to bullying, recently got married (Ben is his human name): 

Crewmember Piyus approached Ben in the Mess Hall.

“I understand you got married. Congratulations, I guess. But you know, there’s so much ignorance about other crewmembers’ rituals and customs, you really should have invited more people.”

“It was a private ceremony,” Ben said.

“But people can never learn about others unless they have more opportunities—”

“I don’t consider my marriage an educational opportunity.”

Crewmember Malyce, who was listening in, said contemptuously, “So much for Starfleet openness.”

Ben set down his fork.

"I think that Starfleet’s education can be useful. I was taken from Gemine when I was under six years old. I didn’t know anything about my planet or its customs—I had nothing more than a few vague memories and some lullabies. Starfleet helped me learn more.” 

He met Malyce's eyes steadily. “But I agree that Starfleet training isn’t quite the same as indoctrination. It can’t force understanding. It’s a resource. To benefit from it, a person already needs generosity of spirit, a desire to accept rather than belittle. It’s easy to use IDIC language to bully others rather than to let them be.”

“Here, here,” another crewmember, Quin, said while Malyce grumbled about IDIC being "Vulcan parochialism" and Piyus looked abashed.

Malyce and Piyus, I found, were bad guys I loved to hate--and spoof. I also realized how shallow so-called progressive arguments can be. I mean, I knew that anyway... 

But when you go to write the arguments (and try to rely on logic rather than labels in order to create strong antagonists), it is hard to defend the incessant name-calling and constant interference. I also discovered how easily such rhetoric can be used to justify any position or viewpoint. The arguers profess to be in favor of recognizing others' differences. In the end, they come across as more preoccupied with a high school-like desire to have all the "cool people" be "just like us." 

Here are Piyus and Malyce again, complaining to Captain Janeway. Note how what really bothers Malyce is that he doesn't have the type of relationship he wants. I think a lot of supposedly inclusive arguments come down to this fundamental human flaw (call it "original sin" or "the natural man"): I don't have the life that I should have had; I will be destructive until I get it. 

Crewmember Piyus began, “We realize that Starfleet is committed to distinctiveness. We all are. It is unfortunate when distinctiveness is used to justify damaging behavior.”

“Such as?” Captain Janeway said levelly. 

“There is the issue with the clone—”

“Clone? You mean Crewmember Allec.”

"There is the Anthro and Teuran.”

“Also Voyager crewmembers. I suggest you use their names.”

“Teurans have been keeping Anthros in captivity for generations.”

“That matter had not been resolved when Voyager left the Alpha Quadrant. I can assure you that proper protocols are being followed. I've received no complaints from the actual crewmembers. What else?” Captain Janeway said before Piyus could argue that nobody other than Piyus and her cohorts were capable of even voicing complaints.

If she only knew.

Not that it would matter if she did. In Piyus and Malyce's minds, a failure to agree with them obviously represented undue subservience to Starfleet. Consequently, only their complaints mattered.

Piyus said, “The Gemine are—dating, I guess they call it. There’s even talk of marriage.”

“I understand that this is entirely acceptable behavior for their species. It is how they mate and reproduce.” 

Malyce broke in, “And if this was the Alpha Quadrant, of course we would all go about our own business. But on a ship as small as Voyager, denigrating behaviors that promote power imbalances, gender absolutism, and advocacy of the status quo should be avoided.”

“And their relationship promotes all these things because—?”

Malyce was practically seething. Captain Janeway eyed him like he was a bristling bug.

He said, “It is offensive how Starfleet encourages duo-couple power expression. Out of phobia and stigma towards experimentation, Starfleet encourages unnatural and exploitative bonds. All for the sake of so-called individualism.”

“That sounds like an excuse to force others to behave as you wish. That isn’t going to happen, Crewmember Malyce. Others do not exist for your gratification.”

Malyce sat back with an offended air. “I am not the only one who finds current so-called pairings on this ship toxic. Others have told me how unhappy they are—”

He was likely referring to his coterie of five or six crewmembers. They huddled in corners and egged each other on. Captain Janeway turned her gaze on Piyus, who was clinging to “I'm so sad when others are unhappy--and I'm sure I'm part of the problem” self-congratulation.

Piyus said, “Captain, we want Voyager to remain a community as much as you—not break apart like the Varro. Shouldn’t a community have common values and ethics?”

“Common morality, you mean? Let's not split hairs. The common morality with this crew is respect for other customs and rituals. I will grant that not all customs and rituals are easily understood. I will also grant that Federation protocol often takes precedence over those customs—we don’t allow Klingon crewmembers to duel each other when they come on-board Federation ships, for instance. Outside of those protocols, Starfleet is not going to violate basic individual—individual—rights because of your personal feelings of offense. You are dismissed.”

I think Janeway would make these arguments. Throughout the series, she promotes Federation protocols (think Western civilization) but she also works to promote the individual, including Seven, the Doctor, Neelix, Chakotay's cultural beliefs, and so on. 

Unfortunately, I also think Voyager would suffer these types of complainers--it is one of the dangers of the closed environment. Consider that Shackleton was reluctant to award all members of the Antarctica expedition. There was that one guy who just wouldn't shut up... (The other crew-members persuaded Shackleton to change his mind.)

But the temptation to dump that one guy on a planet/ice flow must be great!--especially when the relentless complaints are negative and unproductive as opposed to useful and constructive. Does the mindset add or detract? 

Lessons from Fan Fiction & Star Trek: The Motion Picture: There's Nothing There

Over the summer, I decided to watch (most) of the original Star Trek films (okay, I skipped VI--sorry, Shatner).

I started with The Motion Picture. I saw it years ago and remembered it as sort of a waste of time, but hey, sometimes, my memory plays tricks on me.

It didn't.

That is one incredibly boring film.

The major problem, of course, is that it is trying so hard to be 2001 and what became Dune (which went through several hands before 1984), it doesn't settle for being its campy self. I've mentioned elsewhere that I'm a big fan of work in a genre/franchise being the best it can be in that genre/franchise. Frankly, 2001 is boring too, but it's good boring--that is, it does what it is supposed to do as itself (I can't speak for Dune since the book and the movies enter Highlander territory, as in they have followers--okay, I try to here).

Because The Motion Picture is trying so hard to be something else, it doesn't invite a celebration of that universe. In sum, it fails to have fun. The costumes are boring. The ship is boring. The many, many shots of the ship going places or people approaching the ship or people approaching the entity or characters watching all this happen are boring.

Ultimately, there's nothing there.

None of this nothingness is helped by The Motion Picture's plot. It is based around a classic Star Trek/sci-fi trope (object in space has supposedly mysterious origins and a mission of death) but the problem seems almost entirely disconnected from the characters. The plot relies instead on unnecessary complications to lend the trope profundity it doesn't deserve ("The Doomsday Machine" is not one of my favorite original episodes; it is still better than The Motion Picture).

 

When I tried to give my TOS fan-fiction characters things to do during The Motion Picture mission, I couldn't come up with much. I finally put one of my characters to work performing autopsies on the officers who get killed in the transporter accident--uh, I guess the tissue got rebeamed to the Enterprise. Not technically, but I had to give the folks in the medical bay some work as opposed to them staring at the instruments in awe: Look at the color scheme!

 

In comparison, my characters had TONS to do in Wrath of Khan: investigating possible sabotage of the Genesis Project, search and rescue attempts, triage, duties on the bridge.  

My characters had so much to do in Wrath of Khan, not because Wrath is complicated. Its plot is quite simple, being neither strained nor complex. One could even argue that it is less complex than The Motion Picture. Guy known to the crew wants revenge. He quotes great lines from the nineteenth century while starships behave like sea ships from the nineteenth century  (with the additional three-dimensional stuff, so I guess Das Boot crept in there). Crafty maneuvers. Heroic sacrifices. Hey, where's Ioan Gruffudd!? 

 

Yet despite its deceptive simplicity, Wrath of Khan--unlike The Motion Picture--is fully invested in its universe. My characters had things to do because Starfleet and its friends and enemies were no longer observers but participants.

Thank you, Nicholas Meyer.

The lesson: stories do best when they are written by people who love the genre/series/franchise/world AS CREATIVE FANS, not as star-struck overly awed sycophants. --I added the last phrase based on comments :)

Lessons From FanFiction: How Lathen's Books Change

Classic Lathen: domestic financial motive,

witty social commentary, hilarious scenes,

and Thatcher acts like himself. 

I am a fan of Emma Lathen's Wall Street murder mysteries. 

Emma Lathen's mysteries were written by two women, Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Henissart, from 1961-1997. The style/plotting of some of the later books indicate that one author may have had more say in the book's content/writing than the other. This varies (I believe one of the authors was ill at one point), but generally speaking, the later books are not as evenly crafted as the earlier ones.

For one, the books' detective, John Thatcher, changes--as I discovered when I went to write him into my fan fiction. An iconoclast who gets along with his colleagues and is even amused by them, Thatcher yet follows his own line of thinking. His colleagues perceive him as something of a maverick (What is John up to now?). 

However, in some of the later books, Thatcher becomes one of the scooby-gang/the "boys"--a member of a network. A great deal of the earlier reflective and wry humor--including Thatcher's reactions to his colleagues--read more like the good-natured joshing between frat boys or the team in The Fugitive. Still amusing! But not the same.

Consequently, in some of the later books, he solves the cases alongside others including the police while in the earlier books, he alights on explanations and clues (and occasionally hares off to check them) mostly by himself (with some support from "research"). Even if the former approach is more realistic, it doesn't have the tone or nature of the latter approach.

Less classic Lathen: convoluted motive,

little social hilarity, Thatcher less himself.

Another difference: in the earlier books, Thatcher LIKES being a banker. In fact, he will often fiercely protect his space and time to complete work. He does it because he is good at it and because he thinks it matters. He also has a broad and thoughtful understanding of human nature. He gets pulled into the mysteries by both his interest in banking and his interest in people. He is the General Practitioner of the banking world. 

A perfect quote about Thatcher from Going for the Gold--a later book but one in which Thatcher is still Thatcher--sums up his appreciation for money and people: "Watching the three women contestants [at the Winter Olympics] was undiluted pleasure for Thatcher. He had always enjoyed the spectacle of experts at work, even when the physical manifestation was as pedestrian as an auditor checking a ledger." 

But in at least one of the later books, Thatcher is (rather unfairly) portrayed as doing his job but not really interested in it. Or, rather, as the stock-character banker, he does his job because he is soooo obsessed with numbers and stocks. But oh, if only a juicy murder would come along...

He is still an okay character but without the whimsy or the irony of the original Thatcher. Consequently, he became a far less appealing Holmes to my fanfic Watson.

The interesting point here: I always knew that I didn't like the later Lathens as much as the earlier ones, and I could even pinpoint reasons here and there, such as particular plots, exposition, and dialog. I began to zero in on the impact of Thatcher's (changing) character when I tried to make him work in my fan fiction. 

I recommend literary critics give fan fiction a try--it's a remarkable window into how a writer's writing works. And might make said critics more appreciative of what does work--even Lathen's later books are decent mysteries.

The Wild West of Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek: The Original Series is all about adventures with insights: lots and lots of "What ifs". I approve.

I confess, I have greater familiarity with The Next Generation, partly because I was a teen when TNG began and partly because I find it slightly more relaxing. However, I've always had great respect for TOS. Some of the most classic episodes in all of television come from TOS. And nothing has ever measured up to the Kirk, Spock, McCoy combination or, I should say, the Shatner-Nimoy-Kelley combination (sorry, Pine-Quinto-Urban).

I'm happy to report that TOS also has its bonuses from the writing perspective. 

To relax between grading papers (as I wait for the next one to come in), I added to my personal Star Trek fan fiction. Lately, that fan fiction tackled The Original Series, and I found that it has one major bonus in comparison to the other series. While TNG supplies the open environment and Voyager the closed environment, TOS supplies grit and a world without rules.

Sure, sure, there are rules. In fact, one could argue that the non-family-occupied Enterprise of TOS would entail far more regulations than the later family-oriented "we're not anything that resembles the military" Enterprise of TNG. But with TNG, I always feel like bureaucrats are breathing down everybody's necks. Bureaucrats can be amusing as Yes, Prime Minister proves. And they can be useful in terms of plots.

They can also often get in the way.  

One thing I really like about "Galileo Seven" is that the

Enterprise gets to the planet where the shuttle crashed but

can't automatically find the away team--cause, ya know,

planets are big and technology isn't perfect.

In my version of TOS, which may or may not be canon but fits my personal view of TOS, the First Contact office that I have fully staffed in TNG--full of Federation diplomats and Starfleet personnel and civilian experts--is so short-staffed during "Shore Leave" that one of my lowly characters can get a job there simply because he got on the Enterprise by accident (a bureaucrat back on Earth gave him VIP travel status to try and impress the character's relations, which put the character on a planet where the only way off was to catch a ride with the Enterprise, along with a bunch of actors, which proves that bureaucrats are still useful plot devices).

That kind of "hey, you folks need help?" approach doesn't fit the other series (even when the writers tried). TOS reminds me of Barney Miller and early Law & Order, back when police stations were actually dirty and busy and things fell through the cracks. There's something so engaging about TOS being on the edges of civilization: out there, out of contact, and willing to improvise.

In TOS, Deep Space truly feels like Deep Space.

This may be why I've never gotten into the more recent series--or even the more recent movies. The desire to "fix" TOS is too strong. Even some Star Trek novel writers can't help but back-fill TOS with current and TNG technology. I admire Diane Duane's novels, but I mostly ignore that she gives TOS holodeck technology--simplistic holodeck technology, granted, but still not my idea of grit and grime and surviving on the edge of nowhere.

TOS is all about clunky machinery that goes beep--and captains who mostly ignore the bureaucrats on the home planet--and characters who actually can do what the writers wanted Wesley to do in TNG, only in TNG it truly made no sense.

In TOS, adventurers and mavericks and outliers may apply.

Remastered TOS is lovingly done and quite impressive in some ways.  

But I regret some changes, like this. TOS is the wires and batteries.

Reality Really Is Stranger Than Fiction

The proper actor for Lord Peter Wimsey

This is partly a Lesson from Fan Fiction. But it goes beyond that.

In my fan fiction, I've realized that having my characters miss information or clues--that time traveler is a con-artist!--because they are busy, tired, or simply preoccupied is unbelievable--

Even though it is entirely true-to-life.

In the novel Whose Body by Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter Wimsey delivers the following monologue:

You see...if ever you want to commit a murder, the thing you've got to do is to prevent people from associating their ideas...You see, it's only in Sherlock Holmes and stories like that, that people think things out logically. Or'nar'ly, if someone tells you something out of the way, you just say, 'By Jove!' or 'How sad!" and leave it at that, and half the time you forget about it, unless something turns up afterwards to drive it home. For instance, I told you when I came in that I'd been down to Salisbury, and that's true, only I don't suppose it impressed you much. I don't suppose it'd impress you much if you read in the paper tomorrow of a tragic discovery of a dead lawyer down in Salisbury, but if I went to Salisbury again next week, and there was a Salisbury doctor found dead the day after, you might begin to think I was a bird of ill omen for Salisbury residents, and if I went there again the week after and you heard that the see of Salisbury had fallen vacant suddenly, you might begin to wonder what took me to Salisbury...and you might think of going down to Salisbury yourself and asking all kinds of people if they'd happened to see a young man in plum-colored socks hanging around the Bishop's Palace.

He goes on to suggest that only after his theoretical behavior in Salisbury caused suspicions would his listeners remember something he mentioned years before about Salisbury.

Humans love the power of hindsight. We love to claim that we always saw the various relationships of action and inaction and interaction amongst tangents, red herrings, apparent red herrings, things and people and events and news and weather....

The truth is, Sayers through Wimsey is right: a particular set of events means little to nothing until and unless something gives that event a reason for it to come to our attention. As brain experts point out, the human brain tends to eliminate "unnecessary" information in day-to-day life. It takes training to slow the brain down and ponder whether the unnecessary information might actually be necessary.

But in a novel or short story or episode or movie, the information has been brought to the brain's attention. We have to pay attention; consequently, if a character ignores that information, the character looks stupid--

Which is unfair to the character. There's a great House episode which didn't get enough emphasis in which Chase points out that House has chased a particular hare down a rabbit hole dozens of times before--he was wrong all the previous times; why should he be right now? "Because it's this television episode" is not a realistic answer.

Watson truly isn't stupid. Sherlock is simply very observant. 

Fan Fiction Lesson: The Usefulness of Nuttiness

Nanites speaking through Data.

One of my Star Trek: TNG fan fiction characters is a member of the Diplomatic Service, Office of First Contact. This is a Federation office, not a Starfleet office. However, he, along with his boss, are seconded to the Enterprise, which, as Starfleet's flagship finds itself in a great many first contact situations.

My character, Meke, becomes more and more interested in First Contact with non-biological life forms, such as nanites and robots. His boss is an "old-school" diplomat who favors biological life forms. The boss also believes that all aliens are sweet and well-meaning and never at all intent on universal domination.

When the boss entirely misreads the Borg situation, in part because he ignores the resistance-is-futile component of Borg culture, he is replaced.

Meke's new boss is more insightful--but this created a writing problem for me. In real life, Meke would become more and more specialized (see Numb3rs, "First Law" for an excellent example of how two fields can appear superficially similar on the outside--hey, it's cyber-stuff!--yet are in fact quite distinct in terms of specialization).

However, I didn't want my character to become so specialized that he would disappear (not every episode deals with Data and machines). What should I do? 

I gave Meke's boss, Max, a whole host of personality quirks.

Max is competent, even insightful, but occasionally tactless. He develops sudden dislikes for a first contact encounter and refuses to go further. He gets "exhausted" by certain situations and hands everything abruptly over to Meke.

One might ask, "How could someone like this end up on the flagship of the Federation?"

One would answer, "Seriously? Hasn't everybody had bosses like this that got promoted up the food chain way too far and way too fast?"

Max isn't a bad guy, so Meke doesn't try to get him in trouble. In fact, Max lasts right until he fails to pinpoint the true nature of Alkar, the vampire-like diplomat. Nobody else pinpointed Alkar's true nature (until the Enterprise, that is) but somebody has to be the fall-guy and Max is it.

In other words, I ultimately have Max get dismissed for reasons that have nothing to do with his actual tendency to foist his work on his subordinate.

More importantly, I figured out a way for my character to continue to handle first contact situations with species outside his specialization. Consequently, I was able to involve Meke in the episode "First Contact," starring the amazing Bebe Neuwirth. In "Half a Life," Max throws up his hands when Timcin changes his mind (again), leaving Meke to handle the fall-out.

This kind of approach is surprisingly common in series--the writers need to provide reasons for characters to stick around. Giving quirks, oddities, and idiosyncrasies to characters is one approach. Greg's hero-worship of the CSI team plus his manic boredom in the lab explain his decision to go out into the field, lending it a patina of fictional realism. Linda's flightiness coupled with her kind nature explain why she doesn't leave her job with Dr. Becker. Rimmer's constant need to complain to someone explains why he remains Lister's bunk-mate.

Quirks, oddities, and idiosyncrasies can keep characters present in an ongoing series. They can also get taken too far. And they often have a shelf-life. Even I determined that eventually Max would hit a wall and lose support. There's a gap in time when Meke is the only First Contact envoy on-board. And even that won't last forever.

Eventually, Xander goes out and gets himself a job. Kyle finds his calling. Neelix discovers a new community. While Naomi simply grows up. Finding the balance between the static narrative and the organic narrative is a writing challenge--and, one could argue, a life challenge as well. 

Lessons from Fan Fiction: Closed Versus Open Environments in Sci-Fi

To relax, I write personal Star Trek fan fiction. I use my own invented characters set within Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: TOS episodes.

The result is a great deal of insight on what works, what doesn't work, and why some episodes (even though I like them) may not be as well-written as others (and vice versa).

It is also provides insight about the differences (negatives and positives) of closed versus open environments.

Star Trek: TNG is an open environment. Enterprise operates within a vast area, the entire Alpha Quadrant, which is chock-full of outside influences: crew members transfer on and off the ship; family members come to visit; the ongoing political and social problems of various systems--the Klingon Empire, for instance--crop up over and over.

Star Trek: Voyager is a closed environment. Although Voyager encounters a few ongoing rivals, and the Borg is a constant problem, Voyager itself remains a fairly small population (150 is stated in a few episodes although naturally that number fluctuates slightly what with births and deaths) with only occasional additions (such as Seven).

Open environment positives:

It is easy to create problems in an open environment. The Enterprise is called in to arbitrate. Or it rescues some druggies and their dealers. Or it is required to transport some dignitary some place or other.

From a writing perspective, open environments present a continual stream of opportunities. If it is a slow day for a character in Engineering, a letter from family or a visit from a homeworld dignitary or some Federation bureaucratic nonsense can literally come on board to complicate that character's life.

Regarding the Federation, I take the position that the constant claim (by characters and producers) that Earth--and by extension, the Federation--is peaceful and wonderful, free of greed and infighting blah blah blah...is self-promotional rhetoric. In reality, people are people. Consequently, I have a number of characters who not only have to deal with Federation paperwork but with the ongoing interference of various groups within and without the Federation who are offended by, oh, anything (name it). Sociological problems abound!

Open environment negatives:

A lot of fans hate this episode about

Worf's parallel lives. I like it but one

can't really build a show around it.

It is hard to keep track of everyone and everything! I'm a fan of the one-plot-per-episode structure of Star Trek, but when one is trying to write fan fiction with ongoing characters whose essential purpose is change and growth, it is difficult to keep in mind every thread of influence: every family member, every co-worker, every captain or boss, every significant other, every decision, every past job, every future choice. People's lives are just so darn complicated. (And why do none of these people leave? Having the Enterprise as Starfleet's flagship helps. Getting to the Enterprise is the ultimate achievement. Still, I have to wonder.)

In addition, the open environment invites soap opera. One reason so many later seasons of so many shows--including Star Trek: TNG--devolve into soap opera is that soap opera is frankly easier to keep going. Much easier to have trauma and angst roll over into several episodes. The writers in the back room breathe a sign of relief: Okay, that cry-me-a-river mass of problems will take care of episodes 12-19!

It is a temptation to be avoided.

Closed environment positives:

Son and father--survival of a planet versus survival of a family.

In contrast, some of Voyager's most fascinating episodes occur in its later seasons as the initial outside rivals fall away. The focus required for a closed environment can lead to creative and varied plots. Granted (luckily) Star Trek: Voyager had the Borg. But it is still impressive how many well-plotted and thoughtful episodes it produced, simply because the closed environment forced the writers to rely on what was happening in this moment right now to these characters.

I find my Voyager fan fiction relying heavily on (1) inner growth; (2) the themes within each episode. Not only do I have to determine what my characters might be doing/thinking at any given time but how they might react to discussions of sentience, death, aging, memory, memory loss, history, the future, child-care, spiritualism, mutability--and so on.

Closed environment negatives:

For writers, there is the difficult need to generate a full season of specific adventures for a specific group of characters. I made my writing problems even more difficult since my characters are not members of the Bridge crew. Consequently, I've had to acknowledge that most of the time for most of the episodes, they aren't doing very much at all--well, except for their jobs, of course. But no grand adventures (half of them don't even go on away missions).

Consequently, one interesting side-effect is how long to wait to resolve issues: wait too long for a big resolve and the viewer (or in this case, the reader/writer) ceases to care. It took J and S seven YEARS to resolve this issue? Seriously? Insert eye-roll.

In one case, I put one of my characters in a coma for about four years simply because I love the 2-part episode "Work Force" and wanted the relationship problem resolved during that episode. I also moved the episode to the beginning rather than the middle of Season 7.

In conclusion

The writing issues of both closed and open environments have given me some sympathy for those writers in the back room. What do you do when the studio is clamoring for more ideas? Invent another outside enemy (call in the make-up team!)? Give Robert Picardo more episodes because the Doctor is just so much fun? Throw in more time travel plots in order to bring back older characters (this applies to both environments)? Have Troi date EVERYBODY in the crew? Have more family members come to visit (and complain)? Give the Klingon Empire even more problems to deal with--as if Lursa and B'Etor weren't enough trouble?

The Borg--you can always, always bring back the Borg.

Or Q!

Lessons from Fan Fiction: Fans Can Fix Plot Holes

In her commentary to an episode of Angel, Jane Espenson half-jokingly comments about a mistake on the screen, then adds, "But the fans will explain it away."

Yes, fans are very useful.

In a not-bad Next Generation episode "Suddenly Human" the Enterprise rescues a group of teens from a Talarian training ship. One of them, Jono, is human. He was taken as an infant when the Talarians attacked a Federation station (which was in their territory).

Think Richter's Light in the Forest. Very much the same idea since Picard comes to the conclusion that ripping this kid away from the only family and culture that he knows might not be entirely healthy.

It is an interesting problem, and one of the reasons I like sci-fi generally and Star Trek specifically: I prefer the episodes that explore a single "What if?" problem in a neat arc.

Of course, some of these "What if?" problems are fairly complex. In reality, a neat arc may not be long enough to solve such a problem.

For instance, in "Suddenly Human," right after the rescue, the Enterprise contacts Jono/Jeremiah's living paternal grandmother. She is an admiral in Starfleet and is thrilled to learn that her grandson is still alive.

The episode does supply some very funny moments with

Jean Luc "I'd rather be anything but a parent" Picard.

So...what exactly is Picard supposed to tell her when he arrives back at Starfleet Headquarters? Sorry, Admiral Rossa, my personal gut told me to let your grandson go back to the people who killed your son and daughter-in-law.

This is where a lawsuit comes into play--or Picard gets demoted to man-who-scrubs-lavatories.

I fixed it. One of my fan fiction characters is a civilian working in First Contact (with a boss who insists on seeing every alien as "good and kind and sweet" a la Gene Roddenberry and Rimmer). While Picard is running around violating protocol, I have my character contact Starfleet whose Diplomatic Corp contacts the Talarian diplomats (or equivalent) as well as Admiral Rossa. An entire deal is worked out behind the scenes whereby Picard can make his gesture but the boy is still technically returned to Federation status; his grandmother will be visiting him in Talarian space.

She looks terribly sweet--she comes across as a straight talker.

Luckily, the writers made the last an actual possibility. The grandmother is portrayed as something of a hawk. She informs her grandson--who was raised in a Spartan-like militaristic culture--of his family's service, and she clearly means it in a military way. This was smart writing--kudos!--since it prepares the boy for a face-to-face meeting with someone who will be at least somewhat comprehensible to him. It also makes it more likely that she would respect the culture she is visiting and understand her grandson's choices. And the Talarians are more likely to respect her--despite their patriarchal leanings--than, say, a hippie grandma.

This is my favorite kind of fix: when the fan fiction is able to use already extant elements, not entirely rewrite them.

Lessons from Fan Fiction: Time is a Factor

By necessity, television shows create short-cuts. We don't really want to watch a person search for a parking space for ten minutes. And sure, DNA tests take longer in real life, but that's not terribly exciting. Granted, it gets downright weird how quickly various FBI personnel can get from Virginia to Washington D.C. to Maryland, etc. But hey, let's just pretend that traffic was really really good that day!

One of the biggest differences between real life and fictional life is how long it takes things to heal. Even in the Star Trek universe, muscles need to be exercised, neurons need to be re-established, brains need to be retrained. Technology may speed up operations and improve results, but the human body--as Yuval Noah Harari points out in Sapiens--has not evolved as quickly as humankind's creations.

Take, for example, Matthew Gray Gruber in Season 5 of Criminal Minds. To the annoyance of the show's producers, he severely dislocated his knee in the off-season. Consequently, his character spent a number of Season 5 episodes in the BAU office on crutches.

The rewrites worked--and were probably good for the writers' inventiveness--but the length of time Gruber took to heal in real life points to how often shows give us one, maybe two, episodes of fictional broken bones before, oh, well, the person is all well now! Because watching people heal can get really tedious.

When writing fan fiction, the writer has to decide, Exactly how long should it take to fix the ship, take a character to heal, enter data into a program? Too short and the reader's skepticism will kick in. Too long, and the reader may move on to, say, watching paint dry. 

On the other hand, time--and repetition--can prove quite useful to a writer. Not only do things take longer in real life than in fiction, events in real life occur more than once. The Quartermaster has to take inventory not just once in seven years. It would likely be a quarterly event (or more in times of crisis).

On Star Trek: Voyager, Neelix works as a useful reminder that food stuffs need to be collected on multiple occasions. His need to restock becomes a useful plot device. Likewise, whenever necessary, a writer can remember, "Oh, I can have crew members check the replicators in this story--again--because, you know, that's something that has to be done more than once." 

More on the problem of time & fiction at a later date . . .

Learning from Fan Fiction: Speaking for God

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis as narrator states the following:

As soon as [Peter, Susan, and Lucy] had breakfasted, they all went out, and there they saw Aslan and Edmund walking together in the dewy grass, apart from the rest of the court. There is no need to tell you (and no one ever heard) what Aslan was saying but it was a conversation which Edmund never forgot. As the others drew nearer, Aslan turned to meet them bringing Edmund with him. "Here is your brother," he said, "--there is no need to talk to him about what is past."

So if one is writing Narnian fan-fiction about Edmund, an awesome character, from his point of view, does one include what Aslan said?

If one is trying to retain Lewis's vision--

No.

The problem is not merely that putting words into Aslan's mouth might contradict Anglican Lewis's beliefs (what kind of God is God?). It goes deeper than that.

C.S. Lewis consistently refuses to make a theological appraisal of Aslan, which may be why the books are so effective as story. Aslan, the character, is majestic and playful, kindly and quiet as well as somewhat aloof with a dry sense of humor. He is capable of righteous anger and deep sadness. He is gentle.

He is also, as characters in several books state emphatically, not a "tamed lion." He rarely explains himself, and Narnian citizens spend blessedly little time trying to explain him (the citizen who tries to do this the most is the villainous conman, Shift).

Aslan considers freedom better than imprisonment, as the children trapped in the schoolroom can attest. And he himself never philosophizes or dictates rules--except perhaps to Jill Pole in The Silver Chair but those are hints to help on the current adventure, not Ways to Be Good To Get Into Heaven.

I've read occasional Christian Applications of the Narnia series to Real Life; some of them have even been okay. But all of them kind of miss the point. Lewis honestly wasn't trying to speak for God when he wrote the Narnia series. He would have found such an attempt foolish--and possibly blasphemous.

All we can guess from Edmund's conversation with Aslan is the result:

Edmund was a graver and quieter man than Peter, and great in council and judgement. He was called King Edmund the Just.