New Andorian additions!

New eBay win! Original full-page art for a Marvel "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" comic that never happened. This was for a storyline called "Operation Seastrike", with art by Rod Whigham & Philip Moy, and signed by Rod Whigham. That's an Andorian about to ambush Dr Bashir, of course. This art caused great excitement amongst my Andorian toys today!

Daddy Borg Skele-Trek and more than Set 1 of the miniature Skele-Treks. Note that the Data Skele-Trek figure now has yellow eyes (I figured a zombified android's eyes wouldn't go black and inert). Plus they've been joined by a new Andorian, which I customised! Featured are Kirk, customised Andorian, Kor, Gorn, Mini-Me Borg, large Borg, Data and Picard.

Customs

Playmates' 9" "Star Trek" figures: Mirror Universe Marlena Moreau (TOS), with a Lokai (made from a painted "Lost in Space" Major Don West figure in Bele's customised costume) and "Deep Space Nine"'s Ezri Dax (made from a Marlena figure - hair removed, new hair sculpted in putty) and wearing a "First Contact" Geordi LaForge uniform (inner collar dyed teal).


Ezri Dax

I know a secret...

... but I'll get dragged away by the blue people if I say anything more.

I can't wait till next January, when the fourth and final(?) instalment in the "Star Trek: Typhon Pact" storyline, "Paths of Disharmony" by Dayton Ward, shall begin to appear in the bookshops. I can reveal that this novel is set mainly on Andor, and will pick up threads from Heather Jarman's world-building "Andor: Paradigm" (from "Worlds of Deep Space Nine, Book 1"), in addition to picking up the pieces left behind by the post-"Destiny" novels of more recent times.

The dreadlocked Andorian with Picard (above) is Shar, the post-TV series' science officer of "Deep Space Nine".

Thanks in advance to Pocket Books and author, Dayton Ward!

The secret is revealed... HERE.

The trouble with collecting

Still on a "Star Trek" bent today, I was asked about the provenance of screen-used tribble props, and their relative rarity. These days, screen-used tribbles are more likely to be from the "Deep Space Nine" episode, "Trials and Tribble-ations".

Well, when it comes to tribble ownership, I guess I'm ahead of many others...



Supposedly, fan visitors to the set of TOS, in the weeks following the episode being filmed, were given a tribble as a souvenir, and the fuzzy little props were also often sent to conventions for charity auctions throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s. There were tribbles popping up all over Desilu for months. No one thought to create certificates for them at the time, so it can be hard to prove a supposedly screen-used tribble as truly genuine. Writer David Gerrold took home lots of them, and they lived in his garage, slowly dwindling down over the years. The genuine tan ones easier to identify, as the director was apparently unhappy with the pale colour and ordered the fur to be dyed darker with toothbrushes, giving a unique two-toned effect not seen on commercial, fake-fur, acrylic fabric. It's much harder to identify the small white TOS ones, since that acrylic fur is "off the rack" and easily found in fabric stores.

The ones sold by the Roddenberry's Lincoln Enterprises mail order firm were commissioned out to cottage industry people and these were facsimiles, and none were overdyed. Many had squeakers sewn inside. The catalogs did not claim that they were genuine, screen-used props.

I helped David Gerrold auction off a small, genuine, screen-used tan tribble, to which he'd attached a small pet collar, a lead, and a yellow plastic "Tribble on Board" sign. At that New Zealand convention, he discussed how to identify the genuine tan ones, and how there are many replicas which people attempt to sell as originals - hence he'd started doing letters of provenance when he sold them for charity fundraisers.

Although that baby tribble went for a tidy fortune (for charity) and I missed out, I do now have a 1967 TOS tan tribble: supposedly the very last one of its type, found in the back of a drawer when David Gerrold and his son (aka "The Martian Child") decided to clear out their garage. David wrote a wonderfully-worded certificate for it and sold it on eBay, along with an autographed first edition copy of his "Trouble with Tribbles: The Making of the TV Episode" book, and newly-printed, signed, replica scripts of his TOS and TAS tribble episodes. A friend of mine bought the package deal, then regretted the many US dollars he'd spent, so I bought it off him.

From the certificate: "Over 500 prop tribbles were made for the show, and reused throughout. This tribble is one of the actual tribbles used in the episode. It was given to me by one of the prop men for the series after the show was completed."

By the way, when the package arrived, I quickly emailed my friend to admonish him that he shouldn't have packed any quadrotriticale inside for the tribble to eat because, when I opened the box, it was now filled with tribbles - and I wasn't sure which one was the original! ;)

On the Warpath

I finally finished the David Mack's "Star Trek" novel, "Deep Space Nine: Warpath" yesterday. It was great!

I have a few regrets; try as I did to remain spoiler free for this novel (published April 2006), things kept bobbing up on the Internet message boards that led me to guess several major plot twists and resolutions, and I really wish I'd been able to read the whole thing before ever seeing the great "flip book" cover for the upcoming, twice-delayed, "DS9: Fearful Symmetry", because lots more events in "Warpath" may have taken me by surprise.

Also, I regret that I took so long to read such a fast-paced book. This would have been amazing to devour over the first weekend of its release, stopping only for meal breaks. But I so rarely get time to do that with a ST novel ("Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and "ST III: The Search for Spock" novelizations; "The Entropy Effect"; "Andor: Paradigm"; "Gateways: Cold Wars"; "New Frontier: Stone and Anvil", to name a few).

I very much enjoyed the Prynn/Vaughn stuff. Prynn Tenmei has really grown as a character through "Paradigm" and now "Warpath". She's one dynamic, resilient, loyal gal! Also, I really liked the storytelling possibilities that made the chapters I came to think of as "Dreams of a Jem'Hadar" so much fun. I also appreciated David Mack's addition of some Andorian cameos.

Hey, if they'd ever made a movie of this novel, poor Nana Visitor (Kira Nerys) would have been exhausted! And you'll have to read the book to find out why.

Great stuff, David!

Runepp of Rasiinia: going, going, gone!

John Paul Lona's Rasiinian costume, from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", was up for sale on eBay last week. The guys at "It's a Wrap!" weren't able to identify the costume, so it was just listed as a DS9 Promenade alien costume.



John was the winner of Playmates' "Design-an-Alien" contest, back in the day when that company held the action figures licence. For his prize, John got to be an extra on DS9 ("The Muse") wearing the alien mask and - thanks to the costume guys - the rest of the outfit, which they got him to complete as new sketches. And Ambassador Runepp of Rasiinia was born.

I did send John an email to the only old address I had, but I don't know if he actually put in a bid. The rubber pieces on the costume are perishing badly, and it wasn't being sold with the Rasiinian mask, which is the original part of the design with which he won the contest. The costume sold for $US 177.50. I was going to place a bid of $200, so I probably would have won, but I was worried I'd get stuck by Aussie Customs problems, knowingly importing perishing rubber.

The whole "Design-an-Alien" story is here on my Oocities site.

Thanks for the heads-up on the auction, Jörg.

And hey! I just found out that the Borg had once encountered and assimilated some Rasiinians. An image of one such Borg drone appeared during one of Seven of Nine's guilt-induced hallucinations in "Infinite Regress", an episode of "Star Trek: Voyager"!

"Assimilate this!"

I can't believe that some "Star Trek" fans are still complaining loudly about the Klingon, Worf, seemingly giving up his post as an ambassador (as shown in the final television episode of "Deep Space Nine") to return to Starfleet (in the last, rather unpopular, ST feature film, "Nemesis").

On the ST bulletin boards I visit they'll say, "I wish he hadn't come back as Worf, to be honest. What a shame and a waste. Not to mention a slap in the face to DS9 continuity and fans."

Well, some fans would have said that actor Michael Dorn abstaining from an appearance in "Nemesis" would have been "a slap in the face" to fans.

The choice for Worf to be in Starfleet uniform, rather than ambassadorial robes, at the Riker/Troi wedding scene in "Nemesis" was actually Dorn's. When asked by screenwriter, John Logan, he supposedly said, "I want to be in my spacesuit like everyone else."

The "Next Generation" feature films aren't made just for fans of TV's DS9 (which had tiny ratings compared to TNG's TV run). For many members of the cinema-going general public, the last time they'd seen Worf (in the movie "Insurrection"), he was a Starfleet officer. You can't saddle every guest appearance at a wedding with a backstory and still progress the action. ("Oh here's Mr Worf. Why did you give up your ambassadorial post after only a few years in the job? Did Chancellor Martok regret asking you to be an ambassador?" "Wesley! You're no longer travelling the universe with your superpowered friend, the Traveller? Welcome back to Starfleet." "Guinan! We do miss you so much after the crash of the Enterprise-D's saucer. Are you still tending bars somewhere, or are you in retirement?" Ick.)

At a wedding, characters such as Worf, Wesley and Guinan are just going to be there. (Just check out the Wesley lines in the bonus footage of the two-disk DVD. They sound extraneous and don't progress the action in any way.) I think back to family weddings I've been to: I don't necessarily know who all those people are, and I usually go home having only spent a few minutes with some of them, still no wiser about how they spend their lives. And I may not see them again until the next wedding or funeral.

Movies that explain everything leave people with nothing to discuss, except whether they liked it or not. Fans have been discussing the untold dangling plod threads from "Nemesis" ever since it came out. Nothing wrong with that. We never found out everything that had been happening for Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc between the original series of "Star Trek" and "The Motion Picture" (TMP) - or between TMP and "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" - either. That's what the licensed tie-in novels are for!

Incidentally, Worf's career changes (from Klingon ambassador in DS9's "What You Leave Behind" finale to Starfleet officer in "Nemesis") are tracked in an excellent nine-part novel series, "A Time...". The four-part saga "The Lost Years" did similar duty for post-TOS, and novels like "Ex Machina" and the new "Crucible" trilogy cover the post-TMP time period.

I'm anxiously awaiting a huge new book, "Voyages of Imagination" by Jeff Ayers, due any day now, which tracks every licensed ST novel and short story ever written. It will be a very cool thing to have: b/w cover art of every book, brief plot summaries, interviews with authors and editors, and the latest version of the ST novel timeline. Over 800 pages. (I'm probably buying two copies: one to keep in mint condition and one to scrawl in the margins!)