Day: July 4, 2006

Back in 2004, J. Michael Straczynski and Bryce Zabel apparently wrote a treatment for an effective re-boot of the Star Trek universe. It’s not difficult to see why they wouldn’t have gotten the job if they’d actually decided to pitch the idea to Paramount — the proposed prequel nature of J.J. Abrams’ upcoming film version notwithstanding — but it’s an interesting read nonetheless.

Some excerpts:

If you need a holo-deck to make an interstellar starship on the bleeding edge of the unknown interesting, something is seriously amiss.

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Now imagine a new Star Trek calling upon the talents of writers like Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton, Anne Rice, Kurt Vonnegut, Anne McCaffrey, and others.

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We know that the Enterprise was once infested with tiny cute Tribbles piled three fight high in some places…but what if they came equipped with an agenda, an attitude…and teeth?

At Sci-Fi Weekly, Wil McCarthy discusses the physics of Superman:

For my money, the real centerpiece of Superman Returns is its villain, Lex Luthor. More compelling than a two-dimensional do-gooder, Lex is callous enough to cause the deaths of millions of innocent people without a twinge of remorse. And yet he doesn’t want to conquer the world. In fact, in a funny sort of way he wants to save it, or at least bring some cosmic drama to it. He’s smart enough to pull this off, too; it’s only the constant interference of an alien demigod that keeps him from succeeding. No wonder he’s bitter; if Kal-El’s spaceship had taken the long way around, crashing just 20 years later, Clark Kent would have grown up in Lexworld, defending a very different sort of truth and justice. No prime directive there, alas.

Via Backwards City.

With the countless re-imaginings of the Superman mythos, I’m surprised we haven’t seen this one. Or have we? I know there have been British Supermans and Russian socialist Supermans, but does anyone better versed in the DC comic-verse than I know if there’s been alternate-time Supermans similar to what McCarthy describes?