A Retrospective on Star Trek Video Games! Part TWO.

(1986)

The next game in our series is Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy which was released by Simon and Schuster Software in 1986, which coincided with the 20th anniversary of TOS. A text based game in the vein of Zork, the game was created by TRANS Fiction Systems, AKA Ron Martinez and Jim Gasperini who also developed Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Transinium Challenge. The game was the second text game released by Simon and Schuster Software in the 80's of a total of three, preceded by Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative, and succeded by Star Trek: The Rebel Universe, with Promethean Prophecy from what I've been able to understand, being the more popular entry. I managed to find a working web version of the Apple II edition of the game here. I will say, it's a bit difficult to understand what the larger cultural commentary on the various games was a good 27 years out, but I've read a lot of great things about this specific game.

Screenshot from the MS-DOS version.

The Promethean Prophecy has a story that may sound familiar: The Enterprise is attacked by Romulans, who are defeated. During the attack however the ships food supplies are contaminated with a MacGuffin. Since the MacGuffin, can't be handwaved away, they need to go down to Prometheus Four, the closest M Class Planet around. Realizing that they are not yet a Warp Capable species, the problem now becomes one of not just survival, but of the Prime Directive. What follows is an interesting look into an alien culture with a lot of not so subtle callbacks to episodes like "Errand of Mercy," "The Cloud Minders," and "A Private Little War." Unfortunately I did not have quite enough time to finish the game, but I intend to sometime later this week.

Operation and Reference Card.

Text games for those who have not played them, are a sublime experience. The closest thing I can describe it to is reading a book in which occasionally you have to figure out what the story is trying to tell you, and then describe that, at which the story continues. You can at times, if you would like to know more about a certain subject, ask more about that subject, and it will be described! On the other hand, sometimes I would like to talk to a character or examine an item that the programmers and writers never thought about in which the game will respond: "I don't recognize the word 'analyse'." or something else to that effect. The game starts off with an attack by a Romulan ship in which a sort of phantom image is being projected, with a vague description of a visual anomaly off the starboard bow. The Ensign at the con fumbles and fails to be able to scan the anomaly and the phantom ship so you must find someone who can: "Kirk to Spock" the command calls Lt. Commander Spock (The game makes reference to the death of a Romulan Captain at the hands of Kirk, which I believe is a nod to Mark Lenard's character in "Balance of Terror." He says it happened very recently, within a few months, so that puts the game somewhere between Season 1 and Season 2, as Chekov is aboard the ship. I bring this up because Spock's rank as the XO is very slippery. It is believed that at some point offscreen between Season 1 and 2, he was promoted from Lt. Commander, to a full Commander. I'm going with Lt. Cmder now arbitrarily.)  The game is not hard, but sometimes, I got lost and needed to check a tutorial. Despite the difficulty and some logically mind twisting bugs of the typical adventure game ideology, it's a fun game. Because of the strong writing and well drawn characters, Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy has aged QUITE WELL. Not having what is now considered graphical features has prevented the game from looking dated, and even just being played in a Chrome App, is a very satisfying experience. Track it down, you'll enjoy it.

Announcing Two New Feature Article Series

Welcome back folks! My first feature series about Fan Films and series is over and it went very well. I learned a lot about how much work goes into a large project like that and how much time I will need to devote to each post going forward. With that said I think I did a pretty good job for having just rebooted. Moving on.

I know I want to have regular features that bring people back, so they know that I am consistent, and until I have another writer providing an extra voice I'm going to need to be as realistic as possible towards my release schedule, so for the time being I will be sticking two feature articles a week. I'm not entirely sure know but most likely that schedule will be Tuesday, and Friday with some little posts to pepper through the week as well as some activity on the @TrekINADW twitter.

The first project, the smaller month long feature, will be a four part series on Star Trek Video Games through-out time. Now, as I learned with my last feature, this series will not be comprehensive. I will be focusing on major releases and fan favorites, with some examinations of projects that may have been well regarded failures. For this I will be going back to talk about classics of the 1970's but mostly as curiosities. I will devote most of my time playing games that defined the era for games. So for example, 25th Anniversary, Bridge Commander, The Fallen, Star Trek Armada. If the project gets too big I may expand it to a two month long series, but I'll cross that road when I come to it. If any one has so!e suggestions or other ideas feel free to send them my way.

The second, but no less important project is my long running feature set, The Chronological Rewatch and Review. This rewatch method has gained some popularity over the years, though not quite as popular as the Production Order Rewatch which I still respect. I will be watching every episode in chronological order of the in-universe timeline according to this guide: The Star Trek Chronology Project. This method achieves two things for my own purposes: Firstly it allows me to revisit the two series I have spent the least time with first, Enterprise and TOS, in a way that both contextualizes both and informs the other. Second, it allows me to combine this rewatch with the IRL airing of all of Star Trek. The shows in the 90's did not air in a vacuum, and to best recall the true nature of the series, especially the last two seasons of TNG and the first two of DS9, they must be be contextualized with each other. It will also give me a chance to revisit the end of Voyager the same way I did as a teenager, with it as the last bastion of the 24th century. I plan to watch between one and two episodes a week with a corresponding article each week. I will admit there is also a practical element to this: my budget. I want to watch all these shows in the absolute highest quality possible. Currently there are streaming HD seasons of ENT and TOS. With TNG almost done with the blu-ray sets and I hope to god DS9 coming soon with VOY finishing out the run this project will literally give the blurays years to catch up. With 705 different titles not including the animated series, at two titles a week this project won't be done for 7 years... Woah. I know it's quite a bit, and I plan to do quite a bit of research on the tidbits and ideas and between the lines, looking for trivia and other interesting anecdotes to add to the discussion. I'm doing this for my own sanity as I've always wanted to revisit the magic of the 90's when these episodes were waiting constantly. And week by week will give me a nice way to have a regular writing schedule. 

Well, that's it folks, my totally insane and completely nutty plan to start a 7 year project on a whim... Though, if there's one constant in my life, Star Trek is it.

Enterprise Accident Report.

Chance that you will die as a redshirt? High. On average. But did you know that more other colored-shirts died in the first season than red shirts? Matt Bailey over at Analytics Accoding tells us the chances of dying or being injured in the original Star Trek. His conclusion? Don't be wearing red while standing on the bridge. EVAR!



Analytics According to Captain Kirk

Star Trek and Star Wars are Ideologically Different

In response to Holly's post, I have a few things to add. First off let me say that I too love Star Wars. It is a fantastic film franchise that has stumbled quite a bit in the last decade, but nevertheless deserves praise for it's full cross cultural appeal into the mainstream, something that Star Trek has hinted at for a time, but never became as huge of a hit as Star Wars. There are reasons for this however, that go to the heart of the discussion of the differences and faults of both series.
I am what could be described as a third generation Trekkie (screw trekker, learn to own a word folks!) someone who grew up (I am 22) with both Star Trek and The Next Generation, already in syndication. So it is of no surprise that my favorite Star Trek is also the one I matured with, Deep Space Nine. I am a Niner, I admit, but I love whole heatedly every single series, even if Voyager meandered, and Enterprise didn't start telling the stories we wanted until the last season. The things that I love about Star Trek, the things that exist throughout all of the series, is the need to speak to an ideal. There is a need to explore ideas of the time, whether those be racism, sexism, militarism, occupation, or living in fear of an other who can't be seen. These are things that I think really differentiate Star Trek and Star Wars. Star Wars is a space opera with a much grander scope and much broader ideas. These are discussions about good vs. evil rather than about more subtle ideas like the nature of identity. This in no way means that the grand message is flawed, on the contrary, it is a very well plotted series with lot's of great, archetypal characters, which is exactly what George Lucas was looking to do when he made his series, craft a new mythology. Star Trek is not a Space Opera. Star Trek is Science Fiction, and/or Speculative Fiction. Star Trek is a vehicle to tell stories about today. This is how it shines, and this is how it is structured. The technobabble was used to make you believe that this ship full of military-trained explorers, actually existed. To give it a believability and a context for the viewers of the time. There was never a lot of money for huge, grand space battles, so they had to focus on the quality of their scripts, and you can see this in the breadth of talent that wrote for the show. D.C. Fontana, Harlan Ellison, (even if he does hate Trek to death now) Theodore Sturgeon. This was a calculated attempt to tell good science fiction stories from week to week, and still afford to make it believable.
So the question is, should the creative team behind the new Star Trek feature film (of which the first set photos were revealed today, and personally, I'm blown away.) try to inject certain elements of Star Wars into Star Trek? Well, maybe. It depends on what you're "injecting" it with. Now, to make the space battles more epic? Sure. Fire away, but, and this is very important, you must respect canon. I know, I know! CANONAZI! Hush! I am not one screaming that the warp nacelles have to "spin orange" but, in regards to how the ships have been seen in every series and move up to this point, which is capital ships that take a long time to turn, much like naval warfare, this cannot be changed. It would fundamentally change the nature of the show. There have been federation fighters in the past, yes, but they have only ever been seen in large scale warfare. And this comes to my second point. Star Trek is not, and has never been about warfare. Yes, there are space battles, and yes they are (usually) slow paced. But the space battles were always the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. The point of Star Trek is exploration. "These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five year mission... to boldly go where no man has gone before." Need I say more? Now. The characters. This is probably where most Trekkies, Trekkers, and Niners start to go for the nerve pinch. I personally subscribe to the "flawed is better" category of character building. And this has to do with the fact that even certain characters in the Original Series had major flaws! Kirk was arrogant, and condescending at times. Dave Bailey, who famously freaks out in "The Corobomite Maneuver", obviously is incapable of handling the stresses of command, despite his division selection. So I would say that there is a precedence for having flawed characters on the show, and I personally like the concepts of in fighting amongst the crew, if only because it makes the concept of a ship full of explorers that much more plausible.
So keep the Wars out of the Trek? Not entirely. There are elements that it seems J.J. Abrams especially, seems to understand about this universe. Keep the canon. Keep the characters. Keep the exploration. Can you spice it up with bigger booms and more lost like drama? Definitely. Just layoff the laser swords will ya?

Oldie but a goodie.

I found these sites in Design And New Media class my senior year of high school, and I thought they were the most amazing things ever to be created. I would now like to share them with you all. Some of you have probably already seen them, they were pretty popular memes when they came out, and the original sites are still up, so I'm guessing they still makes their way around the nets pretty often.



this one is my personal favorite
http://picard.ytmnd.com/

and for you TOS fans out there
http://whatsnewkhan.ytmnd.com/