From: tlynch@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch)
Subject: Richard Arnold: The Interview, part 1 of 5
Summary: "How'd you end up here?" and "What do you do?"
Keywords: Richard Arnold, interview, general stuff
Message-ID: <1991Sep10.011517.11344@cco.caltech.edu>
Date: 10 Sep 91 01:15:17 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 310

This is part 1 of the interview with Richard Arnold, dealing with mostly
general questions and topics; who he is, what he does, etc.  Those not caring
should skip this article now.
Tim Lynch

TL: Well, first, I guess, some general stuff...how'd you end up here?  How did
you get this job?

RA: :laughs:  Read the Official Fan Club Magazine, issue #79.  Basically, it
began in the mid-70s, when I got to know Susan Sackett.  I'd already met Gene
at several conventions, but I was just another fan to Gene at that time.  She
started to rely on both my knowledge of Star Trek and my constant
availability, or at least...I _made_ myself available.  This was about the
time that Paramount was trying to figure out what to do with Star Trek;
whether to do a feature, to do a new series, which was Barry Diller's dream--

TL: Definitely mid-70s, then.

RA: Yeah.  He wanted to become the fourth network, and that didn't happen
here, so he went to 20th :Century Fox: and it did.  And at that time, they
needed photographic material, they needed somebody who could remember
information that wasn't in what at that time was really the _only_ one source
of information apart from _The Making of Star Trek_, which didn't have a
lexicon of any kind, and that was the Concordance--which, about that time,
also came out in hardback.  So, I had it all sort of in the top of my head.
It started out as just phone calls--and because I was becoming friends with
him, I was coming by the studio a lot--I was living _literally_ across the
street on Plymouth, so I was two minutes away after a phone call.  And that
came in handy when they started writing scripts for this new series, which is
eventually where it went, and _that_ took a year or two...

TL:  Right.

RA:  Because there were a lot of false starts and stops, which must have been
incredibly frustrating for everybody.  But, when it got around to finally
pitching projects, that was when I became more needed, for--again, for
photographic slides, for my knowledge of elements, dialogue, etcetera.  And
then, again, things kinda shelved for a while after they decided they weren't
going to make the series, and they had the sets built and they had fifteen
scripts...I mean it was _literally_ ready to go, and they pulled the plug.
And then, thank God, "Star Wars" came out, and Paramount, then--

TL:  Took a second look.

RA:  I mean, Charles Bludorn :sp?, then head of P'mount: said, "That could've
been US!  Where were all of you?", right?  So, they then turned the series,
which was already basically stopped, into the motion picture.  They took the
best of the scripts, redressed the sets--unfortunately; you should have seen
it before they did, it looked much more like the original series--and then
brought everybody, including Leonard, back in, because Leonard--

TL:  He originally wasn't going to...

RA:  Yeah.  And Walter Koenig, you know, the Great "It's not gonna happen,
it's not gonna happen"--he's the Star Trek Worrier, he's the one who's always
the doubting Thomas in the group--he, right up to the point of going to
Washington, DC, December 6th of 1979, thought that it was all going to get
stopped.  He just didn't believe it was really gonna happen until they
actually sat down in the theater and watched it.  I mean, by then, of course,
he really knew, but...he was the one who kept saying "they're gonna drop this
halfway through, they're not gonna finish it"...because the money was just
going out the window.  It was $25 million, roughly, to make the film, plus
they had to write off the $17 million in development up to that point,
including $5 million to Robert :garble: and associates...I mean, all these
problems that they had...writing off the attempted 9 million dollar feature,
writing off the attempted series, and the specials, and the _miniseries_...and
all these things, all that development money, all those people who got paid
off, all the scripts that got bought...everything got written off, and I'm
sure a heck of a lot other against that budget, so it ended up being terribly
inflated.  And, because they spent so much, the studio was pretty determined
that that was the _last_ film.  And I thought that that would be the end of my
involvement; and when I got to be an extra in the rec deck, which was a
thank-you from Gene for all my involvement up to that point...I thought that
was an incredibly generous thing to do...'cause I hadn't been paid, I was just
volunteering...and, that was to me the icing on the cake.  I didn't see how it
could get any better than that.  I thought that was it.

TL:  Well, yeah, I can see that...

RA:  And then...nothing happened for a while.  The film made $176 million
domestic, which even IV didn't touch--that was only 109.  And then, they
started talking about other films.  Gene was brought back onto the lot in
early '81--he'd had offices over on La Cienega--and it started up,
false-started, stopped, and then they brought in Harve Bennett.  Because Gene,
after all the difficulties with the first movie--they took away creative
control and gave it to Robert Wise, which hurt Gene a lot, but he never got
public about it...they were going to do the same thing again, he could see it
coming...and he decided that he would rather be a consultant than produce
another one, because it had been a strain on him the first time around...all
of that frustration, if you can imagine--several years to get a film out, and
then have it really not be _his_ vision, but somebody else's--Robert Wise's
Andromeda Strain-sterility-in-space meets Star Trek, basically, is what it
was.  The costumes were changed, the sets were changed--again, as I said, if
you could've seen the sets before they were redressed, it was not all pastel
grays and light blues and so on, with a lot of aluminum and metal--it wasn't
so _clunky_, it had the kind of homey atmosphere that the original series
had--which, as you can see, Gene definitely got back into that with the new
series, when control came back to him--right back to those pajama-type
universe, and the _comfortable_ feel of the ship.  Robert Wise, you have to
give him credit, made a beautiful film, but he did not...er...he did not give
us a family in space, so much as just sort of a mission--and we watched them
watch the viewscreen for too much of it.  However, Gene got his chance to kind
of recut it a little bit more to his image, and that was the Special Edition,
that, I think, has been decided is a _little_ better, because there's more
people in it.

TL:  Fewer cloud scenes.

RA:  Anyway, I started becoming involved, again as a volunteer, during Star
Trek II, *very* little, because as Executive Consultant, he basically was
concerned about the script--but when questions did come up and were being
deferred to him about the color of this, the title of that, you know, how can
we locate such-and-such, or do you know how we can reach So-and-so, that
started to come to me a little, again not much...as it had in the first film,
certainly.  More with the third.  More with the fourth, definitely--even
though Harve and I, at times, did not get along terribly well...and again,
that's because, in this industry, you look at somebody like me and say "he's
an outsider, he's a _fan_, he's a _consumer_," right, and there's a lot of
distrust and a lot of "you shouldn't be here".  Harve once described me to my
face as being "a kid who accidentally got into the candy store," so, I know
that certainly he was never comfortable, really--although, at times, he was
almost fatherly.  At times, he was very generous, very _grateful_, very "I
really really appreciate all the help that you're giving us."  But at other
times, I was interfering, I was _invading_, I was on the sets and I had
absolutely no business being there, and at other times, you know, "can you go
over to the set and...", whatever, so it was a weird situation there.
That--it got both better and worse, as time went on, so that by Star Trek V, I
was having to be _very_ cautious, but by _then_, I was already employed by the
studio.  Because through all these years of volunteer work, more and more
people on the lot were finding out that "oh, there's somebody over in Gene's
office that can probably answer those questions."  Because there was really
nobody here to do it.  Keith Sharee, I will give him credit--now he wrote
_Gulliver's Fugitives_, right--Keith Sharee, I will give credit for really
getting me involved in Merchandising and Licensing, because up 'til then, they
had thirty images to represent Star Trek, and that's it.  Black-and-white and
color, and that's all they had, was thirty--and you saw those over and over
and over in the merchandise...backwards most of the time...upside down
occasionally.  In TV syndication, it was Michael Novall :sp?: who got me very
involved over there--this was in the early '80s, mid '80s.  With home video,
it was Tim Clott and Sandra Hornay :sp?: who got me very involved in that end
of it, and the more that I was working in those other areas, the more that I
seemed to have to be here, until it got to be almost forty hours a week--and I
_had_ a real job, I was working forty hours a week already.  And it became a
strain on the job that was paying the bills--and my boss at work told me,
"You're going to have to make a decision."  And I talked to Gene about it, and
he talked to the studio about it--each of the four divisions said--

:interruption:

Anyway, the studio executives all agreed that absolutely I was needed here,
and none of them wanted to pay me.  And, I went over to one of our legal
people, here, his name...:laughs:...his _real_ name is Teddy Zee, z-e-e.
That's really his name!  Elizabeth Zee is his wife, she's our project
attorney.  And he said, "You know, I don't mean to say this in a, you know,
hurtful way, but you've given away the milk for so long that nobody wants to
buy the cow."  And that was absolutely true, so I didn't know what to do.  I
was getting consulting fees, I was getting royalties from the calendars I was
designing, Pocket Books, but I didn't have a steady income.  And that's
when...I was getting enough of an income that I knew I could live on it as a
_consultant_, which up until then I hadn't been, I'd just been a sort of
"friend of the office," if you will, so that I had a long talk with my boss at
work, and I said "look, I'm going to give you a 30-day notice, and I'll be
more than happy to train whoever you need to replace me, but it's becoming
more important to me to be working on this than it is here, and I'm starting
to make enough there as a consultant that I'll be able to live on it."  Which
ended up being a mistake, because for the next ten months, even though I had
money coming in, it took six months to get anything from Pocket Books, which
meant every six months...you know, I was _dying_ towards the end of it, and
then the next check would come in, and of course it's never what you expect.
You know, your agent takes out so much...the usual.  And, it finally got down
to "I've got to start working full time again, Gene, or...you know, this job's
gonna cost me a fortune!"  And I was very much in debt at that point, and Gene
_did not_ want me to leave.  And he went to Frank Mancuso, and said "this is
ridiculous.  You know--they're all using him, in fact they're _abusing_ him at
times to get projects done, and nobody's paying him."  So Frank Mancuso set it
up.  He established the Star Trek Office, with its entire staff--me--and
everybody was notified on the studio lot of the creation of the position,
and...it was amazing.  Suddenly, people had places to send calls and mail.  I
got mail that was _six years_ old, that had been sitting around that nobody
knew what to do with, you know, since the first movie had come out.  They did
not know what to do with this mail.  So I was sending off--that was the first
thing I had to do, was get through all that mail...and what was great fun was
hearing back from people saying, "well, I wrote that when I was in high
school, and I'm now married with two kids, whatever, but I'm still a fan," and
so on--it's amazing how many people got the letters six years later that we
sent out, because most people have moved in that time.  And then, of course,
immediately after being hired--Star Trek IV, the twentieth anniversary, and
the development of the new series!

TL:  Everything just took off.

RA:  It was perfect timing.  If they didn't really think they needed me for
sure then, boy, did they discover they did, after that.  Because the
projects--the release of the original 79 episodes, and then the movies, and
than all of the special packaging that's come up, and now the new series is
on tape overseas, and of course it's starting here as well--Paramount's going
to be releasing it this fall, as well as Pioneer on laserdisc--that's a
question we get all the time--TV syndication going absolutely bananas all
around the world with the new series, and repackaging of the original as
well...a feature, of course, with VI--that will get heavier towards the end of
this year, right now it's still pretty light, mostly dealing with the
press--certainly merchandising, my God, the amount--there's almost a hundred
licensees, currently, and that's everything from trading cards to masks and
costumes, to pewter items and china or porcelain, print, etc.

TL:  Pillows, chess sets...

RA:  Oh, the chess set--Franklin's great.  We only need two more pieces and
our set's complete...'cause we get the distribution slowly here as well, we
don't get everything at once either.  And it doesn't look as though it's going
to slow down.  There is every possibility of Star Trek: the Next Generation
features following our sixth season, which looks very very likely right now,
the show is just _so_ successful--far more than the studio ever _dreamed_, I
think.  Even though there's been a big shakeup in management here, the one
thing that keeps being made clear is that everyone's quite aware that this is
their strongest product, or "property", if you will.  And, for the four
divisions that really are the major income of the studio--Home video,
merchandising and licensing, TV, and feature--it's a major component of each
one of those.  It's the biggest one for merchandising, it's one of the biggest
if not the biggest for home video, it's certainly the biggest one that
Paramount owns all rights for TV syndication, and features--it's the most
successful series the studio has ever had.  So, yes, there's definitely going
to be a need for a while, yet.  In fact, there's now two of us--Guy Vardeman
and myself, although he's been over on the set playing a lot lately, because
he's been standing in for Wil Wheaton.  But that was part of the agreement
when Gene had him hired, was that he would be available to continue his work
as a stand-in, and as an extra on the show, because that's his first interest.
And certainly once the first few months of this madness for the 25th
anniversary ended, and we got through all of the heaviest projects--the 25th
anniversary coffee-table book, which is still in the approval process, but it
_will_ be coming out, and--you can see that I'm covering a lot of questions
that people keep asking.

TL:  Yeah, probably.

RA:  And the upcoming specials--the development of some of the contests, and
so on--once we got through all of that, and the majority of the mail that was
coming in--and we're very much caught up right now--then that became no
problem.  And certainly, once he's finished with this episode--well, there's
"The Unification" as well, so he hasn't been over here as much lately, but
believe me, I need him over here badly, 'cause the phones have been the
biggest problem.

:phone interruption:

TL:  Well, maybe we'd better move on...

RA:  I'm sorry, I tend to give longer answers than anyone needs, but that's
best for the press, because they then cut out what they don't need and
hopefully get exactly what they do need.

TL:  Okay...a couple of other general questions...

RA:  Fire away.

TL:  Well, according to the credits, at least, you're "Research Consultant".

RA:  Absolutely.

TL:  That's...sort of an amorphous title.

RA:  Actually, it's the most accurate.

TL:  What exactly does a Research Consultant _do_?

RA:  Okay, the writers on this show, when they have questions, they can come
to me...now to Guy as well, Mike Okuda, Rick Sternbach, :muffled:--there's
several people who can answer their questions.  I am probably most versed in
original series "lore", if you will, and I'm very strong on Next-Generation
"lore", as is Guy.  Mike is really the tech person.  Lorraine is the _science_
person, even more so than Rick Sternbach.  Rick's is space science, Lorraine's
is planetary science, if you will...earthbound science.  And all of us always
try to keep in mind some of Gene's original thoughts, like you shouldn't make
anything too close to magic, let's not have easy solutions for anything, time
travel is a cheat, you know, these are all the things that he's basically said
over the years.  So, the reason that I think we've become trusted--

:phone interruption:

RA:  I was saying about research...Gene trusted us enough to just let the
questions come straight here.  And...it's a matter of--it's informational
only.  That's all it is.  When somebody from, let's say a licensee has a
question about something, we'll tell them the correct spelling, we'll tell
them the correct way to use a word or a term or whatever, but we don't say
"you can or can't" anything.  Now, I know that's...we've been accused of being
very heavy-handed.  Gene is the one who makes final determination of anything
like that.  And I know that that's been a leading problem with a lot
of...employees of licensees, or "workers for hire", if you will, for
licensees, that they think that those of us who deal with that put our stamps
of approval or disapproval on something, which none of us do.  None of us can.
We give our input--that's what we're paid to do.  So Research Consultant is
*not* a vulture hanging over people's shoulders, which is the way a lot of us
have been described.  We do get very...emotional at times, if you will, in
dealing with these people, but we can't tell them anything.  We can...we
can...help them, but we can't _make_ them.  And that's where, then, it all
ends up downstairs.  So...I know that's the crux of a lot of the issues.

TL:  Yeah.  I've got a few specifics about that which we'll get to.

RA:  We should probably get into those quick.  Go ahead.
--
Tim Lynch (Cornell's first Astronomy B.A.; one of many Caltech grad students)
BITNET:  tlynch@citjuliet
INTERNET:  tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP:  ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.caltech.edu@hamlet.caltech.edu
"With the first link, a chain is forged.  The first speech censured, the first
thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
--
Copyright 1991, Timothy W. Lynch.  All rights reserved, but feel free to
ask...

From: tlynch@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch)
Subject: Richard Arnold: The Interview, part 2 of 5
Summary: Another 250 lines of recorded conversation.  : -)
Keywords: Usenet, Starfleet, USS Avenger, canon
Message-ID: <1991Sep10.011842.11430@cco.caltech.edu>
Date: 10 Sep 91 01:18:42 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 291

This is part 2 of the interview with Richard Arnold, dealing with computer
networks, a problem he had with the USS Avenger recently, and with the
question of canon.  Those not interested in the interview or in said topics
should be departing now...
Tim Lynch

TL:  Um...one of the other general questions first, I guess.  How did you end
up hearing about Usenet and other networks like it, and how do you view groups
like that in relation to the rest of fandom?

RA:  I'm going to give you a very honest answer, which I don't think you
really want to hear, but...the computer networks are far...smaller than I
think they realize.  And I know that they're talking about numbers in the tens
of thousands of readers and so on, but when you're talking a show that counts
its viewers in tens of _millions_, that's a very small percentage of the
audience, certainly less than one percent.  And...nothing is done on this
show, by Rick Berman, or Michael Piller, or Gene Roddenberry or anybody else
to pacify complaints that get raised by computer networks, or
letter-of-comment 'zines, or mail that comes in...

TL:  Oh, I didn't mean to imply--

RA:  And we have certainly, in reading the comments that have been made, we
have been taken to pieces, much less recently, by the way, than in the first
couple of years, for "ripoffs" of original-series episodes and for
"interference" in dealing with merchandise and so on.  And I don't think that
people writing letters into these venues realize that nobody in those
decision-making areas _ever reads it_.  I'm one of the few people that does,
and that's because I've been involved with fandom for 25 years
myself...well...it will be, this weekend.  When I read it, I go through it
looking for the _drift_, that's all.  And I'll go down and talk to Gene and
say "okay, the fans have been saying this, the fans have been saying that,"
and maybe, in a very small way, that has helped him fine-tune a decision or
something.  But he has never said "okay, we are going to change this
because"--see, that hasn't happened.

TL:  Yeah, I know.  I wasn't implying that.

RA:  Okay--but see, if you read things like "Interstat", which is now called
"Engage"--it's actually a different publication, but...it was a
letter-of-comment 'zine for a long time...there were people who were
campaigning on their soapboxes there that "we're gonna have to do this and
that." It's like--you don't DO anything.  The people here make the show--trust
that they know what they're doing; if you don't like it, you've got a switch
on your TV, you can shut it off.  But don't expect them to change it for a
tiny minority.  It was like the Moral Majority of a few years ago--as you
recall, they were neither...neither moral nor a majority.  And they were
trying to _force_ the networks and so on, to change things to suit themselves.
And it didn't work, and they've disappeared--no one knows who they are.  We
know that the Star Trek fans--the approximately 500,000 or so, the
approximately two percent of our viewing audience that buy merchandise, and go
to conventions, and belong to fan clubs and so on--the very involved fans,
beyond just watching it--not passive viewers but active viewers--we know that
they are our strongest support.  But we also know that they are our smallest
viewing number.  There are more homosexuals watching the show than there are
Star Trek fans.  There are more black people watching the show.  There are
more...probably Buddhists watching the show than there are Star Trek fans.
But none of them are active--they're just watching it, whereas the Star Trek
fans are the very active fans that watch it.  And I know for the longest time
that I believed that we were the driving force behind keeping it alive.  But
other than one letter-writing campaign in 1968, no, the fans have had *no*
involvement in the actual shaping of Star Trek.  George Lucas and Star Wars
had more to do with Star Trek's existence today than anything the fans have
done.  _And_, aside from that, step out of the whole Star Trek picture,
and go over to the accounting offices of Paramount Pictures, and look at the
decisions that are made based on "can we make money on this?", and you'll also
see why Star Trek exists.  It's because it's a profit-making venture.  If the
books didn't automatically sell 150,000 copies every time they're published,
whether it's...Chinese newspaper between the covers or not, that is the reason
that they're so popular with the studio, is because they make _money_ for the
studio.  And for a long time, for several years there, nobody read them at
this end.  They were just published.  Nobody cared how good they were, whether
they were even in fact _based_ on Star Trek, they were just put out.  And
then...the Next Generation began.  And Gene at that point in time decided, "I
want a little more control."  Because he'd heard enough complaints--at
conventions, and through the mail, on books--and also, I know it came to his
attention when people started asking "are you going to have such-and-such in
the series?" or "are you going to use these characters?", and he had _no idea_
what they were talking about.  And, of course, those of us...Susan and myself,
who know the books, and anybody else here who knows the books were saying "oh,
that's a character that So-and-so created," or "that was such-and-such."  And
he wanted to kind of get it back to _his_ Star Trek universe, not knowing then
that he was going to have a four-year battle on his hands.  Because--and it's
one that's still raging, as you certainly know, being involved in the computer
end of this--We should probably get into your specific questions, because I'm
going to be answering a lot of them if I keep going on in this vein.

TL:  Sounds good.  Let's see...I have a feeling that the Peter David-related
stuff is going to be the biggest of the lot, so I'm actually going to try to
get through some of the other quick stuff first.

RA:  Okay, that's fine.

TL:  Among other things...besides being on Usenet, I'm also, despite being on
this coast, affiliated with the USS Avenger.

RA:  Ohhhhh...yes...

TL:  And I've got a question forwarded here from Alex :Rosenzweig, CO of the
Avenger:.

RA:  Fine.

TL:  Recently, you severed your ties with them as an information source.

RA:  Well, I was never an official information source for them _anyway_...
The only club that we deal with officially is the Official Star Trek Fan Club.
No one else.  And I was being...I won't use the word generous, because that
sounds egotistical, but I was being _tolerant_, I'll say, of Alex's needs for
information, because, even though, at times, I found Alex to be just a little
too self-important at conventions--and believe me, he will argue the point to
death, I'm sure, but he is very much _Admiral_ Rosenzweig when he's at
conventions, and gathers people around him and talks authoritatively about
Star Trek, but he's never worked on it.  His involvement is strictly fan
involvement.  And whether he's the head of the club or not, that has nothing
to do with us.  It's strictly because he _wants_ to, not because he's been
_told_ to or because he's paid to or anything like that.  And I admire his
enthusiasm, but he has taken it a little too far at times.  And I have stood
and I have _watched_, and I'm sure he's aware of it because he's seen me at
the back of ballrooms watching him with his little clutch of fans around him.
Now, that's fine--this happens everywhere.  It happens in England, it happens
in Australia--there's always people who because of their own...it's not
_really_ involvement in Star Trek, it's involvement in "fringe" Star Trek,
have become...BNF's is the old term, "Big Name Fans."  But, they're just
fans--they're not involved in the actual production of Star Trek.  And I could
give you a list of names that's a hundred names long, it would be scratching
the surface.  There are a lot of people that we have problems with.  We never
really had _problems_ with Alex.  His "Avenger News", although like most
Starfleet is definitely too much militarism for Gene, who has stated more than
once that he _hates_ militarism...it was basically for the group, for the
fans, it disseminated news or whatever, and because of that I tolerated his
frequent--or his _infrequent_ calls, he didn't call often.  And if he wanted
to consider me a source, that's fine--

TL:  You were usually listed as such in the newsletter.

RA:  Oh...I didn't know he was doing that!  Even though he sent them, I don't
bother reading those credits.  I don't look for my name--I know people think
that anybody in this sort of position, the first thing you do is look for your
name, but I don't.  I just tend to read the stuff.  When I read the--

TL:  The "Star Trek--A Religion?" article...

RA:  Yes.  When I read the breakdown, when it broke down who does what in
their group--and we're talking a group of less than 200 people--

TL:  Only just, but yes.

RA:  Okay.  Break that down into how many of our 25 million viewers that
equals, okay.  When I read in there his own personal commentary as to "well,
this is what this survey apparently means," yes, I was burned by it, because
what he basically said was "well, even though our members seem to for the most
part respect Gene Roddenberry, they don't feel that he is any longer basically
the center of the Star Trek universe and that it has grown beyond him."  Well,
I don't believe that, because I work with the man.  And Star Trek is what Gene
says it is.  And I will not tolerate people becoming big-headed about their
own involvement.  That group cannot decide, especially in print, that what
Gene says is not important.  Because without Gene, there is no Star Trek, and
without Star Trek there are no Star Trek fans.  And you can't say it the other
way around--Star Trek does not exist for the fans, the fans exist because of
Star Trek.  You take away Star Trek--there's nothing, and they're going to
have to go back to being terribly involved in...past-only.  Right now, there's
present and there's future for Star Trek.  And as long as Gene Roddenberry is
involved in it, he is the final word on what is Star Trek.  So, for us here--
Ron Moore, Jeri Taylor, everybody who works on the show--Gene is the
authority.  And when he says that the books, and the games, and the comics and
everything else, are not gospel, but are only additional Star Trek based on
his Star Trek but not part of the actual Star Trek universe that _he_
created...they're just, you know, kinda fun to keep you occupied between
episodes and between movies, whatever...but he does not want that to be
considered to be sources of information for writers, working on this show, he
doesn't want it to be considered part of the canon by anybody working on any
other projects.  In other words, don't use other merchandise to base your
merchandise on, use my Star Trek if you're going to call it Star Trek
merchandise.  And that's where the problems come in--is that the writers of
the novels and the comics and so on became _far_ too important to fandom, so
that suddenly they became spokespeople for Star Trek, which they never were,
and they started saying, "well, who is he to tell me how to write Star Trek?"
Not referring to myself, referring to Gene.  And it's like "wait a minute--he
created it."  And this is when the sandbox theory came up, which we'll get
into later.  So--my answer to Alex, you know, why did I sever the ties?
Because...there never should have been any in the first place--I was only
doing it...not even as a favor.  Only because I had read the issues over the
last couple of years, and for the most part, he disseminated it _truthfully_.
He didn't read anything more into the information that I gave him, unlike othe
people we won't mention...although someone with initials like Jim Shaun Lyon,
who tends to just really blow things out of proportion, and--he's like Erich
von Daniken; it could be, therefore it _has_ to be, such-and-such.  And God,
the rumors that get thrown around some of the networks are _scary_, they're so
inaccurate.

TL:  I've got a question/offer about that in a bit, actually.

RA:  And all it ever takes is to pick up the phone.  See--I've always been
available for that, and very few people have ever taken advantage of that, is
that I'm _listed_.  All you've gotta do is pick up the phone and call
Paramount, and say "I'd like to speak to Richard Arnold."  And I'll tell you,
the most accurate sources of information are the ones that actually check with
the source, rather than guesswork, or rumors.

:phone break:

TL:  Actually, some of the canon-stuff you were mentioning...One of the hordes
of questions I'm sure that you're getting is "Exactly what _is_ part of the
canon at this point?"

RA:  That's been stated so many times, including in "Starlog", and that
certainly got a few letters my way.  To Gene, anything that he did was canon.
Now, I know he did the animated series, but we've avoided that ever since this
new series began, because he never really thought that there would be any more
live Star Trek.  He really didn't.  He knew that the fan phenomenon was
happening, but like everybody else, he thought it'd just sort of peter out
and die, and quietly go away--not that he wanted it to, certainly, because it
was his income at the time, he was going to conventions and making speeches,
you know, drawing twenty thousand people at different colleges around the
country.  But, it kept growing and getting bigger, and eventually, obviously,
the new series, films, it was gonna happen.  But this was in the early '70s,
when it was--he could have _bought_ the property, at the time, for $150,000.
And if he'd had the money, he probably would've, but he didn't think it would
be a good investment at the time.  :**phone break**:  So aside from the
original series--

TL:  Is it *all* of the original series?  I've been hearing just the first two
seasons.

RA:  Very _firmly_, except where it's contradicted and then we have to kind of
play with it...see, people can easily catch us, and say "well, wait a minute,
in 'Balance of Terror,' they knew that the Romulans had a cloaking device, and
then in 'The Enterprise Incident,' they don't know anything about cloaking
devices, but they're gonna steal this one because it's obviously just been
developed, so how the _hell_ do you explain that?"  We can't.  There are some
things we just can't explain, especially when it comes from the third season.
So, _yes_, third season is canon up to the point of contradiction, or where
it's just so bad...you know, we kind of cringe when people ask us, "well, what
happened in 'Plato's Stepchildren,' and 'And the Children Shall Lead,' and
'Spock's Brain,' and so on--it's like, please, he wasn't even producing it at
that point.  But, generally, it's the original series, not really the
animated, the first movie to a certain extent, the rest of the films in
certain aspects but not in all...I know that it's very difficult to
understand.  It literally is point by point.  I sometimes do not know how he's
going to answer a question when I go into his office, I really do not always
know, and--and I know it better probably than anybody, what it is that Gene
likes and doesn't like.  And there've been times, for instance--

:knock on the door--scratch that subject:

TL:  I think we've pretty much covered the canon stuff.

RA:  Yeah.  The novelization that Gene wrote himself, of Star Trek: the Motion
Picture, he does not consider canon either, because he also went off on
tangents, that he said that it's okay for individual writers to do that, and
he certainly had some fun with it himself, filling in parts of the puzzle that
he never would've been able to do on film, it would've been a ten-hour movie,
but he doesn't want even that used for canon, because otherwise, where do you
draw the line?  Which books are accepted and which aren't?  _The Making of
Star Trek_, as a reference.  Bjo's Concordance, as a reference, and even that
has errors.  And Allan Asherman's Compendium, _revised edition_.  Not the
first one, because Allan had a lot of supposition and...I literally made four
hundred corrections in the first edition before it was revised with the films
for the first time.  And we took off the cover, "the most thoroughly
researched volume in Star Trek of all time," because it wasn't--he basically
took the Concordance, disseminated what information he could out of that,
and...if he in fact reads this and decides that that's grounds for a lawsuit,
we've got several dozen instances where he misspelled things the same way she
had, where he used the wrong names where she had accidentally used the wrong
names...for instance, for years, everybody wondered whatever happened to
Susan...er...Howard, I think...the actress who was in "Day of the Dove," and
it was because she had used the wrong name in her Concordance, and he used the
wrong name also, just as she had referred to somebody as "somebody Johnson,"
and that wasn't that person's name at all, it was something else, it was
because she had just typed in "David O. Lawson, Lt. Johnson, so-and-so as
so-and-so Johnson," and she got the name confused, right.  Well, there were so
many instances of that that it was so obvious that he had just lifted all
kinds of information from the Concordance even though he claimed he hadn't.
And that was where, in the...because we weren't involved when the first one
came out...when the second one was coming out, by then we were becoming
involved.  It was a simple case of going through and making all the
corrections...it was a simple process to go through the book and find all
the misspellings and make all the corrections, and Allan was very generous in
giving me a thank-you at the beginning of the book, not specifically for
anything in particular, but just for my contributions...
--
Tim Lynch (Cornell's first Astronomy B.A.; one of many Caltech grad students)
BITNET:  tlynch@citjuliet
INTERNET:  tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP:  ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.caltech.edu@hamlet.caltech.edu
"With the first link, a chain is forged.  The first speech censured, the first
thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
--
Copyright 1991, Timothy W. Lynch.  All rights reserved, but feel free to
ask...

From: tlynch@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch)
Subject: Richard Arnold: The Interview, part 3 of 5
Summary: Some author-related problems here.
Keywords: controversy, authors, general
Message-ID: <1991Sep10.012200.11522@cco.caltech.edu>
Date: 10 Sep 91 01:22:00 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 239

This is part 3 of the interview with Richard Arnold.  This section deals with
general problems between him and some Trek authors (Margaret Wander Bonanno,
Peter David, Brad Ferguson, etc.).  :Specific allegations will come up in
parts 4 and 5.:  If you're not interested, don't read it.

Tim Lynch

TL:  Okay...there are a few other "miscellaneous controversy" questions, but I
think, at the moment, because of time, we might want to move on to some of the
other stuff...anyway, most of the net talk, as I'm sure you know if you've
been reading it--at least most of the net talk relating to you; most of the
net talk lately has been about anything else, anything *but* Star Trek, but
putting that aside--most of it's been about the ongoing problems between
yourself and Peter David.  I mean, some of the other writers--

RA:  By the way, we've never had a fight.  This is all being created on paper.

TL:  Okay...well, I mean...Margaret Bonanno, Brad Ferguson, and some of the
others, have had problems, but--

RA:  Never met Margaret...never met Brad! ...I've met Peter.

TL:  But this in print seems to be more of a war than a skirmish.  At any
rate--

RA:  It's one-sided.

TL:  Well, it's one of the biggest.

RA:  It's their war.  It's their war.

TL:  Okay.

RA:  Let me give you a quote that I would love to see in print.

TL:  Sure.

RA:  Because they would prove themselves to be the world's biggest hypocrites
if they continued to claim to be Star Trek writers and had their fight with
_Gene_, they chose me.  And they can make all kinds of incredibly libelous
claims, like I write memos and sign Gene's name to them and send them off, or
Gene never reads the stuff at all, he doesn't know anything about what's going
on, and...making claims like, like he found out what I was doing and *fired*
me.  I mean, give me a break.  I mean, it's *all made up*.  The fact of the
matter is, Gene and I go through everything.  And yes, I physically sit down
and type the memos--and as anybody in this building can tell you, I go
downstairs, we go through it, he changes it, I bring it up, I retype it, I
take it down, he adds a few things, takes out a few more...it's the most
frustrating thing in the world for _me_, because I'm not that fast a typist,
and I use this dinosaur behind me :pointing at an IBM Selectric II:.  That is
one of the more difficult parts of the job, is having to try and guess what
his comments would be.  Now, one of my examples was going to be _Fortune's
Light_.
I did not think that in the midst of the story, it would be a wise idea, which
we certainly wouldn't do on the show, to have Riker boinking the woman in the
story in the middle of solving the mystery!  And Gene had no problem with that
in the _end_ of the story; see, I would have thought he would have just said
"no, take it out," but having written for years, Gene--and I'm not a writer,
never have been, never will be--Gene said "no, the idea's fine--give it to him
as a reward at the end of solving the puzzle."  So it was simply "move that
there."  But, I was only remembering his difficulty with "Piercing Blade" in
_Masks_, when she and Picard get it on in the tent.  And it was very weird,
and it was very out of place, and he did not want it in there, and I had
guessed that.  And that was left in there, and the book came out with a
disclaimer.

:phone break:

TL:  Okay...hmm...Well, that's the sort of statement I was actually looking
for.

RA:  Right...Peter's situation, let me give you Peter's situation.  His first
few books were not heavily edited, because at that point there was very little
involvement at this end.  And then, more involvement suddenly was dumped on
all of them, and they found themselves being edited, which they'd never
experienced before--and you can talk to Melinda Snodgrass, you can talk to
Harlan Ellison, you can talk to David Gerrold--novelists are not used to being
edited, and in fact rewritten, because that doesn't happen when you're
creating your _own_ universe, right.  But they weren't creating their own
universe, they were in someone else's universe.  So, it may have seemed
heavy-handed to be coming in saying, "No, there's far too much emphasis on
your characters, we don't like writing in the first person, this should be
told from our characters' perspective and not your characters' perspective,
this is too militaristic, we don't allow war stories, Star Trek is not a
military story..."  And all of these suddenly were dumped on them, and
they're basically called the Star Trek Writer's Guide.  And suddenly they were
having to follow the same rules that anybody writing for Star Trek, the
series or the films would have to follow, and yet, rather than saying "oh,
well, okay, fine," we got flak heavily back from a lot of people:
Diane...Diane Carey...Peter David not so heavily at first, because we ran into
more problems with later books.  When he was writing _Rock and a Hard Place_,
that was a very good "let's see what it would be like if Kirk was in Picard's
time," and, of course his character of Stone _was_ Kirk, I mean, there's no
question about that.  And it was well-written.  And then we started running
into other problems with upcoming works, mainly because he was determined to
continue, sort of, his...take on things, which, as Gene has said over and over
again, he does not like it when people try to _improve_ on Star Trek.  We ran
into more problems with David on the comics--with Peter, sorry, on the comics.
When he tried to force his sense of humor--and he definitely has a sense of
humor that can work at times, as it did in _Q-in-Law_, but that doesn't work
at other times, as it certainly didn't in _Vendetta_--I'm sorry, but that went
out with a disclaimer for that reason among others--that Gene has said "I
don't want crossing of universes," which he did--

TL:  What universes?  You mean old vs. new series?

RA:  Old series and the new, yeah.  Gene did not want _any_ background on
Guinan's character, which he won't allow on the show either, and he went a
little too far in that area, and he created what was going to be her sister
originally, and nobody of her race would ever go on a vengeance kick,
ever--they're even more paranoid about interference than the Organians, right.
And there were so many elements that just didn't work--Gene has always said,
"Don't ask your audience to buy more than one coincidence--when you ask them
to buy two coincidences, you've already gone overboard," and this asked for so
many more than that.  Wesley originally would not have anything to do with the
"curing", if you will, of the Borg soldier, which in itself was a problem, but
there it is...the Borg soldier _somehow_ survived...Wesley wouldn't help until
he found out that it was a young teenage girl.  Now, these are things that do
not work for Gene because the characters would not work this way.  Wesley
would help, or he wouldn't help, but it would not be depending on whether he
got a hard-on or not.  And so on.  Even in _Q-in-Law_, there were some
problems that needed to be addressed; but they were minor, because for the
most part, he's telling a humorous story of Lwaxana Troi and Q encountering
one another, and that went through very smoothly, and that must have stunned
him, because I think he was expecting us to put the quash on it, but...that's
not how it works here at all.  If Gene's got no problems with the proposals,
other than--sorry :phone break: --other than a few notes that he might make on
the proposal, that then I type up and he signs, they generally just go back
and they take it from there.  But when in a proposal, there are major
problems, and those aren't addressed and it comes back as a manuscript and
they're still there, and then a _long_ memo is then typed up, and that goes
in, and they're still not addressed in the galleys, and then the book comes
out, that's the problem we were having.  Of course, that's not just the
authors, that's the editors at Pocket Books, _and_ the studio, who were not
giving Gene as much support as they probably should have always given him,
because they also were not used to what they considered "interference" from
the creator of Star Trek.  They were used to doing what they wanted to.  So it
was fighting with the studio, fighting with the licensees, and fighting with
the authors.  So it became, yes, a major battle for Gene.  But it was never me
against Peter, me against Margaret, me against Diane, whatever.  Now, again,
they made it that way, because, how could they, without becoming hypocrites,
continue to write in the Star Trek universe, which was obviously created by
Gene Roddenberry, without the fans saying "wait a minute--if you hate Gene so
much, why are you writing in his universe?"  So they turned, instead, on me,
which, which is the easy way to do it because also, I didn't really defend
myself in public forums.  At conventions, I was always very cautious not to
mention names, unless it was brought up--and believe me, they planted enough
people in audiences--Peter's specifically guilty of that--planting people in
audiences to ask questions, okay.  And my favorite one, and this is going to
answer a question you were going to ask, was when somebody stood up at a
convention, shortly after the cruise :SeaTrek:, and said, "I was going to go
on the cruise, but when I heard that Peter David was cancelled, I cancelled my
tickets, and I decided not to go.  Can you tell me why he was taken off the
cruise?"  And, as embarrassing as it must have been for the person asking the
question, I couldn't help laughing.  I said, "First of all, you couldn't
possibly have booked your cruise to go on it to see Peter David, because he
was never announced as a guest, ever.  At no time was he announced as a guest.
Secondly, after he was invited on the cruise, which lasted about a week, you
couldn't have booked to go on the cruise, because it was sold out already.
So, you're a setup question, and I understand that, and I appreciate that
people are trying to get answers to questions, but I'll tell you what the
simple truth of the matter is, and that is that Peter was the one who decided
not to go on the cruise.  Because he was still being invited as a free guest
on the cruise...Gene just did not want him to be an honored guest on the same
dais with him, and this boils back to Peter becoming so public about his
disagreements with the way things were working that, in his column, 'But I
Digress,' he went after Gene.  Not a good idea.  Gene's not...as forgiving a
person as quickly as I always thought he should be.  But when somebody has
publicly said unfair things, it takes him a little while.  He and David
Gerrold have recently buried the hatchet, for instance...which, you know,
probably took a lot longer than it should have, but I think they're both
pretty stubborn.  Harlan Ellison and Gene have not had an ongoing war for 25
years, but Harlan still keeps it up just as Bette Davis and Tallulah Bankhead
always kept up their war, and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.  But they've
worked together in the last twenty years--they were working on the Star Trek:
the Motion Picture script together.  And I believe Harlan's been invited in to
write on this show.  He hasn't done so, which I think is a shame, because he's
a brilliant writer, but I think once burned, twice shy--maybe he doesn't want
to be rewritten again.  Novelists are not used to being rewritten.  Another
comment that I think is very essential that gets out is that Peter David, and
Margaret Wander Bonanno, and Diane Duane, and everybody else that's involved
in all of this, have never written for Star Trek.  I'll take that back--Diane
Duane had a story that came from one of her previous novels, that she and
another writer, who was a writer in Hollywood and therefore they were able to
get it in, bought by the show, then rewritten, changed dramatically, which she
bitches about at conventions, and then that became "Where No One Has Gone
Before."  She's the only one with a legitimate connection.  None of the rest
have ever written for Star Trek.  And they, they should not call themselves
Star Trek writers because they're not.  They are writers of fiction based on
Star Trek for licensees, not for Paramount.  And, I think I described it best
in a recent letter when I said that Margaret Wander Bonanno--this is because
somebody was writing in because of everything _she's_ been sending out--I said
that Margaret Wander Bonanno has never written for Star Trek.  At best, she
has been a writer for hire for a publishing division, Pocket Books, of a
publishing company, Simon & Schuster, that is owned by a parent corporation,
Paramount Communications, that owns the studio, Paramount Pictures
Incorporated, that makes the series Star Trek.  That is as close as she has
ever been.  And for her to make such a fuss out of Gene wanting her work to
reflect what he created...is, is scary to me, because it says that her ego has
definitely gotten in the way of her talent.  She can write--she just has not
been able to write good Star Trek lately, and this certainly began with
_Metamorphosis_...not Margaret, but Jean Lorrah.  _Metamorphosis_ was the last
straw for Gene.  This was when this flurry of disclaimers started, because
these books were all in the works, never approved by Gene--from proposal on it
was no, no, no, no, no--and it was, the war was between Gene and the studio
and the editors at this point.  And suddenly, they started to cooperate, both
Pocket Books and Paramount.  And finally, we were getting the cooperation that
Gene should have always had.  There should never have been anything from the
studio but, because of contractual agreements, "Yes, Gene."  What they got was
"but...but...but," which doesn't work, especially when it's your baby.  You
don't want people mistreating your children.  And he sees both of them as his
children.  So, they then had to turn it back on the writers and say "well,
you've _got_ to cooperate, because these are now the rules."  But the studio
and the editors at Pocket, and at DC, then started doing the same thing that
the authors were doing, and that is, they were blaming Gene.  Rather than
saying, "these are simply the rules now, and you're gonna have to comply with
them if you wish to write in the Star Trek universe," they were saying, "well,
this is what Gene wants, so don't yell at us," you know, "he's the one who's
rewriting your story."  And you can ask me about any book, you can ask me
about any specific storyline in _anything_ and I can tell you why the changes
were being made...what it is about Gene's...vision, if you will, that it was
distorting or it was changing.  You have to remember that writing for Star
Trek is like the famous comment about spelunking, caving--"leave nothing but
footprints, take nothing but pictures."  Do not change anything.  When authors
in books decide to change the universe to suit themselves, they've just
screwed it up for everybody else who wants to write in that universe.  And it
would never be allowed on the series.  And you can't have twelve different
universes coming out a year in book form.  It's got to comply with...and,
trust me, if it were George Lucas, you wouldn't be sitting here talking to me,
because it would have been stopped at the beginning.  But Gene just wasn't
involved back then.
--
Tim Lynch (Cornell's first Astronomy B.A.; one of many Caltech grad students)
BITNET:  tlynch@citjuliet
INTERNET:  tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP:  ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.caltech.edu@hamlet.caltech.edu
"With the first link, a chain is forged.  The first speech censured, the first
thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
--
Copyright 1991, Timothy W. Lynch.  All rights reserved, but feel free to
ask...

From: tlynch@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch)
Subject: Richard Arnold:  The Interview, part 4
Summary: Here's where the fun begins...
Keywords: Peter David, DC Comics, specific problems
Message-ID: <1991Sep10.012615.11642@cco.caltech.edu>
Date: 10 Sep 91 01:26:15 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 229

This is part 4 of the interview with Richard Arnold.  Both this part and the
next part deal with specific allegations made by authors against Richard and
Richard's responses to them.  If you don't care, don't continue on.
Tim Lynch

TL:  Hmm.  Now, some specifics.  There've been a lot of...allegations made,
by various parties, all over the place.  And, I thought, you'd want to put
your own stamp--

RA:  Not my own stamp.  I can answer with the truth...because I know that an
awful lot was going around.  Certainly the last few days, where I didn't show
up at a convention in New York, because I was in Greece on holiday, and I
didn't show up at the convention in Sacramento because I had never told Adam
:Malin, of Creation: that I would...and I was supposedly going to be at both
places.  But the rumors started to fly around that I'd been fired.

TL:  Well, clearly _that_ one's not true, because we're here.

RA:  Right.  And then it exploded to "he _has_ been fired", and then suddenly
people are planning parties and so on, which was very amusing to all of us
here, because, I'm not the only person who reads this, there are other people
here on the show who read the computer networks, and people were calling up
and saying, "gee, it's too bad we're not going to be working with you any
more."  It was like, "Oh, NOW what?", right.  We were even laughing about
this.  These people were being very irresponsible--they never even bothered to
call and check.  They just assumed, and said things in, in print form, if you
will, in a public forum, that were terribly irresponsible...and all they had
to do was to call and check.  And it's probably, the only reason that we're
sitting here and talking right now, is that it was getting so out of hand that
when people started getting on and said "no, I've just checked, in fact he
isn't fired, I just spoke to him at the studio," rather than everybody saying
"oh, we're wrong, oh how embarrassing," you know, "we shouldn't have said
this," people then started coming on and saying "I betcha that must have
inflated his already inflated ego, that all this happened," which again is
assuming that I'm the bastard bad-guy that they've all believed I am all
along, when none of these people know me.  And this is what really hurts, is
other than Peter David, I haven't met any of these people.  And it's as bad as
somebody, because they dislike the President for his politics, saying terrible
things about how he is in bed with his wife.  That's getting beyond your
disagreement politically, and, and...it's character assassination, and...with
the President, that's probably illegal, because he's the only person you can't
assassinate legally or whatever it is.  But I've been targeted for that for a
long time, and basically ignored it, at the studio's suggestion, because it's
probably better that people go after me than Gene anyway--he's got enough to
deal with.  He has said that he has more trouble dealing with the publication
of one book than 26 episodes of Star Trek a year.  And it shouldn't be that
way.  It really shouldn't.  There should be a hell of a lot more cooperation
at both ends.  But, we're _getting_ it now!  We're finally getting it--it's
really starting to work out.  But the problem is that, for a couple of years
there, it seemed that every book was a battle.  Not every book.  We have found
that there are some very strong writers--not necessarily the best, or the most
talented in the style of writing itself, but that can tell a Star Trek story
well, and even though in talking with the writers on this show, their favorite
books have not been my favorite books, but when we talk about which are the
best Star Trek books we agree on that.  Which are the best written books, no,
we don't agree on, because, as I've said, I'm not a writer--I don't
know...character arc, I don't know...you know...setup and so on.  But I know
when I'm reading something whether I'm picturing Star Trek in my head or if
I'm watching something where I have absolutely no idea what it is.  Because
our people aren't involved.  And that's where any writer coming in, or anybody
reading the network and knows about how this show works, anybody coming in and
starting to pitch a story to our staff here, will be cut off cold with the
question, "I hear a lot about your characters, but what about our characters?
This show is about our team."

TL:  Yes, Robert mentioned some of this to me.

RA:  Right, right.

TL:  Anyway, some of the allegations that have been...as you say...are...I
guess a mixture of the political and the personal things, definitely things
that have been specifically listing you rather than Gene.

RA:  Okay.

TL:  One of them, which, depending on how closely you've been reading the
Usenet stuff you have no doubt seen, is the infamous "Robert Bruce Banner"
pseudonym issue of the comic that Peter wrote after he left as regular writer.
Now, at least according to what's been said, that issue had more violence in
it than a storyline which had been allegedly rejected earlier as being too
violent, and yet, this one passed through with virtually no changes.  On the
face of it, at least, that doesn't sound good.  There may be more to it--

RA:  Violence at times in Star Trek is acceptable.  Look at "Conspiracy."
Look at "The Best of Both Worlds."  If the story's well written.  But if it's
for the sake of violence, no.  And, in going through those particular comics,
the story is what's important, what it's saying, where it's taking you, is it
necessary at all.  And at times, I have questioned the level of violence in
something and Gene's said, "no, that's fine, let them have it," and at other
times, as a writer himself, he can say "this isn't necessary here, and I want
it cut out."  The pictorial violence was always a problem with the
comics--that's being toned down, by the way.  When Worf hits somebody with a
blow that in the art would _kill_ a human, with literally explosion lines
all the way around, the person being lifted off the ground, their neck being
twisted around backwards...that's unnecessary, and Worf would be in the brig
if he behaved that way.  At times, the violence has been overboard,
considering that Gene has always felt that the comic venue is one that
children tend to get more involved in than they might with the show, for
instance, even though the show is, you know, certainly available for anybody
to watch.

:phone break:

Gene maintains...and I know that adult collectors are the majority of the
buyers of the comics, but Gene has maintained for a long time that it is not
safe to assume that, that kids won't be picking those up, and Star Trek has
never been about violence--in fact, it's the antithesis of that.  And, in
order to...I'm trying to remember the way he put it...for _image_ reasons, he
thinks that no version of Star Trek should be excessively violent.  And that's
why he's never really allowed the phasers to be sold as...as weapons, as guns,
for kids to play with--'cause he doesn't like the idea of kids running around
shooting each other with phasers when they're _only_ a defensive
weapon--they're not an offensive weapon.  And that's why he got particularly
upset with FASA, because they were looking to build more and more and more
battle scenarios into the role-playing game...they were looking for
_enemies_...they were doing whole supplements strictly to build in another
enemy to fight with, and that was _not_ what he wanted.  And when he got a
fight from them on it, when--and, of course, at the same time the studio was
fighting back against Gene as well--that was when he just drew the line, that
he would not have Star Trek sold as a war game any longer.  Even though there
are people that claim that when they play the game, they never "war" it, we've
all seen examples at conventions, of people who maneuver it into battle
scenarios, and on Star Trek, you lose if you fight, you don't win.  I mean,
when you resort to that, you've lost.  You've lost the philosophy, you've lost
the point.  So, violence is not story on Star Trek, and conflict does not have
to resort to violence in order to tell a Star Trek story.  Again, anybody on
the show can tell you that it's rarely necessary.

:phone break:

Yeah, I know at times we've said one thing, and at other times we seem to be
saying another, but when somebody drags somebody in, a race for instance--this
is a specific charge--when somebody drags a race in strictly to use them as
an enemy, we say, you know, "don't drag in people that we've used in the past
just for these purposes, be more creative!"  And then at other times, we say,
"We've never heard of this race before, you're trying to turn them into a new
major villain, we do not want new major villains, use someone established like
the Klingons or Romulans.  So I know it sounds contradictory, but it's really
not.

:phone break:

TL:  Okay, there are also a couple of similar things.  It's also been alleged
in a couple of forums that you've said, both in public at the odd convention,
and privately to other writers such as Bill Mumy and people like that, that
"Peter David is ruining Star Trek."  Well...first, have you ever actually said
that?

RA:  No.  No.

TL:  Okay.  Can you elaborate?

RA:  I'm sure that anything that I'm saying to you right now today, in fact,
if handled by somebody with a "cause", could be turned against me.  Anytime
anyone who's defending themselves from anything, depending on who's
listening, you're gonna hear different things.  When talking with Bill Mumy, I
called him up because we were having difficulties with the storyline that he
was writing.  His number was right there, on the paper.  I called him up,
reintroduced myself--we'd met before.  I assumed that he was very much in
conjunction with Gene, on Gene's thoughts about what was going to make a
strong story, and I just let him know that, that he really shouldn't let Peter
try and direct the story too much, because we were having problems with David
in other areas at that time, and that it was important to Gene--because I told
Gene I was calling him--it was important to Gene that we keep the story "Star
Trek meets Lost in Space", if you will, not "Lost in Space" with Star Trek
sidelined.  What I didn't know, and found out later, was that Billy wanted to
do a Lost in Space story, he didn't want to do Star Trek, but that there was
no Lost in Space _venue_.  And Peter was only helping him, as far as I could
see, make it enough Star Trek to suit Gene.  But it wasn't.  It was still very
much Bill Mumy writing a Lost in Space story, and using the Star Trek venue to
tell it--which is what Gene didn't want, it was the opposite of what he
wanted.  Now, the more they pushed, the farther away they got, because Gene
then said, "Okay.  We've got to have more involvement for our people, I do not
want the robot to look like the robot, I don't want the ship to look like the
ship, I don't want the characters to look like the characters," and even the
references to the original series were removed.  And then, Peter made a
mistake...and tried to--or it could have been Billy, I don't know--I like
Billy, I have respect for Billy, I'm sorry that this whole thing happened--one
of them decided, "let's have some fun, and use trick names that no one will
get."  So the planet became Wirin, which is Irwin spelled sideways,
right...this dying planet, if you will.  And Ozrro became the name of the
father, which is Zorro spelled sideways, which is a nice little reference to
Guy Williams.  And so on--these clever little things which several authors
have, you know, stooped to, if you will, thinking they can slip things by us.
And we had already been saying for a long time, "Please," to the comics, and
more recently to the books as well, "no cute little references," you know, no
joke references.  Let's not put our friends into these books.  Let's not put
our friends into these comics.  Let's not have fun poking fun at people, or
institutions or whatever, through this venue.  This is Star Trek, keep it Star
Trek--don't use this as your personal...vendetta, if you will.  And if you
recall, Peter David devoted the book to me, if you will, or...dedicated the
book to me, saying "To Richard, the biggest windmill I've ever known."  I am
not the monster that Quixote is fighting.  What David--Peter, sorry, I keep
calling him David--what Peter David was fighting was far bigger than me.  I'm
just an employee here.  What he was fighting was a man with 27 years invested
in his vision, and he was fighting somebody who had never had anything to do
with it, and who was trying to change it.  Star Trek is not...a joke.  And if
you could have read the original versions of some of the things that were
going to be coming out from Peter, through DC...it was very hurtful.  The
planet that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy go to, having gone there once and now have
returned, where it's like the planet is a convention now.  And people are
selling Star Trek souvenirs everywhere they go, and they're saying "we didn't
authorize this."  And Scotty is saying, "Seen it?  I'm judging the costume
competition--have you seen the art show?"  And meanwhile Chekov runs by with a
bunch of fat fans chasing him.  This is not funny.  They go into the art room,
and they're standing by a portrait that is obviously the two of them in a
sexual position, Kirk and Spock, and they're saying "oh, my God...it's
us...and we're..."--now, you don't see it, you only see the back of it, and
the commissioner of the planet or whomever they're talking with is absolutely
mortified and says, "I'll have it removed immediately!"  And then in the
rudest slap to Gene yet from Peter, he turns and says, "oh, no!  Don't do
that!  We would never censor _anything_!  We believe in complete freedom of
expression."  Now...that's not funny.  I hurt for Gene when I read that, and
it hurt me to have to tell him what was going on, and that's when I think he
had sunk to the lowest that he was going to sink...Peter, that is...because he
was now getting personal.  And that's when...the war started.  I think that
was really the first battle.  Up to then it had been minor skirmishes.  Now,
Margaret's problems with _Probe_ are so massive that we don't have time to go
into them...
--
Tim Lynch (Cornell's first Astronomy B.A.; one of many Caltech grad students)
BITNET:  tlynch@citjuliet
INTERNET:  tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP:  ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.caltech.edu@hamlet.caltech.edu
"With the first link, a chain is forged.  The first speech censured, the first
thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
--
Copyright 1991, Timothy W. Lynch.  All rights reserved, but feel free to
ask...

From: tlynch@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch)
Subject: Richard Arnold: the Interview, part 5 of 5
Summary: This is the end...
Keywords: Peter David, _Vendetta_, _Probe_
Message-ID: <1991Sep10.012813.11738@cco.caltech.edu>
Date: 10 Sep 91 01:28:13 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 286

This is the fifth and final part of the interview with Richard Arnold,
containing more allegations and responses with respect to Richard and several
Trek authors.  A post containing impressions and commentary will follow.
Tim Lynch

TL:  Right.  Now...another...battle in the Peter war, I suppose...another
thing that's been said is that you have, you know, again at the occasional
convention and so forth, said to fans that you consider Peter's writing not to
be Star Trek, and have suggested--at least the claims are that you have
outright suggested that they not buy his work.

RA:  Never.

TL:  Okay.

RA:  Never.  Now, here's the thing--Peter's a very good writer.  I know that
because he gave me a book called _Howling Mad_ which was very funny.

TL:  Yes, I rather liked it.

RA:  But, he is _not_ a good Star Trek writer.  Not all the time--he's
inconsistent.  When it's a story that works with his sense of humor, as in
_Q-in-Law_, as in _Rock and a Hard Place_, fine.  But when he tries to change
the universe in order to tell a story he wants to tell, as in _Vendetta_, then
you've got a problem.  Because you can't always make it fit.  My God, do you
know how many scripts we buy out of a thousand that come in?  Maybe six!

:knock on the door:

TL:  Okay...so...

RA:  So, I have never said that Peter David can't write.  I know he can
write--he can write very well.  There was a scene at the end of _Rock and a
Hard Place_ that literally moved me, and this was in the manuscript.  And--I
believe it was David Stern, he's gonna kill me for saying this, who changed
it.  It was a wonderful, moving scene.  What it said to me is that Peter's
probably a dog person as opposed to a cat person, because of the scene at the
end with Stone and this wolf-creature, whatever it was, at the very end...and
it was such a powerful scene, and I think David changed it because...either he
didn't understand it, or because he felt his way worked better.  And...I've
often wondered if it was not the change of that scene in particular that set
him off, because it wasn't us at all.  In fact, if I'd had any say in the
matter, which believe me, I have never had, I would have said "Oh, for God's
sakes, turn that back to the way it was."  He can write--but he...I think
Peter's biggest problem has been...again, saying "Yes, Gene."  Sticking within
the format.  Following the rules that any writer writing for the show has to
follow.  Do not star your own characters.  Do not change anything about our
characters, because then that changes it for everyone after that.  Do not
attempt to overestablish background, because that's for us to fill in, at this
end.  Tell a story that involves our people, and has a point to it, that tells
a tale.  Howard Weinstein's become very good at that--he picks his issue, and
wraps a Star Trek story around it.  That's what good writing is for Star Trek.
You do your AIDS parable, you do your environmental parable, you do your story
about prejudice, right--the original series and the new series have been very
strong with that.  The original series, certainly, had some stronger writers
right up front--it took us a long time to get very strong writers on this
show, because of the problems that we discovered of people coming in, writing
for a while, and then deciding that they were celebrity writers, or...I don't
know exactly if that's the best way to describe it or not, but...people who
from a couple of successes suddenly became too important and started breaking
the rules on the show.  You can't do that...I mean, again, Gene wouldn't allow
that.  So--good writers left the show in anger, because Gene was rewriting
their stories, to again keep it within the format, and there've been a few
who've been extremely public about that as well.  When people bring up the
subject at conventions, absolutely I will defend my position, and I will
defend Gene's position.  But I have never set out to attack any of these
people, because I think it would very much have gotten back to me through my
position here at the studio if I ever did anything like that.  They're very
trusting--they know that I go to these conventions, it's not really part of my
job.  It's actually a perk.  It's a wonderful benefit of this job, is that I
get to go to all of these conventions, and when I am up there, and people ask
me questions that are _very_ political...I will answer them as best I can, as
honestly as I can.  And if I can't give them the answer I want, I'll
apologize.  When people started confronting me about this issue about not
having any homosexuals on Star Trek, I gave them the answer that I knew Gene
would give, which is...if somebody said "why haven't we seen any homosexuals
on Star Trek?", I would say, "what does one look like?"  And they would say,
"well, you know what I mean," and I'd say "no, I don't know what you mean!
What do you want, two men in bed together?  How do you want us to show that
someone's homosexual?  We can't use any of the stereotypes, we can't have them
sashaying down a corridor, we can't put pink triangles on them, we can't have
them holding hands--we don't show the _heterosexual_ crewmembers holding hands
walking down the corridors.  How do you want us to show it?  Why don't you ask
a more intelligent question:  'When are we going to see a story which deals
with the problems that the gay community faces today?'  Besides AIDS, right.
Not just AIDS--there's still the inequality in the workplace, and housing and
everything else, that still--even though it's now illegal, I believe, there's
still a lot of problems that the gay community faces.  And they need a full
story, a script.  And Gene has always said, "If a good script comes in, of
course, we'll consider producing it."  But to just say, "show me a homosexual
on Star Trek...", it's like the old joke, "'My mother made me a homosexual.'
'Oh, great, if I give her the wool, will she make me one too?'"  Nobody can
_make_ anybody anything that they don't choose.  Life is about choice.  And
unfortunately, you cannot by looking at somebody see what their choices are,
_unless_ we're talking stereotypes--if someone's wearing a yarmulke, you can
probably guess he's Jewish.  If someone's wearing a giant cross, you can
assume he's Catholic, but not necessarily--it could just be jewelry.  And
political choices, and sexual choices, and so on--you cannot really, by just
looking at someone--no one would have known that Sammy Davis Jr. was Jewish
just by looking at him.  Rock Hudson shocked the world, this "manly man"
confessed he was gay.  So, I answered that question as intelligently as I
could, considering the parameters of the show, and I got attacked for it for
six months in the gay press.  So, it's very hard to answer global questions,
it really is--and I always say at the end of these answers, "I hope that
answers your question--if it doesn't, I'm sorry," and I've frequently been
told "it doesn't!"  And I say, "well, I'm sorry, but that's the only answer I
cdan give you."  So, I'm sorry that Peter has made this personal.  I can't say
that, that, that Margaret and I ever got along because I never met her.  And I
know people who have met her and who have said that until you bring up this
subject, she seems--I hate to use the word normal, but--she seems pretty
normal.  But she's obviously got a bee under her bonnet, or a burr under her
saddle, or whatever, on this whole subject, and it's because she doesn't
understand what happened with her book at this end.  You have to read her
six-page diatribe that's been published in various letterzines and around the
computer networks as well...and her side of it is so different from the truth.
It's interesting how she perceives what happened.  A lot of it really needs to
be blamed on the Merchandising & Licensing division, and on Pocket Books, and
the way the process works.  And Gene--yes, he had a lot of changes that he
wanted made, but after a certain point, all he said for about a year was "No,"
period.  That's all his input was.  Everything else was the studio and Pocket
Books insisting on continuing with this project, and the editors there
suggesting these changes, making those changes, causing this rewrite and so
on, with not one single directive from this end.  And she was not aware of
that.  I think she assumed that--I mean, other than the comments that were
made such as "this features characters from this author's previous books, and
we do not want authors continuing their own characters through these novels,
and therefore this is unacceptable."  We did not say, "take these out and it's
acceptable," but see, at this point in time, this was the solution, was to
throw bandages on a gaping wound.  And, unfortunately, the wound never
heals--you have to go in and do surgery.  And eventually, Jeanne Dillard--I
think everybody knows this now, because Margaret's being very public about
it--who is a very good writer, was brought in, but again she only did
patchwork where she was told to.  She was not given the case to handle
herself; she was brought in as a consulting doctor and only worked on the
things she was told to work on.  And there were still whole areas that needed
to be healed, and that's why it is _still_ going through the rewrite process
right now.  But, as David Stern can tell you, as anybody in Merchandising and
Licensing can tell you, the meeting that took place recently at Gene's house,
about this book, was definitely on the down side of the hill as far as the
process of getting through this.  But the book is almost ready.

TL:  It will be coming out, then?

RA:  Oh, yeah!  I mean, it's just a matter of getting the last things changed.
And I sat there listening, and I was very pleased, because David Stern was
listening to what Gene was saying about what the problems were with the book.
And, you know, I was certainly putting in my two cents, and where Gene
disagreed with me, _believe me_, I got stomped on too--everybody gets stomped
on.  He's very clear on what is right and what is wrong for Star Trek--and
he's the only authority who has any right to say what is and what isn't right.
I don't.  I can _guess_, and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and I find out before
the memo goes out.  So...that's about as much as I can say on the subject.
Peter is not my enemy.  Ignorance is my enemy.  And, as long as there's this
kind of rumor and innuendo and ignorance running around the computer networks,
this is going to continue to be a problem.  But it's one I haven't addressed
until now because...it's really been...pointless.  Because I'm sitting in an
office here and these people are spread out all across the country, or the
world, depending on which network it is, and they can't hear the tone of my
voice.  They can't see the functionality of my position here.  They don't know
how things work.  I mean, I can't invite everybody in to go through these
sessions with Gene, to go sit and listen to see how it actually works.  It's
my word against...and this is gonna sound bitter, but it's not...against the
word of so-called Star Trek celebrities.  Because they have never written, as
I said earlier, Star Trek--they have written for hire, books based on Star
Trek.

TL:  Okay...two more quick questions...or actually, one question and an offer,
more or less.  The only other question I'm going to deal with as far as
Peter's concerned is, there've also been tons of stories about exactly what
happened surrounding the publication of _Vendetta_.  The...certainly the side
that Peter seems to be presenting is that the manuscript sat in your
briefcase, or on a desk somewhere, for six weeks and that nothing was said,
and that eventually Licensing just sent back their own changes.

RA:  Every manuscript that comes into these offices goes to Gene.  It then
eventually would come up here.  I would then go through it and make my notes.
We would then have our meeting on it, and the process could never take more
than two weeks because that's always the amount of time we were given.  Ten
working days, to go through it and send it back.  Gene's problems with
_Vendetta_ had been from the proposal stage, and it was "no...this book is not
to be published.  This book does not tell a Star Trek story--a vengeance story
is not a Star Trek story."  Okay.

TL:  Well...then, how was it published?  If Gene was that opposed to it, what
happened?

RA:  This is one of those books that, as they say, slipped through the cracks,
if you will, in this process of healing the relationship between Gene and the
studio, and Gene and the publishers, and the studio and the publishers.  I
mean, all this--we have a new president of that division, who was working very
hard to see that all the parties involved started to work together in a more
productive way.  And, we all knew this would be a long process, because
some of these books go through a couple of _years_, in the process.  And
because that was a giant novel, that was one of these ones that went through
for a very long process...and the answer to the very end on this was No.  This
would have to be completely rewritten, and what we got from the studio was
"well, there is no time," you know, "we promise this will never happen again,
beg beg please please can we put it out with a disclaimer on it?"  And Gene at
this point had already said, "I allowed a disclaimer _once_, and that was at
my own generosity.  This was not to then become the routine, that every book,
whether I hated it or not, whether I loved it or not, would just have a
disclaimer on it so that you wouldn't have to deal with me."  Well, _Vendetta_
was just one of those books that went out with a disclaimer, because there
was no time.  It was being printed "as we speak," you know, was basically
what we were being told.  Gene was very unhappy about that, but, he knows the
business well enough to know that you can't say no to everything, especially
when it's now gotten to the point where it's going to be very, very difficult.
But, as I understand, that was the last one that was ever going to be allowed
to come out that way.  Now, I've heard that David claimed that it was taken
away from us, from _me_, and that it was allowed to go out, period.  Well, it
was allowed to go out with a disclaimer because Gene said so.  He said, "okay,
but this is the last time."  It's as simple as that.  Again, he couldn't
possibly know what happened at this end, unless the publishers, Pocket Books,
David Stern and Kevin Ryan, unless _they_ were told by the people who were at
that meeting.  And believe me, the people who were in that meeting were the
President of Marketing _worldwide_, the Manager, if you will, of
Merchandising, and the President of Merchandising.  I mean, these were the big
three, who came in to beg, to say "please", because obviously their division
wants to see these things out on a regular basis for the income.  I'm not
making them bad guys--I'm making them businesspeople.  These decisions are
made for business, and they would have had a gap.  Now, there have been
gaps lately, because Gene will not allow disclaimers any more.  And books,
like _Probe_, have had to be rewritten.  And books will not go out with
disclaimers any more, which means that...we're getting the cooperation from
both Pocket Books and from the studio now, in that things _must_ be written to
satisfy the format, or they won't go out.  And that is something that I would
think the fans would be happy about.  I love reading some of the comments in
the last few days that "it's only because of Richard's interference that books
like such-and-such and such-and-such got out."  What's amazing is that those
are books that we never touched.  Those are books that got out as the
_authors_ wrote them.  I won't mention any names, because I don't want to hurt
anybody.  It's not because that's what _we_ did to them, it's because we
didn't do anything to them.  They got out that way because we hadn't touched
them.  And yet the books that the fans jump up and down, and praise and cheer
about how wonderful they are...they should have seen the original versions of
them.  And yet, do the authors say "well, this really isn't entirely my
story...the entire ending of this book was suggested to us through the Star
Trek offices because the ending that we had for it didn't work, but, no, I'm
happy to sign it for you and take all the royalties"--which we don't get a
penny of.  That's painful, when you see--especially when I go to conventions
and see onstage somebody going on and on about this wonderful book they've
written, and I know damn well that half the suggestions came from Gene...that
made it work in the Star Trek format.  And, again, any author's going to
disavow that, too...they're going to completely disagree with it..."It was all
my own idea, sure."  Harlan's taken the accolades for City for 25 years, and
at the same time behind Gene's back bitched and complained about it.  He's
perfectly happy to take the royalties...he's perfectly happy to be "the author
of 'City on the Edge of Forever'"...and I love Harlan dearly, and if this ever
gets back to him, believe me I'm going to get a phone call from him...'cause
he and I have spoken many times over the years, and he has given me some very
strong advice, about _this sort of thing_, not dealing with this sort of
thing.  But at the same time, he's been very public too.  And Gene's kept his
tongue all this time, because Gene knows that if you're going to continue to
work with people that you've got to stay on good terms with them.  Now...this
whole interview that we've just done...will not make me friends with the
authors, believe me.  It's gonna feed the fire.  That's all.  But, for the
innocent readers, such as yourself--and I never knew who you were, I just kept
seeing your name with interesting comments--that don't know what's going on,
they're finally hearing another side of the story.  I'm not saying that this
is the _only_ side of the story; this is my side of the story.  They've heard
the authors' side of the story.  And maybe they can sift through it, and see
that it's a bigger picture than they know.  And it's not a pretty one, I'm
afraid.  It's very unfortunate that this whole thing's been aired in public
like this.

:last question deleted, as it was a private one relayed by me from Jim
Griffith, who's already been contacted.  If anything comes of it, Jim will no
doubt let all of us know.  Jim, if you want the complete transcript of the
answer rather than the short form I gave you, let me know.:

TL:  Okay.  Well...thanks for large amounts of your time.

RA:  Hey, no problem.  We handled the calls as they came in.

TL:  And I have no doubt that people will be following up, and trying to call
you with followups.
--
Tim Lynch (Cornell's first Astronomy B.A.; one of many Caltech grad students)
BITNET:  tlynch@citjuliet
INTERNET:  tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP:  ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.caltech.edu@hamlet.caltech.edu
"With the first link, a chain is forged.  The first speech censured, the first
thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
--
Copyright 1991, Timothy W. Lynch.  All rights reserved, but feel free to
ask...

From: tlynch@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch)
Subject: Richard Arnold:  Commentary, Opinions, and Evidence
Summary: Not for this one.  Consider this a review.
Message-ID: <1991Sep10.013256.11848@cco.caltech.edu>
Date: 10 Sep 91 01:32:56 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 241

This article is the concluding piece related to the Richard Arnold interview.
It contains my own impressions of the interview, the man himself, and
discussion both general and specific of the issues and allegations raised
herein (with some facts, and a whole bunch of opinions).  Once again, those
not interested in the matter probably shouldn't stick around for this.
And due to propagation delays, this article may be reaching you before the
interview itself does.  I urge you not to read this until you have read the
interview.  I promised to quote Richard as accurately as possible, to the
extent of tape-recording all ~80 minutes of interview (after interruptions,
phone calls, knocks on the door, etc., have been edited out), and I would
rather that people not hear my opinions on the subject until they have already
read the interview and sorted out their own thoughts on the matter.
Tim Lynch

Hmm.  Now, the question:  What did I think came out of this meeting?

Well, I suspect Richard's not going to like the answer.
First of all, while the interview itself was very congenial and civil, the
atmosphere, I'm afraid, didn't quite seem so.  The impressions I was getting
from Richard were not so much "here, let me see if I can explain X", so much
as "I'm going to like you, because I think you could be very useful to me."
It is, I believe, fairly likely that this meeting came about in the first
place because Richard was hoping to exert a little damage control over his
image.  And if the interview manages to convince some people that he's not a
bad guy, more power to him.  I cannot, in all honesty, claim to be so
convinced.

One thing I can say about this that is positive wrt Richard:  I came out of
the interview believing that he sincerely believes he is only doing what is
best for Gene Roddenberry and for Star Trek.  I believe that conviction to be
in error--if that many fans and that many authors are that angry, the net
effect can hardly be beneficial--but I believe it to be a sincerely held one.
I owe him that much forgiveness.

Now, to some of the statements made in the interview itself.  I must say,
truthfully, that I do not agree with Richard's assertion that Peter David,
Brad Ferguson, Margaret Wander Bonanno, etc., are deliberately making Richard
the target of their attacks despite knowing that Gene is the cause of their
problems, wishing to avoid looking like hypocrites.  I have no proof save my
own reasoning, which goes as follows:
=========================================================

**Given the authors' statements, and Richard's assertion to the contrary, one
of them has to be lying.  (Well, I suppose it's possible that both sides are
lying, but let's put that aside for the moment.)  Now, precisely who has the
most to gain by misrepresenting the situation?

**If the authors are telling the truth, then Richard is wielding de facto
authority that he himself claims he doesn't and shouldn't have.  It is
therefore in Richard's best interests to deny this is the case.

**If, on the other hand, Richard is telling the truth, then Peter, Margaret,
and all the others are deliberately hounding an innocent man.  Now, it makes
no sense that this should be the case--because if their problems really ARE
with Gene, and they know this, then they have no _reason_ to want to force
Richard from his position, because the orders would still be coming from Gene
and nothing would improve for them.

**So, to suggest that the authors are deliberately targeting someone for their
attacks that they know not to be at fault implies that said authors are not
only petty and vindictive, but that they're also rather stupid.  Under the
right circumstances, and with the right inducements, I might be able to be
made to believe one of those two at any given time--but not both.

**Thus, it would seem that, although some statements made by the authors could
certainly be presented from a viewpoint that puts them in the best possible
light, there is at least some substance to their claims.
=======================================================================

Now to some even more specific charges and countercharges.

1)  Richard claims that he has nothing personal against Peter David; Peter
claims otherwise.  I cannot prove either side of it, but one particular thing
that I happened to notice in Richard's office before the interview began may
have some bearing.  Richard has a bookshelf with all the TNG novels on it, in
order.  Now, I couldn't see the first five or six novels, because there was a
picture or something in the way, but after those five or six, every novel was
there--with two exceptions.  :There weren't gaps for these two books; they
simply weren't there.:  Those two exceptions were:  _Rock and a Hard Place_,
by Peter David; and _Vendetta_, also by Peter David.

Now, this may mean nothing at all.  However, it may mean more than that.

2)  Richard claims that Peter is deliberately planting people in audiences to
ask leading questions.  He may believe that to be the case, and that may well
BE the case; but at least in the example he quotes, I seriously doubt it.
Among other things, the question, as Richard pointed out, was a fairly inept
one; and if the person had really been a plant, he/she would have been given a
far better question to ask.  Peter's not stupid; he's not going to suggest a
question that can be shot down that easily.

Many of the allegations are ones I cannot comment on one way or the
other--I've been assured by Peter, for example, that many of Richard's claims
are false, but with no evidence apart from the claims of one of the
principals, I don't think I can make any sort of real claim.  *However*, there
are a few assertions Richard makes which I can make very strong comments on.

You see, I decided to conduct a little followup research today (Monday).  To
that end, I called up the Merchandising and Licensing office at Paramount,
where I spoke to someone whose name is being withheld by request.  The
Licensing office, I believe, is probably a fairly impartial source; unlike
both Peter and Richard, they have no particular "light" they'd like the issues
to be seen in, since no one's claiming they're at fault for much of anything.

They're also the middlemen, more or less; they serve as a liaison between the
Star Trek offices and the licensees (e.g. DC Comics and Pocket Books).  Thus,
I expected I could get something approaching "the real story" from them, and
see how well it corresponded to both the authors' version and Richard's
version of various events.

The answers I got were frightening.  Almost to a word, they agreed
near-perfectly with the authors' assertions and allegations where any evidence
existed at all.  For example :and for the record, I did not record these
conversations; it was over the phone, and it's impolite if not blatantly
illegal to tape things like that, so this is from memory and a few hastily
written notes::

--Richard claims that he has no authority and never did.  From a strict
standpoint, that is correct; Gene had to sign all the memos that Richard typed
up, and there's no evidence (and, indeed, no assertions that I know of) that
anyone but Gene signed them.  However, Gene _doesn't read_ all the novels and
the comics and the etc. that come into the Star Trek offices:  he *can't*,
there isn't enough time.  So all Gene knows about the novels is what Richard
tells him, and so, since Richard controls Gene's flow of information, he had
_de facto_ authority.  (Note the word "HAD" there; I'll get back to that.)

--Richard claims that the publication of _Vendetta_ happened against Gene's
will, and only because the President of Licensing and a few others came into
Gene's office and begged Gene to let it go through.  According to the
Licensing office, that is "a complete load of bull".  No meeting ever took
place; what happened is that after the manuscript had been sent up to Richard
for several weeks, and no response was forthcoming, Licensing got tired of
waiting, sent out their own changes, slapped on a disclaimer, and sent the
book through.  In other words, Peter's story of events is absolutely correct,
and Richard's is absolutely false.

:In a similar vein...while I didn't have time to ask Richard about another
book, _Ghost-Walker_, similar things occurred there, according to Licensing.
The story I'd been told was that after multiple brusque rejections, Licensing
called up Gene himself and asked Gene to read it over the weekend.  Gene did
so, and came back with a list of very minor changes and the opinion that apart
from that, this was one of the better Trek novels he'd read in recent times.
If Richard's assertion that Gene reads all the novels and often disputes
Richard's suggestions were correct, that scenario could not possibly take
place.  Licensing confirmed that it took place, exactly as stated above.:

--The Licensing office also provided another piece of evidence that the
opinions given in the memos are not identical to Gene's in every detail.  In
recent months, Pocket Books had been getting an average of roughly 2 out of
every 10 proposals approved when submitted through normal, memo-like channels.
In a recent meeting between Dave Stern, Kevin Ryan, and Gene :and perhaps
Richard, although it wasn't specified and I didn't ask:, an average of 8 out
of 10 proposals were approved--many of them proposals that were 100% identical
to proposals rejected in a previous memo.

--Licensing also pointed out to me that Gene is often taking the heat for
these restrictions, when in the experience of the person I spoke to, Gene was
always very kind, very understanding, and always looking for a way to make a
story work rather than flatly denying it, whenever he dealt directly with
licensed materials.  The only thing Gene can be legitimately accused of in
this issue, Licensing said, is something of a poor choice in assistants.

--Finally, Richard asserted in his recent rebuttal to the net that he was
still involved with Merchandising and Licensing.  This is true, but gives a
false impression that nothing has changed.  Licensing described the change to
me as follows:
=============================================================================

        Until recently, Richard looked over the novels, comics, proposals,
etc., for Gene, wrote up a memo and gave it to Gene, who would change whatever
he felt needed to be changed.  (However, as I pointed out earlier, Gene had
not at this point read the items being discussed, so he didn't have much of a
frame of reference to change things.)  The memo would then go out to
Licensing, and things would proceed from there to Pocket, or to DC, or
wherever it was headed.

        More recently, Gene, for whatever reasons (I've been told some
privately, but I didn't check them with Licensing, who by the way asked me to
mention that although Gene is ill, he is _vastly_ improved from his condition
of a few weeks ago and is proceeding nicely with therapy), removed Richard
from the loop.  Richard was allowed to give no input.

        After Richard spoke with Gene's attorney, that has since changed.  The
current conditions:  Richard again is reading the manuscripts.  He is allowed
to make comments _only of a technical nature_--is this spelt correctly, do
Klingons eat Wheaties, etc.  He is NOT allowed to make editorial comments on
the appropriateness or the quality of the work.  And, furthermore, after the
memo has been signed by Gene, it goes, not to licensing, but to Gene's
attorney, who must make sure it conforms to the rules stated above.  THEN it
goes to Licensing, and so on ahead.
=============================================================================

I believe that's about all I have to say.  (I may think of other things as the
days go by, or as more facts come my way; if so, rest assured you'll know.)
Followups, general commentary, and rebuttal are of course completely welcome.
One final thing, however, which I direct to Richard :whom I'm sure will
eventually see this, just as he sees all other Usenet posts about him::

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I thank you for your interest in this interview, and I appreciate that you
want to protect your image.  However, in light of what I have been told by
Licensing, a neutral party, and in light of my own reasoning in other matters,
I cannot help but feel as though I was not being told the truth.

I find this upsetting.  You had the chance to tell the truth, and present your
positions in the best possible light to boot.  I have made every effort to
keep my own feelings as much out of this as possible, sticking only to my
reasoning and to independently confirmed facts; and you can be assured that
had you described events to me in ways that matched what I was told by
Licensing, I would have confirmed your honesty and would have had no
objections to you putting yourself in as good a light as possible.

You did not do this, even knowing full well that these facts could be checked,
and that your words were going to be reprinted in full on a worldwide computer
network (and others; I fully invite denizens of Compuserve, GEnie, BIX, and so
forth to use both the interview and this subsequent commentary on their own
networks, so long as the copyright notice is kept intact).  I do not
understand your subsequent decisions to lie to me.

In short, I was willing to disseminate your words, and have kept that promise;
you have responded by using this "rope" to tie a noose, insert your head, and
grin.  I take no responsibility for events that come of this interview.

I urge you, in light of this:  Take a good, long look at what has been
happening over the last several years.  Look at the documentary and
statistical evidence against your claim that you're only a mouthpiece for
Gene.  Look at the negative effect in fan opinion towards Star Trek, and
towards *GENE*, that your actions are having.  Ask yourself, honestly, if this
is what you want to be happening.  I hope that in the final analysis, your
answer will be "no."


Sincerely yours,


Tim Lynch
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Lynch (Cornell's first Astronomy B.A.; one of many Caltech grad students)
BITNET:  tlynch@citjuliet
INTERNET:  tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP:  ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.caltech.edu@hamlet.caltech.edu
"With the first link, a chain is forged.  The first speech censured, the first
thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
--
Copyright 1991, Timothy W. Lynch.  All rights reserved, but feel free to
ask...