The wealth of story fodder that was abandoned when Star Trek (The Original Series) went off the air was a worse crime than actually cancelling the show itself. Speaking as a writer, that's pure anathema. If you have material use it. My naiveté aside, I get that there were other issues at play that cancelled the show; but the fact that Star Trek has remained a mainstream sci-fi favourite to this day proves two undeniable points: first, Star Trek has true staying power that can survive re-births, re-boots and new incarnations; second, if anything, Western, English-speaking audiences demand that a good story must continue. Star Trek survives not just simply out of a sense of devotion to Gene Roddenberry's original creation. I mean, how else do you account for twenty-somethings dressing up in vintage Trek gear around the planet? Star Trek survives because of the sheer amount of open-ended story threads and bulk information available for new writers and creators to play with and re-prise it. New stories and developments are given new life in other formats like motion pictures, novels, comics and new media like made-for-internet performances or even board games that allow fans to play out their favourite combat sequences against each other. Let's pick up these TOS threads...
John Kirk is a Teacher-Librarian and currently a History/English Teacher with the Toronto District School Board.
But mostly, John teaches Geek.
Comics, Sci-Fi (Notably Star Trek), Fantasy and Role-Playing and table-top games all make up part of John’s repertoire, There is a whole generation of nerds-in-embryo who rely on him to make sense of it all, to teach that with great power comes great responsibility, that the force will be with us always and that a towel IS the most useful thing to have in one’s possession.
When John isn’t in the classroom, he can be found in his basement writing comic reviews for www.popmythology.com and features for Roddenberry Entertainment's www.1701news.com.
