Warp 10 Editor: Ruben Macias EDITOR'S NOTE: Please pass the news along. Thanks :) From John Ordover, Senior Editor at Pocket Books states that their has been a correction to Jeri Taylor's on-line chat session on WebChat only. Jeri Taylor is the Executive Producer of Star Trek: Voyager. The starting time of Jeri Taylor's on-line chat on Webchat will be now be: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18th, 8:00 PM EASTERN US TIME/5:00 PM PACIFIC. Address: wbs.net or www.simonsays.com/startrek/ VCR ALERTS: Programming Note: Jeri Taylor will be on Sci-Fi VORTEX this Sunday on the sci-fi Channel. Check your listings for time in your area. KATE MULGREW (Capt. Janeway) WILL be on the premiere of the Pat Bullard show, which Kate taped in New York last week, is supposed to be on Monday, though since the show is syndicated that may vary in certain areas so check your local listings. And also a note on upcoming Trek Novels: "Vulcan's Forge" (Spock's decision to leave Starfleet to become an Ambassador) "Ship of the Line" (first voyage of the Enterprise-E without Picard (or Riker, set before First Contact "For Love or Honor" (Worf and Deanna break up) The Starfleet Academy Young Adult line just published a TOS triology focusing on Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, which may be what you're looking for. If not, in 1998 we have a Kirk/Gary Mitchell triology planned that takes Kirk and Gary from the Academy to just before "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Another multi-novel crossover will be released next summer entitled "The Day of Honor Klingon" Peter David will be doing something special next fall. Another Trek novel entilted "The Avenger" will be released next spring DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations" and "First Contact" will recieve novelizations. ------------------- You could do me a huge, HUGE favor if you could pass along the following information to your e-mail list and anybody else who might be remotely interested: --Eric A. Stillwell Bibi Besch (Dr. Carol Marcus in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, 1982) passed away on Saturday, September 7, 1996, after an extended battle with cancer. She is survived by her daughter, actress Samantha Mathis. Bibi Besch was somebody with whom I once worked and a person that I always considered a friend. She was giving of herself -- always generous and genuine (a rare trait in Hollywood!). She loved her fans and was dearly devoted to her daughter and her career. Most people would recognize Bibi even if they didn't know her from Star Trek. She had a most versatile career in stage, television and motion pictures. As an Emmy-nominated character actor she was prolific. Bibi has appeared in hundreds of TV episodes over the past 20 years, ranging from soap operas to dramas and sitcoms and made-for-TV movies. Most recently she had a recurring role on the "Jeff Foxworthy Show." After " Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" where she played Dr. Carol Marcus, she worked again with Director Nicholas Meyer on a TV movie about nuclear holocaust, "The Day After," which became the most-viewed TV movie in history. She followed that with her Emmy-nominated role in "Doing Time on Maple Drive," a story about a mother dealing with a gay son. Bibi was always involved in community activities -- whether raising money for the fight against AIDS, programs to save the enviroment or other causes, but one one of her greatest passions was theatre, and she worked tirelessly to help raise money for local theatre groups in Los Angeles. It was the Los Angeles theatre community which also allowed Bibi to explore her talents as a director. Bibi Besch was a generous sole who gave greatly of herself -- from the heart -- and she will be greatly missed. As one of her biggest fans, I can say that she was loved very dearly. A memorial service is being planned for the week of September 16th. For more information, please call (310) 399-6895. Memorial donations may be made to the "Screen Actors Guild Foundation" in Bibi Besch's name, for the Catastrophic Fund. Make checks payable to "SAG Foundation" with "In Memory of Bibi Besch" in the memo portion of the check. Bibi was very involved in the Guild and served on the board. Cards for the family can also be sent to the guild at: Screen Actors Guild, 5757 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036. The phone number is (213) 954-1600. A Memorial Service will be held to honor Bibi at the Directors Guild of America (DGA) on Monday, September 16, 1996, at 1:00 PM. The DGA is located at 7920 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA. The telephone number is: (310) 289-2000. ----------------------- The Sept. 19 issue of Rolling Stone magazine has a small picture of the upcoming movie showing Picard (wearing a new uniform of some sort), Data, and some crew carrying phaser-rifles through a corridor of the Enterprise. ----------------------- Voyager won the following Emmy: Individual Achievement in Makeup for a Series: Star Trek: Voyager, "Threshold" (UPN) ----------------------- Here is the scheudle for Star Trek: Voyager 9/18/96 147 The Chute 9/25/96 148 The Swarm 10/??/96 143 Sacred Ground 10/??/96 149 Remember -) -- might be swapped 10/??/96 --- Pre-empted / 10/23/96 144 False Profits [s2] 10/30/96 150 Future's End, Part I 11/06/96 151 Future's End, Part II 11/13/96 152 The Q and the Grey 11/20/96 153 The Warlord ----------------------- Here is the schedule for Star Trek: DS9 Week of: 9/28/96 727 Apocalypse Rising 10/05/96 501 The Ship 10/12/96 502 Looking for Par'Mach in All the Wrong Places 10/19/96 503 And the Battle to the Strong 10/26/96 504 The Assignment 11/02/96 505 Trials and Tribble-ations 11/09/96 506 He Who is Without Sin 11/16/96 507 Things Past 11/23/96 508 The Ascent 11/30/96 489 Accession (Repeat) ----------------------- Have you seen the ONLY Star Trek site EVER to win the USA TODAY HOT SITE award? Star Trek Nexus, the PREMIER unofficial guide to the world of Star Trek on-line, invites every one to drop by at http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~kschang/startrek.htm Star Trek Nexus is the ULTIMATE guide to Star Trek on the world-wide web, with over 900 links, that's more described links than ANY ONE (even Yahoo!). Updated weekly or faster, this is the ONLY Star Trek site you need to bookmark, ever, and that is no boast. Divided into over 21 categories, Star Trek Nexus is easy to search. Find almost ANY Star Trek-related sites here. No need to watch search engines return 80,000 results that has nothing to do with your Star Trek search... Just come to the Nexus, and be connected to the ENTIRE Star Trek universe on-line. ----------------------- This is reponse from Simon and Schuster regarding the Star Trek Omnipedia update, as reported by someone on America On-Line: Sorry it's taken so long to get back to your e-mail. We were, in fact, going to release the Omnipedia update when we said we would; we did not know that we would run into production delays. Many of these were unforeseen problems that came up at the last minute. Anyone who has worked with software will tell you that bugs can often not be foreseen. We are sorry for disappointing people, and we also regret not being able to update our websites more often, but our department has a very small staff. We had to make the tough decision to put our people to working on our products rather than updating our websites. We are trying catch up as much as possible. Please tell others on the net that we have not forgotten them. We are trying to put out the best product we can as soon as we can. The Omnipedia update is now in the duplication house and will definitely be sent out within the next couple of months. ----------------------- This year's television nominees for the sixth annual Environmental Media Awards are "Baywatch," "Space: Above and Beyond," "Star Trek: Voyager," "The X-Files," "Coach," "Ellen," "Home Improvement," and "The Simpsons." The awards, which honor programs that "increase public awareness of environmental problems and inspire personal action on these problems," will be handed out Oct. 14 at the Beverly Hilton. Hillary Clinton will be the honorary chair for "Star Trek: 30 Years and Beyond," a star-studded live tribute to the series' 30th anniversary. Other even chairs announced last week were Ethel Kennedy, entertainers Quincy Jones and Ted Danson, entertainment executives Sherry Lansing and Kerry Mcluggage, and Majel Barrett Roddenberry, widow of the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry. The event, which will be held at the Paramount Pictures sound stage for $500 a ticket, will air on the UPN network Oct. 6. ----------------------- The Star Trek Welcommittee (STW) now has a Home Page! Come visit us at http://www.tc.umn.edu/nlhome/g586/both0006/stwhome.htm The Star Trek Welcommitte has been answering questions for fans for the past 24 years. Our specialty is Star Trek Fandom. We have information about Fanzines, Collectibles, Clubs, ST Series Production, Conventions, Costuming, and more. ----------------------- Updates to Master List of Discussion lists (more updates to come soon) [Star Trek Mailing Lists] * Cardassians-l Owner: Alt.StarTrek.Cardassian administrators To subscribe: send an e-mail message to listserv@netcom.com with the following text in the body of the message: subscribe cardassians-l Description: The list is dedicated to discussions about the Cardassian species, and the actors that play them. * DS9-Talk Owner: Dave Sturm To subscribe: send an e-mail message to Majordomo@stargame.org with the following text in the body of the message: subscribe DS9-Talk your e-mail address Description: This list serves but one purpose, to allow the free exchange of ideas concerning DEEP SPACE NINE exclusively. * Romulan-L Owner: Sirius T. 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This includes Jewish and Israeli history, culture, and theology, politics and culture, literature and film, philosophy, and social thought. Some ideas for discussion include ideas, tips and suggestions on roles Jews would have, and different ways plots could have developed if Jews had been present in the series. * TrekTalk Owner: Leigh Gaffney To subscribe: send an e-mail message to trektalk-request@netsplit.phoenix.net with the following text in the subject of the message: subscribe Description: General Star Trek related chat. * TrekWho-L Owner: Clyde Meli To subscribe: send an e-mail message to majordomo@jaguar.is.unimt.mt with the following text in the subject of the message: subscribe trekwho-l Description: Malta's first publically accessible mailing list, is a majordomo list dedicated to discussion of Star Trek and Doctor Who related issues. * Trekwrtr Owner: Kasey Chang To subscribe: send an e-mail message to Majordomo@stargame.org with the following text in the body of the message: subscribe trekwrtr your e-mail address Description: Star Trek Script Writers's mailing list is a public mailing list designed to provide a stomping grounds for those interested in submitting DEEP SPACE NINE and eventually VOYAGER scripts to Paramount. All topics of interest to Trek Script Writing (format, craft, moral support, pitch stories, information from Trek writing cons, series discussions from a writing POV, etc.) are welcome. * Vulcan-L Owner: owner-vulcan-l@netcom.com To subscribe: send an e-mail message to listserv@netcom.com with the following text in the body of the message: subscribe Vulcan-L your e-mail address Description: Mailing list for discussions and speculations of things regarding the Star Trek planet and culture of Vulcan. ----------------------- JOHN DE LANCIE AND JONAHTNAN FRAKES TRANSCRIPTS DATE 9/9/96 SIMON AND SCHUSTER HOME PAGE Moderator : Welcome to the WebChat Broadcasting System, the leading Internet Broadcaster. Thank you for coming and we hope you enjoy the show! Tonight we are pleased to present the final segment in our Star Trek 30th Anniversary series: a discussion with Star Trek: The Next Generation's John de Lancie (Q) and James L. Conway, who have recently released two new CD-ROM titles. Jonathan Frakes wishes to express his deep regret that he cannot join us this evening. He is travelling to Pennsylvania to be with his brother during surgery for pancreatic cancer. Please accept his apologies and join us in keeping Jonathan and his family in your thoughts and prayers. Our host for tonight will be Dennis Michael. Dennis... Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Hello, thank you very much. We are sitting here with John de Lancie. I have to say that this is a first for me as well, doing any kind of a chat thing on the web here, but it's a brave new world, let's give it a try. I'm speaking to John de Lancie who is involved with Star Trek: Borg, but in a way that I'm not completely -- what do you do in Star Trek: Borg? John de Lancie : Well, I play a character called Q. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Oh, that fellow. John de Lancie : That fellow, that's right. I'm an actor and I play a character called Q. And Q essentially comes to this CD-ROM and allows our star, our true star, which is the person who is playing the game kind of ushers in and out of the game and supposedly help him on his way. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I remember it was a dirty trick of Q at the beginning to introduce the Enterprise to the Borg in sort of a surprise, here is what is coming up in your future. I remember that being the story line. We were first introduced to Borg in Next Generation. John de Lancie : I do think of it as a dirty trick. I thought of it as nice people they should meet and apparently they haven't gotten along. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : One of those things that seemed like a good idea. John de Lancie : It seemed like a good idea. But it didn't work out. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : You get to play this same kind of, to make sort of corporate images here, this sort of galactic Bugs Bunny character that Q seems to be. John de Lancie : (Laughing) First time, Bugs Bunny? Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : He seems to go at this with a sort of sense of humor that is above and beyond what humans appreciate. John de Lancie : I think he relishes his naughtiness. In a way I think the audience kind of relishes. It also permits from a story point of view a lot of fun and somewhat unexplainable and no-need-to-explain events to take place. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Gives the writers a certain degree of freedom. John de Lancie : Yes. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : But we are off the subject. What occurs to the main character played by the first person player. John de Lancie : I give the first person player the opportunity to go back and avenge his father's death which looks like about ten years before. It's very complicated because at that point he has a multitude of opportunities and decisions that he has to make to kind of ferret his way through all of the different kind of events or problems that are posed by the game. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : We are asking you questions... this is, I guess, a common failing, that we are discussing in that it is a nonlinear narrative, not a linear narrative. The questions and thinking about things are all necessarily linear because that's what we are used to, this is kind of immediate. John de Lancie : Well, I mean every potential has a series, has kind of a branch of other potentials: if you went off down the left path it immediately became seven or eight other possibilities which, frankly, in the process of shooting, became rather confusing. Thank God it was being tracked by our director and had been, you know, written mostly as it had been because you could have lost me easily down one of those branches. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Again, actors are used to linear stories. John de Lancie : We are used to linear stories, yes. We are also used to not looking at the camera. We are not used to that type of environment. That was probably the most unusual part of the exercise. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Does this call for, you are a little ahead of me here, but does this call for a kind of new acting muscle or new technique or new way of thinking about your work? John de Lancie : I don't know. You know, it's not a drama in the same sense as what you are usually doing. It really is a game and part of the game, at least from the point of view that I was doing, was to entice people to come down a certain pathway, entice them to maybe turn left or turn right and then slam them. I mean there was a lot of personal interaction with the camera. I don't know if that's something that I will ever be asked to do again. Except for this type of product. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Have you been able to look at the finished product? John de Lancie : I saw a few minutes of it when I was at the 30th anniversary, which was this weekend in Huntsville, and it was very popular, and I can tell you it really does look pretty sensational. It's very fast paced. And I would imagine that it's going to be attractive, as Star Trek is, to a number of different levels of game players: you will have the kids entry level, you are going to have the adult and, you know, going up, and up and up. It seems to me, as I was watching the audience that were also watching the monitor, they seemed to be really fascinated with it. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : My familiarity with this kind of nonlinear sort of first person narrative is with Klingon. Klingon seemed to have a real defying kind of personality, not all the same, but they seemed to be very personal type of characters and the Borg seemed to at least initially seemed to be all pretty much on one wavelength. I wanted to ask about the differences between the two. John de Lancie : They are not great conversationalists. But they will steal your toaster if you don't keep your hand on it. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Steal your toaster and inhabit it I guess. John de Lancie : That's right. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I can see why they would want Q in there, that certainly injects a ton of personality. John de Lancie : Yeah, I mean -- yes. Thank you. I think that part of my job, along with the necessity to keep the action moving, was to kind of mix it up and to make it amusing and have that sense of unpredictability and naughtiness about it, and the fun of, you know, when you did make a choice you got the pie in your face. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I want to side track just a hair here and ask you about the pleasures of playing Q. You have been with the Next Generation from the pilot on, and were in the final episode as well playing this character. What is the reward other than paycheck time, but what is the reward for playing Q, what is it like, what do you get from it? John de Lancie : Well, I think every actor looks for an opportunity to have a role where they can express themselves. And this seems to be a role that I can do that in. Now I have only done nine of them. So it isn't something which I can say I kind of live in the role, but it seems to incorporate a number of different talents. I don't know whether I would go so far as to say that, but qualities that I can bring. If I need to play him villainous, I can, if I feel like I want to play him comedically, I can. It keeps things kind of bouncing. It's kind of fun for me. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I remember you appearing in a Mariachi band, that image comes to mind. That was very Q. John de Lancie : Yes, those are some of the things I have done. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I didn't know it was only nine, which is interesting. You had such an impact on the show it seems you have been there more. John de Lancie : It is a character that a lot of people seem to enjoy. I think power has something to do with it, too. The idea that people enjoy power. I have a -- I was teaching my kids eight years ago, potty training one of my children, and after we finished the experience I said okay, pull up your pants now. So he pulled up his underwear and the first one had Batman on it and he pulled up a second pair that had Spiderman, and a third pair, it had He-man. I said, "Why are you wearing three pairs of underwear?" He said, "It gives me power." And I think that that goes on through life. Everybody seems to be intrigued by that idea, that theyhave this, here is a character that has this infinite power, he can do anything he wants at any time. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : And seems to not have the kind of constraints on him of infinitely powerful characters we have seen elsewhere in fiction, he has the power and to heck with it. John de Lancie : No moral constraints or ethical constraints. I mean somewhat so, but as time has gone on, those have come in a little bit more. But no, it's it's the power, it's infinite power given to kind of like a child. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I think we have the power to actually turn over the conversation to some of the people on the web here to reach out from the great beyond here and ask you a few questions so if we have some audience questions, let's listen. Audience Question : Hi I'm very pleased communicate with you like this. I am a Kent State Univ. student and I thought I saw in one of our alumni lists that you were a Kent State student. Is this true? John de Lancie : Yes, it is. As a matter of fact they asked me to come back for homecoming this year. And get my diploma. Audience Question : Mr. De Lancie, have you seen the interactive technical manual for the Enterprise D? What do you think of it? John de Lancie : I read it every day. And know it inside out. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Is the Enterprise metric, what kind of wrenches do you need? John de Lancie : Yes. (Laughing) I read it in the morning in that special place. Audience Question : What do you think of the original Star Trek shows? John de Lancie : Uhm, I -- uhm. Can you be more specific. Move on to the next question. It's just too wide a question to answer. Audience Question : John de Lancie---do you ever feel that playing the role of an omnipotent being is somewhat blasphemous? (question from the audience) John de Lancie : Yes, and I think that that's one of the things that gives it so much appeal. Audience Question : Mr. De Lancie, will Q make a return to the Star Trek universe? John de Lancie : I'm starting shooting on Voyager on Wednesday. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Didn't you appear on an earlier Voyager? I seem to recall one. John de Lancie : Yes, I appeared on Voyager in "Death Wish." Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Way out in the Gamma Quadrant there hanging out, I guess distance is a very small thing for the Q. John de Lancie : That's right. And they will be able to speak to the director, Jim is here, so they can talk to him about it. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : We will talk to Jim in just a few minutes. Audience Question : Are there going to be any Q CD-ROM Games? Just based on the Character of Q? John de Lancie : Well, this is pretty close to, I mean this is not -- this CD-ROM, while it may not be based on the character of Q, I'm pretty pervasive through the entire show. And blasphemous. Audience Question : Mr. De Lancie, what was the chemistry like between each of the actors that have portrayed captains (aka Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, and Kate Mulgrew)? John de Lancie : Well, my experience with Kate is essentially a work in progress. This next time we are going to be exploring that. The experience with Patrick is a done deal. I think I did about five episodes or six episodes with him. And I think one of the elements that made that work out was there was the underlying tension as to who is on top, which was perfect for the two characters that we played. It gave a tension to the scene. What's going to happen between Kate and I is yet to be seen but it's something that we have to examine and look for closely because -- Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : If you don't mind a follow-up question I remember at least one or two episodes you had a considerable byplay with Jonathan Frakes' character, Riker. Let me add him into that group of people as well. John de Lancie : Yes. My main squeeze was Patrick, because that's how it was written. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Sure. Circumstances being that way. John de Lancie : Being that way, right. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : But as I recall, John, you had some scenes with Jonathan Frakes, how was the actor tennis there? John de Lancie : Well, it was good, good actors know that when you hit a ball, hit it as hard as you can, for it will give the other person an opportunity to hit it back hard. It's just that the scenes were not as conflict oriented as the scenes between Patrick and I. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Any further questions from the web? Audience Question : Mr. De Lancie what do you think of the Q action figures? Do you think that they do you justice? Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : A common problem with actors, I understand. John de Lancie : They are fine (Laughing). Now we are talking plastic. Audience Question : Tell Mr. De Lancie that he is one of my favorite actors. Which show did he like the most to work on, TNG, DS9, Voyager, or Legend? John de Lancie : Or Legend? Well, it's a little bit apples and oranges. There are elements about all those shows that I enjoyed. I certainly enjoyed a couple of the episodes on Next Generation, I enjoyed very much my experience on Voyager. And I loved doing Legend, I thought it was a hard show to do and I kind of wishedthat those stories were still happening. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I thought you were pretty good in Taking Care of Business but I think I might have been only one of the two or three dozen people that saw that film. I thought you were pretty good. Audience Question : Did either of you feel that working with Star Trek would damage or change your careers in any way? John de Lancie : There is no question as time goes on that my gravestone is going to read "best known as." It is a -- being type cast in a role, unfortunately there is no to do in it. When I first took this role I was only to be in it for one episode. And I certainly tried hard to do a good job. I try hard to do a good job at each and every time. If the result of that is to be type cast, then so be it. There is no to do. I mean I wouldn't -- I wouldn't try to not do a good job. So I don't know what to do about it. So it's just the way it is and part of me is happy and part of me isn't. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Do you find out you are called out for more roles as a demigod, or are there casting calls for -- John de Lancie : You don't know why you don't get a role. You know, they don't say, thank you very much. Oh, by the way, we are not going to give you this role because of these reasons. You just don't get some. I have so many other things that I do and enjoy doing. I have a rather high profile career as a concert narrator, which I love to do and do all the time. I act as much, frankly as much as I want to, most the time I want to be doing a lot of other things. I just finished doing a whole series of radio shows that I directed and wrote and so I mean I'm always busy, I'm very busy, it is just, if somebody will hire me because they like me as Q, I don't know. Or not hire me because they like me as Q. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I imagine the Q aspect has added a certain cachet to some of the concert work you have done. John de Lancie : Sure, they don't hire people just off the street about that. Even though they might be really good actors, and even better actors than the people they hire, they hire people to bring somebody into the concert. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Any other questions from the web? We could bring in Jim Conway. Audience Question : Mr. de Lancie, have you ever not been satisfied with your performance on a certain episode? John de Lancie : Of Star Trek? Sure. Every episode is made up of a mosaic of shots, scenes and choices. There are a number of times I look at things and go gee, I didn't do very well there, or boy I look awful. Or why is the camera on someone else (Laughing). There are other times where I'm surprised, that looks okay, I think I did what I was supposed to have done. Audience Question : Do you see the Q Continuum as a symbol of man's inability to conquer the unconquerable; and further as an extension of the theme of Man's inhumanity to man? John de Lancie : Yes and no. (Laughing). That's a deep one (Laughing). Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I think cosmic Bugs Bunny was a lot closer. John de Lancie : I thought consortium, I thought we were moving into condominium for a moment. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : The Q condominium. John de Lancie : I can't answer that. That was my answer. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Why don't we go for one more and we'll bring in Jim Conway. One more question. From the Q condominium. Audience Question : Mr. De Lancie, Did it seem like deja vu introducing the Borg again, even though that this was a different media than television? John de Lancie : Well, not particularly, but when I first introduced the Borg I actually thought that that was a terrific invention. And then the show didn't use them for a long period of time. I don't know exactly when, and I thought that that was a missed opportunity. It seemed to me that there was a true villain and it was a missed opportunity. But then obviously somebody picked up on it as well and they brought it back. So I'm delighted that I was involved in an episode that introduced really a major force in this franchise. And it was fun to see them around on the CD-ROM. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I'm still waiting for them to make more use of the Tholi -- that's just me. Never mind. The first -- they were very punctual. Terribly punctual. John de Lancie : Really? That's interesting. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Instead of giving into Tholians why don't we bring in Jim Conway. Move down a chair in the old Tonight Show tradition. Jim Conway is the director of the Star Trek: Borg CD-ROM. Let me ask about this whole notion of nonlinear narrative and how it varies from directing in the sense that we have all become accustomed to, since Euripides and on forward. How did you find it? Jim Conway : I loved it. I'm a game player. And so I enjoyed the fact that I got to contribute to game playing. And in this case as you come to a point in the game when you have to make a decision, you have a few options. Every option leads to other options. And each option then leads into other options and so as you direct it you have to sort of keep track of all the different options and make sure that the cast and crew knows and doesn't get confused. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : This must call for an another way of looking at the story line. The director in theory is sort of the master of all he surveys when making a traditional film or play or something of that nature. Here your role is subjugated to that of the viewer. Jim Conway : As a director you design every shot, and since the player is the game player, is the audience, everybody looked to the camera as we did it. And the action moved to the camera, away from the camera, and the camera would then follow it. As a director you would have to design each shot. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Working with a lot of actors who instinctively do not look into the camera. Jim Conway : We ruined a lot of careers, they will never be able to act normally again. Normally you are right, when you act you look at the other person, you look around, you never look at the camera. We had them look at the camera, they had to look at the camera. Because that was the game player. So in interacting with the camera is how the player feels like they arereally in the game. That's what we did. As the camera is there, watching you, for example, then if you cross the room the camera moves with you across the room, you look into the lens. If someone else starts talking on the other side of the room the camera pans over to pick them up so we it's as if we were really standing in the room. For the audience it's like an interactive episode because you are now one of the people in Starfleet, you are in the midst of this episode, you know nothing about where it's going, how it's going to end, you are sort of being pulled along with everybody else. If you come to the decision point you have tomake what would seem a logical decision and if you are wrong you are killed. And I love that about it. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Thus shortening the episode considerably. Jim Conway : Right. Then you are put back into a spot where you were before you got killed. The fact is there are many many different times in this game where if you pick wrong you are killed. You are killed in a variety of different ways, you are blown up, zapped, beat up, that's what makes it fun. As a game player, when you are playing a game, when you reach a point where you get killed, it's terrific. You hate dying, but you know you made a mistake and you have to figure out how to unmake that mistake. That's what game playing is all about is making mistakes and then finding the remedy to them. In this thing there are so many different decision points that you come across, where if you make the wrong decision you die, it's a terrific challenge. Sometimes there are 3, 4, 5 different choices and four of the five will kill you and one which isn't always the most logical one is the correct answer. However I do have to say that some of the most fun in the game is making the wrong choices because if you made all the right choices and you finish the game you miss a lot of fun, each one of the decision points that is wrong leads to another adventure which eventually will kill you but not always right away. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : In this case getting killed is not always a bad thing. John de Lancie : It's a good thing. In fact people who finish it should go back and make sure they try all the decision points. Each one has its own little fun to it. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : You have shot this on the existing Trek set. Jim Conway : Yes. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : You tell me, what were the circumstances under which you produced this? Jim Conway : Well, because it's Star Trek and we didn't do anything blue screen, it was all done in the sets with real actors, with the same effects you would normally use: the same props, the same wardrobe. We use a bridge for the Righteous, I think it was called, which was one of the bridges from one of the earlier movies. It was a revamp of some of the sets for a computer center and a real hallway and conference room and so by using all of the real sets we had millions of dollars worth of production value which normally people who produce CD-ROMs can't afford to put out. That's right. We have them and redress them and redesign them and use them. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : As John points out the Borg are not exactly the universe's best conversationalists, tell me about utilizing them as a story element. The bad guy puts the spine into a film or story, but in your case what was it like to have that, a story element? Jim Conway : It was fine because John's character of Q actually was a Q-Borg as well. So when we went to the Q, which is where the Borg lived, there was a Q-Borg and so John's character Q looked like a Borg and talked slightly like a Borg. But he was there. Most Borgs don't really talk to you, they have a collectivevoice as one. So, you are right, there is not a lot of conversation going on except you are about to die. But with John there we were able to have little conversations. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : The old resistance is futile line. Let me ask: when in the development of Borgdom does this fall? If I recall correctly from the Next Generation, the Borg were your basic homogenized group of aliens, then there was a point when they sent one of them back with an individual consciousness, and his individual consciousness affected the Borg not unlike a virus and caused them to change over, and then Lore and Data were in, and the whole thing went on... but let me ask where in this sort of context did the Borg fall in your adventure? Jim Conway : Well, it starts in contemporary Star Trek universe time and it goes back ten years. So it's pre, pre the new movie. Just, I believe. Is that right? The chronology? Keith Halper : It actually occurred -- Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Well, what I heard is this happens more or less contiguous with the Wolf 359 battle. Which is Best of Both Worlds, if I remember correctly. Jim Conway : Right. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Well, that's an interesting period of time. John de Lancie : This is Borg at their worst. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : How did you come to this project? Jim Conway : I have been directing the Star Trek episodes on and off since the very first season, we did two the first season of Next Generation, I came back and did one the 6th season and did a couple of DS9s for a season. And then the last couple years I've done quite a lot of Voyager and DS9. And I know when they shot Klingon last year, I was around and met everybody, met Keith and had a nice time. I have worked with John de Lancie both on Legend and the Voyager Death Wish episode of Voyager this year, so they came to me and asked if I would direct it. I said I would love to. Like I said, I have been a game player since Zork in the early '80s and I've watched the whole progress now with CD-ROMs and full action, stereo, it's magnificent. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I wanted to ask about that since you are familiar with working with state of the art television and a show like Star Trek, that's a pretty highly advanced technological level. Did you feel constrained working with the somewhat lesser level of CD-ROM and the slower video and all those other things you have to deal with when it comes to reaching this level of computer animation or the computer video? Jim Conway : Not really... we had to be aware of the compression, what it would look like once compressed. We had a compressionist right there so we would shoot a scene and then check it. The cameraman, Marvin Rush, director of photography for Voyager, DS9 and Next Generation, had talked to all the computer guys and knew the parameters.So it was lit according to what we would need. A couple of times we had to slow down if somebody was panning, walking, talking at the same time. We had to be aware of that because it would complicate it. As an overall no, it was terrific, we shot it like an episode. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : And it seemed like that when you were working on it. Jim Conway : Yes. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Do we have any questions from the web for our director Jim Conway? Audience Question : I know some of you have children. Could you all comment on violence in video games and how it felt making a CD-ROM that is violent? Jim Conway : This one isn't that violent. There is action but there is not what I would call violence. This isn't Doom where you get arms and limbs blown off; however, I have a 13 year old daughter who is playing Doom, so I don't like violence for violence's sake. Though I think action in the right amount is fine. Shakespeare had it, the Bible had it, but I think if you use it it should be used to teach a lesson, not randomly. Audience Question : Jim, who did better: You on "Borg" or Jonathan on "Klingon"? Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : There is a fair question. They are both terrific. I mean without putting it in a comparative basis I would like to ask what you did think about Klingon. Jim Conway : I liked Klingon, I thought it was fun, it had a great sense of humor. I think the biggest difference between Klingon and Borg is Borg has a lot more decision points that meant life or death, and Klingon was, I think, a little more on the educational humorist kind of journey, you learn a lot. Borg is more life and death kind of decisions as you go along. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Let me ask why you think the Borg is effective. I mean John was just talking about how he felt that it took a while for people to catch on to the fact that Borg were very compelling villains. Why do you think that is? What do you think is interesting to the audience? Jim Conway : On a basic level they are almost indestructible. They suck the best out of everything they find and discard it. They will take you over and make you sort of part of them. On some levels I'm sure the old red scare communist kind of feeling, Nazi gets in there, any kind of oppressive society and I think all of our paranoiac fears about oppressive society are there. When it comes right down to it these are ugly guys that can blow the hell out of you and are hard to kill. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : The way I look at it, Klingons for all they do, you can come to some sort of understanding of the Klingon and with any luck at all you might even be able to make him understand you. You are never going to come to a meeting of the minds with Borg. Jim Conway : No. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : They have their agenda and that's the end of it. Jim Conway : Also Borg has no sense of humor. Klingons are great fun. These are warriors that like to have a great time. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Nobody is going to sit around and have a drink with a Borg. Jim Conway : No. Audience Question : Do you belive in extra-terrestrial life? And do you belive that someday we will be journeying on long distances through space? Jim Conway : I would like to believe in extraterrestrial life, although I'm not totally convinced at this time that we have been visited... although I believe there is certainly life in the universe, and I would love for my children to one day be able to travel the universe. I would go myself. I don't know that it's likely. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : My belief on that is if they are truly intelligent enough to travel enormous distances involved and technologically advanced enough to do that, they are advanced enough to hire a good publicist and have everybody do a little press conference, here we are, we've come in from Alpha Centauri, none of this buzzing the high desert and picking up some crazy person out in the middle of the desert and introducingthemselves to that. I figure there is no logic to it. Hire Rogers and Cowan to do the thing. (Laughing). Audience Question : Jim Conway: Were you a big Star Trek Fan before you got your job? Jim Conway : Yes. I was in college I was addicted to Star Trek, the original Star Trek. I watched them when they first came out in the early 60s but in college in the late 60s they were rerun constantly so I was watching them all the time. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I feel better now. Any other questions? Audience Question : I am always fighting with friends over who is a bigger threat the Borg or Q. What do you think? Jim Conway : Q. Q can get rid of the Borg if he wants. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Well, the Borg, let's see here. The Borg have sort of an agenda that is one of the few things we can understand about them, their aims and intentions are pretty clear. Q's aims and intentions are not the least bit clear. Jim Conway : No, not at all. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : He seems to be, again, he is a ping-pong you never know where he is going to be coming from. He is a little more frightening I think in the long run. Audience Question : Mr. Conway, I really enjoyed the Next Generation episode "Frame of Mind." How difficult was it to bring the episode to the screen? Jim Conway : This is an episode where Jonathan Frakes thought he was going crazy and we were cutting back and forth between reality on the Enterprise and an insane asylum on another planet. We had a great time doing it -- Jonathan got to play crazy all the time, because it was easy,that's what he is normally like. He is a nut to begin with. And so we had a great time shooting it and it was very easy to do. Audience Question : Mr. Conway, do you have any information you are willing to share as to whether or not Harry Kim will die during the next season of Voyager? Jim Conway : I know nothing. (Laughing). Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I don't either, if that helps. Audience Question : Jim, what do you think of David Carson`s work on Generations? Did you like the movie? Jim Conway : I enjoyed the movie. I think David is a very fine director, he has done some of the best Star Treks there ever were. I thought Generations was a lot of fun. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : While talking about that, what did the script for this look like, especially weight and thickness, for Borg? Jim Conway : It was very thick and it was very confusing. Most people when they first read it got totally confused. It starts out like a normal script, and looks like a normal script, but when you get to the first decision point it veers off in one direction where it may go for 20 pages, and suddenly you bounce back to where you were in the script 20 pages before, so the first time reading the script is very, very confusing. That happens four or five times in there. And then once you sort of analyze it you figure it out. The first time through most people got totally lost. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Flow chart analogy, perhaps? Jim Conway : On the set we had one just to make sure every decision point was covered. There were so many different decision points, if in fact we forgot to shoot something in Borg that hadn't been properly scripted, you couldn't finish the game. So we did have a flow chart, and as we shot each scene we checked to make sure A went to B went to C went to D, so it would work. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Dare I ask how many possible endings there are or is that a question that means anything in this context? Jim Conway : I don't know for sure. Keith may. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Any other questions from the web? Audience Question : Mr. Conway, have you ever felt like acting, rather then directing? Jim Conway : If you had ever seen me act you would know the answer is no. No. I acted in college. I punished enough people there. Audience Question : Why the continuous fascination with disabling the Borg? Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : With disabling the Borg, do we understand that correctly? Jim Conway : I'm not sure what the question means. If it means why we keep going back to them as bad guys, I think it's because they are so delicious as bad guys, they are almost indestructible, we barely get out with our lives each time. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : It seems like a good idea to disable the Borg, otherwise they will take over the Federation and we'll all look like toaster ovens. Audience Question : Mister Conway, I am a high school journalist. How long did it take to produce the Game? What future plans do you have for Star Trek? Jim Conway : That's a pretty big question. To produce the game, to shoot it was about three weeks of actual production time (and that doesn't include the time it took for Hillary to write the script and the programmers to do all the work that comes after that.) There was also, about a year total for everything from the session to the actual completion of it. And what was the second question? Oh, the future plans of Star Trek are wrapped up with Rick Berman and Ira Bear and Jeri Taylor, what they dream up every day. That's the writers preview and they do pretty well at it. Audience Question : Jim Conway -- Did you feel that Data used his emotion chip at the right moment in the movie Generations? Jim Conway : Yes, I thought he did. I mean, I liked when it happened. I liked it a lot. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Not to name drop here, but I just did a piece for CNN that aired today as a matter of fact. On the Star Trek 30th anniversary. And I ended up asking some of the people about the fact that Star Trek is in a unique position now with the existence of the WorldWide Web and the Internet, that every single decision, every single creative idea is going to get second guessed and you are going to hear about it. You are almost in a unique position in all of entertainment history to get immediate feedback, good and bad, on everything you do with an audience that's more than willing to do so. What effect do you think that has had do you see an effect? Is it pleasant, is it annoyance, is it both? Jim Conway : It's actually great. I know that the writers and I do it too, check the web after an episode airs to see what everybody is saying. It's interesting because you get a real good response level and you know if people like something, if they don't like something, something is working, something not working, so it's very nice to have that kind of feedback. Until the web there was no way to get that except fan mail. People don't tend to read fan mail. Writers and producers certainly don't read fan mail, but they do get on the web and they will look at what everyone else is saying. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Kate Mulgrew said that was the best possible circumstance to be able to get that intimate of an interface with the audience. Jim Conway : Yes. Audience Question : Jim, any other CDROM's coming out or in the planning stages regarding STAR TREK TNG? Jim Conway : Yes, definitely. Specifics I don't know quite yet but I was just told yes, definitely. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Dare we take one more here? Audience Question : Do you think the new game will appeal to younger Trekkers too? Jim Conway : Definitely. Younger trekkers will like it. Like I say, because of the action element it appeals both on an intellectual level and it appeals on a raw gaming level. It's not a shoot 'em up by any means but because each action has a dramatic reaction, it keeps the gamer's attention quite easily. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Let me ask about that a little bit further. When you make any kind of a Star Trek episode, CD-ROM, anything of that nature, what's your mental picture of the demographic now? God knows you have generations, no reference intended, of viewers out there, and listeners and readers and players. What is your image of thedemographic of the Star Trek audience? Jim Conway : You know, I don't really know. I know the producers know. I think they know what it was for TNG, DS9, and Voyager. I know they are always trying to expand it. I always think it tends to be younger male. I'm always surprised. I know there are a lot of women who watch the shows now. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : One more from the web? Audience Question : Mr. Conway, will there be any similarities between the CD-ROM Borg and the New Borg from the new movie, "First Contact"? Jim Conway : Uhm, I think the designs are slightly different. I think for the movie they're designed the way the Borg looked they are still very similar but it's a much, dare I say sleeker improved kind of version. But there are slight differences between the two. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I think we are ready to move on to Hilary Bader. Hillary is the script writer both for the Borg CD-ROM which we have been speaking mostly about and for Klingon and a number of Star Trek episodes. Let me get a quick one. Which of those episodes? Hilary Bader : Oh, I did eight, either story teleplays or the love stories, a lot of stories I did, my first one was Dark Page, I don't know if you want me to describe. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Give me a thumbnail. Hilary Bader : Dark Page, where Troi loses her powers. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I remember that one. Hilary Bader : Hero Worship, which was my favorite, they find this little boy -- Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Who takes after Data, as I recall. Hilary Bader : Slow down. Who is the sole survivor on a ship, he is rescued by Data, he kind of gloms on to Data. Dark Page, which is where Troi's mother comes on board, goes into a coma, and Troi has to go into her mother's mind. Frightening thought for everyone. On DS9 I did Battle Lines, which is they go to a planet and there were eternally warring factions that keep coming back to life. I killed the Kai, but I didn't shoot the deputy. And I did the Rules of Acquisition, which is the female Ferengi dressed as a male Ferengi. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Very funny episode. I didn't want to turn this into then I wrote -- but just give us some background information about it. I mentioned earlier there is a big difference here in that the Borg's personality pretty much can be fed into a thimble, and the Klingons are these incredibly colorful characters. Talk about the difference between putting these two projects together. Hilary Bader : When we first started talking about Borg, the first thought was to do something like Star Trek: Klingon, which is you get to be a Klingon and hang out with Klingons. Everybody likes Klingons. Nobody likes Borgs, who wants to be a Borg, who wants to hang out with them, they have no sense of humor, they have no fun. People don't want to be Borgs, they want to kill Borgs. So instead of designing a story where you would be a Borg and enjoy being a Borg, we wrote a story where you get to go out and kill Borg. That's what everyone wants. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Sure. You are the one who wrote this 20 pound script with the Borg characters? Hilary Bader : It was not quite as heavy as that. Because of the limited shooting. Some day CD-ROMs will have the budgets of huge movies and you will be able to really shoot for three months. But it was about a movie script I would say. Maybe a thick one. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Let me ask about what we were talking about before, nonlinear narrative. What's the trick, how do you do that? Hilary Bader : Oh, God. (Laughing). There were a couple of moments of panic when I was writing that where I realized I hit a point where I wasn't sure I covered everything. In fact I think during shooting they called me at one point and said there was an option I hadn't covered but it was easy to cover. There was -- there is one complicated area where depending upon what you have done much earlier you either bounce way back or you come -- and I got totally lost in my own setup. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I mean this is very mysterious to me. I write news and it's all very point to point and the idea of writing fiction... when I try to write fiction I can't even get a linear narrative. Hilary Bader : Klingon is much more linear. You don't have to go in loops. In Borg it's much more complicated. There are loops and turns and I ended up with kind of like a flow chart, a little spider web that I drew. I would just make sure I colored them over so I knew they had been covered, if I did this then I had done that, I'm covered. It was kind of algebraic, if A, then B, then C, if not A then B then not C. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I see. I really don't but I will pretend I do. Let me ask: was it a necessity to bring in Q? Hilary Bader : It was a necessity to have -- the concept of Star Trek: Klingon is on a holodeck so you have the ability to control going back and doing things again. The only person who can do that in reality is Q. Q can turn the world into a holodeck. If he wants you to do something again, you do it again. The other was also for humor for personality. Because the Klingons have personality, as you said the Borg have none. You needed somebody to add life to it. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Let me ask about writing for the Klingons. It must have been fun. Hilary Bader : It was great, I loved it. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Tell me about it - you've Gowron in there. Hilary Bader : We have Gowron, Gowron was our -- you need a central character to sort of be the liaison, and to do all the blah, blah. In all the games you have to end up with a certain amount of, as you know, speeches. This is the information you need or you won't be able to play the game. Hopefully you get it all done early in the game. Gowron was the person who could talk to the players. Gowron knew everything, knew who the player was, one character and another character. In this of course you needed somebody to be that liaison also, to control the action, to be able to send you back, to be able to talk directly to the player and direct the player character and say "This is what you are doing right, this is what you are doing wrong." Yell at the players. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : So you have to employ these characters; not only do you give them life, et cetera, but you also give them a job. Okay. How long does it take to put some of these things together? Hilary Bader : The Klingon happened very fast because under certain circumstances it just had to be done very quickly. One of the reasons I think it ended up being much more linear is that there was not enough time to do all these loops and circles. The Borg, I don't really remember. About six weeks. About the same as maybe a little longer than you would get to do an episode. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I'm sorry, I'm talking over you and I'm not supposed to. What is the reaction when you see this finished product? Is it analogous to seeing your screenplay? Hilary Bader : It is. And in some ways it's more fun because you can control it. (Laughing). You can click back and do it again. And because in the game it puts you in the show, you have invented more of the characters, Gowron is a character, you have to be absolutely pure to him and absolutelyfaithful to the character Gowron. But then you have invented everybody else and you are serving a whole other story. If you write an episode for the show, you have to service a character that already exists. Q, you had to start with Q, you had to be faithful to the character Q but then you had all these other characters whose story you were telling. So there was more freedom writing the CD-ROM. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Even so we have a fairly well ordered universe here. Hilary Bader : The universe is consistent but it has its own reality and you are already in it. You don't worry about, you won't do a conflict because you know how it works. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : You know better. Hilary Bader : If you are writing in reality you don't do things that aren't real. Hopefully. If you are writing a Star Trek you don't do things that aren't real. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Is there some Federation review board somewhere here at Paramount? Hilary Bader : Yes, yes. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : That checks it out. Hilary Bader : There are a lot of people. Ron Moore, Ron read through everything in the script said yes, no, yes, no. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Very interesting. Okay. Talking more about Borg now, again playing this one. Do you have -- Hilary Bader : The alpha version just recently came out it's not in playable form quite yet. Or just in playable form for the testers. So I haven't actually seen it as a game yet. But I did see some of the out takes, some of them look really cool. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : How does it look? Hilary Bader : Looks good. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Let's just check to see if we have questions from the web. Or -- we are here with Hilary Bader the writer. Audience Question : I am in charge of a Star Trek website for kids and we like Voyager the best. Do you get any feedback like that from us kids? Hilary Bader : I get feedback because again I also surf the web looking for comments about things that I have done. You don't always know, it's very hard to know on the web to know how old someone is sometimes. My nephew is eleven and he sends notes and does all kinds of things, has a web page, in reading it there was no way you would know he was eleven. So for a lot of comments we are getting, when you are reading, unless somebody says I'm an eleven year old kid or I'm ten, you don't know that they are kid's comments. So I personally have never done anything specifically for kids. Audience Question : Are you planning on writing for any VR games and what are your thoughts on incorporating brainwave functions into games and movies i.e. MindDrive and Miramax films? Hilary Bader : Cool. Where can I buy one? Some day it will happen and some day there will be writers writing that from the point of view of the writer even that won't change. That will just be the interface. The interface will change: you will either be pushing buttons... In the beginning, like Zork it was the same thing, you typed in your responses, now you can move your mouse around and click in your responses and later you will be able to think in your responses, but it's still the same thing. Trying to tell the nonlinear story. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Let me intersperse a question here. What is bluer sky than this? What do you see as the next step other than just interface refinement? Hilary Bader : The next step, they will have budgets like movies and you will shoot for three months. We have complicated loops but there will be thousands of feet of film that you will be willing for somebody not to see, so there will be so many more complicated ways of playing the game. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Are we waiting for DVD for example. Hilary Bader : I think it's a question of how much, we had three weeks of shooting, if you had three months of shooting you can have a lot more. Not just a longer story but a lot more paths. There are a number of paths that are incorrect paths, but they are not full length. If you have three months of shooting you could send somebody on a whole movie and they get to the end and come back because they made a wrong turn. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : All the way to the end. Hilary Bader : I think that's the biggest difference. In this kind of interactive. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Sheer volume. Hilary Bader : Sheer volume which will increase the amount of game time and game play. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Other questions from the web? Audience Question : What got you interested in science fiction? Hilary Bader : I was always a science fiction fan. I ended up doing these because I had done some Star Trek episodes. I like it. (Laughing). Audience Question : Hilary, do you more of your brainstorming at a coffee shop? Secondly, have you written a story from a dream you had or do you know anyone who has? Hilary Bader : You have seen me at Starbucks. I love this. Yes, I used to write a lot in coffee shops. Now I have an office, so I do more work there. Never a dream. Sleep is very good. I find as a writer that if you are stuck, you go to sleep and wake up, and the answer isn't there but you are so refreshed that you can then find the answer. But dreams neverreally work for me. You think they are really clever till you write them down and read them the next morning and realize what was I thinking. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Without the special effects? Hilary Bader : They just don't work. Audience Question : Hilary Bader -- Will there be a Star trek CD-ROM involving the view point of the Cardassians, excluding Harbinger? Hilary Bader : Sound like a good idea to me. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : She is scribbling things down. Hilary Bader : I don't know that there is any specific plan right now. As the lowly writer they don't let me in on the secrets till they call me and say time for the Cardassian one. But it certainly sounds reasonable. Audience Question : Ms. Bader, in "Hero Worship", what was your inspiration for placing a boy as the lone survivor of an accident? Hilary Bader : The thought was mostly to have a kid who would want to be an android, the reason he was a survivor was to leave him alone, to have him want to meet somebody to glom on to. Data was ideal because he was perfect, he was invulnerable, he can't be hurt, this kid was just hurt. We were talking about power before, he has power because he is strong andhe can't die and all these horrible things the kid has just experienced would go away if he were an android. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Let me interject here here. Do I remember correctly -- didn't Patrick Stewart direct that episode? Hilary Bader : Yes, he did. He had the distinction of being the one that was being directed when Gene Roddenberry died. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Tell me about Patrick as a director, especially working on your work. Hilary Bader : I tend to go down to watch my episodes as they are doing them because I like to, but they don't need the writer anymore. Once you are done, it's thanks for writing it, now it's ours. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : They are one they hired, as David Gerald said, to do some typing. Hilary Bader : It's your kid and you send it out to the TV world and it's going to do what it wants to do once it gets out there. I did not see Patrick directing that. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : But of course you did see the finished episode. Hilary Bader : I did see the finished episode and yes, I liked it a lot, of all the ones I think it's my favorite. Except The Game, of course. Which I haven't seen yet. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : To bring it back to -- Hilary Bader : Yes, thank you. Audience Question : Ms Bader: I am a college student majoring in creative writing-- what got you into script writing? Hilary Bader : I fell into it. I fell into it through the back door. I was a performer and I was performing a lot of my own work with a partner. We had never written anything down; we never thought of ourselves as writers until someone came to us and said these are well written, and we said nobody wrote them, we made them up. I started to think of myself as a writer then, started to think about better ways of making money as a writer so I came out here. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : That reminds me of the line I heard: "Is this real poetry or just something you made up?" (Laughing). Audience Question : What about Hugh? Will we hear more of what happened to him and his effect on the Borg? Hilary Bader : He is not part of the game. Whether or not the show will use him I have no way of knowing. And this jumps around time a little bit. So most of it does as I say takes place before the arrival of Hugh. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Another question interjected here. What can you do with the Borg as characters, they are a force more than anything else. Hilary Bader : You can't. If you wanted to make changes to invent things about them, you can't do that, there are rules. And the Borg are the Borg. The Borg, it's a terrible thing to be a Borg. Borgs are sociopaths. They have no morality, they have no nothing, they want to assimilate, that's what they do, you can't change that. I can't change that. If the guys want to write a movie and change that, that's another story. That's who they are right now. That's what has been established and you have to be consistent. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : One can feel sorry for them as one wipes them out. Hilary Bader : Feel sorry for the person who used to be but that person is gone. The person who has been assimilated may be aware or not aware that that person is gone. And you've got to hate this Borg or they'll get you. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Needless to say he is coming at you. Hilary Bader : He wants to assimilate you. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : No time to waste here. Any others from the web? Audience Question : Will the Borg actually one day be defeated and taken from the script? Hilary Bader : No way to know. I mean that's one of the things that you don't -- I certainly would have no say in the matter, but if somebody wanted -- if the series had a story that was -- that worked, that they wanted to do, they would kill the Borg but it would seem to me to be a shame since they are such a good bad guy. In fact good bad guys are hard to find. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Let me ask about that bad guys. It's been my experience that, you know, Star Wars wouldn't have been without Darth Vader, and the Fantastic Four isn't going to be fantastic without Dr. Doom. If you don't have a bad guy you got nothing.What's your thinking on bad guys in general? Hilary Bader : The more interesting the bad guy the better off you are. You have more to do. The Borg are bad guy force. Clearly they are not interesting enough to the CD-ROM game by themselves, we had to bring in more personality, we had to bring in other stories to work against it. The more complicated the bad guys the better and more interesting it is. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Klingons. Hilary Bader : Klingons are not really bad guys anymore. But yes, everybody loves Klingons, Klingons are certainly not good guys either but you love them because they have everything. They have personality, they have feelings, they have emotion, they have guts, they have glory, they have everything. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : They have vertebrae in their forehead. Hilary Bader : They have knives, they have guns, they are sensual, they have long hair. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : They drink and they laugh and they -- Hilary Bader : And they have a good time. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Others from the web here. Audience Question : You wrote the scripts for both Klingon and Borg CD-ROMs with about a year in between. What did you learn from the first CD that affected the way you wrote the second? Hilary Bader : I say one of the things was to try to make it a little more complicated. As I said, Klingon tends to be a bit linear. Borg has a lot more loops to it. There is a lot more, it will take longer, hopefully, and be more interesting to get through. That was the main thing. And that was some of theresponses I think we were getting, too. People wished there were a little bit more complexity to it. Audience Question : How can I submit an idea for a script or a script itself for an episode or movie? Hilary Bader : You think I'm going to tell you? There is a way. And I'm trying to remember. You would have to call Paramount and they will let you know. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Literary agents and all that. Hilary Bader : You pretty much have to have an agent to submit anything in this town. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Are you doing any projects that you can even talk about that are coming along the horizon for Voyager, say? Hilary Bader : Not at the moment. I certainly have plans to go and pitch, I have plans to sell multiple stories, of course, but not at the moment. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I think the clock on the old wrist here suggests we should be saying temporary farewell to Hilary Bader and bring in Keith Halper here so we will do a quick change over. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Now you are the producer of both Borg and Klingon. Tell me about this job. I mean what goes in to producing this kind of an almost ground breaking pioneering nobody has ever heard of one of these before kind of a -- Keith Halper : It's about 50 percent hiring people like Jim, John, and Hilary, and 50 percent sipping martinis and watching them do their thing. Honestly my job is very heavy in the very early stages and late stages of filming a product like this. It's my job to think about technology. And to try to imagine the way that we can tell stories. In unique ways and in new ways based on these new kinds of things that we have at our disposal like CD-ROM and nonlinear video and things like the web. Once I come up with some general techniques, then I put on my marketing hat and I say okay, what should we do with this technique? Star Trek was a very natural thing to try to apply these things to the audience since technology is one of the attractions of the show. It's the fact that we can imagine what the future is going to be like and the ways in which technology is going to change our lives as time moves ahead. Obviously it's an optimistic picture of that. What we tried to do, once we gathered we were going to do something with Star Trek was to try to allow people to participate in making that future. So, for instance, when we did the interactive technical manual, the first thing that we did is say okay, we have got this thing call the technical manual, which is a book, very successful book, Pocket Books, which is one of our sister companies. It was a guide that tells you everything about how the Enterprise works. What our job in interactive was, we sat down and said okay if this was actually going to occur in the 24th century what would it look like, people aren't going to be flipping through the book, how do I fix the phasers, and the Romulans are at the door. You will find some kind of technology tool to make it more understandable, make things more efficient, so we invented the virtual reality Enterprise that people can wander around, learn about things, you can very quickly go in the warp core and see how it works, so that you can get out of there before the Tholians come. In any case then the second part is just simply saying what's the right property, what's the right story. Klingons were a very natural story for the first one, I'm a big Klingon fan, and the Borg are again a very natural thing and we said "What are the kinds of stories we can tell, what are the kinds of things we can allow people to do within those stories that they couldn't before? An example: we all love Klingons, we love watching them do these things, wouldn't it be great if we could become Klingons. We know it's a lot of fun because people go on the holodeck on the show and they have a great time. We thought we would give people that opportunity. Then it becomes a marketing thing. Then it becomes very much like a television producer we try to assemble the team that has the right skills, has the right vision, to try to, you know, do a wonderful job with these tools and with this property and with this sort of vague idea of what a story is. By the way, I have to go and free up some money from somebody. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Minor detail. I'm sorry I'm talking over you. Keith Halper : It's very important to us because we have a responsibility to Star Trek. Responsibility to the franchise, responsibility to the fans to make these products as wonderful as they can be. We really believe at Simon & Schuster Interactive that we are raising the bar for interactive multimedia with every product that we do. So it's important that everybody steps up to the plate financially. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I imagine there might be a dilemma for you here because of the nature of the advancement of the technology in that you have to decide to freeze technology at a certain point. Otherwise you would wait, well if we can wait six more months we will have this new technology involved, this new type of programming or this new item. Do you have to finally decide we are just going to have to go at this level of development and go to press? What is the thinking behind that? Keith Halper : It's actually, it is a problem that we face with every single product. Every time we release a new thing we have to imagine where, what technology is going to apply and when are we going to stop it. It's wrong to define it as a problem, it is an issue we have to deal with. I don't think that not having next year's technology hurts the title. You can imagine when Shakespeare was making plays he couldn't do morphing, but he still managed to do one or two good things. We try to look at the tools we have at hand and we tell the best story that we can with them. Next year I'm going to tell different kinds of stories because I have different tools. They are not necessarily going to be better stories, they will just be different because I can now do new and interesting things with that. In addition to being, you know, a typical suit, I try to imagine myself as a creative, so every year I try to do new things. For me that means finding new things, means adding new technology tools, these stories that we can tell with that. So the first half of it is, yes, what's really cool, what are people going to hook into, what is it that's going to excite the market, that's going to make people come and take a look at our stories. So early on it was quick time VR, so we could do virtual reality, then it was voice recognition, which we used for the Omnipedia, then it became this nonlinear interactive full screen video that we are using now. That suggested a whole new slew of stories. We stopped Klingon at a level where we were getting full screen but we weren't getting all the colors that we have now. So we knew we had a limited color palette. We said okay, we have a limited color palette, what shall we do? Klingons are very red and brown. They live in a red and brown world full of smoke, it's really dark there, that's the way they live. So even though the technology that we had then is not as high a level as we have now, we still think that, you know, we did the right thing for the Klingons. It wouldn't have necessarily been any better had we had the advanced tools that we have now. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : We have a fairly computer literate audience, obviously, but I want to ask about the level of sophistication that you imagine that your average user, your average player is going to have. There is a wide variety out there, there is the first timer who has just barely gotten Windows 95 on his machine there are these people writing their own code. Tell me about what thinking has to go into making this as broad an appeal as possible. Keith Halper : It's actually a simpler question than it seems. Imagine that people, Star Trek fans, are going out and buying computers for the very first time in certain cases to buy our products. If they see a really hot title and they say I'm going to go out and spend $2,000 on a computer so I can play Klingon. That seems atfirst glance to be absurd. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I was going to say it was very optimistic. Keith Halper : But let me give it to you a different way. All my friends are going out there and buying computers and I have never done it because it doesn't make any sense to me, there isn't any story out there, there isn't any tool that I find so compelling that I want to go out and plunk down this big wad of cash. Eventually something comes along for everybody that incites them to go out and make the investment in the future. For different people that is -- that different level of technology is different. People that are real technophiles will invest in earlier because they are interested in a promise of a technology, but other people need more proof. In every case we gear it in such a way it's a simple product to use, but yet it's so engaging both from a technology perspective and a story perspective that people will want to go through and use it again and again. It's got to be very very simple to use but the application of the technology should be as complex as we can possibly make it. So we like stories where, disks where you stick it in the drive and wham, there it goes. It runs on everyone's machine. We get as close to that as we possibly can. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I didn't want to ask, what do you hear from tech support? Keith Halper : With Klingon it was extraordinarily low. It's a very interesting title, in that what you are really performing is certainly a lot simpler than the kind of passage you perform in something like Word or you would perform in Pagemaker. Really what you are doing is looking at the screen and then something presents itself that you think you ought to click on and then you click on it. At that level it's relatively simple. You need to be able to take feedback from the interface that says user click here. The really difficult part is compression. How do I get great looking video, full motion on the screen. Fortunately that wasn't really my problem. Just like we hire a great director and great actors to try to make a great product, we also hire great programmers, great technologists. The people who develop the technology are called the Duck Corporation, I think the joke there has to be there is no distinction between digital video and the video we are using because if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck. Simply because they provided us with this code, our task really becomes a production task. Can we shoot the video, can we make the kinds of flow charts that would present a great story. It takes a lot of time. But the technology challenge is not as sophisticated as writing Netscape. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Even so you are calling on these very talented people, especially in the case of the directors, to create something there is almost no paradigm for. You are really creating an art form along with it. Or you are asking them to do so or you are asking them -- Keith Halper : The challenge is a creative one as opposed to technological one. I wouldn't want to go to Jim Conway and say Jim, would you write code for me. Instead I'm saying Jim, we have these interesting tools for you to use. Would you mind going and shooting for a couple weeks and seeing what you can do with them? Or we go to Hilary and say what's the best story you can possibly tell if you weren't constrained by the linear aspects of video? Then we make sure to hire the people that can rise to the challenge. And they are doing new and exciting things. I believe we will look back on this time the way that people in television looked back on the early days of TV, that we are doingamazingly creative things, we are creating a genre, we are finding the categories that are going to excite the mass market, and we will get there. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Blue sky force, five years down the road what will things look like, feel like, taste like? Keith Halper : It is hard to imagine what is going to happen. There are so many creative people spending all day long thinking about what would be very exciting. I believe at this stage of technology development that if we can imagine it we can create it. So if there are people today talking about can we do virtual reality, mind control of our system? If you can think of it and you can actually go through and reasonably detail what are the problems that would be associated with bringing that technology to life, I have no doubt we can create it. I think that there is a certain technology challenge but the next five to ten years we are going to see...Let me put it this way: I think it is going to take several years for us to get our arms around the tools we already have in place. Graphic quality will continue to increase to the point where, for instance, video that you see delivered on your computer is going to be much much better then the video you see delivered on your television. No question about that. But that's not the really interesting thing. The really interesting thing is given we are doing nonlinear things, what kind of stories can we tell? The opportunity for telling these kinds of stories has not been presented to us like this. Thousands andthousands of years, this is a brand new paradigm and amazing things are going to happen. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : There will be a major change when interconnected matures. Can you see concatenations, what might happen when the Internet communities along CD-ROM or the DVD or whatever? Keith Halper : I think it's going to be quite exciting. I actually have a game coming out this Christmas which has a very large web component. It's something we are doing with Tom Clancy and it's called SSN. And Tom wrote a story about a conflict that occurs between the United States and China and part of it is video where we are doing traditional story telling. The second part is you are in a submarine and you are driving around trying to find the resolution to this conflict. You are one of the characters in the Tom Clancy story. You know, that's very interesting but then it becomes really exciting when now you connect via the web, to other people who are also participating in this story. And now we are all participating in this thing together and we are creating these stories because, you know, I don't know what these people need to do, I can't, you know, script their lines for them because I don't know what's going to happen. They are going to create their own story. Tom did an interview the other day and he said he felt his job in creating CD-ROMs was to build a playground, an environment for people to go and play in. I think that you can look at the things that happen inside that playground as being stories but they are not like any stories we have seen before. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : The implication is you will be giving your reader, viewer, player a starship and saying have at. Keith Halper : The exciting part or still a lot of the things that are exciting about Star Trek are how interesting is the universe how wonderful are the characters we will meet along the way. What are the capabilities that I will have as a starship commander to exercise my will in this universe that I don't have in the real world? It will be different stories but they will have a lot of the same elements. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Do we have questions? Audience Question : Mr Halper...Is it likely that we will see a Star Trek game in the same form as the Doom, Duke Nukem, 3d walk through type game? Keith Halper : I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing those kinds of experiences. As you know, with the interactive technical manual you do go and walk through the Enterprise. However I don't think that you will see the kind of gratuitous violence in a Star Trek product that you see in Duke Nukem or Doom. Star Trek is very story oriented. You know, it's very different than other kinds of action shows. I think there are some very strong themes that will continue to be communicated, those are difficult to do in something that is just pure fast action. Audience Question : What technologies do you see lurking on the horizon that have your creative juices flowing. Where do you see taking the Trek sagas then? Keith Halper : Mind control and virtual reality. I am very excited obviously about all the technology we have talked about today but I'm also really excited about being able to do the things that we already are doing in bigger ways. What I mean by that is different kinds of distribution. If I could take a CD-ROM like Star Trek: Borg and get it out on the web so that everybody could access it in their homes and I could be reaching a hundred million or two hundred million people and be able to sell these episodes for much much cheaper, it gives us the opportunity of creating interactive experiences that people can see every single week. I think the distribution power and the way that it enables people to get to lots of stuff and also to put their own stuff up there for other people to see is about the most exciting technology that's around. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Do you think that's a reasonable expectation and what kind of time frame? Keith Halper : In order to be able to deliver full screen full motion video on the web, in a kind of limited test fashion, we are no more than a year away. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Really? Keith Halper : In order to see those things as broadly distributed as telephones and toasters, probably a decade away, we have a lot of creative work to do between now and then. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Where is the money, that's the big question? Keith Halper : You have to look at other forms of media and say, "How have they been successful?" We have obviously been successful doing CD-ROM in retail, meaning people go to a store and buy them. Once upon a time they used to go in a store and buy videotapes, now they don't do that, they rent them. I think it will be a rental model, I think it will be a wonderful subscription model where people join the Starfleet or join some other universe that they want to participate in on an ongoing basis, be a character in a story that continues to develop over time. It's going to be a lot of advertising, which I think is really wonderful, to enable tens or hundreds ofmillions to people to go on and check something out. To give them that kind of freedom to try and to like or not like something the way they do with television. I think there are a lot of different models and models the appropriate one will depend upon what is the product we are selling. Audience Question : Are you strictly Star Trek, or do you have other projects in the works? Keith Halper : Uhm, I have a bunch of other things. I think after this Christmas I will have done six Star Trek products. I have this Tom Clancy product I'm very proud of that's coming out Christmas. We have also done another thing which is kind of a web access tool, the Cube tool, which we will be introducing shortly. I love Star Trek. Star Trek has given us a lot of opportunities to experiment and explore, but it's also fun to apply the things we learn in Star Trek to other properties and see what they do there. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : It's a unique thing because of the nature of the material itself and the nature of the audience. It just seems to me like the perfect laboratory to do some of this work. Keith Halper : It also is very important that the audience is so excited about it. People make Star Trek parts of their lives. They mark time by what was going on in Star Trek. We were talking to Jim today, he said yeah, when I was in college I was a big Star Trek fan. People look back on their life and they remember, you know, who was captain of the Enterprise at that time, and having a fan base that is that excited about a property also gives us the ability to experiment. We know people will take the time to look at a product sitting on a shelf that says Star Trek across the face of it. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Question from the web? Audience Question : Do you think you will ever run out of ideas for shows to come? Keith Halper : I certainly hope not. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : It's been 30 years, it looks like there is a farewell left there. Keith Halper : You have the entire universe to explore. And characters like Q show there is no limit to what you can do. I think so long as the writers remain excited about the show they will continue to come up with new things. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Hilary seemed to have a few more ideas. Keith Halper : I think she has boxes of them stashed away someplace. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Question from the web? Audience Question : Who is your favorite character? Keith Halper : My favorite character on Star Trek? I have a lot of favorites. I mean God knows I love Q, that's why we spent so much time thinking about him. It's been a year with Q on the brain. Star Trek has a rich pantheon of characters, that's part of what makes it great. I have a Frakes beard now. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I just shaved mine off. One more question. I had to shave off my beard as a matter of fact, because I was scanned for the Voyager project out in the distance, they scanned my head to put on a Voyager crewman story I was doing. I was using the laser scanning technology. Apparently hair doesn't reproduce very well on laser scan. So I was asked to get rid of some. Keith Halper : My wife and I are expecting and we went to the Santa Monica pier and we each took a photograph and the computer there automatically tells you what your child is going to look like. My daughter apparently has a 5:00 o'clock shadow. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Oh, dear. The last time I shaved is a whole other thing. One other question from the web? Audience Question : Mr. Halper -- Are there any plans to make official Windows95 Star Trek themes? Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Theme for Microsoft Plus, the screen saver, desktop, things like that. Keith Halper : In the convoluted world of Star Trek merchandising my job is to do story based products and reference based products about Star Trek. So I don't get to do screen savers but I certainly would. But that's as much as I know. There is one I should mention before we go if people are interested in getting a copy of Borg they can actually buy one that is on presale right now at SimonSays.com, which is our Simon & Schuster's on line site. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : You would be able to download this, I gather? Keith Halper : No, what it would be you could go and buy it right now. The product isn't done but you could -- what you would download wouldn't be much fun but you would be the first people to receive the product. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Okay. I think we are reaching the stage now when we are going to sort of do the community sing, we get everybody together and answer any other questions that might be coming. Give us a second to organize ourselves. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : So joining us now Hilary, John de Lancie, Keith Halper, Jim Conway, myself, any questions that may have come for any one of us. I will even answer questions, not very interestingly, but I will. Audience Question : What is the life expectancy for Vulcans? Hilary Bader : 200 was not considered to be ancient, he was considered to be probably a guy who would get a discount at Denny's as a senior citizen, so I would think in the 200s but I don't know, I'm guessing. Audience Question : There is so much talk about the Borg and the Klingons. what about the Romulans? Keith Halper : They are also very bad. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : But Ambassador Spock is working on that. Keith Halper : There is a lot in the product that you guys haven't seen yet. There is amazing things that happened after shooting ended John was involved we did all the voice-overs for all the information. So in addition to watching the story and making decisions, you can actually stop it along the way and find out what things are. In Klingon the fiction was that it was the voice of the holodeck, and you would hear the holodeck come on and say things. We don't have the fiction of the holodeck in this, so we used a tricorder, Q gives you a very special tricorder, and you can freeze time. It's interesting, the tricorder comes up on top of the video and starts playing other videos and tells you who are various people on the ship and you can actually cross reference stuff, it becomes a whole database within the product that tells you the story of everything that you see. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Wasn't the Klingon conviction that it was a training hologram for Star Fleet personnel in any case. So getting the subtext in context would be part of the procedure. Keith Halper : I guess in this one, it's Q feels sorry for you. Audience Question : To all: Do you like the new Enterprise E? ;) Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I would have to say I saw a blueprint, I thought it looked pretty zip. Beyond that I couldn't really say. Keith Halper : We did a, obviously a virtual tour of the Enterprise-D, and the Enterprise-E was actually shot to be a virtual tour but because of the issues around the security of the ship we haven't developed the film yet. So as soon as we are allowed to develop it I'll be glad to tell you. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Question from the audience? Audience Question : How did you become a CD-ROM producer? Could you tell us a little about your history? Keith Halper : I guess there is now but when I was starting in this, which seems so many years ago, I'm not saying that sarcastically because it's a young business. There wasn't a school that you could go to to learn this. The way I did it is probably the best way, you just go and do it. I personally locked myself in a room for 12 weeksand wrote a program. I think the best way to do it is to find some opportunity, any opportunity, to create multimedia and to do that. I would imagine it's just like writing now. Audience Question: Aque la chingada donde estan mis letras???! Hilary Bader : Do it again? It's a Spanish CD-ROM I'm working my way through slowly but I'm only up to lesson two, so read it again slowly. John de Lancie : I need more water, the flowers are dying. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I thought it was Klingon. Is there a Klingon language expert in here? Hilary Bader : Sorry. No se. I'm only up to lesson 2. Audience Question : My question for John De Lancie is: Why did he all of the sudden develop black lips (the vampire look as the nit-pickers call it) in "Death Wish"? John de Lancie : I didn't all of a sudden develop those. I just forgot to take my street make-up off when I came to work. (Laughing) Really, actually what happened was that it was -- it might have been a little heavy that day but mostly what was the case is that we usually, we always, had filmed my lips in studio. And we went outside for this particular episode and it was at the end of the day and the sun was behind me. And we think that what happened was is that the ultraviolet or what have you just simply made them pop out. Especially with the film, the exposure of the film and all that. It wasn't anticipated and it took everybody by surprise. Audience Question : . Are you going to appear at any conventions Mr . de Lancie? - in the near future. John de Lancie : Oh, I'm sure I will. The answer is yes. I don't know which ones. But they are always there. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : While she is looking for one, did I miss something? Is there some great point that any one of you wanted to get in that perhaps I didn't lead you to? Hilary Bader : Buy the game. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Of course I knew that would come up at one time or another. Jim Conway : I agree. Wendie Bernstein-Lash: I have a question. You have the writer here, is there something you wish she had written for you in the script? John de Lancie : For me? No, I was delighted and I really, you know, not only was I made to look better by the writing and the directing, but I must, and the producing, but I must give a particular bow to the teleprompter. Jim Conway : Because John had very, very long speeches he had to do and he had to look into the lens since the lens was the character we provided a teleprompter on the lens for the scenes so he could look right in the camera and speak long long reams of dialogue and not look like he didn't know his dialogue. But you can't see him do it. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : That's a secret us TV news guys have been keeping from you actors for quite some time. I see we are beginning to lose our hegemony on the teleprompter, but you are welcome to use it. Live and be well. John de Lancie : Greatest invention. Audience Question : Will there ever be any female Q characters? Jim Conway : There was. John de Lancie : No, actually there wasn't. It was a child who was born of two Qs but she herself was not. I will tip the next story's hand a little bit by saying that there is going to be a female Q character. Moderator : A love interest? John de Lancie : I feel like I have said enough. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : Aren't Qs above love anyway? John de Lancie : Actually that's a little bit about what the story is going to be about, too. Keith Halper : This is what happens when you log into WebChat, you find out the all the good stuff. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : We have one more question from the web. Audience Question : Mr. de Lancie, Did you enjoy working on "Days of our Lives?"? John de Lancie : Yes. Actually I did. I had a great time. I didn't realize that until about four or five years after I left the show. But I did have a really, a wonderful time. It was a lot of laughs. Every day somehow was funnier than the day before. And I had a wonderful person to work with, Arlene Sorkin, who has gone on to write some very amusing stuff, shows that she is putting on right now called Spire, I think is going to air soon. Very funny. Dennis Michael (CNN Showbiz Today) : I think that pretty much does it from here. We want to thank Jim Conway, Hilary Bader, Keith Halper, John de Lancie, I'm Dennis Michael on the WebChat Broadcasting System. Back to you. Moderator : On behalf of the WebChat Broadcasting System, I would like to thank John de Lancie, Keith Halper, Hilary Bader and Jim Conway for joining us. I would also like to thank Dennis Michael from CNN for hosting this program. Finally, I would like to thank our entire WBS audience for joining us. Good evening. Please join us Wednesday September 18th at 5 PM Pacific for another Star Trek event - an interview with Jeri Taylor, director of Star Trek: Voyager. Transcript | The Participants | Borg Set Shots | Klingon Shots 2-for-1 Offer | About the Borg CD-ROM | About the Klingon CD-ROM Star Trek Chat Home | Star Trek Books | SimonSays.com [LINK] Copyright Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. -----------------------