RIP Ann C. Crispin

Sad news emerged this morning that science fiction and fantasy author Ann C. Crispin has passed away from cancer at the age of 63.

Crispin, who published most of her work under the moniker 'A.C. Crispin', is best-known for her contributions to several shared universes. She wrote six Star Trek novels, beginning with her first published novel, Yesterday's Son (1983). She also wrote in Andre Norton's Witch World universe as well as penning three tie-in novels for the V mini-series and later regular series. She also wrote the novelisation of the film Alien Resurrection. In 1989 she began writing her own series, Starbridge, which eventually expanded to seven volumes.

In the late 1990s she penned a series of Star Wars novels detailing the backstory of Han Solo. This material became the canonical origin story of Han Solo in the Expanded Universe (though it is expected that the rumoured Han Solo Star Wars spin-off will ignore the Expanded Universe altogether).

In 2011, impressed by her work on the Star Wars novels, Disney commissioned her to write the 'origin story' of Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean films, resulting in the 600-page novel The Price of Freedom. This was her last-published work.

As well as writing, Crispin was active in SFF fandom. She served as the Eastern Region Director and later Vice-President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. In 1998 Crispin also co-founded 'Writers Beware', an organisation dedicated to exposing scam agents, editors and publishers. In April 2013 she was named Grandmaster by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.

I read Crispin's Star Trek novels when I was young and found them to be among the best of the tie-in novels from that franchise. Crispin's skill was adding background and layers to characters readers believed they were already very familiar with, and she was not particularly interested in being restricted by concerns over canon. The result were novels that might not 'count' in the official histories of those franchises, but were still well-written and fascinating for the different perspectives on established characters. Her work on the Writers Beware program is also highly laudable, given the number of scam artists out there trying to take advantage of young and up-and-coming authors desperate to get published. Cory Doctorow has a brief obituary to her here.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 4 (remastered)

Star Trek: The Next Generation entered its fourth season riding the crest of a wave. Despite the extremely difficult circumstances it had been written and filmed under, the third season had been given a near-unanimously positive critical reception and the Best of Both Worlds cliffhanger had become a major TV event of the year. The production team thus started the fourth season with confidence and even a bit of swagger to their step and this translated into assured and confident episodes hitting the air.

One of the most noticeable changes in the fourth season is the great embracing of continuity. The fourth season episodes bring back Data's evil brother Lore and address the ongoing Klingon story arc begun in Sins of the Father in the third season. Worf becomes a father, Wesley Crusher departs for the Academy and LaForge comes face-to-face with the real woman about who he's constructed a holodeck fantasy. Lt. Barclay, Vash and Q return, and the events of an episode that no-one can remember, Yesterday's Enterprise, have unexpected major consequences as the season draws to a conclusion. Major new forces also appear, most notably the race known as the Cardassians who will go on to have a massive impact on the Trek universe in future seasons and in the Deep Space Nine spin-off show. The fourth season feels like more part of an interconnected whole rather than 26 random stories thrown together and this works very well.

This isn't to say that every episode is a home run. The Best of Both Worlds, Part II actually resolves the Borg threat in a manner that makes sense but the story is a little too big for the episode and doesn't quite pay off the promises of the Season 3 finale. Suddenly Human has Picard disobeying orders from Starfleet with no consequence, which is odd. Remember Me is terrible (disappointing for a rare Dr. Crusher-centric episode). Devil's Due is played for laughs and doesn't work. Clues is an inferior remake of a much better Red Dwarf episode. Galaxy's Child sets up a great scene where LaForge is called out for some inappropriate behaviour towards a woman but he - rather childishly - blames her for it and gets away with it. Data's behaviour in In Theory is rather implausible.

But balanced against that we have the Klingon/Worf arc in Reunion and Redemption (and to a lesser extent in Family, Data's Day and The Mind's Eye) which is excellent throughout. There's Family's treatment of family life and Picard's backstory, which is well-acted by all involved. First Contact's brave experiment of showing the whole episode from the aliens' POV works extremely well. Brothers opens with a great hijacking storyline and ends with a striking confrontation between Brent Spiner, Brent Spiner and Brent Spiner which the actor pulls off with skill. Qpid has some great laughs (though not much else). Final Mission has some of the most spectacular location shooting the series ever did, and manages to (briefly) make the audience regret that Wesley is leaving. The Wounded expands on O'Brien's character a lot and paves the way for the entirety of Deep Space Nine. The Drumhead is an awesome episode about people using the fear of terrorism and sabotage to justify the draconian crushing of human rights and free speech (something even more relevant today than when the episode aired). The Mind's Eye is a great riff on The Manchurian Candidate. 

From the original SD DVD, the Enterprise approaching Peliar Zel II in The Host.

The same shot from the blu-ray, complete with remastered model visuals and newly-created planets and moons.

So whilst the fourth season doesn't quite hit the heights of the third (nothing here challenges Yesterday's Enterprise or The Best of Both Worlds in quality) it's still a highly entertaining collection of 26 episodes, with even the weakest episodes usually having scenes to recommend them. The regular cast are on top form and bolstered by some excellent guest stars (special mention must be made of Jean Simmons in The Drumhead and a returning Andreas Katsulas in Future Imperfect). There's a definite improvement in the quality of the effects for this season as well.

For this HD re-release of the season, every episode has been re-assembled from scratch from the original film stock, with every visual effect in the season recreated from the source materials (or, when they were unavailable, new CGI). As with the previous seasons, this has the happy side-effect of eliminating all greenscreen artifacts and 'halos' around models and superimposed characters, and allows for much greater detail in effects shots to become visible. Some effects that were originally quite ropey - such as Deanne Troi's dream-trip in Night Terrors - now look utterly fantastic and challenge modern effects work. The replacement of the generic original planets with more detailed CGI versions also continues and hugely improves the look of the show (Pelia Zel II in The Host looks particularly impressive). In a few cases effects that people have been moaning about for years - like the distinctly underwhelming explosion of the Borg cube in Best of Both Worlds Part II - have been redone entirely to look a lot better. The only major problem in the season is the terrible CGI for the space creature in Galaxy's Child, which looks amateurish and out of keeping with the rest of the series. With the rest of the effects looking absolutely stunning, there is no excuse for this.

The fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (****½) is not the show at its best, but it is certainly highly entertaining and, with episodes like The Drumhead, thought-provoking. It is available now in the UK and USA.

Paramount considered a new STAR TREK TV series last year

It's been surprisingly confirmed that Paramount held some meetings last year with Michael Dorn - who played Worf on seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and four of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - to discuss creating a new Star Trek television series. According to Dorn, the meetings went well but further development was shelved out of respect to J.J. Abrams's then-filming second Star Trek film.

Dorn has been saying for several years that he would be willing to return in a new Star Trek series focused on his character. Worf is one of the most popular Star Trek characters and has appeared on screen more times than any other character (outstripping his nearest rival - Colm Meaney's Chief O'Brien - by a clear fifty episodes). Whilst there has been strong fan support for such a plan, there has also been scepticism about Paramount's willingness to consider a new Star Trek series set in the original timeline whilst the 'Abramsverse' has proven popular with movie audiences. However, with Abrams moving on to the Star Wars franchise and the Blu-Ray re-release of Star Trek: The Next Generation selling very well, Paramount may be reconsidering their previous position.

A new Star Trek TV series is inevitable at some point, but whether this will be it remains to be seen.

RIP Michael Ansara

Genre actor and legend Michael Ansara sadly passed away on Wednesday 31 July at the age of 91.

As Elric in Babylon 5.

Ansara will be best-known to SFF fans for his role as Commander Kang in Star Trek. One of the original Klingons, he played the role in the original series episode Day of the Dove. Thirty years later he reprised the same character for the excellent Deep Space Nine episode Blood Oath, and then again in the Voyager episode Flashback, when Kang faced off against Captain Sulu of the USS Excelsior in a special episode made to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the franchise. He also played an unrelated character, Jeyal (husband of Lwaxana Troi!) in another episode of DS9. Towards the end of his career, he voiced the character of Mr. Freeze in Batman: The Animated Series and several of its spin-offs.

Born in Syria, Ansara's family moved to the USA when he was two years old. As a child he was chronically shy and took acting lessons to overcome the problem. He began appearing in minor roles in American film in the late 1940s but achieved a breakthrough when he was cast in the role of Native American chief Cochise in Broken Arrow (1956-58). He went on to play the role of Native American US Marshal Sam Buckhart in two episodes of The Rifleman (ironically, one of the main inspirations for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and then spun off in his own series, Law of the Plainsman. Later, he played a recurring role on I Dream of Jeannie (he was married to the star of the show, Barbara Eden, for a time).

As Commander Kang in the original Star Trek.

Ansara's height, presence, looks and commanding voice won him numerous roles in film and television from the 1950s right through the 1990s. He played three different roles on Irwin Allen's series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, another on The Fugitive and two on The Time Tunnel. He played the title character in Soldier, an acclaimed episode of The Outer Limits written by Harlan Ellison. In 1979 he had a recurring role as Killer Kane during the first season of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

Ansara also had a memorable appearance on Babylon 5, playing Elric, the leader of the techno-mages in the third episode of the second season, The Geometry of Shadows. The character was a simultaneous homage by writer J. Michael Straczynski to Michael Moorcock's albino hero and also J.R.R. Tolkien (Elric quotes Gandalf at one memorable moment). The character was popular but did not make a return appearance on-screen, instead playing a major role in the spin-off Passing of the Techno-Mages Trilogy of novels.

A great actor who lived a full life and brought to life many memorable roles, both in SFF and outside of it. He will be missed.

Star Trek - Into Darkness

After breaking the Prime Directive in order to save the life of a crewmember, Captain James T. Kirk is recalled to Earth and is removed from command of the Enterprise. When a rogue Starfleet agent named John Harrison carries out a devastating pair of terrorist attacks on Earth, Kirk is reinstated and given orders to track down and eliminate Harrison. This involves a dangerous journey into the heart of Klingon space...and into secrets that some in the Federation want kept hidden.

Star Trek Hyphen Into Darkness (not colon, apparently) is the sequel to J.J. Abrams's 2009 reboot of the venerable SF franchise, which is quickly closing in on its fiftieth anniversary. It picks up shortly after where the previous film left off, with a new timeline established in which the crew of the Enterprise have just started working together and need to confront a new threat to the Federation, this time in the form of a canny and intelligent Starfleet officer who knows them better than they know themselves. This enemy is played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who brings presence, menace and brooding intensity to every scene he's in, even when he's given some distinctly ropey dialogue to work with. Cumberbatch rises above the limitations of the script to deliver a great performance, bringing a sense of danger to the film that Eric Bana's Nero never really achieved in the previous film.

The rest of the casting is pretty much excellent. The Enterprise crew were well-established in the previous movie, though I had niggles over Chris Pine as the young Kirk, who brought the Shatner-requisite bluff arrogance but little of his charm or sense of vulnerability in the face of his own overconfidence. Whilst that remains an issue, Pine's performance is much-improved and some of that vulnerability does come out. The other actor whom I thought didn't quite gel was Simon Pegg as Scotty, who didn't really come across as Scotty but as Simon Pegg doing a bad Scottish accent. This time around, the writing is stronger for Scotty and he gets a decent arc through the film. It's also good to see everyone having their moment in the sun: whilst the emphasis remains strongly on Pine and Zachary Quinto's Spock, we also get solid (if somewhat brief) subplots for Sulu, Uhura and Chekhov. Bruce Greenwood also returns as Captain Pike, bringing a formidable sense of gravitas and charisma to his role, whilst Peter 'RoboCop' Weller does a good turn as Admiral Marcus. Less well-served is Alice Eve as Carol Marcus, who is given little to do other than a gratuitous strip-tease scene.

So, great cast, what about the plot? It could be better. Some ideas are great, such as bringing Deep Space Nine mainstays Section 31 into the Abramsverse. Seeing more of 23rd Century Earth is cool, and we get a little bit of a feeling for how normal people live and work in this world, which adds a little bit of texture and depth to the setting. Beyond that, the film is just as rammed full of plot holes (the crew spend a ludicrous amount of time and trouble trying to secure a resource in the finale when they have seventy-two alternate sources of it sitting right next to them on the ship), technobabble and predictable plot twists as its predecessor, though it at least makes an attempt (although a rather clumsy and over-obvious one) at doing some decent foreshadowing this time around. Where Abrams sticks to action, explosions and fights, he does well, as he does with cheesy humour. Attempts at characterisation are variable, and emotion is a bit over-wrought.

Where the film falls not so much flat on its face but screaming plummeting off a cliff is its final fifteen to twenty minutes. For a film set in a rebooted continuity, promising a fresh take on the franchise and the exploration of new ideas, the movie is obsessed and indeed bogged down with paying homages to one of the original Star Trek films. Dialogue and character beats, including wholesale lifting of dialogue and even scenes, are taken from that older film to the point where you begin to wonder why they didn't simply remake the movie wholesale. The reboot becomes a pastiche, reaching farcical levels when a powerful character and emotional moment from the older film is inverted and then undone seconds later by a howlingly awful plot device.

Where Into Darkness truly stumbles is that it does not understand you have to earn your miracles. Having a miracle solve a problem is fine, as long as it has consequences and a price. In the original third Star Trek film, Kirk pulled off a miracle that was highly implausible, but it was sold because the price he paid - in the life of his son, the loss of his ship and the (albeit temporary) end of his career - was high and the consequences real. Into Darkness has a fortune-reversing twist in its ending but because we've spent very little time with this crew (as compared to the better part of two decades at the time of the original films) it does not resonate. Its resolution is cheap and easy, unearned and without apparent consequence: a sequence in which thousands if not tens of thousands of people must have died is shrugged off in a high-fiving, triumphant final scene.

Star Trek - Into Darkness (***) has early promise but its ending is disposable, fast-food storytelling, unworthy of its excellent cast. The deeply unsatisfying ending squanders the promise of some solid early action scenes and even a few effective scenes of character development which are superior to anything in the first film. Indeed, with a different set of final scenes (and much less riffing off of a far superior movie), Into Darkness would have effortlessly surpassed its forebear. Instead, the problems way it down just as much. Into Darkness remains visually impressive, fast-paced and, if you can switch your brain off, fun. But it's also derivative, unsatisfying and apparently terrified of doing anything new, which is a very odd position for a movie set in a new, unrestrained and exciting continuity to be in. The film is on general release in most countries now.

Wertzone Classics: Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 3 (remastered)

When Star Trek: The Next Generation entered its third season, it was in trouble. The critical reception to the show's second year had been mixed, producer and effective showrunner (under Rick Berman) Maurice Hurley had left and the cast were unhappy with the removal of Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher. As the third season opened, Rick Berman had to hire a largely new writing team, a new showrunner and had to bring back McFadden to appease the rest of the cast (particularly Patrick Stewart). Fortunately for his show and for the fans, Berman was lucky. The new showrunner was the talented Michael Piller and amongst the new writers were the young and energetic Ira Steven Behr, Rene Echeverria and Ronald D. Moore, all of whom would go on to define Star Trek for many years to come.

Because of these changes, Season 3 was produced in a state of chaos. Scripts were being completed mere days before filming, leaving little time for pre-production. This can be seen in the reduced amount of location filming this season, with almost no time to book location shoots ahead of filming. However, there's a noticeable improvement in special effects thanks to the introduction of new, smaller and easier-to-shoot filming models of both the Enterprise and the Romulan warbird (which makes several appearances). New, considerably more comfortable uniforms are also introduced, to the evident comfort and relief of the actors.

But what really makes the season work is the superior writing. Piller was keen to introduce more scenes of character interaction and development to the show. The guest cast are moved away from being the centre of the show, with their impact on the regular characters being more important. There's more continuity, with a recurring Romulan threat throughout the season (The Enemy, The Defector, Tin Man) and Worf's Klingon background being developed more thoroughly (Sins of the Father). Having been proven to be a sentient being in Season 2's excellent The Measure of a Man, Data's evolution continues through several episodes before peaking in The Offspring, where he tries to build a new android 'daughter'. Comedy is allowed freer reign, particularly in Deja Q, Captain's Holiday and Menage a Troi, which all feature a few good laughs (Deja Q may be the funniest episode the show ever did).

But the third season's strong reputation relies on its two absolute stand-out, inarguably, stone-cold classics. Yesterday's Enterprise is a time travel story involving parallel universes which remains fully comprehensible, features one of the best space battles the show ever did and finds an intelligent and non-cheesy way of bringing back Tasha Yar. The writing is strong, with lots of moments of subtlety (the alternate Riker and Picard don't get on) and some impressive production values and details, such as the revamping of the Enterprise bridge.

At the end of the season we also get The Best of Both Worlds, the show's first season cliffhanger and still the best one Star Trek's ever done. The return of the Borg, the outstanding music, the character interplay between Riker and newcomer Shelby, the effects and the doom-laden, hopeless atmosphere combine to make for one of the franchise's finest hours.

Conversely, there are only a few weak moments in the mix. The Price, The Vengeance Factor and The Most Toys are quite dull, whilst The High Ground is a commentary on the Northern Ireland Troubles which misfires completely due to the writers' poor understanding of that conflict. Who Watches the Watchers? sabotages a good premise and some excellent Enterprise scenes with some dull guest cast performances. But it's more surprising how good the show has become compared to the first two seasons, with even minor episodes like The Survivors and The Hunted coming to life and being enjoyable in a way the smaller stand-alones of the first two years struggled with.

On a technical basis, the HD upscaling of the show is again amazing, with the same team that handled Season 1 doing the job. That means some more beautiful 3D planet renders, some outstanding effects recreations and superior reproductions of the show's colours (Season 3 is more colourful than the first two seasons). After the slightly disappointing Season 2 upgrade (the company responsible for that is not being re-used, interestingly), the S3 update is even more astonishing. For a season that was driven so much by writing changes, the extra features do a great job of focusing on the writing team and how they went about creating the best show possible and avoiding the mistakes of the first two years.

Ultimately, the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (*****) is outstanding. The writers, actors and crew are all on the top of their game, dragging the so-so show of the first two seasons up in quality to become something truly impressive. The season is available now in the UK and USA.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 2 (remastered)

Originally airing from 1988 to 1989, the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation was beset by challenges. A writer's strike crippled Hollywood between seasons and the show was almost cancelled as a result. The producers were able to get around the problem by re-tasking scripts from the aborted Star Trek: Phase II TV show from the 1970s, reducing the season order by four episodes and - in a fit of true desperation - dropping a clip show (the terrifyingly awful Shades of Grey, widely-acknowledged as the worst episode of the entire franchise) into the mix. They scraped through to produce a season that is a notable improvement over the first year, and definitely better than it has any right to be given the situation it was produced under.

As with the first season, things get off to a bumpy start but improve later on. Fortunately, they improve a lot faster. The first two episodes, The Child (Troi gets pregnant with a rapidly-evolving alien thingamajig) and Where Silence Has Lease (the Enterprise gets stuck in a void in space where an alien superintelligence messes around with them just because that's how it rolls), are pretty bad but there is a quantum leap in improvement when Elementary, Dear Data comes on. Excellent performances and a strong script alleviate the somewhat ropey rules the show is establishing regarding the holodeck. Weaker episodes continue to roll in - The Outrageous Okona (slightly tepid conman comes on board), The Dauphin (Wesley Crusher romance episode...NO!), The Royale (crew encounter weird hotel IN SPACE) and Up the Long Ladder (outrageous Irish stereotyping) should all be burned - but there's also a better sense of the characters getting their own voices and characterisation becoming more consistent.

More to the point, the season gives us a larger number of very good episodes compared to the first. A Matter of Honour is terrific fun, establishing Riker as the first officer of a Kling Bird of Prey during an officer exchange programme. Jonathan Frakes - whose acting powers have now been radically enhanced by The Beard - steps up his game a lot. Contagion is a very dumb episode about computer viruses, but as an action romp it's very entertaining (similar to The Arsenal of Freedom in Season 1, but better). Peak Performance from later in the season is in a similar vein. Time Squared is a creepy episode about time loops and features some disturbing ideas and a doom-laden atmosphere, though some questionable writing for Picard prevents it from fulfilling its full promise. The Emissary is an important episode for Worf and the progression of his character arc and is very solid.

More impressively, this season gives us the first two hands-down, no-questions, absolute 'classic' episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. First up is The Measure of a Man, written by Melinda Snodgrass (best-known as the co-editor of the Wild Cards superhero books series). The episode is an examination of whether Data is a sentient being or not, and features some terrific acting from Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes. It's a morality play, the sort of thing that Trek can make tedious if it mishandles it, but here the team do an exemplary job of exploring the issues and turning them into a riveting hour of television (and it is an hour, as the Blu-Ray set features the hitherto-unseen 60-minute cut of the episode before it was trimmed down to the normal 44 minutes).

Even more impressive is Q Who? This episode is notable for introducing the Borg, but it's also a masterclass in pacing, music (the score is incredibly ominous), exposition without getting leaden (the hints to the past antagonism between Guinan and Q are played just right), tension, action and a genuinely surprising ending: arguably the only time on ST:TNG that the crew 'lose' the struggle of the episode and only barely survive. It's also the one and only time that Q is effectively used as a dramatically intense character. His other appearances either misfire or are played for comedy. Here we see John De Lancie at his absolute best, particularly in the scene where he pitifully tells Picard what is happening is no illusion after eighteen Enterprise crewmembers are killed by the Borg. The climactic scene where Picard begs Q to save them before they are all slaughtered is handled pitch-perfectly by Patrick Stewart (who was genuinely troubled by the episode's message that the Enterprise crew can't win all the time) as well.

Whilst Season 2 will never be remembered as the best season of the show, it does feature two of its finest hours and a whole host of other, very solid episodes. The cast turn in excellent performances, particularly Diana Muldaur as Dr. Pulaski in her only season on the show (replacing Gates McFadden as Dr. Crusher, who was sacked for criticising the show's sexist scripts in the first season; internal and fan pressure resulted in her reinstatement for Season 3). It's a shame we didn't get to see Pulaski again, as the evolution of her character arc and the development of her relationships with Worf and Data were very well-handled over the course of the season.

As with the first season, the restoration job has done a pretty good job. However, a different team was used for the second season and there is the sense that a few corners were cut. The redone effects aren't quite as well-handled as in the first season (particularly noticeable in Q Who?, though the original version of the episode had a few iffy effects issues as well, so perhaps it was unsalvageable) and the new team have only cleaned up the planets that the Enterprise orbits, rather than replacing them with fully-convincing 3D spheres. Whilst the improvements are still light-years beyond what people might be expecting, they're not quite as jaw-dropping as the job that was done on Season 1. This is made up for a bit by the other extras, which are impressive. The highlight is a lengthy roundtable discussion between the entire cast about the show and what it meant for their careers and legacies, although the ongoing 'history of the series' documentary is also excellent. The original DVD extras are also included, though again only in standard definition.

The second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (****) sees the show improving by leaps and bounds over the weaker first year. It is available now on Blu-Ray in the UK and USA. The third season - often regarded as the show's finest season - will be released in April.

DEEP SPACE NINE at 20

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is now twenty years old. The first episode aired on 3 January 1993, whilst The Next Generation was still on the air, and it was for 176 episodes over seven seasons, ending in May 1999.

Deep Space Nine was originally dismissed as the unwanted stepchild of the Star Trek franchise. After a brief eruption of press surrounding its start, it was soon overshadowed by the end of The Next Generation, the release of the first Next Generation movie (Generations) and the arrival of Star Trek: Voyager. However, in the years since DS9's conclusion, it has been critically reappraised and is now often widely cited as the best of the six Star Trek television series.

Deep Space Nine was the result of a conversation in 1991 between Brandon Tartikoff (the then-head of Paramount Television) and The Next Generation producer-showrunners Michael Pillar and Rick Berman, whilst TNG was in its fourth season. With TNG expected to end after six years (it ultimately ended after seven), Paramount was keen to expand the franchise and keep the name going through a new show that would initially air alongside TNG and then take over from it afterwards. Tartikoff himself suggested that if both the original series and TNG were, in Gene Roddenberry's Western analogy, "Wagon Train to the stars," then the new show could be "The Rifleman in space." Rather than being based around space travel and exploration - an area TNG was already handling well - the new show would be set in one location and would deal with the characters exploring issues in greater depth.

Pillar and Berman developed the premise even further. They initially discussed a planetside starbase but realised the costs of location filming for every episode would soon become ruinous. They instead settled on a space station as the main setting. They also decided to use a non-Federation station, feeling this would force the characters to solve problems through ingenuity rather than the superior technology of Starfleet. They also decided to explore some of the races and situations established in TNG rather than relying on old Star Trek stand-bys like the Klingons and Romulans. In particular, the Ferengi and Cardassians of TNG were to be explored in much greater depth than on TNG and a new culture, the Bajorans, was introduced as well (with enough forewarning that their backstory could be established on TNG a year before DS9 aired).

Despite initial plans to not involve space exploration as a major theme, the writers changed their minds and established that a stable wormhole was located in the Bajoran system, linking Federation territory to the Gamma Quadrant on the far side of the Galaxy. This allowed them to explore unknown space or have new aliens arriving on DS9 whilst still retaining a static setting.

For their cast of characters, the producers cast Avery Brooks as Commander Sisko, a survivor of the Battle of Wolf 359 on TNG. Arguably the most professional military commander of the various Star Trek characters, Brooks played Sisko as reserved in command but also a man of deeply-held convictions, a strong family man and also a man with a dry sense of humour. In particular, Sisko was much more of a rule-bender than Picard ever was, feeling the ends often justified the means (most devastatingly in the sixth season episode In the Pale Moonlight, which may just feature the most amoral act ever performed by a main character in Star Trek's history). Backing him up was a considerably more dysfunctional crew than any seen before or since in Star Trek: Nana Visitor as terrorist-turned-solider Kira Nerys; Siddig El Fadil as the arrogant-genius Dr. Bashir; Rene Auberjonois as the shapechanging security chief Odo; Terry Farrell as Lt. Dax (a 28-year-old woman with the memories of a 300-year-old slug living in her abdomen); Cirroc Lofton as Sisko's son Jake; and Armin Shimerman as the station's resident Ferengi barkeep Quark. In addition, Colm Meaney's character of Chief Miles O'Brien was transferred over from TNG (and promoted to the main cast).

It would be fair to say that, like its forebear, DS9 took a while to find its feet. Early episodes focused on the Bajoran political-religious situation and tended to over-emphasise TNG characters and situations (the Duras sisters, Lwaxana Troi, Q and Vash all appeared in DS9's first season). The results were episodes that were often very well-made - and certainly DS9's first season wipes the floor with TNG's first two seasons - but tended to be a little too safe, too neat and too traditional. A notable exception was the episode Duet, a morally complex story which packed genuine emotional power. The second season saw the show adopt more of its own identity, relaxing on the Bajoran stuff (after the opening trilogy) and instead hinting at an enigmatic new threat on the horizon called 'the Dominion'. In the second season finale, the Dominion was revealed to be an anti-Federation, an alliance of several powerful races in the Gamma Quadrant that viewed the Federation as a distinct threat.

DS9 took a big step forwards in the third season. Writer Ira Steven Behr was promoted to showrunner following Michael Pillar's departure and immediately began steering the show away from technobabble solutions to episodes in favour of more human drama. Rules banning holodeck malfunction episodes were put in place. Another important addition was the arrival of Ronald D. Moore from TNG writing team and the addition of a starship permanently stationed at DS9, the Defiant. The third season focused on the cold war between the Federation and the Dominion, with the threat represented by the Dominion becoming pressing. This culminated in the two-part storyline Improbable Cause/The Die is Cast, in which the Dominion destroyed a large portion of the Romulan and Cardassian fleets, vowing that the Federation and Klingons would be next.

For Season 4, the DS9 production crew was ordered to shake up the show in some fashion. A new title sequence was adopted, Sisko was promoted to full captain (in the Season 3 finale) and Michael Dorn was brought on board to reprise his TNG character of Worf. The writers decided to follow up on the Dominion threat in the previous season by having the Dominion orchestrate a split between the Federation and Klingons, leading to a state of near-war between the two sides for most of the season. Whilst successful and highly popular with the fans, the writers did feel this took them off where they were planning to go. In Season 5 they arranged a rapprochement between the two sides just in time for the outbreak of full scale war against the Dominion at the end of the season. This war lasted until the final episode of the series.

Whilst the Dominion War, and the years of cold war leading up to it, are often considered to be DS9's primary storyline, the show's actual main plot centred on the fact that Sisko was 'the Emissary', a Bajoran religious figure with a connection to their gods, the Prophets. In fact, the Prophets turned out to be ultra-advanced aliens living in the wormhole, but who still considered Sisko to be bound to them. Sisko's arc over the seven seasons would see him initially rejecting but later embracing his role as the Prophet. Similarly, Sisko's Cardassian opposite, Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo), would transform over the course of the series from an antagonistic villain to a semi-ally to ultimately Sisko's nemesis, and serving as his equivalent amongst the Pah-Wraiths, a group of 'evil' Prophets. This story arc, though sometimes risking cheese, was well-handled by the writers and actors and gave the show a dramatic spine which began in the pilot and concluded satisfactorily in the final episode of the series, giving the series a coherent, overall storyline and direction that none of the other Star Trek series possessed. Given that this arc was unplanned and was handled by many different writers over the course of seven seasons, the fact it ended up being as cohesive and solid as it did is impressive.

After DS9 ended the cast and crew went on to other things. Most notably, a lot of them regrouped four years later for the 'new' (or I suppose we should be saying now, 'newer') Battlestar Galactica. Ronald D. Moore was the main showrunner and brought on board DS9 writers David Weddle, Bradley Thompson, Michael Taylor and Jane Espenson (Ira Steven Behr was busy on The 4400). Like DS9, the new BSG was darker and more cynical than its parent series, more willing to challenge audience assumptions, kill off characters and feature long-running storylines. Ultimately, however, BSG's story arc collapsed under a morass of unanswered questions and incoherent storytelling. This indicated that DS9 had been lucky to get away with telling a long-running, multi-year arc with almost no forward planning (and DS9's arc had never been quite as intricate as the storyline BSG set up anyway).

Deep Space Nine should be applauded for many things, including the most reliably consistent standard of storytelling, directing and acting across the various Star Trek series. It had very, very few unwatchably awful episodes and several that must rank amongst the very best episodes that Star Trek as a whole has ever produced: In the Pale Moonlight, Trials and Tribble-ations, The Visitor, In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light, Call to Arms and Far Beyond the Stars. By Star Trek standards, the show was relatively gritty and hard-hitting. Relatively major characters died (though only one amongst the regular cast), major Star Trek planets were devastated and most of the final two seasons were dedicated to a gruelling war which exposed the idealism of the Federation as being worth fighting for, but also perhaps somewhat naive in the face of some threats (though the revelation of the existence of the Defiant-class warships and Section 31 showed that the Federation wasn't perhaps quite as toothless as had been thought).

The show generally maintained an optimistic outlook, however, and did not descend into outright bleakness, despite coming closer than any other Trek show (particularly in the amazingly depressing Siege of AR-558). On the flipside the show did comedy better than any of the other shows and in the Odo-Quark relationship had perhaps the most intriguing and well-developed character relationship in the history of the franchise. It also featured the most complex and layered recurring Star Trek character ever, with Andrew Robinson's portrayal of Garak being nothing short of genius. DS9 was also unusual in having a regular, recurring cast of villains including Marc Alaimo's Dukat, Casey Biggs' Damar, Salome Jens's female changeling and, most memorably, Jeffrey Combs's Weyoun. Weyoun may be Star Trek's most amiably entertaining villain, a diplomat with the spiel of a smooth used-car salesman backed up by the most ferocious fighting force in the Galaxy. His ability to ponder the aesthetic value of a painting whilst simultaneously discussing the execution of terrorist suspects was both amusing and chilling.

Deep Space Nine is available in full on DVD right now. A Blu-Ray release, with the show fully remastered in HD, is planned for when the re-relase of TNG is completed. Based on the timescale for that, I expect DS9 will start appearing in that format in late 2015.

Quick Hits: GRRM, Rothfuss, Abraham, Scholes, STAR TREK

Locus has published its publication list from now until next summer, revealing some interesting information:

Expect the new Dunk and Egg story in 2013.

George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois's anthology Dangerous Women, including the fourth Dunk and Egg Song of Ice and Fire prequel novella, is now listed for release in May 2013. Amazon Germany is reporting that the book collecting all four Dunk 'n' Egg novellas into one volume will come out in May 2014. Whilst we have to take that with a grain of salt, that does tie in with the new story having a 12-month exclusivity contract before it can be reprinted anywhere else.

The same list confirms that the third Dagger and Coin novel by Daniel Abraham will be called The Tyrant's Law and that both it and Ken Scholes's long-awaited Requiem will be out in June 2013.

Meanwhile, Pat Rothfuss has sold a new fantasy trilogy to DAW Books. Despite speculation that this might be the rumoured sequel series to The Kingkiller Chronicle, there are also hints that this might be an urban fantasy trilogy consisting of notably shorter novels by Rothfuss's normal standards. He may also have already written (or partially written) the first book, meaning we might see it before The Doors of Stone (the final Kingkiller book). Hopefully Rothfuss will clear this up on his blog soon.

Finally, the new Star Trek movie allegedly has a title. It's Star Trek Into Darkness. Without a colon, which is apparently a deliberately stylistic choice. Hmm. Not sure about that one.

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION Season 2 Blu-Ray release date

Star Trek: The Next Generation's second season will be released on Blu-Ray on 4 December 2012.

Like the first season, the second season has been painstakingly re-mastered for high-definition, with each episode rebuilt from its source film elements from scratch. As a bonus for fans, the set will include a specially-extended cut of the fan-favourite episode The Measure of a Man. A longer cut of the episode was specially prepared back in 1988 for writer Melinda Snodgrass. Snodgrass kept her copy of the extended cut and loaned it back to the remastering team, allowing them to create this extended version of the episode.

The set will also include a brand-new roundtable discussion between the original TNG castmembers as they talk about the show twenty-five years on from its launch.

CBS has also revealed that the first season sold almost 100,000 copies in its first five days on sale in the USA alone, a highly impressive figure (making back more than half of the money invested in remastering the season) given the high retail price of the set.