|
|
BASIC
STATS |
|
Origin Back in the late 90's I decided to write my own sci-fi series named Kidz Trek. It is what you think it is, Star Trek with kids/teens as the crew. It was a daft idea, unless I wanted it to be a silly comedy or kids series not a proper sci-fi fantasy show like I intended. You have to understand though, I was 12 when I first started it up. I barely wrote any of it to be honest, most of it was thoroughly planned however. The series had six separate series': The Original Series starring Lilly, Scot, Lilly's brother (I changed the name for FV), Carly and others, onboard the Lillyia(s). Being kids/teens you can imagine why the Lillyia's were constantly replaced as the series went on. Anyway the other spinoffs were The Voyage Home, Excelsior (or as you guys know it as here Erona, except instead of time travel, the Excelsior jumped through Game Cubes looking for "Voyager" or I named it the Verinia during the later stages of planning*), Millennium, Planetary Quest and The Future. Voyage Home was basically just Voyager, with a lot more episodes. As the Voyage Home series went on a few new faces joined the ranks. While I was planning this series, I came up with Millennium and Planetary Quest to replace Original when it finished - of course it never got close, but that's not the point. Both were based a few years after Original, they both took place after "Voyager" got home, Millennium's point was to mix all of my favourite characters into one series. The Original ended like Season Four of FV did with the Lillyia F9 being destroyed, Planetary Quest began like Season Five where it was sighted by the Excelsior/Erona. Four of Voyage Home's starred in it on and off, Kiara was the one consistently in it.. along with two "new" characters: Stevé and Tani. If the series was released in book form like I had planned it, Planetary Quest would of come first and this would be their first book. However Kiara and co already knew them, which I had expected people to speculate about who they are and where they came from. Two thirds of the way through Voyage went through another cast change, and I had started to make my own version of the Mummy (ala Resurrection lol) for English Literature. This was Stevé and Tani's real introduction. The plot twist for Planetary Quest was that Stevé and Tani were the villains. Nobody knew why and for how long etc, it was found out about half way through. The actual villains of the series were another duo, controlling their actions for most of the series until they're broken free in the last few episodes. When that ended, they were supposed to join the Millennium crew with all my other Kidz Trek favourites. That series never got as far as cast listings, so yeah that was the end of it. Not that I was writing them of course. Around about the time I was planning the final season of Planetary Quest, Fifth Voyager was in production or at least the other fanfic series' that came before it were. By the time PQ was finished it's planning, FV was almost ready to appear on the internet. Kidz Trek took a back seat for over a year, before it was scrapped completely. Stevé and Tani never really got their moment, I loved them from the get go, they needed more.. * For more Kidz Trek information, go back and read the guide Kidz Trek - Where It Began.. if it's online when you read this lol.
The
transition into Fifth Voyager Episode four was a chance to play with some new ones again. At the time Hunters was going to be a good episode as it was going to be bigger and a parody, it's funny how often I'm wrong. I made up the Foster twins to make fun of a boy who bullied me at school, Threepwood for the Monkey Island games I was loving at the time, and then I thought up.. Hey what about James and Jessie from Pokémon. Oh, bad move. I had even assigned their US voice actors to play them. In the end I gave the episode away as I didn't think I would write it well. I told the writers that they could do whatever with the Fosters, as long as they were opposites. Threepwood, whatever. James and Jessie I was specific. I had more hopes for them. I didn't want them exactly like the Pokémon characters. I told them a brief history (for the letters plot), that they lived together, James wasn't as erm.. pansyish as the US dubbers make Pokémon James, or dumb for that matter. Jessie, I told them that she acts angry around everyone else but not James. I didn't take FV seriously back then or I would of wrote it myself, I wanted to see what somebody else could do with what I gave them. The most important part which I think made that episode as awful as it is, I told them to make it seem like James and Jessie may have been together before. Ah hem. I don't know what happened, I really don't. True I hadn't decided how they split up or anything for that matter, but everything about them was unbelievable.. but at least they weren't their Pokémon counterparts. By the time the episode Unforgettable was being planned, I had decided after more character developing that I wanted James and Jessie in the main cast list. I was happyish with Jessie, but James right away went under serious development. I've edited Hunters so much over the years to make it not so bad, but there's only so much you can do that isn't rewriting it all together. It's way too old to do that with.
Change over
the year(s) The one thing I did for a laugh, for me only was make him opposite to Stevé in some ways. He was very sure of himself around women, he constantly hit on Tani most of all who didn't like it most of the time, and other girls.. she was the only one who responds in the end, all others hated it. James is very naive, respects girls too much to "hit on" them, and doesn't like being hit on himself.. but he's unaware that he has that charm that attracts so many girls. Complete opposites. Of course I played it to extremes like everything else in Season One, and made him actually scared at times. I gave him a reason for it just to be fair, and that inspired the whole Angela thing in Season Four and the girl in Test of Time, who he's very non vocal about what happened. I did keep something in that part of Stevé's personality though, his hobby of "nicely" teasing Tani. For me James only found his footing during Season Two between Interactions and The Slayers. It took me a while to get him to be exactly how I wanted that worked as well. For me James is the character who's had the most character development. If you were to list the amount of differences between the original Season One James (that's Season One James with the scenes/lines I cut/edited over the years) and Season Five or B4FV Season Three James for that matter, then you'd be there a while. B4FV3 had to do a major 'reset button' thing to make his Season One self seem believable. I can explain away in the series that the spell Jessie accidentally did was what made him "that way" in Season One, cos there's only so many times you make fourth wall jokes. When it comes to the characters I also feel that I have to explain it in a way that's realistic, not just basically "the writer changed her mind, or seriously developed the character and just couldn't bare the thought of using the original version of the character in the prequels". Over the years the best way to develop ideas and get a general feel for which characters work, and which don't, were me and my best friend acting out episodes.. not to script or anything obviously, just making most of it as we went along. I know it sounds silly but it really works. These things always make me realise that characters such as Damien would be hard to act. Not that me or my friend are actors, but I play Damien everytime the best I can and I just can't despite the fact that writing him is incredibly easy for me. Whereas James and Jessie I can capture their characters as easily as I can on paper/computer, and no we don't do the romance scenes yeesh.. just the talking in those cases. Action, forget about it. Anyway the point I was getting to was when we first started the plays, I think the episode Witchcraft was the first one, (Craig was more or less created in one of those btw, see his guide for more) I played James (and Jess) very much like the Pokémon characters with the same name. The two were cowards, irritating (sometimes), hyper, faint at the sight of blood.. you get the idea, for a while I kept a few of those things in Season One, and the characters were a little difficult to write. Once I started on Season Two those characteristics still felt annoying to me, so James did start to change slowly over the earlier Season Two episodes. While writing his original self in One, I always felt embarrassed for him and it's worse now that I remember how he was or read the episodes themselves. Season One's been edited to death so you don't see the worst of it, but there's still some left in for you to get the idea. I'm not really saying that James doesn't have any of the character traits he had back then, he does.. it would of been just a new character then. I was never comfortable with him, it just didn't work and at first he was miles away from Stevé. Now I'm always in a comfort zone writing him, a part of the past has still rubbed off on me as sometimes I still think twice about what he's saying or doing. He's still the character I'm most careful with.
Overall his
addition has been.. |