How the Strikes Will Impact Your Favorite Shows (and Conventions)

Pic from TrekMovie.com

(For an article that speaks more generally, click here.  I'll be focusing on Star Trek because, let's face it, the strikes have nothing to do with why we haven't heard anything about the new Galactica show.)

Although, this pic feels appropriate, too.

The Writer's Guild of America went on strike in May.  The actors guild (SAG-AFTRA) began theirs on Thursday.  Among the demands from both camps are 1) an updated compensation structure that deals with streaming content more fairly and 2) restrictions on the usage of AI and other computer tools that perform the duties from either union.  (After all, ensigns should make more than this and extras shouldn't have to worry about being in their own version of "Joan Is Awful.")

(And outside of the writers and actors, one mustn't forget the contributions of the many scores of people behind-the-scenes who make these shows possible.  They, too, will be out of work.  Visual Effects Production Manager Shawn Ewashko has tweeted praises about the team he's assembled for Trek live action going forward, but he's also worried that prolonged strikes could decimate that team as its members have to find other work to feed their families.)

Both strikes have come at a time of desperation for Paramount and when its future is clouded.  Any discussion of post-strike Paramount and Trek would be pure speculation at this point, so  I will focus on the productions that are already greenlit and at various stages of completion.

DISCOVERY: As we all know, after filming on the fifth season was wrapped last November, Paramount canceled the show in March.  New scenes were written to wrap up the series and pickup shoots were planned shortly thereafter.  A tweet from showrunner Michelle Paradise indicates that filming for those pickups began in late April, so we can speculate that the filming is complete by now.  Post-production is still underway on DIS season five and that should continue unabated.

STRANGE NEW WORLDS: The show was renewed for season three and writing was completed before the WGA strike in May, however, the series delayed its production start in solidarity with the WGA.  Once the strikes are over, SNW will likely resume shortly afterward.

LOWER DECKS: Voice actors are also on strike, but the recording for season four was completed last year.  Assuming it's not already finished, the show is in the hands of the animators and should be released as planned.  A fifth season was ordered in March, but production on that will have to wait until after the strikes.  (Writing for animation is handled by a different guild than the WGA.)

PRODIGY: (sigh)  Despite its cancellation (more precisely, renewal reversal), the second season is nearing completion.  (The voice acting was complete.)  The Emmy-nominated series is being shopped to other streaming services and producers are confident it will find a home.  

SECTION 31: While a writers room for this show existed way back in 2020, it hasn't been said publicly if the conversion of that series into a single film was completed before the strike began in May (making S31 into a movie was announced in March, so I'm sure that some work was already underway).  Regardless, production has not yet begun and won't until after the strikes.

STARFLEET ACADEMY: Perhaps not as long as S31, but SA has had a writers room for a while and it was already active when the series was announced in March.  However, like S31, no production is expected for a while.

LEGACY: (Not greenlit, but the people want it.)  One of the powers that be says the "appetite for it is undeniable," but there won't be any discussion about it officially until the strike(s) are over.

Conventions:  You may not have seen this coming, but there's a long list of things striking actors can't do.  Sure, SAG-AFTRA members cannot film their roles, but they can't promote them, either.  That means no conventions.  (I'm not sure what's going to happen at Comic-Con then.)  It is unclear at the moment if an actor from a legacy show (like TNG, DS9, etc.) can appear at a convention.  Armin Shimerman is looking for more info while a tweet from Anson Mount suggests that they can make a "personal appearance," so long as they aren't promoting anything specific.

And now you're up to speed.  Let's hope the compensation for writers and actors both can enter the 21st century and end this thing before too long.

Writing the Special Editions Part VII: "Colonies" is Done

Well, it took a couple of months, but the commentary for Colonies of Kobol is complete.  The whole thing is 2,631 pages in Word with about 400 being the added commentary.  That's a lot of pics, show connections, linguistic discussions, and so on.  A lot.

You may recall a previous blog post wherein I was worried about the file size.  Well, yeah.  That's still a concern.  (Warning: lots of talk about how the sausage is made follows.)

Smashwords, the ebook publishing site I use, has a limit of 15MB when it comes to uploading .doc files.  The final version of CoK SE (with low-quality images) is 20.1MB.  So that's out.  However, they also allow uploading epub files and the limit on those is 20MB.

I've experimented with this and here's how it went.  Calibre can make epub files from .docx files, so I converted the book from .doc to .docx and then ran it through Calibre.  I don't know what black magic it utilizes, but the final epub file was only 5.9MB.  Seeing that, I decided to create a version of the book with high-quality images.  Well, that .doc file was 33MB, but after converting it to an epub, it was 18.7MB.  Huzzah!

But there's a problem.  Smashwords apparently employs rigorous standards for the epubs they allow to be published and their site specifically mentioned Calibre (and other programs) as often providing files that get rejected.  They run the epubs through EPUBCHECK, which is apparently a standard for those files agreed upon by some sort of international cabal.  I downloaded a program that allows me to check the files myself and, expecting the worst, I went ahead and ran CoK SE through.  To my unending surprise, it got a green check mark and "OK."

I mean, my formatting isn't crazy because Smashwords also has rigorous criteria for their .doc uploads.  I assumed with all of my footnotes and links to and fro in 90%+ chapters, it would throw off something.  But it didn't.  

I'm cautiously optimistic for next March when CoK SE will be published.  My plan is to upload the epub to Smashwords and see what happens.  If it ends up getting rejected, I'll have a contingency standing by, perhaps the barebones "no commentary" version that barely fit under 15MB but includes links to my Google Drive with the full version.

So there you go.  I'll let both LoK SE and CoK SE sit and marinate for a bit.  Then, in the fall, I'll give the commentaries another pass and be ready to publish the first one in December.  As planned.

Thanks for reading.

Writing the Special Editions Part VI: An Unseen Pic and Commentary

 I'm currently in the middle of the Cylon War on my first pass through the Special Edition of Colonies of Kobol.  I'm having a lot of fun rereading this and writing my thoughts in there, including pics and other stuff, references to the shows, translating the Tauran dialogue, ...

At any rate, I thought you might enjoy a sample piece of the commentary, along with a map I created while I wrote Book Thirteen: Caprica, but didn't end up publishing in the final version of Volume Three.

In this chapter, we have the first mention of specific sectors.  On screen, the only sector mentioned was Sector Twelve, which included the location of Djerba in Blood & Chrome.  Due to its proximity to Scorpia and the blue interstellar gases visible, I determined that Sector Twelve was in or near Helios Gamma.  I doodled and scribbled for a while and eventually came up with a rudimentary map:

Let me state up front that I didn't want to publish this in the final book because I wasn't happy with the way it looked, plus I couldn't figure out how to deal with overlapping sectors between systems, how far out from each system the sector should spread, would there be sectors in the Gulf?, and so on.

In the end, I decided that there were twenty sectors overall.  Sectors Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta are comprised of the main planets of each respective solar system, but a solar system is much bigger than just the orbits of its planets.  There are Kuiper Belts, Oort Clouds, and more.  Simplified for the purposes of this book, however, I primarily worried about the Outer Belt (aka Kuiper Belt) where dwarf planets, tylium, ores, water, etc., can be found. 

So why are the other sectors numbered that way?  Well, for Sector Twelve, I knew it had to be in Gamma and I knew I wanted it closer to the Gulf so Husker and Coker's Raptor could reach that sector in something approaching a reasonable amount of time.  As for the rest, I dunno.  It made sense to me at the time I made it.  I recall thinking the first sector of each system would be anchored to its "corner."  (For example, since Alpha is in the lower left from this perspective at this time, its first sector is in the lower left corner, and the others go from there.)

Let's just say the military likes to complicate things and move past it.

Thanks for reading.

Writing the Special Editions Part V: Halfway Point on 'Colonies'

Well, a little beyond halfway, I suppose.

Here's the screen where I am now (nearing the end of Picon):

Feel free to embiggen so you can get a sample of the commentary.

So far, it's been a great deal of fun, even though I just read, edited, re-read, and published these books last year.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to wait a decade to read and write the commentary on Colonies, like I did with Lords of Kobol, but it makes sense to release the special edition of Colonies sooner rather than later.

Lots of details are in the commentary, including translations of "foreign" dialogue, inspirations for characters or events, funny stories, sad stories ... it's been enjoyable and kinda therapeutic.

Still on track for LoK SE to be released in December and CoK SE to be released next March.  As for the 15MB "wall" I posted about a few months ago, I'm still working on it.  I think I'll be able to get around it on way or another.

Thanks for reading.

Writing the Special Editions Part IV: Hitting the 15MB Wall and a POLL

 

I'm hitting a wall.  And it's 15MB high.

How big is 15MB?  Well, that will get you about one minute of an HD movie.  About one quarter of a podcast.  About ten high-quality photos.  

On the ebook publishing site Smashwords, that's the maximum file size allowed for an uploaded book.

Smashwords is the site I've used for all my books, primarily because they allow me to publish free ebooks (since I can't charge for my BSG spinoffs) and because they convert the source file into just about any format for ebook readers.

When I finished Lords of Kobol Special Edition, I was concerned about the file size since I added a bunch of pics and such in the commentary.  The total at the end of it was 13.7MB.  

I knew, when it came to Colonies of Kobol Special Edition, I would be in trouble.

I have since sorted all 526 chapters from the three volumes into near-chronological order and I finished the laborious task of bookmarking/hyperlinking the chapters for the Table of Contents.  I was well over the limit.  I reduced the quality of the pics to blurry-ass JPGs ... still over.  I deleted all of the maps ... over again.  I deleted all but the two most important (low-quality) pics in the book ... 14.8MB, as you see above.

"Whew," you're thinking.  "You did it!"

No.  No, I have not.

I haven't even started the author's commentary yet.  For me, that's the most important part.  I really enjoyed reading Lords of Kobol again and writing my thoughts about it right afterward, sharing stories of its creation, where ideas came from, pictures and maps, homages I included, linguistic jokes and tricks, and so on.  Since I just finished Colonies a little over a year ago, all of that info is fresh in my head and I won't have to rely upon my archives of old Word files or ancient blogposts to fill in the blanks.  I have PLENTY of thoughts to share on Colonies, stories to tell about its inspirations, LOADS of linguistic insight, connections to the TV series, pics and maps and flags and covers, and much, much more.  I desperately want to have that info readily available for readers in the same way it will be for readers of LoK.

Unless Smashwords changes their file size limit, I can't.

But ... I have an idea.  And a Plan.  (You BSG fans should like that.)

Here's the Plan: I'll publish what I have now via Smashwords next March.  For most readers I'm sure, they'll be happy to have all three volumes in one ebook and with the chapters sorted in chronological order.  For those readers who want all of the additional information (and to salve my own ego), I will have, standing by, a FULL VERSION of the Special Edition ready to be downloaded from some file sharing site.  This will be the version of the book I'd make if Smashwords had no limit.  I will place links to that version right at the beginning of the Smashwords 15MB edition so readers can't miss it.  Then, they can choose if they want the whole shebang or decide they're happy with what they've got.  

Meanwhile, I'll keep checking Smashwords to see if they decide to up their file limit in the next year.  The FULL VERSION will be ready to go, if they do.

TAKE A POLL: Which version of Colonies of Kobol - Special Edition are you likely to download?

VOTE HERE

NEW PLAN: I'm going with the epub file from the get-go.  I've tested it before and a fully annotated and illustrated Special Edition comes under the 20MB limit, so no worries there. 

Thanks for reading.

Writing the Special Editions Part III: Lords of Kobol is finished ... for now

Took about two-and-a-half months, but I've finished the first pass at Lords of Kobol: Special Edition.  If you haven't been following along, I read each of the books and created a kind of "commentary track" (like good ol' DVDs) in which I discussed inspirations, languages used, mythology, connections to the TV shows, and so on.  I threw in quite a few pictures and sketches and things, too.  I tried to keep the commentary fun but I'll admit, it was kinda like therapy for me at times so I got a little "real" once or twice.

All five books plus commentary came out to 1,314 pages in Word.  Thankfully, it's still 1MB under the 15MB limit imposed by Smashwords. 

I'll let it sit and macerate for a while.  I wasn't planning on publishing it until December for BSG's 20th anniversary, so I'll check back in and give the additional stuff another look before locking it down.  

"Will there be changes?"  Yes.  Deleted scenes have been added in, but with "DELETED" in the header of each chapter, so you'll know what's what.  I'll leave it up to you to decide if those are truly "in the story."  There were about three chapters altogether wherein I was displeased with how it read.  More often that not, there was too much "telling" and not enough "showing," so I altered things to do more of the latter.  Only one chapter required a true rewrite and it was for that reason.  I made a few other minor corrections (e.g. spelling) or additions for clarity's sake.  The end product, however, will be the definitive version of those books.

"Are you going to pull a Lucas and remove the originals from the web?"  No.  I won't go that far.  However, once the SE is published, that's the one I'll point people toward.  I cannot foresee a time in the future wherein I'll want to add or change anything else, so the SE will be the final word.

"What's next?"  Oof.  Colonies of Kobol.

Lords of Kobol was "only" one thousand pages.  Colonies is 2,000+.  AND, the Special Edition will put nearly everything in chronological order.  I am certain it will take me days, if not weeks, to arrange the chapters in the new file and then retitle the headers for each chapter.  And that's to say nothing of the bookmarking/hyperlinking for the Table of Contents.  All of that before I even start on the commentary portions.  Plus, don't forget about that 15MB cap for uploads to Smashwords.  I will have to degrade the quality of the images in the books (maps, primarily) to try and stay under that cap.  It's a good thing I wasn't planning on releasing that SE until next March.

I kid about the tedium.  It will be tedious, but I'll enjoy digging into each facet of Colonies again and talking about the various languages involved, why I made certain choices, etc.  

That's what I'll be up to.  Thanks for reading.

Writing the Special Editions Part II: The Trilogy is Finished

If you're just tuning in, I'm working on a "special edition" of the Lords of Kobol and Colonies of Kobol books.  I have collected all five LoK books into a single file and I have been in the process of reading it and commenting on the story as I go.  (The "commentary" portion will be available via a hyperlink at the end of each chapter.)  

Simply put, this has been a lot of fun.  I haven't read the trilogy since ... I dunno.  2017, maybe, right before I started work on Colonies?  Lots of good stuff and plenty to talk about in the commentary.  I "get real" a few times, talking about serious personal stuff and how it ended up in the book.  I also dug up a bunch of old files and have pics of sketches inserted in there.  I found the very first draft of the book so I can compare how it started versus how it ended up ... I also found a crazy timeline of events I created before I started writing in earnest in 2009.  It was pretty detailed and I put the whole thing in there to compare and contrast.

One cool item in that timeline I never acted on?  "Hermes - criminal stowaway."  Wha?  I have no memory of that and no idea why I didn't tell that story.  I'm somewhat disappointed I didn't.

At any rate, I just finished the commentary for Book Three, meaning the original trilogy is complete.  Next, I start on Prelude, followed by the "lost" Book Four.  

Things are still on track for a December release, as promised.

As for the Colonies special edition next March ... we'll see, but it's still looking good.

In the meantime, feel free to download and read Lords of Kobol right here.

Thanks for reading.