If my Stargate musical was cannon...

...what would I change?

For what the Musical is like now, here's the link...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLoEKw5zWTk&t=5s

Let's presume that somebody at Amazon or MGM went nuts and decided to make #Stargate: The #Musical cannon-slash official and gave me the keys, what would I change about it? (Of course, this will never happen. #Execs are not that crazy, but its fun to speculate.) Well, here we go...

1) Replace the track called The Rant. The original was a loud, screaming version. But I did an operatic version as a proof-of-concept. Which turned out a lot better then the original. So I'd use the Opera version instead.

2) Replacing The Rant would make some of the lyrics of the first Alan Smithee song wrong, so that would have to be redone as well. If AmazonMGM is paying the bills, I would try to get a flesh and blood person to redo the whole Alan Smithee role.

3) The song Seize Her! has a pronunciation error. The AI pronounces Bra'tac as Brah-tac, instead of Brey'tac as it should be. That would need to be fixed.

4) But the really big change would be replacing all the connecting narration. That would have to be completely redone. In my dream scenario, I'd get Joe Flanigan. It's a nice way to make the whole thing less AI and spice it with the #Atlantis side of the franchise at the same time.

5) Where possible, add sound effects. Footsteps, the gate dialing, etc.

That is what I would do to take the whole thing from a piece of #fanfiction to something serious(ly) meant to part of the franchise tapestry.

6) I don't know where this hypothetical official version would be released. But if there was a #YouTube version, I would get somebody with #Amazon or #MGM to do additional artwork, providing better visuals. (Perhaps even a full-blown anime.)

Regards,

Ruben Hilbers (aka Commander Nash on fanfiction.net )

Between Kevin Kelly and Sly Stallone, What Trek's Writers Missed.

In Season Two of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the writers had things go badly of the rails in the Demilitarized Zone between the #Federation and the #Cardassians. It's good plotline and not the problem. Things in the DMZ basically went wrong because the Federation signed a bad treaty. The #Maquis plotline shows us what happened to the #Colonists who stayed. But that is only half of the equation.

People in 24th century are smart. Are we to believe that nobody sensed that this treaty would be really bad and got out of dodge before the hammer fell? And where did those people end up? In my version of #StarTrek, some of these people founded the lasted version of Nothing, Arizona. Some people might say that doesn't gel with Star Trek as we know it. But I respectfully disagree.

Let's wind things back a bit and asked the question....Why did those colonists move out there in the first place? I would answer with a simple: Earth has become boring. But it's deeper then that. So I'd like to quote Kevin Kelly at this point:

“A world without discomfort is utopia. But it is also stagnant. A world perfectly fair in some dimensions would be horribly unfair in others. A utopia has no problems to solve, but therefore no opportunities either.”

Part of human nature is that to grow, to learn, we have to leave our comfort zone. #Earth (and the other core Federation worlds) have become one giant comfort zone. So to find growth, to find challenges, the colonists left and settled at the border of Federation space. And now those people are forced back into the core of the Federation. Where - having spent years on the borders - they no longer fit in. Or to quote the 1993 movie Demolition Man, starring Sly Stallone (and Wesley Snipes):

See, according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy. Cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind if guy who wants to sit in a greasy spoon and think, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter and buckets of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in a non-smoking section. I wanna run through the streets naked with green Jello all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to. Okay, pal? I've seen the future, you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sittin' around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake singing "I'm an Oscar-Meyer Wiener". You wanna live on top, you gotta live Cocteau's way. What he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice: come down here, maybe starve to death.

Now replace Cocteau with the word Federation and you realize the exact pickle that these (former) colonists are in. So what do they do, they find a ghost town that is off the grid. That officially doesn't exist and where they can life as they see fit. Without the Federation breathing down their necks about 'correct' and 'healthy' living.

And thus the town of Nothing, #Arizona was founded once again in 2367. (I can't speak of the actual, real-life founding of 1977. I wasn't there. I wasn't even born.) Of course, this is just my #fanfiction interpretation. #Canon / #Official Star Trek has never addressed this issue. Hopefully it will do so one day.

(Just for the record. Once the town was founded, it attracted others that had fallen through the cracks of Federation society. Including, ironically, Cardassians refugees, deserters and dissidents. Fueled by the Dominion War, Nothing has a population of rough 900 people by the end of 2375.)

Regards,

Ruben Hilbers

PS: The Forgotten Frontier website is: https://startrekforgottenfrontier.eu/