|
|
|
|
What Didn't Happen Next #4
by I Love Troi Anon All Paramount characters and trademarks belong to them, as do Decipher’s products and trademarks. I would certainly not intententionally infringe on these rights and the following is meant merely as idle speculation. However, just wait for the day when I discover a universe without copyright laws...... What if Benjamin Sisko was played by George Wendt? In the beginning there was the word, and the word was Star Trek. A bunch of do-gooding futuristic spacemen in pajamas boldly going to shoot aliens with big ships and pointy lasers and stuff. Quite a lot later came the Next Generation. This was a slightly different bunch of do-gooders in futuristic pajamas boldly going to sign peace treaties with the aliens with the big ships and lasers. TNG was in full swing when the creators got bored with boldly going and decided to boldly stay in one place with a futuristic soap opera known as Deep Space 9. This way they could let the aliens with big ships and pointy lasers come to them and save money on exotic location filming. Deep Space 9 also pushed back the boundaries of political correctness with the introduction of an African-American captain, Benjamin Sisko. This, as continued later by the female captain Janeway, displayed the abolition of irrational prejudices in the future. However, as the original series had already demonstrated this was unnecessary. Any rational person in the future would agree that the most likely development of racism would be that the Blacks and Whites would unite and gang up on the Greens. But Avery Brooks became Ben Sisko and a mighty fine job of it he did as well. Not only bringing a new dimension to Star Trek but shaping a show that would have profound influence on Star Trek CCG. Rick Berman was on his way to work one day to continue discussions about a new Star Trek series as a follow up to TNG. He was just about to enter the building when he was stopped by a spotty nerd of about 16. He was bored to tears for the next 20 minutes being asked about every minute detail of Star Trek. Not wanting to disappoint the youngster with the truth (that the characters are based on his wife’s family and the plotlines are drawn out of a hat by trained chimps) he made an excuse about "needing to hurry to develop the next exciting episode" and left. However, this made Rick think. Is this what Star Trek has become, a haven for nerds bored with reality? This needs to change fast! He stormed into the office and shouted, "Scrap the plans for DS9! We're changing it!" "But we've already written the pilot!" replied another director. But Rick got his way. His idea was to make Star Trek more appealing to average people, more amusing and most of all less nerdy. Despite several protests from Gene Roddenberry along the lines of "wouldn't have been allowed in my day" plans were laid out to revamp the show. However, to change everything at this late a stage would have been far too costly so instead they opted merely to change the lead actor. We need comedy, we need deadpan, we need.... Norm! And so George Wendt, most commonly known as Cheers bar rat Norm Peterson was cast as Benjamin Sisko. The DS9 early episodes were quite different in many respects from the ones in our universe but they were similar in one important way. They were pretty rubbish. After a while Ben accidentally defeating the Cardassians by weird strokes of luck and embracing the role of the Emmissary with total apathy became boring. Even the joke about the Captains chair being too small which brought the house down in the first episode soon became dull. Paramount were just about to axe the show when a weird stroke of fate happened. An episode set entirely in Quark's Bar was shown where Sisko sat at the bar (stage right) and the other cast periodically came in and talked about their problems. The episode was an instant success and DS9 became a huge hit overnight, even with those who 3 years ago would have called Star Trek sad. After that, Quark's Bar became the main scene in the show which was increasing in popularity with every episode. Meanwhile Star Trek CCG was ticking along ok. Decipher had just signed a 3 year agreement with Paramount to give them rights to all future Star Trek episodes. Because of the growing popularity of DS9, an expansion for it was rushed out straight away. However, this expansion was vastly different to one we know. For a start it was riddled with abusive strategies. Initially most popular was the "Wormhole to Boston" deck based on the episode where Sisko and the crew traveled back to 20th Century Boston and found themselves in a familiar looking bar. Also fairly big was the "Odo buys a round" deck based on the card of the same name which could score the owner 100 points if played in the right conditions (during happy hour). Because of complaints from the players, Decipher rushed out another expansion to counter these strategies. As the Dominion never existed they went straight to an expansion whose working name was Blaze of Glory. However, as there was so little fighting in DS9 and to reflect more the image of the show it was renamed "Beers of Glory." This countered all previous abusive strategies but tragically created two new ones. These were known as the Abyss deck and the Quark's Party deck. The Abyss deck was based on the card Chula: The Abyss (the episode "Move Along Home" had survived intact). Because Quarks bar was such an important part of the show, it had been released in the first expansion and people quickly discovered the power of a Dilemma that relocated 3 of your opponents personnel to the other end of the spaceline. Most people used at least 3 of them in their deck. The Quark's Party deck was spawned from the Abyss deck. A card called Quark's Party scored you points for every person who was at Quark's Bar (a bit like an orbital colony) and so players figured that if all their personnel were going to be relocated to Quarks they might as well score points from it. This led to a Paper/Scissors/Stone relationship in tournaments. A QP deck would beat an Abyss deck, an Abyss deck would beat any other type of deck but any type of deck except for an Abyss deck would beat a QP deck. This mind-cheesing (copyright ILTA Crap Phrases Inc.) meta-game soon bored players. Decipher realized that a Space-Cheers (as DS9 had been nicknamed) could not occupy the same game as Star Trek CCG. Sadly they had to split it into 2 games. Expansions for Voyager, First Contact, Insurrection and all kinds of wonderful things followed for Star Trek CCG while DS9 CCG became a great after dinner game at family parties. All in all things worked out pretty well... All comments, flames and ideas for future What Didn't Happen Next's are extremely welcome and should be sent to iptaylor@dialstart.net. Bye for now. I Love Troi Anon
|
