Sixty five minutes into a thirty minute interview and I’ve definitely used up more of Phil Farrand’s time than I should have.
I’m now eating into his writing time. At the moment Phil is writing book 14 of a 24 book series and chatting to me is cutting into valuable time. I need to call this; now.
“Moffat was a great writer for Doctor Who - Girl in the Fireplace is one of THE greats!”
But why am I speaking to an IT project manager from the US on a Friday night?
The answer is, of course, Star Trek related because Phil Farrand is a bit of a literary legend - he penned the four Nitpickers Guides for Trekkers covering TOS, TNG (x2) and the first four seasons of DS9. But why did he stop? Why was the only further publication a Guide to The X-Files?
"I actually grew up in the Philippines about 8 miles north of Manilla," recalled Phil as we started off checking all my recording equipment was actually doing its job. "To call my friend I had to walk over to the Bible School because we didn't have a phone in our house. Then I had to dial 9 because the phone system we were on was different to the phone system he was on and about six times out of ten you would get a busy tone so you'd keep hanging up and trying again then you would dial his number and half the time it wouldn't go through so you'd have to start that whole process again... It's amazing to think that now we can just video call halfway across the world instantly!"
"The thing that gave me a lot of love for the original series was that my mom did not watch TV except Star Trek. She was a very religious woman, really did some amazing things n terms of knowing things and intuiting things. She just didn't see the point of television but Star Trek she would watch with us.
Every week Phil's mom would watch the show with the family and afterwards explain the spiritual applications of the episode. "She would go through it and say 'See when Spock had that thing on his back and making him do things that's how we have to stand up against temptation and discipline ourselves'.
"The original stories were rich enough and enough fodder than you could indulge in those types of discussions. It wasn't just about who was going to die today. We seem to have shifted away from these big philosophical issues in science fiction and trying to do justice to both sides. We've shifted into the same dogma and hammering people over the head with it."
Phil applies this also to the latest Jodie Whittaker led series of Doctor Who which he also feels has been let down by the storylines. "There's not the richness we got in something like Blink with the Weeping Angels and The Pandorica Opens - probably one of the finest pieces of writing in science fiction television I have ever seen. Everybody had a moment and it was gorgeous."
"But those books were a lot of fun to write," recalled Phil in reference to the four Star Trek reference works he penned in the 1990's and are still read by observant Trek fans to this day.
After Star Trek went off the air in 1969, Phil watched the reruns, then The Motionless Picture(!), "Then the second movie comes out and it was good, third comes out; it's ok, fourth movie's fun so we're rolling with that and then they announced Next Gen.
"I thought they did some neat stuff. But it didn't have the nostalgia of The Original Series because that's what I'd grown up with but it was very fun. I would get together with my friends and we would talk about Star Trek and that was happening in the background. At the same time I was producing a music notation system that did fairly well and that made me want to go off and write the great American novel. However, it's not quite that easy and it can be dangerous becoming that financially independent so young."
Phil wanted to do something away from music and started looking around, writing and didn't know how to publish. But publishers are only confident with things and authors they know will sell. Taking a more entrepreneurial approach, Phil realised that he needed a product that everyone knew, that was doing well and people wanted to read about.
"I was talking with my friends and we stumbled on, during one of the episodes, about how the communicators worked. That was the trigger. Sometimes they tap them, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they tap them to end the call. That kind of just snowballed.
"What every Star Trek fan does once they get into the mythos far enough... they start nitpicking and so then that started up.. It was such fun and we would meet up every week and I thought there have to be other Star Trek geeks who do this?"
Phil went home and said that he was going to watch every episode of TNG's first four seasons and write down everything they did wrong.
"So I started doing it," continued Phil, "Then I had to find someone to help publish it and that was Steve Eplinger who was a book producer at that time. He was essential but the problem with Steve was that he didn't watch TV and know the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek and he kept calling it the other thing!"
Confident of a winning product, Phil continued to badger Steve until one day Eplinger called him; "He was with his son, and he called to say he was in a shop and did I realise they did Star Trek toys?! I said yes and then he realised we could sell the book."
Steve then hunted and hunted for a publisher which eventually led to a friend of a friend who knew an editor at Bantham Trade Paperbacks. At the time they were a novel company.
"Jean Cavelos was there and Gene was a Trekkie. She pulled the proposal out of the envelope, read a couple of the chapters, picked up the phone and told Steve Eplinger 'I want to do this book'."
"Sometimes they tap them, sometimes they don't. That snowballed into what every fan does and when you get far enough into the mythos and you start nitpicking. We met up each week to discuss in detail and I started to think that there must be other people who were doing the same thing."
Off the back of the first book, which sold something in the region of 250,000 copies, three further volumes of Star Trek and one on The X-Files followed. However confidence in unlicenced products took a slight turn.
"We were right on the front edge of a change in fandom and publishing," explained Phil, "What had happened was that everything was a protected property until William Shatner wrote Star Trek Memories. It sold gang-busters because it was William Shatner but it was not an official property and not done through the official publisher. Everybody said that was because he was famous so then right on the heels of that came this quirky guy writing The Nitpicker's Guides. While they're not producing Star Trek Memories numbers they are a solid seller.
"Then they started moving into this media tie-in market. We were very very careful and had a good lawyer and they said what to do, no photos, you have to put a significant amount of new content in - that was part of the reason for the tote boards and top tens."
This helped drive the format as Phil and his publisher ensured they were towing the correct line and in 1998 he was already working on a Star Wars guide ahead of the imminent release of The Phantom Menace.
"By that time publishers had been pushing the line of media tie ins that were based on fair use and they just pushed it so far that Paramount decided to go on the warpath. While I was writing up the Star Wars guide there's a book on the Godzilla movies and not by those that were authorised which had detailed synopses, pictures, no original content and of course they got sued and the studio won.
"Then there's a guy who wrote a little book called The Joy of Trek and it was about how to improve your relationship with a Trekker. Just a 100 page book and they sued him for about $22 million. They won. I spoke to the guy afterwards and he said that the Paramount lawyers stood up in court and used The Nitpicker's Guide to show an example of what's legal."
Which in turn meant that plans for Star Wars, a possible Buffy book and then loop back to complete DS9 were shelved. Permanently. Steve Eplinger tried for six months to see if another publisher would take the books but after the impact of the court cases it proved fruitless.
But that's not been the end to Phil Farrand's journey into writing. No sir. In fact he continues to write to this day but now focuses on his own projects.
Alongside jobs in computer consulting, a few unexpected turns and a position as the music minister at his local church for 18 months, Phil got back into writing after some time away and is now working on a mammoth project which will take him (easily!!!) to retirement.
"I wanted something to keep me in writing and keep me pushed and then have a goal to complete it by retirement. The plan was to release 24 books in 12 years. Each is about 160,000 words and they are set at the end of a period of time called the Millennial Reign of Jesus Christ."
A race of Titans arrives on Earth, takes over all the governments and establish a utopia. All energy is free, you can grow and eat all the food in your garden. Banks are eliminated, all needs are taken care of and there's no need to work.
"There's two rules. Submit or die and treat others as you wish to be treated. That's it! Some people can live with it and some can't. Some claim that these are Jesus and his followers returned as prophesied and others say they're just aliens.who have used the mythology to get people to submit to them.
"There are those who have gone with it and then there are those that have drifted away," continued Phil, "and some have gone far out into space and established their own colonies. But at 960 years everybody wakes up and the Titans have gone. No-one knows if and when they'll come back. Some of their technology works, other bits don't. You have these people who haven't had to fend for themselves for 960 years and believe in a high moral code but out in the night there are those looking at the resources of Earth and it's ramping up towards the big battle."
Now completing book 14 (which I was by this point in the conversation interrupting the progress of!) there's still a lot more to come. However if literature's not your thing then it's definitely worth dropping on Phil Farrand's Facebook with his now weekly celebrations of National Days.
Certainly a highlight of the week, it'd be wrong to spoil the surprise but the effort that goes into each production is incredible and especially during current times it's sure to raise a smile. That's all I'll say!
Many thanks to Phil Farrand for joining Some Kind of Star Trek for this interview!
I still have my well worn nitpickers guides to TOS and TNG. I never realized that there was a DS9 one!I must look for a copy, they were a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteA YouTube nitpicking channel might be surprisingly popular �� Then you could illustrate your points as well. I'm sure that'd come under fair use.
Definitely - it's a good volume and SUCH a shame they never made any more. Reckon you could be onto a great idea there especially with Disco, Picard, Lower Decks and more...!
Delete