Tribbling Along
Your brain-dead blogger is pretty tired tonight. But being a space poet, she settled down to a classic episode of Deep Space Nine (and why is there so much Trek on TV at the moment? Can't be anything to do with the new film prequel...) entitled Trials and Tribble-ations in which the DS9 crew (or choice members thereof) are thrown back in time to the twenty third century and find themselves having to infiltrate the original Enterprise of James T Kirk, Spock, Scotty, McCoy, Uhura et al, for some not terribly well defined purpose of engineering a return to their own timestream. While there they discover that there is a Klingon plot to assassinate Kirk so have to search through the thousands of alien fluffy balls which coo and chirrup in a thoroughly endearing way. Luckily they discover the explosively charged tribble in question and Captain Kirk is none the wiser.
It's a thinnish sort of plot, but the plot isn't really the point, as the main pleasure for anyone with any sort of passing knowledge of the show is the modern (mind you, 1996!) actors seemingly merging with their predecessors on the vintage starship. All wear the old uniforms and the filming is cleverly manipulated so new and old crew seem to walk and work and even talk together. It's not quite perfect of course; it wasn't possible to present a genuine interraction between Kirk and Sisko although through cutting and montage it's almost there. Meanwhile, although there is some stock footage of the original actors in character, the basic original show has its own plot and character interractions - The Trouble with Tribbles indeed. So this is kind of going on in the background; the newer story layered over the old, like a palimpsest.
I suppose this is what interested me most, this idea of a layering of new over old. We original characters are following our (written or unwritten) script, while a totally other one might be invisibly and innovatively woven over our own. What is this called in TV and film? We have the sequel, and, even more popular these days, the prequel of course - but this invisible same-time layering, what is this: an interquel? Well I'll hereby name it so.
Could it be that other stories are backlayered over our own timeline both after and simultaneous to our living said time, subtly averting any little purring bombs? Presumably such future-originated excursions would have to avoid discovery, or there'd be all sorts of cognitive dissonance going on.
Think it's time I went to bed.
It's a thinnish sort of plot, but the plot isn't really the point, as the main pleasure for anyone with any sort of passing knowledge of the show is the modern (mind you, 1996!) actors seemingly merging with their predecessors on the vintage starship. All wear the old uniforms and the filming is cleverly manipulated so new and old crew seem to walk and work and even talk together. It's not quite perfect of course; it wasn't possible to present a genuine interraction between Kirk and Sisko although through cutting and montage it's almost there. Meanwhile, although there is some stock footage of the original actors in character, the basic original show has its own plot and character interractions - The Trouble with Tribbles indeed. So this is kind of going on in the background; the newer story layered over the old, like a palimpsest.
I suppose this is what interested me most, this idea of a layering of new over old. We original characters are following our (written or unwritten) script, while a totally other one might be invisibly and innovatively woven over our own. What is this called in TV and film? We have the sequel, and, even more popular these days, the prequel of course - but this invisible same-time layering, what is this: an interquel? Well I'll hereby name it so.
Could it be that other stories are backlayered over our own timeline both after and simultaneous to our living said time, subtly averting any little purring bombs? Presumably such future-originated excursions would have to avoid discovery, or there'd be all sorts of cognitive dissonance going on.
Think it's time I went to bed.
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