What have we here? Two links which haven't much (if at all) to do with one another. Well, what the heck: If Douglas Adams can dismiss FTL drive after FTL drive as being "too improbable" for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, only to end end up devising an FTL drive which is no less than the very quintessence of improbability, we can present a pair of links which have nothing in common, and declare that very lack of commonality to be the topic of this issue's Random Access!

Damn, we're good...

The original Star Trek series only lasted three seasons, and didn't even reach 80 episodes. Even so, it inspired a large, and extremely loyal, following; five other series (including the animated one) set in the same universe; more than 10 feature films; and God knows how many printed adaptations, novels, fanfics, etc ad nauseum. With all that going for it, why hasn't anyone tried to revive the original series?

The answer is, someone has. The dramatic conceit behind this project: This is the fourth season of Star Trek, with new actors playing the old, familiar parts, picking up from where the original series left off. Sound like any of myriad other examples of Trek fanfic? Well, yes. It does. But this particular 'fourth season' is a bit different from all the others. It's got scripts written by some of the same authors who wrote episodes for the original Trek series; William Theiss, who did costumes for the original series and Next Generation, has worked with the guy who is the driving force of this thing; and it's even got Roddenberry's blessing -- that is to say, Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry (son of Gene R.) serves as 'Consulting Producer', whatever that is.

Set course for Star Trek: The New Voyages, warp factor 5, Mr. Sulu!

The esteemed Peter David, writer of innumerable comicbooks, movie novelizations, columns, and God knows what-all else, has pointed out that you can generate a television series premise by the simple expedient of juxtaposing any arbitrary pair of character concepts... and declaring that duo to be a crimefighting team. For example: "He's a psychotic axe-murderer when he's off his meds! She's the orphaned, time-lost heir to an obscure European throne! They fight crime!"

Of course, Hollywood being what it is, you can hardly expect a highly-paid writer to do the grunt work of generating the brute concept. Wouldn't it be nice if somebody had written a computer program to do this thing? Sure it would! In fact, someone has written that program. And what's even nicer is that you can go on the net and put the power of this program to work for you!

They Fight Crime -- and don't you dare forget it.

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