Television. The final frontier. Until video games and the internet came along.
This is the story bible about the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s seven season mission to explore strange new set. To seek out new bumpy foreheads and new analogs for whatever culture they wanted to emulate. To boldly go where the original show went before until they could finally think up original stuff.
Somebody asked me this week if it makes me mad looking at early story ideas versus novelizations and early story bibles, and it really doesn’t. I know things change between writing and filming. Look at Mr. Freeze’s intended origin for Batman: The Animated Series versus what actually appeared on-screen. Sometimes the original idea was better but unfilmable and sometimes the changes are an improvement over the original ideas. I find it all rather fascinating to see what changes were made and consider why. It’s something I should also consider in my own works.
The story bible we’ll be examining for this series is officially referred to as the Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers/Directors Guide, but calling this article series “Star Trek: The Next Story Bible” continues the theme from “Batman: The Animated Bible” and any future story bibles I get to review in the…future. Yeah. So I’ll be moving both series into the “Television Spotlight” category under the “Story Bible Review” subcategory here on the BW website. (Those of you reading this on Patreon please consider donating and I know that sentence didn’t make much sense to you.) The version online (which you can also download and read via this link as long as it’s available) is the last draft for season one, released on March 23, 1987 to prospective writers and directors, but still some changes were made. In this first installment we’ll go over what we should expect to see as this article miniseries goes on.
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