posted
I am looking for anyone who has a copy of the text of any series bibles (writers/directors guides or technical guides). Doesn't have to be hard copy, or even complete. Basically, I'm looking for all information from them that never made it on screen; for instance, the Next Generation guide is the source for Picard's twenty-two year command of the Stargazer, and the Enterprise bible discusses a Terellian girlfriend that Mayweather once had.
Any help, however minor, will be appreciated.
[ December 06, 2001: Message edited by: Ryan McReynolds ]
"Star Trek Guide". Whitfield initially wanted to reproduce just that in his book, then decided on expanding it. Most of the info from the guide should already be in "The Making of Star Trek", and "The Making of Star Trek, Phase II" (which repeats a lot of the info).
TNG
A bible for every season, as well as a writers' tech guide that later became the TNG tech manual. If you check the web, there is an old tech FAQ listing info from the third season version of this tech guide, including speeds above Warp 9 that wouldn't be seen in print until the Encyclopedia. Someone also quoted on r.a.s.t. info about B'Rel/K'Vort BoP sizes/specs as being in the fifth season version of this guide, so there are several editions.
VOYAGER
One or more series bibles and maybe one Voyager Technical Guides. Bernd should have a copy of the tech guide, and has already posted some of the relevant information on his site. However, Rick Sternbach says it hadn't been updated in a while, so there are fortunately only a few copies you need to look for.
I've browsed through the series bible in a NY bookstore (and it may still be there), however, I don't remember a thing. The only things I wrote down were a crew of 125 with 20 Maquis.
DS9
I believe the DS9 bible was in the same bookstore also, and I believe I read it. A lot of it is reproduced in "The Making of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", and there is also an online transcript of Majel Barrett's reading of it (attached below). However, this is just from season one -- it's been updated at least once with an entry about the Defiant, seen in the book "Where No Man Has Gone Before" There's also a writers' tech guide Rick mentioned, describing the various locations with possible stories, that I haven't seen.
ENTERPRISE
I know of only one bible, and somebody sold a copy a while ago on e-bay.
------------------------------------------------ EXCERPT FROM THE DS9 BIBLE (1992)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the series, set in the next generation of Star Trek lore, follows a team of Starfleet officers who take command of an alien space station situated near the Bejoran Worm Hole, one of the most strategic locations in the galaxy. The Bejoran Worm Hole. Worm holes, simply put, are shortcuts through space. You go in one end, come out the other in seconds to find yourself billions of kilometers away. All known worm holes previously encountered in the Star Trek universe have been unstable. Their ends can whip randomly around the universe, and they last for brief periods of time before collapsing. But in our pilot episode, the first stable worm hole is discovered near the Denarias asteroid field close to the planet Bejor. Like other worm holes it is only visible when an object enters or exits through it. A brief journey through the Bejoran Worm Hole will take a starship to the Gamma Quadrant, normally a sixty-year journey at warp 9. The ride is a spectacular light show: very brilliant colors surround the ship, while inside, strange visual distortions affect perceptions as passengers tear through the space-time continuum. This worm hole is a new passage way to hundreds of unexplored sectors of space and it will turn Bejor into the leading center of commerce and scientific exploration in the sector, attracting travelers from all over the galaxy. In the first episode, we learn that the worm hole has been artificially created by a species of aliens that do not live in the same space-time continuum as we do. Thus, we encounter them unexpectedly within the worm hole itself. They have been sending out orb-like probes from the worm hole, one orb every century for a thousand years, seeking contact with other life forms.
The Backstory. The Cardassians and Bejora are known to Star Trek audiences. A century ago the Cardassians conquered the planet Bejor, an ancient society dedicated to spiritual pursuits. The mysterious orbs that have arrived each century are among the fundamental sacraments of the Bejoran religion. Bejoran terrorism during the last several decades has been a significan't problem for the Cardassians. Just before our series begins, the Cardassians have completed mining operations on Bejor, stripping the planet of all its resources. They have decided to unilaterally withdraw from Bejoran space and give up the headaches that the Bejoran have caused them.
Well, they have not left quietly and in revenge for the years of terrorism, the Cardassians ravaged the planet, poisoned the wells, scorched the ground and, striking at the heart of the Bejoran people, have desecrated the ancient monastery that is the center of spiritual life. The Bejoran desperately need help. Theyve asked for membership in the Federation and have been granted preliminary acceptance. But the political situation on the planet is terribly unstable: factions that have been united in opposition to Cardassian rule have resumed age-old
conflicts. The Starfleet teams mission is to spearhead the arduous diplomatic and scientific efforts that accompany the lengthy entry procedure. All of this is about to be complicated by the discovery of the worm hole.
Deep Space Nine. The station designated DS9 by Starfleet was assembled haphazardly over several years by Cardassian and Bejoran work teams and anybody else who happened to offer services at a premium. It was used by the Cardassians primarily to monitor mining operations on Bejor and to service incoming and outgoing crews. About two hundred people, mostly Bejorans, still live there. By episode three, there will be about fifty Starfleet officers and crewmen stationed there. When the Cardassians abandoned Bejor they stripped the station of all advanced technology and defense capability and the Starfleet team has a huge job of making it operational again. In fact, it will never work up to our re-quirements and will always be causing the engineering crew a lot of headaches.
The Ops controls are a hub of activity; there are shuttle bays for smaller vessels. On a given day there might be anywhere from 10 to 300 visitors to DS9, as ships come through with foreigners, scientists, merchants, and spies. Most of the visitors stay on their ships but there are special quarters for some guests. In the first episode, we learn that the ships power sources are destructive to the ionic field that is home to the aliens who created the worm hole and live within a different timeframe. During that experience, we are told how to travel through without harming them.
One aspect of life on the space station hasnt changed since the departure of the Cardassians. During their tenure they sold commercial concessions to the highest bidder to provide services to the mining crews. The result is the Promenade. Unlike any space interior ever seen on Star Trek, its somewhere between a free port and a flea market, bustling with aliens of all sorts when a ships in, intriguing and unusual characters at every bend. Theres gambling and smuggling, alien grifters at work here, bars with sexual holo-suites upstairs. Right next to the traditional ships stores are the Bejoran temple and the kiosk serving live food. Part of the job of the Starfleet team will be to try to tame this honky tonk atmosphere. They will have Runabouts [ed: a new class of smaller ships], which allow our characters to travel to numerous star systems with a maximum speed of 4.7, operated by a two-man crew, with a single pilot in control if necessary. They can transport up to forty people, but thats a crowd. There are cramped, uncomfortable sleeping quarters for six people.
Bejor. Bejor is the world we will visit most often because of its proximity to the space station. Striking architecture with rounded domes and spherical shapes mark the landscape. The ancient Bejora were great architects and engineers before humans were standing erect. The people are deeply mystical. On their planet we will find monks who meditate and chant in chords. They are people who believe in spiritual phenomenon, are devoted to a nonsecular philosophy that goes against the Federations logical, scientific way of life. Their religious leader, known as the Kai, is curious and insightful and develops a strong bond with our Commander.
The Characters. Benjamin Sisko, human Starfleet commander with a twelve year- old son, whose gentle, strong, soft spoken demeanor belies the temper that he is constantly trying to control. And when he loses it, he gets furious with himself. He's a man of action who gets impatient with too much talk, but as he has become more mature, hes learned to stop and think twice about losing control. He has a weakness for baseball, a sport that died out in the 22nd century and he frequently goes to a holo-suite to have a chat and a catch with one his legendary ballplayer heroes. Sisko was on a starship with his wife and son at the famous encounter with the Borg led by the Borgified Picard, and his wife was killed. That leads to bitterness toward Picard. Picard: Have we met before? Sisko: Yes, we met in battle. Since that tragedy, he has been assigned to shore duty on Mars where he was on the team reconstructing the fleet at Utopia Benecia Yards. Sisko objected to being assigned to DS9. He told Starfleet he had a son to raise and had been asking for an Earth assignment, not this. His important work on DS9 gives him a new direction, but his is still very much a life framed by tragedy.
Major Kira, a former major in the Bejoran underground. Kira is now an outspoken critic of the provisional government. Having fought for freedom all her life, it has angered her to see the older leaders throw it all away through their petty dissensions. She has been trying without success to reach the Kai herself to air her grievances. It is very possible she was sent by the government to be the Bejoran administrator at the space station simply to get her outspoken voice out of ear shot. [Addressing the audience:] This part was to have been played by Ensign Ro, but Michelle decided she wanted to try to be a movie star instead, so she turned it down. And its a shame because it was a good character. But the characters just been renamed, the character will still be there -- it just won't be Michelle who's playing it. [Reading again:] Kira loathes the Cardassians. She committed atrocities against them in the name of freedom, some of which bother her. But others in the Bejoran underground begin a new wave of terrorism and she is forced into a moral quandary about tracking them down and bringing them to justice. Former terrorists consider her a turncoat.
Miles O'Brien... will be played by Colm Meany. [Applause] O'Brien has been the transporter chief on NexGen for five years. This assignment represents a promotion to Master Chief of Operations, and a tremendous career opportunity for him. [ed: Not to mention Colm Meany.] He has a wife, Keiko, and a three year-old baby girl, Molly. Molly just happens to be Rick Bermans three year- old daughter. He will be in charge of the comings and goings of vessels, plus the nuts and bolts maintenance of the station. He's constantly frustrated by the jerry-rigged way this place is put together. He saw the Cardassians commit unspeakable atrocities and lost a close friend at the massacre at Setma III. The war changed and hardened him. The first man he ever killed was a Cardassian who jumped him on patrol. As he tells the story to another Cardassian in the NexGen episode, The Wounded, I never killed anything before. When I was a kid I would worry about having to swat a mosquito. It's not you I hate, Cardassian: I hate what I became because of you.
Jadzia Dax is a science officer ranked lieutenant, an alien woman, very attractive, late 20s. Dax is a Trill, the joint species first encountered in the NexGen episode, The Host. A Trill is comprised of two separate but interdependent entities -- a host and a symbiont. The host provided the humanoid body, the symbiont is an invertebrate, androgynous life form that lives within the host. It looks like a short, fat snake. Many centuries ago [on the Trills home world], the symbionts lived underground while the humanoids were on the surface. Due to an environmental disaster, they were forced to join to survive. As time went on this mutual support evolved to become a biological dependency, and thus two individuals became one. They speak with one voice. The symbionts life span is far longer than the hosts and, as a result, one symbiont will be combined with several hosts during its life. When a host dies, doctors surgically remove the symbiont. The worm then burrows itself into the new host. Daxs host was joined with her when she was an adult. The symbiont part of her is 300 years old, a brilliant scientist with an innate wisdom who can draw upon a library of knowledge built of six lifetimes of experience. Kira forms a very close relationship with Dax and often tells her to loosen up. Dax admires Kira for her youthful energy, her purpose and her drive and becomes something of a mentor to her. Dax and Sisko have worked together before; the only problem is that back then, Dax was still in the host body of an elderly man and was something of a mentor to Sisko. Her sexually appealing new form will create a certain tension between her and Sisko, which they will both resist. After all, hes still having a hard time getting used to the fact that shes a 300 year-old worm. But he does not hide the respect and affection he has for her.
Odo, an alien male, middle-aged curmudgeon, and a shape-shifter. In his natural state he is a gelatinous liquid. He was Bejoran law enforcement officer on the space station under the Cardassians. Starfleet decides to have him continue in that role, since hes extremely savvy about the Promenade and all who frequent it. His back story is: 50 years ago, with no memory of his past, he was found alone in a mysterious space craft that appeared in the Denarias asteroid belt. He was found by the Bejoran and lived amongst them. At first he was sort of an Elephant Man, a source of curiosity and humor as he turned himself into a chair or pencil. Finally he realized he would have to take the form of a humanoid to assimilate and function in their environment. He does it, but resents it. As a result, Odo performs a uniquely important role in the ensemble: he is a character who explores and comments on human values. Because he is forced to pass as one of us, his point of view usually comes with a cynical and critical edge. But he can't quite get it right, this humanoid shape, though he continues to try. So he looks a little unfinished in a way. He's been working on it a long time. Someone might ask him: Why don't you take the form of a younger man. His answer: I would if I could. He has the adopted child syndrome, searching for his own personal identity. Although he doesn't know anything about his species, he is certain that justice is an
integral part of their being, because the necessity for it runs through every fiber of his body -- a racial memory. Thats why he became a law man. He has a couple of Bejoran deputies; he doesn't allow weapons on the Promenade, and once every day he must return to his gelatinous form.
Quark is the Ferengi bartender. The Ferengi race has been a part of NexGen since the very beginning. They are ugly, sexist, greedy little aliens who are interested only in profit and getting their hands on anything of yours they happen to fancy. Quark runs many of the entertainment concessions on DS9, including the bar, restaurant, gambling house, and the holo-suites upstairs where your every fantasy can be played out. He spends most of his time behind the bar. If there is some scam being run in the sector it often involves him. But beyond the mal-evolence he is a charming host, in a Ferengi sort of way, and forges an interesting relationship with Sisko. They actually enjoy sparring together now and then. The Ferengi lends a hand to dissolve a problem for the commander -- as long as there's something in it for him. His completely sexist attitude makes Kira an obvious adversary, and he is consumed with passion for Dax.
Then we have Dr. Julian Amoros -- human male, mid 20s, rank of lieutenant commander, fresh out of Starfleet, graduated second in class, brilliant specialist in multi-species medicine. He arrives at DS9 with gung-ho expectations about adventures in Starfleet. He's naive and charming and cocky all at the same time. He's chosen this remote outpost instead of the cushy job he was offered at Starfleet medical because this is where the action is, where heroes are made, in the wilderness. Dr. Amoros is still wet behind the ears and has a lot to learn. He is the antithesis of Kira who is street wise savvy but wiser and cynical. O'Brien becomes Amoros confidant As a man who has seen combat and a decorated veteran of Starfleet duty, O'Brien represents an ideal to the young doctor. Julian greatly respects Sisko, but is terrified of him. He is anxious to live up the commanders expectations. Sisko is amused by Julian and is very patient with him.
Recurring Characters: Jake Sisko, the commanders son. An Army brat who doesn't remember life on Earth, has been aboard four different starships, and stationed on two planets. This transient life style has taught him how to scope out a new terrain and assimilate quickly. At the same time he has an inner fear of forming new friendships because he loses them so easily. He dreams of going to live on Earth. He collects holodeck programs of various places on Earth that he uses to try to fulfill his fantasy. Deep inside he knows that his mom would still be alive if they did not live in space, and he has a suppressed bitterness about it. His father promised there would be other kids on the station; as it turns out there are only a handful of various alien species. Only one is his age, Nog, a Ferengi teenage boy who is a bad influence. Jake is close with his dad; they are buddies. The boy has no technical expertise at all [great applause]. He struggles with his homework but is dedicated to doing his best.
Keiko is O'Briens wife. She wondered what a botanist would do on a space station -- she was happy on the Enterprise -- but she agreed that the promotion was an incredible opportunity for her husband. Shes not entirely happy on DS9, and in the early episodes she sees serious shortcomings in the educational facilities and volunteers to be the station's tutor.
Then there's Lwaxana Troi. [Loud applause: I'm with you!] Lwaxana is Deannas mother, established on NexGen as the Auntie Mame of the galaxy. When circumstances bring her to the space station she forms a romantic attachment to Odo and finds reasons to come back to see him. He tries to discourage her:
Odo: Ma'am, I turn into a liquid form at night.
Lwaxana: I can swim.
[Audience glee: Boy, we're off and running.]
One of the other Ferengi who works for Quark is his teenage son, Nog, who becomes friends of the commanders son. Nog is a bad boy, the kind of kid your parents didnt want you to associate with.
And Gil Ducket is a 40s male, deceptively amiable Cardassian commander who represents the continuing threat to our people. The military empire and its borders are only a short distance away from Bejor and DS9. He used to be the Prefect of the Bejoran province when it was under Cardassian denomination. Thus he is the former landlord of the space station.
Kai Apaka is the spiritual leader of Bejor, who provides sharp counterpoint to the secular nature of Starfleet. She challenges conventional human logic. The Kai seems to have an awareness on a higher plane of consciousness and knows things she cannot possibly know. Although our people do not accepts her powers at face value, we cannot always explain them, either. She speaks in vague, mystical indirect language, forcing her listeners to seek her meaning.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine brings into the Star Trek universe an original set of characters as diverse and memorable as the crews of the first two series. It also provides far more interpersonal conflict than weve seen before in the 24th century. If, as Gene Roddenberry always said, Star Trek is wagon train to space, then think of Deep Space Nine as Fort Laramie on the edge of the frontier.
posted
Just for anyone who might try to transcribe them in vain, I should mention that I already have the parts of bibles quoted in The Making of Star Trek, the original series Compendium, Phase II: The Lost Series, the Next Generation Companion, and The Making of Deep Space Nine.
posted
Look, for the last two seasons, the Defiant CG model had a stepped bridge on top, was squished sideways with a raised deflector nose pointing far into the future. BUT, whenever Gary Hutzel shot motion control, or used "stuck" footage, it would magically morph, like He-Man, into its original shape.
There are bigger problems in the world.
Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged
The only things I wrote down were a crew of 125 with 20 Maquis. 
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