"David Gerrold - The Trouble with Tribbles - The birth, sale, and final production of one episode" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

script outlines. In just one year, STAR TREK received more than
six thousand scripts, outlines and stories from would-be STAR
TREK writers.
Six thousand!
At best, a television show will buy thirty stories in a season.
On numbers alone, the odds against any new writer
breaking into STAR TREK were 200 to 1. The odds against
any particular new writer selling them a story were 6000 to
1. Or more. Remember, he’s competing with more than
just the other would-bes, he’s also competing with all the
professionals who are trying to sell their stories too. And the
professionals have the edge—after all, it’s their game.
And yet, the hopefuls keep trying.
It must be more than just the money—there are easier ways
to get rich. It must be more than the credit too—who notices a TV
writer? I suspect it’s the desire to share in TV’s special magic—a
desire to be one of the magic-makers themselves. Every season,
year after year, hundreds of amateur writers mail thousands of
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The Trouble With Tribbles

amateur manuscripts into the Hollywood studios. The process
is continual. But there was something about STAR TREK that
attracted more of them than any other TV show in history.
Maybe it was STAR TREK’S own particular kind of wizardry
that intrigued them, or maybe it was the unlimited scope of
imagination that the show’s format allowed, or maybe it was the
special rapport of the characters and actors who played them—
but it had to be more than just the desire to break into the
promised land of TV writing.
I believe that it was just plain wanting to get closer to your
favorite TV series.
Once a week wasn’t enough—you had to have more of STAR
TREK, more! So you sat down and wrote your own stories—
you acted out your private fantasies and put them on paper.
And then even that wasn’t enough, you had to share them—so
you put them into an envelope and mailed them off to Gene
Roddenberry at Paramount Studios in Hollywood and hoped
that He too would recognize how special this dream of yours
was—and He would reach down from the bridge of the Enterprise
and say, “Yes, this is an official STAR TREK adventure. Yes, we’ll
share it with the rest of the world.” He would anoint you and lift
you up to join the ranks of STAR TREK’S exalted—the special
dreamers! And you would glow forever—because now you too
were one of the people who actually made STAR TREK!
The intensity of those who wanted to make that big leap
was incredible. It still is. (They’re still writing their STAR TREK
stories even though there’s no longer a STAR TREK to sell them to.
But that doesn’t stop them, not at all. To a real Trekkie, STAR
TREK goes on forever.)