Star Trek: New Voyages

Note: This is a preview of “New Frontiers & Old Enterprises”, my 2,600-word interview with David Gerrold, originally published in the 7 March 2008 installment of CS Weekly. To read the full essay, please join my Patreon account at the $5 “It came from the morgue…” level.

The writer of the Star Trek’s episode, “The Trouble With Tribbles,” David Gerrold won literary science fiction’s highest accolades for the true story of how he adopted his son, The Martian Child, and recently returned to his roots to resurrect a long-shelved story for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Decades after they were originally written, two of Gerrold’s most personal stories have finally reached the screen, though neither is quite the same as they started out. The Martian Child chronicles Gerrold’s (played by John Cusack in the film) real-life adoption of his son, Sean (known as Dennis and played by Bobby Coleman in the film), and won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards before vanishing into development limbo for a decade, only to emerge as a screenplay by Seth E. Bass and Jonathan Tollins.

“Blood and Fire,” an AIDS allegory originally written for Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987, is finally seeing the light of day as part of the fan-produced Star Trek: New Voyages series with Gerrold helming the story from the director’s chair. As the former hits DVD and the latter closes in on its internet release, I caught up with Gerrold to learn the history of both projects.

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JASON DAVIS
Freelance Writer / Editor