By GustavoLeao / 06:58, 2 July 2009 / Star Trek: Nemesis

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Wired posted a new interview with author and writer Alan Dean Foster in which he talks about writing Pocket Books new Star Trek movie novelization, and here are excerpts.

Me: I listened to the audiobook of your Star Trek book version. The movie was great, but it was very action packed. There was not a lot of character development, probably because it was assumed that people knew the characters already from the original series. You filled in a lot of holes that I felt were in the movie, and just gave a little bit more background and feel for the characters.

ADF: A movie like that, too, goes by so fast. Unless you go back and see the movie again, you miss a lot of stuff anyway.  So, a book always goes at a slower pace than a film, even if it's a slow movie. The book still goes at your own pace. You can pause whenever you want and start it up again whenever you want. But it is fun with something like Star Trek where you have a good screenplay. Where you can go back and you can fill in and get in the characters' heads and maybe you can adjust some of the science and some of the details as much as you can. The thing people don't realize about a film of that magnitude, or Terminator or Transformers, is that there are a million things going on on the set, all at the same time, and each one of them costs a dollar. So there is a million dollars going by every day, and there is no time to waste. And it's impossible for any one person, the director, the producer, anybody, to keep absolute track of everything that's going on. You can't be in the costume department, you can't be up setting the lights with the guys who are rigging the lights. It's just impossible to keep track of everything. So some things are going to slip through that they don't want to. And you look at the film and say, "Well, that was stupid." And what they need is another year to go back and redo everything and go over everything in minute detail. And they just don't have it.

Me: It costs too much money for that.

ADF: That was the problem with the original Star Trek, the first film that I wrote the story for. They were locked into a release date. They had to have a film in theaters by that date. So a lot of the special effects, which were problematical from the beginning, had to be rushed, and some weren't finished properly on time. But you go to the theater and you spend your seven bucks and you don't see that.

Me: How final of a screenplay were you working from for the Star Trek book?

ADF: Star Trek was exceptional, because for the first time, I actually got to see the finished film before I started the book. It's never happened before, and it shows you how well the production went. That's not something you read about in the paper. But for someone like myself who has been around the business for 35 years, to actually see the finished film before I start the book, never happened before. They are always working on the film up to the last minute.

Me: I read on your website about a follow-up Star Trek novel you'll be working on. Is there any more word on that?

ADF: I signed the contract, so that's a go. At least the first step is a go. The second step is for Pocket Books and Paramount to approve the outline. They wanted an outline. Sometimes when I'm asked to do a book, I just get a book contract for two books or three books or whatever. Sometimes they'll ask for a very brief synopsis of what the general idea is. Not even so much for the editor. The editors are generally satisfied at this point that I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do. But they have to present something to marketing so that marketing has something to promote from the get go. So marketing will want a description. It's obviously different with a novelization where you have a film studio involved, sometimes somebody else, like in this case, Hasbro. They want to know what you're going to do with their franchise. There is a lot more riding on it than just a book by me that's going to be published. So I did a fairly extensive outline for the book which has the tentative title of "Star Trek: Refugees" which I can't explain without giving anything away. I mean, I just signed the contract. But hopefully the outline will be approved since the book is due in October.

Me: Do you think they'll base the next movie on your book then?

ADF: Never happens. I mean all things are possible, but generally they like to have the story written directly for the screen. And some of the criticism, and there's always criticism, you know, War and Peace got criticized, the Bible gets criticized, everything gets criticized. One of the criticisms that was heard about the Star Trek movie, was something you alluded to, which was that there wasn't a lot of time for reflection on the part of the characters or to get to know the characters more deeply. As I've explained, that is just a function of time. There just isn't time for it. That is something you do have time for in the book. So in Star Trek: Refugees, the story actually is designed around that fact. There is plenty of action in it, but I do deliberately leave time for discussion of other things besides people shooting at each other. So that's kind of a round about way of saying that, as much as any author would generally like to see their book made into a movie, perhaps this book is not the most appropriate storyline for a movie. It's hard to film Jean Paul Sartre II. There's not a lot of shoot ‘em ups going on.

More from Foster at the extensive interview here.

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