ST:TNG - "To Better the Instruction" - Notes

The agent I'd found to submit "Yellow Alert" seemed pretty worthless. Roddenberry et al had a the script for the better part of a year, and she was unable to tell me what the script's status was, so I decided to go out to Hollywood and see if I couldn't find out what was going on. There's quite a tale of derring-do there: sneaking on the Paramount lot pretending to be ILM tech-weenie, approaching Marina Sirtis outside her dressing room, and probably getting Eric Stillwel (script-coordinator at the time) in an unbelievable amount of hot water, and not being too terribly impressed by Gene Roddenbery when I met him as he was leaving the lot for the night - turns out his middle name is "Wesley". :-|

In any case, my best friend from high shcool, a guy name Paul Carrol Powers III, with the great initials PCPIII, had graduate from CU Boulder with a degree in Nuclear Engineering, married a gal name Kathryn Kirby, joined the Navy as enlisted personell - he was very amusingly color-blind and so the fact that he had a degree in NukeE, no less, counted for nothing - and became a pit-snipe on the - wait for it! - USS Enterprise stationed out of San Diego. So I flew out to stay with Paul and Kathryn, so I could save money to rent a car and drive up to LA/Hollywood and see if I couldn't get the skinny on the script's status.

Kathryn thought it was way cool that I had written a ST:TNG, and had worked up something like a half-dozen story ideas to pitch to me when I arrived. "To Better the Instruction" was the best of the lot, in my opinion, and over the next couple of months I'd work on the script for a few days, and send the results to Kathryn for her input.

I think we were both pretty pleased with the results - how about you?

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jnorris@wamego.net

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Last modified on T5 Jan 2010