The Big Idea

It surprises many people to hear there were actually five Star Trek series. Not to mention numerous movies. And of those series, perhaps the one most likely to be forgotten is my favorite, Star Trek Deep Space Nine (most likely forgotten because of it's real differences from all the other Star Treks): Why it's the greatest I can explain. But it's worth noting that I watched Deep Space Nine on television as the episodes were released in the 90s. I waited with eager anticipation between season finales and the startup of each new season. While I watched most other science fiction stories without having to wait. That certainly explains some of my past enthusiasm for the show. Now I see the series differently, with more cynicism. Deep Space Nine had some serious problems. For one, it started slow--many people stopped watching it in the first year, which had the worst plots of the entire series. It also made a number of story-telling missteps. As episodes explored var...

As Gandalf famously stated in the Fellowship of the Ring, the Ring of Power appealed to the good-hearted and heroic wizard, giving him a desire to use it for good. But in fact, as every LOTR fan knows, it   cannot   be done. The Ring of Power will eventually corrupt every person who attempts to use it into an evil being. Watching the Fellowship of the Ring movie last night reminded me of this principle. The fact that evil   cannot  be used for good is one of the things I love most about The Lord of the Rings. It’s a powerful statement about the attempt human beings make over and over again to gain power supposedly for good—which simply cannot be done by evil means. Not without   becoming   evil. By the way, back when it was first released, I strenuously objected to the plot changes Peter Jackson put into the Fellowship of the Ring. No, for me, the original story was quite good enough and didn’t need to be streamlined or “Hollywoodized” or anyth...

The Walking Dead's zombie apocalypse has inspired me to comment on the topic of the monster on more than one occasion--how could zombies really exist? But the story fascinates me much more because of what it does to the human characters involved. I'm especially intrigued by the way human evil is portrayed in the show--when survival is on the line, the veneer of civilization comes off most people and they begin doing things, evil things, that their normal selves would barely have recognized. Some characters resist this general fall, but they do so from the beginning of their story arc. However, the characters Carol and Morgan have recently run counter to that general tendency of change always being for the worse. Why? For the uninitiated, Morgan was a character in the story who the leader of the survivor group, Rick, ran into early in the plot. At first, he was just a decent person trying to survive. Later, he appeared again, unhinged, essentially insane. Dangerous--a killer...

I created the "Travis's Big Idea" blog back when I was barely READING blogs, especially not author blogs. A lot of the ones I did know about I found boring to be honest--seriously, writing about the process of writing is super DULL for me. But I did know I liked story ideas--so I decided to blog about some of mine. Doing that was fun for a while, but I got bored with that, too. I'd like to talk about other people's ideas more often, not just my own. That's part of why it's been a long time since I've posted anything. So I've given this blog a tiny bit of a makeover and a title change on the main page. It's THE BIG IDEA instead of Travis's Big Idea. I want to talk about much more than the strange ideas that run through my own head. I want to talk about your strange ideas (and other people's, too). Anyway, I've got things to say. But that can wait a bit. First--I'M BACK WORLD. :) ttp