Crossing Over … Free-For-All Blog Prompt #3

TemplarSora provided the prompt this time round and gave a very interesting post on it here – Time And Relative Diversity in Infinite Combinations

My blog idea is to try and maybe see just how far out there some of us have gone, are considering going, or wish we could go in the pursuit of IDIC in our fanfics. So, of those who are doing it, what other shows/media (or even star trek eras) are people pulling into their fanfics as crossovers? What crossovers do some people wish we could see, or want to try and write themselves. How do you feel about crossovers in star trek in general?

Now, as I mentioned in response to TS, Crossovers are not my thing. Maybe I’ve just been burned by a few really bad example early on that out me off. I do think many have a lot of potential and merit and I suppose I shouldn’t let past experiences sully the notion of crossovers or lead to any sort of snobbish attitude to them. Cos, well, that ain’t me.

But writing crossovers of other franchises still doesn’t quite float my boat. I did however enjoy seeing Trek crossovers when I began my Trekfic reading – fanfiction or TrekLit.

In fact, my very first story attempt was such a crossover story between DS9 and Voyager. Let me tell you, it was epic! In the Alpha Quadrant the Defiant has pulled off a dastardly attack on a Dominion installation but crippled is making its slow merry way back to safety as it remains behind enemy lines when suddenly an artificially generated wormhole seems to open up before them. Is this the death kneel blow from the Dominion? Meanwhile in the Delta Quadrant, the stranded crew of Voyager come across a strange installation under the control of a nefarious crumbling empire. What is the purpose of this installation? What does it and a large network of such station crisscrossing the empire and all have the effect of distorting the local space do? Why of course, makes wormholes – due a battle to save both quadrants, the Federation, time splitting and lots of other madness.

That story got big. Quick. And got unfinished. Didn’t help that this was written largely by hand at the time so it hasn’t been given the opportunity to have the dust blown off and retooled. My original interest in writing fanfic was the Dominion War era and the possibilities post Dominion War for the future of Starfleet and crews patrolling the borders in an uneasy peace. Accipiter was my original attempt to do such writing with a series of stories detailing an original crew’s exploits in the war and building towards their further adventures in the post war era. In many ways, Accipiter was a failure and while it has not been consigned to the bin it is in the to-be-retooled pile.

Kestrel patch, created by SLWalker

During the writing of Accipiter, and its many fanboy inbuilt failures, I learned a lot and also decided that I wanted to write something different and that had been appealing to me for a long time – that of writing for a cutter on a rather different not so slick ship of the line.

Kestrel was something very different in feel and tone. And the switch to that from the often rather too serious Accipiter was to awaken me to the possibilities of branching out and trying lots of different things. Having created a second OC crew I also realised how much I enjoyed creating new people, new interactions and new possibilities.

Therefore, I’ve quickly come to find ideas filter across all eras of Trek and dip in and out of them. It even has to be said the recent Rewatch Chats have given me a hankering for some TOS era fanfic and I’ve begun to germinate some ideas on that front. After reading so much of the fantastic TOS fic on the Archive it makes me think that there is huge potential in this area but it is an area bereft of OC ships.

Border Dogs is the setting within the often neglected ENT era and follows stories involving the crew of the Falcon and a few other various offshoots within that setting. This came about from getting at last to watch the ENT series, sadly once the show had come to its shelf life with the networks. The show itself impressed me with the setting and had me inspired to transplant my Kestrel border cutter idea into that era.

With the Watchtower Universe I am trying my hand at a lot of different stories and settings all revolving around the Sixth Cutter Border Patrol Squadron based out of Star Station Hope. The main setting, that of Star Station Hope, is inspired by DS9 and Babylon 5, in the attempt to make a large arc to the universe story telling.

The Rhapsody Rabbit Gavilán as found by Tabatha Chase.

But within the umbrella of that setting I have a bounty hunter (Étoile Cheval) and a civilian cargo freighter (Rhapsody Rabbit Gavilán) which have inspirations from Star Wars and Firefly with the starring vessels therein robbed from these franchises – I mean ship designs with influences from these various franchises. 😉

Looking to the future of the Trek Universe, hmm, well I have tried my hand at a short story set within a rather bleak Starfleet. There was a lot of freedom and wiggle room with that with so many potentials to create. Stories like Redemption have proven the value of such storytelling and it is something I am thinking of in the back of my head. Otherwise, the intention is to lead the Watchtower Universe off to a future where the game suddenly changes. Recent reading of TemplarSora’s ST Online setting stories has gotten me thinking about the potential of writing within that set up. I was wary about doing so because of the technology leaps etc but TS’s writing has shown it remains all about the characters and their story. Similarly, TemplarSora original AOS material and Niobium’s AOS stories have let me begin to wonder about writing within that universe. Such plans are a long way off but we shall see, we shall see.