Index Crossover Index and Discussion

I'm a fan of Star Trek and Star Wars crossovers, but not having them fight it out. Honestly, it's been done to death. Having them sit down and talk, however...

I mostly do the latter style of crossovers. It's more fun that way.

 

So what do your SW/ST crossovers talk about?

One of my stories featured a paragraph-long crossover prologue, long enough for a Blockade Runner crew to deliver the people of the USS Voyager back to their Alpha Quadrant, in return for one little admission from Captain Janeway.


The Rodian gestured out the port and twisted his snout up at her.
"I held up my part of the deal. Now you do yours."

Janeway glanced down at him. "Are you sure this is all you want? You've pulled off the first interdimensional rescue mission in the Federation's history, after all. We could offer you an exchange of technologies, knowledge of each other's cultures; we have so much to offer each other."

"Quit stalling lady."

She smiled and gave a resigned sigh. "Okay. Your hyperdrive beats the **-"

"Stang." He corrected calmly.

"I'm sorry. Your hyperdrive beats the stang out of our warp drive. Happy now?"

"Ecstatic." Prad jerked a suckered digit at the closed lift-tube behind them. "Now get the frag off my ship."


You mean like that?

 

I always seem to end up doing crossovers! My latest idea is (Literary) James Bond meeting someone (not sure who) c.1981-3, mainly so I can get his car at the time in! And send Bond to Lancashire too.....oh yes....that's about all I've worked out so far.....

 

First off, that was pretty cool.

Second off, I meant like this, actually:

He was dead. Of that much, he was certain.

James T. Kirk held up his hands, or at least the spiritual equivalent. They were translucent, and had an odd blue tinge to them. He felt, in a paradoxical way, more alive than he ever had before.

He looked up just in time to see that Starfleet captain from the future. "Jean-Luc!" He yelled. "I'm not dead." He paused. "I can't be dead. I was supposed to die alone."

Just ahead, Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the late starship Enterprise, pulled a corpse out of a twisted metal framework. Kirk walked up to him and peered over his shoulder. No emotion was visible on his face as he stared into his own lifeless eyes.

Jean-Luc closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross. Merde. I'm sorry, Jim. I should have been able to defeat Soran and? A tear ran down his cheek as he gathered up Jim's body. "I will see you get a proper burial. It's the least I can do." Jean-Luc began walking straight towards Jim, who was only mildly surprised when the captain passed right through him.

Jim shivered at the experience. "I don't like that."

"It's not so bad, once you get used to it."

Jim spun around and instantly shifted into a standard Starfleet defensive stance. After about half a second, he remembered his intangibility.

"Who?are you?" He asked as he looked at the man. Like Jim, his body had a blue tinge to it and was translucent. Unlike Jim, who wore his Starfleet uniform, he wore a simple gray shirt, white pants and a brown robe. His face was partially obscured by a hood. Jim walked up to him. "My name is James T. Kirk, late of the starship Enterprise. I ask again: who are you?"

The man pulled down the hood. "I am to be your guide into what comes next. It will be confusing and perhaps a little frightening, but I can assure you it will be worth it in the end." The man's blue eyes shone with amusement as he spoke the next words. "Consider it the true 'final frontier'."

Jim turned around slowly and looked up. By now Jean-Luc was halfway up the mountain. "A friend of mine once said that I can take death, and turn it into a fighting chance." He shrugged his shoulders. "I guess my chances were all used up." He looked at the man. "So, what force sent you here, the angels or the devils?"

A low chuckle escaped from the man's lips. "I wouldn't call all of them angels, but it is a force of the light that sent me." He walked up to Jim and, much to his surprise, placed a hand on Jim's shoulder. "You have done much good, James T. Kirk. It's now time for you to rest. Let the burden of saving the galaxy fall onto the next generation's shoulders." For a second, he hesitated. Then a thought struck him. I'm dead. What good can come from hanging around this plane of existence when there's a new one just waiting? "All right, lead the way Mr.?" He hesitated as a look of confusion swept his face. "By the way, what'

 

RK_Striker_JK_5, that was very good! You definitely have a feel for James T. Kirk. It felt like Classic Star Trek is your main fandom too.

Coincidentally, instead of going with the 'Calamari Evac' SW/ST excerpt, I had originally planned to make a point using the Sailor Senshu story (not read it) that I spotted on the Beyond the Saga board, and from looking at your sig, that is one of yours!

 

Ok Firstly many apologies for my lack of input in this up to now! I unfortunatly was very ill in hospital over the summer and then ended up being rather busy moving back to uni!

Secondly - I think its great that you want to discuss crossovers, I always got the impression that people weren't really that interested.

I will edit the title of the thread in a minute and will try and post some more stories today as well!

 

Hope you are better now?!

 

Thanks, and yeah, classic Trek is one of my favorite shows of all time.

And go right ahead and use an excerpt from 'Three New Sailor Senshi'. I consider it to be one of my best writings of all time.

 

Thanks Sith-I-5 I am! Just busy with DRL now! I will try to keep index posts up and look in on discussion where I can though!

 

My point with the Senshi story didn't actually involve reading it, but that a third use of the crossover is that of a crutch, where a big-time fan of one genre, eg. Sailor Senshi, has asked you to donate a story on that subject to a fiction collection, storyzine, whatever.

If you want to help, but haven't a clue what Sailor Senshi is, you can quickly Google it to get the gist - long-limbed girls in sailor gear, power gems, possibly the reincarnations of ancient goddesseses?

Now, although you don't really know what the frag is going on in this other universe apart from the basics, this is not necessarily an impediment to making a good story, for the characters you insert from Star Wars can be the equivalents of my less than stellar experiences playing pool, "sorry, don't mind us, we're just here to get our ball back" .

Possible that this situation has not arisen for that many writers, but it did for me, when I was asked to contribute to a Robin of Sherwood zine.
Sorry, not my jurisdiction. Twenty-four hours later, I had a crossover knocked out.

 

Are you talking about making a very short piece, like a crossover drabble, or about writing a longer story in which one of the properties has little more than a cameo appearance? First, in the latter case, if the characters appearing in passing are the ones who're the main subject of the zine, that may not be the wiser choice. If you were to pick up a Star Wars zine and found a Sapphire and Steel fic with just a bit of SW in it, you'd probably feel a bit cheated, especially if you have no idea who Sapphire and Steel were, wouldn't you?

Second, as I've said in the past, I don't tend to count passing references in longer fics as being enough to make it a crossover with that property. More often, it's like an in-joke, like the recurring window cameos from Batman or that scene in The 15 Years Later Affair in which George Lazenby appeared as J.B. Most people wouldn't say that his cameo turned the TV movie into a Bond film, and similarly, such small bits do not, to me, a crossover make. Otherwise, I'd really have to pad out my list of crossovers I've done.

 

Drabbo_Fett, the 'crossover' with Star Trek: Voyager that I quoted would come under what you are referring to, since you would qualify it as a cameo. I doubt if ST:V fans would feel cheated, since I would not promote it as being for them.

Rather than starting at the beginning of the current adventure, it - like a lot of James Bond films - starts off the back of a previous escapade which has nothing to do with the main story.

As for the 'crutch' idea in my last post, I think you are right.
I'm putting forward the concept as something that can be used if you have been asked to write something for a genre that you know nothing about.

 

Finally updated to R

 

Que?

 

No, R. The index above. One more letter, and your stories'll be added.

I'm not sure I'd include a crossover cameo in a PCS* or prologue (at least not without clear disclaimers), simply because it could give the impression that the other property's characters will play a major role. Later in the story, a cameo can look like a cameo, but at the start, given the piece-by-piece format used here, it'd appear to be a fuller crossover.

Also, given that Star Wars is harder to cross over than most properties, I've been experimenting with hybridized crossovers, either AUing other properties to fit within the GFFA or combining characters and situations.


[*pre-credit sequence, another term for a teaser]

 

Ah, Drabbo, why is STar Wars harder to cross than most other properties? I've found it to be remarkably easy, myself.

 

It's not impossible, but it's not as easy as other properties. Most shows, movies, books, and other media are set here on Earth close to the present day. To cross The West Wing with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example, all you have to do is have characters run into each other somewhere, and there are myriad reasons why they could be in the same place. No muss, little fuss. Some difficulty may arise with properties that are removed in time, but there are often ways around that. Star Wars, though, has no time or space overlap with other properties. It's a long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away. And it doesn't have any ready-made ways around that like some other SF properties do. Now if you cross it over with one of those, like Trek or Doctor Who, you can use what that property provides. Otherwise, you have to introduce some outside catalyst. Not difficult, but it's an extra step.

 

Well, I always ignored the 'Long Time Ago' thing, but that's just me. SW also has hyperdrive, which basically rips holes into space/time. I can see a hyperdrive accident dropping, say, the Rock Dragon onto present day Earth, say around Tokyo?

 

For my fanfic, I just ignored the "long time ago" part, so you're not alone, there, Striker.

The fandom I'm crossing over with SW occurs 4000 years into the future. I just put a hole caused by a solar-system sized alien in the division between galaxies and have some of the main characters sent to the SW galaxy to explore, all Lewis and Clark style.

 

I'm not sure I'd include a crossover cameo in a PCS* or prologue (at least not without clear disclaimers), simply because it could give the impression that the other property's characters will play a major role.

Excellent point, Drabbo_Fett. Right under the story title, but above the crossover prologue, I did print this tongue-in-cheek warning:

This features a brief Star Trek/ Star Wars crossover. This is purely to demonstrate that the D-B agents shown herein are available for cross-reality rescue missions and children's parties. This is their story.

Good enough?

but at the start, given the piece-by-piece format used here, it'd appear to be a fuller crossover.


Well, I suppose that is a matter for stuff posted on the JCC, but since we have established that I'm new to this place, rest assured that that wasn't an issue at publication.

Otherwise, you have to introduce some outside catalyst.

Sometimes I make something up, like I had Palpatine attempt to conjure up a replacement for Darth Maul, and he ended up with The Anointed One, the nine-year-old vampire from Season Two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Other times, if I decide to be brutally honest, or simply cannot be arsed thinking some SF mumbo-jumbo up, I'll tell the readership something like - "-got pulled through a dimensional portal by...alright, it was me." And then get on with the story.

 

Yay! I'm listed! *feels happy now*

Hmm... I'm kicking around a few ideas for new crossovers. Any StarCraft fans here?

 

Welcome along, Moff_Yitreas!

Okay, checked your locked thread, and you asked about potential plots?

I have done several crossovers, but since hardly any of my stuff is available on the JCC, I won't give titles, only the crossover elements and concept/reasoning.

SW/ ST: Voyager - prologue only. Blockade Runner pops into their universe to rescue the Voyager crew and diss their warp drive.

SW/ Angel - Angel crosses into NJO timeline to save Chewie.

SW/ Buffy - I team up nine-year old Chosen One (Anakin) with ten-year old Anointed One (Collin) to save the galaxy.

SW/ Robin of Sherwood - That 'crutch' idea I mentioned several posts up, where I got asked to help out with a genre I'm not familiar with.

Fraggin' hell, I've done a lot of these. Never listed them before.

SW/ Dracula - Wanted to see why the Dewback Patrol on Tatooine have such big guns. Four troopers help Maria Van Helsing in the 18th Century Transylvania.

SW/ Snowball-9 - My epic 80-pager, well my idea of an epic anyway, combining SW with a computer adventure game I spent 18 months playing.

Failed or guano ideas from my youth:

Fire Minion (D&D lava pool-dwelling creature I saw on a poster at a mate's house);
Lord of the Rings - aerial assault on Sauron's fortress. Probably a rescue; anything goes if someone needs saving.

QUERY. If you bring a concept into the Star Wars universe, but no characters, eg. running a CSI team on Coruscant; does that qualify as a crossover?

 

Sith-I-5: If you bring a concept into the Star Wars universe, but no characters, eg. running a CSI team on Coruscant; does that qualify as a crossover?

Unless the concept wouldn't usually exist in the GFFA, I would say no. In your example, a CSI team (this stands for Crime Scene Investigation, right?) on Coruscant would just be a Coruscanti forensics team.

But if a mathematician predicted the fall of the New Republic and was sent into exile on a way-out-beyond-the-boondocks Outer Rim world to start compiling an encyclopedia, then . . . maybe.

Of course, this is just my take on the subject.

- lazy

 

QUERY. If you bring a concept into the Star Wars universe, but no characters, eg. running a CSI team on Coruscant; does that qualify as a crossover?

A concept like that, no. CSI and its spinoffs are based on actual law enforcement entities, so that concept isn't at all unique to the fictional CSIverse. Most major cities have something of the kind, so it'd be perfectly logical that Coruscant would, too. Now if Leia were found and told she's the Vampire Slayer, the one girl in all the galaxy who can stand up to the forces of darkness, and Bail were revealed to be her Watcher, then you can make a claim. [If you change "vampire" to "Sith," though, it wouldn't be a crossover but a parody.]

The key is that what crosses over from a fictional reality must be something created for that reality. A fictional concept or location or species can, if it marks out the fictional reality as not fictional within the story. If it's an element that exists in the real world and the fictional reality, then there must be something within the story (not just an author's note) that shows that it's the fictional version appearing. For example, let's say you're writing a story about the Ghostbusters in the White House. At that point, you can't call it a crossover, since there's no indication that it's the Batlett White House (or the Allen, Mitchell, Shepherd, Whitmore, Luthor, Tresch, or Mansfield White House, to name a few) instead of the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Bush version.

EDIT: Ah, Lazybks got in ahead of me, but I'll leave all that up anyway. SI5, you can see the things I've crossed over with Star Wars above. I've also done a lot of non-SW fanfic and crossovers, but this isn't the place for all that.

 

Hmm. I had an ST fic a while back. I could probably continue it, but that would be one hell of a bump. I was thinking along the lines of StarCraft and SW, or maybe Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars. Or, maybe what would happen if the Empire launched a ship towards our Galaxy, and it arrived around now.

Gah, too many ideas. Please help me pick one.