Monday, 4 January 2021

Televising "Wings of Victory"

I would like to see Poul Anderson's short story, "Wings of Victory," adapted accurately as part of a Technic History screen series. There is another option. Larry Niven adapted his Known Space short story, "The Soft Weapon," as the animated Star Trek TV episode, "The Slaver Weapon." Further, there are plot parallels between:

Anderson's prose story, "Wings of Victory";
the animated "The Slaver Weapon";
the live-action Star Trek episode, "The Galileo Seven."

In "Wings of Victory," xenologist Vaughn Webner, pilot Aram Turekian and gunner Yukiko Sachansky descend from the Olga to the surface of Ythri in a spaceboat. Webner, commanding on the ground, makes disastrous decisions.

In "The Slaver Weapon," Spock, Sulu and Uhura, having left the Enterprise in the shuttlecraft, Copernicus, land on an ice planet.

In "The Galileo Seven," Spock, McCoy, Scott and four other crew members, having left the Enterprise in the shuttlecraft, Galileo, crash land on the planet, Taurus II, where Spock, commanding, makes some bad decisions.

I think that "Wings of Victory" is fine as it is but Star Trek adaptation would probably involve increasing the action.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Considering how poorly I regard both STAR TREK and STAR WARS, I'm not really happy with the idea of adapting any of Anderson's stories for the former. I think any such effort would end up mauling and ruining the stories. I would far rather that any filmed versions of the Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry stories (or any others from the Technic series) be made as SET in the Technic timeline.

Ad astra! Sean