Hi Tom.
To me, the simple idea of a ship flying through space on an exploration
mission is not directly startrek related, provided the ship, universe,
characters and aliens are different ones.
For example, the series lost in space involved a family of humans on a
spaceship flying through unknown sectors of space trying to get home,
exploring as they went. Yet, this is an entirely different setting,
universe, set of characters and set of aliens to startrek, sinse the simple
exploration idea, like a ship with laser weapons and faster than light
travel, is more a general sf concept that could be taken in a different
direction.
Susan Cooper's dark is rising series (actually written before harry potter),
could be said to have some paralells, sinse it's about a young boy who meets
an eldily wizard, learns magic, and is involved in a prophecied battle
against evil magicians called the dark.
Yet, the series has an entirely different tone and setting to harry potter.
There is for instance no school of magic, and though will can! use magic,
there is a strict code and set of lores under which he can use it, indeed
throughout the book will the old one, aka servent of the light and magician
is distinguished quite successively from will the boy.
The prophecy is much more vague and never explored, jsut providing the
inevitability for the magic battle, and ultimately it's the characters that
matter most in the series, indeed most of the attacks by the dark revolve
around characters rather than overt magic, though ther is cetanly no
shortage of magic throughout the books.
Even the real world setting differs hugely from harry potter, sinse the
books are entirely themed around wild places in Britain with keltic
significance, such as the mountain in wales, kade idris, or the seat of
arthur, in fact Will himself is the son of a large farming family, and not
an only child or a child living with a single parent in a modern city.
This is why so many fans of susan cooper's books were extremely angry when
hollywood turned it into a blatant harry potter knockoff film, and you had
will chucking fireballs and learning magic, not to mention changing will's
nationality to american for some reason even though the film was still set
in Britain.
thus, I do think there is a difference betwene actual copying of ideas and
simply using general concepts.
For instance, suppose you had a ship exploring new life etc, but the
"federation" they were from wasn't the goody goody one of startrek, but
quite a different body. perhaps unlike the ship's of startrek, the ship is
much smaller, perhaps with only a few crew members, none of whome are alien
in origin, and maybe the crew's technology is actually less! sophisticated
than aliens they meet.
Then of course, there is no reason for the aliens to look human, or behave
like klingons, romulans, vulcans etc, they could be entirely and completely
different.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
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