Newsgroup: it.fan.startrek
Titolo: Intervista a Manny Coto

Racconta il suo lavoro, il suo essere trekker, e fa alcuni cenni -spoiler-
su ENT.
http://www.trektoday.com/news/070205_01.shtml
http://www.thefandom.com/audio/fandom013105b.mp3
"The fun of Enterprise has been showing the series we grew up with coming
to fruition," said Manny Coto, a self-confessed original Star Trek fan
who's now an executive producer on the most recent incarnation of the
franchise. "The continuity issues are a great challenge; the Klingon head
ridges created two great episodes."
Speaking to Lisabeth Shatner at TheFandom.com, Coto explained how his
duties as a producer intersect those of Rick Berman and Brannon Braga,
discussed the earliest episodes he wrote for Enterprise and gave some hints
about what viewers can expect for the remainder of the show's last season.
"Really, there are three showrunners," noted Coto when Shatner asked him to
explain his job. "My basic duties are more geared toward the writing
department: setting up the stories, deciding the course of the stories and
the episodes that we'll be telling. I'm also involved in casting, choosing
props and consulting about production design. Rick handles most of the post
and the finishing of the episodes. Brannon is involved in the story
department as well, but he's not as involved as he was last year. A
'showrunner' is usually the person who does all of these things, but in
this case we're all kind of tag-teaming each other."
In terms of the writing he did before he became an executive producer, Coto
said he was particularly proud of "Similitude", the episode in which Phlox
creates a short-lived clone of Tucker in order to save the engineer's life.
"I didn't actually set out to do a story about cloning," said Coto,
explaining that he hatched the concept during his first week on the show,
"just trying to come up with an interesting idea and a compelling hook." He
came up with the idea of Phlox having a creature that could mimic
biological entities.
"That one turned into a topical issue, I guess, but came out more from the
idea of a being born and living and dying in six days," he elaborated.
"What would it mean for the crew to learn to love this individual, and then
harvest its organs to bring back their friend? There were actually lots of
topical issues in that episode, not just cloning. The moral question was,
is it right ever to kill to save billions?"
"Chosen Realm", another issue-oriented episode - in this case, religious
fanaticism - was less successful in Coto's opinion. "Unfortunately, some
people took it as an indictment of religion; it was really an indictment of
the refusal to accept other points of view and where it can lead you," he
explained. "Whereas 'Similitude' was more a drama, I think 'Chosen Realm'
became preachy. In the original series, they always concentrated first on
story and entertainment, and the issues that they tackled were there as a
consequence of the stories they told. First and foremost, the show is meant
to be entertaining."
Coto's own fandom stemmed less from the ideology of the original series
than the characterisation of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. "You fell in love with
those individuals and their interactions," he noted, joking with William
Shatner's daughter that Kirk was "the man." The challenge of the later
shows, he felt, was to create character interaction that would be equally
compelling, yet not identical. "I remember when I watched The Next
Generation premiere, I didn't like it. I was waiting for the Kirk, Spock
and McCoy interaction but I found the characters too polite." Later, he
said, he pulled himself "out of old-series snobbery" and started watching
the new show because "they were telling great stories...they planted their
own flag, starting with season three."
Working with the established canon of the previous show has been
complicated for Coto but also one of his great joys. "You need an
encyclopedic mind to keep up with Star Trek," he exclaimed. "On
Enterprise...the Romulans had cloaking devices which they probably
shouldn't have had. Anyone who knows the old series knows that we can't
meet the Romulans - we can't see them face to face - so we created a
scenario where two characters, Trip and Reed, are trapped on this Romulan
ship that's operated by remote control." That storyline is coming to a
conclusion on the series next Friday night in "The Aenar."
As for the rest of the season, Coto added, the upcoming Klingon arc fits in
both with original series and Next Gen continuity and with the Augments arc
from earlier this season on Enterprise. When the Augment ship was destroyed
over a Klingon planet, he got a notion: "What if the Klingons became very
impressed with fighting capabilities of these Augments and tried to create
their own Augments with genetic material from the human Augments?" He
decided that the attempt might have led to the difference between the
original and later Klingons. "It's not ignored on Deep Space Nine. Worf
actually said, 'It's something we don't talk about.'" The upcoming
storyline, he said, takes the theme of experimentation out of control and
uses it to address the subject of Klingon foreheads.
"It's this wonderfully coherent world," concluded the writer of the Star
Trek mythos, which covers five shows with five different sets of writers
and producers. "I think what's amazing is how well it holds up."
Jolan Tru
-- 
Filippo "Hytok" Simone - L'oracolo sampdoriano di Sunnydale
La Casa degli Elfi - 
http://www.freewebtown.com/lacasadeglielfi/
Enclave del Dominio - S.N.S. Despiser - 
http://ildominio.altervista.org/
Commissione Voyager - 
http://www.voyageritalia.com/

 conclusion on the series next Friday night in "The Aenar."
questo e' parlare da vero trekker :)
fatelo dirigere a lui ST!
mrt^^ 

 fatelo dirigere a lui ST!
era quello che faceva, prima che gli "tagliassero le gambe" :\
ciao
BLADELA
-- 
"Non disperdere Star Trek V nell'ambiente, può inquinare i mari, i laghi e i
fiumi"
mail to : "bladela@  
hotmail.com
"