An essay on Star Trek: FUCK Rick Berman

I just have to write this, because right now over on their Facebook page, Star Trek are currently paying homage to the worst thing to happen to the brand, Rick Berman. I shared it with them, but I don't expect it to remain up for very long over there. So here then is my essay, Fuck Rick Berman:

Fuck Rick Berman. Fuck Rick Berman in the ear.

The man turned TNG's final seasons into an uneven mess of "restart-by-closing-credits" melodramas and Rubber Forehead Theatre.

The inability to stick to established Star Trek lore or maintain an even portrayal of characters (or for that matter, DEVELOPING the characters beyond the 2 dimensional), as well as ripping off an idea originally pitched to Paramount by J Michael Straczyinski (The big, blue rotating elephant in the room) to create DS9 only cheapened TNG's already-tarnished legacy.

The movies only ruined things further by taking the Borg completely off the rails, (Creating plot holes the size of which you could fly a planet-eater through), allowing William Shatner a hammish and extended death scene, prostituting the TNG cast to inferior scripts and direction and pointlessly and inelegantly killed off one of the franchise's most beloved characters. The net result? TNG died of terminal suck.

Shall we enumerate the sins of Voyager, of which there are many? Start with the wasted potential to tell REAL "Strange New Worlds" stories, assembling a crew of caricatures instead of characters, spending no time on developing a coherent story arc, completely bollocksing up the Borg, Shoe-horning good, old-fashioned cheezy 1980s Three's Company eye-candy Jeri Ryan into the story (and then not even being able to pull of T&A properly) to distract the horny fanboys who couldn't jerk it to Janeway because she reminded them of their moms, not even ATTEMPTING to formulate any kind of direction for the show...

Enterprise? Purile, outdated garbage. The show would have been great-had it come out 20 years before, when Genre audiences weren't as demanding of intelligent, thoughtful storytelling. And the weekly dose of Vulcan camel-toe (Pon-T'ang, I believe it's called) just wasn't enough to make the show tolerable. Nevermind the Xindi fiasco and the one-again pointless killing off of a beloved character in the finale.

The best thing to happen to Star Trek since "All Good Things" aired was the 2009 alternate-history reboot by JJ Abrams. And even there, we need an extended director's cut to really get the most out of that one, I think.

Rick Berman? Should do to him what the Klingons did to Worf: Turn our backs on him and exile him in shame.

AMAZON Replies...and I write them back...

News as follows: Amazon replied regarding Peter Michelsen's theft of my work. What follows is their reply (in blue); beneath that, my reply to their latest.

Dear Mr. Karmazenuk,

Thank you for your message.  Please be advised that we are in the process of removing the following Kindle titles from Amazon.com:

The Unearthing [Kindle Edition] ASIN: B004JF4NUK

It typically takes 2-3 days for a listing to disappear once it has been removed from our catalog. We trust this will bring this matter to a close.

Adrian Garver

Copyright/Trademark Agent
Amazon.com

Thank you for tending to this matter.

However, merely removing Mr Michelsen's plagiaristic entry from your webpage is insufficient. I intend to pursue all legal avenues available to me against Mr Michelsen, and to that end will need the details of Mr Michelsen's account: specifically, the number of sales of ebooks he has completed for The Unearthing, as well as his full legal name and contact/mailing information.

Likewise, I have discovered that another of my eBooks, Through Darkness And Stars, is being sold through your site - purportedly by me.

The link is here:

http://www.amazon.com/Through-Darkness-and-Stars-ebook/dp/B004KPM2KW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC&s=digital-text&qid=1297217004&sr=8-1

Needless to say, the person selling this book is NOT me; I'm shocked that you would allow anyone to sell an eBook through your site without verifying they are in fact the copyright owners of the work in question. Especially considering that the book lists itself as "The Sequel to the Unearthing" and it is not on the same "Steve Karmazenuk" author account as "The Unearthing". Along with the removal of "Through Darkness and Stars" from your listings I will need the details of the bogus Steve Karmazenuk as I've requested for Peter Michelsen.

I look forward to your prompt reply.

Regards,

Steve Karmazenuk

Well, in the last week I've sent 2 notices to Amazon.com about the plagiarism of my book, The Unearthing, by one vile little thief, Peter Michelsen.

Well, Amazon has yet to get back to me about taking this down and doing something to block this piece of shit, Michelsen.

Today, I discovered someone is also selling - at $4.00 a pop, no less - the eBook for Through Darkness and Stars on Amazon, as well.

Needless to say, I'm vigorously pursuing all legal avenues open to me; and at this point I'm not only considering action not only against Michelsen and whoever this other fuckwit selling Darkness is, but against Amazon as well.

I released both of these novels as FREE downloadable eBooks a while back. The Creative Commons license stipulated that the eBooks were allowed to be read and FREELY redistributed...I did this because it was more important to me to be read than to be remunerated. But to find out that some opportunistic parasites out there are making profit off of my work - blatantly and flagrantly STEALING from me - and violating the Creative Commons license - I'm outraged.

What astounds me is the utter lack of effort on the part of Amazon.com to ensure that the products they are selling on behalf of these people are in fact their legally copyrighted work. Peter Michelsen has literally dozens of titles for sale, all of which are obviously stolen from other authors. This other person posing as me, again, is not only using my work but MY OWN FUCKING NAME to steal from me.

I'm shocked at the lackadaisical effort Amazon has put into verifying ownership of work. I'm offended by their lack of response to my repeated requests to fix this matter.

It's one thing to share a file for free that an author has put out there for that express purpose. It's a whole other kettle of fish to take that same work and try to make a buck off of it at the author's expense.

I'm also pretty sure I'm done giving away my shit for free.