A STUDY OF HUMANITY

"A Time and a Place: Parts 1 – 5"

Introduction

I could not help but notice that the stories that Star Trek writers submit to fanzines like Spock, they all centre their stories around the Star Trek universe we all know so well. (Being the continuing voyages of the Starship Enterprise etc.) So I decided to take the view of creating a story that did not have any reference to the Enterprise at all, in an attempt to show that there is more to Star Trek than the life of one starship and more than one crew. I felt that in these stories, the rest of Starfleet rarely had a serious study conducted into it. Since I am a person who does not like predicability, I wrote a story that was based on the Next Generation episode "The Best of Both Worlds" and took that story from a different view point. The result was "A Time and a Place". The rest of it just sort of grew on from there.

The whole concept of the five stories is to show how an opinion can vary depending on what side you see it from. A good guy in one story may also be a bad guy in another. The idea is not to get too comfortable with what you think you understand. 'A Study of Humanity' is about people and how every person is different. You

will notice that there are no aliens in any of the five parts as I wanted to project the human view of everything. People make mistakes and not everyone in the 25th century are saints (as Next Generation would have you sometimes believe). They will still be the same in five hundred years time as they are today. There shall still be greed, theft, murder and the constant feelings of self preservation. This study is directed toward another view of Star Trek, a side you rarely get to see, a side which is just as intriguing and full of suspense as those aboard the good ship Enterprise.

The writing style, you shall find, is rather simplistic as my writing ability has not matured to a point were I can express myself with big words and phrases I do not fully comprehend. So I hope that instead of looking at the words thinking of better ways to say things, you look at the ideas behind them instead and judge the concept behind the of the thing as a whole. I have tried to be original, and I believe I have at least achieved that goal, so if anything, A Study of Humanity will go down in fanzine history as being, unusually different. Which is something to be happy about. After all, we are only human.

Darren Maxwell (29/3/94)

* with special thanks to Katharine Shade for her assistance in editing, as well as her support and opinions.