The year is 1989. Paramount has just released Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the first and only Star Trek movie directed by William Shatner, to almost universal disappointment. Many fans immediately dub it the worst Star Trek movie ever.<\/p>\n
How does one follow up such an unmitigated disaster? Well, if you\u2019re William Shatner, you try to start your own Sci-fi<\/a> franchise called TekWar.<\/p>\n William Shatner first conceived of TekWar during the production of Final Frontier. The franchise started out as a series of novels outlined by Shatner and ghost-written by Ron Goulart.<\/p>\n The series follows former police officer Jake Cardigan as he attempts to get the illegal drug Tek off the streets of Greater Los Angeles.<\/p>\n The novels somehow spawned a television<\/a> series, comic books, and even a video game despite the fact that no known TekWar fans exist. That might be a slight exaggeration, but let\u2019s put it this way: you\u2019re not going to find any Jake Cardigan cosplays at your local Comic Con.<\/p>\n I\u2019m willing to bet anyone reading this has either never heard of TekWar or forgot it existed until they saw the words on their screen just now. The reason for that is simple: It wasn\u2019t very good.<\/p>\n It might be more accurate and a bit nicer to say that William Shatner\u2019s\u00a0TekWar\u00a0wasn\u2019t very original.<\/span> It starts with the name.<\/p>\n Tek and Trek look very similar, and there\u2019s no way that wasn\u2019t done on purpose. Statistically speaking, TekWar has to owe at least one sale to a nearsighted Star Trek<\/a> fan.<\/p>\n Even the addition of the word War feels calculated, as if Shatner wanted to confuse Star Wars<\/a> fans into buying the books as well.<\/p>\n From there, the world of TekWar is populated with nothing but sci-fi cliches and highly derivative ideas. By the time William Shatner created TekWar, high-tech designer drugs and concepts like a Matrix that certain people can tap into had been staples of the Cyberpunk genre for years.<\/p>\n Lexa Doig on TekWar<\/p>\n TekWar\u2018s autonomous robots, nicknamed \u201cAndies,\u201d are practically ripped right out of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the novel Blade Runner<\/a> is based on. I\u2019m not the first to make that comparison. One review of the TV series actually used the term \u201cDullbladerunner,\u201d to describe the show\u2019s aesthetic. Ouch.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
TekWar\u2019s Suspicious Name<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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William Shatner Enters The World Of Dullbladerunner<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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TekWar Becomes A Publishing Franchise<\/strong><\/h3>\n