It's when you say something that you think about it. In Lighten Up and Take More Time Off (The Blank Screen, 21 April 2014) I used the phrase “change the rules”. The Guardian was arguing that we're wrong to think of productivity as a game and I was thinking that I don't – but that if it were, the one good thing about a game is that you can change the rules. And I got that from Star Trek. I am honestly surprised.

Strictly speaking, I got it from a genuinely superb book for writers called The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion which talks about a particular episode and quotes a director saying this DS9 series was different to Star Trek: The Next Generation in this way :

“In general, the DS9 shows are not as squeaky clean as the TNG scripts were,” observes Corey Allen, a veteran director who has worked frequently on both series. “The characters are allowed to be more flawed and that allows for more latitude in interpretation. In TNG, it always seemed to me that the people were wonderfully and heroically bent on the ‘unbent’ — they were straight arrows. But in ‘Captive Pursuit,’ there’s this wonderful moment of realization — almost without words — when O’Brien is sitting at the bar with Quark, and he discovers the possibility that it’s conceivable to break the rules of the Federation, which hitherto had been inconceivable to him. And suddenly he says, ‘Of course — change the rules.’”

(For more about that episode see the blog I nicked the book's quote from, ThemOvieblog.com)

I liked Deep Space Nine and that was for moments like this, when the Star Trek universe would feel a bit more real, a bit less Boy Scout. And that one point about changing the rules has stuck with me.

I like it enough that I wanted to point it out to you, that I now want to explore it. But I'm struggling to find any more life lessons. You know there's a book, right? Wrong. There are two. All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching “Star Trek” (UK edition, US edition) and All the Other Things I Really Need to Know I Learnt from Watching “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (UK edition, US edition). Both by Dave Marinaccio. From the introduction:

For years I’ve related everything in life to Star Trek. But why not? Captain James Tiberius Kirk is the most successful person I’ve ever observed. He’s a great leader, a good manager of people, dedicated, moral, adaptable, at the top of his profession, gets the girls, is well known and respected. There are worse role models.

Okay.

A quick scoot through the Amazon preview of the first book tells me it's all about knowing your place (as McCoy was a doctor, not a… anything else) and always answering distress calls. I seem to remember that being a flawless plan in Star Trek.

But late one night, unable to sleep, flicking channels, I recently came across a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode and I learnt two things from it. First that the days were 26-hours long on this DS9 space station and second that there is no such thing as money.

Sounds like the freelance life to me.