Column SFF Bestiary The Wisdom of Star Trek’s Spot Long before Data has the chip that allows him to feel what humans feel, Spot is his emotional rock… By Judith Tarr | Published on February 9, 2026 Credit: CBS Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: CBS There’s something about a ginger cat. We’ve seen the greatness that is Alien’s Jonesy. But there is another and possibly even more beloved ginger icon, with a similar arc but more screen time. Spot, Commander Data’s cat on Star Trek: Next Generation, appears in eight episodes of the series, with appearances in two of the films, Generations and Nemesis, plus a cameo in an episode of Picard. Spot first appears in Season 4’s “Data’s Day.” The episode is a sort of diary, and it has a Theme: friendship. Amid all the alarums and excursions, we learn that Data has a cat. His name is Spot, he’s a long-haired ginger, and Data feeds him and pets him while he works at his computer. There’s no explanation. We don’t get the backstory on how or why Data ended up with a cat. He’s just there, in the same way Jonesy is just there on the Nostromo. Spot shows up again near the end of the season, in episode 25 (back in ancient times, TV seasons used to be 26 episodes long), “In Theory.” Again, he’s a long-haired ginger, and he’s a minor mover of one of the subplots. Data has the door of his quarters set to allow only humanoids to pass, but Geordi finds Spot outside and a couple of corridors over. It’s a mystery, which eventually gets solved. In the process, we learn that Data has been experimenting with numerous cat-food formulas. Spot, it seems, is a picky eater. The main plot revolves around a sweet young blonde crewperson who makes moves on Data. Data has no emotions at this point, that chip hasn’t been installed, but he’s been developing a program to predict human reactions, and he is amenable to experimenting with a romantic relationship. When the inevitable happens and she breaks up with him, he closes the episode by picking up Spot and cuddling him. That’s the last we see of Spot until Season 6. In “Schisms”, Spot isn’t present except in verse. Data’s poetry reading (attended by a circle of overwhelmingly bored crewpersons) culminates in the famous, or infamous, “Ode to Spot.” It begins, Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclatureAn endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by natureYour visual, olfactory, and auditory sensesContribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses. It ends, And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend. Awful? Brilliant? So bad it’s wonderful? You be the judge. The cat himself appears in “A Fistful of Datas.” Spot is now an orange shorthair, and we have a pattern of behaviors: he often occupies Data’s lap and/or his computer console (whether Data wants him there or not), and he has, as Data puts it, “highly selective tastes.” It’s an ongoing project to find a formula that Spot will eat. Spot is, in short, a normal cat. In “The Birthright, Part I,” in which Data first begins to dream, Spot is one of three personal things that appear in the dream: his cat, his potted plant, and his paintings. Spot is just there, part of Data’s mental landscape. But in Season 7, which is the last season of the series, he finally gets a chance to shine. The first episode of the season, “Descent, Part II,” completes an arc in which Data is equipped with an emotion chip by his evil twin, Lore, but he’s not ready for it. When he comes to that realization, and discusses it with Geordi, Spot is present, doing cat things and allowing Geordi to pet him. “Phantasms” continues Data’s dream journey, this time with a terrifying twist: Data is having nightmares. The episode begins with Data studying Spot as he sleeps, noting the physical indications that he’s dreaming. Data tells Troi, “Spot has never seen a mouse or any other form of rodentia. He has never encountered an insect or been chased by a canine.” Spot is a ship’s cat, though apparently there are no vermin to hunt on a Federation starship. He’s a pet and companion. Data is worried about harming him during one of his waking nightmares, and asks Worf to look after him. Worf is nonplussed. “Your animal,” he growls, and commands the cat to “Come here.” Spot is not a canine, Data reminds him. He doesn’t obey verbal commands. When Worf grudgingly picks him up, Data comes near to babbling about his care and feeding. Which supplement he likes, he has to have water, he has to have a sandbox— “And you must talk to him. Tell him he’s a pretty cat and a good cat…” “I will feed him,” snarls Worf. That, Data realizes, will have to be enough. It does seem to be. After Data’s nightmares have been resolved, Spot is back in his quarters again, and Data is teasing him with a fuzzy toy on a wire. As one does. In “Force of Nature”, Spot has her own major subplot. Geordi has borrowed her in an effort to find out if he wants to get his own cat. Her. Right. We’ll get to that. Spot has been manifesting major cattitude. She’s smashed a vase and a teapot, scratched a chair to pieces, and coughed up hairballs all over the carpet. Now she’s hiding under Geordi’s bed and he wants (entirely metaphorically, one hopes) to kill her. Well, says Data, “When you borrowed Spot, you said you wanted to experience the full range of feline behavior before getting a cat yourself.” The answer to that question, Geordi says fervently, is no. He is not ready for a cat. He then tells Data to call her. Data can’t do that. Spot doesn’t do verbal commands. Well then, Geordi declares, you need to train her. Data’s attempts to train the cat provide comic relief in an otherwise harrowing episode about, among other things, the ways in which warp drives are endangering the universe. Data concludes after a long and varied series of experiments that she may be inherently untrainable; maybe she lacks the intelligence to process human commands. While he tells Geordi this, Spot meows at him. He pauses. She meows again. He fetches her favorite string toy and starts to play with her. “I don’t know about Spot,” says Geordi, “but seems to me your training is coming along just fine.” Seems to me the cat may be rather smarter than Data recognizes. As for intelligence or lack thereof, it may be worth noting that Data had to prove his own sentience in order to be admitted to Starfleet. The fact that he makes a repeated point of Spot’s lack of it, and yet is so clearly bonded to her (or him), is an interesting and ongoing theme in the series. The main plot of episode 9 involves an alien scientist who has made a devastating and controversial discovery. No one believes her. She resorts to ever more desperate and aggressive measures, which backfire badly. Data’s attempts to train the cat are a much gentler reflection of this plotline. They’re teaching a lesson about the difference between persuasion and force. In Spot’s final episode in the series, “Genesis”, she finally becomes a main character. Spot is pregnant, and Data has been with her every step of the way. He doesn’t know which of the twelve male cats on board is the father—he plans to run the kittens’ DNA after they’re born—but he does know that it happened during one of her escapes from his quarters. Meanwhile, crisis of the week means that Data may be away from the ship when Spot has her kittens. He entrusts her to Reg Barclay, the only human on board whom Spot seems to like. (Spot is quite expressive about her feelings toward other members of the crew. As in, physical injuries.) Reg seems to adore her, and he knows cats: he understands that she’ll want a dark and secluded place to give birth. While Data and the captain are away, all hell breaks loose. They come back to find the ship shut down and the crew transformed into prehistoric animals. Spot, when they find her, is an iguana. But her newborn kittens are still kittens. The placenta, the maternal antibodies, and the amniotic fluid all protected them from the evil space virus. That’s the key to the antidote. With the help of a pregnant crew member, for humanoid amniotic fluid, Data whips up an antidote. Spot has saved the day. That’s it for Spot in the series. She (or he) appears briefly in Nemesis, but in Generations he (or she) is a catalyst for Data’s major emotional breakthrough. After the total destruction of the Enterprise, as Data and the rest of the crew comb through the wreckage in search of survivors, Troi detects a small life sign in a heap of rubble. It’s Spot, and Data gathers her up, sobbing into her fur. He’s discovered complex emotions. “I am happy to see Spot, yet I am crying.” He’s spent his life trying to understand what it’s like to be human. Now he knows. Spot is a constant in Data’s life from Season 4 onward (and possibly throughout, but we don’t meet him until halfway through the series). The appearance changes, the gender changes—on this side of the fourth wall it’s continuity issues and a writer who decided, near the end of the game, that she wanted Spot to be female instead of male—but in the Trek universe, pretty much every being is infinitely mutable. Alien invaders, viruses, strange manifestations of space and time, can change a being’s appearance, gender, even species. Maybe Spot is a shapeshifter. Maybe there are multiple Spots. Spot 1.0 the long-haired ginger, Spot 2.0 the ginger boy, Spot 3.0 the ginger girl. They (or he, or she) are Data’s emotional rock. Long before he has the chip that allows him to feel what humans feel, he understands that Spot is his friend. Spot is there, quietly in the background, when he comes to new understandings about human life and human nature. When he’s had a rough day or week or year, he comes back to Spot. From Spot, more than from any other being, he learns how to love.[end-mark] The post The Wisdom of <i>Star Trek</i>’s Spot appeared first on Reactor.

Books book culture What Lures Readers Into Picking Up an Unfamiliar Book? What elements do you look for when browsing the shelves? By James Davis Nicoll | Published on February 9, 2026 Photo by Agustin Gunawan [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Agustin Gunawan [via Unsplash] One might expect that all one needs to do to convince readers to pick up your newly published novel is for it to appear in some appropriate venue (bookshelf, website, etc.). However, even if we were to limit ourselves to conventional publishing and physical books, an astonishing number of books are published each year. It’s easy—quite possibly inevitable—that your new book will get lost in the crowd. What works to attract attention? One possible solution is to ask your neighborhood Books Georg what induced them to pick up the books in the two weighty sacks they are carrying. Luckily for me, despite my very moderate reading pace, I am somehow a Books Georg1, which greatly simplifies the logistical challenges involved in questioning me. So: What will get me to pull a book off the shelf? Actually, make that “a book by an unfamiliar author”2. Obviously, authors with whose work I am already familiar have a leg up. I have long lists of authors for whom I keep an eye out. But how did I find them in the first place? Two main routes: first, methods that the author and sellers can control, and secondly, stuff that they cannot. What publishers, distributors, and authors can control… In declining order: Art: The art doesn’t have to signal much about the contents of the book. In fact, it’s probably best to assume that it won’t. As one publisher has established, the art doesn’t have to be good. In fact, as Penguin showed with its classic cover design, you don’t technically need art in the sense of illustrations at all, as long as the cover design is striking. If the cover inspires a browsing reader to pause and consider the book, the cover did its job. There are a few drawbacks to depending on art to catch the browser’s eye. First, you’ll need an artist (or in the case of Penguin, an inspired designer). But artists and designers want to be paid3. Artists are notoriously insistent on eating and living indoors, as if they were royalty. Second, the cover art will only be visible if the book is face out, rather than spine out. Blurbs: Blurbs are intended to entice the reader, to convince them that this is a book worth buying. Like cover art, conveying any sort of accurate information about the book is an optional extra, something a publisher might consider if the circumstances allow. Still, it’s bad if having read the blurb, the reader has no idea at all what the book is about or to whom it is supposed to appeal. I do need to carve out a special exception for blurbs so terrible they attract reader attention. The classic example is, of course, the back cover copy for Margaret St. Clair’s Sign of the Labrys, which famously read: WOMEN ARE WRITING SCIENCE-FICTION! ORIGINAL! BRILLIANT!! DAZZLING!!! Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides. They possess a buried memory of humankind’s obscure and ancient past which can emerge to uniquely color and flavor a novel. Such a woman is Margaret St. Clair, author of this novel. Such a novel is this, Sign of the Labrys, the story of a doomed world of the future, saved by recourse to ageless, immemorial rites… FRESH! IMAGINATIVE!! INVENTIVE!!! Does that convey anything beyond, perhaps, that the person responsible for the blurb had not read the book and had a deadline? No. It’s a trainwreck of a blurb, but it is so memorable I still think about it sixty-plus years later… and I do own that particular edition, so the blurb did its job. Proximity: It never hurts to be shelved right next to a popular author (or at least the author the reader was originally looking for). I no longer remember which of Simak or Silverberg I found first, but I do remember that I tried the second because their book happened to be next to the first. This is to some extent under the author and publisher’s control, depending on the author’s tolerance for pen names. Use a pseudonym starting with “Tol,” “Ki,” “We”, or “Ya” (to name a few) and your book will be shelved in well-travelled real estate4. Or since surnames tend to cluster, you might get lucky and not need a pen name at all. Eye level: When I ran my store, I was very aware that anything below knee level and anything above eye level was basically invisible to browsers. Does this inform my own browsing habits? It does not! A book that happens to be at my eye level is much more likely to be noticed by me than one that is not. Aside from not having a surname beginning with A or Z, I don’t have concrete suggestions about how one can ensure one’s book ends up at eye level. Well, you can try bribing the clerks, I suppose5. You can at least take heart from the fact that Poul Anderson and Roger Zelazny both had great careers despite the shelving handicap of their surnames. What sellers cannot control: Spontaneous word of mouth from someone I trust. Note the absence of “someone with whom I agree.” Someone doesn’t need to have the same preferences or views about books as I do to be someone whose opinions are useful to me. They just need to be coherent, consistent, and sincere. I can work out from what they said how I am likely to react to a book. From the author’s and publisher’s perspective, this is the most frustrating filter, because it depends on spontaneity and trust. Gaming this system destroys spontaneity and is a good way to annihilate trust. Therefore, to even try to influence word of mouth is high risk. Rather than convince readers that your book is worth reading, it could instead convince them to disregard everything from that particular source of book gossip. I’d name names of places I no longer trust to provide me with good reads, but I so hate being sued… Those are the primary filters I use. What are yours?[end-mark] Even though my review pace has slowed with age to the point that I am only forty-five times as productive as the median reviewer in the 2016 Clarksworld survey, rather than the sixty-five-fold rate I managed when I was at my peak. ︎I will also rule out one of the great drivers of my purchases in the 1970s, which was “it was the only science fiction or fantasy book the store had in stock.” Which had the advantage of introducing me to ambitious authors I would not have thought to try and the disadvantage of introducing me to Gregory Kern’s books. ︎“Gosh, can’t I just use a plagiarism engine to generate artslop?” Well, sure. That’s an option open to any moral vacuum. But why should a reader believe that the contents of a book were any less AI-generated than the cover? I employ numerous negative filters, elements that will absolutely get me to ignore a book. AI cover art is up near the top of the list. ︎There are some downsides. For example, when I went looking for James Alan Gardner’s Expendable, I couldn’t find it until I stopped to think where an overworked clerk might have mis-shelved it… over in mainstream, with the John Gardner books. Both John Gardners. Grendel was tucked in among Bond books. Poor Blofeld’s had an accident. So may you all. Another example: Walter Jon Williams and William John Watkins are not the same people, but their names are similar enough that I’ve had to add footnotes to reviews explaining that. ︎I knew of an author back in the days of spinner racks who made a point of being nice to the guys who delivered new books each week. As a consequence, her books would be left on the spinners when they should have been pulled, which had a measurable effect on her sales. ︎The post What Lures Readers Into Picking Up an Unfamiliar Book? appeared first on Reactor.

News Starfleet Academy Avery Brooks Gave His Blessing to Starfleet Academy’s Big Sisko Episode Writer Tawny Newsome breaks down the battle to pay tribute to Captain Sisko and Avery Brooks in Starfleet Academy’s latest episode By Matthew Byrd | Published on February 6, 2026 Photo: John Medland/Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: John Medland/Paramount+ Note: This article contains light spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 5 “Series Acclimation Mil.” While we won’t dive into the full spoilers here (you can find more of those in this review), it’s safe to call Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s latest episode (“Series Acclimation Mil”) a massive tribute to both Deep Space Nine and Avery Brooks’ beloved character, Captain Benjamin Sisko. Starfleet Academy co-showrunner Noga Landau even referred to it as a love letter to both DS9 and Sisko in our recent interview with them. And now, in an expansive (and excellent) interview with TrekMovie, episode writer Tawny Newsome explains how the episode came about. “I was pretty adamant that for this episode, it was our job to make this an homage, a celebration, and really a bit of a correction for what I feel has been an oversight in a lot of modern Trek,” says Newsome. “We haven’t talked nearly enough about the Siskos, about Benjamin Sisko, or about the show Deep Space Nine at all, despite it being a massive addition to our canon. So I was pretty adamant. I’ll say I was frothing at the mouth some days about how important this was. So if anyone thought it was too much canon, they shared those details among themselves.” Even though Starfleet Academy‘s writers have thus far not shied away from using the series’ setting and premise as an excuse to dive deep into Star Trek lore, the Sisko storyline is its own beast. Not only is it a relatively deep cut (despite DS9‘s resurging popularity in more recent years), but addressing that storyline at all means running the risk of interfering with the deliberate ambiguity that makes it so powerful. So far as that goes, Newsome and the writers wanted to work as closely as they could with the DS9 crew in order to make sure they were doing the right thing. That process involved partnering with one of the biggest players in the Sisko storyline, actor Cirroc Lofton, who played Jake Sisko in DS9. “Cirroc and I were on the phone and at lunches for months and months and months and months trying to figure out how we could get this done,” says Newsome of working with Lofton. “Getting the episode made was such a gargantuan feat, and I have had so many partners locked arm-in-arm in battle. Between [co-showrunners] Noga Landau and Alex [Kurtzman], Cirroc, [executive producer] Aaron Baiers… don’t even know where to start, but all I can tell you is that it was seemingly so impossible to be able to address the hugeness of the Sisko story with some of the limitations that we have because of canon, some of the limitations that we have because of available actors. And we really just wanted to honor the man, Avery Brooks.” Brooks retired from acting roughly 20 years ago, but even if he was willing to appear on the show, having him on-screen again risked compromising the story the team was trying to tell. However, Brooks was a presence behind the scenes where he approved of the episode nearly every step of the way. “I don’t know if he has seen it yet, but he has read it,” Newsome says of Brooks’ involvement. “It was really important for us as the writers to get his blessing at multiple steps along the way, thanks to Cirroc, who deserves an executive producer credit for this episode. He was well aware of things, maybe even before I was authorized to share them. But I was like, ‘We got to make sure Mr. Brooks is cool with this.'” Though Brooks doesn’t make a physical cameo, we do hear Sisko’s voice towards the end of the episode. Interestingly, that audio clip wasn’t taken from DS9 but came from a more personal source. “That is a private recording that belonged to Mr. Brooks that he very graciously allowed us to use,” Newsome reveals regarding the audio that was taken from Brooks’ spoken word album Here. “I still get chills thinking about how it came to be, because I was very anxious asking him for anything. Because this man has given so much of his artistry, his life and himself to this franchise… he very graciously allowed us to have this.” Perhaps more importantly, Newsome feels that the writers were able to honor Brooks’ long-standing belief that Sisko would never abandon his family without them actually having to show the character or even definitively say what happened to him. “We had to square that with the fact that we have seen a lot added to the canon, and there hasn’t been any mention of seeing him,” Newsome muses. “So we sort of had to get into the territory of something that maybe science and Starfleet records can’t explain. So that’s why we wanted to put it in Jake’s mouth at the end where he literally says, ‘I can’t prove it.’ But all those things you think he missed, he didn’t. He was there.” And even though the entire episode is a tribute to Star Trek fandom as much as it is a tribute to Brooks and Sisko, Newsome says she snuck in one additional Easter egg few fans may pick up on. “I made them put in Kerrice [SAM] saying some version of ‘I can live with it,'” Newsome says regarding a variation of one of Sisko’s most impactful lines. “And someone who kept doing a version of the script later kept taking it out. And I kept putting it back in, probably seven or eight times. And finally, it made it to it made it to filming.” [end-mark] The post Avery Brooks Gave His Blessing to <i>Starfleet Academy</i>’s Big Sisko Episode appeared first on Reactor.

News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: January Was a Rough Year, So Here’s Ian McKellen Reading Shakespeare Plus: A fantasy retelling of Charles Dickens and a rare chance to recommend Venom: The Last Dance By Molly Templeton | Published on February 6, 2026 Photo: Lionsgate Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Lionsgate The sign for a bar near me currently reads “January was a rough year.” February isn’t off to a much better start; this short month promises to be at least as long as the previous one. There are the horrors, and then there are the people facing and fighting the horrors. And there are many ways to address the horrors, as Ian McKellen reminded me this morning when I watched his Colbert appearance. That’s below, because I think everyone should see it. It’s a reminder that history repeats, that art is powerful, that people can be moved—and maybe changed—by the unexpected. Stay warm, call your reps, and tell your friends you love them. Ian McKellen Is an International Treasure Last night, Ian McKellen—currently appearing on stage in New York—sat down with Stephen Colbert for a long conversation. I’m sure it is all wonderful, and I’ll listen to it eventually, but so far I’ve just watched one key clip. In it, McKellen performs a monologue. It’s gorgeous. It’s impossibly gorgeous. He is impossibly good, making the most of his somewhat unlikely stage, staring at the audience, into the camera.  I saw the clip without context; it just said “a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More,” which was somewhat perplexing. Shakespeare’s what? But in the longer video, McKellen introduces the monologue, explains how he originated the role, why it’s believed to be written by Shakespeare—all just beautifully deftly and succinctly. I’m kind of not telling you what’s in the monologue on purpose. I think you should watch it. It’s from 400 years ago and it is crushingly timely. He got a few lines in and I teared up. (Colbert clearly did too.) Whoever at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert decided to ask him to do this—they’re a bit of a genius. McKellen, returning to a speech he first gave 50 years ago, is a master.  Good Luck, Have Fun, Appreciate Some Actors’ Previous Films Next week, Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die arrives in theaters. Presumably the name will take up entire marquees. While not a huge fan of Verbinski, I am a huge fan of many of the actors in this film’s cast, all of whom have previous movies that are worth spending time with.  I don’t need to tell you that Sam Rockwell is a genius, and has been at least since he turned up on Galaxy Quest. Zazie Beetz made a splash in Deadpool 2, but is also delightful in Bullet Train, a movie that was never quite as fun as it should have been but is still diverting enough for a weekend watch. I cannot actually recommend Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, but I can tell you that Michael Peña was very good in it. Juno Temple is, of course, in Ted Lasso, but she’s also in Venom: The Last Dance, which is not as charming as the first Venom, but irresistible in its way. And then there’s Haley Lu Richardson, who I first saw in Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls, a quiet indie about one very long day in the lives of some women working at a sports bar. It’s also about the incompatibility of compassion and capitalism. Nothing out of the ordinary happens, except that everything is out of the ordinary. It’s so good, and Richardson is great in it. I can’t wait to see her face the apocalypse (maybe). Dickens + Faeries = A Far Better Thing February 7 is Charles Dickens’ birthday, which means this is as good a time (perhaps a better time) than any to recommend H.G. Parry’s A Far Better Thing, which rewrites A Tale of Two Cities with faeries and changelings. Frankly, it made a lot more sense to me this way: Sydney Carton was taken by the faeries, and Charles Darnay is the changeling left in his place. (Lucie is also a changeling.) Parry effectively weaves a whole faerie world into Dickens’ fabric, and it works astonishingly well. She’s not writing over Dickens, not trying to one-up him, but putting a different spin on his classic tale. (Her first novel also involved Dickens; she has a PhD in English literature and knows of what she speaks.) If you want to know more, Strange Horizons has a great review. We Need Way More Independent Media and We Need It Now A lot of layoffs have been announced recently, from Pinterest cutting staff and leaning in to AI to Amazon cutting a huge number of employees (as CNBC notes, also in conjunction with a push to invest in AI). But this week’s cuts at The Washington Post hit especially hard. A correspondent in Ukraine was laid off while working in a war zone. “The layoffs affect every corner of the newsroom,” NPR wrote. That includes the entire books section, which has been closed.  Yes, you read that right: Closed. Gone. No more books coverage. No more SFF column from Charlie Jane Anders. A lot of book folk took to Bluesky yesterday to talk about what this means, and how bad it is for books; as Meg Reid wrote, “Every national book review outlet that closes feels like a death knell for independent publishers.” You can find a lot of obituaries for the Post as we knew it, but I particularly appreciated this one, from former Post employee Ashley Parker, which is intimate, personal, detailed, and a reminder of how meaningful a truly supportive workplace can be.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: January Was a Rough Year, So Here’s Ian McKellen Reading Shakespeare appeared first on Reactor.

News Baldur’s Gate HBO Is Making a Baldur’s Gate 3 Series, and the Game’s Creators Aren’t Involved The show will pick up where Baldur’s Gate 3 left off but feature new characters and storylines By Matthew Byrd | Published on February 6, 2026 Screenshot: Larian Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Larian Studios Deadline reports that HBO is developing a TV adaptation of Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 with The Last of Us and Chernobyl co-creator Craig Mazin set to write, produce, and serve as showrunner for the series. Released in 2023 by Larian Studios, Baldur’s Gate 3 resurrected the Baldur’s Gate gaming franchise, which was started by the legendary RPG studio, BioWare. Set in the Forgotten Realms (which is part of the Dungeons & Dragons universe), Baldur’s Gate 3 sees players create a protagonist and then throw them into a massive world filled with compelling characters, dangerous creatures, and countless storytelling possibilities. Though initially considered to be something of a niche project due to both the dense nature of the franchise and Larian’s previous projects, Baldur’s Gate 3 went on to be one of the most acclaimed and successful titles in recent gaming history. It’s no exaggeration to suggest it may be the greatest role-playing video game ever made, and its many, many fans include Mazin himself. “After putting nearly 1000 hours into the incredible world of Baldur’s Gate 3, it is a dream come true to be able to continue the story that Larian and Wizards of the Coast created,” says Mazin. “I am a devoted fan of D&D and the brilliant way that Swen Vincke and his gifted team adapted it. I can’t wait to help bring Baldur’s Gate and all of its incredible characters to life with as much respect and love as we can, and I’m deeply grateful to Gabe Marano and his team at Hasbro for entrusting me with this incredibly important property.” Mazin’s involvement with The Last of Us seemingly makes him an obvious candidate for this job, but the devil is very much in the details in this instance. While HBO’s The Last of Us series has thus far been an adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part 2 (with certain creative liberties taken along the way), HBO’s Baldur’s Gate series is being described as a continuation of the events of Baldur’s Gate 3. It will feature new characters and storylines, but it will also advance the adventures of many of the major characters from Baldur’s Gate 3 (it’s not believed the show will draw from the prior Baldur’s Gate games more than what is needed for the purposes of lore and world-building). While there are some questions regarding which of Baldur’s Gate 3‘s numerous possible endings the show will draw from, the set-up seemingly affords the show’s team with relative creative freedom. With no Baldur’s Gate 4 in development and the events of Baldur’s Gate 3 behind them, the show’s team will have the chance to tell a fairly fresh story in this universe. It remains to be seen whether that much creative freedom will help or hinder the series’ writers, but it’s certainly worth noting that those writers will not include members of Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios. Yes, Deadline reports (and Larian Studios confirms) that the developers have no official creative involvement with the HBO series. While the show’s crew will include people close to the series (most notably Chris Perkins, the former Head of Story at Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast), much of the team responsible for making Baldur’s Gate 3 one of the most acclaimed games in recent memory will not be a significant part of this production. That is certainly unusual when compared to some of the more successful recent video game adaptations like Fallout and The Last of Us, which notably featured substantial involvement from various members of those games’ creative teams. It’s also worth noting that Baldur’s Gate 3 was a true passion project for Larian Studios that required years of meticulous development as well as years of the studio making Baldur’s Gate-like titles that proved their credentials. Not involving them in this process is a risky move that has drawn mixed reactions from some Larian team members. Larian Studios’ CEO Swen Vincke said he’s eager to chat with Mazin and offer whatever thoughts and help he can, while Larian’s Director of Publishing Michael Douse went on a bit of a social media rant that included the line “I genuinely don’t think anyone can trump our writers.” To be fair, we do not know who will ultimately write HBO’s Baldur’s Gate series beyond Mazin himself. So far as that goes, it’s possibly worth noting that Mazin enjoyed an… unusual career prior to launching his HBO series, which includes writing credits on Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, The Hangover sequels, and the 1997 Harland Williams comedy RocketMan. Tonally, Chernobyl and The Last of Us are obviously pretty far removed from those works, but it will be fascinating to see which direction Mazin ultimately takes this particular series in given that Baldur’s Gate titles are traditionally filled with more light-hearted elements that balance out all the drama, conflict, and intrigue. The task is certainly tall, but the potential is undeniable. Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the most faithful digital adaptations of Dungeons & Dragons ever made. Among other things, that means it faithfully recreated the experience of throwing a group of fresh characters into a dynamic world and embracing the beautiful chaos of the stories that are told along the way. The HBO series will reportedly focus on a cast of new characters navigating the world left behind by the major events of Baldur’s Gate 3, which is roughly how the great Baldur’s Gate and D&D stories of the past kicked off. Though Larian proved themselves to be uniquely gifted storytellers in this world, perhaps a new group of adventurers will (as many D&D players of the past have done) eventually find their own way. There’s no further information regarding this adaptation’s production schedule or any significant additions to its creative team, but we’ll keep you updated as soon as we learn more. [end-mark] The post HBO Is Making a <i>Baldur’s Gate 3</i> Series, and the Game’s Creators Aren’t Involved appeared first on Reactor.