Brannon Braga: Not a Diane Carey Fan?

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by SpaceCadetJuan, Apr 8, 2013.

  1. TheAlmanac

    TheAlmanac Writer Captain

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    This entire thread is speculation about another person's motives--we're all trying to infer someone's feelings based mostly on textual evidence and an interview with someone else.

    To me, that doesn't say much one way or the other about how Carey might feel about Voyager--she didn't so much write a "traditional" Voyager story set during the series as take its main character and transplant her to her own original setting.

    I remembered that that novel "explains" the hairstyle change, though, and I do appreciate how that fits into the series. :) Maybe she was into the show around the third season, but became (extremely) disenchanted?
     
  2. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Yes, and that's why we should take it all with a grain of salt and not get carried away with our conclusions.
     
  3. Allyn Gibson

    Allyn Gibson Vice Admiral Admiral

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    In Carey's defense, we don't know how she would have executed this idea.

    On the other hand, Carey's last major creation before Keller, Red Sector's Eric Stiles, was a self-centered asshole.

    All I can do is throw my hands up in the air and shrug. We really don't know.
     
  4. DS9forever

    DS9forever Commodore Commodore

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    I enjoyed her Dominion War books, Sisko calls in a favor from an Admiral whose career he saved by not mentioning that the Admiral messed up a mission, O'Brien going on the Argolis mission and Sisko and Martok worrying about Changeling infiltration.
     
  5. tomswift2002

    tomswift2002 Commodore Commodore

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    If he belonged to the, apparently, same family as the Stiles that we saw in "Balance Of Terror" and the Captain Stiles from Star Trek III, then Eric Stiles characterization was spot on, since it seems that all the males in the Stiles family are "self-centered".
     
  6. Avro Arrow

    Avro Arrow Vice Admiral Moderator

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    ^ Forgive me for being pedantic, but just to let you know, the Excelsior captain in TSFS was Styles, and presumably unrelated to Lt. Stiles from Balance of Terror.
     
  7. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    And I wasn't trying to suggest one way or the other. I simply enjoyed "Fire Ship" very much.

    I often hear this view, but the character appealed to me. Being self-centred made him vulnerable.

    I also recall "Challenger"'s Bonifay. A real pain-in-the-neck, but I grew to like him very much - and his cliffhanger fate was... such a no-win scenario.
     
  8. Allyn Gibson

    Allyn Gibson Vice Admiral Admiral

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    There was nothing appealing about Eric Stiles. :lol:

    I laugh because we've had this argument for what? Fifteen years now? We're not budging from our positions, are we? :)
     
  9. tomswift2002

    tomswift2002 Commodore Commodore

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    So one branch of the family decided to change the "I" to a "Y" for reasons that aren't clear. They could still be related.
     
  10. The Wormhole

    The Wormhole Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    No reason to think they are. My last name isn't particularly common, and when I was in high school I had a teacher with the same name (spelled the same, too), but we weren't related.
     
  11. NightJim

    NightJim Captain Captain

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    Yes, similar names doesn't denote anything. My surname is incredibly rare, but there's two different spellings of it. I've seen that spelling with an artist who's worked for Marvel, and spoken to one on the phone in my old job in a call centre.

    My cousin did some digging and we do all trace back to some Dutch immigrants that came to England to work on dikes. One group went south, one stayed in the North. Even so, I wouldn't class us as related.

    Even ignoring that. Think how many Smiths there are.
     
  12. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Not until I read it again, but I just recall the friendship of Stiles and his Romulan colleague, and my enjoyable reading experience at the time - and then walking innocently, as a first-time poster, into the wrath of anti-Carey fans over on Psi Phi.
     
  13. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

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    Except that there's no evidence for that whatsoever, other than your assertion that because both Stiles and Styles were jerks, they must be related to each other. If that were the case, then every boss of every job I've ever had must have been related too :D
     
  14. rfmcdpei

    rfmcdpei Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Quite possibly that's what she did after she stopped writing Star Trek novels. It is curious, though, that she abruptly stopped writing Star Trek novels after Broken Bow came out. This is especially so since she seems to have been on the verge of starting a new novel-only series, Challenger, that was apparently already plotted out. Despite this, it all came to a halt.

    The OP put forward a compelling explanation: Carey's style of writing, which could be seen as slighting non-TOS series, got her in trouble when she novelized the Enterprise series premier. By their own words, the producers of Enterprise noted her novelization, took offense, and complained to Pocket Books. One states that she was reprimanded. Subsequently, Carey hasn't had published any Star Trek titles, including titles that she seems to have plotted out.

    A pity. This explains the large gap between Rihannsu novels, too, right?

    Because I'm not plugged into fandom at all, I have to ask what explanations if any there were for Carey's absence from Treklit.

    Indeed. My personal experience as a McDonald is that I'm not closely related to MacDonalds at all--different transliterations from the Gaelic, sure, but also different origins behind these different spellings.
     
  15. bullethead

    bullethead Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    IIRC, the reason Challenger died was because no one bought the one standalone book in the Gateways series. And to be brutally honest, branding it as Challenger instead of New Earth wasn't the best idea, especially when the debut novel is in a major crossover event. At least New Earth would've had some brand exposure at the time.

    The lack of an ending in the book (and the eventual ending) probably hurt Challenger a lot too.
     
  16. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    That's misunderstanding how this works. The series was never guaranteed to exist. It got a "pilot" as part of New Earth, and because the timing was right, they included it as part of the following year's Gateways crossover to give it a further push, but those were just tryouts. In order to go beyond that, the first two books had to sell strongly enough to justify doing more. And evidently they didn't.


    No; Diane Duane did write other Trek novels during the Arnold era. The reason the Rihannsu books weren't continued is because TNG's depiction of the Romulans overwrote them. They didn't fit canon anymore. When Swordhunt was originally published (in two volumes), it carried a disclaimer making it clear that it was revisiting an old, alternative take on Trek continuity.
     
  17. rfmcdpei

    rfmcdpei Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I stand corrected.

    This still leaves open the question of the reprimand mentioned by Braga. Did it happen? Did it influence the course of Carey's writing career? It's not unimaginable.

    I meant the Rihannsu novels. I'm aware of Duane's other Trek novels in this period, even having started discussion threads on Dark Mirror and Intellivore.
     
  18. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^Yes, I know what you meant, but what I meant was that if Duane had had the kind of "falling out" with Arnold that was described with McIntyre, then presumably Duane would no longer have written any novels after that point. But she did write several more novels, just toned down and more homogenized, without the overt "Duaneverse" content. Which proves that she was able and willing to work within the restrictions of the Arnold era, and that no falling out occurred.
     
  19. Allyn Gibson

    Allyn Gibson Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Actually, the reason there is simpler. Richard Arnold was irked by The Romulan Way and made no secret of it. Here's some of the history behind that.

    Essentially, Arnold claimed that The Romulan Way was an unsold original novel that Duane had in her files that she added a Romulan plot to in order to sell it as a Star Trek novel.

    For balance, this is Arnold's response to Duane's version of events vis-a-vis The Romulan Way.

    It does strike me as odd that she continued to write Star Trek fiction during Arnold's reign of terror, including Spock's World which drew heavily on The Romulan Way. I guess we'll never know the reasons.

    As far as I know, Chainmail sold no worse than any other book in the Gateways series.

    I'm doubtful that sales are the reason there was no ongoing Challenger series.
     
  20. T'Bonz

    T'Bonz Romulan Curmudgeon Administrator

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    His loss. I loved the book and it fit very well in the Trek universe. Her take on the Romulans beat the hell out of how they were portrayed in later Trek.