Brannon Braga: Not a Diane Carey Fan?

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

  1. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    One of the things I used to love about reading novelizations was the extra scenes. The Star Wars Prequels for example have a bunch of scenes that weren't in the movie. I remember in AotC there are we got more with the Lars before Anakin and Padme end up on Tatooine, and RotS had the whole birth of the Rebellion storyline that was cut out of the final movie. I've had the Abrams Trek novelizations sitting on my to read pile since the movie came out, but I haven't read it yet since I found out there were no extra scenes.
     
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  2. Hartzilla2007

    Hartzilla2007 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I thought Data said it would take either a few minutes or hours to get to the fleet during the briefing scene.

    I think there were a few extra scenes.
     
  3. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    From context, he was saying it would take them 3 hours, 25 minutes to reach the Typhon Sector from their current location. Although it's true that Picard ordered a course set for Earth when the battle was engaged, which does imply it was close to Earth.

    And note that he did say "Typhon Sector," not "Typhon Expanse." Maybe those are two different locations. After all, Typhon is a name from Greek mythology, and humans love drawing on classical mythology to name things in space. Heck, there's a real-life trans-Neptunian object by that name, 42355 Typhon, discovered in 2002. So the Typhon Sector could be much closer to Earth than the Typhon Expanse.

    Although it's still problematical if the movie is claiming that the Romulan Neutral Zone is mere hours from Earth, even at maximum warp for the E-E.
     
  4. Hartzilla2007

    Hartzilla2007 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Oh didn't catch that so it may have been a different place.

    Not really let's not forget that Earth and Romulus have to be close enough so that their probably really slow ships that max out at warp 5 on the old scale (which 24th century ships can go considerably faster that) could reach each other in a considerably decent amount of time to fight the battles in the war between them.
     
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  5. The Wormhole

    The Wormhole Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Well, there is one, but that's been contradicted by the Ongoing comic series.
     
  6. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Define "a decent amount of time." In the age of sail, it could take weeks or months to get to a battlefield. That didn't stop people from having wars. It took Archer and NX-01 months to find the Xindi. And in the novels, engagements in the Earth-Romulan War were generally weeks or months apart. Even with the faster warp factors of the 24th century, it should still take days at least, not hours, to get from Earth to the Federation border.

    One of the rules in the writers' bibles for both TOS and TNG was "Do not treat deep space as a local neighborhood." Roddenberry never wanted the show to lose sight of the immensity of space and the difficulty of crossing it. He never wanted ships to be able to hop from planet to planet as easily as commuting to work, because that trivialized space travel. Sadly, that's a rule that Roddenberry's successors frequently ignored.
     
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  7. TheAlmanac

    TheAlmanac Writer Captain

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    To be fair, I haven't read any of her Voyager work, so I can't speak to how Fire Ship treats the characters.

    I was going by how other people had described her later novelisations--if she actually liked the show, wouldn't she have been at least slightly more kind in her adaptations of other episodes? It's not as if the teleplay for "Flashback" is just that much better.
     
  8. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Really, it's generally not a good idea to speculate about another person's motives one way or the other. The only way to actually know is to ask them -- if, that is, they're inclined to answer.
     
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  9. SicOne

    SicOne Commodore Commodore

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    The ST Star Charts book shows Earth to be about 25 light-years from the closest portion of the Romulan Neutral Zone. Based on that reference, as well as the Warp speed chart in the Trekpedia, it would take just over an hour for those subspace transmissions heard on the Ent-E bridge in "First Contact" to even get from Earth to the E-E. Even if the E-E could somehow reach subspace speed with their warp drive, they'd be over an hour late arriving to the party, which was already going to hell in a handbasket. They must have gone to ludicrous speed... ;)

    (BTW, the same Star Charts book shows Earth to be about 48ly from Romulus.)
     
  10. James T. Vader

    James T. Vader Lieutenant

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    Theyve gone to plaid!
     
  11. Guest12

    Guest12 Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    I remember liking her "Flashback" and "Endgame" novelizations. But one thing that did stand out to me, that I still remember, from the "Endgame" novelization was in the scene where future-Barclay is introducing Admiral Janeway to his classroom. He says, "...she literally wrote the book on the Borg," and Adm. Janeway thinks something like, No I didn't. Does Barclay not know what "literally" means?

    It just seemed odd to put something like that in there.
     
  12. SicOne

    SicOne Commodore Commodore

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    Who made that man a gunner?
     
  13. Marcus Porcius Cato

    Marcus Porcius Cato Commander Red Shirt

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    In general, Carey's novels are best in the TOS era. Like some here I just think she didn't think too highly of TNG era onward of Star Trek. Ships of Line was essentially a book long denouncement of Picard.
     
  14. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Well, the published warp charts in the books have never, ever corresponded to any velocities shown onscreen, which have consistently been portrayed as much faster. So it's utterly useless to rely on those charts as a reference.
     
  15. SicOne

    SicOne Commodore Commodore

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    ^ Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. The only series to even remotely hew to those is Voyager, and even then just at the beginning (75 years at roughly 1,000 ly sustainable per year or so). But sometimes all we have to go by is the Trekpedia and not-necessarily-canon supplemental materials, such as the Star Charts book. I meant to give those figures to Mr. Hartzilla as an example.

    I find it difficult to believe from a celestial point-of-view that the Ent-E could go all the way from the RNZ to Earth in just over an hour, even at "speed of plot". From a Trek tech point-of-view, the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that as starships have cruise speeds, maximum sustainable speeds, and maximum 12-hour-duration superspeeds, they must therefore have a super-max, 1-hour, she-can't-take-much-more-o'this-Captain super-duper-speed, for those of us fans who demand a Treknology-satisfactory explanation.
     
  16. tomswift2002

    tomswift2002 Commodore Commodore

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    I remember Phil Farrand in his "Unofficial Nitpicker's Guide..." For both TOS & TNG mentioned how the speeds seemed to vary quite a bit, and he used the example from STV where the E-A went from Earth to the planet and then the center of the galaxy in something like two or three days, but in the TNG era it would take ships something like 8 years or more.
     
  17. Hartzilla2007

    Hartzilla2007 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Thats becuase TNG era engineers aren't as good as Scotty ;)
     
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  18. tomswift2002

    tomswift2002 Commodore Commodore

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    So they turned the E-D into a steamship?
     
  19. Hartzilla2007

    Hartzilla2007 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    If that was the plan I have a problem with it as in the last New Earth book the only reason Keller might get a call back to Earth might have something to do with the whole lying about his former captain being exposed to a substance that caused mental degeneration and becuase of that and his reluctance to relieve the man even when he seemed to show signs of going nuts becuase of it almost got everyone killed and his previous ship trashed beyond repair.

    So the idea that he gets to do that and then decides to leave Starfleet becuase they want to reassign him (which is better than what I would which would have been to court martial his ass) makes it seem like he's trying to weasel his way out of facing the consequences of his actions, not to mention that fact that keeping the Challenger which sounds is kind of shady since a decent chunk of it is made from the remains of a trashed Starfleet starship kind of makes the guy look like a major asshole.

    Not to mention the fact that by hiding it he kept the captain guy from getting treatment which could have prevented the degeneration becuase he lied.
     
  20. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    "Fire Ship" is a Janeway solo story or, rather, Janeway as an underling on an alien ship, stranded far from her Voyager crew over a period of months. It's from the period between the change from the infamous "bun of steel" hairdo to the more casual look that Janeway had in later seasons and, as such, is a nice character arc. The other "Voyager" crewmembers are barely in it.

    I found it a real page turner, with some believable, different, alien tech, and a story on a par with the "New Frontier" installment of "The Captain's Table". Very strong stories!