Why No "Captains' Table" Story For Spock?

[Admiral_Sisko]

DS9forever wrote:

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The DS9 novel from that series is pretty bad; a Spock novel could have taken its place. The Mist doesn't even begin well, Sisko gives the patrons of the bar a background to Deep Space 9 and says that he and his crew "are the guardians of the wormhole between the Alpha and Delta Quadrants". I guess nobody told Janeway.

That's bad, both for the fact that the mistake wasn't caught during the final editing of the story, and also for it's introduction into the text in the first place.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'd much rather see a CT story involving Shran.

And also I'd like to see if this place can cross the boundaries of universes or timelines. Could there be a Mirror Universe story set there? (Can characters from both universes interact there - i.e. is there only one Captain's Table throughout all of the multiverse?) Or how about Abramsverse? Could we see nuKirk, nuSpock, nuPike, etc. in the CT?

[Christopher]

Turtletrekker wrote:

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IIRC, the reason for it was that there was already a Captain Spock tale in the Enterprise Logs anthology.

I believe that's right. The original six novels (later collected in a single fat omnibus volume) covered the five then-extant series -- TOS, TNG, DS9, VGR, and New Frontier -- plus Pike to round it out, so no Captain Spock since he was part of TOS. And Enterprise Logs gave us stories about additional captains including April, Decker, Spock, Harriman, and Garrett (as well as Pike, Kirk, and Picard, and two captains of real Enterprises from history). So the goal of the Tales from the Captain's Table anthology was to focus on the captains who hadn't been featured in those previous works. Picard was the only exception, but it was Stargazer-era Picard (or just after), so it was still something new.

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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And also I'd like to see if this place can cross the boundaries of universes or timelines.

Well, Jerry Oltion's Where Sea Meets Sky posited that it could even cross over with fictional realms, because Captain Nemo was one of the patrons there (though it was an odd hybrid of Verne's and Disney's versions of Nemo).

[JD]

I wonder if we would have gotten enough new Captains since TftCT for a new anthology or miniseries?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I dearly hope that any future Captain's Table novel won't treat it like ST:Online does - where it's on a space station in a nebula. Make it mystical again... (although I wouldn't mind an origin tale of the CT itself)

[shanejayell]

I always figured the bartender/owner 'Cap' to be a Q.

[Admiral_Sisko]

JD wrote:

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I wonder if we would have gotten enough new Captains since TftCT for a new anthology or miniseries?

There are several who would merit a story focusing on them. I'm partial to Romulan characters, and would enjoy learning more about the Romulan Commanders from "Balance of Terror" and "The Enterprise Incident," Commander Donatra, or even Tomalak, as it would be interesting to see Picard and Riker's reactions were he to walk into the bar and order a glass of Romulan ale.

Beyond these characters, it might be interesting to read a story focused on a Jem'Hadar First or a Vorta, as they function in the role of a captain during missions. I'm not sure what a Jem'Hadar would get out of being in a bar setting, but we did see several spending large amounts of time in Quark's during the Dominion occupation of DS9.

Now that I think about it, a story about Clark Terrell from the Reliant would be interesting, as he was apparently a close friend of McCoy, though no scenes discussing their friendship were shown. I'm sure more could be written about Edward Jelico, Morgan Bateson, Ben Maxwell, and others.

[zarkon]

shanejayell wrote:

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I always figured the bartender/owner 'Cap' to be a Q.

One of the first series of stories pretty heavily hinted that it was simply future tech. I think the exchange was about only being able to tell the captain(pike, I think) the place or the time due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and if he wanted to know the time, "hold on to your hat".

[Ronald Held]

It would take a special writer to come up with a believable reason why Spock would relate a factual account of an incident and write it in his voice correctly.

[Christopher]

shanejayell wrote:

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I always figured the bartender/owner 'Cap' to be a Q.

No, he's obviously this guy.

Admiral_Sisko wrote:

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...Now that I think about it, a story about Clark Terrell from the Reliant would be interesting, as he was apparently a close friend of McCoy, though no scenes discussing their friendship were shown. I'm sure more could be written about Edward Jelico, Morgan Bateson, Ben Maxwell, and others.

I'd be glad to see anything new about Terrell. There's also Erika Hernandez and Ezri Dax.

[King Daniel]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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I'd much rather see a CT story involving Shran.

I'd like that too!

And also I'd like to see if this place can cross the boundaries of universes or timelines. Could there be a Mirror Universe story set there? (Can characters from both universes interact there - i.e. is there only one Captain's Table throughout all of the multiverse?) Or how about Abramsverse? Could we see nuKirk, nuSpock, nuPike, etc. in the CT?

The Captain's Table may be able to cross timelines and realities, but one thing it most definitely can't cross is Pocket's mysterious ban on nuTrek. It 1000x stronger than the force which stopped Q-Junior from entering the pre-"Endgame" timeline.

[Christopher]

KingDaniel wrote:

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The Captain's Table may be able to cross timelines and realities, but one thing it most definitely can't cross is Pocket's mysterious ban on nuTrek. It 1000x stronger than the force which stopped Q-Junior from entering the pre-"Endgame" timeline.

Aren't you forgetting the young-adult Academy novels? Although technically those are from Simon Spotlight, a sister imprint of Pocket. But if there is a "ban," it's not coming from Pocket. They'd have no reason to create such a ban. And you should be well aware by now that Bad Robot chooses to supervise its tie-ins more directly than has been done with Trek tie-ins in the past, when it was strictly Paramount or CBS Licensing making the decisions.

[King Daniel]

Christopher wrote:

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Aren't you forgetting the young-adult Academy novels? Although technically those are from Simon Spotlight, a sister imprint of Pocket. But if there is a "ban," it's not coming from Pocket. They'd have no reason to create such a ban. And you should be well aware by now that Bad Robot chooses to supervise its tie-ins more directly than has been done with Trek tie-ins in the past, when it was strictly Paramount or CBS Licensing making the decisions.

My comment was meant in jest. Although yes, I was incorrect to say it was Pocket's decree/ban/whatever.

[JD]

Christopher wrote:

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No, he's obviously this guy.

I'd be glad to see anything new about Terrell. There's also Erika Hernandez and Ezri Dax.

And we got Quinn, Gannon, Zhao, Khatami and Nassir from Vanguard. And there was also Reyes, and Nogura but they weren't Captains so I don't know for sure if they'd count.

[Christopher]

We have seen in "The Ruins of Noble Men" that Reyes was a starship captain before he became a commodore. And it stands to reason that Nogura was a ship captain at some point in the past too. I suppose it's not impossible for someone to be at captain's rank in a strictly administrative post and get promoted from there to the admiralty, but it seems unlikely for Nogura.