Coming July 2013: STAR TREK ENTERPRISE — RISE OF THE FEDERATION

[Middleman]

As a big Enterprise fan and a fan of the Enterprise Era in Trek Canon, I'm thrilled to hear this news and looking forward to reading your work. I sincerely hope that your new found appreciation for the Star Trek: Enterprise series enables you to do justice to the characters that many of us have respected (& love) over these years, and I hope you can develop them further in a very positive light. Many of us are particularly interested in learning about how Star Trek's most Star Crossed Lovers (Trip & T'Pol) got to that happy place at the end of Michael Martin's book "To Brave the Storm".

Please help us out, we are the most neglected segment of the fan base.

[Christopher]

xortex wrote:

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So it's your job to turn RB's boring drab vision over to JJ's nightmare. Serving many masters and falling into line at the snap of JJ adam's whip?

Uhh, no. Like I said, I'm dealing with the 22nd century, and I'm dealing with the Prime timeline. The only thing I've said about anything Abrams has done is that the 2230s uniform designs from that movie were one of the multiple influences I considered in designing a conjectural Federation Starfleet uniform that could be an ancestor of later uniform designs -- and that was really an overstatement, because I also drew on ENT uniforms, TOS pilot and series uniforms, and even TNG/DS9 uniforms in a very small way. Basically I took the whole Starfleet uniform design lineage into account; I'm not focusing on any one specific part of that lineage, although I'd say that ENT and TOS (pilots included) are the largest influences. And we are only talking about uniforms here, a tiny and superficial facet of the work.

As far as the actual content of the book is concerned, everything we know about the 2160s comes from Prime-universe canon or Prime-universe novels. Those are my sources. Those are what I'm building on and building toward.

Take this opportunity to reimagine/reboot/remake all of it's origins.

My goal is to reveal the origins of the Prime-universe Federation as we know it from the TOS era and beyond. Naturally my brief as a tie-in author is to stay consistent with the canon, but there's a wealth of stuff we don't know about that first century of the UFP, so there's plenty of room for surprises and discoveries.

Nix Shran as a crew member. He's a slimy backstabber (sounds like JJ.) and would be a dealbreaker for me.

Shran isn't a "crewmember," but he's a major player in the book. No sense leaving out one of the series' most beloved characters. Of course you can't please everyone, though.

Smarten up the Klingons. Make the Vulcans less annoying and overshadowing.

To Brave the Storm indicated that the Klingons have mostly withdrawn from interstellar affairs to deal with their internal strife -- and The Undiscovered Country (plus a deleted scene from "Day of the Dove") revealed that open conflict between the UFP and the Klingons didn't begin until somewhere around 2220. So while the Klingons are still there in the background, it doesn't look as if they'd be a major player in the early decades of the UFP.

Not to worry, though; there are other known antagonist races that could stand to be fleshed out more. And the Klingons could play a role if I think of a good story about them.

As for the Vulcans, we know both from canon and the novels that they've been reforming themselves toward the society we know from TOS since the events of "Kir'Shara" in 2154, and ended their "overshadowing" role in interstellar affairs at the same time. It's worth keeping in mind that, because of how much time To Brave the Storm covered, RotF picks up more than 7 years after the final season of ENT.

Change thqat god aweful ship, bridge, uniforms

We've already established that the uniforms will change. There will be some variations in the ships, but I absolutely love the design sensibilities of ENT's sets, the wonderful attention to detail and realism. Although, of course, one can't actually see the bridge or engine room or whatever on the pages of a book, so that's a minor element of the tale overall.

and make the aliens less familiar and Human and not treated with contempt. Give it some Human centric scope, distinction, protocol, and respect and character.

So you want aliens not treated with contempt, while also making it human-centric?

I'll treat aliens and humans the same way I usually treat them in my books.

Too bad they can't let you rename her T'Pau as it should have been.

It really shouldn't have been. T'Pau is quite contemptuous of humans as late as "Amok Time." There's no way she could've had the character arc that T'Pol had over the course of the series.

The whole show was a dark and depressing dystopia.

Having just finished my second watch-through of the series in the past few months, I disagree emphatically. Naturally every series is about things going wrong and bad things happening, since that's where drama comes from, but there was a lot of optimism, humor, and warmth in the show, a lot of crises being resolved for the better due to the characters' decency and devotion to their ideals, and so on. The darkest point was season 3, but that ended on an optimistic note.

...the crew laughing at there being life on Axanar,etc..

Nothing like that ever happened.

Reconstruct and recreate the universe and bring a story to it about a greater galaxy wide threat to the entire universe's survival that unifies all the races in a joint effort to defeat a giant space chicken or something. Whoops. I let a story idea slip out. Sorry.

Don't worry, it's a lame idea anyway. As Archer said in "Demons," "This isn't about finding someone else to watch our backs!" An external threat doesn't create real unity; it just puts tensions on hold until the threat is dealt with, whereupon they usually erupt stronger than ever. It takes far more than that to create a real union. Indeed, that's one of the core questions of the book. The Federation grew out of a war, but it became something far more than just a defense pact. That didn't happen automatically.

And we've had enough threats to the entire galaxy or universe lately. Don't want to overuse that trope to the point of devaluing it.

[DEWLine]

Christopher, as a bit of a sidebar, possibly related to research for this next book...have you ever read Will Ferguson's Bastards and Boneheads? As a look back into Canadian history, you might find yourself more than a little entertained and inspired.

[Sho]

Christopher wrote:

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As Archer said in "Demons," "This isn't about finding someone else to watch our backs!" An external threat doesn't create real unity; it just puts tensions on hold until the threat is dealt with, whereupon they usually erupt stronger than ever. It takes far more than that to create a real union. Indeed, that's one of the core questions of the book. The Federation grew out of a war, but it became something far more than just a defense pact. That didn't happen automatically.

^ This is good stuff.

Should we expect to have a cast of political leaders as well, bringing some proto-Articles vibe?

[Christopher]

^To an extent, yes.

[DEWLine]

*pleased to read this last item*

[Relayer1]

DEWLine wrote:

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*pleased to read this last item*

Indeed !

[Deranged Nasat]

Actually, established continuity in this forum (i.e. earlier threads) indicates that the incident involving the Giant Space Chicken was replaced in Starfleet's official logs by a falsified account of a two-week survey of the Turquoise Nebula.

So we've already covered that story idea.

[Christopher]

I thought the Giant Space Chicken was in New Frontier Book 4...

[RPJOB]

So you're admitting that such a thing did happen!

[FatherRob]

Christopher wrote:

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I thought the Giant Space Chicken was in New Frontier Book 4...

Egads, Christopher... Every halfway intelligent Star Trek fan knows that the GSC was consumed by the antimatter villi creature in the first draft of ADF's novelization of the TAS episode "One of Our Planets is Missing" before Roddenberry ordered it's removal because it was the central figure in the Planet of the Titans ST film concept.

I am shocked at yor utter lack of Trek knowledge, and plan to lodge a formal complaint with the management in the morning. I mean, what's next, Christopher?

Sheer incompetence...

Rob+

[Christopher]

Ahh, but what you're forgetting is that the Giant Space Egg came first!

...Or did it?

[Sho]

Christopher wrote:

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^To an extent, yes.

That's great news. IMHO the history of the early Federation definitely also needs some civilian leaders and visionaries involved, plus I loved Articles.

[FatherRob]

Christopher wrote:

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Ahh, but what you're forgetting is that the Giant Space Egg came first!

...Or did it?

Oh my goodness... The Giant Space Egg was in TNG's third season. Seriously, Christopher... I thought that temporal quandary was being handled in the next DTI book.

Rob+

[Enterpriserules]

Chris I am very excited that you are going to be writing in this time period. You are one of my favorite Trek authors, your attention to detail and the Trek timeline are perfect for Enterprise. For all our battles here, you have my respect. Ex Machina is still one of my favorite Trek books. I look forward to hear more as you write and then digging into what I am sure will be a great book.