Tasha Yar novels

[Astraea]

tomswift2002 wrote:

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#51 (book 1 of the Double Helix saga) of the TNG line has her in the story, since it's set around 'Code Of Honor'.

But with the Academy series it's surprising that Wesley was never in the series, since Wesley would've been a natural for the series (he left in Season 4 and then returned in Season 5 for an episode that came out close to the release of the Academy series).

Well, Wes being at the Academy wouldn't have mattered - the Academy kids' novels were all prequels, set whenever Worf, Geordi, Crusher, Troi, etc. were at the Academy. (The Worf ones are actually prequels for New Frontier, in the sense that they introduce a bunch of characters that Peter David used as the Excalibur crew - Soleta, McHenry, and Kebron.)

It's a little bit surprising that Tasha never showed up in the Academy books, though; I believe she was at Starfleet Academy at the same time as Worf. (Will Riker makes a cameo as an upperclassman in one of Geordi's novels, for instance, so it wouldn't have been too hard to give her a one-off appearance or something.)

[JD]

Astraea wrote:

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Well, Wes being at the Academy wouldn't have mattered - the Academy kids' novels were all prequels, set whenever Worf, Geordi, Crusher, Troi, etc. were at the Academy. (The Worf ones are actually prequels for New Frontier, in the sense that they introduce a bunch of characters that Peter David used as the Excalibur crew - Soleta, McHenry, and Kebron.)

He also added a fourth character from the Worf Academy books, Tania Tobias, to last three or four books.

It's a little bit surprising that Tasha never showed up in the Academy books, though; I believe she was at Starfleet Academy at the same time as Worf. (Will Riker makes a cameo as an upperclassman in one of Geordi's novels, for instance, so it wouldn't have been too hard to give her a one-off appearance or something.)

I honestly never thought about it until today, but it is rather surprising Tasha was never in a Academy book.

[Christopher]

JD wrote:

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I honestly never thought about it until today, but it is rather surprising Tasha was never in a Academy book.

Doesn't surprise me. They were young adult books, after all, and they came out starting in the sixth season. The target audience might not even have been old enough to watch the show when Tasha was on it. Even if they remembered her, it would've been a fair percentage of their lives ago. (Unless they caught the show in reruns, I guess.) Either way, it makes sense that the books focused on the currently well-known characters instead of a long-gone character.

[JD]

Good point. I didn't realize they started that far into the series run.

[tomswift2002]

I remember the series came out when I was 9, and CHRO aired the new episodes on Saturday, while running the series Monday to Friday during he week. So I remember seeing Tasha every so often.

But even as a kid I had hoped too see Wesley in an Academy book, with Tasha in there at some point (the books even had the Chronology where Tasha Yar was mentioned as entering the Academy).

[Drago-Kazov]

Are the Academy books consistent with most books that came after them?

[Therin of Andor]

Drago-Kazov wrote:

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Are the Academy books consistent with most books that came after them?

Not always. eg. The Worf books speculated that Worf's human brother was Simon Rozhenko, but the episodes later revealed him to be called Nikolai. You can't assume that every author of regular novels was also reading all the YA books.

[tomswift2002]

Therin of Andor wrote:

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Not always. eg. The Worf books speculated that Worf's human brother was Simon Rozhenko, but the episodes later revealed him to be called Nikolai. You can't assume that every author of regular novels was also reading all the YA books.

Well that's just like with "Survivors"; there was no mention of Tasha's sister in the book, because Ishara had not been introduced on the show yet.

But for the most part the Academy books (except for Troi's book) don't really conflict with the other books or the show.

[Christopher]

How does Troi's book conflict?

[tomswift2002]

Christopher wrote:

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How does Troi's book conflict?

It's the timing of the book. Other books tend to haveTroi elsewhere at the same time.

[Drago-Kazov]

Thanks.

[tomswift2002]

I'm currently finishing up The Buried Age (a lot of it I don't agree with in terms of the age of the galaxy and the evolution stuff, but this is not the time or the place to get into the whole debate on Creation vs. Evolution and the 7,000 year-old theory vs. the millions-of-years-old theory), but Tasha's finally shown up---after the 300th page, and only briefly. I was kind of hoping that she'd be in the story more.

Well, maybe in the future we'll get a novel that does have a lot of Tasha Yar in it.

[Christopher]

Well, if I've offended a Creationist, I'm obviously doing something right.

[KRAD]

tomswift2002 wrote:

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the 7,000 year-old theory vs. the millions-of-years-old theory

There is no "theory" that the universe is 7000 years old. There isn't really even a hypothesis. People throw the word "theory" around, usually with the modifier "just," to try to debase the word, but "theory" carries with it the rigor of probability and some scientific backing for it. The notion that the universe is 7000 years old has nothing even remotely resembling a basis in science, and is wholly faith based. By definition, faith has no scientific rigor behind it.

My objection here is not to faith, nor do I mean to belittle anyone's faith. My objection is linguistic -- tomswift2002's use of the word "theory" is dangerously, insultingly wrong.

[Christopher]

^Right. A theory is a model of a process or set of processes proposed to explain an observed body of data, and explaining them in a way that makes predictions that can be used to test the accuracy of the model. Things like the age of the Earth, the age of the universe, and the process of genetic change from one species to another are not theories; they are data. They are measurements and observations that have been verified countless ways. The theories are the models that explain how those measured results came about and what they can predict about new measurements.

There is such a thing as music theory and color theory, but that doesn't mean the existence of music and color are unproven. The theories are not the assertion that the things exist, since that is an observed result; rather, they are the models explaining how they work and what processes underlie them.