Except the topic is specifically about female authority figures in the Abramsverse (oh, I wish we had a better name for that continuity), and there is no Trek Lit in the Abramsverse except the YA Academy novels. How have they been at portraying female authority figures? (There was a female commodore as a major character in my Abramsverse novel that got cancelled, though.)
Assassination Game has Nadja Luther, who was an authority figure to the cadets. I forget the specifics of her position, but she was ostensibly in charge of the Assassination Game and held some type of position. I really don't recall too many female characters outside of Uhura and Gaila and Kirk's love interest in The Edge in the previous three books. But it's few and far between.
Sorry. I saw the references to the pattern existing since Trek's inception and DS9 and thought that opened the discussion to the whole franchise. I guess I misunderstood.
It's my understanding that Orci and the folks at Bad Robot only oversee comics/novels based on ST09 and STID, not the entire Treklit line. Treklit in general remains under the authority of CBS, not Bad Robot.
^Yes, exactly. Orci's a busy TV/film producer. He doesn't have time to oversee the entirety of Trek Lit. He's only involved with overseeing Abramsverse tie-ins, and judging from how many inconsistencies there are between the films and the comics, it doesn't seem his oversight is particularly close.
Throughout its entire history, Star Trek has always been full of inconsistencies (James T. Kirk vs. James R. Kirk?). As have, frankly, most ongoing franchises. Even those most dedicated to consistency often ended up with their supposedly "canonical" tie-ins (e.g., Babylon 5 and its novel line during the series).
The comics are turning into a bore. Are we going to get A Star Fleet Academy novel in 2013? or are the rumours about the cancellations of the series true?
FWIW there was a fifth (untitled) SA book listed for this August for ages on Amazon, but for some time now it's only listed as unavailable and no sign of it can be found anymore on the S&S site (and I'm reasonably sure I remember seeing it listed there in the past). So I guess there's a very good chance that the series has indeed been discontinued.
I'm pretty sure the series was unofficially cancelled. A fifth book (by Barba, I believe) was listed on Amazon as Defcon said and there was a TBA entry for it on Memory Alpha. I recall someone mentioning at the time Assassination Game came out that it seemed likely that the series was cancelled after the third entry, but as the fourth entry was contracted and written, it made sense to release it and get some money out of it. In hindsight, I wonder if part of the delay on Assassination Game was based around initial similarities to Into Darkness. "Secret Organization Within Starfleet uses staged terrorist attacks to foment war with aggressive alien species. Kirk and well meaning friends foil plan that is figured headed by a blackhat acting like a good guy."
There is a line that cannot be reconcilled no matter what. It happened with more consistent franchises. Continuity is pretty good so far. as far as the novels are concerned. do they belong to a different studio than the comics?
^Yes, the novels are published by Pocket Books, and the comics are published by IDW Comics. Says so right on the covers.
I knew that but aren't the right's mixed up the same way the tv and movie rights are between diferent studios?
Star Trek as a series, and the spin-offs (TNG, DSN, VOY, and ENT) are all copyrighted to CBS Studios. CBS also owns Star Trek as a trademark. The ST films are all copyrighted to Paramount (a subsidiary of Viacom), under license from CBS. Think of it as being like how Firefly is copyrighted to 20th Century Fox, but Serenity is copyrighted to Universal Pictures under license from Fox. Just as Serenity is a derivative work based upon Firefly, the ST films are all derivative works based upon Star Trek.
^That said, the tie-in licenses for each different aspect of Star Trek are generally acquired separately. A given licensee won't necessarily have the rights to every part of the franchise. For instance, Marvel's 1980 Trek comic was theoretically only allowed to use characters and concepts from ST:TMP and not from TOS itself, although they managed to slip TOS nods into the majority of issues anyway. DC had the TOS & TNG comics licenses c. 1993, but the DS9 license was acquired by Malibu (although the companies collaborated on a crossover). And for the most part, IDW and TokyoPop have only had the TOS and TNG licenses, though IDW did acquire the DS9 license for a time.
This talk of licenses brings up a question I was wondering about earlier today. Does a novel and/or comic license automatically include stuff from other publishers? I've been looking around at comics a lot lately, and I saw that IDW has been republishing comics from previous publishers, including DC Trek comics, Marvel. Is that normal, or would they have had to deal separately with the other publisher?