Brannon Braga: Not a Diane Carey Fan?

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

  1. SpaceCadetJuan

    SpaceCadetJuan Ensign Newbie

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    I read Ship of the Line a few months back, and I liked it okay. Didn't love it, didn't hurl it across the room. But the more you guys pick it apart, the lower it seems to be sinking in my estimation...I guess I am easily influenced!

    I really liked Final Frontier and Best Destiny, so don't anybody ruin those for me!
     
  2. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    IIRC, Peter David has snuck in a few barbs at TV Trek over the years - mocking Neelix and Voyager at the start of New Frontier, and trashing Richard Arnold and Gene Roddenberry in Before Dishonor over the Vendetta/female Borg fiasco.
    I loved Red Sector, by far the best of the Double Helix series. I certainly detected no contempt.
     
  3. Gaith

    Gaith Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I really liked Ship of the Line when I read it many years ago... huh. Maybe I was easily pleased.

    The "Broken Bow" story is pretty funny, though. :rommie:
     
  4. kirk55555

    kirk55555 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Oh, I'm not saying it was professional. I can just think of some movies that I'd love to see novelizations of in this style. Heck, let an annoyed Diane Carey write the Into Darkness novelization and I would actually pay money for something connected to the horrible JJ verse again.
     
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  5. James T. Vader

    James T. Vader Lieutenant

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    Actually she did 4:

    Ghost Ship
    Descent
    Ancient Blood
    Ship of the Line
     
  6. Admiral Buzzkill

    Admiral Buzzkill Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That's probably face-saving on someone's part; it certainly does effectively place the onus on a supposedly unfair and unreasonable dead man. The original issues with the TNG folks were substantially more...interesting than that.

    Maybe we'll catch up at Shore Leave or something. :lol:
     
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2013
  7. Hartzilla2007

    Hartzilla2007 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    To be fair according to First Contact its a decent place to amass a fleet to protect Earth from the Borg that isn't that far away from seeing as how fast the Cube and the federation fleet got to earth from there.
     
  8. Gaith

    Gaith Vice Admiral Admiral

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    "As he slathered a third coat of petroleum jelly across the bridge's top tower, Bruce briefly wondered if it wouldn't have been wiser to have skipped this particular errand and start looking for the nuke right away. What if it rained in the early morning hours, washing his signal away? And what if the bomb went off sooner than he anticipated, just as he was starting a quick cat nap to recharge before heading into a final confrontation with the League? 'Screw it,' he thought. 'It's too late for second-guesses; I'll finish this last coat, then take that nap as quickly as poosible."

    :rommie:
     
  9. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    First of all, First Contact takes place five years after "Cause and Effect," so that doesn't affect what was stated in the episode about it being uncharted before that point.

    Second, we don't actually know how fast the fleet got from the Expanse to Earth. Consider that the Enterprise had to get from the Romulan Neutral Zone to Earth in the same amount of time. That should be several days' travel at least. Despite how the film was edited, it's reasonable to assume that the battle near Earth was a separate battle taking place days after the first engagement in the Expanse -- or else that it was a running battle lasting for days.
     
  10. Elias Vaughn

    Elias Vaughn Captain Captain

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    ...no, but one would think that it'd be part of their job to ask her to take them out.
     
  11. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

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    Oh, and just when this thread was getting to be a little fun.
     
  12. rfmcdpei

    rfmcdpei Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Two related points.

    1. Is it the job of the editors to save their writers from themselves?

    2. Perhaps more speculatively, would there necessarily have been the opportunity for the editors to get Carey to take them out, or--if all else fails--for the editors to take them out themselves? Her asides seem to have been fairly pervasive throughout the manuscript. Depending on how much time there was between manuscript submission and the final prep work for publication, they might not have had the time to do an extensive revision.
     
  13. iarann

    iarann Lieutenant Commander Premium Member

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    It is important to note that Diane Carey appears to have been given novelizations because of her ability to quickly put out a novel with a short deadline. If that was the case, they may have either glossed over the manuscript or just not had enough time to change it (as rfmcdpei suggested), or for all we know she had twice as much of this stuff in there and they removed the most obvious stuff.

    I'm honestly surprised this hasn't come up before. I mentioned it in a thread last year, but at the time the novelization came out (or any of the others she has done like this) did no one notice?
     
  14. Elias Vaughn

    Elias Vaughn Captain Captain

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    From themselves? Not sure. But I'm fairly positive they'd want to make sure the book was acceptable for publishing.

    And since they got published...

    Even assuming all that was true (and I'm not convinced it would have been), they could have not signed her to keep writing books.
     
  15. iarann

    iarann Lieutenant Commander Premium Member

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    Which appears to be the case as she has not done any other Star Trek work since Broken Bow was published.
     
  16. Turtletrekker

    Turtletrekker Admiral Admiral

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    This is confirmed in Voyages of Imagination, where Carey states that she wrote the book in two weeks while at sea serving as a ship's cook.
     
  17. rfmcdpei

    rfmcdpei Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    The Broken Bow novelization differs from the other work she did in that it was literally the first literary production associated with the show. The original tie-in novels weren't that widely read, and even the DS9 episode novelizations weren't very high profile. Neither can be said of the novelization of the first episode of a new series.

    Even assuming all that was true (and I'm not convinced it would have been), they could have not signed her to keep writing books.[/QUOTE]

    As others have noted, it's telling that after Broken Bow Carey has written no more Trek novels.

    Looking at the bibliography again, the Star Trek: Challenger series that Carey initiated as a successor to New Earth even died aborning, not having gotten past two entries in the Gateways series.

    She wrote the Broken Bow novelization in two weeks, in those conditions?
     
  18. Allyn Gibson

    Allyn Gibson Vice Admiral Admiral

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    One of the novelizations she wrote in four days. I want to say it was "Endgame."

    And there were certainly plans on her part to continue the series. She had discussed them at the time, and they were a unique approach for a Star Trek series.

    From memory...

    Starfleet assigned another ship to patrol the Belle Terre sector, and that ship carried orders for Nick Keller to return to Earth for reassignment. Keller instead resigns from Starfleet to operate as a privateer in the sector using the Challenger (which he could do, since it was the planet's ship, not Starfleet's ship). The tension in the series would have come from the conflict between Keller and Starfleet.

    Thinking in terms of Carey's interests and politics, Keller and his ship would have been the equivalent of the colonial/early Republic militia, while the Starfleet ship would have been the equivalent of the US Army fort overseen by a representative of the far distant government back in Washington.

    Of course, none of those plans ever came to fruition.
     
  19. PKS8304

    PKS8304 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Fire Ship was one of those novels that I thought had a really good ending but the book itself tended to drag quite a bit and took awhile to get through. Of course the ending isnt good without the journey getting there.

    I managed to read the whole thing through and was happy at the end, my friend however, only got halfway through and refuses to pick it back up. Oh well his loss lol
     
  20. hbquikcomjamesl

    hbquikcomjamesl Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Hmm. I tend to find some fault with Carey's hard-Libertarian politics, her tendency to put it in her books (especially the "Piper" books), and particularly with her tendency to put hard-Libertarian political commentary into a Vulcan's mouth (specifically, Sarda's), but I rather liked Piper; I thought she was by far the best example I've ever seen of a "Mary-Sue" character done right.

    In fact, if I weren't already at least 27 cantos into Dante's Divine Comedy (the Longfellow translation), and didn't also need to set it aside and re-read the first two chapters of another book for a discussion group I signed up for, I'd be inclined to start re-reading her "Piper" and "Geordie Kirk" novels tonight.