Destiny trilogy - speculations

[JD]

This post also has some minor SPOILERS for the Doctor Who season finale two parter, Stolen Earth/Journey's End.

I was just watching the preview for the first half of the Doctor Who season, and I was actually getting a little bit of a Destiny vipe off of it. Now just let me explain why I got the feeling, because I do actually have some real points that I'm basing this off of.
1. Both feature an invasion from the franchises major enemy (Destiny: The Borg, Se/JE: Daleks)
2. Both feature characters from multiple series (Destiny: TNG/DS9/ENT, SE/JE: Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures
3. Both feature the return of an important lost character (Destiny: Hernandez (maybe) SE/JE: Rose)
4. Also both enemies are cybernetic beings
I don't want you to think that I am accusing either group of ripping the other off, because I realize that both of these things have been in the planning for a while now, and that both groups have most likely never interacted in any way. But, I still thought there was quite a bit of similarity between the two.

[Christopher]

^^Which is another case of selection bias. If you cherrypick a few isolated bits on the basis of their apparent similarity and ignore the parts that are different, it's easy to create the illusion that any two things are closely parallel. So it's not a legitimate form of comparison.

I haven't seen the Doctor Who finale yet, but I'm quite confident that it won't be significantly similar to Destiny. Even the comparisons you make are superficial at best, and at least one requires highly selective interpretation to even be alleged as a similarity at all (for instance, Rose is a far more major character than Hernandez, and Hernandez never actually "left," but simply exists in a different century from the rest of the characters). Four -- or actually three -- points of very vague similarity is not "quite a bit of similarity." It's a teensy, tiny bit of similarity. After all, we're talking about three novels adding up to just under 300,000 words, IIRC. A 2-part television episode would be, in script form, maybe 22,500-25,000 words, less than 10% as long. And neither can be meaningfully summed up with three or four bullet points.

I understand the desire to know what Destiny is going to be about. I understand that it's natural to try to figure it out by looking at the little you know and searching your awareness for similar patterns, because that's how the human mind works. But what you folks don't know about Destiny outweighs what you know by about ten thousand to one. You shouldn't trust any hypotheses based on such a tiny amount of information.

[JD]

Yeah, I am aware of everything you said, and I know very well that they will be nothing alike. It's just that as I was watching the trailer those points jumped out at me, and I thought it was kinda funny that the two are even as vaugely similar as they are. I also realize that quite a bit of similarity was probably a bad choice of words and I apologize for using them.

[Therin of Andor]

TrekkieBez wrote:

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If a casual moviegoer - or even someone who's watched Trek in the past, but never sampled the novels - watches ST:XI and decides to pick up a few of the books, what's their point of entry?

The novelization of ST XI.

How about the three "Crucible" books? Actually, if they are due for a reprint, a killer idea would be all-new covers: with Urban/Kelley, Quinto/Nimoy and Pine/Shatner on the three covers!

[Defcon]

Therin of Andor wrote:

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How about the three "Crucible" books? Actually, if they are due for a reprint, a killer idea would be all-new covers: with Urban/Kelley, Quinto/Nimoy and Pine/Shatner on the three covers!

I agree that it wouldn't be the worst idea if Pocket would get some reprints of (older) TOS standalones on the market in the months surrounding the movie release, but I'm not sure Crucible would be the right choice.

They certainly would be a good beginning for someone who watched Trek in the past but has no experience with the novels, but are they really that fitting for total newcomers? I know they were created to be accessible for people unfamilar with the books, but don't they demand a certain knowledge about TOS at least to be fully appreciated?

[Therin of Andor]

Defcon wrote:

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don't they demand a certain knowledge about TOS at least to be fully appreciated?

That would apply to every TOS novel ever written. Probably every media tie-in ever written assumes that you have at least certain knowledge of the parent show.

[Defcon]

Therin of Andor wrote:

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That would apply to every TOS novel ever written. Probably every media tie-in ever written assumes that you have at least certain knowledge of the parent show.

While that is true, I think there are books which demand less familiarity with the charcters etc. than Crucible. Some of the older books, I guess thanks to Arnold (Wow, never thought I would ever write that ), really only need you to know who does what on the ship and little more. Crucible on the other hand only really fully works when you have a good knowledge about the characters the volumes are dedicated to IMO.

[Christopher]

I don't think Crucible demands any great prior familiarity with the show. Indeed, every key episode or scene that's relevant to the story is retold right there in the books themselves, to a degree that might even feel redundant to someone who is familiar with the series, so I can't imagine a novice being unable to follow them. The only things a novice would miss are the various subtler episode references, but those are just Easter eggs, nonessential to following or enjoying the story.

[Defcon]

Christopher wrote:

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I don't think Crucible demands any great prior familiarity with the show. Indeed, every key episode or scene that's relevant to the story is retold right there in the books themselves, to a degree that might even feel redundant to someone who is familiar with the series, so I can't imagine a novice being unable to follow them. The only things a novice would miss are the various subtler episode references, but those are just Easter eggs, nonessential to following or enjoying the story.

Both McCoy's and Spock's volumes are more or less character studies, and while novices will be perfectly able to follow them, I'm not really sure if they are that interesting for someone who only knows the characters from a 2 hour (?) movie which from all I've heard will cover a large timeframe and therefore most likely won't be able to show more than glimpses about the characters backgrounds.

For example DRG III speaks abuout his motivations why he wrote the McCoy story the way he did in the fore- or afterword of the novel, but I'm not really sure that someone who hasn't seen the episodes will be able to fully reproduce/understand his motivations.

[Christopher]

Defcon wrote:

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Both McCoy's and Spock's volumes are more or less character studies, and while novices will be perfectly able to follow them, I'm not really sure if they are that interesting for someone who only knows the characters from a 2 hour (?) movie which from all I've heard will cover a large timeframe and therefore most likely won't be able to show more than glimpses about the characters backgrounds.

Plenty of novels are character studies about characters who never existed before those novels came out. Nobody was familiar with Holden Caulfield before they read Catcher in the Rye, or with Gatsby before they read The Great Gatsby, but that didn't keep people from enjoying those books (although personally I loathed Catcher). So it makes no sense to say that a character study can only be interesting if it's about a character the reader was already familiar with.

For example DRG III speaks abuout his motivations why he wrote the McCoy story the way he did in the fore- or afterword of the novel, but I'm not really sure that someone who hasn't seen the episodes will be able to fully reproduce/understand his motivations.

Whaa??? At worst, that means they won't be able to follow the foreword and afterword. I've read plenty of authors' forewords or afterwords in which I didn't understand all the references they made (for instance, for a long time I had no idea who this Harry Chapin guy was that Howie Weinstein mentioned a lot in his fore/afterwords), but that had no effect on my understanding of the stories themselves. Such things are optional extras. The reader doesn't have to know or care about the author's motivations or thought processes in order to understand a story. It's just a bonus for those who are curious.

[Therin of Andor]

Christopher wrote:

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Such things are optional extras. The reader doesn't have to know or care about the author's motivations or thought processes in order to understand a story. It's just a bonus for those who are curious.

Most definitely! It may take years before all the pieces fall into place, depending on the order you learn certain facts. Nothing wrong with that! (It also seems, based on some people's questions on various ST BBSs, that some people never read forewords, afterwords, historian's notes, publication dates or footnotes, just as most people never stay in the cinema till all the credits have rolled.)

People come to media tie-ins at many levels of previous exposure to the source material. Some people may have seen everything canonical ever made, but still not recall much of it, and yet they are still able to enjoy a particular tie-in as much as the avid fan who remembers every detail.

I remember Baerbel's reactions to PAD adding two great new alien characters, Arex and M'Ress, to "New Frontier" (in "Gateways: Cold Wars"). She had no idea that PAD had written for those characters before (DC Comics' TOS Series I), let alone that they were once TAS regulars. Had she known this previously, she may have been even more thrilled. And there was even more to track down: the additional material about them in Alan Dean Foster's "ST Logs".

[Defcon]

Therin of Andor wrote:

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(It also seems, based on some people's questions on various ST BBSs, that some people never read forewords, afterwords, historian's notes)

I'm in the minority who actually reads all this first, even the afterwords.

FWIW I never argued that Crucible wasn't an option to get reprinted around the movies release, only that I think there are books even more suited.

The perfect scenario IMHO would be of course if there were new books that would directly tie in with the movie beside the novelization, but given the secrecy surrounding the movie I doubt they would show more than one author (the one writing the novelization) the script, so I would be rather surprised if they would announce something like that at Shore Leave.

[Therin of Andor]

Defcon wrote:

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given the secrecy surrounding the movie I doubt they would show more than one author (the one writing the novelization) the script

IIRC, IDW Publishing mentioned that they were doing an adaptation and other direct tie-ins.

It's highly possible Pocket Books will do something similar - but perhaps for young adults, especially since this movie will be accessible to the youth demographic? Pocket has done similar things before, such as "ST II Short Stories", "ST III Short Stories" and "Plot-It-Yourself..." adventures.

[JD]

If they really are going for the full on Star Wars, Batman type of marketing like they claim then their probably will be some sort of YA or children's tie-ins since that seems to be all the rage now. But I do kinda wonder if Pocket will be doing it though, because it seems like most of the kids stuff is done by a different company than the one who does the adult stuff. Or is that just because those companies don't do children's stuff?

[Therin of Andor]

JD wrote:

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it seems like most of the kids stuff is done by a different company than the one who does the adult stuff. Or is that just because those companies don't do children's stuff?

Past YA and kids' ST stuff has been done by different divisions of Simon & Schuster (Archway, Little Simon, Wanderer, Minstrel, etc). Pocket Books is the adult division of S&S.