I always figured that she just didn't actually pay attention to Cause and Effect. We already know she didn't pay attention to Best of Both Worlds and Chain of Command, so it seems the simplest explanation.
Spoilers TNG: Ship of the Line by Diane Carey Review Thread
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I always figured that she just didn't actually pay attention to Cause and Effect. We already know she didn't pay attention to Best of Both Worlds and Chain of Command, so it seems the simplest explanation.
That's what I thought too, but I just don't get where you basically base an entire book on a minute of screen time, isn't that how long the Picard/Bateson exchange lasts at most, and you get it wrong.
And that Kirk is treated as such a god like figure that the mere presence of a Kirk hologram is inspiration enough for Picard to think he can be a good captain after all.
When Carey writes a TOS novel they seem to be OK but when she leaves that series she just gets so many things so wrong it's ridiculous.
Her TOS is pretty good overall. "The Great Starship Race" is one of my favorite TOS books. I also like "Final Frontier" much more than most do.
Final Frontier had it's good moments but there were some uncomfortable moments in there too. The plucky Starfleet ensign who had lost a hand gives a big speech basically rationalizing how no special treatment should be given to handicapped people. It's a really appalling Ayn Rand moment.
I'm reading this book for the first time now, I'm about 2/3 done
I like the decapus thing, it's kind of fun to think of a ship having a mascot animal
reversing the order of chain of command and best of both worlds is super annoying and it doesn't make sense that a gaff like that got through
and the aforementioned lack of mention of the two women on the bridge right after the collision was avoided. The book had gone into pretty deep detail of everyone that was on the bridge and what station they were manning and they were all men in the book
I'm not saying an author has to be a hard core trek fan to write trek books, but they do need to do fact checking and make sure they get the details right
Then there is how everyone keeps saying Bateson is 90 years out of touch and not fit for command because of it, but no one says a thing about Scotty having helped build the Enterprise E. Captain skills would suffer less from the time gap than engineering/technology skills due to the tech changes
I like the decapus thing, it's kind of fun to think of a ship having a mascot animal
reversing the order of chain of command and best of both worlds is super annoying and it doesn't make sense that a gaff like that got through
and the aforementioned lack of mention of the two women on the bridge right after the collision was avoided. The book had gone into pretty deep detail of everyone that was on the bridge and what station they were manning and they were all men in the book
I'm not saying an author has to be a hard core trek fan to write trek books, but they do need to do fact checking and make sure they get the details right
Then there is how everyone keeps saying Bateson is 90 years out of touch and not fit for command because of it, but no one says a thing about Scotty having helped build the Enterprise E. Captain skills would suffer less from the time gap than engineering/technology skills due to the tech changes
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Probably by working from the script, rather than from the video. It's not like she could pop out to Best Buy and pick up the DVDs at the time.
Even if we allow for Carey not having access to the video - and you'd think somebody could've got a vhs tape to her - it still bugs me that she created an all male bridge crew. That goes against everything Trek should stand for, the diverse group of people working together. I know, she's a big age of sail fan, and writes Trek as if they were all really on 18th century sailing ships. Still.
This book is still in my to read list - slowly getting closer to actually being read. The mention earlier of Troi being demoted down to being a nurse - that's so crazy, it makes me want to read how that plays out. But the Kirk worship and humiliating Picard to show how great Kirk is...I don't know if I'm going to be able to get thru that.
This book is still in my to read list - slowly getting closer to actually being read. The mention earlier of Troi being demoted down to being a nurse - that's so crazy, it makes me want to read how that plays out. But the Kirk worship and humiliating Picard to show how great Kirk is...I don't know if I'm going to be able to get thru that.
Generally speaking I've had fun reading her books, and to answer this particular question directly, I liked First Frontier, definitely better than Ship of the Line.
I have largely been inattentive to the politics that underlie her work, so her Final Frontier giant novel always worked for me, and I never realized until I read comments here and elsewhere on line the nature of what she builds up to in that book. It's the only ST novel I've read more than once (multiple times), one of those sentimental nostalgia books that I've had since I was a kid and will keep for the rest of my life if possible.
What's fascinating about Final Frontier and Ship of the Line is that they are both maiden voyage stories for their respective Enterprises, and because I liked Final Frontier so much, I felt confident before reading SotL that the Enterprise-E would get a similarly epic first mission. So interestingly enough, I reject SotL from my head canon (I never disregard books for canon or continuity problems like this), because I like the Enterprise-E, and feel that the ship is deserving of a better shakedown.
Still, I'm optimistic. I've enjoyed books by Carey before, so I hope I will again. I plan to read Fire Ship one day, it sounds like an interesting story idea and word of mouth is encouraging. I'm curious about Dreadnaught! and it's part of my planned read through of "TOS 80's continuity novels" (and as background reading to lead in to The Lost Years). I'm even curious about Ghost Ship, to see what alternative interpretations she had of the TNG crew before the characters and concepts of TNG settled in to their more familiar pattern.
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I've had a busy week, so I'm still only about a third into First Frontier, but I am overall enjoying it. I really love alternate timeline stories, so this one is up my alley. Next up is Q Squared, an old favorite! I'm hoping I'll get a somewhat quiet day tomorrow so I can finish First Frontier.
It was said earlier in the thread that Trek writers at the time had full open access to Paramount's full VHS library; it wasn't specified, but I assume that means that even for people that didn't live near Paramount Studios, they just had to ask and they'd have a tape of any episode they wanted shipped to them.
Edit: Wait, it wasn't this thread. It was another thread about Diane Carey, I think. I think it was the one about her Broken Bow novelization from a while back where that came up, someone else wondered if she might just not have had access to the episode, but one of the writers on the forum said that no, she would have been able to get a copy of it.
Given what I've read about Carey's Enterprise adaptation that ended her Trek career, I'd say she just intentionally ignored what happened on screen and just did what she wanted.
Either she did her research and intentionally contradicted it or - I don't even know what. She didn't bother to do the research? That she wrote out the female bridge crew members shows blatant disrespect for the source material she was following. The erasure of female characters in favor of an all male bridge crew is pretty offensive.
Either she did her research and intentionally contradicted it or - I don't even know what. She didn't bother to do the research? That she wrote out the female bridge crew members shows blatant disrespect for the source material she was following. The erasure of female characters in favor of an all male bridge crew is pretty offensive.
Her interpretations are based on the original writers' bible, which is pretty different in a lot of ways from the show we ended up getting. For instance, the bible says that Riker has an ongoing prejudice against AIs that makes it hard for him to accept Data, and so that's played up in the novel, even though it was disposed of in one or two scenes in "Farpoint" and never mentioned again in the show.
One thing I recall is that, since basing the characters on the bible basically left them as rather basic archetypes, she actually had them concerned about being rather basic archetypes. I seem to recall Ghost Ship's Geordi complaining about how he was seen as just the guy with the visor, Data was seen as the android, etc. It was kind of self-referential, although, to be fair, she didn't have much else to work with.
That is correct. I had a few VHS tapes mailed to me for research in my early years as a Trek novelist. Though they were loaners and we had to send them back eventually.
To be fair, the female bridge personnel were non-speaking extras who were barely glimpsed in the background for a few moments. Honestly, when I first read the book, I didn't even realize there was a contradiction. It was a while before I saw it pointed out. Yes, it's a conflict, but with a very minor element of the episode. There were certainly other novels over the years that featured continuity glitches.
No, but, as Christopher said, Simon & Schuster kept a full library of VHS tapes of every Star Trek episode that could be loaned to authors as needed. (I made copious use of that library when I first started writing Trek novels.) Therefore, Carey had ready access to the 30 seconds of Bozeman screentime that she was obligated to be consistent with.
The "Broken Bow" novelization would have been written off the script and the series bible, because it was being written at the same time that the episode was being filmed. At best she would've had publicity stills to work from....
Oh, the issue with the novelization wasn't lack of fidelity, it was that she had the characters constantly thinking about how awful or unbelievable the situations they were in were. She portrayed the actual events themselves pretty well, but with a ton of internal monologues or offscreen dialogue ripping into everything. Stuff like Malcolm in the butterfly dancer scene thinking about how it was the most trite, cliche thing he could have expected to run into, Archer thinking about how Hoshi's language training in Brazil was pointless because aliens learn English just fine, Trip thinking how T'Pol's comment about Vulcans not eating with their hands was obviously a lie because he'd personally seen otherwise. Those are just the first examples that spring to mind.
It was honestly kind of hilarious how often it kept to the pattern of onscreen sequence followed by internal or offscreen commentary on how silly that sequence was.
I read it for a project in the seventh grade. It was fun, kinda silly and dense at times, but I liked it.
The Enterprise adaptation ended her Trek career?! I would still buy ST books by her, especially TOS.
I'm glad you're enjoying First Frontier, BTW; I also love that kind of time travel and alternate reality stuff, dinosaurs were a great bonus. I was also fascinated by the idea of a species of dinosaur having the chance to evolve into sentience, an alternative path for Earth's history.
It's the kind of thing that is drawing me to the 80's TOS novels, curiosity about how ST might have been interpreted and developed differently from how it eventually did in TNG and the other shows. The Final Reflection is a really enjoyable exercise in testing the flexibility of my imagination. I never experienced with ST what I'm seeing happen with Star Wars novels. A generation of time spent with knowing one version of Star Wars' expanded storyline makes me still treasure it even as it's about to be overwritten. So even though the experience won't be the same, it still made me want to give the 80's TOS novels a chance to shine, to keep it alive in the mind of one more fan, beyond it's superficial end.
I never realized this kind of glitch as well, even though I watch that time loop episode quite a number of times (it's a great story, but it's repetition is more pronounce if you watch the episode more than once).
I don't think any of the continuity glitches bothered me at all. I was just bothered by the book having too many ideas and storylines that didn't seem to fit well with each other, and didn't come together satisfactorily; and it all took away from a very simple idea that Diane Carey did well the first time around: the maiden voyage. With all the other stuff coming and going, I didn't feel like Enterprise-E got the kind of focus I would like to have seen. The book felt all over the place. It was baffling, since Final Frontier seems comparatively much more effectively focused. I enjoyed it for Carey's prose (which I often enjoy), but was horrified by the story's structural problems.
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That was actually in the kinda-sequel, "Best Destiny".
Thanks for the info. I just mixed up the names.
I remember stumbling onto this book when it was first released at Barnes & Nobles. To be honest I haven't read it in many years but I do remember enjoying it. I think it was the novelty that attracted me to it of getting some background to the Ent E which when this came out was pretty limited. I guess I didnt get hung up on the details I see alot of people complaining about on here because the book accomplished what I wanted it to....I thought seeing Bateson and crew was neat and also liked that someone put Picard &Madred back in a room together. Im voting above average as I enjoyed it at the time and still have those memories.
This was discussed in a 2013 thread, here.
Suffice it to say that if an author working under contract goes on to produce derivative material that explicitly mocks the source material, especially if the author's actions come to the attention of the people who control the franchise it's quite reasonable for the author to no longer be allowed anything to do with it.
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