...and after Star Trek IV was released, it was noted in the lettercol that Bennett had notified them that Star Trek V would be set quite some time after the fourth film, which would give the comics some pre-determined space to exist (unlike what happened between TWOK and TSFS and TSFS and TVH).
DC did a pretty deft job squeezing their comics in between TWOK and TSFS. Their pre-movie 2-parter (the second half of which actually came out the month after the movie adaptation) even made a bit more sense of the movie by explaining why the
Enterprise had considerably more battle damage at the start of TSFS than it had had at the end of TWOK. The only major discontinuity (between the comics and TSFS itself, disregarding inconsistencies that arose later) was that the question Phil Morris's character asked about a memorial service for Spock implies they haven't been back to Earth since his death, whereas the comics began with the ship back at Earth.
The attempt to segue from the comics into TVH was more awkward, because it depended on the assumption that the Klingon Bird-of-Prey had been in the
Excelsior's shuttlebay the whole time, even though the issues of the Mirror Universe Saga had (correctly) showed the BoP as far too large to fit inside the
Excelsior. Other than that, it was a decent effort to hit the reset button, but I just can't get past that inconsistency. Perhaps if Mike Barr had stayed as the writer, he might have avoided the mistake that Len Wein made.
Of course, this was just before Richard Arnold started intervening more strongly in those types of conversations (post-TNG debut), but it's still an interesting artifact/snapshot of the era.
Yeah... I still think the attitude toward canon was a lot more relaxed back then, not the urgent and judgmental matter that people treat it as today. And I still say that Arnold's heavy-handed approach was a major contributor to that change.
As one of the five guys on the planet who actually likes Star Trek V. Part of my ongoing sadness is the complete canon lock-out which has been maintained to prevent the events of the film from being referenced ever again in any subsequent novels or material.
Well, that's not true. A lot of things from STV have been referenced. Dayton Ward's debut novel
In the Name of Honor was set just after it and referred to its events and characters. The
Vanguard series showed the establishment of Nimbus III as an ongoing plot point. Klaa and Vixis appeared repeatedly in DC's post- STV comics and in
Mere Anarchy: The Blood-Dimmed Tide (by those comics' second regular author, Howard Weinstein). General Korrd has appeared in the novel
Sarek, the novella "The Unhappy Ones" from
Seven Deadly Sins, and a few stories.
Myriad Universes: The Chimes at Midnight featured an alternate-universe version of Caithlin Dar. Sybok has been mentioned in various books including my own
Ex Machina and Greg Cox's recent
Child of Two Worlds, and appears in alternate-timeline form in
The Tears of Eridanus and a DC annual. The three-breasted felinoid species from the Nimbus III bar scene has been identified in the Mangels/Martin
Enterprise novels with the Draylaxians (indicated in "Broken Bow" to be a three-breasted species).
Phil Morris' character is pretty clearly talking about a welcome home ceremony for the ship. Kirk is the one who connects his question to Spock's death. I agree with you that Kirk's dialogue implies that Spock's death just happened, but the trainee wasn't talking about a memorial service.
