If i'm reading a tie-in novel, i'd like it to feel something like what its based on. Sure you can do a more cerebral story in the Kelvin timeline. But the more you do, the more its going to feel like prime-universe. Which is why i'd rather read it as a prime-universe novel. Personal preference.
Do you want ongoing novels on the Kelvin Universe
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If i'm reading a tie-in novel, i'd like it to feel something like what its based on. Sure you can do a more cerebral story in the Kelvin timeline. But the more you do, the more its going to feel like prime-universe. Which is why i'd rather read it as a prime-universe novel. Personal preference.
I'd write one in a heartbeat. It'd be fun.
The big differences would be with respect to the characterizations, as Christopher already noted, but otherwise? Nothing's preventing a true Trek tale from being told in that timeline, and I don't buy the idea that the "Kelvin timeline" must automatically equate to "less cerebral." There have already been some stories in the comics that could've worked rather well in the prime timeline.
The big differences would be with respect to the characterizations, as Christopher already noted, but otherwise? Nothing's preventing a true Trek tale from being told in that timeline, and I don't buy the idea that the "Kelvin timeline" must automatically equate to "less cerebral." There have already been some stories in the comics that could've worked rather well in the prime timeline.
But you can balance both. When I wrote Seek a Newer World, I did put in more action and spectacle to be more cinematic, but I didn't sacrifice any of the characterization and ideas and science that I put into my other novels. Ditto with my two Marvel novels from some years back. Most creativity is about finding the right balance between different elements, not choosing one to the exclusion of the other.
And of course there have been plenty of Prime Universe novels that have been loaded with action, notably from the pens of Dayton Ward and David Mack. We don't all write every book in the same mode. I've done novels with more action and less action, and so have a lot of other Trek authors. The shows themselves had some episodes that were more action-heavy than others. So it's utter nonsense to say that Prime can only be "cerebral" and Kelvin cannot.
Except that I didn't say that. But whatever, I gave my opinion on the question the thread posed, and the reasons why.
I'd love to see novels about the Prime timeline Kelvin (post-divergence, of course).
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I'd pay good money for that.
And don't anyone even try to tell me that this is a 'story idea' and therefore forbidden to discuss. 
Does beg the question, though: Would Bad Robot be able to interfere with this? They say the novelverse is not allowed to reference anything from the reboot movies, but we're talking about the adventures of the Kelvin crew in the original (non-Nero) timeline - which the reboots don't cover.
Does beg the question, though: Would Bad Robot be able to interfere with this? They say the novelverse is not allowed to reference anything from the reboot movies, but we're talking about the adventures of the Kelvin crew in the original (non-Nero) timeline - which the reboots don't cover.
The Kelvin still belongs to the reboot movies, at least in a lgeal perspective. Arguing that the ship could be used in novels because it had to exist pre movie would be like Marvel trying to avoid the Harmonized Tariff Schedule by saying that the X-Men aren't humans but rather mutants. It only works from a continuity perspective not from a legal one. Well except for Marvel, they somehow convinced the judge.And don't anyone even try to tell me that this is a 'story idea' and therefore forbidden to discuss.
Does beg the question, though: Would Bad Robot be able to interfere with this? They say the novelverse is not allowed to reference anything from the reboot movies, but we're talking about the adventures of the Kelvin crew in the original (non-Nero) timeline - which the reboots don't cover.
But in al seriousness I think that by "Referencing" everything exclusive to the reboot movies are meant.
^ Fucking lawyers.
Indeed, if the 24th century novels aren't allowed to touch the destruction of Romulus (which we know to be the case) then it stands to reason there can't be a Kelvin novel for similar reasons.
Although, a Kelvin novel was once pitched nearly six years ago, clearly nothing came of it.
Although, a Kelvin novel was once pitched nearly six years ago, clearly nothing came of it.
^ Fucking lawyers.
C'mon, lawyers don't decide contracts, the companies do that; they just use lawyers to make sure what their intentions are and what the contract says match up correctly.
I'd like for the people who do want it to be able to have their way, but for myself I don't care.
Those are some very fair points and I agree that the multicolored bandanas were a very good idea and also prefer Splinter as Hamato Yoshi turned into a mutant rat (esp. since it makes the Splinter/Shredder feud far more personal).
I'll admit I was generalizing, however, I still think the '80s cartoon overshadows the Mirage comics as far as influence goes on the franchise. (The only direct adaptations I'm aware of these versions of are in the Turtles Forever movie finale to the 2003 cartoon continuity and it's pesudo-remake as the "Trans-Dimensional Turtles" episode in the 2012 cartoon continuity).
For example, you commented that the 2012 cartoon is largely it's own thing. While that's true, since there's a lot of new characters, exclusive parodies of other properties, and old characters and elements tend to get revised origins, the vast majority of old elements are from the '80s cartoon. The mutagen works the same way as it did in the '80s and we get stuff and characters like the Party Wagon, the Turtle Blimp, Dimension X, Foot bots, Mutagen Man, fly mutant Baxter Stockman, Pizza Face, Bebop and Rocksteady, Slash, Muck Man, Mona Lisa, the Neutrinos, Lord Dregg, etc.
There are elements from other iterations of the franchise, like the Earth Protection Force, Bishop, and Hun from the 2003 cartoon, Armaggon and Belly Bomb from the Archie comics, adaptations of the "City at War" materials and other ideas (like Leatherhead being a good guy) from the Mirage comics (plus the inclusion of any Mirage original characters), and several easter eggs to the original movie in the North Hampton episodes (April reading her journal in voiceover, Splinter being seen in the campfire, etc.). But, the '80s cartoon is still the defining source of inspiration. It's a similar situation for the new movie series, esp. Out of the Shadows. To the best of my knowledge, aside from three or so elements cribbed from 2012 series (Baxter Stockman, Rocksteady's real name, and Casey Jones rollerblades), that movie takes every pre-existing thing from the '80s show.
On a final note, regardless of the incarnation, every version has based the Turtles themselves squarely on the '80s version (Raph notwithstanding). If that's not dominate influence, I don't know what is.
(To continue the TMNT parallel, I'd also argue that that Abramsverse movies wanted to be their franchise's version of the 2012 show; a remake that took its own spin on the source material, but was still recognizable as the source material -- and, by chance, even grandfathered older material as a parallel universe in the same multiverse, albeit TMNT 2012 did establish that 2003 TMNT cartoon was not in continuity.
However, the difference is is that TMNT 2012 understood how its franchise works, so they are able to reimagine elements in a way that still feels organic, whereas the Abramsverse has a lot of in-jokes and recycles stuff, but really doesn't understand what it's playing with, so things don't feel quite right. I find it also telling that that the TMNT 2012 production team is staffed by fans of the '80s cartoon, while the Abramsverse takes pride in the fact that the people steering the ship are not Star Trek fans. While having fans working on it doesn't mean the product will be great -- Spider-Man comics have been suffering because of fans working on the property -- I think it's very interesting that TMNT 2012 has become considered one of the best installments in its franchise, while the Abramsverse has a mixed reception with its. Your mileage will vary with all this, of course.)
I'd love to see some of the MCU TV shows beyond Agents of SHIELD (DVD/Blu-Rays, please?). However, I'd point out that the Trek movies also tended to be far more character-driven than other blockbuster movie. For example, First Contact's action is driven by Picard's obsession with revenge on the Borg. There's battles and fights, but the drama is focused on on man dealing with his demons, not stringing together action set pieces for exciting battles. The "B" plot has the the characters meeting a historical figure and learning that the lionized version that the history books have presented was very wrong. That's both stuff I feel that the new movies have botched, as the character's take a back seat to the plots, which are written to best string up cool actions scenes, rather then writing the action scenes to best fit the narrative. So, my feeling is that the old movies in general knew how to balance the stuff that made Star Trek Star Trek, but still have it on a bigger scale, while the new movies are trying to twist the franchise to fit a formula that it was never meant to be (and doing it at the expense of the writing and characters, to boot, which are the real benchmarks for a stories success).
Fair enough, and while I don't like the new Trek movie series (I will admit that the second trailer for Star Trek Beyond makes the movie look promising, but I've already been bit twice, so I'm not very trusting right now), I don't think they don't have a place. If that's what some people like, fair enough. (I am willing to debate its merits and wether it works in the context of being a Star Trek film series, but that doesn't mean that others shouldn't be free to love it.)
I'd just like to see a future Trek movie or TV show return to its roots and tell something that feels like the prime universe version of Star Trek (whether they do that by continuing the prime universe, writing a movie in the Abramsverse that functions like a throwback, create a brand-new continuity, etc.). That's what I like about this franchise and the reason I watch it.
I never quite got the logic of it, though. While the comics' and movies' version was that the mutagen made animals anthropomorphic, the '87 version was that the mutagen hybridized a human or animal with whatever other organism was touching them at the time of exposure. So the turtles turned humanoid because they were touched by Hamato, but Hamato turned into a rat even though he was touching the turtles at the same time?
Although I guess the sequence is Hamato touches rat -> Hamato steps in mutagen -> Hamato touches mutagen-exposed turtles. So he would've already been primed to turn into a rat before he touched the turtles, but he was still human at the time he touched them. I guess that's how it works. But it confused me for decades.
As I said, the '03 series was extremely faithful to the comics, directly adapting many of their storylines and one-shot stories, even though it didn't recreate the original black-and-white look. The first movie also drew as much on the comics as on the cartoon.
To a large extent, yes, but I think the recent "Trans-Dimensional Turtles" showed how much is different too. Raphael is the barely-controlled hothead he's been in every version since the first movie, rather than the "cool but rude" character from the '87 series. The Kraang took their name and their evil alignment from the '87 Krang, but in most respects they're the Utrom (and we now know they're literally the Utrom). Baxter is back to his original African-American ethnicity instead of the redhead of the '87 show. April isn't a reporter. Karai is included. "Turtles in Space" happened. Renet and Savanti Romero showed up. And so on. The '87 influence is certainly present, but I don't think it outweighs the other influences as much as you suggest. The current show is drawing promiscuously on just about everything before it (even tossing in a couple of Easter-egg references to Venus from the reviled The Next Mutation).
What about Baxter is from the '12 version specifically? I haven't seen the new movies.
Still, it doesn't surprise me that they'd draw on that version. It's a nostalgia thing -- the generation that grew up with that version is in charge of making the movies now, and they're trying to recapture their childhood. It's the same reason we're getting a feature-film reboot of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers even though there have been nearly 20 different incarnations of the Power Rangers since then.
Other than Raph, were the comics characters really that different from their usual screen portrayal? Leo as the serious, driven leader, Donnie as the techie, Mikey as the clown?
One thing from the '87 series that definitely has not been retained by any other version was the insistence on always, always referring to the Turtles by their full names. Every other version has used Leo, Mikey, Raph, and Don/Donnie, while that one never used nicknames at all, which was pretty bizarre.
I wouldn't agree with that. I think the Abrams movies capture the characters quite well, and STID at least made an effort to address the philosophy (it nicely captured the "Arena"/"Devil in the Dark" dynamic of Kirk initially wanting to respond aggressively, rejecting Spock's urging to act more peacefully, and then choosing the peaceful route when the crunch came). Its main misfire was its clumsy rehash of the TWOK death scene. I think that part was so ill-conceived that it overshadows the rest in people's minds and colors their perception of the whole thing.
You're badly misremembering the facts here. The "Supreme Court" actually prided itself on having a mix of both dedicated fans (Robert Orci, Damon Lindelof), moderate fans (Alex Kurtzman), and non-fans (J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk), so that they could have parallax between both the fan and the non-fan perspective and hopefully balance the appeal to both audiences.
And let's not forget that Nicholas Meyer also prided himself on being a non-fan...
I think that "mixed reception" is greatly overstated. Look at the quality ratings for the Trek movies on IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and the like, and both Abrams movies are consistently among the highest-rated films of the entire series. General audiences mostly approve of the new films, and a lot of Trek fans do as well, but a lot of the haters make an ongoing effort to dominate or monopolize the conversation and propagate the illusion that their perspective is the majority view. And just in general, the critics of a thing tend to make more noise than the people who are satisfied with it, which can skew perceptions of public opinion.
How is that not like other action films? Only about a million of those are driven by their main characters' obsession with revenge on the bad guys.
Whereas I think the plots are written to serve the characters. The first film is about Kirk finding direction in life and he and Spock going from adversaries to tentative friends. Nero and the plot he sets in motion are underdeveloped and secondary, because they aren't as important to the writers as the relationships and emotions. (Which is common in Abrams's work. The plotting in Alias was often ridiculous and mainly served as a backdrop for the ongoing character drama. Mission: Impossible III was the first movie in the series that gave Ethan Hunt an actual personality of any kind, but its plot was largely a means to the end of advancing Ethan's character arc, and the script had so little interest in the Macguffin driving the plot that it didn't even bother to explain what it was.) STID is about Kirk learning humility and earning the captaincy that he somewhat lucked into the previous time.
And yes, there's plenty of action, but it's handled in a deeply character-focused way. When the Kelvin is blowing up, we're focused on George and Winona and their tearful goodbye. When the Narada is blowing up, we're focused on Nero's quiet moment of grief and surrender, with the direction deliberately parallelling his end to George's end and creating sympathy rather than going the usual action-movie route of treating the villain's death as something cool and celebratory. No matter how big the action gets, Abrams is always focused on the people at the center of it.
So I'm amazed that you'd think Abrams makes character secondary. Character is the thing he does best by a huge margin, and it's always been the clear priority of his work overall, frequently to the detriment of plot and logic. It's the success of his character work that makes me willing to forgive the absurdities of his plotting and the excesses of his action.
Sometimes I suspect that people who criticize Abrams's work on the movies have never seen his work anywhere else. Because a lot of the things they claim about his work are just diametrically opposed to reality. (Like when they accuse him of marginalizing women, even though almost everything he's ever done besides ST, M:I, and Lost has been female-centric.)
I voted "No."
The older I get, more & more of what I like about the TOS characters is their history with each other and how they interact with each other. If you take that away, it's taking away half of what I enjoy about that set of characters. I find I feel the same way whenever DC Comics does a reboot of their universe. Each time they do it, my interest wanes a bit more. I like following the same characters I grew up on, not revamped versions that share a name and only bits and pieces of the same history.
Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge the new stuff existing. If you enjoy the Kelvin Timeline, go nuts. But if they did come out with novels set in that timeline, I don't really see myself reading them.
The older I get, more & more of what I like about the TOS characters is their history with each other and how they interact with each other. If you take that away, it's taking away half of what I enjoy about that set of characters. I find I feel the same way whenever DC Comics does a reboot of their universe. Each time they do it, my interest wanes a bit more. I like following the same characters I grew up on, not revamped versions that share a name and only bits and pieces of the same history.
Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge the new stuff existing. If you enjoy the Kelvin Timeline, go nuts. But if they did come out with novels set in that timeline, I don't really see myself reading them.
Yeah, me too. I actually had a pitch queued up for when the series got going. I liked the idea of writing the characters in this younger, a bit less seasoned incarnation taking on the kind of challenges their "prime universe" counterparts often encountered, and seeing how differently it would play out...
Yeah, that was fun. Still, writing one of the first tie-ins to a new series is a bit limiting, since it tends to be relatively superficial and is highly prone to contradiction by later installments. If mine had been published at the time, it would've since been contradicted by Into Darkness. So I feel I sort of dodged a phaser beam there.
I'm still wondering how they expect to get around that. The novelverse will have to get to 2387 at some point, and once that's done, what are they supposed to do? Not mention Romulans at all? Because if any Romulan appears in a post-2387 novel, they're going to have to say something about what happened to their homeworld...
...and even for novels which have no Romulan characters, the destruction of Romulus is still going to have MAJOR repercussions for the entire Alpha and Beta Quadrants, so what then? Just IGNORE it?
Has CBS/Paramount put a restriction on stories post-Romulus destruction in the main timeline?
How does that affect Star Trek Online gaming which goes into the 25th century (don't know much about this)?
How does that affect Star Trek Online gaming which goes into the 25th century (don't know much about this)?
Pocket Books doesn't have a license to Bad Robot stuff, while Cryptic Studios does. So anything first established in a Bad Robot movie, Pocket Books can't actually directly reference.
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