I don't recall the Iconians being described as colossal. Doors Into Chaos implied that the Kalandans were an offshoot of the Iconians, which means the Iconians were probably human-sized as well.
Can you elaborate on this?
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I don't recall the Iconians being described as colossal. Doors Into Chaos implied that the Kalandans were an offshoot of the Iconians, which means the Iconians were probably human-sized as well.
Can you elaborate on this?
No I can't. I was, for some reason, under the impression that Blind Man's Bluff was post-Destiny, which it isn't. If it was set after Destiny, then Seven should be a lot more mentally down and stuff.
There are at least two different resurrections for Data, one in the Cold Equations books and one in the Star Trek Online universe.
Also, I don't think it's been mentioned yet -- Data was resurrected in the IDW Countdown series (pre the 2009 movie) by overwriting B4 with Data's programming, more or less (which raises some ethical issues, if we are to take TNG's "Measure of a Man" at its word, but...)
Also, I don't think it's been mentioned yet -- Data was resurrected in the IDW Countdown series (pre the 2009 movie) by overwriting B4 with Data's programming, more or less (which raises some ethical issues, if we are to take TNG's "Measure of a Man" at its word, but...)
Well, it was command-track in Kirk's era. Has it been definitely established that things haven't changed by the 24th century? And I haven't read those stories since they were published, but maybe Nog switched to command track at some point after the events we saw in DS9? Or maybe Starfleet decided it should be a mandatory part of the curriculum for all or most of its cadets, since anyone might be faced with a no-win scenario... I dunno, doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem to me, especially since the idea of Nog taking the test is undeniably rich.
But it's explicitly a test of how a starship commander would handle a no-win scenario. Why would that make sense for anyone who wasn't pursuing command?
The stories were set, as I said, in Nog's first year as a cadet, before he returned to DS9 in later seasons. And he was definitely an engineering cadet when he came back.
I don't agree. I think it's lazy to assume that just because the Kobayashi Maru is the one Academy simulation we happen to have seen, that somehow requires it to be the single central experience of every Starfleet cadet ever. It's classic small-universe syndrome. The worst example of this was in the early, Diane Duane-written computer game The Kobayashi Alternative. The reason the game was called that, as explained in the introductory materials, is that it was supposed to represent a second, alternative simulation developed by the Academy after they decided that maybe there should be more than one simulation used at the Academy besides the no-win scenario one. That never made any sense to me. Why in the world would anyone assume that the KM was the only simulation used by the Academy? It's a very narrowly focused simulation meant to test a single, very specific psychological question. Logically, it would be a very small part of the Academy's entire process, and surely there would be plenty of other simulations in use.
And really, what's so all-fired amazing about the KM simulation anyway? Is it really so valuable to assess how someone responds to a totally fabricated scenario that's designed to make it impossible for them to win? Is that really a meaningful assessment of character or just gaslighting? Even if it has some merit in assessing a command candidate's suitability, it seems like it'd be a pretty nasty trick to play on first-year cadets. And I just can't buy that the Academy's entire curriculum is so fixated on trying to prepare its students for abject failure.
"Every party needs a pooper..." 
I'm kidding. I grant you have valid points. The show itself even shows that Starfleet moves on from the KM, or at least has other simulations for other purposes (TNG, "Coming of Age"). (And the TOS novel The Kobayashi Maru has Chekov undergoing an alternate simulation.) I agree it has become "small universe syndrome." Still, I dislike the word "lazy" being used to describe those stories' premise. The authors had the idea and executed it to professional level, at least in three editors' judgment.
I think the KM was such a novel idea when introduced (since we really knew nothing, did we, about Starfleet Academy training, beyond some references to who and what were "required reading"), it's had a disproportionate impact on the franchise since 1982. I don't think characterizing it as "preparing for abject failure" is fair, since both times it's shown on-screen, the intent is spelled out as something quite different -- a test of character.
I can't fault your logical arguments for not liking it, or its frequent use. I'll just pull out my fanboy card in this instance and say, "Cuz its cool."
I'm kidding. I grant you have valid points. The show itself even shows that Starfleet moves on from the KM, or at least has other simulations for other purposes (TNG, "Coming of Age"). (And the TOS novel The Kobayashi Maru has Chekov undergoing an alternate simulation.) I agree it has become "small universe syndrome." Still, I dislike the word "lazy" being used to describe those stories' premise. The authors had the idea and executed it to professional level, at least in three editors' judgment.
I think the KM was such a novel idea when introduced (since we really knew nothing, did we, about Starfleet Academy training, beyond some references to who and what were "required reading"), it's had a disproportionate impact on the franchise since 1982. I don't think characterizing it as "preparing for abject failure" is fair, since both times it's shown on-screen, the intent is spelled out as something quite different -- a test of character.
I can't fault your logical arguments for not liking it, or its frequent use. I'll just pull out my fanboy card in this instance and say, "Cuz its cool."
I think TalonCard might mean that the DTI backstory could still be true in the Assimilation2 "universe", even if Assimilation2 isn't true in the Novelverse?
Kira meets an Iconian in "Horn and Ivory". I think Enterprise 1701 is correct in saying they were big.
The Voyager story in the Crossover Series "The Badlands' is set on Voyager before the Delta Quadrant adventures. It's similar to the episode Relativity but the author made some changes (like when the EMH was first activated and so forth). I seem to remember that it's from Tom and Seska's points of view but it's been a while since I read it.
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Bob Greenberger's "The Other Side" says the Iconian woman Picard meets is at least 7 1/2 feet (2.29 meters) tall and willowy of build, with an otherwise fairly typical humanoid appearance. The male that Kira meets in "Horn and Ivory" is described as "huge" and well over 2.5 meters (8.2 ft). So we're talking somewhere around 8 feet, which is enough to qualify as giant by human standards, but I think "colossal" is overstating it. In fact, from the pictures I've been able to find, it looks like the STO Iconians are around the same size, although far less humanlike.
Here's how the TNG novella from the last Gateways book describes the first Iconian Picard encounters.
The Other Side by robert Greenberger said:
That was what I was referring to when I said the Star Trek Online universe. Star Trek Online uses Countdown as part of it's backstory, so I consider it part of the STO universe, and I'm pretty sure I've seen other people refer to it that way too.
No -- the STO tie-in novel that Pocket did contained a chapter that had a character talking about alternate timelines, including Easter-egg references to the novelverse. It was an in-joke inserted by a tie-in author, which is hardly the same as official game policy.
True, STO has borrowed a number of characters, ships, and ideas from the novelverse as well as from other sources. But that's got nothing to with saying it's a "real alternate timeline" or whatever. It just means they're borrowing ideas from another branch of the fictional franchise.
Ok...thanks for the info. That didn't seem right.
Y'know, this reminds me of the implausibility of some of STO's takes on loose ends from canon. Like making the Preservers from TOS - "The Paradise Syndrome" (who had to have been active within the last millennium) the same species as the progenitor humanoids from TNG - "The Chase", who were alive billions of years ago.
And STO's take on the Future Guy. The Envoy brings the Na'kuhl and the Sphere Builders into his Temporal Liberation Front. But onscreen in ENT, the Suliban Cabal's sponsor warned Archer's Enterprise against the Builders' machinations. And deployed Silik against the Na'kuhl in 1944.
And STO's take on the Future Guy. The Envoy brings the Na'kuhl and the Sphere Builders into his Temporal Liberation Front. But onscreen in ENT, the Suliban Cabal's sponsor warned Archer's Enterprise against the Builders' machinations. And deployed Silik against the Na'kuhl in 1944.
Yeah, I was misremembering that detail.
Unfortunately, that's been a common misunderstanding for decades, hardly unique to STO. Even before "The Chase," there was a tendency to forget that Native Americans only became an endangered population in the 16th-17th century and to assume the Preservers were some really ancient godlike race, because in the absence of specifics, people's imagination tends to default to extremes.
Yeah, that's weird. Those were pretty clearly three mutually inimical factions in the Temporal Cold War, all working toward conflicting goals. I did bring a lot of different time-travel factions into my version of the TCW (such as the Aegis and the Vorgons), since it stands to reason that various different time-travel conflicts would tend to overlap chronologically and get tangled together; but it was clear enough onscreen that those factions were working for many different purposes.
But that's the thing with games -- the needs of the gameplay, e.g. having a bunch of different bad guys and bosses to fight, override other considerations like in-universe story logic.
I know that Spock's second pon far occurs in the novel Triangle, and I'm pretty sure I've read that another novel that I haven't gotten around to reading also covers that.
I know that Killing Time also has another Spock pon far story, but I'm not sure if that is established as also being his second or not.
And then later he goes thru another pon farr cycle in Vulcan's Heart, but I'm not sure how many he's had by then, but as it's post TOS movie era, I'd say there's a couple more we haven't seen.
I hope I'm not the only one that puts much thought into this.
I know that Killing Time also has another Spock pon far story, but I'm not sure if that is established as also being his second or not.
And then later he goes thru another pon farr cycle in Vulcan's Heart, but I'm not sure how many he's had by then, but as it's post TOS movie era, I'd say there's a couple more we haven't seen.
I hope I'm not the only one that puts much thought into this.
It's covered in DTI: Forgotten History -- in a completely, completely different way from Triangle.
What's the difference between a 'real' alternate timeline and an 'unreal' alternate timeline, in this context?
Partially, yeah. I don't read a lot of the novels or comics, and since they aren't presented as part of the Trek canon and since I started reading them before the "Novelverse" was a thing, I don't really keep the whole "Novelverse" in mind when I'm reading. (I'm not a fan of the "But it's all fiction anyway, so what does it matter?" attitude, so I don't have anything against followers of the Novelverse; it's just not my thing.)
But I love the little background details that pop up to elaborate on plot points from canon Trek, and both "the Borg got their time machine from the Sphere Builders" and "The Borg became interested in time travel technology after encountering the Doctor during a failed universe crossing alliance with the Cybermen" seem like equally awesome ideas, so I'm glad they aren't mutually exclusive. Whether or not the one-off comic miniseries fits into the greater storyline of the novels or vice versa, who knows. Who knows.
That said, I'd love it some or all of the non-canon literature were part of alternate timelines/universes. Maybe some of the Enterprise-Ds in "Parallels" are from some of those universes.
TC
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