The destruction of Romulus in the novelverse

[Christopher]

I have no idea. That's an issue for the lawyers. I do find it somewhat puzzling that CBS Licensing is willing to license the films to IDW Publishing but not to Pocket Books.

If it were solely up to them, CBS would be perfectly willing. That's why we got the go-ahead to do tie-ins in the first place, before they were cancelled. But it's also up to Bad Robot, and they'd apparently rather work with comics and games than with novels. As I understand it, BR likes to maintain in-house creative control over all its tie-ins, and they find that more feasible with comics and games.

 

[JD]

But they did do the YA Starfleet Academy novel, so they apparently are OK with some novels. Is there a chance that there was something in one of the adult novels that they disliked so much that they won't let Pocket have access to stuff from the movies now?

Of course, unless they simply never mention the Romulans (or have any Romulan characters) ever again, which like I said is impossible to do, given how important Romulans are to the political landscape of the day.

Could just get away with vague references to something happening to Romulus, without going into the the what, when, where, why?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Could just get away with vague references to something happening to Romulus, without going into the the what, when, where, why?

That would probably be more awkward than not mentioning it at all.

I suppose they could say something about "the new capital" but would that, technically (and legally) speaking, still be a Kelvin reference?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Perhaps, if the story is not about the Romulans. I seem to recall hearing that there's a book where somebody in the prime universe sees this destruction in a vision? Or is it Vulcan's destruction?

 

[JD]

That would probably be more awkward than not mentioning it at all.

I suppose they could say something about "the new capital" but would that, technically (and legally) speaking, still be a Kelvin reference?

If it were me, I would say no, since the movies never established anything about the Prime Universe after Hobus, but I don't know how picky CBS and Bad Robot would be about that kind of stuff.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Since there are reasons OTHER than destruction as to why the Romulan Empire might have a new capital, I doubt there would be any reason to object to that phrase.

 

[Idran]

Perhaps, if the story is not about the Romulans. I seem to recall hearing that there's a book where somebody in the prime universe sees this destruction in a vision? Or is it Vulcan's destruction?

In "Armageddon's Arrow" there was something from the future Raqilan records that really freaked out Taurik, to the point that he quarantined that information off from the crew and sent off to the DTI; some people wondered if it was Romulus's destruction, but Ward hasn't said anything either way. There was nothing else said about what it was yet beyond it being a huge event in the future, so it could be literally anything.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Perhaps, if the story is not about the Romulans. I seem to recall hearing that there's a book where somebody in the prime universe sees this destruction in a vision? Or is it Vulcan's destruction?

That was the Star Trek Online novel, The Needs of the Many. STO's backstory includes IDW's Countdown and the book references it heavily.

The novelverse has snuck in a few easter egg-style references to the Kelvin timeline here and there, but it's all minor stuff.

That said, if novels started using "subspace beaming" (the name from Next Gen) and "singularity bombs" (Grigari tech from the Millennium trilogy) I think they could get away with those things which are ostensibly not "transwarp beaming" and "red matter"

Whole novels could be written about the passing of Spock without mentioning the circumstsnces. Following Nimoy's death it feels wrong that there isn't some kind of tribute novel happening.

Still, those are little things compared to the Hobus-sized, future-redefining 2387 elephant in the room.

 

[Voth commando1]

Yeah it really is an elephant isn't it. Sort of like the annilatation of the Borg collective in Destiny dramatically changed the franchise as well.

Does anyone think aside from Easter eggs there will be any explicit mention of the kelvin verse in the novels? Like a character saying after Romulus was destroyed and Spock went missing an alternate universe was created etc...?

 

[Idran]

Yeah it really is an elephant isn't it. Sort of like the annilatation of the Borg collective in Destiny dramatically changed the franchise as well.

Does anyone think aside from Easter eggs there will be any explicit mention of the kelvin verse in the novels? Like a character saying after Romulus was destroyed and Spock went missing an alternate universe was created etc...?

Eventually? Yeah, I'm sure at some point it'll happen, once things get renegotiated. Just too tempting to not call to it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Does anyone think aside from Easter eggs there will be any explicit mention of the kelvin verse in the novels? Like a character saying after Romulus was destroyed and Spock went missing an alternate universe was created etc...?

Unlikely, because there's no way anyone can know what ultimately happened to Nero and Spock Prime. All that is known is that they went missing.

Although I suppose we could see further adventures of the Kelvin itself in the prime timeline. And possibly appearances by Prime versions of characters like Commodore Paris (although it's also unlikely that Yorktown Station has a prime counterpart, as the technology just isn't there), Balthazar Edison, Alexander Marcus, etc.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The station may be something closer to K-7

 

[JD]

Yeah it really is an elephant isn't it. Sort of like the annilatation of the Borg collective in Destiny dramatically changed the franchise as well.

Does anyone think aside from Easter eggs there will be any explicit mention of the kelvin verse in the novels? Like a character saying after Romulus was destroyed and Spock went missing an alternate universe was created etc...?

It would be nice, but we can't really say for sure since it all depends on whether or not Bad Robot, CBS, and Pocket renegotiate things, and we don't even know if any kind of negotiations are happening.
I would love to get a big post-Hobus Romulan novel, and Kelvin and Franklin novels, but I'm not going to get my hopes up at this point.

 

[Christopher]

But they did do the YA Starfleet Academy novel, so they apparently are OK with some novels.

Those were were from a different imprint of Simon & Schuster with different editors -- Simon Spotlight, which is S&S's imprint focused on media tie-ins in general. (I think the reason Trek books aren't part of that imprint is because they've been around since before that imprint existed and they're kind of grandfathered into a different branch of the company.) Also, they were prequels to the movie rather than sequels, so maybe Bad Robot felt they were less likely to conflict with their future plans. Either way, though, there were only four of those books and the last one was four years ago.

Is there a chance that there was something in one of the adult novels that they disliked so much that they won't let Pocket have access to stuff from the movies now?

It wasn't about the content of the books. I've stated that any number of times over the past six years. After all, if there's something in a book outline or manuscript that the licensor doesn't like, all they have to do is ask for it to be rewritten, and we have to oblige them.

As I said, my understanding is that Bad Robot simply has its own approach to tie-ins that's different from the way CBS and Pocket have traditionally done things, so it's more a matter of overall corporate and creative approaches than anything else. And maybe it has to do with IDW and the game makers being on the West Coast, easier for the Bad Robot people to coordinate with than the Pocket editors in New York and the novelists all over the place.

 

[Leto_II]

Not unlike Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin novels, where twelve of the novels take place during 1813. As Wikipedia puts it: "the series then enters a kind of fantasy-time in which it takes another dozen novels to progress to November 1813. Much of this period is spent at sea, with little or no connection to real-world years, and the events of the novels take up substantially more time than the few months 'available'."

Also not unlike the collective entirety of all the TOS 5YM stories ever produced.

 

[Dayton Ward]

Right now, we're working with the idea that Romulus ran out to grab some cigarettes and milk, and got sidetracked at the casino.

 

[Kemaiku]

That would probably be more awkward than not mentioning it at all.

I suppose they could say something about "the new capital" but would that, technically (and legally) speaking, still be a Kelvin reference?

The point is that Hobus was a threat to all of the known galaxy, Spock treated the threat as such, as did all of Vulcan and the Federation (as Geordi helped design the Jellyfish).

There's no getting around a threat that is larger than many faced in all of Star Trek before that would have been a huge thing to...everyone.

There's an elephant in the room then there's Cthulu sitting on your lawn.

 

[Voth commando1]

I hope they just don't reboot the past 20 years of IU storytelling and it on continual reloop. I want to see novels going into the 4th millennium.

 

[Stevil2001]

Not unlike Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin novels, where twelve of the novels take place during 1813. As Wikipedia puts it: "the series then enters a kind of fantasy-time in which it takes another dozen novels to progress to November 1813. Much of this period is spent at sea, with little or no connection to real-world years, and the events of the novels take up substantially more time than the few months 'available'." O'Brian himself acknowledged that the books took place in "hypothetical years" (his words).

There's a year's worth of Upstairs, Downstairs episodes like this. Internal chronology moves ahead by a year, but historical references on either side indicate no time has passed. They were trying to avoid moving out of the Edwardian era (1901-10), but eventually gave up.

 

[David cgc]

Although I suppose we could see further adventures of the Kelvin itself in the prime timeline. And possibly appearances by Prime versions of characters like Commodore Paris (although it's also unlikely that Yorktown Station has a prime counterpart, as the technology just isn't there), Balthazar Edison, Alexander Marcus, etc.

Yorktown looked impressive because of the novel design, but in terms of size and complexity, it was only about as big as two or three of the up-sized TNG mushroom starbases. Which is really more on TSFS for making such a huge spacedock, and TNG for making it even huger so they could use stock footage, but there's precedent for the ability to build something Yorktown-ish in the Prime Universe.

There's a year's worth of Upstairs, Downstairs episodes like this. Internal chronology moves ahead by a year, but historical references on either side indicate no time has passed. They were trying to avoid moving out of the Edwardian era (1901-10), but eventually gave up.

The entire run of "Justified" had the reverse happen. Absolute time references (and cars, and cell phones, and references to current events like states legalizing cannabis) all corresponded to the airdate, but according to relative time references of events within the show, at most a little over two years elapsed between the series starting in 2010 and ending in 2015.