The ramifications for the Federation and Starfleet should be immense, so personally I cannot wait for more 24th century TrekLit now. As for the worldbuilding for the mid 22th century, I agree. Initially, season 1 of Enterprise was to be set on Earth, and the ship wouldn't be launched untill the end of the season. The studio-bosses didn't like this, feeling that Star Trek should be set on a ship in space, so that was cut short. But it would have been great.
It's essentially canon to the movies, and to STO and as far as I remember hasn't been flatly contradicted by anything in Lit yet. The dance is...if the novels move to making Picard and amabassador, and Geordi goes into research, and Data comes back to the E E, then it's moving that way...so, does that mean th books can basically do none of these things? I suspect the license will be sorted, the other license holders have already overcome the same problem. It's basically a money thing.
The key word here is "essentially". Because yes, the nuTrek comics tie into the movies. But if the writers/producers/directors decide to completely ignore them, they are free to do so. There's a whole backstory about Cumberbatch's Kahn in those comics. For Nero aswell. They are technically created with Bad Robot's blessing. But if they wanna make a backstory for either of those characters in Star Trek 4, they are free to ignore those comics as much as they like. Long story short... like Mr Laser Beam said, comics (and novels) are NEVER canon. The only people that keep insisting they are, are fans who want them to be canon.
And they've already ignored the comics in the past. The first two comic storylines had a number of Enterprise crew fatalities, but Kirk said in STID that he hadn't lost a single crew member since taking command. There are also a number of other inconsistencies due to the comics' creative team not being quite as closely coordinated with the movie's team as the publicity would suggest (like Countdown establishing a whole past friendship between Spock Prime and Nero when the movie dialogue suggested they'd never met before their battle at the supernova site). Well, some franchises have tie-ins that are treated as canonical (though any canon status is subject to later revocation, even with onscreen works -- just ask Bobby Ewing from Dallas). Star Wars currently treats all its tie-ins as canonical, though I doubt that will last forever. The second, Del Rey series of Babylon 5 novels is canonical, along with the DC Comics tie-in and two novels from the earlier Dell series (all of which was meant to be canonical, but it didn't work out since the showrunner wasn't able to supervise them closely enough). Pretty much all the post-series comics from Joss Whedon shows like Buffy, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, and Dollhouse are canonical, although the comics and novels that came out during the shows were not. It's more common than it used to be, because there's more fan demand for it. But yes, the usual, default case is that tie-ins are not canonical. Canon, by definition, is the original creators' or owners' version of the universe, as distinct from other people's versions derived from it. So the only times it's ever been practical for tie-ins to be canonical have been in cases where the original creators were able to supervise them directly, as with JMS on the later B5 novels or Whedon on the post-series comics -- or in the case of Star Wars, with Pablo Hidalgo's "Story Group" coordinating closely with the filmmakers and tie-in creators. Plus, it helps if the original franchise is no longer in production so that there's nothing to contradict the tie-ins. That's why I'm skeptical about the Disney Star Wars tie-ins remaining canonical in the long run. But supervision does not automatically equal canonicity, of course. All tie-ins must be approved by the owners of the material, so there's always some degree of supervision. But some supervisions are more direct than others. And usually it's not about canon at all, just about making sure that the brand is preserved -- that works purporting to be based on a franchise represent it accurately and have a minimum of mistakes or revisionist elements. It's not about whether the stories "actually" happen in-universe, it's just about quality control for the merchandise. A story that gets the details of the universe wrong is no more desirable than an action figure with a bad face sculpt, or a T-shirt that has an off-model version of the logo.
@Christopher I was speaking of Star Trek only when I said no novel or comic is canon. Wouldn't know about other tie-ins, Trek is the only one I follow.
Well, yes, that's certainly true of Trek. Jeri Taylor did consider her Voyager novels Mosaic and Pathways canonical while she was Voyager's showrunner (again, canon = the creators' own version of the universe), but her successors in the role did not acknowledge them and contradicted a lot of elements from the latter book, at least. But on the other hand, Gene Roddenberry evidently did not consider his own ST:TMP novelization canonical, since he ignored or contradicted aspects of it when he co-created TNG. (Picard never had a transceiver implant in his brain, and holography was treated as a novel technology in the 24th century when the TMP novelization portrayed it as routine in the 23rd.) But then, Roddenberry considered canon to be a mutable thing in itself, one that could be reinvented as needed. He evidently saw Star Trek less as a firsthand document of the future and more as a dramatization with limited accuracy, the best approximation of his vision that he could manage given the limits imposed on him by budget, technology, and network intervention. So when he changed the canon, e.g. redesigning the Klingon makeup for TMP, he saw it as improving the accuracy of the dramatization.
I don't particularly care for the modern comics, or indeed the KT movies, but countdown was, at the time of its release, pushed as canon to that first film...same writers etc. But does it's existence mean Picard can not now go and become an ambassador in the books? I have never considered the comics in Trek canon... well not since I was about ten anyway. But the modern era is a different beast...as the other examples have shown.
As explained, yes, it was advertised as a tie-in. It was never stated to be canon as far as I recall. Fans asumed as much, since it was backed by Bad Robot and all. But if the writers of the actual movies decide to ignore it, they can. Same thing goes for Picard. If for some reason TNG is brought back to the small or big screen right now, the writers are in no way restricted by those comics.
It was backed by and written by I thought. This is drifting close to a 'canon restrictions' discussion, which is far from my aim, just thinking about the specifics of the hobus event as already portrayed and as it may be.
You're quite right, we derailed this topic completely. If you want to discus this more, feel free to open a new topic.
Finished this book yesterday. Great read and a great thriller. Couldn't put it down. One bit I really liked was the scene that took place on the Aran Islands as my mother is from there. Always nice when Ireland pops up in the books.
Maybe it was answered in a post I did not read. In the 22d century, I thought there were no food or drink replicators. How did Admiral Ko's tea get poisoned? When Data assaults Memory Ptime he claims that his chameleon circuits just got fixed. I thought that got done shortly after Data got reborn?
I remember those, but they seemed like dispensers from a reservoir maybe with multiple canisters of liquids.
I don't see a contradiction. I imagine the drinks are being mixed on the fly from raw components, like those awful Coke machines that never taste right. Unfortunately, one of those raw components... was murder.
I'm split on this one. On the one hand, I loved the espionage and the adventure. Julian Bashir is one of my favorite Star Trek characters, third to only Elim Garak and Data, so I was thrilled to have an engaging story with all three of them (as well as the wonderful Sarina Douglas and Lal). I'm also a sucker for planet hopping and this novel had it in spades. On the other hand, I didn't like certain revelations about Section 31. As soon as the story established that an artificial super intelligence was created in the mid-22nd century and was clearly the basis for Section 31's intelligence and surveillance network, I immediately predicted that not only Control was Uraei, that it was deliberately manipulating the events to actually have itself killed (for reasons I didn't determine). And I guessed that around page 27. I'm not trying to be boastful. If anything, I'm disappointed. Not that I was able to predict that plotline, but because that kind of story about an all-knowing, all-powerful artificial intelligence that successfully manipulates everything around it just bores me. It takes away the free will of the events and actions of the history of Star Trek, or at least the many events that we're told about. The idea that Federation was, at least on small level, manipulated into existence by Uraei instead of naturally developing on its own is especially bothersome. I'm also torn because thematically, the nature of privacy surveillance, especially in this day and age, is a potent and relevant topic. The parallels to Person of Interest (deliberate or not) also resonated with me to the point that I unintentionally cast Michael Emerson as Ikerson and Amy Acker as Lenore (not fair to David Mack, I know, but it happened). So early on in the book, I was cautiously enjoying this aspect of the story, right until it revealed that Section 31 didn't come about on its own and took over Uraei, but instead Uraei created Section 31 as a means to operate in the physical world. I preferred the idea of Section 31 coming to fruition because a group of people decided that for "the betterment of the Federation," a secret organization needed to operate outside of the confines of the system and the law. I know to an extent that's still what we got, but this comes back to the whole free will issue. I further realize I'm projecting my own expectations for the story onto the novel and I know it's not fair to criticize the story based on those expectations, but those developments still bother me. This all being said, the execution of these revelations and their implications are well written. I just don't like them. Well, one exception: I did like subversion of the typical "Who is the shadowy figure?" trope as someone we know, even if the answer seemed obvious to me. I loved thrill of the chase and seeing how the good guys will win at the end of the day, no matter the cost. I seem to be one of the few people loved Sarina and enjoyed her romance with Julian, so naturally I was devastated by her death and Julian's paralleled catatonic state as that payment. I further hope that future novels will follow-up on the implications of Section 31's fall, how its existence affected the very nature of the Federation, and what fallout occurs regarding those revelations and other specific scandals. I particularly hope we see how this affects Picard (I was a little disappointed we didn't get to see Data's reaction, presuming he didn't know already), which would mean I would need to finally read the A Time to... books. And now it dawns on me that I've been here before: I likewise didn't like certain aspects of the Destiny trilogy, particularly regarding the Borg's origin. I enjoyed much of the action of the books but I didn't like the core aspect leading up to that revelation. Instead, I've found myself much preferring the aftermath of the Destiny trilogy and how the following books handled those issues. I likewise hope for the same regarding Control. Not David Mack's fault, but I found myself feeling guilty about never reading any of the A Time... books (except the first two), particularly his entries and KRAD's. I've known most of the details for years now, thanks to other novels and Memory Beta, but I felt like I missed out on some emotional beats with Ozla Graniv (and to a lesser extent, Lagan Serra and L'Haan). They worked within the confines of the story, but I knew I was missing just a little bit of that extra punch. One particular quote stood out to me during Nyrok Turan's talk about how an ASI could shape reality: "Change the contents of private conversations as they happen without the participants realizing they've been deceived." That's a prospect that I have never considered. Since the dawn of instant messaging, be it via phones or computers, we've unquestioningly trusted that the messages we've received have been 100% accurate. And in reality, we have no reason to not to. But now the possibility of those messages could be wrong, could be altered without either party knowing is stuck in my mind. The level of trust that could be destroyed by such an action would be grave. The idea that something like that could happen is insidious (and not the good kind like root beer and the Federation). Lastly, I loved the reference to Orphan Black with Helena Maslany as a nonexistent Starfleet commander responsible for clandestine orders.
It helps if you select water first, push to dispense some water into the sink below, and only then choose your drink choice. Otherwise, you'll get some of the prior user's drink choice into your cup.
In that case, they should build the machines to automatically flush out the dispenser nozzle with water after each drink is dispensed.