Spoilers DTI: Shield of the Gods by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread

[Christopher]

Looking back on my post from about 25 hours ago, I guess that's close enough to a "story idea" to kill any possibility of a ST/Our Man Flint crossover.

Assuming such a thing ever was possible.

There's a scene in Rise of the Federation: Uncertain Logic where Malcolm and Trip are watching that movie.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Which would itself, by common sense, tend to rule out such a crossover.

On the other hand, I remember two episodes of Emergency! that involved sister series Adam 12: in one, McCord and Milner made guest appearances as Officers Reed and Malloy, while in the other, there was a minor subplot about Squad 51 being sent out while Adam 12 was on, and Firefighter John Gage spent the rest of the episode trying to find out how the Adam 12 episode had turned out. "Breaking the Fifth Wall" years before the Newhart finale broke the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Walls.

 

[Christopher]

On the other hand, I remember two episodes of Emergency! that involved sister series Adam 12: in one, McCord and Milner made guest appearances as Officers Reed and Malloy, while in the other, there was a minor subplot about Squad 51 being sent out while Adam 12 was on, and Firefighter John Gage spent the rest of the episode trying to find out how the Adam 12 episode had turned out.

Not unlike Batman and The Green Hornet. Each one was a television series within the other one's reality, yet then the Green Hornet and Kato showed up in a Bat-climb window cameo and were recognized as heroes by the Caped Crusaders, but not long thereafter, they made a full guest appearance and Batman and Robin believed they were criminals.

In the second episode of Static Shock, the main characters referred to Superman/Clark Kent as a fictional character, as an analogy for a superhero needing a secret identity. Yet at the start of SS's second season, Batman and the Joker guest-starred, and from then on SS was in the DC Animated Universe and featured crossovers from many heroes including Superman.

 

[Markonian]

Doctor Who met the Trek crew and knows the series from TV. Plus, for all we know Trek happens on TV inside the Trek universe.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

DW was a television show in its OWN universe, wasn't it? (Remembrance of the Daleks)

 

[Christopher]

Doctor Who met the Trek crew and knows the series from TV.

They only met in a tie-in comic, so that's not the same as having that kind of real/fictional inconsistency show up in the actual shows. We know that Star Trek is a TV show within the Doctor Who universe, so if some character in Discovery turns out to be a fan of the old TV show Doctor Who, then we've got a problem. (As far as I know, the only mention of DW existing as a show within the Trek universe was in either The Wounded Sky or My Enemy, My Ally.)

 

[UssGlenn]

We know that Star Trek is a TV show within the Doctor Who universe, so if some character in Discovery turns out to be a fan of the old TV show Doctor Who, then we've got a problem

Wait, why is it a problem if they are both fictional in the other series?

 

[Christopher]

Wait, why is it a problem if they are both fictional in the other series?

Because it's a contradiction, of course. If something that's a 20th/21st-century TV show within the Star Trek universe referenced Star Trek, Spock, etc. as fictional entities within it, then that would be a paradox, because it would make Spock a fictional entity in the same universe where he's also a real person. You can shrug that off with a sitcom like Batman, since it played fast and loose with reality anyway, but most Trek fans prefer it to maintain the pretense of being a plausibly consistent reality.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't see why there can't be two shows that are fictional in each other's universes. Assuming every show exists in its own parallel reality, then there's bound to be some mentioning of each other.

Worked in DC Comics, didn't it? "Flash of Two Worlds" and all that.

 

[Tuskin38]

DW was a television show in its OWN universe, wasn't it? (Remembrance of the Daleks)

You can hear a BBC advert for it on a TV, but they cutaway before the name was said IIRC.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

Well, if we think of shows as interpretations of fictional universes like legends, having a fictional series like Doctor Who exist in Star Trek works if we interpret it as, 'Much like our own timeline, the Star Trek universe's past also had fictional stories of a time traveling alien called Doctor Who, albeit their own interpretation.' The fictional Doctor Who of Star Trek would not have had crossovers with Star Trek's fictional version of Star Trek, because Star Trek didn't exist in Star Trek's universe.

I mean, it's not a clean way of explaining a reference to Doctor Who in Star Trek, but we accept a lot of things in Star Trek history that don't coincide with our own history.

 

[Christopher]

^Sure, that's one way of doing it, by assuming that the in-universe version is different from ours. That's how Marvel Comics can exist within the Marvel Universe. The comics are presumed to be based on the heroes' actual adventures (a conceit made explicit early on in Fantastic Four, when Doctor Doom stormed the Marvel offices and forced Lee and Kirby to call Reed Richards in for a story conference), but in the case of characters with secret identities, like Spider-Man, it's presumed that the in-universe versions of the comics are different from the ones we get. I gather there was a time when Marvel actually published a few of those in-universe comics so we could see what they were like.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

I dunno if anyone here is a Digimon fan, but season 3 (Tamers) occurs in an AU from the first two seasons (Adventure, Adventure Zero Two), but references the first two seasons as an in-universe TV series. I remember this upsetting many people in the fandom, lol. Man, those were fun forums to lurk on.

 

[Markonian]

Let's put it this way. We have superhero stories with characters in the 31st century.

If, in the actual 31st century, through whatever fluke, people were born that match those characters, nobody's existence would be invalidated.

 

[Christopher]

I dunno if anyone here is a Digimon fan, but season 3 (Tamers) occurs in an AU from the first two seasons (Adventure, Adventure Zero Two), but references the first two seasons as an in-universe TV series. I remember this upsetting many people in the fandom, lol. Man, those were fun forums to lurk on.

Not just a TV series, but a card game and a computer game. Tamers was built around the main characters collecting the cards and playing the game (and watching the show, though we didn't see them doing that) only to discover that the computer game was based on a government AI research program and the Digimon had gained sentience and the ability to "bio-emerge" in the physical world by creating synthetic proteins out of the elements in the atmosphere. It was blatantly done to sell the cards and toys, but at the same time it was brilliantly metatextual, making a show that was essentially "What if the earlier show came to life in the real world and fans like you got to live it for real?" Although it was so much more than easy wish fulfillment -- man, it went to some really dark and tragic places, because when the fantasy fighting-game characters became real, it meant there were real consequences and real loss, and the show absolutely did not shy away from exploring that in a pretty compelling way.

It's not uncommon for Japanese franchises to reboot their continuities multiple times -- Godzilla is up to eight distinct Japanese continuities with a ninth on the way -- and there have been several more Digimon reboots since Tamers. (The second reboot, Frontier, was much younger-skewing and less interesting, and the later bishonen-style reboots were hard for me to find and I never got too engaged by what little I saw of them.) But none of them were so clever about it. The whole franchise is about using the show to sell the merchandise, but Tamers found a way to make that part of the story itself. It didn't entirely excuse the blatant commercialism of it all, but it made it more interesting and self-aware, at least.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

I really enjoyed Tamers, but felt the first half was much stronger than the second. But, more than anything, I appreciated the darker take on the franchise and how it kinda flipped what my expectations were on what a Digimon anime should be about. You could call it an analogue of DS9 in Digimon terms. I watched all of Frontier, but either they were aiming too young or I had just grown out of the franchise. Anything afterwards, I looked up the evolution sequences (which is half the fun of these types of shows) but never actually watched them.

But Digimon Adventure Tri has been a delight so far (albeit with its own forgivable problems).

 

[Christopher]

I really enjoyed Tamers, but felt the first half was much stronger than the second.

Really? I found the second half much more powerful and moving. Although I guess if you're looking for something more fun and lighthearted, it could be off-putting. But it was basically an allegory for coping with depression, and that's something I can relate to personally.

I watched all of Frontier, but either they were aiming too young or I had just grown out of the franchise.

I was 31 when the first series debuted in the US, so I'd "grown out" of its target demographic long before. Still, I found that Digimon Adventures had enough smarts, character depth, and humor to engage me despite being aimed at kids. And Tamers, of course, skewed older and had a lot of smart ideas and rich characterization to appeal to an adult. Frontiers, though, skewed much younger. It's interesting how that parallels their treatment of the Digital World vs. the real world. Adventures was split about half and half between the two, particularly in season 2 when they were regularly commuting. Tamers took place mostly in the real world with an extended middle part in the Digital World. But Frontier was almost entirely in the DW, and despite its name, it was treated less like a virtual reality in cyberspace and more like a standard portal-fantasy-style magical realm.

But Digimon Adventure Tri has been a delight so far (albeit with its own forgivable problems).

I've never even heard of that one.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

!!!!

Digimon Adventure Tri is the third season of the Adventure story, to celebrate the 15th anniversary. It's been ongoing for about a year and a half I believe, and its formatted as 6 (the fifth of which is releasing in the fall) theatrical releases of 4-5 episodes each. It can be a little awkward, since they write it as a movie but split it up into episodes so the pacing is weird sometimes. It stars the original 8 Chosen Children as the main cast, where the older kids are in high school and Takeru and Hikari are in middle school. It's seriously a love letter series and is aimed directly at fans that watched the original broadcast. It has nothing in common with the crazy modern versions of Digimon and focuses almost exclusively on major character arcs.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Spoiler

"Ronarek" is a member of the TAG? Is that the real Ronarek or the Augment?

 

[Christopher]

Spoiler

"Ronarek" is a member of the TAG? Is that the real Ronarek or the Augment?

Whoopsie. That's a pretty big continuity error, isn't it? I wrote this in such a rush that I used the name of the wrong TAG agent. That was supposed to be Revad. Sorry.

EDIT: Okay, I alerted Ed to the error, and he says it will be fixed -- the advantage of e-books. I'm not sure if people who've already bought the e-book will get the correction, though.