Star Trek Books and Comics Timeline-ing Discussion

[ryan123450]

My Litverse Based TOS Chronology thread has had a long and winding life, even after the project came to a close. When @Jbarney got back into the novels and discussing their timeline/chronological details a couple of years ago, that thread sort of became a catch all for those types of discussions, regardless of series.

Inspired by Jbarney’s enthusiasm, I thought it would be good to have a less specifically titled thread for all of us with that ‘timeline-ing’ disease to discuss chronological details. Regardless of series and regardless of their interconnectedness with the Litverse. These chronology talks have certainly been the most fun discussions I’ve had on this board over the years. And I wouldn’t want someone who doesn’t read that thread to miss discussions about other series and time periods because we’d gotten off topic there.

I know that besides Jbarney and I, @LetoII, @Idran, @DarrenTR1970, @Jinn, and @Christopher have been very into these talks before. There are others I’m forgetting.

The issue on my mind of late (TOS related ironically) is how to handle the Gold Key comics. I’m about two thirds of the way through reading them, and there’s been very little to go on. The stardates, in addition to being oddly formatted, jump all over the place. Many characters (most importantly for this discussion being Chekov) don’t appear in alot of issues. I recall one issue that referenced the Klingon Romulan Alliance, and another that seemed to take place directly after The Enterprise Incident, as the Enterprise has a Romulan cloaking device onboard.

So how have others treated these comics in your personal timelines? Interspersed throughout the 5YM, or grouped together at some point?

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Gold Key comics, along with the TOS UK stories and the Book and Records, I put into their own seperate Trek elseworld. In my mind, DC's first TNG miniseries is the Next Gen of that world.

Although some of the later Gold Key comics do reference episodes, I recall one being a follow-up to "City on the Edge of Forever" involving the Guardian and an alternate timeline.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

Oh man, I know I won't have a lot to add to this thread, but I know for sure its going to be interesting as hell to read!

 

[ryan123450]

Yes, many of these, especially the early issues, are VERY hard to reconcile with the actual series, continuity wise. Let alone the rest of the franchise.

 

[Garth Rockett]

So how have others treated these comics in your personal timelines? Interspersed throughout the 5YM, or grouped together at some point?

My timeline, although it's been in development for about a year and half now, is still in early days (I'm not even adding the episodes until I rewatch them for this project, and I'm only up to "The First Duty" right now). I've still got a lot of comics and novels in my collection to go, including the handful of Gold Key comics I own. I did buy one Gold Key issue after starting on the project (#31), and I went ahead and put it on the timeline between Catspaw and Metamorphosis. The factors I used were the stardate (20:1:7, which I converted to 2017.0, suggesting a relatively early placement) and the appearance of Chekov (suggesting after season 1), so I just put in early season 2. I used a similar approach for the Gold Key pastiche in Waypoint #2, which I placed between Metamorphosis and Friday's Child based on stardate.

When I get around to re-reading my other Gold Keys, I'll use a similar methodology. I expect to have all the issues interspersed throughout the 5YM by the time I finish this thing.

The Gold Key comics, along with the TOS UK stories and the Book and Records, I put into their own seperate Trek elseworld. In my mind, DC's first TNG miniseries is the Next Gen of that world.

I can definitely see that!

 

[Christopher]

I would never count the Gold Key comics as "real" Trek adventures. I've had the idea that they could be in-universe fiction about the Enterprise, though. Remember how the introduction to Roddenberry's TMP novelization put forth the conceit that TOS was a 23rd-century Gene Roddenberry's "inaccurately larger-than-life" dramatization of the Enterprise's real adventures, like a Dragnet or Untouchables based on Kirk's logs, and that the differences in TMP were because it was a more accurate dramatization vetted by Admiral Kirk? Well, maybe the Gold Key comics are the even more inaccurate media tie-ins. Or, like the weekly The Untouchables series from Desilu, totally fictionalized adventures added once the adaptations of the true story had run out. (Although the Untouchables book that Desilu Playhouse originally adapted as a 2-parter was hardly a true story, despite presenting itself as such. Despite being nominally co-authored by Eliot Ness, it was actually an almost completely fictionalized account, embellished and sensationalized by sportswriter Oscar Fraley with Ness's grudging consent, since Ness was so desperately broke and depressed at the time that he could be persuaded to break his lifelong record of integrity. But he died before he saw a penny from the book. Which is really sad.)

I suppose that if you went the "in-universe fiction" route, you could presume that the comics were very loose adaptations of actual missions, and estimate when those missions would've taken place. But the episodes and books we already have take up so much of the 5-year mission that there isn't too much room for more.

Then again, if we go with the Dragnet analogy, the cases Joe Friday investigated on the show were based on the real-life experiences of numerous different cops. So maybe the fictionalized adventures attributed to Kirk and the Enterprise were actually based on the adventures of various other Starfleet captains and crews. In which case they might not even have taken place in the same decade as the 5-year mission.

 

[ryan123450]

The factors I used were the stardate (20:1:7, which I converted to 2017.0, suggesting a relatively early placement) and the appearance of Chekov (suggesting after season 1), so I just put in early season 2.

See I would have interpreted that as 2001.7, given the way the stardates work in all the other issues. Odd that there’s only 1 numeral in the middle section. But it’s equally odd that there are sometimes two numerals in the third section.

But those two stardates probably wouldn’t be placed any differently anyway, so its kind of irrelevant.

 

[Leto_II]

Yeah, like Christopher and I'm sure others in here, I don't count any of the Gold Key stories as part of my personal continuity, since most of them are just so incredibly difficult to even somewhat reconcile with the modern continuity and Trek universe assumptions. Heck, I barely have any books from the '80s Pocket TOS continuity in my own, and those things are FAR easier to reconcile than the Gold Key stuff.

I quite like Christopher's suggestion to consider them to be wildly flamboyant in-universe tie-in fiction produced in the wake of the Enterprise's legendary voyages (and/or other Starfleet vessels as well), which is pretty cool -- kinda like how one might consider the film Highlander II: The Quickening as "taking place" in the TV series universe as a weirdass, drugged-up fever dream Connor MacLeod experiences while he's "in storage" at the Watcher Sanctuary, or something similar.

That all said, I've since developed a sort of newfound, perverse appreciation for the Gold Key stuff as an adult, and I absolutely loved Dayton and Kevin's "homage"-tale last year in Star Trek: Waypoints; I remember cackling out loud several times while reading it.

 

[Christopher]

I admit, I've come to be rather taken with the hypothetical notion that Star Trek could actually be an in-universe dramatization based on multiple different starship captains' logs. The TMP novelization did indicate that Kirk, Spock, and the others were real people and that the in-universe show was based on Kirk's logs, but it would make sense if at least some of the episodes were based on other captains' logs instead and rewritten to use Kirk and his crew. After all, it's unlikely that any single starship would have so many big, life-or-death adventures per year.

Also, even if the main characters are based on real people, some of the supporting characters could be fictionalized. In the case of people like Lt. Stiles or Kevin Riley or Ben Finney, the names might've been changed to protect the innocent.

 

[Jbarney]

I haven't read all of the Gold Key stuff, but at some point I will. I am aware of the weird stories, and at one point I would have argued that "everything fits", but the franchise is well beyond this now. Looking forward to tackling them. I wouldn't put too much stock in the stardates, unless they are the only chrono-clues available.

 

[Christopher]

I used to be an "everything fits" guy, but I soon realized that, not only was there simply not enough room to make everything fit ("Mind-sifter" alone spans nearly 2 years), but the various stories out there are often so idiosyncratic in their interpretations of the Trek universe that forcing them to fit required editing out or ignoring too much of what gave them their distinct character. I realized it was better to let the different interpretations of the universe be different -- to enjoy the things that made them individual rather than bulldozing them in the pursuit of conformity.

 

[Dayton Ward]

Some time back, I opted to view the episodes as being “what really happened” and everything else as “historical fiction.” I figure that would at least slow down my eventual descent into madness.

Except for Vanguard. All that stuff is totally real.

 

[Christopher]

Some time back, I opted to view the episodes as being “what really happened” and everything else as “historical fiction.” I figure that would at least slow down my eventual descent into madness.

Except for Vanguard. All that stuff is totally real.

My personal continuity is put together from screen canon (minus a few episodes like "The Alternative Factor" and "Threshold") and those tie-in stories that I feel are consistent enough and good enough, although there are some stories that fit better than others. And my choices of what to include have been continuously evolving over the decades as new stories come out and contradict older stories, or sometimes just when I reread something and see it in a different light. And that frequent change is part of the fun, because it lets me keep being creative and move around the puzzle pieces in novel ways. Honestly, one drawback of the modern tight-knit novel continuity, speaking as a reader, is that it doesn't give me as much latitude to pick and choose and rearrange things. Although as a writer, I'm gratified that, to date, I have yet to have one of my own novels or stories contradicted to the point that I have to remove it from my own personal continuity.

 

[Jbarney]

Some time back, I opted to view the episodes as being “what really happened” and everything else as “historical fiction.” I figure that would at least slow down my eventual descent into madness.

Except for Vanguard. All that stuff is totally real.

It is not madness. It is just a disease. Embrace it.

 

[Jbarney]

The issue on my mind of late (TOS related ironically) is how to handle the Gold Key comics. I’m about two thirds of the way through reading them, and there’s been very little to go on. The stardates, in addition to being oddly formatted, jump all over the place. Many characters (most importantly for this discussion being Chekov) don’t appear in alot of issues. I recall one issue that referenced the Klingon Romulan Alliance, and another that seemed to take place directly after The Enterprise Incident, as the Enterprise has a Romulan cloaking device onboard.

So how have others treated these comics in your personal timelines? Interspersed throughout the 5YM, or grouped together at some point?

So I went over my notes for the first three Gold Key Issues last night, it has been 10 years since I even gave them that much attention. I REALLY did an analysis of the first issue and the scope of the stories are pretty unique. Going back to the Continuity of Days gone by thread, and knowing that "everything fits" has to be ignored once in a while.....I wonder how well the Gold Key comics would fit into the 1980s continuity. Understand, my view of the 1980s continuity is somewhat different from the current litverse, but I have not gotten to the point of organizing it as such. In this admittedly undeveloped view, the Gold Keys would probably fit within the 1980s continuity....a separate universe, a different thread of space time than Prime.

Sounds like a project I might get to soon.

 

[Garth Rockett]

As someone who is placing the Gold Key stories in my timeline, perhaps I should explain that my approach to my timeline project is probably a little bit different than most. I am not trying to stitch together any sort of cohesive continuity. I don't have a personal continuity or head canon and I don't believe everything fits, either. My view is everything outside the movies and TV series is apocryphal, and I simply take the approach that if a given story did happen, where would it best fit? I try to note major inconsistencies if I come across them, but I make no attempt to explain them or to give one preference over another. My intention is to have contradictory stories side-by-side in my document.

By the time I'm done, I'll probably have half a dozen (or more) different versions of the end of the 5YM all listed together. I won't view any of them as more accurate than the other, and I will make no attempt to reconcile them.

 

[ryan123450]

Sounds like the approach taken by the Timeliners in the Voyages of the Imagination timeline.

 

[Christopher]

I am not trying to stitch together any sort of cohesive continuity. I don't have a personal continuity or head canon and I don't believe everything fits, either. My view is everything outside the movies and TV series is apocryphal, and I simply take the approach that if a given story did happen, where would it best fit? I try to note major inconsistencies if I come across them, but I make no attempt to explain them or to give one preference over another.

That's the same approach the Voyages of the Imagination timeline used. It seems the only reasonable way to classify tie-ins that mostly weren't meant to be in continuity with one another.

However, with things like the Gold Key comics, you're so far removed from canon that I don't think it's even possible to assign them a chronology in common with TOS. Some of them refer back to episodes, yes, but to a large degree they're in their own separate reality. And they aren't even all that consistent with one another. Especially the early issues. The later ones felt more like Trek because the writers were more familiar with the show by then, but the early ones are their own unique realm of craziness.

And Trek has the additional problem that its timeline wasn't even firmly settled on until it was already more than 20 years old. So the tie-ins that came out in those first two decades weren't always written based on the same chronological assumptions as each other, or as what we now use for TOS. For instance, a number of the '80s-continuity novels (most explicitly The Final Reflection and First Frontier) were based on the Spaceflight Chronology timeline which put TOS in the first decade of the 2200s, about 60 years earlier than it's now understood to occur. So when different tie-in continuities don't even agree on when TOS canon took place, is it really feasible to list them in the same chronology? And there's no telling what kind of even more eccentric assumptions the Gold Key issues made about when ST was set.

 

[Jbarney]

I think I need to pick up a copy of the Space Flight Chronology.

 

[ryan123450]

I’ve been slowly reading through it for the past year or so. It’s interesting in that the 60 ‘missing’ years seem to be partly explained by the fact that in that version of history, there was no WWIII.

Seems like a good book to have onhand to do an in depth look at the 80s continuity, like you were talking about above.