Casting Pike's Number One

[TrickyDickie]

Repeat after me: No tie-in novels are ever truly canon, simply as matter of practicality. That's just the way things are, whether you're talking STAR TREK or MURDER SHE WROTE or THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY.

And that's probably for the best. If, God forbid, the movies or TV shows were actually obliged to treat the tie-in books and comics as Canon with a capital C, we'd never be allowed to do anything interesting in the books.

Honestly, I could never figure out what Pocket was doing. In the 80s, they came out with printed guidelines of what was acceptable and what was not. They explicitly said: No stories involving time travel. Then what did they publish? Various novels involving time travel! They said No stories involving parallel universes. Then they publish the short story collections involving just that! They outlined a bunch of different things in 'canon' that they did not want to be deviated from. But they did not stick with that, either. I don't know whether there was some kind of favoritism thing going on with certain authors or what the deal was, but I know that I am not alone in feeling that policies were confusing, to say the very least. Do they want really good stories that people are going to want to read, which will sell books, or do they want to keep things bogged down with chaos that just sours new writers on the idea of trying to deal with them at all?

 

[Greg Cox]

Honestly, I could never figure out what Pocket was doing. In the 80s, they came out with printed guidelines of what was acceptable and what was not. They explicitly said: No stories involving time travel. Then what did they publish? Various novels involving time travel! They said No stories involving parallel universes. Then they publish the short story collections involving just that! They outlined a bunch of different things in 'canon' that they did not want to be deviated from. But they did not stick with that, either. I don't know whether there was some kind of favoritism thing going on with certain authors or what the deal was, but I know that I am not alone in feeling that policies were confusing, to say the very least. Do they want really good stories that people are going to want to read, which will sell books, or do they want to keep things bogged down with chaos that just sours new writers on the idea of trying to deal with them at all?

Can't speak for Pocket, but I suspect those were guidelines for submissions, not for what could actually be published. As in, "We're getting buried in time-travel submissions. Please stop! If we want to do a time-travel story we'll hire somebody to write one, okay? We don't need to get ten of them in the mail every week!"

Over at Tor, back in the day, a lot depended on we had already had in the pipeline. It was not uncommon, when I was editing full-time there, to get directives like "We're way over-bought on alternate-history books. No more alt-history books until we've published all the ones we already have in inventory Unless, of course, Larry Niven or Ursula K. Le Guin wants to write an alt-history book , which is an entirely different matter . . . "

It's also worth noting that the 80s were at least thirty years ago so this is all old news.

 

[TrickyDickie]

Can't speak for Pocket, but I suspect those were guidelines for submissions, not for what could actually be published. As in, "We're getting buried in time-travel submissions. Please stop! If we want to do a time-travel story we'll hire somebody to write one, okay? We don't need to get ten of them in the mail every week!"

Over at Tor, back in the day, a lot depended on we had already had in the pipeline. It was not uncommon, when I editing full-time there, to get directives like "We're way over-bought on alternate-history books. No more alt-history books until we've published all the ones we already have in inventory Unless, of course, Larry Niven or Ursula K. Le Guin wants to write an alt-history book , which is an entirely different matter . . . "

It's also worth noting that the 80s were at least thirty years ago so this is all old news.

Thanks for the insight. Makes sense.

 

[Greg Cox]

I remember once, many years ago, the word came down: "No more westerns! We have enough westerns to publish one a season for the next two years!"

And the same thing happened with short-story collections once.

But, of course, Tor is still publishing westerns and short-story collections to this day.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

The Librarian in me approves of this casting choice, btw.

I like the fact that she was sort of "manly" in The Librarians. It's strange to think of Rebecca Romijn as being "manly" (or at least not overtly feminine, either), but her Librarians character did give off that vibe.

I really do think that her Librarians demeanor helped her land the role of Number One, whom I think should also have some not-traditionally-feminine qualities about her...i.e., I think Number One's a tough broad who doesn't necessarily have the time or patience to engage in all the trappings of acting traditionally feminine.

BTW, sorry for replying to a relatively old post...I've been a little busy IRL to post about Romijn's casting.

 

[Greg Cox]

^It's never too late to post about THE LIBRARIANS.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

^It's never too late to post about THE LIBRARIANS.

It was entertaining. It wasn't exactly "Important Television", but then again few shows are.

 

[ITDUDE]

It was entertaining. It wasn't exactly "Important Television", but then again few shows are.

Never heard of it until I now.
Cool Trailer though:

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The ER guy, the Night Court guy, and Mystique. No wonder it lasted 4 season. Just the star power alone probably carried it a long way.

 

[Greg Cox]

Never heard of it until I now.
Cool Trailer though:

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The ER guy, the Night Court guy, and Mystique. No wonder it lasted 4 season. Just the star power alone probably carried it a long way.

And it featured some Trek-friendly guest-stars as well: John DeLancie (as the Devil), Rene Aubojonois, and some others I'm probably forgetting. And Jonathan Frakes was heavily involved behind-the-scenes.

And, trust me, the show has a devoted fan base. And did I mention that there are novels, too?

 

[Yistaan]

We will see if Discovery treats the novel Desperate Hours as canon and call Rebecca Romijn's character Commander Una. Unless they are just going to call her Number One throughout the show...

 

[Tuskin38]

We will see if Discovery treats the novel Desperate Hours as canon and call Rebecca Romijn's character Commander Una. Unless they are just going to call her Number One throughout the show...

It would depend how often she appears. She may only be in a few episodes

 

[DaveyNY]

We will see if Discovery treats the novel Desperate Hours as canon and call Rebecca Romijn's character Commander Una. Unless they are just going to call her Number One throughout the show...

Heh...

If only Pike talks to her... problem solved.

 

[Yistaan]

Heh...

If only Pike talks to her... problem solved.

The showrunners will take this "light hearted, humorous" tone for the new season too far and turn Pike's forgetfulness of Number One's name into a gag, like the way Mr. Burns can never remember Homer's name in the Simpsons.

The last time we had such an issue was when everyone in TNG kept talking about the 'Klingon homeworld'.

 

[drt]

Roddenberry presumably thought it would add a bit of mystique to the character.

I see what you did there.

 

[Greg Cox]

I see what you did there.

Hah! I swear to God, I did not do that on purpose! Some sort of Freudian slip, I guess.

 

[Tim Thomason]

And, trust me, the show has a devoted fan base. And did I mention that there are novels, too?

Yeah, but they're not canon.