Buddy, if you think 31 being mixed up in a harebrained under-the-table fountain-of-youth scheme is a bridge too far compared to their regular harebrained under-the-table genocide schemes, I've got some bad news for you.
INS Holoship
- Thread starter Bry_Sinclair
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Why? The novels are where the good stuff is at.
I prefer the novels above the Discovery serie and kelvin movies.
Funnily enough the only Discovery story I like so far is Desperate Hours.
While the medical properties of the particles from Insurrection would be a benefit to many billions in the Federation and beyond, they would not be important to the survival of the Federation and I don't think it would be a matter Section 31 would be involved in.
I've noticed a tendency on the part of some fans to ascribe anything clandestine happening in the Federation to Section 31, as if they were the only game in town.
I've noticed a tendency on the part of some fans to ascribe anything clandestine happening in the Federation to Section 31, as if they were the only game in town.
I don't read Disco novels, only the prime line novels.
Mostly because I don't have that much time to read and its too expensive to buy all the books.
And I find the Discovery universe not that interesting
Then why do the vast majority of the fans avoid them?
The real question is, "Why do the vast majority of people avoid books?" generally. Novels are orders of magnitude less popular than television and movies.
To hit the New York Times Bestseller list, you need to sell about 10,000 copies of a book in a week. If someone made a Star Trek movie that sold 10,000 tickets in the opening weekend, they'd never work in Hollywood again. If they made a TV episode that only had 10,000 viewers, someone would probably break their legs.
Look at the prices. A novel has an author, an editor, a cover artist, copy editor, typesetter, and various other people involved in creating it. Let's say a dozen, just for the sake of argument. A Marvel movie, for instance, has three or four thousand credited personnel working on it. Probably twice that if you throw in everyone else who doesn't rate a credit, or just gets their company credited. A movie ticket costs about the same as a book (depending on hardcover or softcover, or matinee versus super-IMAX 4D), not three hundred times as much.
You could made a movie adaptation of the ideal, perfect Star Trek novel that ended up absolutely terrible, one of the infamous failures of book-to-movie adaptaions, and more people would still unreservedly love the movie version than would ever read the book, because that's how few people read books.
Star Trek V is better than STD.
Most no, a small number sure. Diana Duane's stuff meets your description of most novels.And the most novels are better then Star Trek V
Does that include stories you would get on a phone or a pad, or just print books? Physical books are expensive.
I commonly see people reading stories on their devices. I can get stories from the public library on my device after signing up, it's been years since I checked a physical book out.
Diane Duane hasn't written a Trek novel in twelve years, and her second-most-recent one was six years before that. There have been about a hundred and forty-some novels and anthologies since then, representing probably close to two dozen authors. That's like picking D.C. Fontana as your example of the rare "good" filmed Star Trek writer. Moore? Menosky? Pegg? Never heard of 'em.
It does include eBooks, but wouldn't include any kind of library book, for obvious reasons. Of course, movie and TV viewing figures also don't include libraries.
While admittedly I haven't read every Trek novel, the older ones do seem to be the better.
Does that make a difference in the quality?
It suggests you have a narrower basis of comparison. When people are saying the last good Trek novel they read is twenty or thirty years old,* it implies they aren't that familiar with more recent stuff. Again, if someone said the last good Trek episode they saw was "Q Who," it makes one suspect that they might've been put off for good by "Shades of Gray."
Look, I get being put off by the idea of fanwanky novels going and connecting every flying holodeck and presidential assassination attempt to Section 31. I just don't think it's valid to tar the whole medium with that second-hand impression when the superior, purer, filmed version of Star Trek has, at the same time, given Section 31 unlimted access to the Federation's industrial and technological base, regular, uniformed and ranked officers, and freaking branding. Or, for that matter, featured great moments in drama like the bad guys tying up Archer and T'Pol in such a way that in their escape, he smushed his face into her boobs, or well-developed ongoing arcs like the romance between Seven of Nine and Chakotay, or whatever the hell "Profit and Lace" was.
*Strangers from the Sky, July 1987, Best Destiny, November 1992.
What could be more important? The cure against death might go unused in the UFP, but plenty enough people would want it, and would be willing to end the universe (and never mind the puny UFP) in order to get it.
S31 ought to be quite interested in suppressing the cure for death one way or another. Or then turning it into a UFP trump card, but I doubt even they could be arrogant enough to consider the cure "manageable" in any other sense of the word besides suppression.
Of course, "requiring S31 attention" and "getting S31 attention" are different things. S31 probably needs to think of its reputation first and foremost, just like any secret society: they can't tackle a job they can't pretend to have successfully handled in the end. Being seen trying to do something about the fountain of youth would make them a bunch of King Canutes. (Now there's a misunderstood fella. But when S31 got their faces wet, they'd definitely look silly rather than clever.)
Timo Saloniemi
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