Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

[Damian]

You know though, re-reading a little bit further it does note Chekov and Kyle expected Ceti Alpha VI to be rejected for Genesis by Dr Marcus and that they would be moving on in short order. Since Khan and his group were on V, with no way to get off, they probably figured they'd be there and gone pretty rapidly.

It does note that had Ceti Alpha VI panned out that Chekov at that point would have felt obliged, and free, to divulge the information to Captain Terrell.

It was a favorite book of mine though for many reasons. A number of people have brought up some issues with TWOK in the past, including Christopher. To Reign in Hell does a great job of trying to provide some rationale behind some of those issues, including Khan's singular obsession with vengeance. I've heard some people complain about Khan's single mindedness. He has a starship, as Joaquin (I believe that's spelled correctly) points out, and yet Khan is obsessed with getting Kirk. The novel provides a pretty good basis for that. It didn't happen overnight. But by the time the Reliant encounters Khan, he's gone through so much Hell, including the deal of Lt McGivers that he goes insane with rage. It's something that builds over the years. And it even explains how Khan's merry band of supermen look like they belong in Guns'n'Roses. Good stuff

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

But how does the story explain no one noticing a planet in that system was missing? I mean, they're numbered planets! lol.

 

[The Wormhole]

But how does the story explain no one noticing a planet in that system was missing? I mean, they're numbered planets! lol.

IIRC, the Ceti Alpha system was only supposed to have six planets, so they simply went to the one furthest out.

 

[WebLurker]

No way. For real. That was a great book. I don't throw out the word excellent on many books and I LOOOOVED that book. I read it in a few days.

I couldn't get into it for whatever reason. Maybe I just didn't need a Khan book like that? I'd also just come off Cox's Eugenics Wars books, so I may have been a bit burned out on the character/Cox's writing; As good as those books were, I found the TOS framing device to be a detriment and the whole "secret war" thing got old after a while; I would have much preferred that the book had stuck to canon and showed an actual world war.

To Reign in Hell does a great job of trying to provide some rationale behind some of those issues, including Khan's singular obsession with vengeance. I've heard some people complain about Khan's single mindedness. He has a starship, as Joaquin (I believe that's spelled correctly) points out, and yet Khan is obsessed with getting Kirk. The novel provides a pretty good basis for that. It didn't happen overnight. But by the time the Reliant encounters Khan, he's gone through so much Hell, including the deal of Lt McGivers that he goes insane with rage. It's something that builds over the years.

I honestly never needed this explained, since I thought the movie showed why Khan would want revenge and be so single-minded about it.

And it even explains how Khan's merry band of supermen look like they belong in Guns'n'Roses. Good stuff

That idea always seemed really unneeded, IMHO; we knew that there were 72 people onboard and saw nowhere near that many in the TOS show. It always made sense to me that the younger Augments from Wrath of Khan were original crew members that had been off-camera during TOS.

While I have disagreed with Christopher Bennett on quite I few points regarding the subject, I will more then concede that he's right that it doesn't make much sense that Starfleet would know about Khan and not monitor the situation, if nothing else to keep other nations from getting involved in it (one reason I do favor the "Kirk did it off the books" idea). Does Cox address that?

 

[Christopher]

IIRC, the Ceti Alpha system was only supposed to have six planets, so they simply went to the one furthest out.

Which is incredibly stupid. Planets aren't lined up in a straight hallway somewhere; they move constantly in elliptical paths, and you can actually see the entire system as you approach it. And a given planet's orbit has six distinct parameters that you need to know in order to predict its location and set a rendezvous course for it, and the orbital parameters of the Ceti Alpha system would surely have been plotted by Starfleet, by the Enterprise on its visit if not earlier. The physical characteristics would be known too. So there's no way one planet could've been mistaken for another.

 

[Damian]

the whole "secret war" thing got old after a while; I would have much preferred that the book had stuck to canon and showed an actual world war.

Well, Greg Cox was trying to explain how the Eugenics Wars could have occurred in canon. The book was written well after the 1990's and there was obviously no Eugenics Wars (well, at least that we know of ). The only way to keep the actual canon of the Eugenics Wars in the 1990's was to present it as a series of smaller wars part of a larger war that the general public was unaware of.

I honestly never needed this explained, since I thought the movie showed why Khan would want revenge and be so single-minded about it.

I guess it was a bigger deal for some than others. It was interesting to read, though it wasn't something that bothered me a whole lot.

I thought To Reign in Hell was an excellent book overall for its plot. The reconciling of Space Seed with TWOK was just a nice side benefit. I thought the book was already good. And there were even things explained that I didn't realize were discontinuities until I read them in the book. As a bit of a continuity junkie I love that sort of thing in novels.

While I have disagreed with Christopher Bennett on quite I few points regarding the subject, I will more then concede that he's right that it doesn't make much sense that Starfleet would know about Khan and not monitor the situation, if nothing else to keep other nations from getting involved in it (one reason I do favor the "Kirk did it off the books" idea). Does Cox address that?

Yes, it was classified top secret and it was a case of bureaucratic right hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. And I can actually buy that. Things like that have been known to happen in history. Starfleet isn't perfect. I'm sure Kirk explained Khan and his group were incredibly dangerous. If it was reported to an over cautious admiral (say the opposite of Marcus in STID), they may have decided to bury it and it just got lost in paperwork.

And it was explained that the Ceti Alpha system had 6 planets with an outer asteroid belt. The Reliant mistook the remains of Ceti Alpha VI as part of that asteroid belt. That and the orbit shifting (which was stated in the movie) That caused the confusion.

Which is incredibly stupid. Planets aren't lined up in a straight hallway somewhere; they move constantly in elliptical paths, and you can actually see the entire system as you approach it.

I agree with you guys, that some of the premises behind TWOK are silly, even stupid. I too find it hard to believe they'd lose a planet like that.

I think Greg Cox has even stated he had some difficulty explaining the whole lost planet thing away and he basically did the best he could, esp. considering he had to end up in the same place as the movie, that in fact the Reliant miscounted. As ridiculous as that may seem, that's what we have in TWOK. I thought the outer asteroid belt and the fact that VI was rubble that became part of the asteroid belt, and the orbit of V shifted, was probably the best he could do under the circumstances.

 

[Christopher]

And it was explained that the Ceti Alpha system had 6 planets with an outer asteroid belt. The Reliant mistook the remains of Ceti Alpha VI as part of that asteroid belt. That and the orbit shifting (which was stated in the movie) That caused the confusion.

Still doesn't work. As I said, there are 6 distinct parameters that define an orbit. There's no way the explosion of an outer planet could somehow suck an inner planet outward into its exact former orbit. Even if V happened to be passing through the point where the Reliant expected to find VI, it'd still be moving at a different speed and direction.

Not to mention that telescopes are a thing. Any explosion powerful enough to destroy a planet would briefly outshine a star. Even if the Federation didn't have FTL subspace sensors (which they do), the Reliant would've seen the explosion as soon as they came within 15 light-years of the system. Trek writers too often forget that "sensors" include just plain looking at things, and that space has no horizons so you can see just about anything anywhere if your telescope is good enough.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

IIRC, the Ceti Alpha system was only supposed to have six planets, so they simply went to the one furthest out.

That's hilarious. I'll accept it based on audacity alone. Props to Greg, lol.

 

[Damian]

Still doesn't work. As I said, there are 6 distinct parameters that define an orbit. There's no way the explosion of an outer planet could somehow suck an inner planet outward into its exact former orbit. Even if V happened to be passing through the point where the Reliant expected to find VI, it'd still be moving at a different speed and direction.

Not to mention that telescopes are a thing. Any explosion powerful enough to destroy a planet would briefly outshine a star. Even if the Federation didn't have FTL subspace sensors (which they do), the Reliant would've seen the explosion as soon as they came within 15 light-years of the system. Trek writers too often forget that "sensors" include just plain looking at things, and that space has no horizons so you can see just about anything anywhere if your telescope is good enough.

I don't disagree with that. It is something that bothered me about TWOK. How does a starship mistake one planet for another? Unless the entire crew of the Reliant (supposedly a science vessel if I'm right about the Miranda class) is so incompetent that they just lazily went to the outermost planet without scanning. You know, 'hmm, here's a bunch of asteroids, here's the outer planet, we're good' and look at nothing else.

I'm just saying I think Greg Cox did the best he could with what was an extremely implausible scenario in TWOK. I don't have the book with me right at the moment but I also think he added that they only had limited information on the system, that they didn't have detailed information on the Ceti Alpha system, and that added to the confusion. Again, probably very implausible, but what can you do. In TWOK the Reliant mistakenly believed Ceti Alpha V was actually VI so it's where the novel has to end up with too. I give Cox credit for trying to explain it in the novel in a way that at least acknowledges the implausibility of it all. McCoy was the one asking the questions people here have asked---how did the Reliant lose a planet? Why didn't they know about Khan and his merry band of supermen? Why didn't Chekov and Kyle (who was attacked by Khan) speak up? Those were all questions even a lot of TWOK's fans have asked over the years and the book tries to address them. The losing of the planet was probably the hardest to explain and the most implausible. I can buy the answers to the other two questions, they have a ring of believability to them. The first though (a case of mistaken planetary identity) is so implausible as you guys pointed out that no answer to that will ever completely make sense.

 

[Christopher]

Unless the entire crew of the Reliant (supposedly a science vessel if I'm right about the Miranda class) is so incompetent that they just lazily went to the outermost planet without scanning.

Which, again, isn't possible, because it's not like walking down a hall and opening the first door you see, it's more like... like you're driving in the desert at night and there are six cars driving around in concentric circles several miles apart and you have to track them by their headlights to figure out which one is the outermost one and then try to catch up with it. Although the difference is that a driver in the desert would have to make a best estimate by sight, so there's a chance they could get it wrong, but a starship would have computers that could calculate each planet's orbital parameters precisely so there's little room for error. (Also it wouldn't necessarily approach in the same plane as the planets, since space isn't flat. It might come in at an angle to the orbital plane, so the analogy would be more like a helicopter or drone trying to close on the outermost car.)

I'm just saying I think Greg Cox did the best he could with what was an extremely implausible scenario in TWOK.

That's true. And Vonda McIntyre did so as well in her TWOK novelization, arriving at somewhat different explanations than Greg did. But the fact remains that the original premise was a conceptual mess. TWOK's story just doesn't hold up to analysis, which is part of why I think it's hugely overrated.

 

[Damian]

But the fact remains that the original premise was a conceptual mess. TWOK's story just doesn't hold up to analysis, which is part of why I think it's hugely overrated.

Sort of amusing in a way. Khan, a man who was stranded on a primitive planet with virtually no technology has to explain to members of a Starfleet science ship something that they should have noticed. It was even he who explained to them that the orbit shifted when that was something they should have noticed.

 

[Tuskin38]

Didn’t Vanguard also try to explain it? The system’s number of planets was classified or something because they accidentally blew it up?

That really doesn’t work though, because it would only effect computers connected to a central information net. What about other species, or independent parties?

 

[F. King Daniel]

It's looking more and more likely that Disco Control is...

Spoiler: Perpetual Infinity

A Borg Origin story. Control's nanites controlling Leland, tissue repair and time travel technology to end with them stranded on a world in the past of the Delta Quadrant. I won't be too surprised if Dr. Burnham ends up their first Queen.

 

[Yistaan]

It's looking more and more likely that Disco Control is...

Spoiler: Perpetual Infinity

A Borg Origin story. Control's nanites controlling Leland, tissue repair and time travel technology to end with them stranded on a world in the past of the Delta Quadrant. I won't be too surprised if Dr. Burnham ends up their first Queen.

Spoiler

As someone pointed out in the episode discussion thread, if this is true then First Contact would make no sense because the Borg, by acting to prevent Cochrane's flight, would be acting to prevent their own creation.

 

[SolarisOne]

It's looking more and more likely that Disco Control is...

Spoiler: Perpetual Infinity

A Borg Origin story. Control's nanites controlling Leland, tissue repair and time travel technology to end with them stranded on a world in the past of the Delta Quadrant. I won't be too surprised if Dr. Burnham ends up their first Queen.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Spoiler

As someone pointed out in the episode discussion thread, if this is true then First Contact would make no sense because the Borg, by acting to prevent Cochrane's flight, would be acting to prevent their own creation.

Logic has no place in TV time travel plots. Remember the Temporal War from ENT was launched from a corrupted timeline which only existed as a result of the war...

 

[Kemaiku]

Soooooo, they'll use Control, a contentious single novel (at least going by the thread here when it launched) for nearly the entire backbone of season 2. But potentially ignore Destiny 1-3 which was much more well recieved and could be part of the Picard series?

I just....what?

Are these people really as fucking incompetant as they appear now?

 

[Tuskin38]

Soooooo, they'll use Control, a contentious single novel (at least going by the thread here when it launched) for nearly the entire backbone of season 2. But potentially ignore Destiny 1-3 which was much more well recieved and could be part of the Picard series?

I just....what?

Are these people really as fucking incompetant as they appear now?

How does any of that make them incompetent?

They're not copying Control 1:1 from the books anyways, just the basic idea.

 

[Yistaan]

I don't think the Destiny books are going to have anything to do with the Picard show. Those books involve a massive Borg invasion, and Patrick Stewart and other showrunners make it clear his new show is going to be extremely different from anything Picard has done before.

I don't think the new show is going to retread Picard vs Borg territory again.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Soooooo, they'll use Control, a contentious single novel (at least going by the thread here when it launched) for nearly the entire backbone of season 2. But potentially ignore Destiny 1-3 which was much more well recieved and could be part of the Picard series?

I just....what?

Are these people really as fucking incompetant as they appear now?

They're just borrowing the idea but doing their own version. Like how Batman (1989) made The Joker into the killer of Thomas and Martha Wayne and turned it into a revenge flick.