I have a feeling they skip DS9 often when Star Trek captains are mentioned
Kathryn Janeway: The Autobiography
- Thread starter Markonian
- Start date
I have a feeling they skip DS9 often when Star Trek captains are mentioned
It would make more sense than Sulu given Leslie was in more episodes...
I would love a book about Captain Sulu, especially about his live in the 24th century
Which actually has me thinking a Sisko one could be released for 2023, DS9's 30th. After all, the Picard one was released in 2017, TNG's 30th.
What hardcore fans?
DS9 was (and still is) my least favorite ST series. Especially after the Dominion War arc took over everything. It seems ironic to me that DS9 and B5 aired concurrently, directly competing with each other, and almost everything DS9's producers did to try and differentiate it from B5 ended up backfiring, and making it look that much more like it was copycatting JMS's creation.
Talk on the forum. Just because you are a hardcore fan doesn't mean you're the only one with the a correct opinion. Hell, no opinion is ever correct, that's why they're opinions. But yeah, general talk amongst Trek-fans seems to show DS9 was more popular than VOY. But Janeway seems to be a more a popular character than Sisko.
And again, everything you said needs a 'in my humble opinion'. Nothing you are stating is fact. And nothing I said was either. Which is why I used the words 'I get the feeling'.
It might be your least favorite, but based on what I've seen here and other places around the internet, you seem to be the minority.
Almost everytime I see DS9 mentioned, the person talking about it calls it the best Star Trek series, or a least their favorite.
Completely disagree on what you said about DS9 and Babylon 5, other than both being set on space stations and a war breaking out, they are almost nothing alike.
Still want to write Breaking My Silence: The Morn Story.
But seriously folks, having talked to Una about the Janeway book at DST this weekend, I reckon it's going to be great.
But seriously folks, having talked to Una about the Janeway book at DST this weekend, I reckon it's going to be great.
Was it the case that Kirsten had no time to write this?
According to William Rotsler's "Star Trek II Biographies", she did write one, using the name "Janice Rand Dale". There are a few brief excerpts in the biographies of the seven main characters.
A fishy story.
DS9 Relaunch Morn by Ian McLean, on Flickr
Didn't the Kirk autobiography essentially make its own way, separate from the Shatnerverse novels? The recent DS9 documentary showed a male child of Kasidy Yates Sisko in its mythical eighth season, not the female child of the post-series novels, so a Captain Sisko autobiography might be much harder to find consensus re Sisko's future that will appeal to readers without clashing too much? Would it only go up to his disappearance?
Last edited:
Yeah, the Goodman books from Titan are their own continuity, unrelated to prior tie-ins.
They've always ignored the novels before, so I don't see why it would matter there. The novels have always been just one of multiple tie-in continuities, alongside the games and comics and now the Titan hardcovers.
However, the Titan autobiographies (at least the Kirk one) seem to focus mainly on known events from Trek canon rather than extrapolating too much beyond it. Since Sisko has not returned in any canonical work, maybe they'd be reluctant to postulate a return.
Exactly.
Mind you, if they asked Avery Brooks himself to write it, it would probably be rather out of left field. (Remembering his interview for Shatner in "The Captains" documentary.)
I need this book!
They are very brief indeed (don't buy if only for the Janice sentences), but yes, the actual book is great. A few things predicted didn't come to pass... and I think I recall that Rotsler confused Ceti Alpha V as having been destroyed to become the Genesis Planet (which Rotsler has the characters naming as "Spock").
Last edited:
No, Duane kept using Rotsler's "Leonard Edward McCoy" for years after TSFS had canonically established his middle initial as "H" -- in Duane's "The Last Word" for DC, in The Romulan Way, and in Spock's World. "Horatio" originated in the fan-published U.S.S. Enterprise Officer's Manual by Geoffrey Mandel and Doug Drexler, and was later used in the Crucible trilogy.
He also posited that Pavel Andreievich Chekov's father was named Alexei rather than Andrei (clearly he didn't understand Russian patronymics), and IIRC he implied that warp drive had been invented in Scotty's lifetime. Oh, and that Khan recognized Chekov because he memorized every face in Starfleet.
Yep, sorry about that. Shoulda Googled.
Nothing the least bit alike in conception, other than being set on space stations, to be sure: one was conceived as a 5-year story arc, essentially the longest miniseries in history, while the other was Star Trek.
But consider how they were presented: B5 was presented as an interstellar crossroads, bringing together dozens of sentient species in a huge station located next to a jump-gate, an access point to an ancient, poorly-understood, FTL transportation network. DS9 was presented as an interstellar crossroads, bringing together dozens of sentient species in a huge station located next to a newly-discovered stable wormhole. B5 had its cryptic advanced race, the Vorlons, always hidden inside bizarre encounter suits, and speaking in cryptic phrases; DS9 had its cryptic advanced race, whom the Bajorans worshiped as "The Prophets," existing outside of linear time, and speaking in cryptic phrases.
Then, sometime in the middle of the first season, B5 introduced the Shadows: a malevolent race seen only as a lurking, vaguely arachnoid presence in the background, seeking to sow conflict. They had always been part of JMS's plan, and their arrival signaled the end of "setting the stage" for his arc, and the beginning of the arc itself. And sometime in the middle of the first season, DS9 introduced the Dominion: a mysterious Gamma Quadrant power, for which we had no idea whether they were a force for democracy, for tyranny, or for kleptocracy. It would not be until much later that we would learn that it was run by Odo's people, or that they were bent on totalitarianism.
As I said, B5 already had its course set from the beginning. JMS had built in enough flexibility to end the series early, and write characters in or out as needed, but the Shadow War was inevitable. DS9 was open-ended, and could have gone in almost any direction. The Dominion War was far from inevitable until the Founders were painted (with Odo as the one dissenting voice) as relentlessly and intractably bent upon galactic domination. Yet every time the producers tried to steer away from B5, they ended up steering towards it.
For that matter, my least favorite season of Enterprise was the 3rd Season Xindi War arc. Why must "Wagon Train to the Stars" and "Hornblower in Space" turn into one war after another?
Why isn’t this called An Autobiography, since a hypothetical canon version is likely to be different? What if VGR is remastered and the Okudas replace a formerly illegible screen with newly-conjectured text that has nothing to do with this? What if Janeway appears on PIC and says something contradictory?
That's reaching. For one thing, jump gates were standard infrastructure in the B5 universe, as routine as freeways regardless of their origin, while the Bajoran Wormhole was unique and exceptional and the specific reason why the station was important. They served totally different roles in the stories and the universes.
For another thing, how else are you going to do an ongoing series set at a space station except by making it an interstellar crossroads? That's the only way to get a multiplicity of stories out of it, is if it's a place where people from all over are constantly coming and going. That's the defining premise of my own Hub series of prose stories, set at the one and only FTL warp in the known universe through which all interstellar travel must pass. It's a comedy series, and I was inspired by sitcoms set at transportation centers that generated stories from the wide range of different people who passed through them, e.g. Taxi, Wings, and the little-remembered The John Larroquette Show (set at a bus station).
This would only be valid if they were the only two SF franchises with cryptic advanced alien races, but that's obviously not the truth, so it's a pretty lame comparison. I mean, come on, how many dozens of super-advanced godlike aliens did Star Trek feature long before there was a B5?
Ooh, so more than one TV series has recurring, arc-driving bad guys. What a shocker!
This is what I find so irritating about the people who argue that DS9 "ripped off" B5 -- the sheer laziness and dishonesty of their arguments, their obvious failure to consider both sides of the question. You can always pretend that two things are the same if you cherrypick the superficial similarities and ignore the differences, or if you ignore that they're generic ideas that show up all over the place. In this case, one would have to ignore a huge amount of difference between the Shadows and the Dominion. They have little in common besides being arc-driving baddies.
The Hornblower series was about military officers, so I'd be surprised if there wasn't some warfare going on. Still, I agree, I don't like it when Star Trek devotes too much time to war.
