And has been remarkably consistent quality-wise too. Honestly, y'all had a far better hit-to-miss ratio than Star Wars Legends and Big Finish Doctor Who (both also awesome, so don't @ me) did/do. It's one hell of an accomplishment.
Spoilers It’s Official... (probably TV spoilers here too)
- Thread starter ryan123450
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The old litverse was quite fun, but the odds were never very good that the litverse with all of its twists and turns would ever have been adapted into a new television series. The timeline has advanced from Nemesis forward to 2385: How could you possibly introduce that status quo to a mass audience? Where would you start?
The stories remain. I do grant that it could be seen as disingenuous, as missing the point, to observe that the novels are still on everyone's shelves, but it's true: The stories remain, have been told, will be recalled. If people still reference Diane Duane's Rihannsu novels even though they were written for a continuity two litverses old, or the novels of John M. Ford, or other titles, well, why shouldn't the best of the most recent litverse novels remain living similarly afresh in fans' memories?
I would also note that Star Trek, most unlike Star Wars, is explicitly set within a vast multiverse where anything can happen. If you're really concerned about the most recent litverse, who is to say that these stories did not occur in one of those many alternates which we know exist?
The stories remain. I do grant that it could be seen as disingenuous, as missing the point, to observe that the novels are still on everyone's shelves, but it's true: The stories remain, have been told, will be recalled. If people still reference Diane Duane's Rihannsu novels even though they were written for a continuity two litverses old, or the novels of John M. Ford, or other titles, well, why shouldn't the best of the most recent litverse novels remain living similarly afresh in fans' memories?
I would also note that Star Trek, most unlike Star Wars, is explicitly set within a vast multiverse where anything can happen. If you're really concerned about the most recent litverse, who is to say that these stories did not occur in one of those many alternates which we know exist?
Great. Now I want Crisis on Infinite Kirks.
Yeah, I agree. I know for me personally the angst you see is that they probably won't continue. That's where I want my cake and want to eat it too. Must all good things really come to an end?
But as JD noted, we all know CBS (or Paramount again someday I guess) isn't coming to confiscate our books. And someday I may return to reread them much like rewatching TNG or Enterprise.
I'm just disappointed to see them coming to an end, esp. without some DS9 finale (come on, you knew that was coming
)
IIRC, the early Enterprise relaunch novels utilized versions of minor characters from the completely incompatible Starfleet: Year One. So I guess there's nothing to stop a Picardverse version of Elias Vaughn (or whoever else) from showing up.
And if they wanted, they could pluck one or two novelverse characters, put them through some kind of anomaly and plop them down into the Picard continuity with all their memories and experiences intact. After all, Spock Prime ended up in the Kelvin Universe that way.
I'm fully expecting Captain Ezri Dax appearing in either season two or three of Picard as the CO of either Aventine or the ship from the DS9 documentary.
As far as I can tell, the only character original to Year One who was referenced in the ENT relaunch was United Earth President Lydia Littlejohn. Otherwise, the only characters they shared were differing versions of characters established in canon, such as Bryce Shumar and the Essex crew, or differing versions of Lt. Stiles's ancestors who fought the Romulans.
I assume you mean the books might do that, since there's no chance the show would. But I doubt they'd go that way. The priority when there's a new show is to try to attract the show's viewers to the books, to build a new readership by recruiting from the show's much larger fanbase. So the books would need to be accessible to new readers, with any novelverse references being subtle at best and unobtrusive.
If they appear, that is pretty unlikely - they will adapt them to the medium but the idea that they are from an alternative universe that represents the Litverse? no.
My intent was that some character from the old novelverse could somehow survive into the new Star Trek Universe™ compliant litverse. I don't think it's likely and of course there's the risk of turning off new readers, but done right it could be super cool.
At most, we might see an alternate version of such a character, adapted to fit into the new continuity. Much like what was done with Grand Admiral Thrawn in Star Wars.
Primeval and Fringe have explored such things quite interestingly IMHO. But as said, it's not likely for the reasons given.
Honestly, I feel that if they draw on any tie-in, it's more likely to be Star Trek Online, which has had millions of players in contrast to the, at most, tens of thousands of readers that the novels and comics get.
If Trek explores alternate timelines again in the future, they'll invent new timelines that serve their narrative needs, or revisit well-known ones like the Mirror Universe. They won't bend over backward merely to appease a few thousand Novelverse loyalists.
I agree; I feel that tactic would never work when alternate non-canon takes on a franchise are so similar but so different.
Can you imagine a canon Trek production depicting the novelverse Tzenkethi and the STO Tzenkethi as parallel realities that somehow still share TNG-PIC episodes in common?
I don't know if that would really work, pretty much ever time we've seen alternate universe versions of people and things they've looked the same in universe. Even though the Kelvinverse versions of the TOS characters were played by different actors it Spock Prime and Nero recognized them, so they were supposed to look the same in universe.
I still find it hard to believe that the Novelverse has actually been around that long.
The one thing the books do have in their favor is that they have had the most behind the scenes crossover with the shows. Although with Kurtzman's involvement in the '90 Countdown comic and early Kelvin ongoing series, Brannon Braga's Hive, and Kirsten Beyer's involvement with the new series' comics, they're coming pretty close now.
I have never se3n Primeval but Fringe does not do this. Yes it has an alternative universe but that is created as part of the narrative - it is not a bolt-on from tie- in media.
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I think the only time I've seen a canonical series incorporate an adaptation of itself as a parallel timeline within its own reality was when Marvel Comics' "Spider-Verse" event established various screen or video game adaptations of Spidey (even the Japanese ones) as alternate-universe Spideys (this was the inspiration for the Into the Spider-Verse film, of course). And maybe when DC released that multiverse list claiming that the Young Justice TV series was set on Earth-16 in the comics' multiverse, though I don't know if that was actually used or made explicit in any comics story.
That's not what I meant. A lead character exploring a timeline that wasn't theirs, which would be vaguely akin to what would happen in the hypothetical situation where a novelverse character was dropped into a Picard-complaint novel.
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