What's the fastest a novel has been contradicted?

[tomswift2002]

When was Apollo anywhere near the second-shift communications officer?

I believe you are thinking of Lt. Palamas.

And I have a vague recollection of Riker having both "Thomas" and "Thelonius" as middle names.

--
James Harlyn Hayden Lampert

Well you could also say that Blish helped launch Star Trek: New Frontier decades later, especially the Mark Henry character.

 

[Therin of Andor]

And I have a vague recollection of Riker having both "Thomas" and "Thelonius" as middle names.

I think I recall Frakes himself suggesting "Thaddeus" (for Thad Jones and/or Thaddeus Tukes, both jazz musicians) in early TNG. And that was before the first Thaddius Riker in VGR's "Death Wish".

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Thaddius_Riker

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I have a vague recollection of Riker having both "Thomas" and "Thelonius" as middle names.

I think I recall Frakes himself suggesting "Thaddeus" (for Thad Jones and/or Thaddeus Tukes, both jazz musicians) in early TNG. And that was before the first Thaddius Riker in VGR's "Death Wish".

I remember in the TNG half of the DC Comics miniseries The Modala Imperative, Peter David had Admiral McCoy asking Riker if the "T" in "William T. Riker" stood for "Tiberius." Riker just replied "No, sir" and didn't elaborate.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Imzadi must be up there. Established Riker's middle name as Thelonius, which was invalidated by Second Chances about 10 months later.

And I have a vague recollection of Riker having both "Thomas" and "Thelonius" as middle names.

In a zigzagged way, no and yes. In 1992's Imzadi by Peter David, a computer stated the full name to be "William Thelonius Riker". After 1993's "Second Chances" blew this out of the water with "Thomas", 1994's Q-Squared, also by David, tried to smooth this over by having Picard address him as "Commander William Thomas Thelonius Riker". Interestingly, David's Triangle: Imzadi II in 1998, which featured Thomas Riker, did not acknowledge "Thelonius". For his part, Jonathan Frakes narrated the audiobook version of Imzadi, and just last year he joked on Twitter about Peter David's origin of the name homage: jazz musician Thelonious Monk.

This feel somewhat parallel to the DIS Enterprise scenario. 2017's Desperate Hours by David Mack had Georgiou's Shenzhou meet Pike's Enterprise a year before the outbreak of the Klingon war. 2019's Discovery season 2 set up a new premise for Pike's Enterprise meeting the Discovery after the conclusion of the Klingon war. Burnham and Spock do not acknowledge the events of Desperate Hours wherein they overcame some sibling tension; Burnham states to Sarek that "it has been years" since she has seen Spock. By contrast, The Enterprise War by JJMiller has Spock think to himself that "it already felt like many years since [the events of Desperate Hours], and he expected [Burnham] felt the same way". I am not sure if this massaging feels believable to me, though to be fair, the Enterprise crew was being dragged by pseudo-religious zealots through a good year's worth of hell.

 

[Harvey]

But for the most part Blish was working from early draft scripts. So that’s how people know that in an early draft of “Who Mourns For Adonis?” (and was filmed as can be seen on the Roddenberry vault Blu-Ray) that Lt. Palmer was impregnated by Apollo. Also “The Trouble With Tribbles” in Star Trek 3 has Sulu in the story as he was suppose to be. The Doomsday Machine does not feature Commodore Matt Decker committing suicide (and it is actually Brand Decker, not Matt Decker). Spectre of the Gun is called The Last Gunfight; in Star Trek 1 Charlie X & The Man Trap are called Charlie’s Law & The Unreal McCoy respectively.

The pregnancy tag for “Who Mourns for Adonais?” was in the shooting script and was filmed. They just cut it during editing.

Decker died in every iteration of “The Doomsday Machine” written until Blish’s version. That’s a detail he made up, not something that came from an early draft.

“Spectre of the Gun” was written and filmed as “The Last Gunfight.” The title was changed after filming.

I’ve often read that Blish was working off of early draft scripts, but I wonder how much of this is actually true? Someone needs to visit his papers and see if they clarify the matter.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Re: Spectre of the Gun

I'm not dead sure, but I believe I've actually seen two slightly different versions: in one, the bartender's line is ". . . unless you want corn whiskey"; in the other (which I think may have been the print KTLA aired, when they had the strip-syndication rights for the Greater Los Angeles market) it was (as in the Blish adaptation) ". . . unless you want gin."

 

[tomswift2002]

The pregnancy tag for “Who Mourns for Adonais?” was in the shooting script and was filmed. They just cut it during editing.

Decker died in every iteration of “The Doomsday Machine” written until Blish’s version. That’s a detail he made up, not something that came from an early draft.

“Spectre of the Gun” was written and filmed as “The Last Gunfight.” The title was changed after filming.

I’ve often read that Blish was working off of early draft scripts, but I wonder how much of this is actually true? Someone needs to visit his papers and see if they clarify the matter.

The first Blish book came out in January 1967, and because of lead time required to adapt the scripts, Desilu’s promo department would give him drafts that had been discarded. So, with the pregnancy, it may’ve lasted to the final shooting script, but Blish was working from an even earlier script. For example, with “Charlie X” (“Charlie’s Law”) the 2nd draft script was turned in on June 27, 1966, with the final script being turned in July 5, 1966. Or the last episode in the book (“The Conscience of the King”), has its first draft turned in on May 9, 1966, but the the last revision of the final draft wasn’t until September 22, 1966, meanwhile principal photography was shot between September 13 & 21, 1966 (there was probably a pickup shot for the episode later, unless the revision concerned SFX). So there is no way, until at the earliest,”Star Trek 4” that Blish could’ve had final scripts.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

In a zigzagged way, no and yes. In 1992's Imzadi by Peter David, a computer stated the full name to be "William Thelonius Riker". After 1993's "Second Chances" blew this out of the water with "Thomas", 1994's Q-Squared, also by David, tried to smooth this over by having Picard address him as "Commander William Thomas Thelonius Riker". Interestingly, David's Triangle: Imzadi II in 1998, which featured Thomas Riker, did not acknowledge "Thelonius". For his part, Jonathan Frakes narrated the audiobook version of Imzadi, and just last year he joked on Twitter about Peter David's origin of the name homage: jazz musician Thelonious Monk.

Even after "Second Chances," it's not that difficult to "massage" Thelonius as Riker's middle name.

William Riker states in "Second Chances," IIRC, that he never liked Thomas as a name, while Thomas Riker states that he did. So I rationalized that when Riker was much younger and got into jazz music, he decided Thelonious Monk was super cool and Thelonious itself a really cool name, certainly a much better name than Thomas, so he "adopted" it as part of his name; if someone asked what the T stood for, "Thelonious" he'd say. After the incident where Riker was "split," the two Rikers developed in very different directions. Will was still able to enjoy his love of jazz music, and so he maintained a connection to Thelonious Monk and the name Thelonious as an adopted middle name. Thomas, on the other hand, was trapped and alone and jazz music, which he had been important to him, was unavailable to him; the connection to the jazz greats, and Thelonious Monk, was broken. William Thelonius Riker is a cool name he could drop at parties. William Thelonius Riker is a name that doesn't do him any good when trapped and abandoned in an old outpost, and it's a name that might remind him of the life he had lost.

The tl;dr version: Riker hated Thomas as a middle name, so when he was younger he could have adopted Thelonius as a middle name.

 

[KRAD]

I’ve often read that Blish was working off of early draft scripts, but I wonder how much of this is actually true? Someone needs to visit his papers and see if they clarify the matter.

It was definitely an early draft of "The Doomsday Machine," because Decker's first name was Brand rather than Matthew.

 

[tomswift2002]

Re: Spectre of the Gun

I'm not dead sure, but I believe I've actually seen two slightly different versions: in one, the bartender's line is ". . . unless you want corn whiskey"; in the other (which I think may have been the print KTLA aired, when they had the strip-syndication rights for the Greater Los Angeles market) it was (as in the Blish adaptation) ". . . unless you want gin."

If you watch the VHS’s, DVD’s and Blu-Ray’s, sometimes in the promo trailer there’ll be an alternate take for a scene. Maybe you heard it in the promo trailer.

 

[Harvey]

It was definitely an early draft of "The Doomsday Machine," because Decker's first name was Brand rather than Matthew.

The character is named Curt Decker in...

• March 6, 1967 outline "The Planet Eater"
• April 5, 1967 script "The Doomsday Machine" (1st draft)
• May 8, 1967 script "The Doomsday Machine" (revised draft)

Then, he's named Matt Decker in...

• June 14, 1967 script "The Doomsday Machine" (2nd revised final draft)

It seems that the first name "Brand" was Blish's invention, along with the character's revised fate. In all of the drafts named above, Decker dies flying a shuttle craft into the maw of the planet eater.

 

[tomswift2002]

Where are you getting Curt from? As far as I can tell, the only version that’s been put it is the 2nd revised draft, which doesn’t seem to contain the later revisions.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

If you watch the VHS’s, DVD’s and Blu-Ray’s, sometimes in the promo trailer there’ll be an alternate take for a scene. Maybe you heard it in the promo trailer.

No; this was definitely the complete episode, broadcast in strip-syndication. I recall being jarred a bit when I read the Blish adaptation, reading the line rendered as "gin," when I remembered it on KCOP strip-syndication as "corn whiskey." Then I remember being jarred again, when it went to KTLA, and I heard the line rendered as "gin" on the air. Then, when it went back to KCOP, a few years later, (and again, watching the commercial VHS tape), when the line went back to "corn whiskey." The only explanation of how is that (1) the "gin" version was for airing in places that spoke The Queen's English, (2) every time the strip rights changed hands, the station(s) got pristine prints, so they could make cuts as they saw fit for additional commercial time, and (3) KTLA got the "Queen's English" version because that was what was handy.

Of course, that fails to explain why Paramount would bother with two different English language versions of the episode when the whole series was barely hanging onto a third season.

 

[thribs]

Contradicted by another novel or by live action? If the latter then those new TNG books were contradicted before they came out.

 

[Harvey]

Where are you getting Curt from? As far as I can tell, the only version that’s been put it is the 2nd revised draft, which doesn’t seem to contain the later revisions.

From scans of those drafts I’ve made.

 

[David cgc]

Of course, that fails to explain why Paramount would bother with two different English language versions of the episode when the whole series was barely hanging onto a third season.

It seemed to happen surprisingly often (and, probably, still does, though its easier to catch now with illegal downloads doing the unintentional historic work of preserving first-run material as-is before later alterations). The mono audio mix of Star Wars used entirely different takes for all of Aunt Beru's dialog, for instance. It's possible that when they were prepairing the syndication cuts, for whatever reason, they had to replace that line with an alternate. Maybe the print they were editing down was damaged, or they needed to reverse a trim after deciding to remove material somewhere else, instead, and they had to use the other take instead because that's what was handy. It was certainly a hack to save time compared to doing it properly, and not any kind of intentional alternate version.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Contradicted by another novel or by live action?

By a live action production, i.e. canon. As none of the novels officially "count" as ST continuity, it doesn't matter much if one book contradicts another. Those would just be two different interpretations of the current canon.

 

[tomswift2002]

From scans of those drafts I’ve made.

I’ve got to question where those came from.

Since changing a name doesn’t make any sense when it doesn’t effect the plot.

Now then I noticed in the Preface to Star Trek 3 James Blish wrote that he had multiple drafts of the scripts and with The City On The Edge of Forever he mentions that he adapted it from both Harlan Ellison’s first draft, and one of the later versions used for the actual TV series (and Blish notes that Ellison’s original was too long for TV) to create a short story that featured the best of both scripts. But in a number of prefaces he mentions that it’s not him that selected which scripts he was adapting, (or the order, although he would mention which ones fans had requested) but Desilu/Paramount. But he says that everything is based on the scripts that he was given.

 

[Extrocomp]

I’ve got to question where those came from.

Since changing a name doesn’t make any sense when it doesn’t effect the plot.

I don't know why they do it but it happens all the time. The earliest Star Trek example would be the name of the captain, which went from Robert April to James Winter to Christopher Pike. Decker is still called "Curt Decker" in the cast list of the 2nd revised final draft because apparently they don't bother updating the cast list when they change the rest of the script.

 

[Starbreaker]

Desperate Hours got invalidated pretty quick. Not sure if it was as fast as Federation.

And then they try to wave away Michael and Spock's meeting by saying it still happened, but that they didn't really get to connect on a personal level in a later book. The Enterprise War, I think.