And let us be thankful. One David Mack is enough. Two would likely kill off more Starfleet personnel than Nero did. 
Spoilers TOS: The Higher Frontier, by Christopher L. Bennett - review thread
- Thread starter Cyfa
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I am following the conversation just fine, I don't need to be told what the point is. My point is that it could be 17-19 years after "Balance of Terror" if Dar is rounding, which could put The Final Frontier just 1-2 years after The Wrath of Khan.
There's no argument here. The two points are not in conflict; they are merely different facets of the conversation. They coexist.
But there's no way the films could be as far apart as 2 years. TSFS is probably no more than a couple of weeks after TWOK, given the rate at which Spock's cells regenerated and given how fresh the incident seems to be in everyone's minds. TVH is explicitly 3 months after TSFS. There could have been as much as a few months between the climax of TVH, the outcome of the trial, and the launch of the E-A, but probably not too long. And there seems to be relatively little time between the end of TVH and TFF, although Harve Bennett considered there to be a 6-month shakedown cruise in between, IIRC. So I can buy there being roughly a year between TWOK and TFF, but not two. That's an assertion of the Chronology that I could never accept. I bow to the 2285 dating for TWOK because there are too many novel-continuity references to that to ignore, but in my mind, TFF takes place in '86 rather than '87.
The one we know already did that!And let us be thankful. One David Mack is enough. Two would likely kill off more Starfleet personnel than Nero did.
Understandable, of course. You're writing tie-in fiction, you color inside the lines you're given. It just strikes me as peculiar that the thing you're obliged to abide by (the Okudachron date) is by every relevant definition not canonical, whereas the thing you're obliged to disregard (the "fifteen year" period mentioned repeatedly in the film by multiple characters) unequivocally is canonical. Anyhow, nice to know that you'd rather put TWOK earlier if you had your druthers.
I don't actually see any serious problem with having a significant continuity gap between TVH and TFF. (Certainly the DC Comics series running at the time had no difficulty shoehorning quite a lot of missions between the two films.) If the Ent-A was out there for a few years' worth of missions, then returned for some sort of minor refit, that would not only allow both films' dialogue references to be more chronologically accurate, but also provide an in-story explanation for the clear changes in bridge layout between films (as well as the embarrassing tech glitches that bedeviled the ship in TFF).
What was the logic for putting Final Frontier in 2287?
(Given that Scotty's first line was: "Borgus frat! 'Let's see what she's got' said the Captain. And then we found out, didn't we?," I always took the movie to happen "right" after Voyage Home.)
I've never been certain, but as I said, my best guess is that it was to reconcile the "20 years" reference with "Balance of Terror," before which there could've been no Federation-Romulan cooperation because there was no contact.
Makes sense, although I guess the years could be a rounded number if you wanted to.
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The Chronology was oddly reluctant to acknowledge the possibility of rounding, except with TWOK. In the case of the Valiant in "Where No Man...," they insisted on putting its launch exactly 200 years before the episode, in 2065, even though that was only 4 years after their conjectural date for the first warp flight, and only 2 years after the date ultimately set for it in First Contact. That's a case where it was obviously ridiculous to go for an exact date, but they did it anyway, in every case except TWOK.
Granted, the Chronology had disclaimers insisting that its conjectural dates were no more than conjectures and shouldn't be taken as immutable absolutes. But of course everyone took them as immutable absolutes anyway, except when the shows or films explicitly overwrote them.
Do recall them saying in the introduction that they took dates as absolute for the most part, even if in context rounding and estimations were probably in order. While it might fudge things a bit, I guess it makes sense, since it keeps things tied closer to the episodes rather then having more judgement calls.
Well, there are two different kinds of dates, the solid ones based on clear onscreen evidence and the conjectural ones where they went beyond the evidence. It's the conjectural ones I'm talking about.
Do recall them saying in the introduction that they took dates as absolute for the most part, even if in context rounding and estimations were probably in order. While it might fudge things a bit, I guess it makes sense, since it keeps things tied closer to the episodes rather then having more judgement calls.
They should have used 'circa', 'fl' and other historical tools, because either doing as Christopher describes or picking a more realistic date always requires intepretation, but the format of the Chronology instead frames their decisions as factually authorative. Using 'fl', 'circa', etc, would have given more ambiguity to the book, and a more accurate sense of reconstructing fictional history
The title of the book just makes me think of marijuana
Have you by any chance read the Alan Dean Foster short story, "NASA Sending Addicts to Mars!" (from 1994, first appeared in Alien Pregnant by Elvis; reprinted in Impossible Places).
...and that ambiguity would've upset a different set of fans (or the same set!), who would've complained about the "copout" of "wishy-washy" dates, asserting that the Okudas should've made up their minds.They should have used 'circa', 'fl' and other historical tools, because either doing as Christopher describes or picking a more realistic date always requires intepretation, but the format of the Chronology instead frames their decisions as factually authorative. Using 'fl', 'circa', etc, would have given more ambiguity to the book, and a more accurate sense of reconstructing fictional history
There's really no way to win in this sort of situation, and the Chronology had to settle on something.
They should have used 'circa', 'fl' and other historical tools, because either doing as Christopher describes or picking a more realistic date always requires intepretation, but the format of the Chronology instead frames their decisions as factually authorative. Using 'fl', 'circa', etc, would have given more ambiguity to the book, and a more accurate sense of reconstructing fictional history
Eh, it was covered in the introduction and a lot of the entries did have notes on how the dates were derived and even if they were based on hard information or just conjectural. I think they covered everything.
Right. There's no rational reason to complain about that, since it's appropriate and truthful to acknowledge uncertainty rather than falsify precision. And creators should not concern themselves with the possibility of irrational complaints, because those will come no matter what you do and they have no real bearing on the work itself.
New to fandom, are we?
I can only speak as someone with a bit of experience (*cough*) putting fictional chronologies out there for public consumption, but I think you overestimate people's familiarity with and understanding of historiographic techniques.
IME, fans will complain about every aspect of one's timeline assembly--specific dates because they don't like your specific conclusions, vague dates because you didn't make a specific conclusion, your interpretation of an ambiguous line of dialogue, your adherence to an unambiguous line of dialogue. No amount of annotative caveats ever prevents this.
Exactly. You can't prevent it, so it shouldn't be an influence on your decisions. Saying "don't use approximations because people will complain" is a terrible argument. That should never stop a creator from doing their work the right way.
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