Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

[JD]

Rather, his face was permanently covered in his trademark glue as the result of an accident.

Oh, OK, I haven't actually read it, just read about it and saw a couple panels with Gumm.
When it comes to stuff like Star Trek, or Star Wars, would it be standard for everyone to give them rights to your likeness for games or comics as soon as you sign on, or is it something they come to you just if/when they want to use your character in something?

 

[Christopher]

When it comes to stuff like Star Trek, or Star Wars, would it be standard for everyone to give them rights to your likeness for games or comics as soon as you sign on, or is it something they come to you just if/when they want to use your character in something?

For main cast, I assume the likeness rights would come with the license, but for guest stars, it's apparently case-by-case.

 

[Greg Cox]

When it comes to stuff like Star Trek, or Star Wars, would it be standard for everyone to give them rights to your likeness for games or comics as soon as you sign on, or is it something they come to you just if/when they want to use your character in something?

That's standard now, but it wasn't back in the 1960s when the original STAR TREK and BATMAN series aired.

 

[JD]

OK, good to know.

 

[Greg Cox]

OK, good to know.

Which is why this is more of an issue with actors from the original shows. In those cases, they have to go back and try to secure the rights retroactively from the actors or their estates -- which is not always possible.

 

[Odo]

I was wondering, what from the Litverse is compatible with canon (Disco, Picard, Lower Decks)?

In particular, I was wondering about the Vanguard, DS9 relaunch, and Beyer Voyager books. Are there some minor discrepancies, or larger ones? Apologies if this has been answered somewhere already.

Of course, if those books are no longer compatible with canon, it won't take an iota of my enjoyment of them away!

 

[Tuskin38]

I can't think of anything that directly contradicts Vanguard.

 

[Dayton Ward]

I can't think of anything that directly contradicts Vanguard.

 

[Christopher]

I was wondering, what from the Litverse is compatible with canon (Disco, Picard, Lower Decks)?

So far, the only major discrepancies are post-Nemesis, and particularly from 2381 onward (Destiny in the novels, the prediction of the Romulan supernova in PIC canon). Anything before 2380 is still basically reconcilable (there may be a few details you have to gloss over, but that's nothing new for Trek), and maybe a few things after that (post-NEM TNG is iffy since there's no sign Picard and Crusher ever got together, but Articles of the Federation and the first four Titan novels are reconcilable if you assume there were some personnel changes in the months between Sword of Damocles and "No Small Parts").

 

[Sci]

Spoiler: PIC

Honestly, I would say the biggest thing that's contradicted by PIC would be the Cold Equations trilogy and the adventures of Data Soong and Lal in subsequent novels. I mean, I personally include it in my headcannon and rationalize Picard's reaction to Data in NEM as Picard drawing a distinction between Data and Data Soong, but I readily acknowledge that that's a stretch and that for most practical purposes Cold Equations has been nullified by canon.

I haven't read The Last Best Hope yet, but unless something in that book totally contradicts things, I personally think that the broad outline of post-Borg Invasion events (Borg invasion, rise of the Typhon Pact, Typhon Pact/UFP cold war, exposure of Section 31) are compatible with the canon if you squint a little about the timeline and compress these events into the period between 2380 and 5 April 2385.

Spoiler: PIC, The Fall

It would be very hard to fit The Fall into the canon, though -- maybe not on a purely technical level, but on a thematic/emotional level; The Fall is about the Federation being tempted by authoritarianism and xenophobia but rejecting it; whereas PIC makes it pretty clear that the Federation fell into isolationism and xenophobia for a very long time after the Mars Attack. Personally, in my head, the Speaker of the Federation Council who pushed through the ban on synths was Ishan Anjar, and Nanietta Bacco resigned as Federation President in protest the day he got the Council to end the Romulan Rescue Mission.

 

[Sci]

Interesting side-note re: the Trill in the Novelverse and DIS S3.

Spoiler: DIS: "Forget Me Not"

In "Forget Me Not," we see that the apparent leader of Trill in the year 3189 is a woman name Pav who holds the title of "Leader." We also hear mention of a body called the Commission, but it is unclear if the Commission is the legislature or if it is the Symbiosis Commission, a specialized government agency established in DS9 "Equilibrium."

In the DS9 Relaunch, particularly the novel Trill: Unjoined, Trill is led instead by a President, and the legislature is referred to as the Trill Senate. Of course, there's no necessarily any contradiction here, because it is entirely plausible that Trill's constitutional structures have changed in the intervening 813 years!

Trill in "Forget Me Not" is an independent planet; the canon was always unclear whether Trill was a Federation Member State in the 24th Century, but the novels make it clear that it is. Trill could, of course, have seceded from the Federation after the Burn much the way United Earth did (as established in DIS: "People of Earth").

Trill: Unjoined did strongly imply that post-Symbiont population loss, Trill society would need to find a way to stop functioning as a de facto oligarchy of the Joined. "Forget Me Not" implies that the ability to Join with a Symbiont is still commonly considered the highest aspiration in Trill society in 3189, but this line is vague enough that it need not be seen as contradicting Trill: Unjoined's idea of a more egalitarian Trill -- or, if you do think it contradicts that idea, then there's of course more than enough time between the two stories for Trill to regress back into an oligarchy of the Joined by the 32nd Century as a consequence of the upheaval caused by the Burn.

The Trill Commission and Leader's extreme reverence of the Tal Symbiont -- literally, the leader of the entire planet showed up! -- is startling in comparison to how Dax was treated in "Equilibrium" (no planetary leaders meeting her!), but it is entirely consistent with the idea that Symbionts are much more rare than they used to be as a result of the events of Trill: Unjoined.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

There's a practical element to that, likely; Roger Carmel's likeness rights are notoriously unavailable. Off-hand, I remember the Star Trek: 25th Anniversary PC game only showed Mudd's face in shadow, and one of the John Byrne photocomics got around it by having Mudd somehow assume the form of Captain Kirk. The fact that they can just make Harry Mudd look like a totally different actor who is also Harry Mudd on-screen was probably seen as a far-superior solution to "recasting" him with a non-Carmel but Carmel-esque face.

Relatedly, while Jeffrey Hunter has appeared as Pike on several novels from Pocket (Legacy and Burning Dreams) and Marvel seems to have had likeness rights for Early Voyages (though it's hard to tell with Patrick Zircher's art style), DC Comics did not, so when they used Pike he usually appeared with facial hair (a mustache in an annual drawn by Gordon Purcell, a full beard in another story set on Talos IV).

I don't know why they bothered, though, since the Batman '66 comic portrayed numerous other characters they didn't have likeness rights to, simply redesigning them (e.g. Chandell was blonde, Black Widow was much younger, etc.).

The Batman 66 comic... Yeah. I'm probably going to misexplain this. Based on talking to people at DC, Batman 66 was not a comic based on the Adam West Batman series, which is why characters didn't always look the same or details line up (like, there was a London, not a Londinium, in the Batman 66 comics). It was a Batman comic in the style of the Adam West Batman series, much as Batman Adventures was a Batman comic in the style of Batman: The Animated Series. (Though the crossovers -- Green Hornet, The Man from UNCLE, Steel & Peel, etc. -- really only make sense as being Adam West Batman comics.) That's how I understood it, which is why I put together a Batgirl pitch with 66-ified versions of Azrael and Anarky, even though they're characters that debuted long after Adam West's Batman. I think they 66-ified easily -- Anarky fits well with an organization like the SDS, Jean-Paul would be a late-60s computer science guy at Gotham University.

 

[JD]

They 66ififed quite a few characters who were introduced after the show ended, like Harley Quinn, Bane, Killer Croc, and the al Ghuls.

 

[Christopher]

(like, there was a London, not a Londinium, in the Batman 66 comics).

There was both a London and a Londinium in Batman '66. London was referenced by name in the Chad & Jeremy 2-parter in season 2 ("The Cat's Meow"/"The Bat's Kow Tow"). And both cities were referenced in the comic as well, with London appearing in #4 and Londinium being referenced in #6 and #19 (the Lord Marmaduke Ffogg issue). Similarly to how the comic featured the three Catwomen interchangeably without ever accounting for the discrepancy.

They 66ififed quite a few characters who were introduced after the show ended, like Harley Quinn, Bane, Killer Croc, and the al Ghuls.

My least favorite issues of the Batman '66 comic were the ones that just felt like regular standalone Batman stories with the likenesses of Adam West and Burt Ward. Fortunately, a lot of them felt more like they belonged in the show's universe and were elaborations on its characters, world, and storytelling style.

I thought the Batman '66/Green Hornet crossover comic did a very good job of fitting into the Greenway Productions superhero universe, to coin a term. IIRC, it felt like a second Batman movie, albeit one designed to be re-edited into four episodes of the series. I also liked the Batman '66/Wonder Woman crossover comic, which did a fairly credible job of making the two shows feel like they fit into the same universe -- although I didn't think its idea of the Joker becoming darker and more dangerous in the decade after the show (inspired by his evolution in the comics) was a good fit for Cesar Romero's Joker, who if anything had degenerated into a farcical moron by season 3.

 

[The Wormhole]

So in the most recent episode of Disco we see a decent percentage of holographic personnel at Starfleet Command, and some of the ships seen docked around it are even said to have holographic hulls. Influences of the USS Galen from the Voyager novels, perhaps?

 

[Christopher]

So in the most recent episode of Disco we see a decent percentage of holographic personnel at Starfleet Command, and some of the ships seen docked around it are even said to have holographic hulls. Influences of the USS Galen from the Voyager novels, perhaps?

Maybe, but it could also owe something to Red Dwarf's "Holoship" episode, where the whole ship and all its crew were holograms.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Interesting side-note re: the Trill in the Novelverse and DIS S3.

Spoiler: DIS: "Forget Me Not"

In "Forget Me Not," we see that the apparent leader of Trill in the year 3189 is a woman name Pav who holds the title of "Leader." We also hear mention of a body called the Commission, but it is unclear if the Commission is the legislature or if it is the Symbiosis Commission, a specialized government agency established in DS9 "Equilibrium."

In the DS9 Relaunch, particularly the novel Trill: Unjoined, Trill is led instead by a President, and the legislature is referred to as the Trill Senate. Of course, there's no necessarily any contradiction here, because it is entirely plausible that Trill's constitutional structures have changed in the intervening 813 years!

Trill in "Forget Me Not" is an independent planet; the canon was always unclear whether Trill was a Federation Member State in the 24th Century, but the novels make it clear that it is. Trill could, of course, have seceded from the Federation after the Burn much the way United Earth did (as established in DIS: "People of Earth").

Trill: Unjoined did strongly imply that post-Symbiont population loss, Trill society would need to find a way to stop functioning as a de facto oligarchy of the Joined. "Forget Me Not" implies that the ability to Join with a Symbiont is still commonly considered the highest aspiration in Trill society in 3189, but this line is vague enough that it need not be seen as contradicting Trill: Unjoined's idea of a more egalitarian Trill -- or, if you do think it contradicts that idea, then there's of course more than enough time between the two stories for Trill to regress back into an oligarchy of the Joined by the 32nd Century as a consequence of the upheaval caused by the Burn.

The Trill Commission and Leader's extreme reverence of the Tal Symbiont -- literally, the leader of the entire planet showed up! -- is startling in comparison to how Dax was treated in "Equilibrium" (no planetary leaders meeting her!), but it is entirely consistent with the idea that Symbionts are much more rare than they used to be as a result of the events of Trill: Unjoined.

This is somewhat tangential, but I have been itching for an opportunity to discuss the novelverse status of the Trill as depicted in 2376 in DS9 novels and comics published in the 2000s. Warning, anger and catharsis ahead.

Spoiler

I cheered when Trill: Unjoined mentioned that the neo-Purist unrest killed Doctor Renhol from "Equilibrium" before she could run for President of Trill. In reading Divided We Fall to Trill: Unjoined, I felt almost no sympathy whatsoever for the stupid Trill officials who enabled a caste system between joined and unjoined Trill and maintained power by pretending a caste system did not exist.

Every time a Symbiosis Commission member showed up in canon or non-canon stories, their elitist arrogance infuriated me. From my perspective, getting murdered for spending millennia telling lies to the public was righteous narrative comeuppance. A scenario of Renhol gaining elected office would have been more than a slap in the face to how Jadzia nearly died from the Commission being hellbent on keeping secrets in order to preserve their own power.

Novelverse background or not, it is unsurprising but a bit disappointing to me that joining holds such reverence for the sake of reverence in the 32nd century.

 

[Sci]

This is somewhat tangential, but I have been itching for an opportunity to discuss the novelverse status of the Trill as depicted in 2376 in DS9 novels and comics published in the 2000s. Warning, anger and catharsis ahead.

Spoiler

I cheered when Trill: Unjoined mentioned that the neo-Purist unrest killed Doctor Renhol from "Equilibrium" before she could run for President of Trill. In reading Divided We Fall to Trill: Unjoined, I felt almost no sympathy whatsoever for the stupid Trill officials who enabled a caste system between joined and unjoined Trill and maintained power by pretending a caste system did not exist.

Every time a Symbiosis Commission member showed up in canon or non-canon stories, their elitist arrogance infuriated me. From my perspective, getting murdered for spending millennia telling lies to the public was righteous narrative comeuppance. A scenario of Renhol gaining elected office would have been more than a slap in the face to how Jadzia nearly died from the Commission being hellbent on keeping secrets in order to preserve their own power.

Novelverse background or not, it is unsurprising but a bit disappointing to me that joining holds such reverence for the sake of reverence in the 32nd century.

In fairness, I think it is possible to have a reverence for Joining without having an oligarchy of the Joined. I would like to imagine that's the case for the 32nd Century Trill.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

So far, the only major discrepancies are post-Nemesis, and particularly from 2381 onward (Destiny in the novels, the prediction of the Romulan supernova in PIC canon). Anything before 2380 is still basically reconcilable (there may be a few details you have to gloss over, but that's nothing new for Trek), and maybe a few things after that (post-NEM TNG is iffy since there's no sign Picard and Crusher ever got together, but Articles of the Federation and the first four Titan novels are reconcilable if you assume there were some personnel changes in the months between Sword of Damocles and "No Small Parts").

And as far as Lower Decks goes, the only contradiction that I'm aware of is...

Spoiler

the first officer of the Titan is a Saurian, not Christine Vale, although it is entirely possible that Vale was on leave or leading an away mission when that scene took place.

 

[F. King Daniel]

And as far as Lower Decks goes, the only contradiction that I'm aware of is...

Spoiler

the first officer of the Titan is a Saurian, not Christine Vale, although it is entirely possible that Vale was on leave or leading an away mission when that scene took place.

Supposedly...

Spoiler: Lower Decks S2 rumour

Boimler remains on the Titan in at least a few episodes of season 2, so I suspect more contradictions will be introduced.