Spoilers NO SPOILERS FOR CODA - A Lit-verse Grand Finale...What We Know (Spoilers for Entire Lit-verse)

That's simply not how it works. The tail does not wag the dog.

Not a value judgment. Just a reality check.

 

Right. If you want fiction that stands entirely on its own and is free to do whatever it wants, there is a vast amount of original prose science fiction out there that isn't based on television shows. Some of it is even by me and other Trek authors.

 

My solution is it's all another big multiverse. (multiverses are in. Shared unvierses are so last decade)

The novels, beginning with DS9: Avatar, began to build a rich universe of new storylines and characters, taking place after final episodes and final movies. It can exist in it's own sphere. (although Coda may be a grand finale?)

Star Trek comics have taken different paths. In different books. Sometimes published by the same company! We have multiple versions of events such as the beginng and end of the historic 5 year mission and the revival of Data.

Then there was Star Trek Online, not to mention fan films and fiction. There were licenced but hypothetical futures. Picard and Discovery are the official futures now, post-Nemesis, which was the end point for over a decade. It's a pity they 'wipe out' some of the storylines of the last 15 years, but I'm looking forward to seeing where they go from here.

 

Zack Snyder seems to think so, though I suppose he is going more for "faithful" than "canonical": https://www.tor.com/2021/02/16/zack-snyder-king-arthur/

I am starting #ReleaseTheArthurCut now

 

We all have our headcanons. Probably Philip Reeve's Here Lies Arthur for me, or anything from Rosemary Sutcliff.

 

It is conceivably possible for a Star Trek Litverse to be completely divorced from the regular Star Trek shows (certainly the shows do not need to worry about the books), in much the same way as the Star Fleet Universe arose. They would have to be financially feasible on their own, with an audience aware and willing to overlook the discrepancies, which would go every year that we learn more about what the shows are portraying in the 2380s and the 25th century (and 23rd century and details from the 32nd even).

But, a key concept of the Litverse was to extrapolate what was going on in the Star Trek world now that the shows had gone off and done a prequel, gone off the air, or the movies were focused on another timeline entirely. That extrapolation is unnecessary now that the main period is filled with at least two shows, and large amounts of backstory for another show, and cannot possibly remain compatible given how expansive the Litverse was.

When the Berman era shows were still airing, the novels were concurrent products. During the Kurtzman era, the novels seem to be predominantly prequels and some concurrent products. They have to be carefully written (on their level, the shows won't care) to not be overwritten too quickly, as backstory for Picard or Prodigy is still the future of Lower Decks. Yet, they also have to have stories that interest readers (you know, so they get readers) and featuring familiar characters is one of the main draws of writing in the Star Trek Universe.

 

It's the expected norm for Batman or Iron Man to be different in comics and novels than in movies. I know they're originally from the comics so the movies adapt the basic concept, but why not have a book or comic reimagine Trek from the ground-up and do their own thing? Just because they haven't done it yet doesn't mean it's not worth a try one day.

 

So...Gold Key comics, then?

 

Scotty's blond phase was mentioned in Indistinguishable From Magic so they're 100% part of the litverse

 

Star Wars did it, sort of, when they adapted George Lucas's original pitch for "The Star Wars" in comic form. And Star Trek kinda did it with their comic book adaptation of the "original version" of Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever. Comic books have much more dramatic leeway to be experimental in that regard, and you could very well have a licensed agreement to adapt a new take on Kirk, Picard, or Janeway that doesn't take the onscreen continuity into account and "redoes" the Star Trek Universe however they like it. Again, that would require CBS to understand the pitch, and see a financial reasoning for granting that license.

The novels were usually licensed and edited on the understanding of agreeing to uphold to onscreen canon. You, of course, get novels that ignore the other novels (Crucible Trilogy), but having novels that ignore the established onscreen Trek universe to make their own would have to be carefully negotiated and doesn't seem to be an easy seller.

 

That would never, ever happen. I gather that SFU is some weird sidebar thing that's only allowed to exist because it's derived from the Franz Joseph publications that he retained independent rights to due to some sloppy contract-writing back in the day. It exists through a loophole only, and it's tolerated because it's a game franchise rather than a fiction franchise and thus isn't in direct competition with the canonical fiction. And I presume it does not use canonical characters and storylines either. None of those special circumstances are applicable to the novel line.

There is no way to be "completely divorced" from a franchise if you are using their concepts, characters, and backstory. All of that rightfully belongs to CBS Studios. We're allowed to borrow it, but that doesn't give us the right to take it home with us if they ask for it back.

Because the modern shows are more serialized and have little room for new stories to be inserted between episodes. That has nothing to do with Berman vs. Kurtzman. Note that there are hardly any novels set in the last two seasons of DS9, because they were so serialized.

It's not even close to symmetrical. Movies and TV shows have a vastly larger audience than books and comics, by a factor of hundreds or thousands. This is why we use metaphors about the tail not wagging the dog. A movie adaptation of a comic book is a huge expansion of its audience and profit potential, so it takes the lead; its mass and momentum are so great that it drags the original after it (look at all the comics characters who debuted in adaptations, from Jimmy Olsen to Phil Coulson). But a novel adaptation of a TV show is a tiny offshoot of the real thing, entirely dependent on the much vaster franchise for its existence and survival.

Star Trek is a screen franchise. If it ever gets reinvented from the ground up, it is the place of the screen franchise to take that step first. The place of the tie-ins is to follow the lead of the real thing.

 

Why must that always be the way, though? Say someone wanted to do nununununuTrek ongoing and had a compelling plot and concept to reinvent TOS, would CBS always veto it because they don't think there's any money in it?

 

I suppose Le Morte d'Arthur has some claim to be the definitive version if not canonical.

Personally my "head canon" for those aren't literary (surprisingly), being the movie Excalibur and T.V.'s Robin Of Sherwood. Which probably a) dates me and b) plays into my 'crusty' sympathising grubby world view.

 

Gold Key Star Trek comics is the only canon Star Trek.

 

I can imagine it, if it was a big prestige creator coming to Star Trek, and was siloed off somehow (probably a comic book series, or maybe a movie; it occurs to me I'm basically describing the Tarantino project), but CBS seems to be consider consistency in storyline and creative personnel a core element of their approach to Star Trek. They might be more willing to be more experimental and broad-minded if other large franchises have success having splinters and alternates. The DC adaptations having separate live-action TV and film worlds, and exploring a wide range of alternative takes in movies that aren't part of their main film series, is interesting, but not yet enough of a break-out to make the CBS higher-ups think they need to have a copycat approach to Star Trek.

 

I'm afraid I have to agree with Christopher, Greg Cox and some of the others here that are saying that tie ins will never be able to go their own way. Star Trek was created as an on-screen product first, and that's where the vast amount of money is being made from for Paramount. I mean, as much as I love the novels personally, I know it's not even close. Novels make the barest fraction of what is made on screen. It's enough to keep S&S happy that they have exclusive rights, but it's nowhere near the amount that they can hold up on their own.

It's all simple marketing really on all sides. Even if Paramount were to say to S&S, if you want to continue the novel-line independently of the existing shows (which would never happen, but just for the sake of argument), why would S&S even want to. What's going to sell more books? A novel that's it's own independent thing....or a novel based on a popular TV show that's currently airing?

We're actually lucky that S&S has even commissioned the Coda Trilogy--my guess is since it apparently will tie into the Picard timeline in some fashion, it's still at least loosely tied into Picard and perhaps will provide some more backstory to the main show. And I suppose their is enough interest in the current reluanches that it's worth their while to close out the series in some fashion.

Personally, I'd love to see the novel continuity continue. I've noted before, partly because they have been ongoing for 20+ years (far longer than Picard's been on the air), that I personally consider the novel continuity the primary timeline and Picard the alternate timeline--despite the fact that the novels are never going to be 'canon.' And partly because I like where the novel continuity is right now. They went through Hell with the Borg invasion, and had their own sort of existential crisis with Section 31---but the Federation has moved past that now and is in a far better place then they are in Picard. And Picard is still Captain of the Enterprise doing what he has does best, making a difference. And I came to like and care about the characters from the novels. I was saddened by the deaths of those characters probably almost as much as I would have been in it were a series character. So while I liked Picard, I actually like the novel continuity more. Part of me can't help but wish the showrunners had simply picked up where the novels left off (even though I know the odds of that were next to nil).

So at the end of the day I'm grateful we've had all these years of the relaunches, and I hope someday to see the Enterprise relaunches continue, since they are pretty much the only continuity unaffected by the current shows (that'd kind of be a nice consolation prize in a way, to see at least one of the relaunch continuities continue). For a long time after Enterprise ended, the novels were pretty much the only new Star Trek I had so they kept many of us going during that 10+ year period where there were just 3 movies and nothing else on screen. Somehow, during that time, S&S stll managed to give us 12 new books a years and several new book-only series was created during that period.

 

That is entirely their choice to make, as they are the owners of the concept. Ownership works the same way for intellectual property as it does for any other property. If you want to drive someone else's car or repaint someone else's house, that's only going to happen if they permit it. They have the right to make the decisions about their own property.

And again, it's not going to happen in a medium as incidental as prose tie-ins. If it happens, it's up to the screen franchise to set that precedent.

Besides, Star Trek is not the only universe in science fiction, not by a long shot. When I was young, I started making up my own Trek stories, but then I decided that the Trek setting was too restrictive, and I ended up leaving all the Trek elements behind and creating my own independent universe, which evolved over the years to get less and less Trek-like and ended up becoming the Arachne/Troubleshooter Universe comprising most of my original fiction. That belongs to me, so I decide what to do with it. Star Trek belongs to CBS, so they decide what to do with it. It's not a complicated principle.

I'll never understand the self-contradiction of people who want something to be derivative of Star Trek yet totally independent from it at the same time. That doesn't even make sense. If you want something independent, why do you want it to be Star Trek? There are so many other possibilities out there.

 

I recall DC Comics' Star Trek series would "go their own way", until the next movie came out, Then they had to get all the ducks back in row.

 

That's what I said when I used the term "conceivably". You don't need to write a whole thesis to say you agree with me. A like will suffice.

 

That's not going their own way, not in the sense being discussed here. They were actually under strict instructions to avoid anything that would risk conflicting with future movies. That's why the first run of stories wasn't allowed to follow up on Genesis or David, and why the post-TSFS comics shunted Spock off to another ship while the rest of the crew open-endedly borrowed the Excelsior. They weren't ignoring the movies, they were carefully tiptoeing around them, within the limits imposed on them by Paramount.

Whaa?? I was disagreeing with you. It is inconceivable that any such thing could ever happen today.