IYO, what do you think should be made canon from Star Trek novels or short stories, and why?

[Relayer1]

There's a lot of things in this thrrad that would port over well - Vanguard, Trip living, the Typhon Pact. I'd like the birth of the federation as the basis if they continue the Enterprise story. The Andorian biology works too.

It would be good to see Christine Vale, Second Gen White Blue and T'Ryssa Chen.

 

[dupersuper]

There's a lot of things in this thrrad that would port over well - Vanguard, Trip living, the Typhon Pact. I'd like the birth of the federation as the basis if they continue the Enterprise story. The Andorian biology works too.

It would be good to see Christine Vale, Second Gen White Blue and T'Ryssa Chen.

I'd love it if we got even a background cameo of the Early Voyages comic book characters in the new Strange New Worlds show.

 

[Antant123]

Before the new era of TV shows, I'd have said everything from Destiny onward.

Now? There needs to be a Star Wars type division into formally accepted Canon books (essentially being everything published from the launch of Discovery onward), and Legends, being everything else.

 

[Christopher]

Now? There needs to be a Star Wars type division into formally accepted Canon books (essentially being everything published from the launch of Discovery onward), and Legends, being everything else.

Star Trek doesn't do "canon books." Heck, even Star Wars is free to ignore and contradict the tie-ins that it pretends are canonical. At least Trek is honest about it.

And there is no single "everything else" either. Star Trek books have historically rarely bothered to be in continuity with each other, and those that were have been overwritten by new continuity on previous occasions. This is just the way tie-ins usually work, the way Trek tie-ins have always worked. People keep assuming Star Wars is the default, and that's just not realistic.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

When anything originating in a tie-in novel to a television (or cinema, or comic book, for that matter) franchise is made canonical, it is a rare and special moment, to be celebrated. It means that the canonical writers of the franchise, and the arbiters of what is and is not canon in the franchise, have seen and recognized that a tie-in writer has come up with something really good.

And the same is true, for that matter, when the primary canon of a franchise is prose fiction, and the television/cinema/comic is the tie-in.

What is not ok is when pop culture treats the tie-in as "senior" to the canon. Which is why I have a perpetual bee-in-the-bonnet about cinematic Oz in general, and the 1939 MGM musical Oz in particular: changes made for the movie, that directly contradict the novels for no good reason, that are pointless at best (e.g., "ruby slippers," for the sake of Technicolor), and detrimental to the story at worst (e.g., "Oz is a dream," which lowered the stakes to zero), have insinuated themselves so deeply into popular culture that even when somebody endeavors to do a cinematic version of Oz that's "less wrong" (e.g., 1985's Return to Oz), they feel pressured to at least acknowledge those changes.

There is a reason why canon is canon, and tie-ins are tie-ins, and why even when multiple formats are considered canon, some must remain senior to others.

(And then there's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where every new format is considered independently canonical, and is all-but-required to contradict previous formats.)

 

[The Wormhole]

a Star Wars type division into formally accepted Canon books

I should think The Bad Batch has recently proven that even in Star Wars, the comics aren't canon, and presumably neither are the novels.

 

[Christopher]

When anything originating in a tie-in novel to a television (or cinema, or comic book, for that matter) franchise is made canonical, it is a rare and special moment, to be celebrated. It means that the canonical writers of the franchise, and the arbiters of what is and is not canon in the franchise, have seen and recognized that a tie-in writer has come up with something really good.

I think that's romanticizing it needlessly. Storytellers take ideas from any number of sources. If they find something useful, they use it. Particularly in TV, with all its pressures to produce, grabbing useful ideas from outside may be a matter of pragmatism rather than some kind of sentimental exercise in bequeathing honors. Sometimes it's just a matter of convenience or luck, like how Peter David happened to be on the set of The Undiscovered Country at the right time to suggest that they use "Hikaru" as Sulu's first name.

What is not ok is when pop culture treats the tie-in as "senior" to the canon. Which is why I have a perpetual bee-in-the-bonnet about cinematic Oz in general, and the 1939 MGM musical Oz in particular: changes made for the movie, that directly contradict the novels for no good reason, that are pointless at best (e.g., "ruby slippers," for the sake of Technicolor), and detrimental to the story at worst (e.g., "Oz is a dream," which lowered the stakes to zero), have insinuated themselves so deeply into popular culture that even when somebody endeavors to do a cinematic version of Oz that's "less wrong" (e.g., 1985's Return to Oz), they feel pressured to at least acknowledge those changes.

There is a reason why canon is canon, and tie-ins are tie-ins, and why even when multiple formats are considered canon, some must remain senior to others.

I reject that kind of elitism. This isn't religion, it's entertainment. People have a right to enjoy whatever moves them. It doesn't have to be the same thing that's meaningful to you or me, as long as it means something to them. Sure, we should try to inspire people to seek out works we find valuable or important, encourage them to gain a pleasurable experience if we think they're missing out, but shaming them for not liking the same things we do is just obnoxious gatekeeping, the same kind of crap that people in the mainstream constantly use to mock and dismiss those of us who enjoy science fiction or comics or television.

And let's face it, movie and TV adaptations are always, always going to draw in a far bigger audience than the original books. I tend to agree with Greg Cox's view on this -- instead of treating it as a competition, we should be grateful that at least some small percentage of that huge audience will be curious enough to seek out the books, which will bring them new readers they didn't have before. Yes, it's a tiny fraction of the whole, but the whole of the movie audience is so big that it's quite a few readers gained by prose standards.

(And then there's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where every new format is considered independently canonical, and is all-but-required to contradict previous formats.)

Historically, telling a new version of a story in each distinct iteration is more the norm than the exception.

 

[Antant123]

Elitism? Seniority?

At the end of the day they are all fictional novelizations of a fictional televisual world. The reason i suggest CBS, Paramount or whoever actually owns Star Trek, implement a Star Wars esq division of the book universe into Canon and Legends, is purely for a matter of ease and simplicity. None of which is to suggest the `legends` books are viewed as worse than the Canon books-infact Id say the Destiny books are incomparably better than any of the recent tie in books. But clarity in the canon, reduced confusion etc, is not a bad thing.

 

[JD]

The easiest way to handle it is the way they do now, it's only going to start getting more confusing if they start saying somethings are "canon" and some things aren't. There are just way to many different independent tie-ins out there to try to any of them canon.
And it doesn't really matter anyways since, as Star Wars just proved with the first episode of The Bad Batch, even when they say the tie-ins are "canon", that's not going to stop them from contradicting them anyways.

When anything originating in a tie-in novel to a television (or cinema, or comic book, for that matter) franchise is made canonical, it is a rare and special moment, to be celebrated. It means that the canonical writers of the franchise, and the arbiters of what is and is not canon in the franchise, have seen and recognized that a tie-in writer has come up with something really good.

And the same is true, for that matter, when the primary canon of a franchise is prose fiction, and the television/cinema/comic is the tie-in.

Not necessarily, it just means the person writing it just happens to like that thing, and the people above them were OK with the thing being in there.

What is not ok is when pop culture treats the tie-in as "senior" to the canon. Which is why I have a perpetual bee-in-the-bonnet about cinematic Oz in general, and the 1939 MGM musical Oz in particular: changes made for the movie, that directly contradict the novels for no good reason, that are pointless at best (e.g., "ruby slippers," for the sake of Technicolor), and detrimental to the story at worst (e.g., "Oz is a dream," which lowered the stakes to zero), have insinuated themselves so deeply into popular culture that even when somebody endeavors to do a cinematic version of Oz that's "less wrong" (e.g., 1985's Return to Oz), they feel pressured to at least acknowledge those changes.

There is a reason why canon is canon, and tie-ins are tie-ins, and why even when multiple formats are considered canon, some must remain senior to others.

I don't think you can count adaptations like movies or TV shows as tie ins, tie-ins have a very specific set of rules and limitations that they have to follow, and have to go through a whole series of approvals. Movies and TV shows are adaptations, and are pretty much free to do whatever the hell they want. We are starting to see the original creators or license holders taking a more hands of role in the adaptations, but even they aren't limiting them the way they tend to with tie-ins.
And the most popular versions of a thing is always going to take priority. Once the movie or TV shows have drawn a bigger crowd in, they are going to want to give them something recognizable when they check out the other versions. That's why have things like Ian Malcom dying in the Jurassic Park novel, and then being alive in The Lost World novel, or the original white Nick Fury having a black son named Nick Fury Jr. who took over his role in the Marvel comics.

 

[Christopher]

But clarity in the canon, reduced confusion etc, is not a bad thing.

There's nothing to be confused over, because it's really quite simple. The shows and films are the canon, by definition -- the original works by the original creators/owners. The books and comics are not part of the canon, by definition, because they are from outside creators. Tie-ins try to be consistent with the canon as it exists at the time of publication, to be faithful to the original that they're imitating; but they are just conjectures of what might have happened between or beyond the canon works. If the canon is history, tie-ins are historical fiction.

As I said, Trek books have been overwritten by new screen continuity many times before, and they inevitably will be again. So any attempt to draw a bright line between what "used to be" consistent and what's "now" consistent is bound to be rendered obsolete in the long run when even the newer stuff starts to be contradicted.

And it doesn't really matter anyways since, as Star Wars just proved with the first episode of The Bad Batch, even when they say the tie-ins are "canon", that's not going to stop them from contradicting them anyways.

Of course, canons are perfectly free to contradict themselves. Dallas retconned away a whole season as "just a dream." Marvel Comics constantly rewrites its heroes' origin stories to update them in time. Canon is never a guarantee of consistency, because even a canon is just a story, and if you're pretending, you can always change what you pretend.

I don't think you can count adaptations like movies or TV shows as tie ins, tie-ins have a very specific set of rules and limitations that they have to follow, and have to go through a whole series of approvals. Movies and TV shows are adaptations, and are pretty much free to do whatever the hell they want. We are starting to see the original creators or license holders taking a more hands of role in the adaptations, but even they aren't limiting them the way they tend to with tie-ins.

Yeah, I think that's true. Tie-ins usually pretend to be set in the same reality as the thing they're adapting, to be just more stories in between or after the main ones. Adaptations tell new, distinct versions that aren't meant to be in continuity with the original, that take the ingredients of the original and put them together in a new way to create a new work.

Adaptations that purport to be in continuity with the source material are quite rare. I think the Watchmen TV series qualifies, as it's meant to be a direct sequel to the comic, though it's out of continuity with the comics sequels that DC did around the same time. The first live-action Ben 10 TV movie purported to be in continuity with the animated series, but it was later retconned by the series as a parallel universe. I think those come closer to being tie-ins than most adaptations, since they're new stories in the same sequence rather than retellings of pre-existing stories.

And the most popular versions of a thing is always going to take priority. Once the movie or TV shows have drawn a bigger crowd in, they are going to want to give them something recognizable when they check out the other versions. That's why have things like Ian Malcom dying in the Jurassic Park novel, and then being alive in The Lost World novel, or the original white Nick Fury having a black son named Nick Fury Jr. who took over his role in the Marvel comics.

The sequel to the original Logan's Run novel opened by quickly undoing the ending of the original novel to make the status quo closer to the entirely different ending of the movie, because most of its readers would be more familiar with the movie. Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2010 was a sequel to the movie 2001 rather than the book version (although Clarke almost never had continuity among his different novels or stories anyway).

 

[Tuskin38]

The sequel to the original Logan's Run novel opened by quickly undoing the ending of the original novel to make the status quo closer to the entirely different ending of the movie, because most of its readers would be more familiar with the movie. Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2010 was a sequel to the movie 2001 rather than the book version (although Clarke almost never had continuity among his different novels or stories anyway).

Yeah, and didn't 3001 retcon parts both of them?

 

[The Wormhole]

But clarity in the canon, reduced confusion etc, is not a bad thing.

What's so confusing? Shows and movies are canon, nothing else is. Pretty clear and simple and not at all confusing.

 

[thribs]

That Picard kept control of the Enterprise and remained Captain until 2390.
Captain Ezri and the Aventine is another

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, and didn't 3001 retcon parts both of them?

I wouldn't call it a retcon, since Clarke didn't really pretend they were in continuity with each other. He approached the four books in the series more as alternative takes on the same characters and ideas. As I said, Clarke didn't have much use for continuity.

 

[Oddish]

Yeah, and didn't 3001 retcon parts both of them?

Clarke has stated that all four of his 2001 series novels take place in similar but seperate timelines.

 

[DarKush]

There's quite a few things I would like to see canon and I'm sure I will be repeating a lot of what others have said. Some that come to mind:
-Andorian and Romulans: I think Trek Lit. has done a very good job developing cultures and histories for both that make them stand out and add something different to the Trek universe. I give ST: Picard some credit for fleshing out Romulan culture more than the other Trek series, and Chabon definitely has thoughts about Romulan history and culture, but I still prefer what has been done with the Romulans in Trek Lit.
-QuchHa' and HemQuch: I just think those are cool terms that should be canonized in live action.
-Left Hand of Destiny: Would be an epic way to revisit the DS9 characters and catch up with the Klingons after the Dominion War.
-The Typhon Pact: I think the Typhon Pact would work very well in ST: Picard as an enemy. I also think the Typhon Pact could work on ST: Discovery as well, though I would like to see them develop the Emerald Chain more.
-Star Trek: Early Voyages: I know it can't be a straight adaptation, but I would love for Strange New Worlds to look to that comic for inspiration when it comes to characters and stories. A lot of good stuff is there to build on.
-Lost Era: Lot of good stories here that could be used for Short Treks or seeds could be planted in Strange New Worlds, and could've blossomed by the time of Discovery.
-Section 31: Don't know what will happen with the proposed television series, but it would be neat to look to the novels for inspiration.
-The Good That Men Do/The Romulan War: I really liked The Good That Men Do, but bailed on The Romulan War novels, however, I'm thinking more so just revisiting that era and giving ENT a proper send off as a miniseries, on Strange New Worlds, or in some Short Treks.
-IDW Mirror series: I think this would be a fun way to explore the Mirror Universe again with twisted takes on revered characters. It could be a way to have a TNG reunion (and perhaps VOY and DS9 too) without having to worry about Prime canon concerns.

 

[FederationHistorian]

Nothing. Allow the books to have their own universe.

You offer a fair point here.

In regards to the Earth-Romulan War for example, there are a number of good ideas that seem believable (series of small battles featuring on average 3 ships for both sides, and the larger battles featuring 9-18 ships on each side, guerrilla tactics like using smaller asteroids to collide with planets to prevent Romulans consolidating their positions, “Fortress Earth” policy, Battle of Algeron as the start of the war, the Devastation of Coridan III in the lead up to the war, Daedalus class housing MACO dropships, space battles tending to be very short for its era). However, there are a number of ideas that should just be left to the books.

- The overreliance of coalition forces aiding Earth. I think it would work better to follow TOS and just keep it between Earth and its colonies against the Romulans for the majority of the conflict.

- The involvement of the Vissians. Being in active combat against the Romulans makes no sense. Since, based on the tech level of the Vissians seen in Enterprise, it would likely be the equivalent of a Galaxy class vessel against a bunch of Lysian vessels. The conflict would be over very quickly. Plus, it would bring up the cogenitor incident and would draw away from the conflict. Seeing Archer choosing to protect Trip from Vissian law over creating an alliance with the Vissians to end the war quicker would have made for a excellent episode of Enterprise if the show continued, but I don’t think the Vissians fit very well here.

- Klingons aiding Starfleet at the Battle of Cheron, which contradicts its own established canon!

Some ideas really are better left to their own universe.

Is that the transporter psychosis that Barclay was worried about?

That would definitely make a lot of sense to me, if it were to be left untreated.

 

[Antant123]

I think the books and indeed other media such as STO, could be mined heavily if only partially for sources for the shows.

The two basic premise of the Destiny books (a massive genocidal Borg invasion and/or a Borg origin/resolution story) could be applied wholely or in part to practically any time between Picard and The Burn-you could even have some sort of Borg invasion become a Sub Plot of the Temporal wars.

Similarly, the STO treatment of post supernova Romulan space, could be with suitable modification merged with the best aspects of the post Nemesis book universes treatment of the division of the Romulan Empire, and could then in turn lay the seeds for the formation of Ni'Var may centuries hence.

Cultural development of the other species is complex. The Ferengi seem unlikely even 1000 years after DS9 to do a 180 from ultra capitalist to communists, not when you consider the religious underpinning of their materialist ethics (real world Western civilisation is no less underpinned by Judeo Christian thinking than it was in 1021, we just view it through a different lense).

The Klingons, you could quite easily view as on a route from Space Vikings to Space Samurai. From brute violence, to by the time of their membership of the Federation (which would put restrictions on their capacity for overt violence), and eventually The Burn, highly ritualistic honour driven spirituality.