Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

Or they saw the endless Nhan puns we made for Discovery season 2 and wanted a slice.

 

A character name is hardly a spoiler, unless it's a secret identity. Still, what the heck:

Spoiler

It's Jennifer Sh'reyan. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Jennifer_Sh'reyan

 

It’s on CraveTV the same day it airs on CTV Sci-Fi, in fact like 14 hours before it airs.

Though I guess that would require you to have a Crave subscription.

 

This is purely my headcanon but I actually have a VANGUARD and THE TROUBLE WITH EDWARD crossover in my head even though the latter is now out of continuity. Edward was working on the tribbles as a biological weapon to be used against the Klingons the entire time and Captain Lucero tried to shut down this without knowing the full story. It was originally a Vanguard project, though, because that's where the TOS era loved shoving it nefarious plots.

 

In what way?

 

I meant former. The power of typos. My editor will now whip me.

 

How is Vanguard "out of continuity"? If you mean the minor details of M'Benga being part of Strange New Worlds, that's hardly an irreconcilable difference, and certainly not enough to render Vanguard wholly apocryphal.

 

Mostly because I assumed that the Novelverse would be starting over post-Coda. I love Vanguard and wish it was its own series.

 

I imagine it's mostly just the post-Nemesis novel continuity that will be starting over.
Until more shows pop-up pre-nemesis that contradict even more things.

 

Yeah. My ENT and TOS stuff are mostly fine now, but I figure it's only a matter of time before Strange New Worlds changes that.

 

Ah ha.

That's reassuring. I wasn't aware if they would be starting over-over or incorporating TOS and Pre-Relaunch books into the timeline.

 

I doubt it'll be anything so formal; it's just that until something's directly contradicted, readers are free to assume it still fits if they so choose. Heck, that's how I've always handled tie-ins since long before the modern Novelverse.

 

Exactly. It's not as though there's ever been an official memo stating which Trek novels still "count" or whatever. Or if there is, I've certainly never seen one. Or any other formal declaration along those lines.

It's funny. Some years back I referenced Ann Crispin's "Yesterday" books in a TOS novel. I thought this was no big deal, just a nice tip of the hat to a recently departed friend and colleague. Imagine my surprise when folks on the internet started posting excitedly about how those books had been officially "restored" to the "LitVerse" or whatever, as though this was some major executive policy decision of great import, that had sweeping implications for the entire Star Trek book line.

Um, no. That was just me, because it felt weird to revisit that planet without referencing Ann's classic books.

Honestly, it was news to me that the "Yesterday" novels were NOT considered in continuity by some readers. As far as I knew, they had never been contradicted by any subsequent movie or TV episode. And, again, if there's an "official" list of which books we could and could not reference anymore, I've never seen it -- and I've been writing Trek books for more than a quarter of a century now.

Are my older books apocryphal now? Who knows? Who cares? As far as I'm concerned, they still "count" as long as they stay in print and readers keep enjoying them. Or until some onscreen story contradicts them.

Which is the way it's always worked in the past.

 

As I understand it, there's an alien pontifex who determines which Star Trek media is canon or not and if you don't agree then it eats you. That's how we know the TOS animated series is canon again.

 

You should include a reference to one of the Gold Key comics in your next novel just to mess with people. Preferably one of the early ones that blatantly contradicts canon (rocket nacelles, exploring other galaxies, pink tricorders, wrong uniforms, blond Scotty, the whole works).

 

Blond Scotty was referenced by @Lonemagpie in Indistinguishable From Magic!!

 

There's also a reference to Galaxy Telpha-Z from "The Peril of Planet Quick Change" in The Future Begins, though it calls it a star cluster. (And the blonde Scotty reference was my idea!)

 

Time for Yesterday I kinda side-eye because it features a number of stars, including Alpha Centauri B, going nova due to the malfunctioning Guardian just before Star Trek II, and I never understood the novel to push the reset button on that. That said, nothing in canon contradicts the stellar events.

Her unpublished (and mostly unwritten) follow-up trilogy would have fit with canon. (It even features an appearance by Dulmer and Lucsly.) Had it been published circa 2006-7, I don't think anyone would have questioned the place of five book series in novelverse continuity. I think it's the age of the books that prompted that reader's question -- the assumption being, if it's old, it doesn't count, not understanding that writers are often in dialogue with one another through their works across decades.