Spoilers CODA / Litverse-End unnecessary?

[Christopher]

I know, it’s the writers choice how things went, and I credit it them for doing it. But goddamn, when did optimism and potential turn into cynicism and despair?

Optimism doesn't always mean sunshine and roses. Optimism is most important when things are dark, when you need a ray of hope that things can get better, or at least that your own sacrifices make a positive difference for others. Think of "Yesterday's Enterprise" and the sacrifice the alternate E-D crew made to ensure that the E-C crew got back to where they needed to be to save their timeline. Was that cynical? Did you feel despair when Picard made his big history speech or leapt heroically over the railing as the music swelled? This is the same thing writ large. According to Coda, the canon timeline we now see on TV owes its continued existence to the bravery and sacrifice of the First Splinter characters.

Which can be read as a metatextual statement, a metaphor for how the fans' support of the novels and other tie-ins over the years helped sustain the franchise's popularity. And how the novels also started the career of Kirsten Beyer, who's gone on to contribute in major ways to the current screen canon. So the novels have had an influence on the canon even if it's subtle and largely invisible. The trilogy's events can be taken as a metaphor for that. It ended, but it still had an enduring impact.

 

[Pikekirk]

Why could the not leave it as a alternative universe like the myriad universes

 

[The Wormhole]

Why could the not leave it as a alternative universe like the myriad universes

You may have noticed there hasn't been a Myriad Universes book in over a decade. And even then, the Myriad Universes line has a grand total of three books. So how does it make any sense to you to continue a three book series a decade after the last one was published, just to keep something active that's being overruled by onscreen Canon.

Yes, I get it, the Litverse is what You like, and therefore it's more important than everything else, but that's not how these particular business decisions are made

 

[Airmandan]

Optimism doesn't always mean sunshine and roses. Optimism is most important when things are dark, when you need a ray of hope that things can get better, or at least that your own sacrifices make a positive difference for others. Think of "Yesterday's Enterprise" and the sacrifice the alternate E-D crew made to ensure that the E-C crew got back to where they needed to be to save their timeline. Was that cynical? Did you feel despair when Picard made his big history speech or leapt heroically over the railing as the music swelled? This is the same thing writ large. According to Coda, the canon timeline we now see on TV owes its continued existence to the bravery and sacrifice of the First Splinter characters.

Which can be read as a metatextual statement, a metaphor for how the fans' support of the novels and other tie-ins over the years helped sustain the franchise's popularity. And how the novels also started the career of Kirsten Beyer, who's gone on to contribute in major ways to the current screen canon. So the novels have had an influence on the canon even if it's subtle and largely invisible. The trilogy's events can be taken as a metaphor for that. It ended, but it still had an enduring impact.

That is a good point. And we do see more novel ideas that are popping up more frequently on screen, which I am more than happy for. I’m just sad to see this particular series’s come to an end. It got me through my times in Iraq and Afghanistan, so it’s a tough thing to see end. I can only hope that in whatever new book series we get, we can see some familiar faces come back, albeit in a new light.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Last evening, after putting up the third section of Christmas lights, I was listening (as usual) to From the Top (a weekly NPR-distributed broadcast "celebrating the power of music in the hands of today's kids"). Last evening's show was a "clip show," featuring performers from the archives (mostly from when Christopher O'Riley was host).

And one of the whiz-kids shared a bit of wisdom received from a teacher: You can't please everybody. But as long as you've provoked an emotional response in the audience, you have managed to reach them on some level, even if they hate it (a certain scene from Generations comes to mind).

 

[Christopher]

And one of the whiz-kids shared a bit of wisdom received from a teacher: You can't please everybody. But as long as you've provoked an emotional response in the audience, you have managed to reach them on some level, even if they hate it...

My view is that anything that evokes a strong positive reaction in some people will evoke a strong negative reaction in others. The only way to upset nobody is to be so bland that you delight nobody either. So anything truly worthwhile is going to have detractors. You just have to hope they're outnumbered by the people who loved it.

 

[Tuskin38]

You had a mentally 6 year old

Not at that point anymore. Wesley had merged him with versions of himself that were older.

 

[The Wormhole]

Not at that point anymore. Wesley had merged him with versions of himself that were older.

Eh, he still acted like he was six years old.

 

[JJMiller]

Regardless, it seems to me Star Wars Legends fans got the better end of the deal. Sure, there's no resolution, but should they desire they can still pretend those versions of the characters are still having their adventures on some other plain of existence.

Having been at ground zero of that change, I'd note that the contingent demanding a resolution was sizable despite the benefits you suggest — to the point that many still demand the release of a Christie Golden trilogy that was never written and wasn’t expected to resolve anything anyway.

And that brings us to a difference with Star Wars in general, which is that while every installment has its own ending, I can't envision a circumstance where a permanent "ending" story to any sets of characters' lives would appear. It's a Saturday-morning serial, open-ended by nature. The answer to "how will people know how those characters' lives turned out" is that they never would have found that out, any more than they'd have learned how Superman or Spider-Man's lives wrapped up. Marvel even has a "The End" sub-brand for alternate-reality finales for characters who otherwise will never, ever, get to appear in a final story.

I think what most of those fans are really asking for is just more stories with certain characters, and there are ways to do those without bringing a whole timeline in with them — as we've seen with Thrawn.

With regard to Trek, I'd say that the fact that the source material has deliberately incorporated series finales — and episodes like "Yesterday's Enterprise," punctuating an entire ship's untold stories— makes it more amenable to finales as a narrative choice in other media. For an extreme example of this in another franchise, I'd look to "The Night of the Doctor," the filmed mini-episode that wrapped up Paul McGann's audio drama adventures. Yes, his career could have been left open-ended (and I expect some would have liked that), but it's part of the nature of the parent series to show how each Doctor's career wrapped up, so it really would have been an outlier if we didn't see it.

 

[ATimson]

And that brings us to a difference with Star Wars in general, which is that while every installment has its own ending, I can't envision a circumstance where a permanent "ending" story to any sets of characters' lives would appear. It's a Saturday-morning serial, open-ended by nature. The answer to "how will people know how those characters' lives turned out" is that they never would have found that out, any more than they'd have learned how Superman or Spider-Man's lives wrapped up.

I dunno. The Unifying Force certainly felt like the original trilogy characters were going to retire gracefully afterwards. Yes, there would have been room for them to have cameos going forward; but their time as the main characters felt like it had been wrapped up. The books could have effectively become "Star Wars: The Next Generation" at that point.

(Of course, Legacy of the Force promptly came along and undid that...)

 

[dupersuper]

Have people forgotten Jingle All the Way?

We've tried...

 

[F. King Daniel]

I do wish Trek would be really brave and say, "you know how Batman movies and comics are their own seperate thing? That's how our Star Trek books and TV are gonna be."

I'm curious how many complaints S&S received about the novels once Picard premiered. Probably not many.

But accepting that they were going to end the novelverse, I'm glad it went out with a bang rather than just stopping.

 

[Christopher]

I do wish Trek would be really brave and say, "you know how Batman movies and comics are their own seperate thing? That's how our Star Trek books and TV are gonna be."

That analogy doesn't fit here, though, because there the comics are the original work, while movies have a much larger audience and are naturally going to do whatever they want. Indeed, even though the continuities are separate, comics have always, always followed the lead of their mass-media adaptations with larger audiences, e.g. Superman comics adopting Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, and kryptonite from the radio series, Batman comics adopting Harley Quinn and Renee Montoya from the '90s animated series, Ninja Turtles comics adopting the color-coded masks from the '80s animated series, Marvel adopting Phil Coulson from the movies/TV, even Archie Comics adopting Hot Dog from the '60s/'70s animated series. Even with the comics as the originals, it makes more sense for the incarnation with the smaller audience to follow the lead of the incarnation with the larger audience, because you want new readers to see things they find familiar. "Bravery" has nothing to do with it.

I'm curious how many complaints S&S received about the novels once Picard premiered. Probably not many.

"Complaints" have nothing to do with it either. Any new show is going to bring in a new audience. A supporting merchandise line for that show, like tie-in fiction, is going to be designed to appeal to that audience, to follow the lead of the show that brought them in to begin with. It would make no sense to do otherwise.


I still feel it's contradictory to look to tie-in fiction if you want something independent and fully self-defined. That's like shopping for cars and being disappointed that they can't float on a lake. If you want something that floats on a lake, shop for boats instead of cars. If you want fiction that's not beholden to anything but itself, then read original fiction instead of limiting yourself to media tie-ins.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I know all that, hence starting with, "I do wish"

 

[Enterprise1701]

That analogy doesn't fit here, though, because there the comics are the original work, while movies have a much larger audience and are naturally going to do whatever they want.

I don't think your analogy fits either considering DC and Marvel are always running various concurrent continuities in comics.

 

[Markonian]

Perhaps someday, some 50 to 100 years from now, we can have Siri/Alexa/Google rewrite every Star Trek novel and comic to fit the current continuity each time there's a shakeup.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think your analogy fits either considering DC and Marvel are always running various concurrent continuities in comics.

I'm not making an analogy. That's my whole point -- that it makes no sense to draw analogies between different fictional franchises, because each one is different and does things for its own reasons.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

If you want fiction that's not beholden to anything but itself, then read original fiction instead of limiting yourself to media tie-ins.

And if you want an entirely original and independent milieu that has much of the general flavor of Star Trek (i.e., an interstellar civilization in which many species are equal partners), you really can't go wrong with ADF's Humanx Commonwealth.

 

[Christopher]

And if you want an entirely original and independent milieu that has much of the general flavor of Star Trek (i.e., an interstellar civilization in which many species are equal partners), you really can't go wrong with ADF's Humanx Commonwealth.

Or Iain M. Banks's Culture series, though that gets somewhat darker and sometimes tends more toward Section 31 territory than Starfleet.

My own Arachne duology features such a civilization, but humans aren't part of it yet. The second book, Arachne's Exile, explores how that and other civilizations in the galaxy address "Prime Directive" questions, and the problems with their respective approaches.

 

[Stevil2001]

I do wish Trek would be really brave and say, "you know how Batman movies and comics are their own seperate thing? That's how our Star Trek books and TV are gonna be."

I'm curious how many complaints S&S received about the novels once Picard premiered. Probably not many.

But accepting that they were going to end the novelverse, I'm glad it went out with a bang rather than just stopping.

The most recent Buffy comics just do their own thing, reinventing the tv show.