Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Pike series and novel continuity

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds featuring Captain Christopher Pike and his crew is nearing premiere, so here is a dedicated thread for this Kurtzman-era series in relation to the non-canon expanded universe.

Related threads for other series streaming on Paramount+:
Star Trek: Discovery
Star Trek: Picard
Star Trek: Lower Decks
Star Trek: Prodigy

Non-screen works of note which we can anticipate to be overridden and/or homaged:
Star Trek (DC Comics)

• "Door in the Cage"

Star Trek: Early Voyages (Marvel Comics)

• #1-#17

Star Trek: Alien Spotlight (IDW Publishing)

• "Orions"

Star Trek: Captain's Log (IDW Publishing)

• "Pike"

Star Trek: Crew (IDW Publishing)

• #1-#5

Star Trek: The Original Series (Pocket Books)

• Enterprise: The First Adventure
• Vulcan's Glory
• The Rift
  
• Burning Dreams
  
• The Children of Kings
• Child of Two Worlds
• Legacies - Captain to Captain
  
• Legacies - Best Defense
  
• Legacies - Purgatory's Key
• The Captain's Oath

The Lives of Dax

• "Sins of the Mother"

Enterprise Logs

• "Conflicting Natures"

The Captain's Table

• Where Sea Meets Sky

Star Trek: Discovery (Pocket Books)

• Desperate Hours
• The Enterprise War

Star Trek: Discovery (IDW Publishing)

• Aftermath #1-#3

 

Well, Den of Geek describes a clip from the pilot that decisively contradicts Uhura's backstory from Living Memory. I figured that was likely to happen, but I didn't expect it so soon. Oh, well.

 

Don't forget the ENT relaunch and it's Aenar lore is in jeopardy with SNW introducing an Aenar regular.

Might be fun, once we get a concrete date for SNW (guessing a 2260 start? The last 5 before TOS) to compare dates with previous Pike novels to see if they plausibly fit into the new crew's continuity.

 

I try not to see it as jeopardy. What we do is basically speculative fiction within speculative fiction. As with science fiction in general, we just make our best guesses about how things might be. Sometimes those guesses turn out right -- e.g. "Tomorrow is Yesterday" correctly predicting what day of the week Apollo 11 was launched on -- and sometimes they turn out wrong -- e.g. "Tomorrow is Yesterday" predicting that we would've had a crewed mission to Saturn by now. It's just the way the game is played. If reality (or in this case, fictional reality) turns out different from what we conjectured, well, at least our conjectures are still (hopefully) entertaining guesses.

I'm guessing 2261. For one thing, Chapel's presence means it should be five years before season 1, since that's when she joined Starfleet to look for Roger Korby. For another, its premiere will be three years after the end of DSC season 2, which took place in 2258.

Most Pike-era novels have tended to cluster very tightly around "The Cage" in 2254, either before it or shortly after it. The only exceptions I can think of are Burning Dreams -- whose portrayal of Pike's father has already been contradicted by DSC -- and the flashbacks in TOS: Legacy. So most Pike novels and comics would probably be a considerable distance in the show's past.

 

Honestly, I'm not worried. As I've mentioned before, it's an occupational hazard. If you don't want your work overwritten by later writers, don't write franchise fiction. It comes with the territory.

And it's not as though they're going to stop selling those older books . . .

 

Or that those books are going to Thanos snap themselves off the bookshelves of those who have bought them. I mean, I have Vulcan’s Glory, Child of Two Worlds, and Desperate Hours all packed into the same general area of my shelves, despite all of them offering different views of Pike’s Enterprise and Spock’s background. They build on the same foundation, but canon after the fact has altered what and where they can build. It doesn’t particularly bother me as a reader, because I enjoy the stories.

 

Right? I actually enjoy doing readthroughs of things like that to get a feel for how the ideas of these characters and developments have evolved over time.

 

For me, until we're told otherwise, the ending of 'Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2', where the Enterprise sets out to explore the new moon around Edrin II is the start of the second five-year mission; so, that would be in mid to late-2258. If the second five-year mission were to conclude in 2263, that's enough time for the Enterprise to be refitted and Kirk to take command in 2264 as per the Okuda chronology.

 

Predictions I can make now:

SNW will almost certainly conclude with the juiciest plot thread possible for the premise: how James T. Kirk ascended to captaincy of the Enterprise. If and when this happens, then Enterprise: The First Adventure, My Brother's Keeper, Inception, and The Captain's Oath are all out.

Sadly for the Kurl parasite storyline from the DS9 2376 saga, Kurtzman canon is a very separate endeavour, and frankly I am surprised DIS season 1 and 2 did not make use of Emony or Audrid Dax. But nonetheless I anticipate The Lives of Dax - "Old Souls" and "Sins of the Mother" as well as The More Things Change by Scott Pearson are out.

I also cannot count upon them to make use of Christopher's neat and convenient Rigellian sorting from ENT - Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel, so that will probably be out when SNW does a flashback to the Kaylar of Rigel VII. I just hope they don't make Rigel the Beta Orionis star.

SNW will likely give details of Jabilo M'Benga differently from VAN by Dayton Ward, Kevin Dilmore, and David Mack.

SNW will probably also continue ENT's separation from TOS - The Eugenics Wars by Greg Cox in depicting La'an Noonien Singh as a descendant of Khan Noonien Singh. For better or for worse, subtlety is not the style I would anticipate from the Paramount+ team.

Plus:

As DIS has already solidly ignored DS9-ENT novel Andorian lore.

 

Eh? Granted, Disco hasn't really acknowledged the Litverse Andorian stuff too much, but I've seen no indication that it's been "solidly ignored." If anything, the people who make the props are at least acknowledging it, given Georgiou's diploma from the Laikan Military Academy. Lower Decks actually has an Andorian character with a name using the Litverse's naming conventions, so that's definitely not "solidly ignoring" things either.

 

Yeah, so far it's still entirely possible to interpret Andorians as having four sexes per the Litverse. Particularly given the existence of Jennifer sh'Reyan.

Edited to add:

It occurs to me that the Litverse's depiction of the Andorians as having four sexes might appeal to the team at Secret Hideout, since they've made it clear that representation of LGBTQIA+ people is a priority for them. Having an alien species coded as queer might appeal to them.

 

An interesting point. They have people on staff that are familiar with the novels, particularly Kirsten Beyer. The Andorian sexes as depicted in the novels might be a way for a new show to pay homage to the novels and is in line with their current priorities.

 

Which was built into the novels' approach to begin with. After all, two of the Andorian sexes look male and use "he" pronouns in English, while the other two look female and use "she" pronouns. So they outwardly appear to be just male and female, and the four-sex paradigm isn't really evident unless reproduction specifically comes up.

 

And, honestly, I have no problem with that. I never expected my books to be the last word on Khan. And, honestly, one would expect Khan to have some offspring, legitimate or otherwise.

 

I was referring more to your novels reconciliation of TOS references to Eugenics Wars devastation with reality by describing a behind-the-scenes war encompassing events occurring in real-world developing economies. Though, it will be interesting to see if or how Picard season 2 brings back Rain Robinson, survivor of peacetime Los Angeles of 1996.

 

We don't know that the Eugenics Wars didn't happen in "Future's End." After all, no war in the past century has been fought in the continental United States, so why would the Eugenics Wars have been any different?

 

Knock on wood when you say that.

 

The Eugenics Wars wrapped up almost thirty years ago, you know.

 

That was my point...

 

My point can't possibly be the same as yours, because you said "peacetime." My point is that the United States could still be in a state of war without Los Angeles suffering any damage, as was the case with WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. The intactness of the city does not prove that it's peacetime.