Heh, no one saw my point. I should have figured.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Pike series and novel continuity
- Thread starter Enterprise1701
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When the showrunner tells the publisher "I will not be using this character on my show, go write a book with him in it" is the publisher supposed to say "we better not in case he gets fired in the next year and his successor has different plans" instead of writing the novel the guy in charge is telling them to write?
In addition to the point about how a showrunner who was no longer part of the show by the time it premiered was the one who requested the novel, there's also the simple fact that Strange New Worlds, a new series centered specifically on Pike's tenure as the captain of the Enterprise, was not even announced until well after the book's release - Strange New Worlds was announced about a year after The Captain's Oath was published, during the height of lockdown.
At the time anything surrounding The Captain's Oath as an individual work was handled, the most information we had was that Pike and company were going to be part of Discovery for a season - am I misremembering this, or didn't I read in the annotations that it was written before season two of Discovery even aired?
On that basis, there's no reason to believe that this WOULD have led to a spinoff - all through the first season (and, on occasion, still), I've seen plenty of complaints about Discovery having been set in a pre-Kirk timeframe, so it was questionable at that time if people would be interested in more 23rd century Trek or if it should have just focused on advancing the timeline (and, as it turns out, they ultimately decided on both).
Just to clarify, The Captain's Oath started when my editors asked me to pitch a “major” story in the TOS era now that they were switching to trade paperbacks — something more than just a routine adventure, but in the time frame of the 5-year mission, since that’s the perennial best seller. I tried to figure out what could be a "major" story within those limits, and I realized that the modern continuity didn't have a version of Kirk's first mission as Enterprise captain. CBS accepted my pitch with only one proviso, that I limit Kirk's pre-Enterprise command experience to one ship, presumably because The Making of Star Trek and "Where No Man Has Gone Before" mentioned only his first command and didn't specify any additional ones.
Just out of curiosity, how many pre-Enterprise commands did you envision in your original pitch?
I wanted two, the first being a more military mission and the second being an exploration vessel, to give Kirk a range of experience. I ended up doing pretty much exactly that, just with the same ship assigned to both missions with some downtime and crew reassignments in between.
And the first ship was going to be the Oxford, Kirk's first command from Howard Weinstein's "Star-Crossed Part 2" in the second DC Comics TOS run. Having two ships would've let me stay consistent with that story while also featuring my own ship.
You are almost at my point. Almost.
Sorry @Enterprise1701, but @The Wormhole is right and you're wrong. When you're a licensee and one of the higher-ups representing the property you're licensing specifically tells you to do a particular book, you do the particular book. Desperate Hours was a book that Bryan Fuller -- who at the time was the show-runner of Discovery -- told Simon & Schuster to go ahead do, because it covered ground he had no intention of covering.
It's the same reason why S&S did Jeri Taylor's Mosaic and Pathways. Yes, they were later contradicted by onscreen events once Taylor was no longer Voyager's show-runner, but at the time, she was the show-runner. By your logic, the editors at S&S should've told the show-runner of one of their licensors that they couldn't do her book, because she might leave the show and the book would be contradicted in some theoretical future.
Which is not how this work. Even a little bit.
It's the same reason why S&S did Jeri Taylor's Mosaic and Pathways. Yes, they were later contradicted by onscreen events once Taylor was no longer Voyager's show-runner, but at the time, she was the show-runner. By your logic, the editors at S&S should've told the show-runner of one of their licensors that they couldn't do her book, because she might leave the show and the book would be contradicted in some theoretical future.
Which is not how this work. Even a little bit.
The latest character trailer reveals M'Benga is a full commander and the Enterprise is the Starfleet flagship. What was his rank in Vangard?
Ugh, that's a concept that wasn't introduced until TNG, and it's a misuse of the term. A military ship is only a "flagship" if a flag officer is based aboard it or if it's the lead ship in a task force.
In Star Trek's world, it seems to mean "best of the best/publicity vehicle"
Starfleet isn't military, after all
We...MIGHT...actually be in luck on the Dr. M'Benga rank-issue, with regard to Strange New Worlds and Vanguard -- I recently re-read the first novel (Harbinger), and, in that book at least, there's absolutely no Starfleet-rank established for M'Benga; several times he's referred to as "young" and "boyish" (which might make a career spanning at least as far back as the 2250s problematic by 2265, in terms of appearance), but that one might be in the clear, although I don't remember offhand what the later novels mentioned on this.
The one thing that might be a tiny hangup is when he's talking to Dr. Piper about his desire for a starship-posting, where he seems to evidence no familiarity with the Enterprise herself, and also at one point M'Benga says something to the effect of, "I wonder if they'll even be interested in someone who did his internship in a Vulcan hospital?", to which Piper replies, "You haven't met our first officer, have you?"
But maybe this can be a bit of handwavium, depending on what SNW eventually does, here.
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In Star Trek's world, it seems to mean "best of the best/publicity vehicle"
Starfleet isn't military, after all
In TOS, it was. There was no single "flagship" -- the entire Constitution class represented the most powerful, versatile capital ships in the fleet, on the vanguard of frontier exploration and defense. The Enterprise was one of a dozen equally important ships. It didn't start out as exceptional -- it came to be seen that way in retrospect after the achievements of Kirk and his crew.
I still think it's likely that SNW takes place in 2261, based on the real-time interval since Discovery season 2 (set in 2258) and on the fact that its crew includes Christine Chapel, who joined Starfleet only 5 years before "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" They're obviously being flexible with prior canon, but the fact that the Chapel date aligns perfectly with the real-time interval is suggestive.
Anyway, my main question about these trailers is, what the hell is going on with Spock's sideburns?
There've already been several TOS novels which referred to the Enterprise as Starfleet's flagship. Behind the scenes information for Disco season 2 also called the Enterprise the flagship, though the closest they got onscreen was calling it Starfleet's most prominent ship. Like it or not, every Enterprise is now meant to be the flagship of Starfleet, apparently.
Though I have a suspicion in the 32nd century Voyager is probably the flagship, or at least one hell of a prestigious ship given the Federation President is personally responsible for selecting Voyager's Captain.
Just as some TOS novels have used terms like "away team" or "warp core" or "replicator." The TOS installment of the Gateways crossover assumed the transporter had a biofilter. People lose track of what ideas came from TOS and what came in TNG and later.
Heck, one of the SNW trailers showed Spock apparently mind-melding with La'an, so his "I've never used it on a human" from "Dagger of the Mind" is evidently toast. Which is exactly what I feared would happen sooner or later, but I didn't expect confirmation right off the bat.
It will only be a "Mind Semi-Meld". Praise be, Prime continuity preserved!!!
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