What's the worst non-canon decision in the history of Trek?

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by F. King Daniel, Jul 3, 2021.

  1. Steve Roby

    Steve Roby Rear Admiral Premium Member

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    Oh, yeah, Gene's Vision 2.0 definitely precedes TNG by years, but that's where it really became noticeable. It was developing during all those university lecture tours. Distinguishing himself from the Bennett/Meyer Trek was a big part of it, but the other factor was Roddenberry believing all the press he'd been getting about being a progressive visionary. His book Report From Earth was going to be a deep and meaningful look at how wonky human society would seem to an alien civilization, but the bits he trotted out during the lecture tour I saw him on were about as deep as a comedian saying, "What is it with airplane food anyway?" So the anti-military thing (and the utopian thing and the perfect humans thing) was, I think, as much about "hey, I'm a visionary and a deep thinker" as it was about "Wrath of Khan isn't my Star Trek." It's funny that the whole "we don't have money in the future" thing came from one of the GRless movies, though.
     
  2. David cgc

    David cgc Admiral Premium Member

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    I remember how Roddenberry was using the same hackneyed, “Richard Dawkins Has a Cold and is On Deadline” criticism of organized religion as both a trenchant insight from an intellectually superior Vulcan in “The God Thing” and as a dumb, superficial nitpick from the unenlightened in “Letter From a Network Censor,” both in the mid-to-late ‘70s.

    I was equal parts surprised and disappointed years ago when I actually figured out the dates involved and found that both those perspectives were written less than a year apart, so there probably wasn’t an accompanying epiphany shifting the thought from “insightful” to “stupid” (or vice-versa, I can’t remember which would’ve come first).
     
  3. Markonian

    Markonian Fleet Admiral Moderator

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    Coming back to the threat title:
    1. killing Janeway in the First Splinter timeline.
    2. The Denobulan resolution in the Picard biography.
    3. Coda wiping out TrekLit instead of retiring it to greener pastures.
     
  4. Richard S. Ta

    Richard S. Ta Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    This. I've only read about three Star Trek books, but even as a fan of the Litverse from a distance I don't see the need to go the route they did.
     
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2022
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  5. somebuddyX

    somebuddyX Commodore Commodore

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    I haven't ready any of the novels so I can't say about the execution but if Coda was basically the Ragnarok of the novelverse then I can't blame the writers for taking a swing at it. There is something fascinating about going out with a literal bang. On the one hand it's something I thought that would have been interesting to do just before Flashpoint or one of those DC comic book resets in the comics, with an all out epic battle between good and evil, but on the other I also was kind of upset when that sorta did go and happen to the Ultimate Universe and it was trashed like three or four times over it's life before getting blown to bits, and was stoked when Bendis brought it back at the end of Spider-Men 2.
     
  6. Captain's Coffee

    Captain's Coffee Commander Red Shirt

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    This, especially point 1. If someone wants to @ me that killing Janeway was the right thing to do, especially the way Peter David did it, I don't care that I'm a 5'6" 130-ish lbs woman I will challenge them to a sumo match to the death right then and there.

    I haven't read Coda, but I've read of Coda. And what I've read sound like a miserable slog and a shite way to send off the characters we've grown to know and love for hundreds of book, so I'm glad I waited until the trilogy was complete before deciding whether I should invest my time into it.
     
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  7. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    How would that work? I think it would only be possible if the ring were surrounded on all sides by a pit of spikes or something.
     
  8. David cgc

    David cgc Admiral Premium Member

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    Now, that’s the ultimate evolution of the martial arts!
     
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  9. Avro Arrow

    Avro Arrow Vice Admiral Moderator

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    But only if it has this playing over the speakers:

     
  10. Smiley

    Smiley Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I thought it was anbo-jitsu. Did "The Icarus Factor" lead me astray?
     
  11. XCV330

    XCV330 Premium Member

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    I would maybe use a more obscure (defunct) government initiative that had been setup purely for exploration but DID go armed. the US Corps of Discovery. It did fall under the military but (AFAIK) only its officers were military and its primary job was specific to the Lewis and Clark expedition. Of course it only ended up being attached to the Lewis and Clarke expedition.

    curiously, the National Geospace Intelligence Agency considers itself a spiritual successor, of sorts, to the CoD.
     
  12. DGCatAniSiri

    DGCatAniSiri Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    While I do agree that the way Peter David did it was not right, I will say, for the record that, right or wrong, Janeway’s death and how it was handled once KMFB got to explore the fallout... Those novels were helpful for me and processing my grandmother’s death right around that same time.

    It was a story I needed in that time, once the right author was telling the story. Whether that means it was the right thing period... Well, that’s a separate question.
     
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  13. dupersuper

    dupersuper Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Didn't she come back after that?
     
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  14. Captain's Coffee

    Captain's Coffee Commander Red Shirt

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    She did, but that doesn’t change the fact that Before Dishonor is atrocious and insulting. Also, when they originally killed her off it was with the intent that it would be permanent.
     
  15. Captain's Coffee

    Captain's Coffee Commander Red Shirt

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    trying to avoid the sumo match, I see :shifty:

    Joking aside, I, too, love some of the stories that resulted from her death, like Full Circle and The Eternal Tide.
     
  16. flandry84

    flandry84 Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I thought that the characters of Eden and Batiste were horribly treated.And even though the C.Golden introduced crew were rather bland they deserved better than the “Alpha flight” ending they received.
    Once the deadening presence of Janeway returned that was that for Voy-lit as far as I was concerned.
     
  17. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I wonder if that's true, given that both her death and her resurrection were editor Margaret Clark's ideas. It wouldn't be the only time that Margaret played a long game. When I wrote Greater than the Sum for her, she suggested I begin it with Picard and Crusher already married, to whet the readers' curiosity about the wedding as a setup for a later story focusing on it.
     
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  18. Vox24

    Vox24 Ensign Newbie

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    I agree that a bad decision was killing Janeway. I wasn't really reading the novels at that time (I picked up an occasional book but those were usually the ones set during the series proper) and when I saw this news it made me mad. I felt there was no way they would kill off Picard or Sisko or Kirk (if the movies hadn't already killed him). As a big Voyager and Janeway fan that made me stay away from the novels for a long time.

    I also agree with flandry84 that Beyer killing off all of Golden's character was bad. Sure, some of them I had never clicked with, but it left a bad taste in my mouth that the new author killed off all the previous author's character and then introduced her own, especially since I absolutely hated Cambridge. I mean, couldn't some of Golden's characters have transferred?

    Coda. Killing off the entire universe is something I will never agree with.

    The death of Jasminder Choudhury. I felt it was so unnecessary and seemed to exist to give Worf more pain (which he had enough of already) and to make the Breen commander seem like a bigger threat which didn't work since I can't even remember his name. It also came at a time when the Enterprise crew was finally stable after a lot of books with changing cast members. The fact that it was followed by two more somewhat prominent female deaths in the next two books in the trilogy, and then followed up by the death of yet another major female character in the first The Fall book was just a bad look. Note, I'm not accusing any of the authors of hating women or taking glee in killing them. It was just bad timing that they all died so quickly together.

    The New Frontier crew helping a race commit genocide because some members of that race did the same to Calhoun's people. New Frontier's crew were always a bit more morally ambiguous but that crossed the line for me, and I knew I would never read another NF book after that, which was made easier by the fact that was the last book.

    I was not a fan of how the Illiana Ghemor/Ascendants plot was finally wrapped up. I thought Ghemor made for a great villain and the Ascendants were this mysterious race I wanted to learn more about. The build-up was good but then when it is finally revealed what happened it just... peters out. The Ascendants and Ghemor don't really do anything. I was very disappointed.

    I didn't have as big of a problem with Sisko abandoning Kasidy and Rebecca as others did but that's partly because I didn't really have to wait to see how that played out. I knew he got back together with them. I still thought it was a bad plot to use with Sisko. I also didn't like that, before the time jump, Sisko still seemed to have a connection to the Prophets and at least an inkling about events to come and was active in trying to stop it. After the time jump Sisko is adamant that he is no longer the Emissary, has nothing to do with the Prophets, and has no way to help them deal with the Ascendants.
     
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  19. ThetaSigma

    ThetaSigma Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    I don't know Coda was a fun read once you realized just ho 'kill em all' it was and I sort of got the meta narrative they were going for - the novel characters had helped keep the franchise alive but had to die now the show was returning to the screen.

    All in all it has it's flaws, I think Ezri was killed too early and should have stuck around till the second book, the Worf K'Ehlyr thing was wrong on so many levels, I didn't like the way the other show's cast seemed expendable to get the TNG cast to the finish - they should have mixed them up a bit. Spock felt underutilized in book 3 where I'd been sure they were setting up a confrontation with Riker given all the references to Ambassadors have the equivalent of Vice-Admiral rank and Riker as only a Rear Admiral.

    I still think they should have left it ambiguous whether a version of the Splinter timeline could continue in our heads if we wanted but that's just me.

    Long story short, if you know what you're in for and sit back you can just enjoy the ride, I especially loved the whole 'Stealing the Enterprise' homage.
     
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  20. Enterprise1701

    Enterprise1701 Commodore Commodore

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    I don't quite get that reference. What did Marvel Comics do to Alpha Flight?