Hmm... Coda also brought DTI Agent Ranjea back to life after I (essentially) killed him off in Shield of the Gods. So that must mean the characters I created for Trek Lit can come back from the dead! There's hope for T'Ryssa after all!
Spoilers Coda Trilogy Discussion Thread
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I for one see no reason why future Star Trek novels can't establish that T'Ryssa Chen -- and Nan Bacco, and Elias Vaughn, and other First Splinter Timeline fan favorites -- lives in the Prime Timeline.
I like to imagine that in the Prime Timeline, Ishan Anjar is the President who banned synths and cancelled the Romulan Rescue Fleet after the Mars Attack and Nan Bacco was elected and legalized synths after the Battle of Coppelius.
Sorry for thread necromancy. Between working 8 days a week and trying to get caught up on the last few years of TrekLit, it's taken me a while to catch up and compile my thoughts. Add me to the list who didn't like Coda, not just for what it did or failed to do, but for the fact that the stated goal was already unnecessary.
I've always felt that this argument --and the wider comparison to the Star Wars Legends continuity-- is a false dichotomy; Star Wars has always presented itself (admittedly, not always successfully) as a single narrative continuity, but Star Trek has always embraced the idea of alternate timelines and parallel universes, ever since TOS (arguably) codified the concept of a "Mirror Universe" into pop culture.
What's interesting about Star Trek's particular take is that these parallel timelines seem to be actually parallel --meaning that something that happens in one universe (like a random group of people all being born and coming together on the same starship or station) will have "echoes" in another universe, and another, and so on.
Spock commented on this directly in the 2009 movie, and Worf saw it in "Parallels," where some of the alternate timelines were so similar that he didn't initially realize he'd shifted, but Discovery all but confirmed it by establishing that, by the 32nd century, the "Mirror" universe has diverged so much that it is no longer "accessible" (i.e., no longer a parallel universe, but just one other possibility out there in the limitless multiverse). We also see it in Star Trek Online, which draws inspiration from both the Relaunch novels and the "canon" timeline, but is still happily chugging along doing its own thing.
This means that, even if the Relaunch is incompatible with the official canon timeline, similar events could still have played out (and no doubt will in fanfic). There's a universe out there where the Cerritos gets caught up in the Borg invasion, or where Admiral Janeway is tracking down the Protostar from aboard the Vesta, or where retired Jean-Luc is helping René prepare for his Academy entrance exam when an amnesiac Lal shows up on their doorstep (and where Thaddeus Troi-Riker is trans, and still alive because Data was still around to save him).
(Hell, the Uraei Incident is an equally logical impetus for the AI ban, and tensions with the Typhon Pact could help explain the Federation's shift towards isolationism --and we've already seen Jean-Luc and Beverly contemplate retiring to Earth to raise René in a "safer" environment.)
I've always felt that this argument --and the wider comparison to the Star Wars Legends continuity-- is a false dichotomy; Star Wars has always presented itself (admittedly, not always successfully) as a single narrative continuity, but Star Trek has always embraced the idea of alternate timelines and parallel universes, ever since TOS (arguably) codified the concept of a "Mirror Universe" into pop culture.
What's interesting about Star Trek's particular take is that these parallel timelines seem to be actually parallel --meaning that something that happens in one universe (like a random group of people all being born and coming together on the same starship or station) will have "echoes" in another universe, and another, and so on.
Spock commented on this directly in the 2009 movie, and Worf saw it in "Parallels," where some of the alternate timelines were so similar that he didn't initially realize he'd shifted, but Discovery all but confirmed it by establishing that, by the 32nd century, the "Mirror" universe has diverged so much that it is no longer "accessible" (i.e., no longer a parallel universe, but just one other possibility out there in the limitless multiverse). We also see it in Star Trek Online, which draws inspiration from both the Relaunch novels and the "canon" timeline, but is still happily chugging along doing its own thing.
This means that, even if the Relaunch is incompatible with the official canon timeline, similar events could still have played out (and no doubt will in fanfic). There's a universe out there where the Cerritos gets caught up in the Borg invasion, or where Admiral Janeway is tracking down the Protostar from aboard the Vesta, or where retired Jean-Luc is helping René prepare for his Academy entrance exam when an amnesiac Lal shows up on their doorstep (and where Thaddeus Troi-Riker is trans, and still alive because Data was still around to save him).
(Hell, the Uraei Incident is an equally logical impetus for the AI ban, and tensions with the Typhon Pact could help explain the Federation's shift towards isolationism --and we've already seen Jean-Luc and Beverly contemplate retiring to Earth to raise René in a "safer" environment.)
More importantly, Star Trek tie-ins have just not tried to be in a single continuity. It's not even about "alternate timelines." That's merely a plot device within certain stories. It's just about the fact that stories are imaginary and speculative, and therefore are under no obligation to agree with each other. Continuity among stories is an option, not a requirement. Fiction is full of series of stories that share characters and concepts but make no pretense of being consistent with one another, because they're just different conjectural explorations of the same imaginary ideas. (For instance, all the contradictory Sherlock Holmes pastiches or Tarzan movies, all the distinct Godzilla continuities in the movies -- even the canonical Zorro stories by Johnston McCulley contradict each other to the point that they don't even agree on the hero's surname.) You don't need to waste energy handwaving about alternate universes to "explain" why stories aren't in continuity with each other. They aren't in continuity because they're imaginary and are free to imagine things in different ways.
I grew up reading Trek novels, comics, and stories that contradicted each other routinely, and I never needed to rationalize them as alternate universes, nor did I see other fans talking about any need to do so. It was just accepted that different works of fiction were imaginary and thus continuity among them was optional. The conceit of "explaining" different imaginary interpretations of a fictional premise by claiming they're alternate timelines in the multiverse is a fairly recent phenomenon. I mean, it was used in some contexts in the past, notably in DC Comics in the '60s onward, but it seems to be only in the past decade or two that fandom seems to have started assuming that it's somehow required to invoke alternate timelines to account for incompatible continuities in any and all franchises.
Oh, that's not particular to Trek at all -- it's the general way the conceit is used in "multiverse" franchises. Look at the DC or Marvel "multiverse," where there are multiple separate continuities where, say, Krypton always explodes with Kal-El being the only survivor and being found by Ma and Pa Kent, or Peter Parker always gets bitten by a radioactive spider, no matter how much else is different about the chronology and the specific events surrounding them.
Well, those are hardly the same thing. The Kelvin movies posited the implausible premise that the same crew came together nearly a decade earlier despite the timelines being massively different due to a diverging event decades earlier, because some kind of nebulous probability force was pushing them back toward convergence. In "Parallels," the idea was that new timelines branched off all the time due to only minor changes, and the early timelines Worf visited were ones where the divergence had happened only hours or days before so very little was different, but then he moved into progressively more distant timelines that had diverged earlier and more radically. So they're basically opposite models.
The point is not about how many survivors there are, the point is that the same basic events happen in every "timeline," because every "timeline" is just another retelling of the fiction. So it's incorrect to say that trope is "particular to Trek." It's true of every franchise that chooses to interpret its different adaptations and reboots as alternate timelines, as has become trendy in recent years.
It's just a fun rationalisation, and doesn't need to make any more sense than all aliens in Trek being humans with silly forehead bumps.
They explained that one.
Star Trek is the only series I know to specifically address aliens both having and not-having bumpy foreheads.
Though there are also continuities (the 90s Batman movies, the original Flash TV series, Watchmen, Wildstorm), where Krypton either wasn't destroyed or never existed in the first place, resulting in a world without Superman. There are also near-future post-apocalyptic settings (the Kamandi or Jonah Hex miniseries), alternate history settings (Elseworlds, Bombshells), cross-brand crossovers (Milestone Comics), and even the implication that the Marvel and DC multiverses are themselves reflections of each other (Amalgam). And of course the whole point of the New52 Multiverse (and the retroactive significance of the Pre-Crisis era) is that things aren't parallel; there are multiple worlds where "Superman" either doesn't exist or has a wildly different origin.
That's overthinking it. Those are merely adaptations of works of fiction other than Superman, so Superman is not part of their narrative one way or the other. The conceit that they represent parallel timelines in some multiverse is merely a device used in certain metatextual stories that reference those stories after the fact.
Again, though, my point is not to nitpick the exact details of how the trope is or isn't used, but merely to correct the misstatement that it is unique to Star Trek. If anything, Trek is a latecomer in its use.
So, I missed out on a few books that came out before Coda (Available Light, Collateral Dame, Fortune Of War). They are not easily available in the Netherlands anymore.
Can I go into Coda without reading those novels? Or will I miss out too much for it all to make sense?
Can I go into Coda without reading those novels? Or will I miss out too much for it all to make sense?
I think Im completely up to date on the S31 stuff. So that helps. Thanks!
Each Coda novel also has a recap of relevant plot points from previous novels at the start.
