Absolutely agree! The Autobiography of James T. Kirk was the best backstory I had ever seen for him - it's in my head canon for sure!
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Which Trek novels are in your personal headcanon?
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Absolutely agree! The Autobiography of James T. Kirk was the best backstory I had ever seen for him - it's in my head canon for sure!
Both great books, but I tend to cherry-pick bits 'n' pieces from them for my personal continuity if there are discrepancies with other works. For example, in Federation: The First 150 Years, there's the bit about the 2293 theft and disappearance/destruction of the USS Yorktown, which contradicts the TNG hardcover Crossover. On the other hand, there's the bit about President Hiram Roth surviving and handing power over to Ra-ghoratreii, which tracks better with the DC Comics series (as opposed to Keith's Articles of the Federation), for instance. And so on.
Whichever one I happen to be reading at the time.
Interesting question.
Well for me, kind of like your choice of "Federation", "Starfleet Year One" is how I see the beginning of the Federation, not the trash we got in "Star Trek: Enterprise".
Other books would include the TNG & Voyager Star Fleet Academy series, Vendetta, Survivors (with edits to include Ishara Yar), Grounded, except for "Ashes Of Eden", all the William Shatner novels, all the Voyager novels published since 1995, the Q Continuum books and the DS9/TNG post-series books (except for "Indistinguishable From Magic" and any e-books).
Most of the post-Nemesis relaunch novels, especially those covering the period from 2380 and to the "present" (2386).
Here is a summary of how the "broad strokes" of the Abramsverse, ADF's Star Trek Log Seven (L7P), DC's Final Frontier (FF) and Best Destiny (BD), VM's Enterprise: The First Advanture (E), and a flashback in (I think) JMD's The Lost Years BF's A Flag Full of Stars all fit into my headcanon (citations added; I expected everybody to be familiar enough with the source material to recognize what was implicitly synopsis of existing material and what was speculation, but this is hardly the first time I've assumed all readers would share my background):
Updated 10/18/2023, to correct my faulty recollections of the Tarsus IV flashback in A Flag Full of Stars.
Tiberius Kirk is a farmer in Iowa, around the time of the founding of the Federation. He was born at the time of a local fad of naming children after well-known ancients (there was an "uncle joke" in an episode of Welcome Back, Kotter that did this, involving a tailor named Euripides Feldman; the punchline was "Euripides?!" "Yeah! You menda dese?") (Speculation, but I recall something establishing a grandfather named Tiberius)
Tiberius has a son, George Samuel Kirk. George isn't interested in taking over the family farm; he worships Jonathan Archer, and wants to join Starfleet. He also worships the literal "girl next door" (even if "next door" is over a kilometer away), a young woman named Winona. Winona is a born farmer, and a born agronomist. The two marry while he's a cadet at Starfleet Academy San Francisco, and she's a University student (picking up various degrees from Iowa State, University of Iowa, Cal Poly SLO, and UC Davis); when their parents retire, she combines the two adjacent farms, farming (in the old measurements) some thirty quarter-sections. They have a son, George Samuel "Sam" Kirk, Jr. (Still speculation, but Winona is established as running the farm)
George Sr. takes a lot of ground and near-space assignments, wanting to be close to home for Winona and Sam, and at some point, he's mentored by a young officer named Robert April. Eventually, Starfleet gives him a deep space assignment, though, basically giving him a choice between 14 months on a science vessel, the USS Kelvin, or resigning his commission with an honorable discharge. They also encourage him to take Winona along as a civilian consultant. James T. Kirk is conceived some 4 months into the mission, and is born right about the time the Kelvin starts to head for home. (Speculation and the Kelvin scenes of ST09)
We all know what happens in the Abramsverse: George Kirk sacrifices his life to allow the crew of the Kelvin to escape, and in the wake of an attack by an apparently Romulan vessel of immense size and power, the Constitution Class plans are scuttled, in favor of a bigger, beefier, more heavily armed design, and the new ships are assembled in an Iowa cornfield, instead of in orbit, to better hide them from Romulan spies. And of course, James T. Kirk grows up without a father to rein in his juvenile delinquent tendencies, and resenting a stepfather who apparently cares more about his antique hydrocarbon-fueled vehicle collection than about his stepson. (ST09, and a bit of speculation about who is angry about the car)
But this isn't about the Abramsverse. In the Prime Universe, everybody aboard the Kelvin returns home, and George Kirk takes some much-needed leave before returning to ground and near-space assignments. And meanwhile, Robert April gets introduced to the Constitution Class plans, the first capital ships to be built truly under the UFP banner, and informed that he is to be the first captain of the first Constitution class ship.
(L7P, and the situation at the beginning of FF)
The first ship to have its keel laid is, of course, the Constitution. But production problems and technology changes result in a second, unnamed ship pulling ahead. Then Starfleet Command gets wind that a vessel, the Rosenberg, has been disabled by, and stranded in, an ion storm, with no hope of rescue . . . unless a Constitution class ship can be rushed out of the shipyard. (FF)
George has become Chief of Security at Starbase 2, with his protege, Francis Drake Reed (proudly, fiercely, from the West Indies, but possibly also a descendant of Malcolm Reed), from whom he'd picked up the nickname "Geordie." April has him shanghaied for the rescue mission. Which immediately goes awry, thanks to the machinations of a Romulan deep-cover agent. They eventually manage to escape (picking up a high-ranking Romulan defector in the process) and complete the rescue, but because the Federation was not ready to know that the Romulans originated as a Vulcan offshoot, everybody is sworn to secrecy, and that aspect of the mission is classified. At "Geordie" Kirk's suggestion, the new ship is named Enterprise, and it is completed and launched. (FF)
"Geordie" Kirk returns to near-space assignments. Winona, Sam, and Jimmy visit Tarsus IV on their way to a rendezvous with Dad. (Is there some other bit of TrekLit that establishes Winona as being there to help deal with the famine?)takes Jimmy along on what was expected to be a working vacation: a trip to Tarsus IV, to deal with a massive crop failure. Jimmy ends up witnessing the massacre, and saving the life of a young orphan, Kevin Thomas Riley, and ends up permanently scarred, and severely disillusioned about space. (My recollections of the flashback in A Flag Full of Stars)
Some time later, he begins running with a youth gang, and they run away from home, with the intention of signing aboard an oceangoing freighter. Geordie catches them, and arranges with April to take his son along on a "milk run" mission aboard the Enterprise. That, of course, turns into another monument to Murphy's Law, but James T. Kirk is no longer a juvenile delinquent. (BD)
April never commands a 5-year mission; he'd grown to realize that he was too much of an idealist. Pike commands several. On his first, he gets stuck in the Kalar Wars on Rigel VII, and then gets captured by the Talosians; his second is, of course, chronicled in SNW. (end of FF; "The Cage," and SNW season 1)
Oh, yes, and when Kirk finally gets the Enterprise, his first assignment is a milk-run, that involves ferrying a vaudeville troupe. (E) When trouble manages to find him anyway, he handles it so well that he's sent on an extragalactic probe. When he discovers an unexplained barrier, he ends up burying his best friend, delaying the official start of his first 5-year mission by several months, and causing massive head-scratching among astrophysicists and cosmologists, although he does at least find out, without much detail, what happened to the Valiant. ("Where No Man Has Gone Before")
Tiberius has a son, George Samuel Kirk. George isn't interested in taking over the family farm; he worships Jonathan Archer, and wants to join Starfleet. He also worships the literal "girl next door" (even if "next door" is over a kilometer away), a young woman named Winona. Winona is a born farmer, and a born agronomist. The two marry while he's a cadet at Starfleet Academy San Francisco, and she's a University student (picking up various degrees from Iowa State, University of Iowa, Cal Poly SLO, and UC Davis); when their parents retire, she combines the two adjacent farms, farming (in the old measurements) some thirty quarter-sections. They have a son, George Samuel "Sam" Kirk, Jr. (Still speculation, but Winona is established as running the farm)
George Sr. takes a lot of ground and near-space assignments, wanting to be close to home for Winona and Sam, and at some point, he's mentored by a young officer named Robert April. Eventually, Starfleet gives him a deep space assignment, though, basically giving him a choice between 14 months on a science vessel, the USS Kelvin, or resigning his commission with an honorable discharge. They also encourage him to take Winona along as a civilian consultant. James T. Kirk is conceived some 4 months into the mission, and is born right about the time the Kelvin starts to head for home. (Speculation and the Kelvin scenes of ST09)
We all know what happens in the Abramsverse: George Kirk sacrifices his life to allow the crew of the Kelvin to escape, and in the wake of an attack by an apparently Romulan vessel of immense size and power, the Constitution Class plans are scuttled, in favor of a bigger, beefier, more heavily armed design, and the new ships are assembled in an Iowa cornfield, instead of in orbit, to better hide them from Romulan spies. And of course, James T. Kirk grows up without a father to rein in his juvenile delinquent tendencies, and resenting a stepfather who apparently cares more about his antique hydrocarbon-fueled vehicle collection than about his stepson. (ST09, and a bit of speculation about who is angry about the car)
But this isn't about the Abramsverse. In the Prime Universe, everybody aboard the Kelvin returns home, and George Kirk takes some much-needed leave before returning to ground and near-space assignments. And meanwhile, Robert April gets introduced to the Constitution Class plans, the first capital ships to be built truly under the UFP banner, and informed that he is to be the first captain of the first Constitution class ship.
(L7P, and the situation at the beginning of FF)
The first ship to have its keel laid is, of course, the Constitution. But production problems and technology changes result in a second, unnamed ship pulling ahead. Then Starfleet Command gets wind that a vessel, the Rosenberg, has been disabled by, and stranded in, an ion storm, with no hope of rescue . . . unless a Constitution class ship can be rushed out of the shipyard. (FF)
George has become Chief of Security at Starbase 2, with his protege, Francis Drake Reed (proudly, fiercely, from the West Indies, but possibly also a descendant of Malcolm Reed), from whom he'd picked up the nickname "Geordie." April has him shanghaied for the rescue mission. Which immediately goes awry, thanks to the machinations of a Romulan deep-cover agent. They eventually manage to escape (picking up a high-ranking Romulan defector in the process) and complete the rescue, but because the Federation was not ready to know that the Romulans originated as a Vulcan offshoot, everybody is sworn to secrecy, and that aspect of the mission is classified. At "Geordie" Kirk's suggestion, the new ship is named Enterprise, and it is completed and launched. (FF)
"Geordie" Kirk returns to near-space assignments. Winona, Sam, and Jimmy visit Tarsus IV on their way to a rendezvous with Dad. (Is there some other bit of TrekLit that establishes Winona as being there to help deal with the famine?)
Some time later, he begins running with a youth gang, and they run away from home, with the intention of signing aboard an oceangoing freighter. Geordie catches them, and arranges with April to take his son along on a "milk run" mission aboard the Enterprise. That, of course, turns into another monument to Murphy's Law, but James T. Kirk is no longer a juvenile delinquent. (BD)
April never commands a 5-year mission; he'd grown to realize that he was too much of an idealist. Pike commands several. On his first, he gets stuck in the Kalar Wars on Rigel VII, and then gets captured by the Talosians; his second is, of course, chronicled in SNW. (end of FF; "The Cage," and SNW season 1)
Oh, yes, and when Kirk finally gets the Enterprise, his first assignment is a milk-run, that involves ferrying a vaudeville troupe. (E) When trouble manages to find him anyway, he handles it so well that he's sent on an extragalactic probe. When he discovers an unexplained barrier, he ends up burying his best friend, delaying the official start of his first 5-year mission by several months, and causing massive head-scratching among astrophysicists and cosmologists, although he does at least find out, without much detail, what happened to the Valiant. ("Where No Man Has Gone Before")
Updated 10/18/2023, to correct my faulty recollections of the Tarsus IV flashback in A Flag Full of Stars.
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The Vulcan's Noun novels, particularly Vulcan's Heart which is my favorite Trek novel of all time.
Also The Entropy Effect.
Also The Entropy Effect.
There would be quite a few, but those that come quickly to mind:
The Ashes of Eden
Avenger
Sarek
Federation
Vendetta
Q-Squared
Crossover
Wrath of the Prophets
Imzadi
New Frontier series
Objective: Bajor
The Left Hand of Destiny
Avatar
Abyss
The Section 31 miniseries (for the most part)
Lost Era series
Comics:
The Gorn TNG miniseries
Captain's Table comics
Blood Will Tell
The Ashes of Eden
Avenger
Sarek
Federation
Vendetta
Q-Squared
Crossover
Wrath of the Prophets
Imzadi
New Frontier series
Objective: Bajor
The Left Hand of Destiny
Avatar
Abyss
The Section 31 miniseries (for the most part)
Lost Era series
Comics:
The Gorn TNG miniseries
Captain's Table comics
Blood Will Tell
You didn't indicate which elements came from where, so I can't easily tell what is just summarizing previous works vs. your own ideas (basically fan fiction), so I have spoiler coded the entire bit just to be safe.
Noted. Citations added and speculations/conjectures tagged as such
And I've now corrected my faulty recollections of the Tarsus IV flashback in A Flag Full of Stars. I could have sworn, though, that I'd read something in published, licensed TrekLit about Winona and the kids being on Tarsus IV to help deal with the famine. Could it have been the Kirk "Autobiography"? If so, then that could be its first glimmer of a redeeming virtue in that opus.
All of them
Federation by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, especially the parts about Cochrane's backstory.
Strangers from the Sky by Margaret Wander Bonanno. It's much more interesting of a first-contact story than First Contact.
Strangers from the Sky by Margaret Wander Bonanno. It's much more interesting of a first-contact story than First Contact.
I don't think I read through this before, but I see a lot of it is a few years old, including this from David McIntee:
It's easier with Doctor Who. My headcanon there, to the extent that I have one, is that all of it happened, from the unaired version of An Unearthly Child to the Bernice Summerfield New Adventures to the Kaldor City audios to the K-9 TV series to the Senor 105 ebooks. The core show contradicts itself, but because it's about time travel and involves a Time War or two, as well as a reboot of the universe or two, it has a built-in explanation. Some of it may have unhappened, or rehappened differently, but at some point in the Doctor's tangled timelines. Ace died, Ace became a Time Lord, and Ace went back to Earth and started A Charitable Earth, and the Eighth Doctor regenerated into a vampire-looking guy who fought the Shalka and also a guy who sounded like he was from the north and hung out with Rose Tyler. At one point, no doubt some kind of exceptionally weird Time War misfire, the Doctor wasn't even Gallifreyan any more, but a human who inexplicably managed to create his own Tardis and went to Skaro and the future. It all happened.
Star Trek canon has contradicted itself a few times, and it has time travel and the underexplained Temporal Cold War, as well as an infinite number of slightly different parallel universes that characters can flit between, so what the hell, it all happened, too, and sometimes unhappened, rehappened, or we just didn't notice it happened in one of those parallels.
The most important question of any piece of Star Trek is not whether I can fit it into some rational, sensible, non-self-contradictory continuity. It's whether I'm enjoying it.
It's easier with Doctor Who. My headcanon there, to the extent that I have one, is that all of it happened, from the unaired version of An Unearthly Child to the Bernice Summerfield New Adventures to the Kaldor City audios to the K-9 TV series to the Senor 105 ebooks. The core show contradicts itself, but because it's about time travel and involves a Time War or two, as well as a reboot of the universe or two, it has a built-in explanation. Some of it may have unhappened, or rehappened differently, but at some point in the Doctor's tangled timelines. Ace died, Ace became a Time Lord, and Ace went back to Earth and started A Charitable Earth, and the Eighth Doctor regenerated into a vampire-looking guy who fought the Shalka and also a guy who sounded like he was from the north and hung out with Rose Tyler. At one point, no doubt some kind of exceptionally weird Time War misfire, the Doctor wasn't even Gallifreyan any more, but a human who inexplicably managed to create his own Tardis and went to Skaro and the future. It all happened.
Star Trek canon has contradicted itself a few times, and it has time travel and the underexplained Temporal Cold War, as well as an infinite number of slightly different parallel universes that characters can flit between, so what the hell, it all happened, too, and sometimes unhappened, rehappened, or we just didn't notice it happened in one of those parallels.
The most important question of any piece of Star Trek is not whether I can fit it into some rational, sensible, non-self-contradictory continuity. It's whether I'm enjoying it.
My headcanon includes TOS proper, plus all of the books that I have read (and finished) so far. None of the novels I’ve come across seem to substantially conflict with each other or with the show. There is some silliness, but it’s not as though the show is exactly even, either.
Here are the novels I’ve read so far… with a “working” thumbnail sketch of a chronology (again, headcanon!), just enough to help me imagine it all together.
BEFORE TOS
The Final Reflection (main narrative)
DURING SEASON TWO
The Vulcan Academy Murders
YEAR FIVE
The Galactic Whirlpool
The Entropy Effect
Yesterday’s Son
The Tears of the Singers
PHASE TWO
The Final Reflection (frame story)
The Wounded Sky
My Enemy, My Ally
The one caveat I would add is that The Final Reflection has some rather idiosyncratic ideas that I wasn’t planning to accept, but the story won me over so fiercely that I tend to think of it all as having definitely happened, though possibly some facts can be rearranged.
My present headcanon has it that Kazh and Kronos and Klinzhai are all separate planets within the Klingon Empire. Kazh is probably the homeworld of the smooth Klingons, and Kronos is probably the homeworld of the ridged Klingons, and Klinzhai is just another that they’ve settled at some point—a particularly hospitable one, which served, at least at one time, as the Empire’s capital. All three planets also have other names, and orbit stars with multiple names, too. All three planets have developed unique cultures, with some intersections and some contradictions. Of course there are multiple languages.
Here are the novels I’ve read so far… with a “working” thumbnail sketch of a chronology (again, headcanon!), just enough to help me imagine it all together.
BEFORE TOS
The Final Reflection (main narrative)
DURING SEASON TWO
The Vulcan Academy Murders
YEAR FIVE
The Galactic Whirlpool
The Entropy Effect
Yesterday’s Son
The Tears of the Singers
PHASE TWO
The Final Reflection (frame story)
The Wounded Sky
My Enemy, My Ally
The one caveat I would add is that The Final Reflection has some rather idiosyncratic ideas that I wasn’t planning to accept, but the story won me over so fiercely that I tend to think of it all as having definitely happened, though possibly some facts can be rearranged.
My present headcanon has it that Kazh and Kronos and Klinzhai are all separate planets within the Klingon Empire. Kazh is probably the homeworld of the smooth Klingons, and Kronos is probably the homeworld of the ridged Klingons, and Klinzhai is just another that they’ve settled at some point—a particularly hospitable one, which served, at least at one time, as the Empire’s capital. All three planets also have other names, and orbit stars with multiple names, too. All three planets have developed unique cultures, with some intersections and some contradictions. Of course there are multiple languages.
The Galactic Whirlpool would most likely be placed during S2 as well, as David Gerrold implies that it takes place shortly before "The Trouble with Tribbles." Kirk is tracking Koloth's ship at the beginning of the novel and at the end he orders the ship to Space Station K-7, saying he could use a rest.
It has been a while since I read it, but that makes sense.
It was Gerrold’s first script, so in his mind it would precede TT.
It has Kevin Riley (S1) and Chekov (S2-3) and Arex and M’Ress (TAS) all aboard, which kind of throws me for a loop. Sort of the Chekov-in-“Space Seed” issue squared. But I suppose rather than imagining people joining and leaving and rejoining and leaving again, the intent would be that they were all “really” along for the entire Mission, whether or not you saw them in a given story (or massive chunk of stories).
A lot to think of, I suppose: Serpents among the Ruins and The Art of the Impossible? Likely on my list.
The Captain's Oath and The Buried Age - almost certainly!
Only parts of Federation, I suppose (pick and mixing)
And most other parts sort of come in an out of focus, depending on my mood. Sisko's return from the Celestial Temple is a bit hard to ignore, though...
An Vanguard contributed a lot, even if it was a bit overly dark, at times.
The Captain's Oath and The Buried Age - almost certainly!
Only parts of Federation, I suppose (pick and mixing)
And most other parts sort of come in an out of focus, depending on my mood. Sisko's return from the Celestial Temple is a bit hard to ignore, though...
An Vanguard contributed a lot, even if it was a bit overly dark, at times.
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