If you could make one trek novel canon which would you choose?
- Thread starter AmandaSmith
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Vendetta
This is a tough one because there are so many I would like to make canon. I'm going with The Art of the Impossible. It was one of the best Lost Era novels, and it doesn't really retcon any of the existing series while fleshing out a largely unexplored time period. And it would make Elias Vaughn canon and that would be cool.
Cheating here, but Serpents Among the Ruins is my honorable mention. I thought it was a great adventure for Harriman, a character in need of some redemption. And Vokar was a good villain.
Cheating here, but Serpents Among the Ruins is my honorable mention. I thought it was a great adventure for Harriman, a character in need of some redemption. And Vokar was a good villain.
The one set in Seattle in the 1800s
"Ishmael" by Barbara Hambly.
Vulcan's Heart
I've always said the original series novel, Chain of Attack by the late Gene DeWeese is my favorite Star Trek novel of all time. If we're talking about 'making it canon' in the sense of making a film or show about a book, I would love to see this book adapted for the screen. The beauty of it, too, is that it's a self-contained story. For the most part it could fit in the existing continuity of the Star Trek canon (there may be minor details that are out of synch of course that would need to be adjusted).
Basically the Enterprise gets flung into another galaxy that has been at war for centuries. It starts off ominous and even a bit creepy as the Enterprise comes across planet after planet destroyed by war. Then eventually they encounter the current factions and Captain Kirk must use his diplomatic skills to get the 2 sides to just talk to each other. It's one of the few books I read in the course of a weekend (it typically takes me 2 to 3 weeks to read a novel).
Certainly there's plenty of other stories I'd love to see filmed as well. There's a lot of good Star Trek books out there that could potentially be adapted into great on screen stories. In a way I'm actually surprised none of the showrunners ever did that. I realize there's some legalities involved probably. And would the novel writer be entitled to some royalties from that even though it's a licensed novel? I honestly don't know.
Now if we're talking about just 'canonizing' a novel I'm not really sure what the point would be if you're not going to adapt it for the screen. I think sometimes fans get too hung up on the concept of 'canon'....and many times I think fans talk about 'canon' when what they are really talking about is 'continuity.' I know I've been guilty of that myself. The showrunners at any time can make some part of some novel(s), or even an entire book if they really wanted to, part of the continuity. And they have done that in some limited cases. It still wouldn't make it canon though since Paramount has been always been pretty direct about what is canon, outside revising the original animated series from non-canon to canon status.
In a way it amuses me how much fans stress over 'canon.' That's just something tie in works have to really worry about, since they have to be consistent with canon works in their own stories. I'm much more interested in continuities, and I've come to consider things like the relaunches as part of the continuity of the shows. And in fact I prefer to consider the 24th century relaunches the primary storyline over the Picard timeline. But it's not canon and never will be. I choose to consider it in the continuity because I enjoyed them more than the show.
Basically the Enterprise gets flung into another galaxy that has been at war for centuries. It starts off ominous and even a bit creepy as the Enterprise comes across planet after planet destroyed by war. Then eventually they encounter the current factions and Captain Kirk must use his diplomatic skills to get the 2 sides to just talk to each other. It's one of the few books I read in the course of a weekend (it typically takes me 2 to 3 weeks to read a novel).
Certainly there's plenty of other stories I'd love to see filmed as well. There's a lot of good Star Trek books out there that could potentially be adapted into great on screen stories. In a way I'm actually surprised none of the showrunners ever did that. I realize there's some legalities involved probably. And would the novel writer be entitled to some royalties from that even though it's a licensed novel? I honestly don't know.
Now if we're talking about just 'canonizing' a novel I'm not really sure what the point would be if you're not going to adapt it for the screen. I think sometimes fans get too hung up on the concept of 'canon'....and many times I think fans talk about 'canon' when what they are really talking about is 'continuity.' I know I've been guilty of that myself. The showrunners at any time can make some part of some novel(s), or even an entire book if they really wanted to, part of the continuity. And they have done that in some limited cases. It still wouldn't make it canon though since Paramount has been always been pretty direct about what is canon, outside revising the original animated series from non-canon to canon status.
In a way it amuses me how much fans stress over 'canon.' That's just something tie in works have to really worry about, since they have to be consistent with canon works in their own stories. I'm much more interested in continuities, and I've come to consider things like the relaunches as part of the continuity of the shows. And in fact I prefer to consider the 24th century relaunches the primary storyline over the Picard timeline. But it's not canon and never will be. I choose to consider it in the continuity because I enjoyed them more than the show.
My view of the Preservers has been that it's more like a title, really (like Reclaimers, for example, to reference Halo)
A title held by multiple species, likely, adhering to some older code or sacrament - that MAY go back as far as the Progenitors (or some dimly remembered accounts of them) just maybe.
But's that maybe more to help reconcile all the different portrayals of them. It's likely they'll be tied into the Aegis in canon, though (and the Travellers)
It can't go back that far, because the Progenitors' whole motivation is that there was no other intelligence in the galaxy at the time, so they arranged to seed multiple worlds to gradually evolve intelligence billions of years after they were gone. They were all alone in the galaxy, so there was no one for them to preserve. They're the opposite of preservers, because they're not keeping something around that already exists, they're creating something that doesn't.
See, this is why it's so weird that people want to associate the Preservers with the Progenitors. Metatextually, they're both attempts to explain humanoid aliens, but in-universe, they have nothing even remotely in common and indeed are opposites in many ways.
I also think it's ridiculous to believe any cultural concept, institution, or tradition could possibly endure for billions of years. Even millions is pushing it.
A couple of thoughts here…
If the Star Trek film or TV producers want to adapt a story from the licensed Star Trek fiction, they certainly can. There would be no need for them to obtain permissions or options or anything else — the tie-ins are Star Trek's property, theirs to use as they wish, forever. The film/TV creators are at liberty to borrow whatever they want from the books or comics without any permission from, or credit or compensation to, the original writers or publishers.
One reason most of the TV writers don't frequently mine the books for ideas is that they already have their own ideas, which, understandably, they like better.
TV writer-producers in particular shy away from adapting tie-ins directly to the screen as new series because, if they did, they would not be able to claim the coveted "created by" screen credit (which brings with it certain fiscal and reputational boons); they would be limited to the less exclusive (and less remunerative) "developed for television by" credit.
Not necessarily, I think. I've seen a number of recent adaptations, e.g. the Netflix Marvel shows, that credited their developers as creators. So apparently there's a way to finagle creator credit for an adaptation.
It depends upon the creators' contracts. Also, Marvel tends to be better about that sort of thing than DC, which often failed to acknowledge original creators when making derivative works, or Star Trek, which never has. Also, my answer was principally in response to the poster's question about Star Trek tie-ins, not tie-ins generally.
Most comic creators I've spoken with have said that DC has traditionally been better than Marvel when it comes to financial compensation on creator's stuff being used in movies and TV. Len Wein famously said that he got paid more for Lucius Fox being used in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies than he did for ALL the Marvel movies made with Wolverine. But DC isn't as good about that sort of thing since Paul Levitz left the company.
Well, the ones I would have chosen have been taken, so, I'll go ahead and mention 'Final Frontier' by Diane Carey.
Good choice.
Whether it's legally correct or not, I suspect the latter is at least in part because much of the modern character of Wolverine builds on material established by Chris Claremont on the long-running X-Men title rather than Wein's Incredible Hulk or Giant Size X-Men #1, whereas his contributions to Lucius may have been more foundational to the ongoing character.
Thanks for the explanation. I was curious about that after I wrote it. I figured since Paramount owns Star Trek they can use anything they want from the tie ins if they ever wanted to. But I started wondering would the original novel writer get any additional compensation if their novel was adapted on screen somehow.
That does bring up another question. Would the novel writer get any on screen credit? For instance if they decided to adapt, say, Collateral Damage for the screen (just picking the first novel that came to mind), would you get a credit on screen saying "based on the novel Collateral Damage by David Mack"? Even if you wouldn't get any additional compensation.
It would be mostly at the discretion of the producers. Contractually, I wouldn't be entitled to any screen credit or compensation. However, if a work for film or TV was adapted directly from literary material I created, I might be able to petition the Writers Guild to demand a screen credit.
For that to work, I would need to be able to show that the producers adapted most of the plot and a significant degree of the original details from my book. If they borrowed just a few prominent elements but not the plot, that would not suffice to get me a screen credit.
No, that has nothing to do with it. It's about who created the character. None of the development that Chris Claremont and others did with Wolverine could have happened if Len Wein and Herb Trimpe hadn't created him first. Chris Claremont, for all he did with the character, did not create Wolverine. It doesn't matter that Len Wein's original version of Wolverine was very different from the character that became mega popular years later. Wolverine wouldn't exist without Len Wein. It doesn't get more "foundational" than that.
But anyway, my point wasn't about that. It was illustrating that DC has much better terms for creators than Marvel does. Another example: Jim Starlin has said that he's gotten more money from the KGBeast appearing in some DC movie or another than he has from Thanos appearing in multiple Marvel movies.
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