Exactly. That's why I tend to think of TOS as its own thing, separate from the TNG era. Not in terms of continuity, but simply because they are each of their own time. TOS is very much a 1960s tv show, which looks and feels very different from TNG and its spin-offs. They're apples and oranges, despite the latter-day shows being a continuation of the 60s show.
I agree, but more in terms of philosophy than time period of origination. TOS has a distinct outlook that I think only returns (after TUC) in the reboot films. After a TNG rewatch a few years ago, even
Beyond felt like a breath of fresh air.
Most of
The Motion Picture feels more like proto-TNG than TOS, though. Only Ilia/the probe really feels like she fits with the series.
(For what it's worth, I grew up with the TOS movies during TNG. We didn't have a television at home, but went to the movies regularly, and I regularly watched my grandparents' library of classic 80s and early Hollywood movies. I'm probably one of the few millennials who grew up with Max Fleischer's
Superman.)
This can be a judgement call. I mean, obviously you omit the casual 1960s sexism that occasionally surfaced in TOS, and we can reference previous adventures in the books more than TOS ever did, but what about slang expressions and idioms that postdate 1969, or bits of technology that modern readers might find conspicuously absent? (No security cameras in Engineering? Really?)
There are engineering cameras in
The Wrath of Khan (according to
The Search for Spock), operating similarly to those on the bridge in "Court Martial" (and the London imagery in
Into Darkness). It seems, though, that they operate on an archival or black box basis, rather than surveillance.
And, to try to bring this back to books, one of the challenges of writing TOS books these days is trying to capture the feel of the Original Series while also writing for readers in 2026. Do you write the books as they would have been written back in the day, or do you write TOS as it might be written today?
As a reader, I'm looking for a period piece set in
Star Trek's 23rd Century, so I don't like to be reminded of other series or of actual history that came after TOS (unless it was specifically referenced, e.g. the end of the Cold War). I feel similarly about DS9 books, TNG books, etc. and material from outside of their series (e.g. I wouldn't want to hear about Bajor in a pre-timeskip
Discovery novel).
Some of that is probably because I grew up in the 90s, when that type of cross-referencing was essentially forbidden. Everything I read was either from before TNG or intentionally didn't reference other series (or later films) as a matter of policy.
I'm pretty far behind on the TOS books, the most recent I've read is No Time Like the Past, but I've always been impressed with how well the more recent TOS books like that has managed to give us books that feel like TOS but in a more modern style.
I barely read them today because I feel the opposite. The modern novels feel much more "professional mid-list novel" than anything else, to me. In the 80s and 90s, that meant "terrorist plot" and "hostage crisis" in almost every other book. Today, it's often some other kind of arbitrary disaster, upheaval, or MacGuffin.
A good example is the TOS novel with Seven of Nine (a great premise), which was forgettable because its plot didn't dramatize any meaningful idea.
If you look at the acclaimed books of the 80s (most of which I actually read in the early 2000s), the authors generally had something they wanted to
communicate—whether that was Duane's meditations on culture and honor, Ford's idiosyncratic perspectives, Eklar's thoughts on what Starfleet would want its young officers to test in themselves, etc.
TOS itself mostly functioned in the same way. Whether the plots came from spec writers (often working in sci-fi) or on staff, they generally revolved around dramatizing an idea (usually abstracted or generalized, rather than allegory). And, much like the line about tragedy being a flawed character put in the precise situation in which their specific flaws will cause their demise, the conflict mostly arose naturally from the combination of character and problem.
Much of the appeal of the series was in the moral frisson that resulted from doing the right thing (Kirk's
deeply satisfying speech at the end of "A Taste of Armageddon" is a great example). It's the same basic idea as
Everything Everywhere All at Once (
Waymond has a lot in common with the crew of the
Enterprise).
Modern tie-in fiction is very professional, but it often ultimately reads like skilled plate-spinning to me (when not disturbingly cynical and illiberal, like many of
David Mack's better novels;
A Time to Heal made a strong impression on me when it came out). Writers get work who deliver a
workable story, but
good story comes from wanting to communicate.
From my perspective, by far the best
Star Trek-related literature of the last fifteen years (admittedly, I didn't read much of the post-2009 fanfic, though the fan
art was great) is the parody webcomic
Ensign Sue Must Die (
part two,
part three).
