Post-STXI novels

[Broccoli]

...the ring ship Enterprise. Obviously they aren't limited to Federation starships alone.

Grabbing my dog-eared copy of Spaceflight Chronology 1980-2188, it notes that the "ring ship" design is a Declaration-class spaceliner and suggests that it's a "Federation" (if not Starfleet) vessel.

P'wned!

delinquent Kirk contradicts Mitchell's walking stack of books at the Academy comment.

No, it doesn't.

Kirk can be a juvey delinquent as a teenager, and then he pulls his fecal matter together in college.

Which, by the way, is Kirk's character arc in Diane Carey's Best Destiny. He's a screw-up, and the events of the novel show him that he needs to pull it together. (Carey's YA novel Cadet Kirk follows up on this to some extent.)

Hasn't delinquent Kirk been a theory in fandom for years? It makes sense from the way adult Kirk acts. Given is somewhat unorthodox (dare I say reckless) tactics as a captain, I can see that he was a trouble maker as a youth. Even the Shat's Collision Course makes use of this theory.

^ The film couldn't possibly 'reset' the timeline - not if they want to have a window for sequels, which will need to have the same 'look' and plot freedom.

What I'm calling a "canonical reboot" is basically a divergent timeline from the moment the Kelvin gets destroyed.

Whew...at least Enterprise gets away unscathed!

[...]some (including Rick Sternbach) seem to be holding out hope that we'll see an original NCC-1701 at the end of the film, and that everything will be set back to "normal."

I'll admit, at the dark corners of my mind, I'd love for that to happen. However, I highly doubt it'll happen and I am not banking on it.

The presence of Data makes this pre-NEM.

Not necessarily. From what I have read previously, the prequel comic goes from "Unification" to the beginning of the 24th Century parts of the movie. Data could make an appearance towards the beginning of the comic, but is not in the post-Nemesis stuff.

 

[Christopher]

Hasn't delinquent Kirk been a theory in fandom for years?

It originated in Diane Carey's Best Destiny.

It makes sense from the way adult Kirk acts. Given is somewhat unorthodox (dare I say reckless) tactics as a captain, I can see that he was a trouble maker as a youth.

That's the myth of Kirk, not the reality, as KRAD showed in his article in the current ST Magazine. The Kirk of TOS, especially early TOS, was a serious, disciplined military man, a hardnosed officer to whom duty was paramount. He obeyed orders even when he disagreed strongly with them ("The Galileo Seven," "A Taste of Armageddon"), and he always put his duty to his ship above his personal longings ("The Naked Time," "This Side of Paradise," "Elaan of Troyius"). If anything, he was portrayed in the first season as positively stiff. In "Mudd's Women," he was the only crewman other than Spock who was immune to the women's charms, because he was too driven by duty and discipline. In "This Side of Paradise," he was the only crewman who spontaneously shook off the spores' influence because his sense of duty to his ship was so overpowering.

There's also the fact that both "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "Shore Leave" established that Kirk was a serious, driven, "positively grim" student in his Academy days.

In Carey's version, Kirk didn't start off as a troublemaker and stay a troublemaker; he started out as a troublemaker and learned discipline and maturity as a way of making up for that past.

The presence of Data makes this pre-NEM.

Not necessarily. From what I have read previously, the prequel comic goes from "Unification" to the beginning of the 24th Century parts of the movie. Data could make an appearance towards the beginning of the comic, but is not in the post-Nemesis stuff.

Ahh, okay. That makes sense.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Can't we just have Abramsverse novels to go next to our Shatnerverse trilogies?

Unless Countdown does for Star Trek what "End of an Era," the pre-Zero Hour story arc, did for the Legion of Super-Heroes in closing the book on a forty-year continuity, making a clean break with the past, and setting the stage for the blank slate that was the post-Zero Hour relaunch, I think that the analogy of the post-film novels to the Shatner-verse may not be a bad one.

We often speak of the Shatner novels as being separate from the rest of the novel line. But are they really? Here, we're well versed in Star Trek fiction. But there's a casual reader out there, somewhere, who's not as tied into online fandom, who has no idea that Shatner's novels, like the Totality trilogy, are supposed to be in any way different than any of the other novels. Captain's Glory, for instance, had the Titan and her crew (like Dr. Ree and Christine Vale and Tuvok) and the Enterprise-E and her crew (like Kadohata and Leybenzon), so why shouldn't this casual reader think it's supposed to be part of the same tapestry as Q&A and Orion's Hounds?

I don't know if it's still true today, but during Ordover's era that was by design. The other novels didn't go out of their way to contradict Shatner's novels; if a reader wanted Spectre to co-exist with Ship of the Line, there was no reason why they couldn't.

I know, the congruences today are not exact. Titan's mission is different in Shatner's telling. But they're similar enough that discrepancies are a matter of nitpickery details than an active plan to make them separate. Cognitive dissonance is minimal.

Which may be an approach for the Star Trek novels in the short- to medium-term post-May, once the dust settles and the future of the franchise becomes clear. Novels that can fit either way -- either with the letter of the old vision or with the shiny new vision -- without causing cognitive conundrums for readers, either the new readers that will come into the franchise from the film's excitement, or the old readers who have been in the trenches and carrying the flame.

 

[Christopher]

I know, the congruences today are not exact. Titan's mission is different in Shatner's telling.

And Bajor isn't a Federation member yet in 2378, and Janeway's still alive in 2381, and the Mirror Universe has a very different history, and V'Ger is a creation of the Borg.

But they're similar enough that discrepancies are a matter of nitpickery details than an active plan to make them separate. Cognitive dissonance is minimal.

Which may be an approach for the Star Trek novels in the short- to medium-term post-May, once the dust settles and the future of the franchise becomes clear. Novels that can fit either way -- either with the letter of the old vision or with the shiny new vision -- without causing cognitive conundrums for readers, either the new readers that will come into the franchise from the film's excitement, or the old readers who have been in the trenches and carrying the flame.

That's quite possible. As long as a book skirts around certain details, it could potentially fit in either version (assuming they are, in fact, meant to be separate). It might mean the return of an earlier approach to TOS novels, fairly standalone stories without a lot of continuity ties. But it could be done.

 

[TheAlmanac]

Can't we just have Abramsverse novels to go next to our Shatnerverse trilogies?

Unless Countdown does for Star Trek what "End of an Era," the pre-Zero Hour story arc, did for the Legion of Super-Heroes in closing the book on a forty-year continuity, making a clean break with the past, and setting the stage for the blank slate that was the post-Zero Hour relaunch, I think that the analogy of the post-film novels to the Shatner-verse may not be a bad one.

Which may be an approach for the Star Trek novels in the short- to medium-term post-May, once the dust settles and the future of the franchise becomes clear. Novels that can fit either way -- either with the letter of the old vision or with the shiny new vision -- without causing cognitive conundrums for readers, either the new readers that will come into the franchise from the film's excitement, or the old readers who have been in the trenches and carrying the flame.

That's quite possible. As long as a book skirts around certain details, it could potentially fit in either version (assuming they are, in fact, meant to be separate). It might mean the return of an earlier approach to TOS novels, fairly standalone stories without a lot of continuity ties. But it could be done.

In that "skirting around" sense, I sometimes think the end result might be like the Big Finish Doctor Who fiction co-existing with the BBC Books Doctor Who fiction--theoretically part of one big continuity, but not in a way that matters so much in practice, because one line concentrates on the old and one concentrates on the new, with a minimum of overlapping references.

 

[KRAD]

^ With the added joy of things like Human Nature -- the Seventh Doctor novel -- and the episodes "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood," which both have basically the same plot (Paul Cornell based the two-part episode on his novel).

 

[JoeZhang]

I'm sure most of you have seen this before but PC on Canon:

http://paulcornell.blogspot.com/2007/02/canonicity-in-doctor-who.html

 

[tranya]

Great post by Cornell! Thanks for sharing that, I'd never seen it. This part had salience for me:

To deal with that ‘won’t be bound by’ clause, Russell’s quietly invented something, and I have no idea as to whether or not he realised it could be used for this purpose. (I don’t think he sits up at night worrying about canonicity, except for the times when I’m pretty sure he does.) I’m talking about The Time War. As mentioned often by the Ninth Doctor. Probably between the Time Lords and the Daleks, and it probably ended with both sides being wiped out, probably that being a sacrifice made by the Doctor. (Like I have any idea, I’m just following the hints.) There’s a line in ‘The Unquiet Dead’ (I think) indicating that the War puts all historical events up for grabs. Nothing necessarily happened like we think it did.

Including previous Doctor Who.

Doctor Who fans, we like to think it all fits together. In our book about continuity, The Discontinuity Guide, me, Keith Topping and Martin Day suggested that, following the events of the story ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, a story where the Doctor is deliberately trying to change history, and says he succeeded in doing so, previous Dalek stories may not have happened, in the universe of Doctor Who, as they were seen onscreen. This theory has gained no ground at all. It was met with a resounding silence. Fans like to think that what they’ve seen remains ‘real’. (No abuse implied, I’m using ‘real’ in the way they’d intend.) Probably because if it doesn’t it makes fun with continuity that much more difficult. (But not impossible, and the game is surely worth it.)

Subtitute "Narada blowing up the Kelvin" for "Time War" and, well, you're all smart enough to see why this might create great storytelling opportunities.