^All of which underlines the problem.
I'm not attacking the quality of their content, certainly not. They may be required to be consistent with the existing true canon material available at the time but that doesn't mean they are consistent with each other. There were a lot of Star Trek books written before 2000.
The TV shows struggle to maintain their own continuity, bringing hundreds of books in to it would serve to do nothing but confuse every discussion you could possibly have about the show.
Oh, definitely. I don't think that it would be a good idea to canonize much of any novels before 2000, and would only favor the canonization of the current shared TrekLit continuity if the writers of the canon were willing to work closely with the folks at Pocket -- which is itself an unrealistic goal. Better that the folks at Pocket work around the canon (though it would be nice if maybe a few basic facts about the Litverse, like Min Zife and the Tezwa war and Nan Bacco, were canonized).
that Trip's death was faked. And even that is not strictly speaking a contradiction of the canon, since the canon did not establish that Trip had died in 2161, but rather that people in the 24th Century believed he had died in 2161.
That's definitely a strict contradiction of canon any way ya slice it. The show made it explicitly clear what happened to him.
Well, no. It's a contradiction of Berman and Braga's clear creative intent, but it's not a violation of what they actually established. We never saw any of the ENT characters in "These Are the Voyages...." We saw holographic re-creations of them created centuries after the fact. In real life, that sort of re-creation would be prone to error anyway. "These Are the Voyages..." did not establish that Trip died in 2161, it established that people in the 24th Century believed that he had died in 2161. The Good That Men Do did not contradict what "These Are the Voyages..." had established, it merely revealed that the people of the 24th Century were mistaken in their belief.
And on top of that, Trip's death in "TATV" made no sense. At all. He sacrificed himself to defeat invaders when he had never done so before to defeat intruders that were much more numerous and more dangerous -- and, further, he practically begged for it from the very beginning. Watching "TATV," what struck me was that it almost seemed like Trip wanted to be killed defeating them -- which was something that he had never been like before.
So for me, it actually made far more sense when The Good That Men Do revealed that Trip seemed unusually eager to die because he was acting for the internal sensors. It also created a very interesting new arc for the character that I'm enjoying very much.
And on top of that, Trip's death in "TATV" made no sense. At all. He sacrificed himself to defeat invaders when he had never done so before to defeat intruders that were much more numerous and more dangerous -- and, further, he practically begged for it from the very beginning. Watching "TATV," what struck me was that it almost seemed like Trip wanted to be killed defeating them -- which was something that he had never been like before.
So for me, it actually made far more sense when The Good That Men Do revealed that Trip seemed unusually eager to die because he was acting for the internal sensors. It also created a very interesting new arc for the character that I'm enjoying very much.
This is however, a very great example of why books should never be made canon. "The fans don't like what the showrunners did to a character, therefore we are gonna brush the big magical eraser over what happened on-screen to give the fans what they want instead (and sell more books that way)."![]()
1. There's no reason to think that anyone thought that bringing Trip back would sell more books. They did it because his death was so poorly handled in the ENT finale that it practically demanded a revision.
2. The very same editor, Margaret Clark, who brought Trip back in the ENT Relaunch has steadfastly refused to bring back Data, a far, far, far more popular character on a far more popular series, so your assumption that they only brought Trip back because he was a popular character is invalidated.
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