Well, not entirely. Picard sets foot on the Enterprise on the fifth-to-last page of the novel.
Death in Winter and the TNG Relaunch
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Well, not entirely. Picard sets foot on the Enterprise on the fifth-to-last page of the novel.
Well, Trident sounds too close to Titan, so we could call it ST: Poseidon, or ST: Mueller's Law
How about OTiYAFSN?
Star Trek: Our Title is Yet Another Frickin' Ship's Name?
"The Second Decade" is a misnomer as the total run of the Next Generation crew ran from 2364 to 2379, a total of fifteen years, not ten. So "The Second Decade" should have started prior to Insurrection.
Margaret was toying with "TNG: Second Decade" for a while there, IIRC.
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Do they really need their own special label? Aren't they just Star Trek: The Next Generation novels? I don't see any particular need to differentiate them from any of the other TNG books, especially since the post-Nemesis books are the mainline of the TNG novel franchise.
See above, Therin. We've been through this.
I know, that's why my footnote already said, " Last edited by Therin of Andor; Reason: Yep, there's an echo... echo... echo... "
I would say that "relaunch" implies that something has been re-made, as in done again but differently.
However, the TNG books don't tell the same stories in a different way. They continue with new stories. So it's more of a continuation, isn't it?
It's all Star Trek The Next Generation to me and if I were a layman coming into it, the only real outward difference of the books is that the post Nemesis Novels have a different logo text, even though The Buried Age has that same Logo and not the one from the TV series nor the books up until the A Time To.... series.
I loved the term "relaunch" for the DS9 books as to me, the tales of their lives have been "relaunched" into the world again. The Defiant "relaunched" to explore... *kindof* again... Most of the characters, especially Ro and Taran'atar are *relaunching* their lives. I just assumed that was happening in the other series too, given they've been in syndication for years... well, I guess DS9 didn't have a huge gap, but... meh.
I see the 'A Time To' books and Death in Winter as a new beginning for TNG. It seems like a lot of the writer restrictions were relaxed after the realization that there won't be any new TNG onscreen anymore. Now the characters are allowed to grow and change (to a much greater degree anyway) and there is greater continuity between the books. I see all of these changes as positive, in fact I didn't really get interested in Trek lit until this started to happen.
No, reboot implies that something has been redone but differently, like nuBSG.
In recent fan vernacular, yes, but only because BSG used it that way. In industry-speak, a reboot is any restart/reinvigoration of a dormant franchise that makes it viable and popular again, regardless of whether it's a new continuity like BSG or just a fresh take on an old continuity like Doctor Who (or Abrams' ST, which is somewhere between the two). It's like rebooting your computer -- that doesn't mean changing it into a different computer, it just means taking something that's inactive and giving it a fresh start. But because BSG is a recent, prominent example of a reboot, fans have jumped to the conclusion that its approach is the definition of a reboot, which really doesn't follow.
I believe the term "relaunch" was initially meant to refer only to the process of setting the post-finale DS9 novel line in motion, the promotional push that started it out. After all, if you refit a ship and launch it again, then the term "relaunch" refers to the act of sending out the new ship; you don't call the ship itself a relaunch. So the term was never meant to apply to the actual book line as a whole, just to the marketing strategy of starting it out with a big publicity push and a rapid-fire release schedule for the first few installments.
But people on the Internet have a knack for repurposing vocabulary, especially, it seems, when it begins with "re-" (such as "reboot" or "remastered"). And so the term "relaunch" started being applied to the post-finale DS9 series as a whole, and then when other post-finale series came along, people started calling them relaunches as well.
As I said, Marco (who was an editor, not a publisher) used the term "relaunch" to refer to the process of setting the new line in motion -- the publicity push, the release of the first few volumes in quick succession, the new Okuda-designed logo -- not to the actual series itself. The books are the post-finale DS9 novels, and in May 2001 the DS9 novel series was relaunched -- restarted -- with new post-finale adventures, a new look, etc. But that was seven and a half years ago. A launch, by definition, is a singular event, not a continuing process. So the fan practice of referring to the series as a whole as a "relaunch" is a technically inaccurate use of the word and is not what Marco intended or expected. (It's sort of a synecdoche, I guess -- using the term for a part to refer to the whole. So maybe not so much wrong as figurative.)
It is a fantastic read. Buy, borrow or steal a copy right away! On second thought, buy a copy. Christopher deserves his royalty.
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