Latecomer To This: JANEWAY DIED?!?
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There are not personal attacks since no person's name is mentioned.
Did I call them "unprofessional" in my previous post? No, what I have previously stated is that they have made a bad decision which might hurt and annoy many fans.
Did I write that they have insulted the fans in my previous post? No, what I did write was about alienating fans in common, no matter if it's a book company, TV company or a rock band who change something which might annoy, hurt or even insult certain fans who previously have had a strong liking for the company, rock band or whatsoever.
Gates McFadden came back, almost as a favour at the very last minute, because Diana Muldaur, who was not under a five-year contract as Pulaski, informed GR that she would be unavailable for the first three or four episodes of Season Three, because she was taking up an invitation to participate in the reunion telemovie, "The Return of McCloud".
Also, the executive with whom McFadden had had difficulties, had left the series by then.
Hypothetical: So I could talk about stupid, annoying fans who run Kes websites, and who complain bitterly about Janeway's assassination in the novels, and not be insulting you because I don't mention you by name?
Please, Lynx, your comments have been very personal and insulting. People have tried to point out how to modify your tone, but it hasn't worked. Luckily for you, and us, some of the writers seem to have set this thread on ignore.
Mriana, the classic example of a TV series that made an effort to try to give the fans what they wanted was the last few years of Doctor Who, the ratings of which went through the basement floor, leading to its cancellation in 1989. They brought back the Daleks, they brought back the Cybermen, they brought back Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, they brought back the Master, they tied two sets of episodes in to the first episode from 1963, they damn near created fanwank. And the show was cancelled. There was a single TV movie in 1996, but the show was off the air for sixteen years.
Here's the problem: first, fans don't always agree on what they want. This discussion should be ample proof of that. Second, the noisiest fans aren't representative of the mass audience. You need millions of people watching to make a TV series a success, but you don't generally get millions of people who identify as fans, who care enough to buy tie-ins. If you're lucky, you get tens of thousands. Those are the people who make the most noise, but by definition they're also unlike the majority of people making up the numbers that keep the show on the air.
Sci stole my thunder on that one. It simply isn't true.
Name one.
No, they really won't. If Pocket tries to do something CBS Licensing doesn't want them to do, CBS will sell another publisher the rights to do Star Trek books, and Pocket won't make any more money from them. Even if it is all about money, and Pocket's track record over the last ten years shows that they will work as hard as they can to support book lines that aren't making much money at all (e.g., Strange New Worlds) so obviously that's not true, why try a dumb stunt that may make money on one book and lose them the rights to make any more money?
Also, Mriana, please lose the "I've been around forever and I know better than you young whippersnappers" tone. I've been a fan since the early 1970s, I've read the Roddenberry biographies and a lot of other books, I've seen Roddenberry lecture in person, I've met some of the Pocket editors and writers in person. I don't know what credentials Sci and Thrawn may have of that nature, or how old they are, but they have the only important credential for a discussion like this: they're thinking rationally and basing their position on facts.
And she was brought back. I'm glad she was too. Thing is, he did listen to the fans, even though he said that.
And she was brought back. I'm glad she was too. Thing is, he did listen to the fans, even though he said that.
"Game. Set. Match." Thrawn, you made my day. You do know that she was brought back, right?
The win was FOR the fans who wanted Gates back--and TNG wasn't shit because of it.
Because fans wanted her back and then she did come back, doesn't mean the two are necessarily related. They might be, and they might not. Without proof one way or another we're just making assumptions and drawing connections where there may not be any.
Hypothetical: So I could talk about stupid, annoying fans who run Kes websites, and who complain bitterly about Janeway's assassination in the novels, and not be insulting you because I don't mention you by name?
Please, Lynx, your comments have been very personal and insulting. People have tried to point out how to modify your tone, but it hasn't worked. Luckily for you, and us, some of the writers seem to have set this thread on ignore.
As I've written before, it's not my intention to be rude and insulting. If I am, it might be because the unnecessary assasination of Janeway has made me annoyed and angry. It has also made me lose the last hope I ever may have had in Star Trek in general and in the Star Trek books in particular. It hasn't restored my faith in those in charge of "official Star Trek franchises" either.
The fact that some posters who defend the assasination of Janeway haven't been that polite either may have worsened the situation.
As for the writers, I did try to have a debate with one of them. Who knows, it could have turned out to be a cordial, constructive and interesting debate.
As for the "hypothetical" comment, it wouldn't have bothered me that much. I've seen worse things on other forums.
Never mind, they did bring her back as a regular character, something I do think was beneficial to TNG in the long run.
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I appreciate that.
Apparently more fans than people at Pocket or at Trek Lit suspected which goes back to the disconnect I was talking about earlier. Ideally, TrekBBS should be a place that ALL fans should feel comfortable posting at in addition to their other boards but sadly that has not been the case lately. Hopefully that will change some day.
Well said.
Not all.
And I don't remember Lynx using the word 'unprofessional'. There's an awful lot of interpretation going on in this thread, I think.
Ahem.
(emphasis mine)
But you're right; you didn't use the word "unprofessional"; you instead accused them of "selling out", which I actually don't think is any better. But you're right, you didn't use the specific word I mentioned, so I apologize for the mistake.
As for the attacks not being personal because no one's name is mentioned, there are only two or three people responsible for the decision in the first place, and everyone knows who they are. So you don't have to mention names, we know who you're talking about.
Game. Set. Match.
And she was brought back. I'm glad she was too. Thing is, he did listen to the fans, even though he said that.
"Game. Set. Match." Thrawn, you made my day. You do know that she was brought back, right?
The win was FOR the fans who wanted Gates back--and TNG wasn't shit because of it.
As many have pointed out, the fact that she was brought back doesn't mean Gene was listening to fans. My point was not that "the fans" (which I still feel is a meaningless term, but moving on) are always wrong, it was that the attitude of creative people is almost never "let's do what the fans want!". They do what makes the best story in their own personal opinion, with perhaps some constraints from TV regulations, network guidance, etc. They brought back Crusher, yes, but this quote demonstrates amply that Gene's instinct was not to do what his fans told him to.
What's that quote? "Don't let a hand full of people complaining on the internet be confused for any sort of trend"? Something like that. All I see is a handful of people posting over and over saying the same things. Considering Janeway was killed in a book that was published over a year ago and they are just now finding out about it is a good indication they aren't reading the books anyway, well, except for the guy who spends $2000 a year just on pocket books and he still seems to have missed it.
I just really think when you keep complaining the way people have been complaining here go from having a point, and as far as I'm concerned Voyager fans do have a point with the way thier relaunch has gone as compared to say DS9, to having people just think you're just a bunch of obsessed people who really need to get on with thier lives and stop carrying on as if Janeway was a real person.
And the fact that they ARE posting over and over again pretty much kills your idea they are uncomfortable posting here since they are doing it over and over again.
I don't know anyone at Pocket or any publishing company but I just have a hard time being convinced these threads are going to make anyone regret the story decisions that have been made.
Dear Kirsten,
Thank you for your reply. I appreciate your effort in trying to keep me informed as indeed I wasn't aware that Janeway would be alive in the first part of your book.
However, I have to admit that I'm a bit of a sap for happy endings.
I rarely care how many trials and how much suffering the character is put through during the telling of the story - in fact I rather prefer a lot of it,
but I absolutely insist on a happy ending and have been known to rage for hours after having watched a movie or read a book that didn't give me that. I'm sure some will call me shallow for that (nobody here perhaps), but that's ok. I'm a sap, I know it, and I don't try to hide it.
I love movies and books that make me feel, perhaps even shed a tear or two, but I need a happy ending, and though the first part of your book sounds interesting - if as you say, it centers on Janeway and her story - then the last bit sounds like it's going to give me a heartache and those around me a headache.
What I'm trying to say is that I'm afraid knowing that she's going to die is a great turn off for me.
Now if I knew for sure that you were going to bring her back in the second book, I'd be fine with it, but since that isn't the case, I think I'll have to spare myself and my surroundings the headache of having to listen to me bitch.
Thank you again though for taking the time and replying to me.
Reading back over my posts last night, I think I got a little snippy with some posters, so I hope you all will allow me to try and extend an olive branch again.
I just mentioned, in another thread, that I'd recently stopped reading Star Wars books, and I thought it might be worth repeating here because I really do know, to some extent, where the Janeway fans in this thread are coming from. I followed Star Wars from the moment Timothy Zahn released the first post-Return Of The Jedi novels in in 1991 (my username comes from the villain in those novels, still one of my all time favorite characters) up until a year and a half ago, where I stopped halfway through Legacy Of The Force, the recent nine-book series, and quit reading altogether.
My reasons for giving it up were complicated; for one, I started feeling that, after so many years of war, each new conflict was becoming more lame than the last; for another, the series centered on one of the most good and giving characters turning evil and while I loved the idea of the story I felt that in addition to making him evil they made him a complete moron for no reason (which makes my complaint actually a lot like the "character destruction" thing Lynx mentioned); and for a third, ironically enough, they killed off one of my favorite characters, an extremely strong female main character, and while I thought her death was epic and incredibly powerful, the follow-up novels didn't make a good enough story out of it to have it be worth it (see aforementioned complaint about the villain becoming stupid; if he'd stayed in character, and been an "evil" character that you could almost believe in, I'd have had no problem with him killing this other strong female character).
So, actually, I do know what it feels like to be driven out of a series by main character death and destruction that seemed pointless and went nowhere, I know it rather well.
When I read the book that killed it for me, a book of in my opinion utterly inane and ridiculous plot twists and mischaracterizations, dropped balls on important moments left and right, author-inserted characters stealing any thunder away from the mains, and a truly bizarre interpretation of the underlying mythology, I logged on to the biggest Star Wars expanded universe messageboard I could find, at theforce.net, and I read the review thread for that book.
And there were a few people that hated it, like me, but the vast majority loved it. They got some kind of catharsis from the fact that going evil made our previously brilliant character into an idiot. They felt the author-inserted characters added greatly to the tapestry. They felt his interpretation of the SW mythology was "daring". The average review in the thread was a four point three, or something like that, out of five.
So I realized pretty fast that wasting my time bitching about it on that forum, a forum that indeed some of the authors frequented, would simply be pointless; what I would've heard was "I'm sorry this didn't work for you, but clearly many people disagree", and with SW books selling as well as their giant presence in bookstores seems to indicate, I would've been hard pressed to have a point against that.
So it sucked, it hurt, and I ranted about it to my friends for weeks, but I left the Star Wars universe behind. Maybe I'll come back, if the reviews of the next series are any better, but since all they did was replace the best of the three authors of the last series with Christie Golden, I sincerely doubt the quality from my perspective will improve, as I've never really been a fan of her writing.
Anyway, I know it sucks, and I know the temptation is to scream and yell and convince everyone how wrong they are, but now that I'm on the other side of it, I think I realize even more how pointless it would've been if I'd tried to do that.
When it comes down to it, they tell the stories they want to tell, and sometimes it makes you squee and thrill and leap inside, and sometimes it just pisses you off and annoys you. Part of being a fan that loves something like this so much is the deep and bitter disappointment and anger that comes when stories start to reliably tend towards the latter option, but be around long enough and it's bound to happen to some fandom or other that you follow. It's happened to me, and now it's happening to you.
But you can't change it. You really can't. So just spend your time loving the stories that work for you, and singing their praises as loud as you can, because I really think that all that's left on the other side is wallowing in pointless recrimination that accomplishes nothing.
I just mentioned, in another thread, that I'd recently stopped reading Star Wars books, and I thought it might be worth repeating here because I really do know, to some extent, where the Janeway fans in this thread are coming from. I followed Star Wars from the moment Timothy Zahn released the first post-Return Of The Jedi novels in in 1991 (my username comes from the villain in those novels, still one of my all time favorite characters) up until a year and a half ago, where I stopped halfway through Legacy Of The Force, the recent nine-book series, and quit reading altogether.
My reasons for giving it up were complicated; for one, I started feeling that, after so many years of war, each new conflict was becoming more lame than the last; for another, the series centered on one of the most good and giving characters turning evil and while I loved the idea of the story I felt that in addition to making him evil they made him a complete moron for no reason (which makes my complaint actually a lot like the "character destruction" thing Lynx mentioned); and for a third, ironically enough, they killed off one of my favorite characters, an extremely strong female main character, and while I thought her death was epic and incredibly powerful, the follow-up novels didn't make a good enough story out of it to have it be worth it (see aforementioned complaint about the villain becoming stupid; if he'd stayed in character, and been an "evil" character that you could almost believe in, I'd have had no problem with him killing this other strong female character).
So, actually, I do know what it feels like to be driven out of a series by main character death and destruction that seemed pointless and went nowhere, I know it rather well.
When I read the book that killed it for me, a book of in my opinion utterly inane and ridiculous plot twists and mischaracterizations, dropped balls on important moments left and right, author-inserted characters stealing any thunder away from the mains, and a truly bizarre interpretation of the underlying mythology, I logged on to the biggest Star Wars expanded universe messageboard I could find, at theforce.net, and I read the review thread for that book.
And there were a few people that hated it, like me, but the vast majority loved it. They got some kind of catharsis from the fact that going evil made our previously brilliant character into an idiot. They felt the author-inserted characters added greatly to the tapestry. They felt his interpretation of the SW mythology was "daring". The average review in the thread was a four point three, or something like that, out of five.
So I realized pretty fast that wasting my time bitching about it on that forum, a forum that indeed some of the authors frequented, would simply be pointless; what I would've heard was "I'm sorry this didn't work for you, but clearly many people disagree", and with SW books selling as well as their giant presence in bookstores seems to indicate, I would've been hard pressed to have a point against that.
So it sucked, it hurt, and I ranted about it to my friends for weeks, but I left the Star Wars universe behind. Maybe I'll come back, if the reviews of the next series are any better, but since all they did was replace the best of the three authors of the last series with Christie Golden, I sincerely doubt the quality from my perspective will improve, as I've never really been a fan of her writing.
Anyway, I know it sucks, and I know the temptation is to scream and yell and convince everyone how wrong they are, but now that I'm on the other side of it, I think I realize even more how pointless it would've been if I'd tried to do that.
When it comes down to it, they tell the stories they want to tell, and sometimes it makes you squee and thrill and leap inside, and sometimes it just pisses you off and annoys you. Part of being a fan that loves something like this so much is the deep and bitter disappointment and anger that comes when stories start to reliably tend towards the latter option, but be around long enough and it's bound to happen to some fandom or other that you follow. It's happened to me, and now it's happening to you.
But you can't change it. You really can't. So just spend your time loving the stories that work for you, and singing their praises as loud as you can, because I really think that all that's left on the other side is wallowing in pointless recrimination that accomplishes nothing.
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Wonderful post and I love the irony of the situation, meaning you finding yourself suddenly on the other side.
Anyway, I can only speak for myself and I'm definitely not trying to convince anybody of anything. There's no right or wrong - just opinions from two different sides of the matter.
Well, maybe I am trying to convince somebody that they have made a mistake (Pocket Books), but I'm most certainly not trying to convince any of you as you're more than entitled to disagree with me.
Oh well...just wanted to say that I found your post interesting and that I don't think we have been yelling and screaming. I actually think most of us have put forth valid points and created a very active debate, which is tiring at times and interesting at others.
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