Latecomer To This: JANEWAY DIED?!?

[Thrawn]

... I know the temptation is to scream and yell and convince everyone how wrong they are...

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.

And I, personally, have very much enjoyed your posts in this thread. You've always been respectful and genuine, and no one on Earth has any problems with that.

I think talking about these creative decisions and why they work or don't can produce and has, as you said, at times actually produced a fascinating conversation; what I meant was that Trying To Change It! is basically doomed to failure and just makes everyone bitter.

Edit: actually, scratch that; what I mean is that if you will only think that the conversation is a good one if you succeed in Changing Things, then it's basically doomed to failure. You can make your case, but if you aren't capable of saying "oh well, I guess I can't change it, time to go" all you're doing is making yourself and everyone else bitter. That's better phrased, I think. Because really, the odds of you changing anyone's mind are effectively zero.

 

[captcalhoun]

consider this:

there are Star Trek fans who hate everything made since 1979.

there are Star Trek fans who only like stuff made since 1979.

there are others who only like TOS, the movies and TNG.

Others like everything up to DS9 and don't like Voyager or ENT.

another group likes everything except DS9.

yet another likes everything except ENT.

some even like it all.

so, given the fact that not everyone can even agree on which TV shows and movies are 'good', how the hell can anyone expect to please everyone with the books, which are afterall, a spin-off optional extra?

and that's not even getting into the movie out in May...

 

[MilitantJaneway]

... I know the temptation is to scream and yell and convince everyone how wrong they are...

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.

And I, personally, have very much enjoyed your posts in this thread. You've always been respectful and genuine, and no one on Earth has any problems with that.

I think talking about these creative decisions and why they work or don't can produce and has, as you said, at times actually produced a fascinating conversation; what I meant was that Trying To Change It! is basically doomed to failure and just makes everyone bitter.

Thank you both. I didn't come hear to yell and scream either it was as Gorf says, to express another opinion.
To the poster who claimed that we didnt know she got killed-and therefore we dont read the books-couldnt be more wrong here. I have known that she was killed for as long as the book was out-I just didnt know this place existed-there are other boards that I frequent. I just happened on this board when it was pointed out to me a couple of weeks ago.

 

[Gorf]

so, given the fact that not everyone can even agree on which TV shows and movies are 'good', how the hell can anyone expect to please everyone with the books, which are afterall, a spin-off optional extra?

But isn't it the very fact that we disagree that makes it interesting?

I mean I would consider it boring to debate with somebody, who always agreed with me as it would be a rather one-sided conversation.

 

[JoeZhang]

I just happened on this board when it was pointed out to me a couple of weeks ago.

I can't be the only one who's wondering - were you asked to come here? because I find it odd that in the span of about a week, we seem to have gained a number of new posters who all have popped up with the same point - like an attempt at astroturfing.

 

[Gorf]

Edit: actually, scratch that; what I mean is that if you will only think that the conversation is a good one if you succeed in Changing Things, then it's basically doomed to failure. You can make your case, but if you aren't capable of saying "oh well, I guess I can't change it, time to go" all you're doing is making yourself and everyone else bitter.

I totally agree. None of us have the power to force TPTB to change the direction of these novels anymore than we did while the show was on the air, but that doesn't make the discussion any less interesting than others that praise the direction.

I've never considered it important to win a discussion, and maybe that's my luck here because once you start focusing on forcing somebody to see something your way then, as you say, you're on a path to nothing but bitter arguments and both sides will lose.

However, if you can stay objective and argue your points that way...love that.

 

[Brit]

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.

But you can change it Thrawn, fans can change things. I've been a trek fan since I was 19 years old, in 1966. I saw the very first episode of the original series the very first time it aired. I've been hooked ever since. When the original series was slated to be canceled after the second season a lot of fans sent letters to NBC in protest. Trek got renewed for one more year. Now you may ask just what did one year get us.

One more year made the series viable for syndication, one more year only added to the fan base. The year after the series was canceled NBC switched to a demographics rating system. They discovered that had canceled a very successful show.

From that one more year, and the new fans made because now it had better time slots, came the fan fiction writers, the fanzine publishers, the animated series and finally conventions. I was actually setting in a audience and heard Gene Roddenberry announce that a movie would be made.

The movies spawned a new TV series and that another and another. All this was possible because some fans though that they could make a difference, I was one of those fans who wrote a letter forty years ago, and we did get something done.

So we are here, and we are writing letters and we are staying because bringing back Kathryn Janeway is the right thing to do.

Brit

 

[Thrawn]

There's a huge difference, Brit, between letter writing campaigns to continue a series and demanding that said series take a different direction.

"We want more!" is, in fact, the one thing fans CAN say and really make a difference. But "we want you to do this" is something else entirely.

And, no, bringing back Janeway is not "the right thing to do". It's merely the story you prefer.

 

[Thrawn]

Edit: actually, scratch that; what I mean is that if you will only think that the conversation is a good one if you succeed in Changing Things, then it's basically doomed to failure. You can make your case, but if you aren't capable of saying "oh well, I guess I can't change it, time to go" all you're doing is making yourself and everyone else bitter.

I totally agree. None of us have the power to force TPTB to change the direction of these novels anymore than we did while the show was on the air, but that doesn't make the discussion any less interesting than others that praise the direction.

I've never considered it important to win a discussion, and maybe that's my luck here because once you start focusing on forcing somebody to see something your way then, as you say, you're on a path to nothing but bitter arguments and both sides will lose.

However, if you can stay objective and argue your points that way...love that.

I agree with all of this, but my one caveat regarding this particular discussion is that, since Full Circle has yet to arrive, we're all stuck arguing over whether or not Janeway being killed could have been a good idea, rather than whether or not it was. I'm really looking forward to these discussions getting a lot more developed and interesting once we actually see where Full Circle goes; until then, I keep having to write things like "my argument will be accurate if Full Circle is good; I'm still waiting to be sure" and it seems a bit silly at times.

 

[MilitantJaneway]

There's a huge difference, Brit, between letter writing campaigns to continue a series and demanding that said series take a different direction.

"We want more!" is, in fact, the one thing fans CAN say and really make a difference. But "we want you to do this" is something else entirely.

And, no, bringing back Janeway is not "the right thing to do". It's merely the story you prefer.

Okay then we can say "We want more Janeway" not less which is what we will get if she stays dead

 

[Therin of Andor]

were you asked to come here? because I find it odd that in the span of about a week, we seem to have gained a number of new posters who all have popped up with the same point.

There's nothing hidden here. Lynx told us he knew "lots" of Janeway fans from other boards and was informing them of these threads.

 

[Gorf]

I agree with all of this, but my one caveat regarding this particular discussion is that, since Full Circle has yet to arrive, we're all stuck arguing over whether or not Janeway being killed could have been a good idea, rather than whether or not it was.

Nope, nope and afraid not.

What you forget here is the difference between our two standpoints.

You believe that killing Janeway has furthered the storyline and created many new directions for the Voyager relaunch to go.

However, us newbies consider the very fact that Janeway dies in the middle of the book to be a complete turn off, and so whether you end up considering the book a success or not really doesn't matter to us.

Now, as I wrote in my previous reply to Kirsten's message to me, IF we knew for sure that she was going to bring Janeway back in her second book, then I'd feel entirely different and I'd be willing to suffer Janeway's temporary death, but since this is in no way the case, I'm afraid the conclusion has already been made - even if we haven't read the book yet and aren't likely to ever do so.

The keypoint here is...Janeway dies and that will leave a great part of the book to deal with a subject we do not wish to read about - unless of course we have some kind of guarantee that it's just temporary and that she'll be right back, so to speak.

 

[Trent Roman]

I stopped halfway through Legacy Of The Force, the recent nine-book series, and quit reading altogether.

Funny; I did the same, giving up the book before said character death because, at that point, the Saturday morning cartoon quality of LOTF had already run my interest into the ground. And with Golden being tapped for the next trilogy, I've pretty much said goodbye to the post-ROTJ series. A shame, because the NJO rocked my socks off. Even if the editorial direction were somehow reversed, the heavily interconnected nature of SW fiction means that this idiocy will always be in the background, and one would have to settle for either a massive gap in one's knowledge of the narrative or force oneself through the current tripe to get to where the characters would be at that point. (That said, I'm still reading fiction set in earlier time periods; Coruscant Nights in particular is a fun set of books.)

If one doesn't care for the direction, there's really nothing to be done except to stop buying the books; the audience is, individually, utterly impotent. That's how I felt when I refused to buy any more VOY-R books after the crapfest of Spirit Walk until they switched authors--which, happily for me, is exactly what happened, albeit several years later. It'll still be my solution if Full Circle fails to meet my standards (and one book may not be much of a chance, but there's so much negative baggage associated with the Voyager fiction at this point that I feel I'm actually being generous). But conceeding that one is powerless doesn't equate quietly accepting the situation. If people don't bitch, here and in other venues, how are we to know what's working creatively and what isn't? I certainly wouldn't want anyone to think that the butchering of Janeway went over easy; that fans of the character, or those like me who just like to see the characters treated respectfully, took it up the ass without some squeals of protest.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[JoeZhang]

were you asked to come here? because I find it odd that in the span of about a week, we seem to have gained a number of new posters who all have popped up with the same point.

There's nothing hidden here. Lynx told us he knew "lots" of Janeway fans from other boards and was informing them of these threads.

Ah right - it's my own lazyiness, I couldn't be bothered to read all of the thread - thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Okay then we can say "We want more Janeway" not less which is what we will get if she stays dead

Then you just need a ST writer to propose to Margaret and Paula a sequel to "Voyager: Mosaic", a storyline which features Janeway after her return to the Alpha Quadrant, but is set in its own continuity like the Shatnerverse or the "Crucible" trilogy.

There are precedents, after all, and you just need to prove to Pocket Books and CBS Consumer Products that there is a sufficient number of fans out there, ready to buy.

You know, John Ordover made a point once, about the supposed demand for "Captain Sulu" novels. He was deluged by complaints by a small core group of avid Sulu fans, over many months. They claimed to represent a legion of like-minded fans. "The Captain's Daughter" by fan favourite and regular "New York Times bestseller", Peter David, had received critical acclaim as a "Sulu/Excelsior" novel, but had been an unexpected flop, sales wise, for Pocket Books. The trio of Captain Sulu original audios had also underperformed for Simon & Schuster Audioworks.

John decided to pacify "the fans" over on the Psi Phi and S&S boards, and he set up a promise/challenge that if he received a certain number of genuine, separate, hand-typed requests (I can't recall how many - 100? - but he worked out and announced what he considered would be a representative sample) then he'd commission a new, branded "Captain Sulu" novel. The fans had several weeks to rally supporters.

"Too easy!" they exclaimed.

And you know what? The numbers did not come in, just as John predicted.

It was to Marco Palmeri's credit that he, and Mangels & Martin, kept tinkering away at their "DS9: Blood Oath" prequel, "Forged in Fire", featuring Captain Sulu, over many, many years, despite the failed challenge that John had set up.

 

[Gorf]

were you asked to come here? because I find it odd that in the span of about a week, we seem to have gained a number of new posters who all have popped up with the same point.

There's nothing hidden here. Lynx told us he knew "lots" of Janeway fans from other boards and was informing them of these threads.

Not a secret, no. As always I can only speak for me, but I was told about the fact that Janeway died in a recent TNG book and that there was some discussion about it going on over here.

Nobody told me to go here, but I decided to check it out and I have to admit that my first reaction was to run as fast as I could in the other direction because most of the replies in the thread I came across first weren't exactly gentle on the issue and the debates were rather heated and I felt mostly one-sided.

However, reading more I felt that I needed to make my opinion heard and I felt that the discussion centered mostly on the posibility and effects of a boycott. Not to mention how few Janeway fans there could possible be - all very speculative.

I decided it might be interesting to start a new discussion centering on whether or not focusing some of the books on Janeway (and the Voyager crew as a whole with a bit of romance thrown in ), and thereby pleasing the Janeway fans, might actually increase sales instead of reducing them. Unfortunately, that idea got lost amid various other arguments.

But there you have it - that's how I arrived here.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Now, as I wrote in my previous reply to Kirsten's message to me, IF we knew for sure that she was going to bring Janeway back in her second book, then I'd feel entirely different and I'd be willing to suffer Janeway's temporary death, but since this is in no way the case, I'm afraid the conclusion has already been made - even if we haven't read the book yet and aren't likely to ever do so.

That's exactly what the "Spock Must Not Die!" campaigners said about ST II. If Spock's death was going to be permanent, then they were boycotting the movie. People sent hate mail to Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett. The campaigners calculated loss-of-revenue from box office, tie-ins and the then-fledgling home video market, they took out a full page ad in "Variety" - even Gene Roddenberry was saying it would be a terrible film, and might withhold his "created by..." credit. Majel Barrett announced that she'd show her support of Gene by not appearing as Dr Chapel - and then...

ST II came out and became an instant critical and box office hit. At this point there was still no intention for Nimoy to play Spock again.

The "Spock Must Not Die!" campaigners were never heard from again. Perhaps some continued their boycott (until friends saw ST III and told them it was safe to re-enter a cinema). Perhaps some heard what a great story ST II was and went to see it anyway. Perhaps some stopped being ST and Nimoy fans and have never returned. We'll never know.

Supposedly some went on to run the "Enterprise Must Not Die!" campaign in the weeks leading up to ST III.

 

[Thrawn]

I agree with all of this, but my one caveat regarding this particular discussion is that, since Full Circle has yet to arrive, we're all stuck arguing over whether or not Janeway being killed could have been a good idea, rather than whether or not it was.

Nope, nope and afraid not.

What you forget here is the difference between our two standpoints.

You believe that killing Janeway has furthered the storyline and created many new directions for the Voyager relaunch to go.

However, us newbies consider the very fact that Janeway dies in the middle of the book to be a complete turn off, and so whether you end up considering the book a success or not really doesn't matter to us.

Actually, no, I didn't misrepresent your argument at all, as far as I can tell.

You feel as though Janeway's death could not possibly have been a good idea, I feel as though it could possibly have been a good idea. Anyone who holds the position that it couldn't possibly have been a good idea would of course have no reason at all to read the book in which she died. I was mostly speaking of myself; I don't feel as though I can argue that it was, in fact, a good idea until I've read the book itself, putting me at something of a logical disadvantage in these arguments.

So, I'd feel more comfortable talking about it once I actually can speak of the stories that have resulted. After all, in Star Wars, part of the reason I left was that they killed off a main character in an outstanding book but then the follow-up stories didn't justify it. The follow-up stories are an incredibly important part of this equation for me.

 

[MilitantJaneway]

Now, as I wrote in my previous reply to Kirsten's message to me, IF we knew for sure that she was going to bring Janeway back in her second book, then I'd feel entirely different and I'd be willing to suffer Janeway's temporary death, but since this is in no way the case, I'm afraid the conclusion has already been made - even if we haven't read the book yet and aren't likely to ever do so.

That's exactly what the "Spock Must Not Die!" campaigners said about ST II. If Spock's death was going to be permanent, then they were boycotting the movie. People sent hate mail to Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett. The campaigners calculated loss-of-revenue from box office, tie-ins and the then-fledgling home video market, they took out a full page ad in "Variety" - even Gene Roddenberry was saying it would be a terrible film, and might withhold his "created by..." credit. Majel Barett announced that she'd show her support of Gene by not appearing as Dr Chapel - and then...

ST II came out and became an instant critical and box office hit.

The "Spock Must Not Die!" campaigners were never heard from again. Perhaps some continued their boycott (until friends saw ST III and told them it was safe to re-enter a cinema). Perhaps some heard what a great story ST II was and went to see it anyway. Perhaps some stopped being ST and Nimoy fans and have never returned. We'll never know.

Supposedly some went on to run the "Enterprise Must Not Die!" campaign in the weeks leading up to ST III.

Fine but Spock as it turns out did come back. I am not saying that the book is going to be bad. I happen to love Kristen Beyers works. I loved String theory book 2 and Isabo's shirt and I am sure she will do a fabulous job, and I do intend to read it. But beyond that, for me anyways Voyager is just not Voyager without Janeway. I hope, as they have done in many other cases they will reconsider this descsion as well and bring her back.

 

[Thrawn]

John decided to pacify "the fans" over on the Psi Phi and S&S boards, and he set up a promise/challenge that if he received a certain number of genuine, separate, hand-typed requests (I can't recall how many - 100? - but he worked out and announced what he considered would be a representative sample) then he'd commission a new, branded "Captain Sulu" novel. The fans had several weeks to rally supporters.

"Too easy!" they exclaimed.

And you know what? The numbers did not come in, just as John predicted.

Indeed, as far as I can remember, the publication of The Captain's Daughter was the only time that anything was done specifically because "the fans wanted it" in the Trek book line, at least since TNG hit airwaves. And, as you so correctly pointed out, sales were awful and then even the very same messageboard fans that got it started in the first place were unable to muster the necessary support. There's a moral here.

I'd like to say, though, that The Captain's Daughter is, I think, a pretty damn solid book; the question is not "were the fans right that it'd make a good story?" The question is if a small number of people on a forum actually means anything. And in the one case I can recall where this was tested, it didn't.

Finally, on this point, one last thing about Lynx's point about thousands of Kes fans writing letters. The difference between the number of people watching a show and the number of people reading the tie-ins is, charitably, 20 to 1. Perhaps more like 50 to 1. Proportionally speaking, 1000 Janeway fans is about right, perhaps even too large. And that's barely enough to make any kind of dent in sales, just as Kes fans, proportionally speaking, were barely enough to make any kind of dent in ratings.