^ Thirded. You can't develop a new status quo, which is something I think needs to be done to maintain a large number of readers, while moving at this pace.
At the Prophet's Door - new DRGIII TNG novel?
- Thread starter DarkHorizon
- Start date
Has anyone got a timeline of books post-Destiny so we can see just how fast the years are passing?
That is one of my main problems. Voyager is moving slow, and I think it's pace is perfect. But it will fall way behind very soon, if not already. Why not let the other series take their time as well?
I can think of a couple of reasons:
1) It lets the pace of the books approximate how far apart they're being released.
2) It avoids SCE's problem where the stories literally cannot fit into the timeframe they're supposed to occur over. (Admittedly, that's at least partially due to their being retroactively compressed to allow for the DS9 crossovers, but IIRC it was still pretty tight beforehand.)
Oh God, not this debate again.
Listen, these are all separate series telling separate stories. There's no reason for them to progress at the same speed. It all depends on what the authors think is best for the stories they're telling.
I for one think the complaint about them taking too long between books is silly. Book series OFTEN have a year or two between entries. Same with films -- did it really bother anyone that an entire year passed between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight? There's no need to have less time pass between books.
Did it? Given that Batman Begins concluded with Gordon showing the Joker's calling card to Batman, I've always assumed that TDK picked up pretty soon after BB.
Which is not to disagree with your point. In Trek alone, we have over a decade between TMP & TWOK, something like 7 years between TFF & TUC, and the intervals between TNG movies corresponding pretty much to real time, around 2 years each between the first three and around 4 years between INS & NEM.
On the other hand, books don't need to conform to real time since the characters aren't played by actors who are aging in real time. So maybe movies aren't the best analogy. How about The Dresden Files? Those books usually tend to have gaps between them ranging from several months to a year and a half. They pretty much have to, since Harry Dresden is generally so beat up by the end of a book that he needs the time to recover.
Christopher, I can see your point but to me it seems as though Pocket's ST editor(s) are doing their damnedest to bring the book lines to 2387 as quickly as possible so they can deal with the Hobus supernova and then move forward from there with nothing else in the Prime universe happening on screen.
The Pact was formed in 2381 and there have been 4 novels and a novella covering the next year or so. Indistinguishable from Magic is in 2383, two years after the formation of the Pact, but is not Pact related.
I find it inconceivable that nothing of note has happened between the Federation and the Pact between 2382 and 2384, cold war or not. Unless DRGIII's duology hints at events in that time frame that Mack's trilogy will then fill in later, there is another gap in the universe.
The Pact was formed in 2381 and there have been 4 novels and a novella covering the next year or so. Indistinguishable from Magic is in 2383, two years after the formation of the Pact, but is not Pact related.
I find it inconceivable that nothing of note has happened between the Federation and the Pact between 2382 and 2384, cold war or not. Unless DRGIII's duology hints at events in that time frame that Mack's trilogy will then fill in later, there is another gap in the universe.
Well, by the same token, it stands to reason that there were events of note in Federation-Klingon relations between The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country, but we didn't get to see those. And we know in retrospect that there was a bunch of stuff going on between the UFP and the Cardassians around 2364-6 -- like a state of open declared war and the negotiation of the treaty that ended it -- even though we never heard of the Cardassians until an episode set in 2367. Our attention during those years was focused elsewhere. It's a big universe, and our exposure to its history and politics has always been piecemeal.
So I don't think there's any obligation to show every single event that occurs between the UFP and the Typhon Pact. Indeed, if the goal is to focus on the most important events, it kinda makes sense to space them out so that they don't all happen absurdly close together.
Besides, who's to say the most important events in the Pact's ongoing evolution involved the Federation at all? People tend to want to define the Pact purely in relation to the UFP, but the reason the Pact's members founded it was so that they could be strong enough to stand on their own and lead lives that aren't defined or dominated by the Federation. So logically their highest priorities would be their own internal affairs. And for six proud and highly independent civilizations trying to hash out a working partnership for the first time in their respective histories, there would be a lot of internal questions to occupy their attention. Particularly in the wake of the events of The Struggle Within, I think the Pact's members have enough domestic concerns to contend with that clashing with the UFP would not be their overriding priority for a while. So if Trek Lit continues to tell its stories from the UFP/Starfleet perspective, it makes sense that there could be a sizeable gap between stories involving the Pact.
Not every month brings chaos - Trek already stretches credibility with the number of galactic crisis that have occurred since the Dominion War.
That said, not every minor event or skirmish needs to be detailed. Many fans ignore it, but in First Contact, Picard alludes to an unseen, ongoing conflict with the Borg which the Federation is losing. Something as simple as that can bring us up-to-date with the Federation/Typhon Pact situation in any future novel.
No, numerous lines of dialogue make it clear that a year has transpired between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.
I see no reason to assume that's their motivation. Really, when you're doing stories about the big astropolitical situation, having intervals of around a year between entries makes sense. You wouldn't star off a story about the Cold War immediately after you've finished writing World War II -- you'd set it a few years after WW2, to establish the early Cold War situation. And then you'd probably give it another year or so before your next installment, to let the consequences of your previous story sink in before starting a new story.
This isn't like a TV series, where there's a "status quo" that each individual episode deviates from but then restores by the end of the episode. These aren't TV shows, these are novels.
The fact that they haven't covered it doesn't mean nothing of note happened, it just means that that's not the story they're telling right now. I mean, it's pretty clear that plenty of interesting things happened between 2286 (end of STIV) and 2293 (STVI) besides the events of The Final Frontier, but that doesn't mean the films had to tell every potential interesting story right then.
Again, you're thinking in terms of a TV series. This isn't a TV series. Not every event every week has to be shown.
... I'm sorry, but what on Earth are you talking about?
Right before Picard smashes his model ships. All that stuff about the Federation falling back again and again as the Borg invade their space and assimilate entire worlds.
I'm fairly certain he was talking about the incursions seen in "The Best of Both Worlds" and First Contact, nothing else.
For me it's not so much the skipping so much time, as it is that we went from one story pretty much leading from one to the next, to suddenly skipping ahead a year or more. I prefer the former, so I was disappointed that they switched to the later.
EDIT: Another thing for me is the fact the characters like Worf, Geordi, and Picard are getting up there in age, so if we keep jumping ahead so much they're going to be getting kinda rediculous that they're still running around the galaxy. Although now that I type I realize we do still have TOS characters active into the Post-DW era, and charaters like Vaughn who are well into 100s, so I guess it's really not that bad. Never mind.
EDIT: Another thing for me is the fact the characters like Worf, Geordi, and Picard are getting up there in age, so if we keep jumping ahead so much they're going to be getting kinda rediculous that they're still running around the galaxy. Although now that I type I realize we do still have TOS characters active into the Post-DW era, and charaters like Vaughn who are well into 100s, so I guess it's really not that bad. Never mind.
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It can be taken that way, but the line certainly did seem to imply that there had been more cycles of invasion and falling back. Which is understandable since, of course, the priority is to make a film stand on its own rather than quibble about continuity. It was more dramatic at that moment to have Picard talk about a recurring pattern of Borg attacks than to say it had happened only once before.
he specifically says 'they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back', that HAS to mean more shit's going down than Wolf 359, Descent and I, Borg.
plus which, if you do take it literally (and why would Picard lie?), it neatly explains Sisko's line about the 'recent Borg attack' in DS9 which was stardated BEFORE the stardate of First Contact.
Fridge Brilliance?
plus which, if you do take it literally (and why would Picard lie?), it neatly explains Sisko's line about the 'recent Borg attack' in DS9 which was stardated BEFORE the stardate of First Contact.
Fridge Brilliance?
Not particularly. Jouret IV was assimilated in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I," remember?
(Besides, he was literally in the middle of an emotional breakdown. It's not like he was necessarily a reliable source of information at that point -- people do tend to do things like exaggerate when they're not thinking rationally.)
I think it's pretty obvious that Sisko was talking about First Contact. Stardates are never supposed to stand up to scrutiny like that.
Besides, the idea of a sustained, ongoing conflict with the Borg is just completely implausible. The Federation wouldn't be able to survive one -- as Destiny established very clearly.
Hm, I dunno. A Borg cube attack is always such a huge thing, because even a lone cube is so much more powerful than the entire (pre-Voyager homecoming) fleet, it just seems implausible that there would be cube incursions without us hearing about it. I can buy the idea of incidents involving smaller ships -- spheres encountered in remote corners of the Alpha Quadrant, say. But cubes seem to be an entirely different animal.
A lot of big stuff happened on DS9 that we didn't hear mention of on TNG or in the movies. The whole Dominion War was barely alluded to in Insurrection even though it was supposed to be ongoing at the time. It's a conceit of fiction that it focuses on what's happening to its core cast and doesn't mention events elsewhere unless they have an effect on that core cast.
Or think of Vanguard, which reveals that there was a lot of quadrant-shaking stuff going on simultaneous with TOS that we never heard about -- or that, unknown to us, was the underlying cause of things we did see on TOS.
Or think of Vanguard, which reveals that there was a lot of quadrant-shaking stuff going on simultaneous with TOS that we never heard about -- or that, unknown to us, was the underlying cause of things we did see on TOS.