I had a question: would Starfleet: Year One, Federation, and Crossover be consistent or compatible with this loose continuity, and if so, where would they fit?
The Continuity of Days Gone By
- Thread starter ryan123450
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Well, most of the '80s continuity predates the TNG era, and indeed it was the arrival of TNG that blew it out of the water as the show established its own incompatible versions of things. So given that TNG itself is not compatible with the '80s continuity, it doesn't seem likely that Federation or Crossover could be. As for S:YO, it's based on the TNG-era idea that the UFP was founded in 2161, which doesn't mesh with the Spaceflight Chronology dating used in books like The Final Reflection and Final Frontier.
However, as far as I know, there's nothing about Crosover that isn't still compatible with the current book continuity. I count it as part of that continuity myself, though I haven't re-read it in years and I'm not sure if something has come along to contradict it since then. The only discrepancy I'm aware of is that it has a Galaxy-class starship named Intrepid, which is inconsistent with the existence of a distinct Intrepid class (to which Voyager belongs) around the same time. But I just disregard the Galaxy-class reference and assume it's the class-namer Intrepid (most likely NCC-74600).
Ok. Thanks for the answer.
^By the way, this is off-topic, but I keep wondering about that line in your signature, "Ze director's cut is ze film you saw in ze theater." I wonder where that's from, because it's certainly not true, at least not in Hollywood. In the Hollywood system, studios, not directors, get the final cut on movies, so that the theatrical version is often different from what the director wanted -- which is the whole reason that director's-cut DVDs exist at all, and the reason the "Alan Smithee" credit exists, for situations where directors take their names off a film to protest changes made to it against their will.
I would say that Starfleet: Year One fits better in continuity than all of Star Trek: Enterprise, while Federation is a fun read, and it's surprising that it was put out so close to Star Trek: First Contact (the hardcover came out in 94, then the paperback followed in 95, then the movie hit in 96), but it doesn't really fit any where any more.
How is it surprising? The writers of "First Contact" would have been almost oblivious to the existence of "Federation". Who knows, maybe mention of Cochrane around the traps got the movie team thinking?
Very unlikely. If the filmmakers had known a book had just done something with the character, it would've been more likely to discourage them from using a similar idea, if anything. And it's not like there haven't been multiple other instances of the novelists and the show staff coming up with similar ideas close together. Surak's Soul and "The Seventh" come to mind, for example, or Seven of Nine and "Infinite Regress."
I remember the Reeves-Stevens mentioning in the interview for their Signature Edition book that they had, back around 1985/86, before TNG was announced, proposed a story that would've had Kirk and crew travelling a hundred years into the future, but the proposal wasn't approved because of TNG. But then, about a decade later a book by the same team gets published that does something similar, but is not rejected by Paramount, even though a new movie based on a similar idea is about to hit in the same amount of time.
It's all a matter of timing. The deal with "Federation" was that crossovers in the tie-ins were being actively discouraged at the time, but the storyline was such that the two Enterprise crews never met, so it got approved.
DC Fontana's novel, "Vulcan's Glory" was being written about the same time as rumours/factoids of the storyline of ST V, then in pre-production, were being released. Roddenberry and Fontana were being asked to comment publicly on the "Spock has an older brother?" concept and it seemed they were displeased that DC's old TOS memos about the importance of Spock not suddenly having siblings in TOS episodes carried no weight with Shatner & Loughery. (They'd probably never read them.)
But "Vulcan's Glory" has a line, from Amanda, IIRC, where Spock is called "the only son of Sarek". Years later, I asked DC about whether this was a deliberate stab at the then-not-yet-onscreen ST V storyline with Sybok and she smiled cheekily and said, "I'm glad you noticed."
Had the book been commissioned after ST V was out, that line would have been edited out.
But... it was possibly also because David Dvorkin's "Timetrap" was already in train. That one had Kirk apparently timeslipped into a future where the Klingons were the UFP's allies, IIRC, and it came out in June 1988. I recall, when reading it, that I'd hoped Dvorkin had been able to slip in a few TNG-type references, but there were none.
Not necessarily. Sybok was disowned, after all, so officially he was no longer counted as a son of Sarek. Spock was the only one who had legal or familial recognition as a son after that point, and many people (including Kirk and McCoy) were unaware that Sarek had ever had another son.
But because of the nature of the setup, there couldn't have been any.
There was no actual time travel, just 23rd-century Klingons faking the 24th century to trick Kirk into revealing strategic information -- a ploy used from time to time in Mission: Impossible and spy movies. So the Klingons who faked the future would've had no way of knowing what the actual future would be like, and thus any actual TNG references would've been impossible.
Wasn't there a comment that in the future, a Klingon served on the Enterprise? Workable as both something the plotters would say, and sufficient to fool the readers.
I'm not sure how Moore and Braga glommed onto Cochrane as a character for First Contact after they decided against the Renaissance-set story with Leonardo da Vinci. However, we do know that Braga had no idea who Cochrane was and thought that Cochrane could be Picard's love interest.
You know, I just now realized that I left Enterprise: The First Adventure off my list of the '80s novelverse. I did mention in my preliminary list that it might count, but said that I couldn't remember any cross-references that would connect it. Now I realize there is one: it introduced the names George and Winona for Kirk's parents, which were then reused in Final Frontier and Best Destiny, which are on the current version of the '80s-verse list. (It also established the name Jocelyn for McCoy's ex-wife, which has been used in numerous other books, though I'm not sure if any of them are on the '80s-verse list. And I could swear the "Admiral Noguchi" mentioned in E:TFA was mentioned in other books as well, but I can't find any evidence of that online.)
That makes four books I've added to the list since it was last edited, and it's now closed to editing, so I suppose I should post my current, revised list:
Before TOS:
2170s: The Final Reflection (body)
2183: Final Frontier (body)
2188: Best Destiny (flashbacks)
c. 2204: Enterprise: The First Adventure
During TOS (c. 2207-10):
Final Frontier (frame) (just after "City on the Edge")
The Vulcan Academy Murders and The IDIC Epidemic (just before "A Private Little War")
After TOS/2nd 5-year mission:
Prime Directive (early year 5 of mission)
Yesterday's Son (2 years after "All Our Yesterdays," so late year 5)
Uhura's Song
Shadow Lord
The Wounded Sky
My Enemy, My Ally
The Abode of Life
Mindshadow
Crisis on Centaurus
Demons
Chain of Attack
The Final Nexus
Dreams of the Raven
Bloodthirst
How Much for Just the Planet?
Memory Prime
Doctor's Orders
Dreadnought!
Battlestations!
Corona
The Entropy Effect
The Romulan Way (8 years after "Enterprise Incident")
The Final Reflection (frame) (10 years after “Errand of Mercy”)
Interim period:
The Lost Years
Movie era:
Spock's World (shortly after TMP)
Rules of Engagement
The Pandora Principle (just after Saavik enters Academy)
Dwellers in the Crucible (during Saavik's time at Academy)
Deep Domain (Kirk returns to Admiralty)
Strangers from the Sky (frame)
Time for Yesterday (shortly pre-TWOK)
TWOK, TSFS, TVH (McIntyre novelizations)
Music of the Spheres (after TVH)
Best Destiny (just after TUC)
My placement of E:TFA in c. 2204 is based on Kirk being slightly under 30 in the novel. That would put it four-plus years before "The Deadly Years," which by SFC dating (at least the version on Memory Beta) would be in mid- to late 2208.
That makes four books I've added to the list since it was last edited, and it's now closed to editing, so I suppose I should post my current, revised list:
Before TOS:
2170s: The Final Reflection (body)
2183: Final Frontier (body)
2188: Best Destiny (flashbacks)
c. 2204: Enterprise: The First Adventure
During TOS (c. 2207-10):
Final Frontier (frame) (just after "City on the Edge")
The Vulcan Academy Murders and The IDIC Epidemic (just before "A Private Little War")
After TOS/2nd 5-year mission:
Prime Directive (early year 5 of mission)
Yesterday's Son (2 years after "All Our Yesterdays," so late year 5)
Uhura's Song
Shadow Lord
The Wounded Sky
My Enemy, My Ally
The Abode of Life
Mindshadow
Crisis on Centaurus
Demons
Chain of Attack
The Final Nexus
Dreams of the Raven
Bloodthirst
How Much for Just the Planet?
Memory Prime
Doctor's Orders
Dreadnought!
Battlestations!
Corona
The Entropy Effect
The Romulan Way (8 years after "Enterprise Incident")
The Final Reflection (frame) (10 years after “Errand of Mercy”)
Interim period:
The Lost Years
Movie era:
Spock's World (shortly after TMP)
Rules of Engagement
The Pandora Principle (just after Saavik enters Academy)
Dwellers in the Crucible (during Saavik's time at Academy)
Deep Domain (Kirk returns to Admiralty)
Strangers from the Sky (frame)
Time for Yesterday (shortly pre-TWOK)
TWOK, TSFS, TVH (McIntyre novelizations)
Music of the Spheres (after TVH)
Best Destiny (just after TUC)
My placement of E:TFA in c. 2204 is based on Kirk being slightly under 30 in the novel. That would put it four-plus years before "The Deadly Years," which by SFC dating (at least the version on Memory Beta) would be in mid- to late 2208.
Hey, Christopher. Do the Rihannsu novels Swordhunt and Honor Blade, as originally published, fit into this older continuity, and, if so, where would they fit?
As I discussed before, I made this list to reflect the continuity as it would've been seen in the '80s, before TNG came along and changed things. The idea was to offer a glimpse at a period of history, to try to codify an old interpretation of Trek continuity which has since been superseded.
Swordhunt and The Empty Chair came later and retconned some TNG-era ideas into the Duaneverse, so they represent a different era's take on the continuity. After all, the revised versions of the earlier novels as found in The Bloodwing Voyages retcon them to be post-TMP rather than in the conjectural "second five-year mission" implied to exist in the original version of the books. Swordhunt claims to begin two months after The Romulan Way, but is also after Spock's World, so that definitely conflicts with the '80s version of the continuity I tried to reconstruct above.
Swordhunt and The Empty Chair came later and retconned some TNG-era ideas into the Duaneverse, so they represent a different era's take on the continuity. After all, the revised versions of the earlier novels as found in The Bloodwing Voyages retcon them to be post-TMP rather than in the conjectural "second five-year mission" implied to exist in the original version of the books. Swordhunt claims to begin two months after The Romulan Way, but is also after Spock's World, so that definitely conflicts with the '80s version of the continuity I tried to reconstruct above.
^ Ok. Thanks for the answer.
I really don't see it as a problem. Kirk was made the goat, he came back and became the hero again, and Starfleet had to take him back. But they didn't want him running off without a leash anymore, so they promoted him to an admiralty desk and out of a captain's chair. This is why Nogura was so reluctant to let him take the Enterprise in TMP. If, say, Yorktown had been the ship ending it's refit, Nogura might have been more willing to send Kirk aboard, but as a flag officer controlling Yorktown's mission, not as a captain commanding Yorktown.
After TMP, it seemed to me that Kirk got along with the admiralty a lot less than he had in TOS, and lost the easy friendship he'd had with commodores and admirals before. PD is an excellent explanation as to why. By TMP, he'd realized his promotion was not a reward, but a control, and he distrusted them after that as much as they distrusted him.
Wow, it's neat to see this thread again, after such a long time. This is one of my favorite threads, it inspired me to hunt down the books on the list and read through the 80's alternative TOS continuity. I've been happy as a clam with the books I've read off the list so far, if nothing else it's been an amazing consolation prize after not getting the four Kelvin continuity novels that were abruptly cancelled. Been reading through the DC Volume 1 series as well...I love 80's era Star Trek!
I've always disliked the idea of a 2nd 5 year mission before TMP .... the aesthetics change way too quickly between the first two movies for them to be on the short end of the timeline. A 2nd 5 year mission makes a ton more sense when set after the first movie. When I was younger, I'm not sure I realized the timeline the novels implied; I was reading them from the public libraries in my city, and they would always be mixed in with all sorts of other 70s trek books and other out of continuity stuff and anthology books. I definitely didn't get to read them in any type of chronological order, and remember almost none of it (i'm sure I skimmed a lot, too).... but I explicitly remember thinking the cover art was messed up, and used the wrong uniforms all the time.
*Edit* sorry for the thread ressurection; didn't realize it was this old, and have been looking through it over a couple day period. Sorry!!
*Edit* sorry for the thread ressurection; didn't realize it was this old, and have been looking through it over a couple day period. Sorry!!
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