NuTrek references in the novels

[TJ Sinclair]

Pah, it's not real fucking Star Trek if it doesn't have Chris Pike, Number One, Dr Boyce. Fuck these apocrypha going along with that bullshit that Spock speaks softly and doesn't have a limp!

The only Trek that matters.

 

[Christopher]

Who's this Pike guy? Robert April is the captain! And why are they calling the navigator Tyler instead of Ortegas? And how dare they call it the Enterprise when everyone knows it's the Yorktown?

 

[Noddy]

^I think the idea behind The Children of Kings, as expressed in the author's afterword, was that since we now had more than one timeline onscreen, the books didn't necessarily have to be bound to an existing timeline. Or something like that. Although from a more pragmatic standpoint, I think the book was most likely written before the movie came out, and things were still up in the air about which timeline(s) Pocket would be writing books about going forward. I recall that before Marco Palmieri was laid off, and before I was pegged to write one of the abortive Abramsverse novels, Marco had asked me to develop a TOS novel which could be tailored to either continuity depending on what Pocket ended up doing vis-a-vis the movies going forward. (In retrospect, given what happened with the Abrams novels, that seems like a safer idea than what we ended up doing.) Mine would presumably have been adjusted to fit either one continuity or the other before publication, but maybe TCoK was based on a similar idea, telling a story that wasn't clearly bound to either continuity.

As for TCoK being before the launch of the Enterprise in the movie, keep in mind that Countdown to Darkness established the existence of an earlier Enterprise that Robert April commanded until 2249. So maybe it could fit that continuity after all?

But wasn't NuSpock stay at the Academy and (re?)design and oversee the Kobayashi Maru simulation during the time period the novel is set?

 

[SeerSGB]

Pah, it's not real fucking Star Trek if it doesn't have Chris Pike, Number One, Dr Boyce. Fuck these apocrypha going along with that bullshit that Spock speaks softly and doesn't have a limp!

The entire franchise from the end of 'The Cage' forward is nothing but a Talosian telepathic illusion.

 

[Christopher]

But wasn't NuSpock stay at the Academy and (re?)design and oversee the Kobayashi Maru simulation during the time period the novel is set?

I never took it that Spock had been teaching at the Academy that entire time. After all, he'd only been out of the Academy for four years as of the events of the 2009 film, and he would've had to gain some prior starship experience in order to be qualified to serve as the Enterprise's first officer.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The entire franchise from the end of 'The Cage' forward is nothing but a Talosian telepathic illusion.

Those Talosians were also responsible for the disappearing Chuck in "Happy Days", and for Pam's dream that the freshly-showered Bobby Ewing interrupted in "Dallas".

 

[Christopher]

^Tommy Westphall is really a zoo exhibit on Talos IV.

 

[Avro Arrow]

After all, he'd only been out of the Academy for four years as of the events of the 2009 film, and he would've had to gain some prior starship experience in order to be qualified to serve as the Enterprise's first officer.

Yes, you would think so... but then, Kirk.

I know it probably doesn't really count for anything, but the promotional "dossier" for Spock that was on the official movie site back in 2009 says:

Commander at Starfleet Academy. Current instructor of Advanced Phonology and Interspecies Ethics. Specializes in computer programming, tracking toward Science Officer.

It doesn't really go into any previous assignments. And I know it's hardly a "canonical" source... I just don't know of any other source that might have touched on nuSpock's career history.

 

[Noddy]

But wasn't NuSpock stay at the Academy and (re?)design and oversee the Kobayashi Maru simulation during the time period the novel is set?

I never took it that Spock had been teaching at the Academy that entire time. After all, he'd only been out of the Academy for four years as of the events of the 2009 film, and he would've had to gain some prior starship experience in order to be qualified to serve as the Enterprise's first officer.

I think it would be more like 5 years since he graduated in the new reality, assuming he joined in 2249, and was there for the standard four years of training. "The Cage" took place in 2254, so Spock Prime would only have been out of the academy for about a year.

 

[Lonemagpie]

^Tommy Westphall is really a zoo exhibit on Talos IV.

No, he's one of the illusions

 

[F. King Daniel]

How does that work when it's reversed? The Reboot Team used the novels for a lot of the backstory and fill in the gaps for some of the characters: Kirk a little prick that was always in trouble comes from the novels years (2 decades, I'm thinking) before the reboot. So does that mean the Prime Universe contaminated the Reboot-Verse?

Not to mention pre-'09 novels which flukishly feature very nuTrek-ish things, like Kirk's Red Bull space jumping in Captain's Peril. How dare they write something that reads like a movie reference years later!

 

[SeerSGB]

How does that work when it's reversed? The Reboot Team used the novels for a lot of the backstory and fill in the gaps for some of the characters: Kirk a little prick that was always in trouble comes from the novels years (2 decades, I'm thinking) before the reboot. So does that mean the Prime Universe contaminated the Reboot-Verse?

Not to mention pre-'09 novels which flukishly feature very nuTrek-ish things, like Kirk's Red Bull space jumping in Captain's Peril. How dare they write something that reads like a movie reference years later!

Imagine had they took Killing Time as a reference point.

A Romulan time-tampering project that has transported the Enterprise and the galaxy into an alternate dimension of reality. Now Kirk is an embittered young ensign and Spock is a besieged starship commander.

Nah....

Ensign Kirk awakens in his cabin on the VSS ShiKahr, shared by his roommate, Paul Donner. Kirk, an ex-convict who has been on the ship less than twenty-four hours, injects himself with the drug lidacin. Captain Spock, walking the night-time corridors of his ship, has a fit of vertigo during which he sees a vision of the corridors of the Enterprise and of Kirk. Kirk gets into a fight with Donner, who taunts him for having been given the choice between Starfleet and prison.

Huh...okay....

Okay, Best Destiny...

In the past, some forty-five years earlier, the reader is introduced to a young Jimmy Kirk. At 16 years old, he embodies every parent's worst fears: he is brash, rebellious, impulsive, cocky, and reckless. He is first seen leading a group of similarly rebellious (and criminal) youths on a barely-considered scheme to "escape" from Iowa, sign onto an ocean-going freight vessel as underage deckhands (itself illegal), and make their fortune somewhere in South America. Even at this young age, it is clear that Jimmy is a leader, but he is completely directionless. His father's long absences on Starfleet assignments and his own experiences on Tarsus IV have made him angry and violent, as well as impatient for the right to make his own decisions and live his own life.

...

....Although Jimmy displays his usual rudeness and lack of respect for authority on the trip up from the Earth's surface,... even Jimmy is impressed by his first view of Enterprise.

Damn it!

Anyone have a list of books they used? Cause I'm seeing a lot of old Trek contaminating Nu-Trek.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Anyone have a list of books they used? Cause I'm seeing a lot of old Trek contaminating Nu-Trek.

IIRC, Orci & Kurtzman specifically named "Spock's World", "Final Frontier", "Best Destiny", "Enterprise: The First Adventure", "Prime Directive" and "Ex Machina", plus the TAS episode, "Yesteryear", as favourites/influences.

Found some references:

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncategorized/star-trek-screenwriters-pick-their-fave-trek-novels/

http://trekweb.com/articles/2009/04...boutnbspTheir-Favorite-Star-Trek-Novels.shtml

 

[Timewalker]

Perhaps we should put stickers on the books:

"Warning: Part of the same franchise that also produced the most recent movies. May contain trace amounts of NuTrek. People severely allergic to reboots should be aware of the possibility of cross-universe contamination. Proceed at your own risk."

Seriously, NuTrek isn't plutonium. Trace amounts never killed anybody.

Yeah, I could live with a warning like that. As for "trace amounts" of crossover or "reimagined" stuff... I feel the same way when I see nuDune nonsense inserted into a story that claims to be Dune.

Write all the nuTrek books you want. Just don't try to pass them off as real Trek, and keep cross-contamination out of it. The nuTrek fans will be happy with the book and the people who loathe nuTrek can safely ignore it. After all, it doesn't help when a reader sees some mention of a nuTrek detail of a character's life in a TOS book and mutters, "WTF!!! This author doesn't know what he/she's talking about!" when it doesn't match real Trek details.

How would you know that something is a nuTrek detail if you loathe nuTrek, and therefore, presumably, have not seen nuTrek?

You think I would love it if only I'd watch it?

I saw the 2009 movie when it came on TV. Yes, I loathed it. Most of the actors come across like plastic models. Wesley - I mean Chekov - is ridiculous. McCoy (the actor looks like a dead ringer for the actor who played Gary Mitchell, btw), running around, jamming hypos into Kirk every chance he gets? It was probably supposed to be funny, but it just seemed stupid. The list of what I hate about it goes on and on.

Yeah, I'll watch STID - when I can see it for free, since I don't think it's worth spending money on. After all, if I'm going to complain about it, I should know what there is to complain about. From what I've seen here, it's full of pointless explosions, and they've ripped off a lot of TWoK (thereby showing that they don't seem able to come up with any original plots). Oh, and nuCarol really needs to eat a sandwich or a dozen. From the photos posted here, she looks anorexic.

Perhaps we should put stickers on the books:

"Warning: Part of the same franchise that also produced the most recent movies. May contain trace amounts of NuTrek. People severely allergic to reboots should be aware of the possibility of cross-universe contamination. Proceed at your own risk."

Seriously, NuTrek isn't plutonium. Trace amounts never killed anybody.

Yeah, I could live with a warning like that. .

Umm, I was being sarcastic . . .

I knew that.

Perhaps we should put stickers on the books:

"Warning: Part of the same franchise that also produced the most recent movies. May contain trace amounts of NuTrek. People severely allergic to reboots should be aware of the possibility of cross-universe contamination. Proceed at your own risk."

Seriously, NuTrek isn't plutonium. Trace amounts never killed anybody.

Yeah, I could live with a warning like that. As for "trace amounts" of crossover or "reimagined" stuff... I feel the same way when I see nuDune nonsense inserted into a story that claims to be Dune.

Write all the nuTrek books you want. Just don't try to pass them off as real Trek, and keep cross-contamination out of it. The nuTrek fans will be happy with the book and the people who loathe nuTrek can safely ignore it. After all, it doesn't help when a reader sees some mention of a nuTrek detail of a character's life in a TOS book and mutters, "WTF!!! This author doesn't know what he/she's talking about!" when it doesn't match real Trek details.

I have to ask, are you serious? If a book tells a good story and written well, wouldn't that concern override bits of minutia such as "what movie in the franchise" it's based on?

If you mix the two indiscriminately, you confuse the readers who are unfamiliar with what they haven't seen.

At least I guess we should be thankful that there were no pointless sex changes of the characters like they did with nuBSG.

Heck, I remember when a Star Trek novel was "contaminated" by characters from Here Comes the Brides.

Didn't hurt the book one bit!

Yeah, I've read that book several times. I never saw "Here Come the Brides" and had actually never heard of it before reading the book. So that part wasn't what annoyed me. It was the Doctor Who reference (the race who live in the "constellation of Kasterborus", aka the Gallifreyans) that annoyed me, since the in-universe physics and Earth history of Doctor Who and Star Trek are completely incompatible.

How does that work when it's reversed? The Reboot Team used the novels for a lot of the backstory and fill in the gaps for some of the characters: Kirk a little prick that was always in trouble comes from the novels years (2 decades, I'm thinking) before the reboot. So does that mean the Prime Universe contaminated the Reboot-Verse?

Not to mention pre-'09 novels which flukishly feature very nuTrek-ish things, like Kirk's Red Bull space jumping in Captain's Peril. How dare they write something that reads like a movie reference years later!

Imagine had they took Killing Time as a reference point.

I enjoyed this novel. But remember that at the end of the story, everything was reset to the proper timeline.

Okay, Best Destiny...

In the past, some forty-five years earlier, the reader is introduced to a young Jimmy Kirk. At 16 years old, he embodies every parent's worst fears: he is brash, rebellious, impulsive, cocky, and reckless. He is first seen leading a group of similarly rebellious (and criminal) youths on a barely-considered scheme to "escape" from Iowa, sign onto an ocean-going freight vessel as underage deckhands (itself illegal), and make their fortune somewhere in South America. Even at this young age, it is clear that Jimmy is a leader, but he is completely directionless. His father's long absences on Starfleet assignments and his own experiences on Tarsus IV have made him angry and violent, as well as impatient for the right to make his own decisions and live his own life.

...

....Although Jimmy displays his usual rudeness and lack of respect for authority on the trip up from the Earth's surface,... even Jimmy is impressed by his first view of Enterprise.

Damn it!

Anyone have a list of books they used? Cause I'm seeing a lot of old Trek contaminating Nu-Trek.

I've gone on record on this forum as stating that (in my opinion, of course) basically everything Diane Carey has written is written badly, and I really don't like it.

 

[Greg Cox]

At least I guess we should be thankful that there were no pointless sex changes of the characters like they did with nuBSG.

With all due respect to Dirk Benedict, I'll take Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck anyday!

 

[Kertrats47]

At least I guess we should be thankful that there were no pointless sex changes of the characters like they did with nuBSG.

With all due respect to Dirk Benedict, I'll take Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck anyday!

A-MEN!

Except with a TINY bit less respect to Dirk Benedict than you're giving him.

 

[Timewalker]

At least I guess we should be thankful that there were no pointless sex changes of the characters like they did with nuBSG.

With all due respect to Dirk Benedict, I'll take Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck anyday!

Considering that I was in high school when Battlestar Galactica was on TV and had a poster of Dirk Benedict on my bedroom wall, I think it's understandable that we disagree on the actors. But my point is that there was no point to the sex changes between original BSG and nuBSG.

At least nuTrek didn't make Uhura male and McCoy female, for example.

 

[Greg Cox]

At least I guess we should be thankful that there were no pointless sex changes of the characters like they did with nuBSG.

With all due respect to Dirk Benedict, I'll take Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck anyday!

Considering that I was in high school when Battlestar Galactica was on TV and had a poster of Dirk Benedict on my bedroom wall, I think it's understandable that we disagree on the actors. But my point is that there was no point to the sex changes between original BSG and nuBSG..

But as long as it works, what difference does it make? NuStarbuck was a great character in her own right. Who cares if the old version was a man? That was then; this is now. Ditto for turning Boomer into a woman. Didn't hurt the show at all.

None of this stuff is sacred or untouchable. I mean, look at ELEMENTARY. They made Dr. Watson an Asian-American woman and it works just fine. Fidelity to the original source is hardly mandatory, as long as you can reinvent the stories and characters in an engaging way.

(Oh, just to date myself, I was in college when the first BSG debuted and I had a poster of Boris Karloff in my dorm room. Not quite the same thing as Dirk Benedict, I admit!)

 

[Nerys Myk]

Since we're sharing.

I was in my freshman year of college and my walls had posters of the Beatles, Star Wars (the cool one by Hildebrandt) and Linda Ronstadt. The door had one of James T. Kirk. (door sized). BSG? Perish the thought.

 

[SeerSGB]

Yeah, I could live with a warning like that. As for "trace amounts" of crossover or "reimagined" stuff... I feel the same way when I see nuDune nonsense inserted into a story that claims to be Dune.

Write all the nuTrek books you want. Just don't try to pass them off as real Trek, and keep cross-contamination out of it. The nuTrek fans will be happy with the book and the people who loathe nuTrek can safely ignore it. After all, it doesn't help when a reader sees some mention of a nuTrek detail of a character's life in a TOS book and mutters, "WTF!!! This author doesn't know what he/she's talking about!" when it doesn't match real Trek details.

How would you know that something is a nuTrek detail if you loathe nuTrek, and therefore, presumably, have not seen nuTrek?

You think I would love it if only I'd watch it?

I saw the 2009 movie when it came on TV. Yes, I loathed it. Most of the actors come across like plastic models. Wesley - I mean Chekov - is ridiculous. McCoy (the actor looks like a dead ringer for the actor who played Gary Mitchell, btw), running around, jamming hypos into Kirk every chance he gets? It was probably supposed to be funny, but it just seemed stupid. The list of what I hate about it goes on and on.

Yeah, I'll watch STID - when I can see it for free, since I don't think it's worth spending money on. After all, if I'm going to complain about it, I should know what there is to complain about. From what I've seen here, it's full of pointless explosions, and they've ripped off a lot of TWoK (thereby showing that they don't seem able to come up with any original plots). Oh, and nuCarol really needs to eat a sandwich or a dozen. From the photos posted here, she looks anorexic.


I knew that.



If you mix the two indiscriminately, you confuse the readers who are unfamiliar with what they haven't seen.

At least I guess we should be thankful that there were no pointless sex changes of the characters like they did with nuBSG.


Yeah, I've read that book several times. I never saw "Here Come the Brides" and had actually never heard of it before reading the book. So that part wasn't what annoyed me. It was the Doctor Who reference (the race who live in the "constellation of Kasterborus", aka the Gallifreyans) that annoyed me, since the in-universe physics and Earth history of Doctor Who and Star Trek are completely incompatible.


I enjoyed this novel. But remember that at the end of the story, everything was reset to the proper timeline.

Okay, Best Destiny...

In the past, some forty-five years earlier, the reader is introduced to a young Jimmy Kirk. At 16 years old, he embodies every parent's worst fears: he is brash, rebellious, impulsive, cocky, and reckless. He is first seen leading a group of similarly rebellious (and criminal) youths on a barely-considered scheme to "escape" from Iowa, sign onto an ocean-going freight vessel as underage deckhands (itself illegal), and make their fortune somewhere in South America. Even at this young age, it is clear that Jimmy is a leader, but he is completely directionless. His father's long absences on Starfleet assignments and his own experiences on Tarsus IV have made him angry and violent, as well as impatient for the right to make his own decisions and live his own life.

...

....Although Jimmy displays his usual rudeness and lack of respect for authority on the trip up from the Earth's surface,... even Jimmy is impressed by his first view of Enterprise.

Damn it!

Anyone have a list of books they used? Cause I'm seeing a lot of old Trek contaminating Nu-Trek.

I've gone on record on this forum as stating that (in my opinion, of course) basically everything Diane Carey has written is written badly, and I really don't like it.

Point is, like the sources of not, they put in the effort to build the reboots on the foundations of Trek's past and didn't just limit themselves to the movies and TV shows. You can argue with the presentation, but the heart was there in the effort.

As for STID being a TWOK rip off: Anyone that has seen the movie and says that with a straight face is just bitching to bitch. Khan, and his backstory, and one scene aside, the movie is its own story not a remake of TWOK or Space Seed.