So I was recently reading @Christopher's The Buried Age which covers the loss of the Stargazer as well as Picard's first meetings with a number of TNG characters. This got me thinking about how these are the kinds of things that I almost would have expected to be covered in much earlier novels, rather than one from 2007. So who decides when to depict these kinds of events and explore events that have been mentioned on-screen but never shown?
Depends. Sometimes it's the editor, sometimes it's the author. The Buried Age happened because my editor Marco Palmieri invited me to do a novel about Picard's missing years between the Stargazer and the Enterprise, but as it happened, that was a story I'd already wanted to tell for a long time. And other gap-filler books I did, like Ex Machina following up on TMP and The Captain's Oath exploring Kirk's first command before the Enterprise, were my own ideas. My only editorial instruction for TCO was to tell a big story in the TOS era.
Exactly. It would be a mistake to assume that there's some sort of high-powered executive committee in charge of fleshing out Star Trek history according to a long-range master plan. Most of the time, it's a lot more informal than that. Sometimes an editor may have an idea, sometimes a writer might, sometimes a bunch of writers get together in a bar at a convention and start brainstorming ideas . . . . In the case of my EUGENICS WARS book, those happened almost by accident. In one of my previous books, I'd tossed in a throwaway reference to Gary Seven being instrumental in the downfall of Khan Noonien Singh back in the nineties. I swear to God, that line was meant to be just a cute Easter Egg; I had absolutely no intention of ever expanding on it. But my editor, John Ordover, read that line, decided he liked the idea, and "Hey, Greg, you want to write that story?" Before I knew it, it was a trilogy!
I'm sure someone will come along and contradict me, but I don't think that approach to Star Trek books was really all that common prior to 2000, with a couple exceptions (e.g., Imzadi, Federation, The Lost Years). But then 2000 gave us The Valiant and Starfleet: Year One, 2001 The Eugenics Wars, and then 2003 The Lost Era. So if you look at it on that time scale, it took just about six years before The Buried Age, which seems pretty quick!
Is there ever any pushback from editors if you want to fill something in? So if there's a chance it's something the TV series are likely to cover. Star Trek novels are quite difficult and expensive to come by where I live, so I've only been able to get books 1 and 3. I'm holding off on reading it until I can get the middle book.
Sure -- any pitch runs the risk of getting turned down if the editor isn't engaged by it. Nothing is guaranteed. As for potential conflicts with TV, that hasn't been a major issue for most of my Trek career until the past few years. But it does seem likely that options would be more limited now that the shows are back. In that case, it might be CBS that nixes an idea instead of the editor, but it could be either one.
The push back comes from CBS more than our editors - this wasn't much of an issue when we didn't have new shows being made, but it's become more prevelant now. Both my Discovery and Picard novels were originally planned with different stories to their final versions, but utlimately the plot threads I planned to cover were "reserved" for the TV shows to explore. I had similar experiences working on Doctor Who tie-ins as well. It's part and parcel of working alongside an ongoing entertainment franchise, and one of the great things about being "in the loop" with CBS means our stories can compliment one another instead of pulling in different directions.
How often do the editors come to you guys with an idea compared to when you approach them with a pitch?
In my experience, the editors rarely come to us with an idea so much as say to us "Could you come up with an idea involving X." For instance, Marco asked me to come up with an idea for Picard's missing years, and Margaret Clark asked me to come up with an idea for a book that would tie up Before Dishonor's loose threads, clear the board for Destiny, and have Picard and Crusher decide to start a family. They often set parameters, but coming up with the specific ideas is the thing they hire us to do. Why would they do it for us?
That's more of what I meant when I said ideas. I was just wondering how much you guys approach them with something, and how often they ask you to do something.
Of course. As with any submission for any franchise, you get rejected sometimes. Just part of the job. One example, from a zillion years ago: I had a (very) vague notion of doing something about how Q and Guinan first met. At that back, back in the nineties, I was told that the Powers That Be preferred to keep that mysterious for the time being, which was a perfectly valid call, so I shrugged and did something else instead. Would that idea still be off-limits today? Who knows? Probably depends on whether the actual shows have any big plans regarding Whoopi Goldberg and John DeLancie. Again, I stress this is just standard operating procedure and no big deal. You pitch lots of idea and not all of them fly. And the ones that get rejected . . . sometimes you can rework them and sell them elsewhere. I turned at least one rejected VOYAGER pitch into a FARSCAPE story, and used part of a rejected FIREFLY outline for a TERMINATOR novel. Waste not, want not!
I feel sorry for the Starfleet: Year One authors whose long-term plans were torpedoed by Star Trek: Enterprise, but oh well. Inherent hazard of this sub-industry.
There was only one author for that, Michael Jan Friedman. Anyway, all writers have a bunch of ideas we don't get to do. There are no guarantees.
Or we disguise them and save them for another book. But, yes, this is all very normal. Just recently, THE LIBRARIANS folks asked me to steer clear of Egyptian mythology since that was going to be their third-season arc plot, so . . . fine, I did Mother Goose instead. There are always other ideas. Although I admit I once swore out loud when a new episode of WAREHOUSE 13 preempted a WH13 plot I was thinking about. "Damn it! They beat me to the punch! Now I have to come up with a new idea!"
Which immediately reminds me of the Voyager novel "Seven of Nine," and the episode "Infinite Regress." My sister and I were trying to figure out if the episode was an adaptation of the novel when it first aired.
The short answer is, it varies! It's often dependent on the needs of the line and the direction from CBS. Here's how my personal experience has gone... I wrote Day of the Vipers because Marco Palmieri wanted to make the Terok Nor series a trilogy, so I was specifically asked to write a book that slotted in before Night of the Wolves and set up that narrative. Marco then asked me to pitch a novel for Star Trek Vanguard, but that was ultimately turned down, so I was offered a slot on Titan instead, which became Synthesis. Margaret Clark then offered me the chance to pitch whatever I wanted, so I wrote Cast No Shadow because I wanted to do a movie-era novel. I was asked to write a TNG crew novella, so I wrote The Stuff of Dreams. I got the offer to be part of The Fall, so I wrote the Titan installment of that miniseries (The Poisoned Chalice). After The Poisoned Chalice was done, Margaret sought to commission me for two books and again she gave me a free hand to pitch whatever I wanted - I had a Titan pitch (Sight Unseen) and a TOS pitch (The Latter Fire); I wanted to do the TOS story first, but she wanted a "24th Century" era novel at the time, so I wrote the Titan book and did the TOS book the following year. With Fear Itself, the request came down from CBS: "can you write a Saru novel?" And with my upcoming Star Trek: Picard novel, the directive was "we'd like a story about Riker and Troi on the Titan or Worf on the Enterprise" and I chose the former.
Wasn't there also a similar situation with the Enterprise novel Surak's Soul being similar to the episode The Seventh?
Hmmm. So I guess “First Officer Worf becoming Captain” is a bit more solid in PIC’s backstory than just a one-line mention in LBH. Interesting.
Yes, and there were other cases too, I think. Kind of hard to avoid when there are so many new episodes coming out. In that case, though, there was enough advance notice that they were able to write in a bit of material acknowledging "The Seventh" at the last minute.
It would appear so! At one point, we actually discussed the possibility of the "Riker and Troi on the Titan" and "Worf on the Enterprise" plot threads both being part of my Star Trek: Picard novel, but I felt that they would be better served by being told seperately. (And to be clear, this doesn't mean I've also been asked to write a "Captain Worf" novel... But it is a neat idea...)