NEW ONGOING TREK CROSSOVER SERIES BEGINS OCTOBER 2022

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by Danlav05, Jul 21, 2022.

  1. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    Umm, I'm the one who pointed out that you can't assume the in-story timing corresponds to the real-world timing -- scroll up and read the first paragraph in post #107. My point is that your assumptions are no better. You're trying to use calendar years as "evidence" for when an anniversary falls, and that's a fundamental mismatch of scale. People routinely use "three years" to mean anything from two and a half to three and a half years, or an even wider spread if they're going by calendar years. So it's far too imprecise to prove anything about an exact, to-the-day interval. I'm not "assuming" an answer is correct, I'm saying we don't have clear enough evidence to assume any answer is correct. Sometimes the only intelligent answer is "We just don't know."



    And as I said in post #107, I'd be willing to agree with you if not for the show's general practice to assume that the number of years elapsed in-story corresponds to the number of years in real life. When there's a significant exception like "Second Sight," it makes it hard to reconcile. It's more a question of internal consistency than anything else.
     
  2. DarKush

    DarKush Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 18, 2005
    I purchased the first issue of the new Star Trek series. I'm torn because I liked the focus given to Sisko, and the mystery that was set up was intriguing, but the premise of a kind of Star Trek Avengers feels gimmicky to me. I also liked the artwork overall.

    I also didn't care that this story seemed shoved between VOY's "Endgame" and Star Trek: Nemesis. That lessens the stakes, but if they were going to draw from various Trek series for some of the casting, I wish they had gone more obscure and off the beaten path and used characters that didn't show up later on Lower Decks or in PIC, and it was a good guess that they wouldn't be showing up again to round out the cast.

    I thought it was interesting to start out the story with an article from Jake though it got Jake's age wrong when it came to the Battle of Wolf 359, and I liked the Jake/Kira conversation, and the idea that the Dominion War is already being forgotten.

    I liked how Sisko was depicted here better than in the Litverse "Rough Beasts of Empire" but the line that this mystery is "bigger" than Sisko's family didn't sit right with me. It moved the story along, but I think it did so at the expense of Sisko's promise in the DS9 finale. I don't get why they just didn't give him a reunion with Kasidy, let him meet his daughter, and then have a tearful separation as Sisko has to get on with it. Perhaps they are saving the reunion for a finale or some big turning point in the series, but it didn't feel right to me that Sisko would be so dismissive. I am glad that Jake is along for the ride.

    Back to the gimmicky aspects. Why did Sisko need to go to Picard? Where was Admiral Ross or Whatley? I was okay with the Theseus as a starship-it stands out-but I didn't care for the new uniforms. I'm guessing they are just for that starship, like how the Protostar Starfleet crew had their own uniforms on Prodigy.
     
    DS9forever and ryan123450 like this.
  3. ToddCam

    ToddCam Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Jul 15, 2003
    Location:
    Philadelphia, PA, USA
    This was ok. Not sure how I feel. Sisko not meeting his daughter or apparently even talking to Kasidy feels like echoes of bad novel choices. The crew choices feel kind of bland. Data is annoying me already. Crusher seems okay so far, I guess. Tom Paris was probably my least favorite VGR character (yes, I like him less than Neelix), and Scotty has been so overused in 24th century tie-in fiction, it feels like including him is old hat. And if there was a character I would definitely NOT want to read the further adventures of, after 11 years of TV, several movies, an upcoming Picard role, and a prominent figure in the novels, it's Worf, so that's not an enticing upcoming cast addition.

    T'Lir being non-binary is kind of interesting, and makes me wonder about if their naming, given their masculine appearance, was a conscious choice of their own, or if they were raised in a non-binary way. I can't recall anything to indicate Vulcans do not generally follow the human binary more-or-less.

    Sato seems all right. I hope her having two fathers is a call back to the four sexes idea from the novels than just her two gay dads. The gay parents thing has become, in my mind, a way of giving a nod to diversity than actual diversity. And how does this all work with the idea she's descended from Hoshi Sato?

    The plot wasn't all that interesting so far. I'll give it a couple of issues at least.
     
  4. Extrocomp

    Extrocomp Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Jul 6, 2004
    Andorians are said to have four person marriages in canon. There is no implication that the two males (or chan and thaan according to the novels) have any kind of homosexual relationship.
     
  5. tenmei

    tenmei Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Jul 10, 2004
    Location:
    Manchester, UK
    Also, why does the MSD on the Theseus' Bridge appear to be of a Sovereign Class? Yes, their size profiles are similar, but the nacelles on the MSD are definitely coming from the secondary hull and not the saucer?!
     
    Enterprise1701 likes this.
  6. Stevil2001

    Stevil2001 Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 7, 2001
    Inappropriately reused art on an IDW comic? Say it ain't so!
     
  7. mastadge

    mastadge Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Feb 13, 2021
    I wonder, based on nothing, whether this will be a rotating-cast series pulling in various crew members from the series depending on the needs of particular missions.
     
    SolarisOne, ToddCam and Allyn Gibson like this.
  8. Enterprise1701

    Enterprise1701 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2014
    Location:
    Sol III, Sector 001, 2063 C.E.
    Well, that one was a screwup by the showrunners.
     
  9. Markonian

    Markonian Fleet Admiral Moderator

    Joined:
    Jun 2, 2012
    Location:
    Derbyshire, UK
    Should've cancelled the show right then and there.
     
  10. ToddCam

    ToddCam Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Jul 15, 2003
    Location:
    Philadelphia, PA, USA
    To be fair, if you go with the general idea that the second digit in the stardate represents the TNG year, if you go with the 43997 number as sometime in Year 3, and 46379.1 corresponding to Year 6, you can easily make that error. Is December 2019 three years before March 2022? No. But you can understand it.
     
  11. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    Yes or no, depending on what degree of precision you choose to employ. If you treat months as your unit and define a year as 12 months, then it breaks down to 27 months = c. 2.25 years. But if you use years as your units and measure to only one significant figure, then yes, 2022-2019 = 3 years. And that rougher measurement is good enough for broad purposes like writing a TV caption to give a general sense of the passage of time where the exact interval is unimportant. The whole reason stardates were invented was to avoid giving precise chronological information, because too much rigidity would be restrictive on the storytellers. It's preferable in that context to use broad-strokes figures like "three years" rather than narrowing it down to the month or day.

    Shows like Star Trek give a misleading impression by having smart people like Spock always rattle things off in exact numbers with decimal points, like "The odds are 2,753,492.273 to 1." It falsely equates precision with accuracy. Not every measurement needs to be equally precise, and sometimes it's better to be less precise, for instance in cases where there's a wide margin of uncertainty. It depends on the specific context.
     
  12. Tuskin38

    Tuskin38 Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2011
    Meanwhile Lower Decks has gone and changed the common preception of the Stardate, by not having the second digit represent a year.
     
  13. Johnny Luck

    Johnny Luck Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Sep 5, 2022
    Location:
    The Bright, Sunny South
    Finally I received my latest shipment from my LCS which had this new #1. Overall, I thought it was decent. The art was really good, some of the panel layouts were interesting, the double page spreads were nice, the info page on the Theseus was much appreciated and yes, even the uniforms looked okay.

    As for Sisko, while the reunion with Jake seemed heartfelt, I agree that the lack of Kasidy and their daughter's appearance seems like an odd choice yet my impression is that the writers are going with presenting Sisko as being 'off'. His stay with the Prophets has apparently altered his perceptions and thinking so what we may think would be normal actions/reactions, he has to become re-accustomed to experiencing now that he has returned. Plus, his focus on this new mission given to him by the Prophets seems overriding to him at the moment. It's an interesting choice and I'm willing to hang around to see how the writers progress with it.

    As for the crew, I'm okay with this initial selection, Data has always been a favorite, Paris is Paris though if he's around, I'd want to see B'Lanna at some point. Crusher is tolerable and I'll see about these new crew members.

    As for the story itself:

    While the exact nature of this threat remains a mystery, I'm intrigued by Sisko's flashes with the Prophets. The sequence in the beginning is outlined in blue, the sequence in the end is outlined in red. Also seeing the small red image of a wormhole apparently reflected in Sisko's eyes on the very last panel, I have to wonder Pah-Wraiths anyone?

    I don't mind Jake's reference to the Borg being 'god-like'. To his young mind (at whatever age discrepancies aside), I would think an alien force that's nigh unstoppable and seemingly all-powerful would appear god-like in some fashion, an impression that is likely to linger with him over time even if he learns better. Besides, the implication seems in line with the original intentions of the TNG episode Q Who that I once read about, Picard having to make a choice, accept God's help in overcoming the Devil or not.. or something along those lines. Correct me if I'm mistaken on that part.

    Lastly, my main nitpick is small but a major one for me. Look at the double page spread when Sisko arrives on the bridge of the Theseus. Off to the far left is a crew member, a female whose wearing what looks like some type of Native American headpiece or ear wear. It's a distinctive look. Yet when the bridge crew is introduced, she's not! She even appears in some later panels, drawn with that head piece. Well who is she? Don't introduce someone with such a distinctive look and then not formally introduce them. Argh, aggravating :)
     
    DarKush likes this.
  14. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 5, 2008
    Location:
    A type 13 planet in it's final stage
    Your first IDW comic?:lol:
     
    ryan123450 likes this.
  15. Enterprise1701

    Enterprise1701 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2014
    Location:
    Sol III, Sector 001, 2063 C.E.
    I remember when the ongoing Kelvin comic did its first attempt at a Mirror Universe story, and the TMP Constitution design was drawn instead of the Kelvin Constitution design.
     
    Ovation and F. King Daniel like this.
  16. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 5, 2008
    Location:
    A type 13 planet in it's final stage
    They've also used fan art instead of official Trek ships on at least 3 occasions; and one memorable time covered the TOS Enterprise bridge with TNG LCARS graphics
     
  17. Eduardo

    Eduardo Captain Captain

    Joined:
    May 30, 2001
    Location:
    Buenos Aires, Argentina
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2022
    ryan123450 and Markonian like this.
  18. Markonian

    Markonian Fleet Admiral Moderator

    Joined:
    Jun 2, 2012
    Location:
    Derbyshire, UK
    Thanks! Took me some digging to find the Klingons comic on Amazon but I bought it now and will read it in advance of Captain Worf.
     
  19. Enterprise1701

    Enterprise1701 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2014
    Location:
    Sol III, Sector 001, 2063 C.E.
    I see the authors probably perused Memory Beta to include the patronymic moniker 'Martok, son of Urthog', as first specified in The Left Hand of Destiny.
     
    DarKush, Markonian and DS9forever like this.
  20. DS9forever

    DS9forever Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2007
    Location:
    United Kingdom
    Have the writers confused Worf's ambassador job again? He is the Federation ambassador to the Klingon Empire, not the Klingon ambassador to the Federation.
     
    DarKush and Markonian like this.