Charting the Novel-verse's Discontinuities

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by Jsplinis, Jun 4, 2013.

  1. captcalhoun

    captcalhoun Admiral Admiral

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    they utilised phased torpedoes to destroy a Cube IIRC.
     
  2. Noddy

    Noddy Captain

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    I find the first run of DC Comics very awkward to reconcile with the rest of Trek, I must admit. The first couple of issues had the Enterprise return to Earth immediately after the incident with Khan, and Kirk get demoted to captain, but he's suddenly an admiral again in TSFS. Then there's the character of Konom, a renegade Klingon who joins Starfleet, whereas televised canon dictates that as of the 24th century, Worf is the only Klingon to have ever served on a Federation starship.

    Things only get trickier in the comics set between TSFS and TVH. For one thing, there's the fact that the Excelsior is portrayed as being huge enough for Kruge's bird-of-prey to fit inside its shuttle bay. And why was it left in there so long anyway?
     
  3. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Or perhaps created a Khan-blood-powered Super Eel!

    But seriously, I think under the best of circumstances it might have left Khan with a physically healthy but mentally severely impaired or insane wife.

    I think the first can be reconciled by saying Kirk held the rank of Admiral but had the position of captain. Admiral Pike in Into Darkness would appear to have been about to do the same thing.

    As for Konom, we was an enlisted crewman. Worf was the first Klingon officer in Starfleet. That's my fudge for it, anyway.[/quote]
    Things only get trickier in the comics set between TSFS and TVH. For one thing, there's the fact that the Excelsior is portrayed as being huge enough for Kruge's bird-of-prey to fit inside its shuttle bay. And why was it left in there so long anyway?[/QUOTE]
    The Excelsior's an odd case in that the model was detailed to indicate a ship much larger than it's supposed size of 467m. But even at it's apparent "real" size of 622m (which would give deck heights on par with an NX-class vessel) and the smallest possible Klingon Bird of Prey size of about 50m, they don't fit.

    But then again, Neelix's ship somehow fitted inside Voyager...
     
  4. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^No, Konom was granted honorary ensign's rank, so he was an officer.
     
  5. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Ah, my mistake. It's been ages since I read them.

    (and how the hell did I reply to MLB's post in the nuKhan comic thread here? Kill me now.)
     
  6. Noddy

    Noddy Captain

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    Maybe we can fudge Konom in if we say that Worf was the only Klingon to go through Starfleet Academy, which I don't believe Konom did?
     
  7. Turtletrekker

    Turtletrekker Admiral Admiral

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    I agree that there is no end of continuity nit-pickery involved, with the Bird-of-Prey thing really being probably the trickiest, but that's never been an issue for me. Most of the problems ccould be explained away with a small amount of continuity spackle and a little bit of hand-wavium. The reason I will always include them in my "personal continuity" is for what they mean to me personally.

    When these comics came out, there wasn't exactly the same amount of Trek out there that there is today. Nowadays, if you want to watch some Trek, all you have to do go to Netflix, and you have your choice of over 700 episodes.

    Back then, you had endless re-runs of the original 79, of course, and I would record my favorite episodes like a good geek. But new adventures? New fun and suspense? More banter and heroics? The DC comics were the place to find them. The adventures of Konom, Bryce, Bearclaw, and even "Bernie" the Klingon mean as much to me as the adventures of Elias Vaughn, Mackenzie Calhoun, Diego Reyes or any other lit-original character.
     
  8. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Wriggle room. Konom didn't attend any Academy classes? We seem him simply wear the uniform.

    Similar complaints were leveled at T'Pol, with some fans insisting the Spock was "the first" Vulcan to serve in Starfleet.

    They cloaked it. LOL.
     
  9. Shane Houston

    Shane Houston Commander Red Shirt

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    I just had a head turning experience with discontinuity that I've never noticed before. I re-read A Time For War..A Time For Peace and Death In Winter back to back, and I had to re-read the last chapter of the latter because it ends with Picard and the Enterprise-E leaving for the Deneb sector, the place where the Enterprise-D's first mission took place, yet DIW starts with the Enterprise-E still in drydock getting repaired.

    Sad too because ATFW..ATFP ended in such an uplifting manner.
     
  10. ryan123450

    ryan123450 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Doesn't that scene in ATFWATFP actually take place after the events of DIW?
     
  11. Shane Houston

    Shane Houston Commander Red Shirt

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    It could if DIW had implied it was so. For example you replay that last scene of ATFWATFP and then bring in the new story with 3 days earlier or something. But that would be in world reasoning. The real reason is that Michael Jan Friedman must not have read ATFWATFP nor communicated with it's author.
     
  12. Noddy

    Noddy Captain

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    How would it have gone if, in the last DC story prior to TVH, the BoP was one that had been abandoned by its crew and been left to drift, like the Stargazer was, until Kirk and co found it just before they abandoned the Excelsior?
     
  13. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^That would've been a rather absurd coincidence, to just stumble across a ship exactly like the one they'd previously captured.

    Unfortunately I can't think of a good alternative explanation for how they would've gotten the BoP back. Logically, after the Mirror Universe Saga, Starfleet would've taken the BoP into its possession and taken it apart to study Klingon technology. They wouldn't have just let it sit in the Excelsior's shuttlebay even if it were small enough to fit there. Having it be intact and functional at all would've been hard to justify.
     
  14. Noddy

    Noddy Captain

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    In some ways it's a shame the first DC run has so many problems, as including them would go some way toward explaining how TWOK can occur in March of 2285, but TVH can take place in 2286, even though TVH begins only around three months or so after TWOK, and TFF in 2287 (if we believe the Okuda Chronology, that is).
     
  15. TheAlmanac

    TheAlmanac Writer Captain

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    I've always half-suspected that those dates for the movies were the Okudas' way of allowing for the comics to exist--but only if you felt like including them.

    Those stories weren't canon, of course, and the Okudas couldn't acknowledge them in a Chronology that only stuck to canon, but there was enough space for them to occur...or not.
     
  16. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^I think the reason they dated the movies that way was to reconcile Nimbus III being around for 20 years as of TFF with the Romulans not being re-contacted until 2266 in "Balance of Terror." Although I've never understood why they didn't just round down. I mean, they put TWOK 18 years after "Space Seed" instead of the explicitly stated 15 years, so why not go the other way with the TFF reference?
     
  17. Noddy

    Noddy Captain

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    It would make more sense. I accept the 2285 date for TWOK and TSFS, but prefer to place TVH and TFF in that same year.
     
  18. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^Harve Bennett says there was a 6-month shakedown between TVH and TFF, so I put TWOK through TVH in '85 and TFF in early '86. I'm not happy with the bizarre choice to put TWOK in '85, but so many novels and comics have referenced that date by now that we're stuck with it.
     
  19. ATimson

    ATimson Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    If you take the 2283 date for the Romulan Ale as an Earth date (which seems to me like the likely intent), you need to put TWOK at least a few years later; otherwise the "stuff takes a while to ferment" line makes no sense.
     
  20. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I always figured McCoy was being sarcastic, joking about a very young beverage "taking a while." After all, wines tend to be aged quite a few years. But I just looked up ale fermentation times, and they're apparently on the order of days or weeks. So now I'm not so sure.