I have Troublesome Minds before The Rings of Time myself. And Forgotten History details the final months of the 5-year mission and portions of the interim period between it and TMP.
A Lit-verse based TOS chronology
- Thread starter ryan123450
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Did M'Benga's letter actually say anything about Sarek during those events? I don't honestly remember offhand, but I thought it was a pretty broad description that didn't even go into that much detail.
The letter mentions a rash of murders at the Vulcan Academy in June and a plague outbreak on Nisus in July, no mention of Sarek. It places "Journey to Babel" in November, with M'Benga joining right after Sarek's heart surgery, and "A Private Little War" happening two weeks later.
Which pretty much requires that the Vanguard version of those two events happened without Sarek or Amanda's involvement, since Kirk and McCoy wouldn't have met them yet.
Which pretty much requires that the Vanguard version of those two events happened without Sarek or Amanda's involvement, since Kirk and McCoy wouldn't have met them yet.
What is it you wouldn't consider part of the Litverse? Are you applying criteria besides publishing era? Share!
You're right about the main story of Ex Machina, but as CLB has pointed out, it contains flashback references pertaining to the end of the FYM...
...which are then elaborated in DTI: Forgotten History.
Anyway, it sounds like you think the I may be including too many stories (on the list of nine), but not that I've overlooked any?...
Well publishing era alone doesn't determine if something is part of the Litverse. The Crucible trilogy is specifically not part of the Litverse, dispite being published in the last several years, nor is Troublesome Minds itself specifically set in the Litverse. It has nothing contradicting the Litverse in it, but the author didn't make any references that particularly linked it to the wider Litverse.
Conversely there are older novels that have been explicitly included in the Litverse by references in newer novels. Explore my site for all the links I've ever found.
Conversely there are older novels that have been explicitly included in the Litverse by references in newer novels. Explore my site for all the links I've ever found.
IIRC, one of those books also has a mind meld between Spock and Sarek, contradicting Spock's statement in "Unification" that they never did so...
It really is surprising, in retrospect, that these would be the older novels referenced so specifically in a more recent work.
Oh, that's right! Yeah, that was one of the reasons I removed The Vulcan Academy Murders from my personal chronology to begin with, IIRC. That's a big one.
I can understand wanting to pay homage to them, since they're pretty memorable. They're certainly the only M'Benga "origin story" I think we've ever gotten prior to Vanguard itself. But continuity-wise, they don't really work today.
Yeah, Crucible I didn't count because it pretty clearly was free to contradict other continuity. But I'd figured that in general, anything published in "recent years" was fair game, even if it doesn't explicitly link to other novels. (That's a much more deliberate part of the agenda with the TNG-era books, after all.)
If you're including older stories incorporated by reference, then it seems like you're defining "Litverse" in a different way than CLB is, for instance. (Not that I disagree with the approach; just trying to be clear about terminology!)
Guess I will have to spend some spare time reading your site. (Wait, I have spare time?...)
Well, not "anything." The TOS novels in recent years seem intentionally much more standalone. And the e-novellas aren't necessarily in continuity; for instance, while The More Things Change is compatible with the post-TMP continuity of Ex Machina, the later Shadow of the Machine offers a contradictory followup to TMP.
With the Crucible trilogy, I tend to cherry-pick which portions of it I've incorporated into my personal continuity -- for example, while the post-TMP sections (detailing the 7 1/2-year-long mission to the Aquarius Formation), Sulu and Chekov's post-mission XO promotions, Spock's activities immediately post-The Undiscovered Country, and the final mission of the 5YM are incompatible with other stories, stuff like all of the Enterprise-A sections and most of the TOS intra-episode material work extremely well, and don't really gainsay too much elsewhere in other sources.
That said, one 5YM interstitial I've very recently dropped/supplanted is the version of Yeoman Rand's departure from the Enterprise found in Provenance of Shadows -- I now prefer John Byrne's recent New Visions tale, which works surprisingly, if unintentionally, well (by Byrne-standards, at any rate) with Peter David's The Captain's Daughter, in terms of one particular implied plot-point from that novel...or at any rate, much better than Crucible itself does.
Fair point: what one takes from a given work doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. Although this kind of approach does make assembling a timeline a bit more complicated vis-a-vis the level of detail!...
Interesting — how so? (No worries about spoilers...)
Heh, too true, I'm afraid
-- one oftentimes finds oneself skipping and weaving in and out of individual tales to place/accommodate other stories taking place at the same time, but I also like not having to necessarily throw out an entire work when certain portions of it actually do work extremely well with the rest of the Litverse (the Enterprise-A sections of the Crucible trilogy being one example I mentioned earlier).In The Captain's Daughter, it's mentioned that Rand left the Enterprise shortly after her final onscreen appearance ("The Conscience of the King") and not long afterward gave birth to her daughter Annie (Captain Kirk being implied as the father).
Now, this was probably in no way intended by John Byrne to be any sort of reference to David's novel, but on the very last page of his recent New Visions story ("Sweet Sorrow"), just as Rand is about to step onto the transporter pad for the final time, she suddenly turns and gives Kirk a long, knowing look. If you're completely unfamiliar with the novel, it simply reads as a powerful exchange of looks between two comrades who've been through a great deal together (which was undoubtedly Byrne's intention there), but connecting that moment to Peter David's novel and the greater Litverse suddenly adds several whole new layers of significance to it all.
Also on a purely chronological note, "Conscience" takes place very late into 2266, probably around November/December, and the New Visions tale is stardated as taking place almost immediately afterward (2817.7 for the TV episode, 2908.4 for "Sweet Sorrow," with the first chapter of Christopher's Forgotten History stardated at 3113.7, and being set in December, 2266), and Peter David's novel mentions that Annie Rand's birth occurred not too long thereafter. However, McCoy: Provenance of Shadows has Yeoman Rand and Tonia Barrows both departing the ship much, much later into 2267 under completely different circumstances, IIRC, which doesn't really fit with the implied timeframe of Rand's pregnancy in David's book.
Again, it's probably a complete and utter coincidence that Byrne's story connects to the 1995 novel as well as it accidentally does, but it definitely does work, and it's now part of my own personal continuity.
Implied, but not confirmed. In Ex Machina, although I did reference the Captain's Daughter backstory for Rand, I made a point of establishing that someone else was the father -- that she fell into an affair with a crewmate specifically because she recognized that Kirk would never be available to her. All due respect to Peter, but the idea that Kirk would've ever slept with a member of his crew (something Peter only hinted at, let's be clear) is, at least to me, a profound misreading of his character. That would've been an abuse of his authority, and it would've been inconsistent with how he was portrayed onscreen, at least during Rand's tenure on the show. The whole point of their interaction was that he could never permit himself to act on his attraction to her. The only times he expressed it were when he wasn't fully himself or in his right mind. (A deleted scene from "Dagger of the Mind" revealed that the only reason Kirk danced with Helen Noel at the Christmas party was because he thought she was a passenger. Which is why he was so uncomfortable to discover she was under his command.)
Good point, and I'm trying to remember offhand if it's in David's novel or another source, but wasn't there an implication that the conception might've taken place during the events of "The Enemy Within" (I think the suggestion was that Rand got violated by Evil Kirk shortly before the reintegration)? Can't remember for the life of me where I even read that, but in theory, it'd fit the general timeline, and more significantly, avoid that whole Kirk character-issue you mention.
While introducing a whole host of horrible implications overall, though. As though "Enemy Within" wasn't bad enough as it was. :/
I'm kind of hoping that no one actually went that route and you are just remembering wrong, because that would just be horribly distasteful; "Evil" Kirk was still a part of Kirk and all.
I'm kind of hoping that no one actually went that route and you are just remembering wrong, because that would just be horribly distasteful; "Evil" Kirk was still a part of Kirk and all.
That sure as hell wasn't in The Captain's Daughter, and it doesn't make any sense. The extent of Evil Kirk's intimate contact with Rand during the assault scene was one kiss, and I'm pretty sure I remember from health class that kissing doesn't cause pregnancy. And though Evil Kirk did approach Rand, pretending to be the "real" captain, and asked to come by her quarters later, he then went directly to the bridge, whereupon he was captured and taken pretty much directly to the transporter room for reintegration. So he never had a second opportunity to assault her.
And seriously -- retconning in the rape of one of the series' major characters merely to resolve a minor continuity question? That would just be disgustingly wrong. Just -- nobody should go there. Ever.
Really, the extent of what The Captain's Daughter actually says is that the father of Rand's deceased baby was someone whom she believed to have a great destiny and who was now dead as of the events of the novel. It's never even made explicit that the father was in Starfleet, or when it happened, just that it led Rand to take a leave of absence from Starfleet. Sure, it's consistent with the idea of Kirk as the father, but it's vague enough that it could be anyone. (Which is probably all that Paramount licensing would've allowed in those days anyway.)
So busy lately with other stuff, but here is my version of 2268:
January 2268 (Note 1)
January 2268 (Note 1)
- Mission to Horatius (Note 2)
- VAN: The Ruins of Noble Men (Note 3)
- 2x18- Obsession
- 2x19- The Immunity Syndrome
- 4x12- The Time Trap (Note 4)
- SCE: Where Time Stands Still (Note 5)
- The First Peer (Note 6)
- 2x20- A Piece of the Action
- 2x21- By Any Other Name (Note 7)
- 2x22- Return to Tomorrow
- VAN: The Stars Look Down (Note 8)
- 2x23- Patterns of Force
- Uhura's Song
- 2x24- The Ultimate Computer
- VAN: What Judgments Come (Note 9)
- 3x09- The Tholian Web (Note 10)
- 2x25- The Omega Glory
- 2x26- Assignment: Earth (Note 11)
- From History's Shadow
- 3x01- Spectre of the Gun (Note 12)
- 3x02- Elaan of Troyius
- 4x05- More Tribbles, More Troubles (Note 13)
- 3x03- The Paradise Syndrome (Note 14)
- Romulans: The Hollow Crown, Issue Two (Note 15)
- 3x04- The Enterprise Incident
- 3x05- And the Children Shall Lead
- Dreams of the Raven
- 3x06- Spock's Brain
- How Much For Just the Planet
- 3x07- Is There in Truth No Beauty?
- Ghost-Walker
- 3x08- The Empath
- Devices and Desires
- Section 31: Cloak
- 3x10- For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
- 3x12- Plato's Stepchildren
- First Frontier
- 3x13- Wink of an Eye
- Another stretch of spacing the months out evenly, this time from The Gamesters of Triskelion to Assignment: Earth, the next specifically dated episode.
- Moved uptime from it's original placement because it takes place after Trouble with Tribbles, which Vanguard moved to December 2267.
- Takes place days after the end of Precipice (Late December 2266)
- Set shortly before SCE: Where Time Stands Still (See Note 5). It seems a few authors over the years have assumed the Animated Series episodes took place interspersed with the Original Series episodes, rather than the more common assumption that they took place post Season Three. That means this marks the first appearance of Arex.
- This story doesn't have the Enterprise, but it's timing is relevant to the placement of The Time Trap so I tossed it in. While the story claims this was set in 2269 (around the time The Time Trap should have been set during) the destruction of the Lovell in What Judgments Come means this must have actually happened before March 2268. I'm not sure why, but Memory Beta puts it in 2268. Going with that assumption (which lets The Time Trap be pushed back as little as possible), I placed this story midway between it's surrounding Vanguard books Precipice and What Judgements Come.
- Ends several months after The Deadly Years, as pointed out by Idran.
- The way everything works out, this episode takes place enough before the destruction of the Lovell that they would have time to help with the establishment of the New Kelvan colony after this episode.
- Takes place about two months after the end of Precipice.
- Takes place shortly after The Stars Look Down but just before The Tholian Web.
- We know this episode takes place shortly after What Judgments Come. But if it is correctly ordered according to production order, then almost 20 TOS episode must take place between the end of 2267 (the end of Precipice) and about three months later. Additionally, we know one of those episodes (Assignment: Earth) is set in April, which makes more sense. I don't know why this made sense during the writing process, but I have to assume The Tholian Web just needs moved backwards in time to give the episode order some breathing room. The timeline of the final two books of Vanguard really got me unsure of things when I was trying to figure all this out.
- Specifically set in April in Forgotten History.
- Spacing the months even from here on out to Turnabout Intruder which is definitely dated in June 69.
- Another TAS episode that has to be moved. It's set after Trouble with Tribbles (obviously), but also before The Unhappy Ones. The Unhappy Ones is just before Day of the Dove and explicitly set in 2269. I split the difference and put it the middle of that timespan. I did shift it a bit because the exact middle would have been during the 2 month long span of The Paradise Syndrome.
- I have it in my head that this episodes takes two months. Now I'm wondering if that's right or if that's just the estimate I came up with. Does that sound like the right amount of time?
- Ends 9 months to a year after the last issue.
Personally, I keep "The Time Trap" and Where Time Stands Still in the timeframe of the animated series. Technically, IIRC, the Lovell is only half-destroyed at the end of Vanguard, and most of its crew survives. It could've been rebuilt afterward, or replaced with a namesake like the Enterprise and Defiant later were.
I forgot to mention that point in my notes. I knew that theory was an option (and I think we've discussed this before), but I just find it unlikely that a century old clunker would warrant rebuilding half the ship, and especially not building a replacement of the same class. I'd rather not have animated episodes mixed in with TOS but since there is already one other for sure, I don't have a problrm moving this episode as well.
The Lovell and her two sister ships were dismissed as "century-old clunkers" to begin with, but the SCE made a project of refurbishing them despite Starfleet's skepticism, and they made it work. So this would be just more of the same. Granted, Where Time Stands Still does mention that replacement parts are hard to come by, but maybe that's because they used up most of the replacement parts rebuilding the secondary hull of the Lovell.
Anyway, when I referenced "The Time Trap" and WTSS in the opening of Forgotten History, it was under the assumption that they took place when TAS is supposed to take place, so I explicitly mentioned that they occurred 113 years before February 2383. So that data point is out there, for what it's worth.
And what do you mean, there's another "for sure" animated episode during TOS? I don't accept that placement for any TAS episode.
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