Books Whose Information Became Canon

[Christopher]

Star Trek has a rich literary background, with hundred of stories that could be used in some capacity in a movie or television episode. Not all of them should be, of course, but when you have something that is for example a best seller, how come no one is approaching that as a potential idea to use?

Tie-ins are rarely "best sellers" in the way that term is generally understood -- and even a best-selling book has a tiny audience compared to a moderately successful television show. The audience for Trek prose or comics tie-ins is at best 1 to 2 percent of the audience for the shows and movies. There's certainly no reason they couldn't borrow an idea from the books if they were aware of it and considered it creatively useful, but it wouldn't be done to court popularity.

I get that Star Wars didn't (and still doesn't) have the plethora of TV media to engage with, but at least those show creators know when a popular character like Thrawn or a concept like kyber crystals should be incorporated. Couldn't Trek do the same?

First off, there is no "should" here. It's not mandatory. They use ideas because they like them and find them useful, not because someone's compelling them to.

And second, yes, of course Trek could if the creators wanted to. There isn't a single blessed thing stopping them. They can do whatever they damn well please, because they're the ones making it all up. They just don't need to, because they have plenty of their own ideas. And as I think I've explained earlier in the thread, Star Wars is a franchise whose supporting merchandise (including books and comics as well as toys, games, etc.) has always been proportionally more important relative to its screen content, because up until recent years it was mostly a film franchise and thus had a limited amount of screen content that only came out intermittently. With Trek, the tie-ins have not been so prominent. It's just not reasonable to expect Trek and Wars to work exactly the same way. It's apples and oranges.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I read "should" from "Tiberius1701170" not as "the hardcore fans will crucify us if we contradict this," but rather as "OOoohh, here's a really good idea, and it's already ours by virtue of work-for-hire rules; let's use it!"

 

[Christopher]

I read "should" from "Tiberius1701170" not as "the hardcore fans will crucify us if we contradict this," but rather as "OOoohh, here's a really good idea, and it's already ours by virtue of work-for-hire rules; let's use it!"

Again, there's no reason they couldn't hypothetically do that. They just didn't need to. They had whole multi-person writing staffs developing ideas and a ton of freelancers pitching more ideas. They were buried in ideas already. They weren't so desperate for material that they had to go hunting for more ideas.

There was nothing preventing novelists themselves from developing pitches based on their novel ideas. Diane Duane (with Michael Reaves) based TNG: "Where No One Has Gone Before" on her novel The Wounded Sky, though it was rewritten so drastically that almost nothing from the novel remained. Dennis Bailey and David Bischoff based TNG: "Tin Man" on their non-Trek SF novel Tin Woodman. Other novelists like Michael Jan Friedman pitched too (I don't think David Mack was a Trek novelist yet when he wrote for DS9), and they might have pitched ideas based on their Trek novels; but any given pitch would've been competing with hundreds of other possibilities, so it's not like just suggesting the idea would automatically make it happen.

I believe that Michael Chabon did base some of his Romulan worldbuilding for Picard on elements of Diane Duane's work, like the idea of Romulans having secret names (although I think he got it from Memory Beta rather than the books themselves). So there are instances of this sort of thing happening. It's just not guaranteed or obligatory. There are many sources for ideas.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

the idea of Romulans having secret names

Seems to me the germ of that one was in The Enterprise Incident.

 

[Tuskin38]

You can't read this in the final episode since the prop is never shown clearly on screen, but one of Georgiou's diplomas in DSC season 1 mentions the capital city of Andoria from the books.

https://twitter.com/karterhol/status/912746928550567936

 

[Tiberius1701170]

I read "should" from "Tiberius1701170" not as "the hardcore fans will crucify us if we contradict this," but rather as "OOoohh, here's a really good idea, and it's already ours by virtue of work-for-hire rules; let's use it!"

Exactly, yes!

 

[JD]

I did.

Since you were confused, let me spin this another way. Star Trek has a rich literary background, with hundred of stories that could be used in some capacity in a movie or television episode. Not all of them should be, of course, but when you have something that is for example a best seller, how come no one is approaching that as a potential idea to use? I get that Star Wars didn't (and still doesn't) have the plethora of TV media to engage with, but at least those show creators know when a popular character like Thrawn or a concept like kyber crystals should be incorporated. Couldn't Trek do the same?

Another thing to keep in mind is that the TV and movie writers are incredibly busy, so they're not going to have time to pour over all of the books, comics, video games, and all of the other ties ins for ideas, when they already have plenty of their own.

 

[Jinn]

Seems like one of the new Prodigy characters is a Brikar!

"The cast and characters are, as described by Paramount+:
Rylee Alazraqui (Home Economics) as “Rok-Tahk,” a Brikar and an unusually bright eight-year-old girl. Rok is a bit shy, but not when it comes to her love for animals"

 

[F. King Daniel]

Now let the speculation about the New Frontier gang in the P+ TV Trek universe begin!

 

[JD]

Cool, it's always nice to see stuff from the books used onscreen.

 

[Jinn]

Now let the speculation about the New Frontier gang in the P+ TV Trek universe begin!

I mean, I doubt we'd ever see any of them in the new TV shows (let alone in Prodigy, considering the target audience), but I could see Kebron being still alive in Discovery season 3...

 

[Stevil2001]

Neat! Have we ever had an alien species ascend to canon before?

 

[Christopher]

Neat! Have we ever had an alien species ascend to canon before?

I'm pretty sure it's a first for Trek. Well, unless you count the Kzinti, which originated in non-Trek prose fiction.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

According to Michael Chabon's notes for Star Trek Picard, Ki Baratan, the name for the romulan capital from the Novelverse, may be canon by now.

https://michaelchabon.medium.com/two-final-notes-on-romulans-8d05e27ee9fa

 

[Tuskin38]

Well it won't be until it's used on screen. But it shows it was probably used internally in the writers room.

So it might be part of franchise's 'Internal canon', if they have such a thing.

 

[Christopher]

Well it won't be until it's used on screen. But it shows it was probably used internally in the writers room.

So it might be part of franchise's 'Internal canon', if they have such a thing.

There isn't really. Any background materials like that are subject to change, so as not to restrict future storytelling. They're the ingredients in the pantry, available for use if necessary, rather than part of the cooked meal.

 

[Leto_II]

^ Still, that's pretty freaking awesome to see; glad that Chabon is at least considering these longtime Litverse-elements, even if they never necessarily show up in a finished episode. Have long been hoping that Picard would use Diane Duane's stellar-designation for Romulus's sun ("Eisn") ever since the show established that the supernova originated there (rather than Hobus), so hope springs eternal.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

^ Still, that's pretty freaking awesome to see; glad that Chabon is at least considering these longtime Litverse-elements, even if they never necessarily show up in a finished episode. Have long been hoping that Picard would use Diane Duane's stellar-designation for Romulus's sun ("Eisn") ever since the show established that the supernova originated there (rather than Hobus), so hope springs eternal.

Yeah, especially as the issue of the secret names came from her novels.

 

[Leto_II]

Was just loading up the Paramount+ app on my TV to watch something non-Trek related, when I happened to click on the Lower Decks page, and…what’s this I happened to spy on the screen?

 

[Csalem]

The Titan shuttlecraft on Lower Decks are named after Jazz musicians, like in the books. Two out of the three craft named have a counterpart in the books.