Brannon Braga: Not a Diane Carey Fan?

[DorkBoy [TM]]

I am having trouble keeping up with all of these Joneses.

 

[Garrovick]

Jones???

Name's Smith, sir.

 

[NotLKH]

Rick Jones must be seeing gamma green at all the relations by now!

 

[Garrovick]

Almost forgot Grace Jones, also known as May Day, one time henchwoman to Max Zorin until James Bond got ahold of her (literally)...

 

[Greg Cox]

Any relation to a certain Martian Manhunter . . .?

 

[ElScoob]

Jones is my name. I'm one of the Jones boys.

--g

 

[Turtletrekker]

Page 35 of Trials and Tribble-ations...

Lucsly crossed something off on his padd. "So you're not contending that this was a pre-destination Paradox?"

Dulmer added, for any idiot present, "A time loop-- that you were meant to go back into the past?"

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

And they're part of a vast, Wold-Newtonesque clan that also includes Miranda Jones, Cleopatra Jones, Rick Jones, Jessica Jones, Davy Jones of the Monkees, and Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.

The only reason I personally suspected that Stiles from TOS could ever be Styles from ST III is simply that they ACT alike. Sure, we never knew Styles that well, but from what little we did see, it's obvious he was a pompous jackass - and so was Stiles, though more overtly racist of course.

That being said, it reminds me of my favorite line from Die Hard, played completely and utterly serious:

"Hi, I'm Agent Johnson, and this is Special Agent Johnson. [beat] No relation."

 

[Christopher]

I don't think Lt. Stiles and Capt. Styles behaved anything alike. Sure, they were both antagonists, but they came at it from entirely different directions. The lieutenant's hostility came from a sense of victimhood -- the memory of all his ancestors who died at Romulan hands and the desire for retaliation against the race he'd been raised to hate and fear. Captain Styles, by contrast, acted the way he did out of a sense of entitlement and privilege, the smug condescension and complacency of a Peter Principle beneficiary who's used to having things go his way. They could hardly be more different. Lt. Styles is like a pre-"Duet" Major Kira, while Capt. Styles is more like early Dr. Bashir.

 

[Charles Phipps]

In any case, this encourages me to seek stuff out but I will say that it's kind of funny how things change. The "vulcan children play with more complex stuff" line offended me originally but, in the JJ Abrams movie, young spock is doing Quantum Physics level stuff.

Which I accepted immediately.

 

[Phoenix219]

I don't see how that's damaging, though. If anything, the original DW was a series that generally had too little continuity or memory of its past. I'd say that acknowledging that history was a good thing overall.




But most tie-ins don't "count" as part of the core continuity. That's historically been the norm, not the exception. Heck, in past decades, tie-ins were frequently very unfaithful to the continuities they tied into or interpreted them in alternative ways, like Ashley McConnell's eccentric take on Quantum Leap (which was actually more interesting in some ways than the show itself) or the various incompatible tie-ins to The Prisoner.

And it's only in recent years, well after the Arnold era ended, that we've begun to see tie-ins that were treated as canonical or pseudo-canonical, like the Del Rey Babylon 5 novels, the Buffyverse and other Whedon comics, and the like.

I'll go this far: Arnold's attitude did help promote the false belief that canon is some sort of value judgment or stamp of approval, that being out of continuity makes a story "wrong" rather than just an alternative take on an imaginary concept. I'll grant that that may have hurt the perception of tie-ins that don't "fit" the continuity. But Arnold didn't create the idea of tie-ins being apart from canon; he just stigmatized it.

Sorry to be a bother, but would you mind telling about the differences in the QL books? Big fan of the show; Never read the books.

 

[Christopher]

Sorry to be a bother, but would you mind telling about the differences in the QL books? Big fan of the show; Never read the books.

Well, it's been a long time since I've seen the show or read the books, but I'll see what I can remember.

Mainly, the McConnell books focused more heavily on the people back at Project Quantum Leap, developing characters we only got a glimpse of in the show, and sometimes reinterpreting them (for instance, the ditzy sexpot is developed into a really brilliant scientist who likes to put on the act of being a ditzy sexpot). There's also a lot more exploration of how the timeline is constantly in flux as Sam Beckett changes the past. Those are more elaborations than contradictions, though. The main inconsistency between the two is that the books operate on the assumption that only Sam's mind is leaping into other people's bodies -- which would explain how he can fit into their clothes, but it contradicts episodes where he retained his own physical abilities (like being able to walk when he leapt into a double amputee).

 

[Phoenix219]

Well, it's been a long time since I've seen the show or read the books, but I'll see what I can remember.

Mainly, the McConnell books focused more heavily on the people back at Project Quantum Leap, developing characters we only got a glimpse of in the show, and sometimes reinterpreting them (for instance, the ditzy sexpot is developed into a really brilliant scientist who likes to put on the act of being a ditzy sexpot). There's also a lot more exploration of how the timeline is constantly in flux as Sam Beckett changes the past. Those are more elaborations than contradictions, though. The main inconsistency between the two is that the books operate on the assumption that only Sam's mind is leaping into other people's bodies -- which would explain how he can fit into their clothes, but it contradicts episodes where he retained his own physical abilities (like being able to walk when he leapt into a double amputee).

That inconsistancy often shows up on the show, as does the nature of the time travel involved; some times he's blatantly changing the past while other times it seems more of a predestination paradox. It sounds like the books just had to pick a gimmick that makes sense and try to stay consistant. It makes more sense to think of it that way, since everyone else including the mirror images all present Sam as the physical person he has become, while people in the waiting room see Sam and freak out, right?

 

[Christopher]

^Yes. I felt that, in a lot of ways, the McConnell QL novels thought through the show's premise better than the makers of the show did.

 

[Phoenix219]

I thought the issue with the Star Trek IV novelization, since McIntyre talked about this in an interview a few years ago, was that midway through writing the novelization Paramount suddenly wanted an outline for the book, and that McIntyre's response was that she could either finish the book by the deadline or she could stop writing the manuscript and spend her time on an outline, but that she couldn't do both.

Also, I don't know where you're getting this idea that there's no additional material in the novelization after the trash collectors. I distinctly recall that there's a plotline with an FBI agent that goes right up until the end of the book. The reason I remember this is that I was disappointed when I saw the film and there was no FBI agent; I was looking forward to seeing that on screen.

It was for the 20th Aniversary "Giant" novel Enterprise, not the IV novelization.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5574037/how-the-first-star-trek-novel-was-written

I stumbled into this accidentally today, and remembered this post.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Hmm. I've never cared much for Carey's tendency to wear her hard-libertarian politics on her sleeve (or put it in a Vulcan's mouth, in direct contradiction of the Spock-ism, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few")

But I have made no secret of the fact that I like her handling of the April era, and I think her Piper novels are one of the best examples of what a "well done Mary-Sue" can be.

Then again, it's been quite a while since I last read anything she wrote other than April-era or Piper. Too long for me to voice any opinion, one way or another, on the assertion that she hated everything outside the April-to-TOS-movie range. Indeed, looking at her Memory Beta page, I see a fair number of works that I can only vaguely recall reading.

 

[Destructor]

What a hilarious story- I almost want to read it to see how bad it got!
Just weighing in on 'Ship of the Line'- it's awful. Really, really bad. It gets very basic facts about Star Trek badly wrong (quick: What happened first, Picard's assimilation or his torture at the hands of Gul Madred? If you got this right, you did more fact-checking than Carey did). The author of that work has no right to criticize the authors of Broken Bow.

 

[F. King Daniel]

While Picard watching episodes of TOS on the holodeck was awful, and it had continuity errors galore, I liked Ship of the Line. The backstory for the Bozeman and her crew made it for me.

But what do I know, I loved Red Sector.

 

[Phoenix219]

I don't read Trek books.

Picard watching episodes of TOS sounds HILARIOUS.

That book has Scotty in it.

The author seems to share my slant for TOS.

Hrmm.

 

[Jinn]

I don't read Trek books.

If you want to begin reading Trek novels at one point or another and don't know where to start feel free to ask. The standard answer is Avatar Book One & Two, but it's always noce to see everyone agree on something and share their memories of how that duology changed their lives. It was in 2012 when...