Brannon Braga: Not a Diane Carey Fan?

[Allyn Gibson]

Ah, I see she got a second one in after Roddenberry had passed away. The others were written after the series was off the air.

Isn't the story that her dedication of Ghost Ship to someone who served in the Marine Corps was a point of contention between her and Roddenberry? Roddenberry wanted it cut because he felt that it glorified the military, Carey was adamant that an author's dedication is a private thing. That was her last Star Trek book until after Roddenberry's death, as I recall.

 

[ronny]

AFAIAC, if Carey is not writing a TOS book she's totally slagging on the characters.

I've recently finished off all the novelizations so I could get them off my un-read shelf and into boxes to put in the garage, including several by Diane Carey, and all I can say is I'm glad that part of my life is over. I've heard she was the go to person for doing some of these novelizations because she could be expected to meet tight deadlines but the final product just didn't work for me.

I've only got 3 Carey books left to read but since they are TOS books I'm hoping they are at least OK. Battlestations!, The Great Starship Race and First Frontier.

 

[zarkon]

I've only got 3 Carey books left to read but since they are TOS books I'm hoping they are at least OK. Battlestations!, The Great Starship Race and First Frontier.

GSR & FF were good (FF is a favourite of mine). Been a long while, but I don't remember liking Battlestations.

 

[Christopher]

AFAIAC, if Carey is not writing a TOS book she's totally slagging on the characters.

I thought her novelization of Voyager: "Flashback" was great. She had to double the length of the story, so she added a really good Kes subplot and a Paris subplot, and she expanded on the ending in a way that made it much more about Janeway's character rather than the pure technobabble climax of the episode. So I'd say it treated the characters pretty well.

Carey's VGR Captain's Table novel Fire Ship is also pretty well-regarded, I think, though it was almost exclusively about Janeway.

Her Dominion War duology adapting DS9's opening season-6 arc took some liberties with the story, but she added a plot thread that made Sisko a more active guiding force. I don't think that was treating him negatively.

 

[Garrovick]

AFAIAC, if Carey is not writing a TOS book she's totally slagging on the characters.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "slagging", but Ghost Ship was not disrepsectful to TNG in any way. Sure, there were some characterization issues since it was written so early in the show's life (particularly between Riker and Data, also Picard was rather more irritable than usual, at least so I thought), but overall it did treat the characters positively. Overall, I thought it was pretty good for a very early TNG book.

 

[Christopher]

^Ghost Ship wasn't just written "early in the show's life" -- it was written while the show was still pre-natal. All Carey had to go on were the first-draft writers' bible and the "Farpoint" script. I don't think she even knew what the characters would look like at that point.

 

[Lt. Cheka Wey]

Never been a fan of hers, and this doesn't materially affect my previous impressions. She did one TNG novel - there were reasons for that as well.

Off the top of my head, she did at least two: Ghost Ship and Ship of The Line. The first suffered from being done very early on in TNG's run, and the second is either violently loved or utterly hated depending on who you ask.

She did five: Ghost Ship, Descent, Red Sector (Granted, that one was only a TNG novel per name),Ancient Blood and Ship of the Line

Ship of the Line was fine. I am siding with Carey, Enterprise deserves all the criticism it can get.

 

[kirk55555]

That kind of makes me want to read the novelization of broken Bow now. That sounds like a pretty funny way to write a novelization. The book is a bit too expensive (around $9 on amazon for some reason) but, while I don't hate enterprise like some people do, a book novelization of Broken Bow thats written by someone who apparently hated the script sounds awesome. They should do more books like that. I can think of a lot of horrible movies that deserve a novelization like that.

 

[rfmcdpei]

That kind of makes me want to read the novelization of broken Bow now. That sounds like a pretty funny way to write a novelization. The book is a bit too expensive (around $9 on amazon for some reason) but, while I don't hate enterprise like some people do, a book novelization of Broken Bow thats written by someone who apparently hated the script sounds awesome. They should do more books like that.

No, no they shouldn't. Or, at least, these books shouldn't be written by people who are supposed to be writing the official novelizations of the shows in question.

What Carey did was unprofessional in the extreme. Going by that and the time, this would go a long way towards explaining why a prolific Trek novelist would suddenly stop producing new novels.

 

[JD]

^Exactly. It just seems unprofessional to me. She was being paid to write an adaptation of the script, not a review or commentary. If this was a fan thing that was supposed to be making fun of the show, that would be fine, but not in a professional novelization.
I'll admit I'm not real happy with the place where I work, but I'm not about to go around telling customers in the store that I hate the place, and they shouldn't shop there.

 

[ronny]

Ship of the Line was fine. I am siding with Carey, Enterprise deserves all the criticism it can get.

Here are my issues with Ship of the Line.

The base of the book is from a 30 seconds scene in one episode and she got pretty much every detail wrong. In the episode Bates is sitting in his chair calm, cool and collected with 2 female crew members in site. In the book the Bozeman entered the time loop because they were in a pitched battle with Klingons, I think some bridge crew was killed but not positive and it's an all male crew. I can forgive mistakes but I don't know how you can make a mistake this big a mistake unless you've got a story in mind and damn the facts.

The other thing is Kirk is treated as such a god like figure and Picard is such a slouch that the mere presence of a hologram of Kirk talking to him is enough to make Picard think that maybe he could be a good captain after all. I just didn't believe anything Picard said in the book was actually said by Picard. And the resolution was totally unbelievable to me.

My least favorite ST book of all time. Red Sector is way down there as well.

 

[Thrawn]

Ancient Blood is pretty fun though.

 

[Christopher]

Here are my issues with Ship of the Line.

The base of the book is from a 30 seconds scene in one episode and she got pretty much every detail wrong. In the episode Bates is sitting in his chair calm, cool and collected with 2 female crew members in site. In the book the Bozeman entered the time loop because they were in a pitched battle with Klingons, I think some bridge crew was killed but not positive and it's an all male crew. I can forgive mistakes but I don't know how you can make a mistake this big a mistake unless you've got a story in mind and damn the facts.

Also, Picard's log entry in "Cause and Effect," repeated multiple times because of the loop, makes it clear that the Typhon Expanse is a frontier region that no Federation vessel has ever charted before, yet Ship of the Line portrays it as a region on the Federation-Klingon border with Federation colonies and a starbase.

 

[xortex]

Sounds like she confused it with Yesterday's Enterprise and another alternate invading reality. Braga should talk. He's turning out to be a show killer on shows that he really doesn't believe in either I think.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Ancient Blood is pretty fun though.

It's widely hated, I know, but I rather like it. I especially love the Fighting Sail chapters. If Carey had written Age of Sail fiction, I'd have bought it all avidly.

Here are my issues with Ship of the Line.

I agree with all of that.

It has the feel of a rushed novel. I don't know who ran out of time, if Carey had tight deadlines on the book (she was writing three Star Trek novels a year at the time) or if John Ordover didn't give it the editorial love it needed. What I do know is that the book reads to me like it's two passes away from being right.

My least favorite ST book of all time. Red Sector is way down there as well.

Red Sector is appalling. Tim Lynch said that it "actively causes brain damage." I don't recognize any of the characters in the book.

Data fights Romulan ninjas. Let that sink in.

Terrible, terrible book that displays contempt for the audience.

 

[bullethead]

Data fights Romulan ninjas. Let that sink in.

Honestly, that's kind of a cool idea, since the Romulans were dull as hell in their onscreen portrayals. But given Carey's feelings towards non-TOS stuff and her work on Broken Bow plus Ship of the Line, I'm not surprised that she botched it.

 

[Elias Vaughn]

So I admit I'm pretty ignorant about the details of getting a book from the writer's head to a published product, but... isn't blaming Carey alone for whatever details she inserts a little silly? The books still had to be vetted by Paramount and edited by editors, right? And since they got published, obviously whoever's n charge of reading them thought that Carey's inserts weren't so bad...

 

[rfmcdpei]

So I admit I'm pretty ignorant about the details of getting a book from the writer's head to a published product, but... isn't blaming Carey alone for whatever details she inserts a little silly? The books still had to be vetted by Paramount and edited by editors, right? And since they got published, obviously whoever's n charge of reading them thought that Carey's inserts weren't so bad...

Sure, but ultimate responsibility for these asides has to rest with the author. If she didn't make these asides, would the editors have gone out of their way to insert them into her text?

 

[ronny]

Ah, I see she got a second one in after Roddenberry had passed away. The others were written after the series was off the air.

Isn't the story that her dedication of Ghost Ship to someone who served in the Marine Corps was a point of contention between her and Roddenberry? Roddenberry wanted it cut because he felt that it glorified the military, Carey was adamant that an author's dedication is a private thing. That was her last Star Trek book until after Roddenberry's death, as I recall.

If that story is true I think it's kind of lame on Roddenberry's part. The Marine she dedicated the book to was her father. She should have been able to dedicate a book to her father and if she wanted to mention his being a Marine, well, why the hell not?

As far as the book itself goes, that is one I give Carey a 100% pass on for the characters being so off since it was written before the series aired.

 

[JoeZhang]

Ship of the Line was fine. I am siding with Carey, Enterprise deserves all the criticism it can get.

Here are my issues with Ship of the Line.

The base of the book is from a 30 seconds scene in one episode and she got pretty much every detail wrong. In the episode Bates is sitting in his chair calm, cool and collected with 2 female crew members in site. In the book the Bozeman entered the time loop because they were in a pitched battle with Klingons, I think some bridge crew was killed but not positive and it's an all male crew. I can forgive mistakes but I don't know how you can make a mistake this big a mistake unless you've got a story in mind and damn the facts.

The other thing is Kirk is treated as such a god like figure and Picard is such a slouch that the mere presence of a hologram of Kirk talking to him is enough to make Picard think that maybe he could be a good captain after all. I just didn't believe anything Picard said in the book was actually said by Picard. And the resolution was totally unbelievable to me.

My least favorite ST book of all time. Red Sector is way down there as well.

She also blows the big moment between Madred and Picard because she seems to think that The Best of Both Worlds occurs after Chain of Command and thus their conversation makes no sense (in part).