Brannon Braga: Not a Diane Carey Fan?

[SpaceCadetJuan]

I read Ship of the Line a few months back, and I liked it okay. Didn't love it, didn't hurl it across the room. But the more you guys pick it apart, the lower it seems to be sinking in my estimation...I guess I am easily influenced!

I really liked Final Frontier and Best Destiny, so don't anybody ruin those for me!

 

[F. King Daniel]

IIRC, Peter David has snuck in a few barbs at TV Trek over the years - mocking Neelix and Voyager at the start of New Frontier, and trashing Richard Arnold and Gene Roddenberry in Before Dishonor over the Vendetta/female Borg fiasco.

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.

I loved Red Sector, by far the best of the Double Helix series. I certainly detected no contempt.

 

[Gaith]

I really liked Ship of the Line when I read it many years ago... huh. Maybe I was easily pleased.

The "Broken Bow" story is pretty funny, though.

 

[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.

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.

Oh, I'm not saying it was professional. I can just think of some movies that I'd love to see novelizations of in this style. Heck, let an annoyed Diane Carey write the Into Darkness novelization and I would actually pay money for something connected to the horrible JJ verse again.

 

[James T. Vader]

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.

Actually she did 4:

Ghost Ship
Descent
Ancient Blood
Ship of the Line

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

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?

That's probably face-saving on someone's part; it certainly does effectively place the onus on a supposedly unfair and unreasonable dead man. The original issues with the TNG folks were substantially more...interesting than that.

Maybe we'll catch up at Shore Leave or something.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

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.

To be fair according to First Contact its a decent place to amass a fleet to protect Earth from the Borg that isn't that far away from seeing as how fast the Cube and the federation fleet got to earth from there.

 

[Gaith]

Oh, I'm not saying it was professional. I can just think of some movies that I'd love to see novelizations of in this style.

"As he slathered a third coat of petroleum jelly across the bridge's top tower, Bruce briefly wondered if it wouldn't have been wiser to have skipped this particular errand and start looking for the nuke right away. What if it rained in the early morning hours, washing his signal away? And what if the bomb went off sooner than he anticipated, just as he was starting a quick cat nap to recharge before heading into a final confrontation with the League? 'Screw it,' he thought. 'It's too late for second-guesses; I'll finish this last coat, then take that nap as quickly as poosible."

 

[Christopher]

To be fair according to First Contact its a decent place to amass a fleet to protect Earth from the Borg that isn't that far away from seeing as how fast the Cube and the federation fleet got to earth from there.

First of all, First Contact takes place five years after "Cause and Effect," so that doesn't affect what was stated in the episode about it being uncharted before that point.

Second, we don't actually know how fast the fleet got from the Expanse to Earth. Consider that the Enterprise had to get from the Romulan Neutral Zone to Earth in the same amount of time. That should be several days' travel at least. Despite how the film was edited, it's reasonable to assume that the battle near Earth was a separate battle taking place days after the first engagement in the Expanse -- or else that it was a running battle lasting for days.

 

[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...

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?

...no, but one would think that it'd be part of their job to ask her to take them out.

 

[Harvey]

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?

That's probably face-saving on someone's part; it certainly does effectively the onus on a thoroughly unfair and unreasonable dead man. The original issues with the TNG folks were substantially more...interesting than that.

Maybe we'll catch up at Shore Leave or something.

Oh, and just when this thread was getting to be a little fun.

 

[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?

...no, but one would think that it'd be part of their job to ask her to take them out.

Two related points.

1. Is it the job of the editors to save their writers from themselves?

2. Perhaps more speculatively, would there necessarily have been the opportunity for the editors to get Carey to take them out, or--if all else fails--for the editors to take them out themselves? Her asides seem to have been fairly pervasive throughout the manuscript. Depending on how much time there was between manuscript submission and the final prep work for publication, they might not have had the time to do an extensive revision.

 

[iarann]

It is important to note that Diane Carey appears to have been given novelizations because of her ability to quickly put out a novel with a short deadline. If that was the case, they may have either glossed over the manuscript or just not had enough time to change it (as rfmcdpei suggested), or for all we know she had twice as much of this stuff in there and they removed the most obvious stuff.

I'm honestly surprised this hasn't come up before. I mentioned it in a thread last year, but at the time the novelization came out (or any of the others she has done like this) did no one notice?

 

[Elias Vaughn]

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?

...no, but one would think that it'd be part of their job to ask her to take them out.

Two related points.

1. Is it the job of the editors to save their writers from themselves?

From themselves? Not sure. But I'm fairly positive they'd want to make sure the book was acceptable for publishing.

And since they got published...

2. Perhaps more speculatively, would there necessarily have been the opportunity for the editors to get Carey to take them out, or--if all else fails--for the editors to take them out themselves? Her asides seem to have been fairly pervasive throughout the manuscript. Depending on how much time there was between manuscript submission and the final prep work for publication, they might not have had the time to do an extensive revision.

Even assuming all that was true (and I'm not convinced it would have been), they could have not signed her to keep writing books.

 

[iarann]

Even assuming all that was true (and I'm not convinced it would have been), they could have not signed her to keep writing books.

Which appears to be the case as she has not done any other Star Trek work since Broken Bow was published.

 

[Turtletrekker]

It is important to note that Diane Carey appears to have been given novelizations because of her ability to quickly put out a novel with a short deadline.

This is confirmed in Voyages of Imagination, where Carey states that she wrote the book in two weeks while at sea serving as a ship's cook.

 

[rfmcdpei]

...no, but one would think that it'd be part of their job to ask her to take them out.

Two related points.

1. Is it the job of the editors to save their writers from themselves?

From themselves? Not sure. But I'm fairly positive they'd want to make sure the book was acceptable for publishing.

And since they got published...

The Broken Bow novelization differs from the other work she did in that it was literally the first literary production associated with the show. The original tie-in novels weren't that widely read, and even the DS9 episode novelizations weren't very high profile. Neither can be said of the novelization of the first episode of a new series.

2. Perhaps more speculatively, would there necessarily have been the opportunity for the editors to get Carey to take them out, or--if all else fails--for the editors to take them out themselves? Her asides seem to have been fairly pervasive throughout the manuscript. Depending on how much time there was between manuscript submission and the final prep work for publication, they might not have had the time to do an extensive revision.

Even assuming all that was true (and I'm not convinced it would have been), they could have not signed her to keep writing books.[/QUOTE]

As others have noted, it's telling that after Broken Bow Carey has written no more Trek novels.

Looking at the bibliography again, the Star Trek: Challenger series that Carey initiated as a successor to New Earth even died aborning, not having gotten past two entries in the Gateways series.

It is important to note that Diane Carey appears to have been given novelizations because of her ability to quickly put out a novel with a short deadline.

This is confirmed in Voyages of Imagination, where Carey states that she wrote the book in two weeks while at sea serving as a ship's cook.

She wrote the Broken Bow novelization in two weeks, in those conditions?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

She wrote the Broken Bow novelization in two weeks, in those conditions?

One of the novelizations she wrote in four days. I want to say it was "Endgame."

Looking at the bibliography again, the Star Trek: Challenger series that Carey initiated as a successor to New Earth even died aborning, not having gotten past two entries in the Gateways series.

And there were certainly plans on her part to continue the series. She had discussed them at the time, and they were a unique approach for a Star Trek series.

From memory...

Starfleet assigned another ship to patrol the Belle Terre sector, and that ship carried orders for Nick Keller to return to Earth for reassignment. Keller instead resigns from Starfleet to operate as a privateer in the sector using the Challenger (which he could do, since it was the planet's ship, not Starfleet's ship). The tension in the series would have come from the conflict between Keller and Starfleet.

Thinking in terms of Carey's interests and politics, Keller and his ship would have been the equivalent of the colonial/early Republic militia, while the Starfleet ship would have been the equivalent of the US Army fort overseen by a representative of the far distant government back in Washington.

Of course, none of those plans ever came to fruition.

 

[PKS8304]

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.

Fire Ship was one of those novels that I thought had a really good ending but the book itself tended to drag quite a bit and took awhile to get through. Of course the ending isnt good without the journey getting there.

I managed to read the whole thing through and was happy at the end, my friend however, only got halfway through and refuses to pick it back up. Oh well his loss lol

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Hmm. I tend to find some fault with Carey's hard-Libertarian politics, her tendency to put it in her books (especially the "Piper" books), and particularly with her tendency to put hard-Libertarian political commentary into a Vulcan's mouth (specifically, Sarda's), but I rather liked Piper; I thought she was by far the best example I've ever seen of a "Mary-Sue" character done right.

In fact, if I weren't already at least 27 cantos into Dante's Divine Comedy (the Longfellow translation), and didn't also need to set it aside and re-read the first two chapters of another book for a discussion group I signed up for, I'd be inclined to start re-reading her "Piper" and "Geordie Kirk" novels tonight.