Brannon Braga: Not a Diane Carey Fan?

[JD]

Studios' preference for more limited novelizations, faithful to the source and adding little or nothing, has been an industry-wide trend in recent years. It's not specific to Trek or to Pocket.

I'm going to show my ignorance here, but I just don't see the point. I mean, back in the day before home video, novelizations served a purpose-- it was a way to relive a movie or TV show you couldn't rewatch on demand.

Now that one can get your film or TV episode of choice on a half-dozen different platforms, what purpose does a bare bones novelization which regurgitates the source material scene by scene serve?

One of the things I used to love about reading novelizations was the extra scenes. The Star Wars Prequels for example have a bunch of scenes that weren't in the movie. I remember in AotC there are we got more with the Lars before Anakin and Padme end up on Tatooine, and RotS had the whole birth of the Rebellion storyline that was cut out of the final movie. I've had the Abrams Trek novelizations sitting on my to read pile since the movie came out, but I haven't read it yet since I found out there were no extra scenes.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

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.

I thought Data said it would take either a few minutes or hours to get to the fleet during the briefing scene.

Studios' preference for more limited novelizations, faithful to the source and adding little or nothing, has been an industry-wide trend in recent years. It's not specific to Trek or to Pocket.

I'm going to show my ignorance here, but I just don't see the point. I mean, back in the day before home video, novelizations served a purpose-- it was a way to relive a movie or TV show you couldn't rewatch on demand.

Now that one can get your film or TV episode of choice on a half-dozen different platforms, what purpose does a bare bones novelization which regurgitates the source material scene by scene serve?

One of the things I used to love about reading novelizations was the extra scenes. The Star Wars Prequels for example have a bunch of scenes that weren't in the movie. I remember in AotC there are we got more with the Lars before Anakin and Padme end up on Tatooine, and RotS had the whole birth of the Rebellion storyline that was cut out of the final movie. I've had the Abrams Trek novelizations sitting on my to read pile since the movie came out, but I haven't read it yet since I found out there were no extra scenes.

I think there were a few extra scenes.

 

[Christopher]

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.

I thought Data said it would take either a few minutes or hours to get to the fleet during the briefing scene.

From context, he was saying it would take them 3 hours, 25 minutes to reach the Typhon Sector from their current location. Although it's true that Picard ordered a course set for Earth when the battle was engaged, which does imply it was close to Earth.

And note that he did say "Typhon Sector," not "Typhon Expanse." Maybe those are two different locations. After all, Typhon is a name from Greek mythology, and humans love drawing on classical mythology to name things in space. Heck, there's a real-life trans-Neptunian object by that name, 42355 Typhon, discovered in 2002. So the Typhon Sector could be much closer to Earth than the Typhon Expanse.

Although it's still problematical if the movie is claiming that the Romulan Neutral Zone is mere hours from Earth, even at maximum warp for the E-E.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

And note that he did say "Typhon Sector," not "Typhon Expanse." Maybe those are two different locations. After all, Typhon is a name from Greek mythology, and humans love drawing on classical mythology to name things in space. Heck, there's a real-life trans-Neptunian object by that name, 42355 Typhon, discovered in 2002. So the Typhon Sector could be much closer to Earth than the Typhon Expanse.

Oh didn't catch that so it may have been a different place.

Although it's still problematical if the movie is claiming that the Romulan Neutral Zone is mere hours from Earth, even at maximum warp for the E-E.

Not really let's not forget that Earth and Romulus have to be close enough so that their probably really slow ships that max out at warp 5 on the old scale (which 24th century ships can go considerably faster that) could reach each other in a considerably decent amount of time to fight the battles in the war between them.

 

[The Wormhole]

I've had the Abrams Trek novelizations sitting on my to read pile since the movie came out, but I haven't read it yet since I found out there were no extra scenes.

Well, there is one, but that's been contradicted by the Ongoing comic series.

 

[Christopher]

Although it's still problematical if the movie is claiming that the Romulan Neutral Zone is mere hours from Earth, even at maximum warp for the E-E.

Not really let's not forget that Earth and Romulus have to be close enough so that their probably really slow ships that max out at warp 5 on the old scale (which 24th century ships can go considerably faster that) could reach each other in a considerably decent amount of time to fight the battles in the war between them.

Define "a decent amount of time." In the age of sail, it could take weeks or months to get to a battlefield. That didn't stop people from having wars. It took Archer and NX-01 months to find the Xindi. And in the novels, engagements in the Earth-Romulan War were generally weeks or months apart. Even with the faster warp factors of the 24th century, it should still take days at least, not hours, to get from Earth to the Federation border.

One of the rules in the writers' bibles for both TOS and TNG was "Do not treat deep space as a local neighborhood." Roddenberry never wanted the show to lose sight of the immensity of space and the difficulty of crossing it. He never wanted ships to be able to hop from planet to planet as easily as commuting to work, because that trivialized space travel. Sadly, that's a rule that Roddenberry's successors frequently ignored.

 

[TheAlmanac]

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.

Given Carey's attitude, I don't think it's that surprising that Voyager's tribute to TOS, featuring TOS characters, is the novelisation where she actually put in some effort. The other series' characters just happened to benefit from her elevation of TOS in this case.

That sounds like a pretty labored rationalization to fit new evidence into your pre-existing thesis. Couldn't it be that she actually liked Voyager? You're forgetting that she did another VGR novel, Fire Ship, which had nothing to do with TOS and is also well-regarded. (She also novelized Equinox and Endgame, but I don't think I ever read those.)

To be fair, I haven't read any of her Voyager work, so I can't speak to how Fire Ship treats the characters.

I was going by how other people had described her later novelisations--if she actually liked the show, wouldn't she have been at least slightly more kind in her adaptations of other episodes? It's not as if the teleplay for "Flashback" is just that much better.

 

[Christopher]

I was going by how other people had described her later novelisations--if she actually liked the show, wouldn't she have been at least slightly more kind in her adaptations of other episodes? It's not as if the teleplay for "Flashback" is just that much better.

Really, it's generally not a good idea to speculate about another person's motives one way or the other. The only way to actually know is to ask them -- if, that is, they're inclined to answer.

 

[SicOne]

And note that he did say "Typhon Sector," not "Typhon Expanse." Maybe those are two different locations. After all, Typhon is a name from Greek mythology, and humans love drawing on classical mythology to name things in space. Heck, there's a real-life trans-Neptunian object by that name, 42355 Typhon, discovered in 2002. So the Typhon Sector could be much closer to Earth than the Typhon Expanse.

Oh didn't catch that so it may have been a different place.

Although it's still problematical if the movie is claiming that the Romulan Neutral Zone is mere hours from Earth, even at maximum warp for the E-E.

Not really let's not forget that Earth and Romulus have to be close enough so that their probably really slow ships that max out at warp 5 on the old scale (which 24th century ships can go considerably faster that) could reach each other in a considerably decent amount of time to fight the battles in the war between them.

The ST Star Charts book shows Earth to be about 25 light-years from the closest portion of the Romulan Neutral Zone. Based on that reference, as well as the Warp speed chart in the Trekpedia, it would take just over an hour for those subspace transmissions heard on the Ent-E bridge in "First Contact" to even get from Earth to the E-E. Even if the E-E could somehow reach subspace speed with their warp drive, they'd be over an hour late arriving to the party, which was already going to hell in a handbasket. They must have gone to ludicrous speed...

(BTW, the same Star Charts book shows Earth to be about 48ly from Romulus.)

 

[James T. Vader]

Theyve gone to plaid!

 

[Guest12]

I remember liking her "Flashback" and "Endgame" novelizations. But one thing that did stand out to me, that I still remember, from the "Endgame" novelization was in the scene where future-Barclay is introducing Admiral Janeway to his classroom. He says, "...she literally wrote the book on the Borg," and Adm. Janeway thinks something like, No I didn't. Does Barclay not know what "literally" means?

It just seemed odd to put something like that in there.

 

[SicOne]

Theyve gone to plaid!

Who made that man a gunner?

 

[Marcus Porcius Cato]

In general, Carey's novels are best in the TOS era. Like some here I just think she didn't think too highly of TNG era onward of Star Trek. Ships of Line was essentially a book long denouncement of Picard.

 

[Christopher]

Well, the published warp charts in the books have never, ever corresponded to any velocities shown onscreen, which have consistently been portrayed as much faster. So it's utterly useless to rely on those charts as a reference.

 

[SicOne]

^ Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. The only series to even remotely hew to those is Voyager, and even then just at the beginning (75 years at roughly 1,000 ly sustainable per year or so). But sometimes all we have to go by is the Trekpedia and not-necessarily-canon supplemental materials, such as the Star Charts book. I meant to give those figures to Mr. Hartzilla as an example.

I find it difficult to believe from a celestial point-of-view that the Ent-E could go all the way from the RNZ to Earth in just over an hour, even at "speed of plot". From a Trek tech point-of-view, the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that as starships have cruise speeds, maximum sustainable speeds, and maximum 12-hour-duration superspeeds, they must therefore have a super-max, 1-hour, she-can't-take-much-more-o'this-Captain super-duper-speed, for those of us fans who demand a Treknology-satisfactory explanation.

 

[tomswift2002]

I remember Phil Farrand in his "Unofficial Nitpicker's Guide..." For both TOS & TNG mentioned how the speeds seemed to vary quite a bit, and he used the example from STV where the E-A went from Earth to the planet and then the center of the galaxy in something like two or three days, but in the TNG era it would take ships something like 8 years or more.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

I remember Phil Farrand in his "Unofficial Nitpicker's Guide..." For both TOS & TNG mentioned how the speeds seemed to vary quite a bit, and he used the example from STV where the E-A went from Earth to the planet and then the center of the galaxy in something like two or three days, but in the TNG era it would take ships something like 8 years or more.

Thats becuase TNG era engineers aren't as good as Scotty

 

[tomswift2002]

I remember Phil Farrand in his "Unofficial Nitpicker's Guide..." For both TOS & TNG mentioned how the speeds seemed to vary quite a bit, and he used the example from STV where the E-A went from Earth to the planet and then the center of the galaxy in something like two or three days, but in the TNG era it would take ships something like 8 years or more.

Thats becuase TNG era engineers aren't as good as Scotty

So they turned the E-D into a steamship?

 

[Hartzilla2007]

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.

If that was the plan I have a problem with it as in the last New Earth book the only reason Keller might get a call back to Earth might have something to do with the whole lying about his former captain being exposed to a substance that caused mental degeneration and becuase of that and his reluctance to relieve the man even when he seemed to show signs of going nuts becuase of it almost got everyone killed and his previous ship trashed beyond repair.

So the idea that he gets to do that and then decides to leave Starfleet becuase they want to reassign him (which is better than what I would which would have been to court martial his ass) makes it seem like he's trying to weasel his way out of facing the consequences of his actions, not to mention that fact that keeping the Challenger which sounds is kind of shady since a decent chunk of it is made from the remains of a trashed Starfleet starship kind of makes the guy look like a major asshole.

Not to mention the fact that by hiding it he kept the captain guy from getting treatment which could have prevented the degeneration becuase he lied.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I haven't read any of her Voyager work, so I can't speak to how Fire Ship treats the characters.

"Fire Ship" is a Janeway solo story or, rather, Janeway as an underling on an alien ship, stranded far from her Voyager crew over a period of months. It's from the period between the change from the infamous "bun of steel" hairdo to the more casual look that Janeway had in later seasons and, as such, is a nice character arc. The other "Voyager" crewmembers are barely in it.

I found it a real page turner, with some believable, different, alien tech, and a story on a par with the "New Frontier" installment of "The Captain's Table". Very strong stories!