Characters or situations you'd like to see in the books?

[Christopher]

Commodore Wesley does appear in Yesterday's Son by A. C. Crispin, but that novel makes no acknowledgment of anything from TAS (even though it's set two years after the late third-season episode "All Our Yesterdays"). So he's still commander of the Lexington there, not a governor.

I don't think "A Door in the Cage" is compatible with Burning Dreams, though it's a fine story.

 

[David R. George III]

^ Not quite what you're asking, but Wesley does appear in The Fire and the Rose, where he eulogizes Jim Kirk.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

^ Not quite what you're asking, but Wesley does appear in The Fire and the Rose, where he eulogizes Jim Kirk.

Which I thought was a very nice touch!

 

[Vastator]

...or the Grigari (Millennium Trilogy) invading the Carnelians (The Buried Age)...

The Carnelians would kick their collective tuchas.

It just seems a shame to me that all these great aliens and storylines are created, visited once (even if that once is really in-depth over the course of an entire novel or tetralogy), but then left behind. I appreciate it when a writer-fan includes the odd Hamalki (The Wounded Sy) or Choblik (Orion's Hounds) or Vahni (Twilight) sitting in the back at Quark's, but one yearns for more.

For what it's worth, I'm always looking for opportunities to revisit species I introduced in earlier works. Someday I hope to reveal what the Shesshran (Ex Machina) are up to in the 24th century.

Arpy, would you mind explaining who the Carnelians are? I haven't had a chance to read "The Buried Age" yet, but I hear its VERY good.

In "Legacy," Picard revealed that he first met Tasha Yar saving colonists from a "Carnelian minefield." Given the timing, I pretty much had to make that part of the climax of The Buried Age. I didn't just want to make them aliens from the planet Carnelia or something, given that carnelian is an English-language word for a type of gemstone. So they became the Regnancy of the Carnelian Throne, a multispecies empire sort of thingy, comparable to the Federation in size and power, but very distant from it. Their members include at least a couple of species glimpsed in the background of DS9 episodes, though that's only implicit in the book.

*puts The Buried Age as one of the books to get* Damn you Christopher, you will bankrupt me at this rate! *shakes fist*

While its not been that long since Vulcan's Soul has come out but I wouldnt mind seeing the Watraii again especially in the post Shinzon era. Maybe even more analysis of the Vulcans and their splinter species. I mean how many splinter races are there now? Debrune, Romulans, Remans, Rigellians (Decipher books says they are at least), Watraii.

Maybe something on those Ascendants that I have heard about and read about on Memory Beta as they seem to be the newest big bad in the Gamma Quadrant.

Oh and maybe some look at the Preservers... have the novels ever hinted if the Preservers and the Humanoid Progenitors being the same race? I think one of the TNG books says that the Planet Killer was created by them to fight the Borg or something as they were destroyed in that conflict.

 

[EmperorKalan]

I mean how many splinter races are there now? Debrune, Romulans, Remans, Rigellians (Decipher books says they are at least), Watraii.

Speaking of that, there are over half a dozen races from various sources that have used that name "Rigellian" (or some variant thereof).

Sorting all that out is more the territory of an RPG sourcebook than a novel, but a novel that did touch on this in more than a superficial manner (as part of a larger plotline, of course) would be welcome.

 

[Christopher]

Oh and maybe some look at the Preservers... have the novels ever hinted if the Preservers and the Humanoid Progenitors being the same race?

That's a fan theory that crops up a lot, but it makes no sense, since they have absolutely nothing in common aside being explanations for humanoid aliens in the show. The Progenitors lived 4 billion years ago, were the only sentient race in the galaxy, and had the technology to seed countless worlds with DNA programmed to encourage the eventual evolution of humanoid forms billions of years down the road. The Preservers' one canonical act (taking Native Americans from Earth) took place only an estimated 2-300 years ago, and all they did was to transplant already-existing endangered cultures to other planets. I've always been surprised that the Preservers have gotten this reputation as something from the ancient mists of time, when they're really quite recent in cosmic terms. I also don't buy that they're any great hyper-advanced civilization; if anything, they're a bunch of bumblers. How stupid do you have to be to try to "preserve" a civilization by sticking it on a planet that's subject to regular asteroid bombardment and giving them only one lousy, manually operated beam projector to defend themselves with?

The Trek race that I've always considered the best candidate for the Preservers is the Vians from "The Empath." After all, they were doing the exact same thing: transplanting an endangered population to a new homeworld.

But there are so many different theories out there for who the Preservers were that I'm tempted to call it a collective label for multiple different groups or populations that maybe took on the mantle at various points in history.

 

[captcalhoun]

But there are so many different theories out there for who the Preservers were that I'm tempted to call it a collective label for multiple different groups or populations that maybe took on the mantle at various points in history.

which, IIRC, was used in 'Federation' by the Reeves-Stevens gestalt.

otoh, their shatnerverse MU trilogy goes with the thing of them being this super-uber-advanced civilisation manipulating everything from alternate time-lines to starship personnel assignments as part of some grand cosmic chess game.

 

[EmperorKalan]

I'm one of those people who both likes books that break up the ususal crews and ones that explore Trek's various "lost years/eras", so let me suggest something back in the first half of the 23rd century, before the Constitution class, back in the days when people like Robert April and Heihachi Nogura were young captains (or earlier).

The only one I can think of set in that "era" (circa midway between the Romulan War and the launch of the Connies) is The Final Reflection. It might be time to revisit that timeframe, especially with the new movie bringing the focus back to the 23rd century.

 

[Christopher]

otoh, their shatnerverse MU trilogy goes with the thing of them being this super-uber-advanced civilisation manipulating everything from alternate time-lines to starship personnel assignments as part of some grand cosmic chess game.

Yeah... I guess there's a tendency to mythologize. I mean, given everything we know about the Preservers, they did nothing that the Starfleet of Kirk's or Picard's era couldn't have done (the asteroid deflector might've been a bit beyond 23rd-century tech, though maybe it could've been done with a big enough underground generator). I mean, we even saw Picard's crew acting as "Preservers" of a sort in "Homeward," offering a possible model for how the real Preservers could've transplanted populations without their knowledge. And yet fandom -- and even pro authors -- have built them up into something so much greater, making them the catchall Ancient Beings responsible for whatever you want to explain. (I'm surprised I haven't yet had anyone ask me if the Manraloth from The Buried Age could've been the Preservers.) And this is despite knowing about other, far more ancient civilizations that are more plausible candidates, like Sargon's people, the Organians, the Talosians, the Tkon, the Iconians, etc. (Although the Iconians have gotten some use in this way in the fiction, at least in The Devil's Heart.) I guess it's because the Preservers are just a name, a nearly blank slate that people can fill in with whatever they imagine.

 

[BrotherBenny]

I like to think of the Preservers like galactic zookeepers, taking nearly-extinct cultures/races to a new world to protect them from said extinction. It would be interesting to see a novel from the Preservers' point of view. Whether they are like the Federation or not. And the one canonical event we have is 2-300 years ago, but they must have existed prior to that, as a secret society maybe. Who knows.

That's for the pro-writers to tell us....well, we're waiting.

 

[JD]

Maybe something on those Ascendants that I have heard about and read about on Memory Beta as they seem to be the newest big bad in the Gamma Quadrant.

Well, the DS9 Relaunch (especially Rising Sun, Unity, and Warpath) seem to be heading twoards some sort of a big conflict with them. So if you just stick with those books, you should hopefully get to see them sometime within the next couple major arcs. I'm thinking it'll probably be sometime after the stuff with the Illiana Ghemores is done.

 

[Christopher]

I like to think of the Preservers like galactic zookeepers, taking nearly-extinct cultures/races to a new world to protect them from said extinction. It would be interesting to see a novel from the Preservers' point of view. Whether they are like the Federation or not. And the one canonical event we have is 2-300 years ago, but they must have existed prior to that, as a secret society maybe. Who knows.

Sure, they could've been around for hundreds or thousands of years before that -- I have no problem with that assumption, and I've used it myself (I once asserted that they were responsible for seeding the Roman planet in "Bread and Circuses," which would have to go back about 2000 years or so). But billions of years ago? I just can't buy that. Cultures last a few thousand years. Species typically last a few million years, maybe tens of millions if their environment is stable enough -- but sapient species in the Trekverse tend to turn all glowy and incorporeal on the scale of thousands or at most hundreds of thousands of years after evolving sapience.

For some strange reason, though, people just have this tendency to assume that everything in the past happened at the same time. And it can be hard to grasp the staggering gulf that exists between a timescale of centuries or millennia and a timescale of billions of years. This is one thing I tried to address in Picard's archaeology lecture in The Buried Age -- to try to get across the fact that most of the "ancient" history explored in Trek amounts to only the tiniest, most recent fraction of the history of the galaxy. And I find it ironic that the Preservers get lumped into the "really ancient" category when they're actually one of the most recent "old" civilizations in all of Trekdom.

 

[hellsgate]

cicero: The above image is of the LEGACY-CLASS starship, created by Galen & Kaden, two members of SciFi-Meshes.Com.

 

[Furlong]

There are few things that I would like to see in a Trek novel. Among them...

- A Caitian main character OTHER then M'Ress

- Some Starfleet Commandos in action (Hazard Team, anyone?)

- A threat to the Federation akin to the Star Wars EU Novel character Grand Admiral Thrawn. I just think it would be really cool for there to be an enemy that the Federation faced that didn't rely on better tech, but superior strategy and tactics.

 

[Vastator]

Yeah... I guess there's a tendency to mythologize. I mean, given everything we know about the Preservers, they did nothing that the Starfleet of Kirk's or Picard's era couldn't have done (the asteroid deflector might've been a bit beyond 23rd-century tech, though maybe it could've been done with a big enough underground generator). I mean, we even saw Picard's crew acting as "Preservers" of a sort in "Homeward," offering a possible model for how the real Preservers could've transplanted populations without their knowledge. And yet fandom -- and even pro authors -- have built them up into something so much greater, making them the catchall Ancient Beings responsible for whatever you want to explain. (I'm surprised I haven't yet had anyone ask me if the Manraloth from The Buried Age could've been the Preservers.) And this is despite knowing about other, far more ancient civilizations that are more plausible candidates, like Sargon's people, the Organians, the Talosians, the Tkon, the Iconians, etc. (Although the Iconians have gotten some use in this way in the fiction, at least in The Devil's Heart.) I guess it's because the Preservers are just a name, a nearly blank slate that people can fill in with whatever they imagine.

Are the Manraloth the Preservers? :P

I' havent read The Buried Age yet but plan on getting it sometime in the near future. On Sargon's people, its interesting that you mention that as I just found an old DC comic that talks about them which states that their homeworld was called Arret and that they were the creators of Vaal while the inhabitants of that world were actually descendents of Sargon's people who were forced into a primitive level of technological development to revent them from destroying their world as they did to their original home planet. It was also stated that the planet was artificial.

Havent read the book as I just read about it on my searches of the net but I heard something about the T'Kon being destroyed by one of those incorporeal entities in the Q books who tested the race and when they passed it the entity simply decided to destroy them anyway.

And again not read the book but dont the Gateway books talk a bit about the Iconians? Or at least their gates.

Well, the DS9 Relaunch (especially Rising Sun, Unity, and Warpath) seem to be heading twoards some sort of a big conflict with them. So if you just stick with those books, you should hopefully get to see them sometime within the next couple major arcs. I'm thinking it'll probably be sometime after the stuff with the Illiana Ghemores is done.

Indeed, I have been waiting to see whether the next books deal with the Ascendants or not.

Another possible race from the TOS era are the Kelvans, I mean wasnt it said that they were sending an armada to the MW galaxy or something?

Also note, multi-quote rocks!

 

[Christopher]

Are the Manraloth the Preservers? :P

Ummmmm... NO!!

I' havent read The Buried Age yet but plan on getting it sometime in the near future. On Sargon's people, its interesting that you mention that as I just found an old DC comic that talks about them which states that their homeworld was called Arret and that they were the creators of Vaal while the inhabitants of that world were actually descendents of Sargon's people who were forced into a primitive level of technological development to revent them from destroying their world as they did to their original home planet. It was also stated that the planet was artificial.

Sargon's planet was called "Arret" in some behind-the-scenes material, perhaps an early-draft script, and it's thus referred to that way in the Star Trek Concordance. Of course, that's just Terra backwards, so it's a bit too on-the-nose.

That comic story you mention was one of Mike Carlin's better efforts in his short run on DC's Trek comic (although that's faint praise, since he was the weakest regular writer they had), but it's also pretty flawed. I think the comic claimed that Sargon's people had been destroyed in a nuclear war, forgetting that in "Return to Tomorrow," Sargon explicitly said that his people had survived their primitive nuclear era long before, and that their downfall came when their power advanced to the point that they began to consider themselves gods -- most likely a consequence of the psychokinetic abilities we saw them manifest. Imagine a whole planet of Gary Mitchells.

Havent read the book as I just read about it on my searches of the net but I heard something about the T'Kon being destroyed by one of those incorporeal entities in the Q books who tested the race and when they passed it the entity simply decided to destroy them anyway.

And again not read the book but dont the Gateway books talk a bit about the Iconians? Or at least their gates.

I'm aware that those other races have been referenced occasionally. My point is that I find it surprising when people decide to use the Preservers in contexts where there are so many more plausible choices.

 

[Turbo]

While we're on the subject of the Preservers, there's something about Vendetta that's been bugging me. How long ago was the battle between the Borg and the builders of the Doomsday Machine (whether they were the Preservers or not) supposed to take place? At some points, it feels like it was supposed to be a couple thousand years before Vendetta and at others it seems like it was only a few centuries.

 

[Vastator]

While we're on the subject of the Preservers, there's something about Vendetta that's been bugging me. How long ago was the battle between the Borg and the builders of the Doomsday Machine (whether they were the Preservers or not) supposed to take place? At some points, it feels like it was supposed to be a couple thousand years before Vendetta and at others it seems like it was only a few centuries.

It seemed to be hinted that it was thousands of years ago, plus I think the facility used to make the Planet Killer was outside the galaxy I think. Its been a while since I read the book though.

 

[Vastator]

Oops didnt see Christopherhad responded to my post, sorry about that

Ummmmm... NO!!

Well had to ask especially when you said that no one asked it

And bah this mention of the Regency of the Carnellian Throne and Manraloth makes me want to know more about these races *checks for cash*

Sargon's planet was called "Arret" in some behind-the-scenes material, perhaps an early-draft script, and it's thus referred to that way in the Star Trek Concordance. Of course, that's just Terra backwards, so it's a bit too on-the-nose.

That comic story you mention was one of Mike Carlin's better efforts in his short run on DC's Trek comic (although that's faint praise, since he was the weakest regular writer they had), but it's also pretty flawed. I think the comic claimed that Sargon's people had been destroyed in a nuclear war, forgetting that in "Return to Tomorrow," Sargon explicitly said that his people had survived their primitive nuclear era long before, and that their downfall came when their power advanced to the point that they began to consider themselves gods -- most likely a consequence of the psychokinetic abilities we saw them manifest. Imagine a whole planet of Gary Mitchells.

Cool, didnt know about that behind the scenes stuff.

I only have one issue and thats when they re-instate Vaal so not sure what was stated though the fact that they created an artificial planet to restart their civilization seemed kind of impressive. I think it was said Vaals planet was just some asteroid belt and Kirk compared it to a workable Genesis planet.

And indeed an entire race of Gary Mitchells seems freaky and if thats the case then its no wonder that their civilization collapsed.

Anyway onto the situations aspect, what ever happened to the H'urq? Don't have books where Martok has a civil war on his hands when he returns home but I heard that they are kind of seen there but thats about it. I think the Startrek game Invasion had it that the H'urq were some interstellar race of insectoid conquerors that got trapped in subspace by an alien scientist or something along those lines.

Also what about the Guardian of Forever? Heard something about the Devil's Heart being a new Guardian or something like that. Too much second information on my hands

 

[KRAD]

Anyway onto the situations aspect, what ever happened to the H'urq? Don't have books where Martok has a civil war on his hands when he returns home but I heard that they are kind of seen there but thats about it. I think the Startrek game Invasion had it that the H'urq were some interstellar race of insectoid conquerors that got trapped in subspace by an alien scientist or something along those lines.

Clones of the Hur'q were used by Gothmara in her attempt to unseat Martok, but it's not clear how close these were to the real Hur'q. And yeah, they were in that videogame, but nothing's been done with them beyond mentions here and there.

Also what about the Guardian of Forever? Heard something about the Devil's Heart being a new Guardian or something like that. Too much second information on my hands

The Guardian plays a big role in the Crucible trilogy by David R. George III, Yesterday's Son and Time for Yesterday by A.C. Crispin, and Imzadi by Peter David, among others.