Spoilers Coda: Book 3: Oblivion's Gate by David Mack Review Thread

[jaime]

I think one thing that comes up is ‘how do you end all those plot threads in just three books?’ But I think part of my criticism would be that some of those plot threads had been going on way too long already, and that the discontinuity between books and authors sometimes made it inevitable. (You often wonder if the writers even read each other’s work beyond a synopsis, which is important in serial storytelling… that’s how Geordi went from ‘never get a date’ to ‘juggling the relationships’)
What shouldn’t have been inevitable, was at least giving the characters something to do before killing them off. The most obvious example being O’Brien.
I actually think the litverse became too drawn out, across books, and now within books… usually resulting in some sudden jumps to get things up to speed with other parts of the story.

I really just… don’t think I will read anymore books in Trek, unless the premise is interesting, and it’s by the few authors in the range who I still trust to deliver a decent book. Maybe time for some new blood. Someone who doesn’t seem bored with the inherent Trek or the characters.

 

[Idran]

That's indeed a possibility and I have no information either way as to sales figures or revenue, so I'll slightly amend my statement to reflect my own personal experience.. the Litverse *was Star Trek* for *me*, especially in the last 2 decades. It will always be *that* branch of Trek for me - not canon, not that well-known by most Trekkies, but the closest to my heart.

Fair, and same here, yes. I still think the worst of the Litverse is better than the worst of anything on screen and the best of the Litverse is better than the best of anything on screen. Which is part of why it bothers me so much that a major part of the "hope" given in Coda is "don't worry, the screen stuff still exists~"

It just implies in a general sense that the tie-ins don't matter in and of themselves, but only in so much as they connect to the core material. Not in a canon sense, because who cares about what's canon and what isn't, and not in a commercial sense, because yes of course that's how tie-in media works. But that they don't matter in and of themselves in an artistic sense, that they were only ever there as a seat saver until the real Trek came back and they have no real artistic worth outside that. It communicates that we should only care about and connect with tie-in material in terms of how it connects back to the source, and not care about and connect with it as a work in itself separately from the source material.

Do the authors of tie-in works really not believe that their works can have greater artistic value to some portion of their readers than even the best of the source material they derive from? Or I guess a better way to put the question, do they believe that a reader who sees that in their works is simply wrong?

I see the DNA of a number of things in the trilogy, probably unconscious because it's all part of the soup, though the reprise of the end to "The Pandorica Opens" was possibly intentional, but Crisis isn't really one of them. And I'm saying that having made some of the pre-publication Crisis jokes myself.

Ward actually said on Literary Treks that the Last Great Time War was much more an influence than CoIE, for what it's worth.

 

[ICW]

Fair, and same here, yes. I still think the worst of the Litverse is better than the worst of anything on screen and the best of the Litverse is better than the best of anything on screen. Which is part of why it bothers me so much that a major part of the "hope" given in Coda is "don't worry, the screen stuff still exists~"

It just implies in a general sense that the tie-ins don't matter in and of themselves, but only in so much as they connect to the core material. Not in a canon sense, because who cares about what's canon and what isn't, and not in a commercial sense, because yes of course that's how tie-in media works. But that they don't matter in and of themselves in an artistic sense, that they were only ever there as a seat saver until the real Trek came back and they have no real artistic worth outside that. It communicates that we should only care about and connect with tie-in material in terms of how it connects back to the source, and not care about and connect with it as a work in itself separately from the source material.

Do the authors of tie-in works really not believe that their works can have greater artistic value to some portion of their readers than even the best of the source material they derive from? Or I guess a better way to put the question, do they believe that a reader who sees that in their works is simply wrong?



Ward actually said on Literary Treks that the Last Great Time War was much more an influence than CoIE, for what it's worth.

Personally, I've always gotten the sense from some author interviews that they enjoyed building the Litverse but, at the end of the day, were always aware that it could be taken from them at any given moment and accepted that nothing lasts forever, they would never a "fight" to keep the Litverse going, so it's completely out of their hands.

 

[Christopher]

It just implies in a general sense that the tie-ins don't matter in and of themselves, but only in so much as they connect to the core material.

Well, yeah, obviously. That is literally why they call them tie-ins -- because their entire purpose is to connect to the core material. I mean, it's cool that people enjoy them and all, but let's not get an overinflated sense of what they are. Tie-in literature is a supplement, existing to support a media franchise, not compete with it. We're the Alfred to the franchise's Batman. You may think Alfred is an awesome character in his own right, and he is, but his role is to back up Batman, not to compete with him or replace him.

If you want something whose value is entirely intrinsic to itself, there is a vast amount of original fiction out there that you can read (or listen to, as audiobooks) and enjoy. Tie-ins are the wrong place to look for that. It's right there in the name.

But that they don't matter in and of themselves in an artistic sense, that they were only ever there as a seat saver until the real Trek came back and they have no real artistic worth outside that.

Not at all, because continuity has nothing to do with value or worth. No story "actually happens," after all. They're all equally made up. So it makes no sense to define their value on the basis of their continuity with other stories. Their value is whether you enjoy them while you read them. What they may or may not connect to outside of that is a secondary consideration. Continuity is just a storytelling device subordinate to the fiction. It's not the source of the fiction's value. It's a tool in the kit, and an optional one. Fandom today could stand to be reminded of that.

I mean, heck, we Trek fans went through this once already, when TNG came along and the '80s Pocket continuity had to be abandoned. We didn't stop caring about books like The Final Reflection and The Romulan Way. We didn't have them taken away from us. We still read and enjoyed them as much as ever. Because the value of a story is in the story.

If anything, getting to do a story that explicitly ties the novelverse into the new canon and shows how they connect in-story is not a repudiation of the novel continuity, but just the opposite. It's allowing readers to believe that it all actually did happen as part of the Trek multiverse, and that what you see onscreen now was brought about through the actions and sacrifices of the novelverse characters. That connects it more strongly to the canon, much like Kelvin did with Prime, rather than just writing it off as a bunch of "imaginary stories."

Do the authors of tie-in works really not believe that their works can have greater artistic value to some portion of their readers than even the best of the source material they derive from? Or I guess a better way to put the question, do they believe that a reader who sees that in their works is simply wrong?

Our job as tie-in writers is not to compete with our employers. We're working for them. They're not our rivals, they're our bosses. Whatever we write as tie-in authors is done on their behalf and at their indulgence, and it's derived from their intellectual property to begin with, so none of it would exist without them. So no, we don't see it that way. If you see artistic value in our works, that's not in spite of or in conflict with the core franchise, it's an extension of it. We're all on the same team.

Again, if you want something that stands apart from the screen franchise, plenty of us have written our own original fiction. That's where you should look if you want to see us really being ourselves, creating our own independent worlds whose merits or faults come entirely from us.

Personally, I've always gotten the sense from some author interviews that they enjoyed building the Litverse but, at the end of the day, were always aware that it could be taken from them at any given moment and accepted that nothing lasts forever, they would never a "fight" to keep the Litverse going, so it's completely out of their hands.

Of course. Except I'd say it couldn't be "taken" from us, since it was never ours to begin with. We were guests in someone else's home, borrowing their toys. Really, it's a fluke that we managed to keep our pretense of a continuity going as long as we did. That's not something any tie-in author would expect or feel entitled to. It was a gift we were lucky to get.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

We were guests in someone else's home, borrowing their toys. Really, it's a fluke that we managed to keep our pretense of a continuity going as long as we did. That's not something any tie-in author would expect or feel entitled to. It was a gift we were lucky to get.

That is profound, and it is something we must all keep in mind, not just the writers, but the readers as well. Especially the readers.

 

[David cgc]

Fair, and same here, yes. I still think the worst of the Litverse is better than the worst of anything on screen and the best of the Litverse is better than the best of anything on screen. Which is part of why it bothers me so much that a major part of the "hope" given in Coda is "don't worry, the screen stuff still exists~"

I would say the major part of the hope is that just because something has ended doesn't mean it didn't have value. I mean, the novel itself explicitly raises the possibility that the new Star Trek isn't going to be as good as the novelverse was, and responds that which one is better or worse is irrelevant in the face of the fact that one is ending and the other isn't. It's less about the novelverse wallowing in its subservience to the shows than it is a meditation on "Why do bad things happen to good fiction?" Sure, in a perfectly just world, the version of Control whose subtle manipulations are "accidental" poisonings from drink fountains would "win out" over the on whose subtle manipulations are puppeteering around proto-Borg corpses and very ineptly attempting to beat people up, but shit happens, and only one gets to continue on. Perfect moments can be had, but not kept, except in memory.

Don't get me wrong, I would've preferred something more celebratory than funeral, but I'm picking up what the authors are putting down by choosing instead to do an existential statement that superseding these stories isn't the same as devaluing them. And I also see where you're coming from, that acknowledging that the stories are being superseded within the reality of the narrative, complete with putting a period at the end of the sentence, does feel a lot like devaluing them.

I'm curious about who was for and against in the "showing the novelverse continuing past the end" debate, considering I was very much "for." I don't think it's as necessary of a story if it just dramatizes the reality of the situation with no twist. I guess it's similar to my opinion on Blade Runner. If Deckard is a human who learns there's no meaningful difference between himself and a Replicant, that's a character arc and a statement on the meaninglessness of bigotry. If he's a Replicant who learns there's no meaningful difference between himself and a Replicant, no shit, Sherlock.

Well, yeah, obviously. That is literally why they call them tie-ins -- because their entire purpose is to connect to the core material. I mean, it's cool that people enjoy them and all, but let's not get an overinflated sense of what they are. Tie-in literature is a supplement, existing to support a media franchise, not compete with it. We're the Alfred to the franchise's Batman. You may think Alfred is an awesome character in his own right, and he is, but his role is to back up Batman, not to compete with him or replace him.

If you want something whose value is entirely intrinsic to itself, there is a vast amount of original fiction out there that you can read (or listen to, as audiobooks) and enjoy. Tie-ins are the wrong place to look for that. It's right there in the name.

I don't think it's fair to denigrate tie-ins so comprehensively. Outside of the commercial context, what functional difference is there between what you do and what Ron Moore did, except who reads the words aloud, Robert Petkoff or Patrick Stewart? Personally, I'm not ready to ceed my judgement of artistic merit to corporate strategy.

I'm suddenly remembering the bit in "Destiny" about how, technically, the first work of English literature in history was a Captain Proton fan-fic. So what if it was? What if it was really good? It feels like a Douglas Adams bit, that some alien super-intelligence or literary computer would determine the greatest work of human literature was an obscure tie-in novel to a movie that bombed, so only a handful of people read it and they were all too self-conscious about its provenance to tell anyone how affecting it was.

Not at all, because continuity has nothing to do with value or worth. No story "actually happens," after all. They're all equally made up.

Then why are "It was all a dream" endings so frustrating? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm curious about your take on that in light of your advocating that continuity is optional.

 

[Corran Horn]

Is there any new Legends content, produced after the EU was "decanonized", other than the SWTOR MMO and Star Wars #108?

Crucible is the farthest out and was sold as such. It wasn't a surprise. People keep saying the SW EU was 'abruptly dropped' but once that decision was made Crucible was a planned capstone and it's not like there were a lot of ongoing storylines between series in the main EU book line (FotJ had ended, for example, years before) so I don't really get the comparison.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think it's fair to denigrate tie-ins so comprehensively.

It's not denigration. Why would I denigrate my own profession? I'm just putting it in perspective. There's nothing bad or inferior about being a supporting member of a team; it's just different from working solo. As tie-in authors, we are hired contractors. We are doing a job on someone else's behalf, a job that they have entrusted us to do for them. It's the difference between being a clerk in someone else's store and opening your own store. Or between being a backup singer and being a soloist.

Outside of the commercial context, what functional difference is there between what you do and what Ron Moore did, except who reads the words aloud, Robert Petkoff or Patrick Stewart? Personally, I'm not ready to ceed my judgement of artistic merit to corporate strategy.

My whole point is that it's not about merit, and it's not a competition. We're just playing different roles on the same team. Please stop trying to pit us against each other.

Then why are "It was all a dream" endings so frustrating? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm curious about your take on that in light of your advocating that continuity is optional.

I think that's apples and oranges. Fakeout endings within a core continuity feel like a cheat because we expect the events there to be relevant to what follows. But Trek tie-ins have never, ever claimed to be part of the core continuity, so the same expectations don't apply. As I like to say, if canon is history, tie-ins are historical fiction. We're not claiming any of this happened; we're just telling conjectural stories that could have happened within the canon as defined onscreen. And now that canon has contradicted our earlier conjectures, we have to adjust accordingly.

 

[rfmcdpei]

I would say the major part of the hope is that just because something has ended doesn't mean it didn't have value. I mean, the novel itself explicitly raises the possibility that the new Star Trek isn't going to be as good as the novelverse was, and responds that which one is better or worse is irrelevant in the face of the fact that one is ending and the other isn't.

Are you talking about the exchange between Data and Lal where Lal reveals her anxiety about the possibility that, in the Prime timeline, she and her father are not revived?

If so, that Data-Lal exchange is an altogether different dialogue from that.

In at least one way, the Prime timeline seems to be better than the novelverse, in that the catastrophic Borg invasion of 2381 never happened. Plenty of populous and important worlds that got razed in the litverse are still intact in the Prime universe. I would suggest that, even accounting for the devastation of Romulus and adjacent worlds, the Prime timeline comes out ahead.

 

[thribs]

Prime timeline better? They made Picard a bitter useless old man and Seven a murderer. The Borg invasion was better than that. At least they got rid of them.

 

[Christopher]

In at least one way, the Prime timeline seems to be better than the novelverse, in that the catastrophic Borg invasion of 2381 never happened. Plenty of populous and important worlds that got razed in the litverse are still intact in the Prime universe. I would suggest that, even accounting for the devastation of Romulus and adjacent worlds, the Prime timeline comes out ahead.

And it's not just the Borg Invasion, but the Genesis Wave, the intergalactic catastrophe in The Body Electric, the universal near-armageddon in Q & A... really, this timeline has been subject to so many huge cataclysms that it's as if the writing was on the wall the whole time. If the worst that happened in Prime was the Romulan supernova, it got off easy. And yeah, that led to the Federation having a lapse in its tradition of generosity and tolerance for a number of years, but how does that compare to having two presidents assassinated and one turning out to be an impostor, plus losing a founding member to secession (albeit getting it back again)?

I mean, let's face it -- stories are about things going wrong, about characters coping with crisis and adversity. So it follows that whatever version of the universe has had the most stories is going to be the one that's had the most bad stuff happen in it. It also means that it's missing the point to argue that the less troubled timeline is the preferable one for the audience. If stuff isn't going wrong, there are no stories to tell, and that's not good for us.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

really, this timeline has been subject to so many huge cataclysms that it's as if the writing was on the wall the whole time. If the worst that happened in Prime was the Romulan supernova, it got off easy.

<Gabby Johnson>Rarebitz!</Gabby Johnson>

But things don't have to go wrong (at least, not "wrong on a civilization-threatening scale") to give us a good story. I loved "The Corbomite Maneuver" (and your sequel thereto), and I loved "The Inner Light." In those episodes, nothing was really going wrong, per se: the former was just a reclusive alien making a very cautious first contact, and the latter was just a long-dead civilization sending out a time capsule.

 

[David cgc]

If so, that Data-Lal exchange is an altogether different dialogue from that.

Lal literally says, “And what makes the Prime timeline so great?” and “How can I know the realities you’d have me die to save will be good ones?”

It’s very much taking the “subtle” out of “subtext.” I don’t know how more on-the-nose it could be, except maybe by omitting Lal’s rationale that she’s really worried about whether she has a counterpart in the other timeline.

 

[Enterpriserules]

Lal's question hit me hard because I don't love the Prime timeline for these 24th century characters for the most part, especially Picard.

 

[Christopher]

But things don't have to go wrong (at least, not "wrong on a civilization-threatening scale") to give us a good story.

Not in every story, no, of course not. But when you have a series with a lot of different stories being told, it stands to reason that a number of them will have big things going wrong, and thus there will be more things going wrong there than in a series with fewer installments. It's not about story merits, it's sheer statistics. More events happen when more stories are told. Whether it's something big like catastrophic events, or something small like new uniforms or ship classes being introduced (which is why we had more changes in those things in the 14 years of TNG/DS9/VGR than in the preceding 71 years between GEN and TNG).


Getting back to the other topic, of whether declaring the novelverse an alternate or "erased" timeline invalidates it somehow, I say of course it doesn't. It's no more invalid than the Mirror Universe, or the "Yesterday's Enterprise" timeline, or the timeline of "The Visitor." Regardless of their status in in-universe cosmology, all these alternates are narratively meaningful because of their impact on the audience.

 

[DimesDan]

Thank you @Dayton Ward, @James Swallow and @David Mack, all three books were clearly written with a love of all the characters and bringing everything in the first splinter to an end. I enjoyed the journey.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Regardless of their status in in-universe cosmology, all these alternates are narratively meaningful because of their impact on the audience.

And that is something we all need to be reminded of. Some more than others, but all, to one extent or another.

 

[Mage]

If anything, this thread so far has convinced me to read these novels to form my own opinion, and that fans in any fandom are impossible to satisfy and that the authors of the novels are hotdamned heroes for trying to.

Kudos to all of them for trying to cap something that has entertained a very small fraction of Star Trek fans that were dedicated to this incarnation of a beloved franchise. It'll be a while before I get a chance to read the novels but Im curious as hell.

Also, a huge thanks for all the authors who spend years fleshing out excisting characters to a new dimension, creating new characters for us to be mesmerized with, coming up with new adventures and making the franchise go boldy where it never went before.
I truly hope you all get a shot to write new Star Trek stories for the new shows out there and in development, or otherwise find new avenues where you can unleash your creative energy.

 

[Christopher]

If anything, this thread so far has convinced me to read these novels to form my own opinion, and that fans in any fandom are impossible to satisfy and that the authors of the novels are hotdamned heroes for trying to.

I think we're mainly trying to satisfy ourselves -- and our editors and the licensors, of course. The range of audience preferences and opinions is so broad that it's a fool's errand to try to satisfy everyone. You just try to tell the best story you can in a way that feels right to you, and hope that a reasonable number of other people get what you were trying to do.

 

[Jarvisimo]

I think in my head I'll just imagine the Treklit version of this, rather than Coda:

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While I understand and respect the work the authors did here, I know creatively, it is not what I had hoped for. I'm glad some will find it meaningful in a good way - and great to see that here on this thread - but overall, I'm definitely saddened by the choices made and not sure this was the best end to this wonderful period of work.