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

[F. King Daniel]

They may well have stipulated "make it go away forever"

If the Krenim were really gonna be the big bad at one point I wonder how different Coda would have been? Their motivation would be entirely different.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, that's true. From a real world perspective for sure. But from an 'in story' perspective the events of Coda basically erased the entire timeline of the novelverse from TNG: The Genesis Wave, DS9: Avatar, Voy: Homecoming, etc. from existence. They now basically never happened in universe.

Neither did the '80s novel continuity, or the DC or Marvel or Malibu comics, or Star Trek Online, or any of hundreds of standalone stories, or any of the countless fan films. What does that matter? Most works of fiction don't take place in the same universe as each other. If Coda hadn't been done, if the new shows had just overwritten the novelverse continuity with an incompatible version the way the TNG-era shows did with the '80s continuity and the rest, then the novelverse still wouldn't have happened in the canonical universe. But so what? It didn't happen in the Star Wars universe either, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or the Expanse universe, or the Charles Dickens universe or the Calvin and Hobbes universe. Stories happen in their own universes, and any wider connection is optional.

Sure, Coda gets metatextual and posits the erasure of the continuity as an in-story plot device. But it's still just a story. Just like the rest of Star Trek.

 

[Csalem]

One thing the last twenty years of litverse did was to make me appreciate DS9, VGR and ENT more. Those last two became my favourite book series, which I would never have imagined when watching the shows.

 

[Damian]

Sure, Coda gets metatextual and posits the erasure of the continuity as an in-story plot device. But it's still just a story. Just like the rest of Star Trek.

I guess that's my point. I didn't happen to like that plot device. I know it's just my opinion and all, but being a review thread I figured it was fair game.

I just didn't like that they decided to erase the entire timeline from existence. It just made me wonder what the point was of all that happened there now, like the end of the Borg and all the rest? Now it never happened in story. I just didn't care for that.

As an aside I wonder how New Frontier fits into all this now. It was kind of it's own thing, and thus far I haven't seen anything major in Picard that affects it. But at the same time New Frontier was nominally part of the ongoing litverse (I think an occasional mention was made of other things going on in the rest of the litverse, like the end of the Borg). I did notice the mirror universe Calhoun made a cameo. Though I suppose that's up to the reader. I don't expect we'll ever see a NF novel again so I guess it's up to the individual reader if NF still exists or if that was wiped from existence as well.

 

[Sci]

I think it’s inevitable that an ending where most of the litverse characters are killed off and then the entire timeline unhappens was going to bum some readers out, and I find the vehemence with which others are rejecting the legitimacy of that response a bit weird. The ending the writers chose was one that was unusual for Star Trek in many ways, and it’s reasonable that different readers disagreed on how well it worked.

What I'm reacting to is not that people are bummed -- I'm bummed -- but to the idea that because the characters died, nothing they did mattered.

Obviously this is all about fiction and the stakes are pretty low -- just our feelings as fans. But, that basic idea feels like it's saying, "If someone dies, then they didn't matter." Which -- again, it's fiction. But if you were to apply that feeling to real life, that would be horrific.

For example: My mother suffered a stroke nine and a half years ago. After the stroke, she had to have numerous intensive medical treatments, including multiple surgeries. In spite of her doctors' efforts, my mother did eventually die in August of last year.

The fact that my mother was only able to survive for less than a decade after her stroke does not mean that the efforts her doctors undertook to treat her, or that the sacrifices I made to support her, did not matter. Meaning and importance are not nullified by death. If it were, there would be no point in doing anything to help anyone, since we're all going to die eventually.

So that's what I'm trying to push back against, more than anything else: the idea that the things the First Splinter versions of the ST characters went through don't matter just because they eventually died. Death is not the nullifier of meaning.

Yes, that's true. From a real world perspective for sure. But from an 'in story' perspective the events of Coda basically erased the entire timeline of the novelverse from TNG: The Genesis Wave, DS9: Avatar, Voy: Homecoming, etc. from existence. They now basically never happened in universe.

You're thinking a little too linearly. They happened -- and like erased pencil marks under the new writing, you can still see that the eraser couldn't eliminate all trace of the old writing. The consequences of the First Splinter Timeline live on in the fact of the existence of the Prime Timeline. It's like the Prophets promised Kira: They will always remember the sacrifices of the brave heroes of the First Splinter. And so will we the readers.

One thing I would love to see is for one of the shows, Picard, Lower Decks, maybe even Prodigy, to give a nod to the litverse series. Maybe use a litverse character, or incorporate some plot thread or civilization. They don't have too certainly. But just one of those things that would be nice to see.

There have been some tidbits already. DIS S2 used a version of Control as their antagonist. Number One's true name of "Una" was taken from the novels, as were the names of a lot of the Discovery bridge crew. Lower Decks used the "sh'" prefix for the surname of the Andorian officer named Jennifer. The Luna class originated from the novels and has now appeared in both LD and PIC. The MacGuffin ore that the bad guy on PRO is after came from the novels, as did the Brikar species.

That's what makes it so hard for me to rate this novel. I didn't like the resolution, but it wasn't a poorly written book. Not that it's the end of the world if I don't rank it (it's not like David Mack is anxiously waiting to see whether I see it as average, above average ), but I usually try to offer a ranking since it's a new book. I'll just have to consider it for a while.

*shrugs* At the end of the day, they wanted to write a book about finding meaning in the face of oblivion, about the idea that death does not negate purpose even when it is unavoidable. You can dislike the idea of ending with death, but death is coming for us all, inevitably. We will all one day die, and everyone we love will one day die, and one day all life on Earth will die, and one day the Heat Death of the Universe means that all life everywhere in the universe will die. These are just inevitable facts of life. You can either avoid internalizing these facts (a form of denial), or you can internalize them and decide life has no meaning (nihilism), or you can internalize them and decide you will find or create meaning in spite of them (existentialism). The Coda trilogy chooses existentialism over denial or nihilism.

As an aside I do have to admit I was surprised at how the Krenim were just eliminated from the story. I thought something was being built up after To Lose the Earth with the Krenim, and they are master time travel manipulators. I thought originally the Devidians might have been a false clue and we'd find out the Krenim were behind what was going on. But they were swiftly swept under the rug.

As I understand the situation, nothing was swept under the rug. The authors considered using the Krenim in Coda before they were asked not to by, IIRC, Kirsten Beyer herself, so instead they constructed Coda around the Devidians. There was no foreshadowing in Coda about the Krenim, and any foreshadowing in the Voyager novels was about a different arc that never materialized as a result of the novel continuity being nullified by Picard.

I have wondered if there might've been other constraints on the project from licensing beyond what we've been told.

I don't see why there would be. The entire point of Coda was to end the literary continuity, so why would CBS/Paramount care enough to micromanage things?

Dramatizing the literal truth of the First Splinter carrying the torch, and then being rendered superfluous and utterly destroyed by TV Trek seems like such a strange perspective to take, with no twist or anything beyond just "What happened to Star Trek in reality is also what happened in the fiction," that I've wondered if there wasn't some sort of condition that Coda was required to firmly establish the primacy of streaming Trek over the novelverse, and it couldn't just be a finale of a Star Trek story in and of itself.

I think this was just the authors wanting to do a story that gave a definitive end to the literary continuity, tied into the canonical shows, and which set its plot against the backdrop of inevitable death in order to dramatize the importance of finding meaning in spite of death rather than through denial of death.

I was definitely expecting something that was more "Star Trek Six" than "Blake's Seven."

I've never seen Blake's Seven -- I found myself comparing Coda to the series finale of Angel, "Not Fade Away," in which Angel and his "Ministers of Grace" go up against an overwhelmingly powerful foe which they know will destroy them, but choose to do so anyway.

I just didn't like that they decided to erase the entire timeline from existence. It just made me wonder what the point was of all that happened there now,

What was the point of all those surgeries my mother went through? What was the point of me working a job I hated for seven years to support her after her stroke?

It was the right thing to do. That was the point of it all.

As an aside I wonder how New Frontier fits into all this now. It was kind of it's own thing, and thus far I haven't seen anything major in Picard that affects it. But at the same time New Frontier was nominally part of the ongoing litverse (I think an occasional mention was made of other things going on in the rest of the litverse, like the end of the Borg). I did notice the mirror universe Calhoun made a cameo. Though I suppose that's up to the reader. I don't expect we'll ever see a NF novel again so I guess it's up to the individual reader if NF still exists or if that was wiped from existence as well.

One of the ingenious things Peter David did was set New Frontier far enough away from the rest of the Star Trek Universe, in its own isolated environment, that you can interpret it as still having happened in the Prime Timeline without it being nullified by anything in the canon (at least yet). As far as I'm concerned, New Frontier happened in both the Prime Timeline and the First Splinter Timeline.

In fact, a very clever thing about the Coda trilogy is that while it gives a definitive finale to the literary continuity, it also leaves the door open for things that have only ever been depicted in the books to still have happened in the canon. There is, at this point, no reason whatsoever to imagine that the events of the Rise of the Federation series did not happen as described in the Prime Timeline, for instance. The events of the A Time to... series and of Articles of the Federation could so far (unless something something has happened in the last two episodes of PIC -- I haven't seen them yet) still have happened in the Prime Timeline. So could the events of the DS9 Relaunch from Avatar through Warpath. A modified version of the events of The Sorrows of Empire and Rise Like Lions could still have happened. A modified version of the Andorian reproductive crisis and Bashir's quest to rescue them and then fight Section 31 could still have happened (so far, at least). So far, there's no reason most of the Vanguard series couldn't have still taken place. So far, there is no reason that most of Una McCormack's post-finale Cardassian arc, from Cardassia: The Lotus Flower to The Never-Ending Sacrifice to The Crimson Shadow to Enigma Tales, couldn't still have happened. (Granted, the events of The Crimson Shadow would need to be a little different where they intersected with the broader events of The Fall, but most of Crimson Shadow was isolated enough from the rest of that series that it's only a few bits here and there that aren't consistent with canon anymore.)

Here, I'll raise you one better. Maybe it'll put your mind at ease a bit: Maybe the literary continuity we saw in every single book prior to Coda actually took place one timeline over -- call it the 0th Splinter -- and that was virtually identical to the First Splinter, and the 0th Splinter is still continuing alongside the Prime Timeline. In fact, arguably I've got textual support for that idea, since The Good That Men Do established that Jake and Nog survived into the 25th Century while Coda featured Nog's death in 2387.

 

[Christopher]

Or maybe they're all just stories and it doesn't matter if they go together as long as they're entertaining. Every story is real in its own universe. That's all it needs. Everything else is a bonus.

 

[Damian]

What I'm reacting to is not that people are bummed -- I'm bummed -- but to the idea that because the characters died, nothing they did mattered.

Obviously this is all about fiction and the stakes are pretty low -- just our feelings as fans. But, that basic idea feels like it's saying, "If someone dies, then they didn't matter." Which -- again, it's fiction. But if you were to apply that feeling to real life, that would be horrific.

It's actually much deeper than that. The characters didn't just die. They never were now. The events of Coda erased them from existence. After the litverse timeline was erased, nothing they did happened. Not the final end of the Borg as depicted in Destiny, not the end of Section 31, not the end to the Ascendent threat. The whole point of Coda was in story none of that ever happened. That's what I meant. Yes, most of the characters 'died' before the final end happened. But then all that was erased, the entire timeline following the split caused by the Borg in FC.

We can speculate whether an almost identical timeline exists, but it's just that, speculation.

Now yes, the stakes in reality are low. It's fiction. It's obviously not something I'm going to lose sleep over and stress about. It's just not how I wanted to see the litverse brought to an end. But yes, in the grand scheme of things, it's pretty trivial.

There is, at this point, no reason whatsoever to imagine that the events of the Rise of the Federation series did not happen as described in the Prime Timeline, for instance. The events of the A Time to... series and of Articles of the Federation could so far (unless something something has happened in the last two episodes of PIC -- I haven't seen them yet) still have happened in the Prime Timeline. So could the events of the DS9 Relaunch from Avatar through Warpath.

I think the implication is that most of the litverse that existed past First Contact was erased from existence. I think Christopher noted that events up to just prior to the Borg Invasion could, in theory, still be consistent with Picard. But I think the idea with Coda is that anything in the novel continuity post FC was affected.

Now some of the events of the early Titan novels may still apply based on James Swallow's Picard novel. He did indicate some things that took place in the first 2 Titan novels were part of that continuity (of course that's not canon so we'll see if that holds up).

So far, there is no reason that most of Una McCormack's post-finale Cardassian arc, from Cardassia: The Lotus Flower to The Never-Ending Sacrifice to The Crimson Shadow to Enigma Tales, couldn't still have happened.

Maybe. In her Picard novel, The Last, Best Hope, she did give a few nods to the litverse. Worf was first office of the Enterprise at the very beginning, like he was in the litverse. And she hinted at some things about Cardassia that seemed consistent with the litverse as well. Again, not canon so that could change at any time.

Enterprise thus far is unaffected, so it's possible that series could continue mostly unaffected, though that seems unlikely (though I thought it unlikely we'd ever see a DS9 novel that takes place during the TV series so you never know I guess). Vanguard so far is mostly unaffected I believe, though with Strange New Worlds coming out could that affect Vanguard? The timeframe is several years before so it might not be affected.

And then there's the Lost Era novels (which I usually consider the Stargazer novels part of retroactively since they are in the same era). Some of that has been impacted I think, though some creative storytelling, like about the doctor who served on the Stargazer, could work around that.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Dark Veil goes so far as to mention plans for the Titan to have a much more species-diverse crew than she ended up having, thanks to the Romulan crisis. The litverse... mattered.

 

[The Wormhole]

Apparently, the Krenim were going to be involved somehow, hence the foreshadowing in the last VGR novel, but licensing vetoed that.

That's interesting. I don't suppose a reason was given? Typically, something like that's done because the show might have plans for it. Could this mean there's plans involving the Krenim in one of the upcoming shows?

 

[David cgc]

As I understand the situation, nothing was swept under the rug. The authors considered using the Krenim in Coda before they were asked not to by, IIRC, Kirsten Beyer herself, so instead they constructed Coda around the Devidians. There was no foreshadowing in Coda about the Krenim, and any foreshadowing in the Voyager novels was about a different arc that never materialized as a result of the novel continuity being nullified by Picard.

That's the explicit constellation of things we've heard, but it doesn't add up. To Lose The Earth knew it was going to be the last Voyager novel, and it knew Coda was coming, so it doesn't make sense that the disconnected scenes of the DTI trying to get in touch with the Krenim was a dead-end subplot setting up a Voyager story that everyone involved knew was never going to happen, but on the other hand, it doesn't make sense if they were slipped in as a teaser for Coda if Beyer put it in while also being the one to request the Krenim (and the rest of the Voyager milieu) be excused from the elegy and be allowed to ride off into the sunset rather than be systematically butchered with the rest of the characters.

I don't see why there would be. The entire point of Coda was to end the literary continuity, so why would CBS/Paramount care enough to micromanage things?

Some people take brand integrity very seriously, especially when it's their job to do so. Maybe it was considered a bridge too far to have novels come out that were explicitly ignoring released canon. Maybe they thought having an ending to the litverse that didn't provide an on-ramp to the new shows would be dereliction of the books' purpose as ads for the shows. Or maybe you're right and it would've been just fine if the novelverse finale pretended PIC didn't exist and that they had just decided apropos of nothing to have a big event with wider-reaching narrative closure than usual, but no one involved wanted to when this was an option.

 

[Sci]

It's actually much deeper than that. The characters didn't just die. They never were now.

That's just a fantastical plot device for what amounts to death, though. And, again, you're thinking too linearly -- they did exist; their timeline might have been erased, but it did exist and nothing can change that. Like the Prophets said -- everything First Splinter!Kira and the other First Splinter people went through happened, and mattered, no matter what the magic time eraser does to them.

Now yes, the stakes in reality are low. It's fiction. It's obviously not something I'm going to lose sleep over and stress about. It's just not how I wanted to see the litverse brought to an end.

*shrugs* Like I said, when you're dealing with stories about death, you've got three choices: Denial; nihilism; or existentialism. Coda chose existentialism.

I think the implication is that most of the litverse that existed past First Contact was erased from existence.

Sure, but I'm saying that you, as a fan, can interpret anything from the First Splinter Timeline as having happened in the Prime Timeline too as long as the events of the Prime Timeline don't conflict with it. So far, for instance, nothing has contradicted the events of A Time to Kill/A Time to Heal; if next week's episode of Star Trek: Picard featured Jean-Luc remembering when the Enterprise led Starfleet's occupation of Tezwa in 2379 at the order of Federation President Min Zife of Tezwa shortly before the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, that would be completely consistent with the canon. If the next episode established that President Nanietta Bacco of Cestus was elected after President Zife resigned and then spent her first year in office dealing with a Reman refugee crisis before it was discovered that the Romulan star would go supernova, that would also be completely consistent with the canon.

I think Christopher noted that events up to just prior to the Borg Invasion could, in theory, still be consistent with Picard. But I think the idea with Coda is that anything in the novel continuity post FC was affected.

I think I'd go with @Christopher 's take -- the real inconsistencies between the Prime Timeline and the First Splinter Timeline start in 2381 with the Borg Invasion. But even after that point, certain events from the First Splinter Timeline could still have occurred in the Prime Timeline with minor changes.

And yes, of course all that could change with the next episode of PIC or whatever. But there's no reason these things can't still be part of your headcanon as a fan.

Enterprise thus far is unaffected, so it's possible that series could continue mostly unaffected, though that seems unlikely (though I thought it unlikely we'd ever see a DS9 novel that takes place during the TV series so you never know I guess).

Yeah, S&S seems to have decided to focus the novel line on tie-ins to the current shows and the perennial strong sellers of TOS and TNG. The DS9 novel I think demonstrates that DS9 has managed to develop a place in popular culture these days that's endured moreso than ENT.

Vanguard so far is mostly unaffected I believe, though with Strange New Worlds coming out could that affect Vanguard? The timeframe is several years before so it might not be affected.

I'd say it's 50/50. If SNW is set in the 2250s and mostly stays away from the Tholians, then it probably won't contradict VAN in a meaningful way. But if VAN is set in the early 2260s and/or deals with the Tholians, there's a strong chance it will contradict the history of the Tholians that VAN established and thereby contradict a really important part of VAN's story about the Shedai. SNW also has the potential to contradict VAN in a meaningful way if it does stories about Klingon politics that are set close to the VAN era.

That's the explicit constellation of things we've heard, but it doesn't add up.

Why would they not just share this info? What would be the point of keeping something secret?

To Lose The Earth knew it was going to be the last Voyager novel, and it knew Coda was coming,

Did it? I thought Beyer started writing it long before PIC was developed or Coda conceived of.

so it doesn't make sense that the disconnected scenes of the DTI trying to get in touch with the Krenim was a dead-end subplot setting up a Voyager story that everyone involved knew was never going to happen, but on the other hand, it doesn't make sense if they were slipped in as a teaser for Coda if Beyer put it in while also being the one to request the Krenim (and the rest of the Voyager milieu) be excused from the elegy and be allowed to ride off into the sunset rather than be systematically butchered with the rest of the characters.

1. "Systemically butchered" is a really mean-spirited, pejorative way of describing the events of Coda.

2. You're assuming a level of narrative unity that I see no reason to assume exists. Beyer had her vision for the VOY books and how she wanted to end them; she wanted the Krenim not to be part of Coda. There could be any number of reasons she asked them not to use the Krenim that might have nothing to do with the novel line; for all we know, maybe at the she thought they would use the Krenim on DIS or PIC. Or maybe she just wanted VOY's toys not to be used in Coda. Either way, I see no reason to think that there was anything more complex than what we've been told.

Some people take brand integrity very seriously, especially when it's their job to do so. Maybe it was considered a bridge too far to have novels come out that were explicitly ignoring released canon. Maybe they thought having an ending to the litverse that didn't provide an on-ramp to the new shows would be dereliction of the books' purpose as ads for the shows. Or maybe you're right and it would've been just fine if the novelverse finale pretended PIC didn't exist and that they had just decided apropos of nothing to have a big event with wider-reaching narrative closure than usual, but no one involved wanted to when this was an option.

I think you're over-thinking this.

 

[Christopher]

I'd say it's 50/50. If SNW is set in the 2250s and mostly stays away from the Tholians, then it probably won't contradict VAN in a meaningful way. But if VAN is set in the early 2260s and/or deals with the Tholians, there's a strong chance it will contradict the history of the Tholians that VAN established and thereby contradict a really important part of VAN's story about the Shedai. SNW also has the potential to contradict VAN in a meaningful way if it does stories about Klingon politics that are set close to the VAN era.

SNW contradicts Vanguard just by having M'Benga on the Enterprise during Pike's command.

 

[Sci]

SNW contradicts Vanguard just by having M'Benga on the Enterprise during Pike's command.

Ah, good point -- I had forgotten M'Benga was on VAN. The broader story arc of VAN might still be compatible with SNW though.

 

[David cgc]

Did it? I thought Beyer started writing it long before PIC was developed or Coda conceived of.

It doesn't matter when she started writing it. She wasn't taping up pages against a window for all the world to see as she finished each one, any given part of the book could've been added or excised up until when it was finished. She did explicitly say in the Literary Treks interview at the time that she'd laid a little ground work for the secret novelverse finale project, though she didn't explicitly confirm it was the go-nowhere, inexplicable, dare-I-say MCU-esque DTI/Krenim micro-plot. It's entirely possible that it was establishing that Voyager was scheduled to be out of touch until ten minutes after the universe ended.

2. You're assuming a level of narrative unity that I see no reason to assume exists. Beyer had her vision for the VOY books and how she wanted to end them; she wanted the Krenim not to be part of Coda. There could be any number of reasons she asked them not to use the Krenim that might have nothing to do with the novel line; for all we know, maybe at the she thought they would use the Krenim on DIS or PIC. Or maybe she just wanted VOY's toys not to be used in Coda. Either way, I see no reason to think that there was anything more complex than what we've been told.

What we were told was that Beyer put in a couple of breadcrumbs for Coda, and we were told that Coda didn't pay off those breadcrumbs because Beyer asked them not to. I don't see where it's overly conspiratorial to suggest those facts are, on the surface, a touch contradictory.

I think you're over-thinking this.

Which part, the part where we already know for a fact that there were notes from licensing, a perfectly normal thing for tie-in novels, or the part where the tie-ins are required to remain consistent with the core canon above all else, a thing we also know, most notably from the decade-long period where the novels could neither refer to anything from, nor be inconsistent in any way with, Star Trek '09?

No, no, if anything, I'm underthinking, rejecting out of hand the notion that a comprehensible first-and-only artistic reaction to the events of 2020 was a story about embracing and making the best of utter impending extinction, so I'm trying to find some kind of excuse that makes "People will feel bad if we just stop the novelverse cold-turkey, but they'll be satisfied if we make them watch it die" a reasonable notion.

1. "Systemically butchered" is a really mean-spirited, pejorative way of describing the events of Coda.

Yes, it is. But is it wrong? Is it even unfair?

The longer I sit with Coda, the less patience I have for it. Fresh off the experience of reading it, I was willing to humor it, that it was a well-done execution of an ill-conceived idea, but now I'm not thrilled, or invested. I don't still have the emotions of reading it ringing in my head. I just have the facts of it, and I think it was the wrong conclusion to this story, and that there's no way it could've been written well enough to change that. But Thrawn was right, even more than I gave him credit for at the time. I want to like Coda. You can go back and read my posts from December in this thread where I'm trying so hard to square the circle on my feelings about it. I want to think it's important, I want to agree that it says something important or novel or even interesting about finding meaning in the futility of death, that hadn't been done before and hadn't been done better, but in the end, all it did was hurt, over and over.

And it didn't have to.

I wish it did, I truly wish this is how it had to go, that the utter ending and extermination of the Star Trek universe (or a Star Trek universe) was in any way inevitable, but it probably wasn't. You're right, JVC probably didn't tell them they could have one last round-up, but it had to end with PIC being ongoing and the First Splinter being terminated. And this certainly wasn't the natural path everything has been on since we first met Elias Vaughn or, hell, Gary Mitchell, so there was some narrative momentum leading to the Human Adventure being a heroic tragedy. So it just ended up being a choice to swerve into a pointless make-work story where, just like in real life, the novelverse carried the torch, and then was disposed of and recycled for parts. What happened to the Star Wars EU was a kindness by comparison.

For the rest of my life, Coda is going to be a go-to example for how not to stick the landing, how sometimes, it is better to fade away.

 

[Christopher]

What we were told was that Beyer put in a couple of breadcrumbs for Coda, and we were told that Coda didn't pay off those breadcrumbs because Beyer asked them not to. I don't see where it's overly conspiratorial to suggest those facts are, on the surface, a touch contradictory.

Plans change all the time. People change their minds -- it's a natural part of the creative process. There doesn't have to be some deep dark motivation behind it. Like, I just went back and rewrote a scene in my current project because I did a bit more research and hit upon a better idea than the one I'd gone with the first time. Creativity is a process of refinement and revision. If what you end up with is identical to what you initially planned, then you weren't trying hard enough.

most notably from the decade-long period where the novels could neither refer to anything from, nor be inconsistent in any way with, Star Trek '09?

Oh, we were able to refer to ideas from the Kelvin films here and there. We just didn't have the license for stories set in it, although the young-adult branch of Pocket did have that license for a time, and so did IDW Comics, obviously.

 

[David cgc]

Plans change all the time. People change their minds -- it's a natural part of the creative process. There doesn't have to be some deep dark motivation behind it. Like, I just went back and rewrote a scene in my current project because I did a bit more research and hit upon a better idea than the one I'd gone with the first time. Creativity is a process of refinement and revision. If what you end up with is identical to what you initially planned, then you weren't trying hard enough.

Fair enough, I suppose it seems like such a constrained series of events from the outside, it's hard to figure out what might've prompted the change in direction.

Oh, we were able to refer to ideas from the Kelvin films here and there. We just didn't have the license for stories set in it, although the young-adult branch of Pocket did have that license for a time, and so did IDW Comics, obviously.

I was thinking specifically of the Romulus Catch-22, where ST09 couldn't be referenced, but also couldn't be contradicted, so the timeline couldn't progress past when it would've happened because it either would've incorporated events from the movie, or contradicted them by ignoring the destruction of Romulus. The references to ST09 that did happen, as far as I remember, were sly and deniable, like your Vulcan scientist working on Probably Red Matter in Watching the Clock.

 

[Sci]

It doesn't matter when she started writing it.

It does if it speaks to whether or not there was an intent to foreshadow Coda.

What we were told was that Beyer put in a couple of breadcrumbs for Coda,

Were we told that? I don't remember hearing about that. I remember people seeing some references to the Krenim in her books and assuming they would be the Time Villains in Coda.

and we were told that Coda didn't pay off those breadcrumbs because Beyer asked them not to.

Again, were we told that? I was under the impression that the Coda authors had considered using the Krenim as their Time Villains but didn't because Beyer asked them not to. I'm not aware of any evidence that Beyer had originally been foreshadowing the Krenim as Coda's Time Villains in her books the way you keep asserting.

I don't see where it's overly conspiratorial to suggest those facts are, on the surface, a touch contradictory.

I just don't see the contradiction here. Nor even the evidence that there was an overt narrative link between To Lose the Earth and Coda in the first place.

No, no, if anything, I'm underthinking, rejecting out of hand the notion that a comprehensible first-and-only artistic reaction to the events of 2020 was a story about embracing and making the best of utter impending extinction,

You can reject that out of hand all you like, but the authors have been very clear that various events in 2020, including the deaths of people they loved, were important creative influences, and that they were writing a story about finding meaning in spite of the inevitability of death. I'm sorry if the story didn't work for you, but it's clearly the one the authors wanted to tell.

so I'm trying to find some kind of excuse that makes "People will feel bad if we just stop the novelverse cold-turkey, but they'll be satisfied if we make them watch it die" a reasonable notion.

I was satisfied with Oblivion's Gate, and I've been a fan of the novelverse since Avatar, Book One was published in 2001 when I was in eighth grade.

Yes, it is. But is it wrong? Is it even unfair?

Yes. Stories about finding meaning in spite of the inevitability of death are artistically legitimate, and your characterization ignores the deeper thematic purpose behind featuring those characters' deaths.

The longer I sit with Coda, the less patience I have for it. Fresh off the experience of reading it, I was willing to humor it, that it was a well-done execution of an ill-conceived idea, but now I'm not thrilled, or invested. I don't still have the emotions of reading it ringing in my head. I just have the facts of it, and I think it was the wrong conclusion to this story, and that there's no way it could've been written well enough to change that. But Thrawn was right, even more than I gave him credit for at the time. I want to like Coda. You can go back and read my posts from December in this thread where I'm trying so hard to square the circle on my feelings about it. I want to think it's important, I want to agree that it says something important or novel or even interesting about finding meaning in the futility of death,

Not in the futility of death. In spite of the inevitability of death. If Coda has a thesis statement, it is clearly "Death be not proud."

that hadn't been done before and hadn't been done better,

I mean by that logic, there's no reason for Star Trek itself to exist, because most of what ST has said or done has been done by someone else before. In fact, by that logic, there's no real reason for most of art to exist, since most of art has antecedents.

but in the end, all it did was hurt, over and over.

If your only reaction to Coda was pain, then that's fair. It's your reaction and you're entitled to it. But Coda did more than just hurt.

As I have said multiple times in this thread, it helped me process my grief over my mother's death, and alleviated my pain over it. Again, if you could not find comfort in it, that's a legit response. But that doesn't mean the books weren't doing things other than causing pain.

And it didn't have to.

I wish it did, I truly wish this is how it had to go,

Works of art almost never "have" to be done a certain way. They are deliberate choices made by artists. This is the story the authors wanted to tell. It may not have worked for you, and it may not have been the story you wanted to read. But it is the story they wanted to tell.

So it just ended up being a choice to swerve into a pointless make-work story

Finding meaning in spite of the inevitability of death is not pointless.

And it is not make-work; each of these authors could easily have just pitched novels set in the new canon continuity. They wrote this trilogy because doing so gave them a sense of closure and resolution to the literary continuity that they had all worked so hard on.

Again, if it didn't work for you, that's fine. But you can say that without attacking the artistic legitimacy of their efforts.

It just sounds to me like you would have preferred a story that went into denial about the inevitability of death (by avoiding depicting it) instead of a story about finding meaning in spite of the inevitability of death. That's a perfectly fair subjective artistic preference -- I think it was Neil Gaiman who pointed out that stories can only end happily if we end them before the characters we love die, and stories that end happily are important too. Human beings need a certain level of denialism of the inevitability of death to get by in life.

But that's not the story the authors of Coda wanted to tell, and your preference for stories that don't depict death's inevitability does not mean that a story that does is artistically illegitimate.

 

[Leto_II]

SNW contradicts Vanguard just by having M'Benga on the Enterprise during Pike's command.

Re-reading the first Vanguard-book (Harbinger), I'm noticing that M'Benga didn't actually come aboard Starbase 47 until late 2265, which would give plenty of theoretical time for him to serve aboard Pike's ship in the 2250s and -- from what I'm seeing in his conversations with Dr. Fisher in the novel -- still provide quite a few years before he finally signs onto Kirk's command in TOS. It might not be too difficult from a continuity-standpoint to handwave a few of his comments about serving aboard a starship versus a starbase in the novel, assuming it's been several years (and a new commanding-officer) in between, depending on what the new show does, here.

 

[David cgc]

Were we told that? I don't remember hearing about that. I remember people seeing some references to the Krenim in her books and assuming they would be the Time Villains in Coda.

Remember harder.

Rushing: So, one of the things, as we kind of come to "The End," is the whole DTI situation, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this may have implication in maybe the next couple books that we see where we can possibly line up the novelverse with the "Picard" universe.

Beyer: You think? Does that sound like something I have any interest at all in doing? I mean, do you know me at all, Matthew?

Beyer: Some of [the ending] was agreed upon to service future things.

(The second quote is from here, I'm not listening to a full hour-and-a-half interview so I can specifically cite something we were all talking about for over a year. The other quote is only there because it was next to a promising-looking chapter stop.)

As for the rest, I'm going to practice what I preach, and while I may have needed to write it, you don't all need to read it. Suffice it to say, death and endings are not the same, that's what it all boils down to. That's what Neil Gaiman was talking about. Not that in the real, secret book of the world, all stories just keep going, and going, and going, until there's nothing but a cold, dark universe of formless, evenly distributed atoms, and stories that end before that are lies for the weak.

 

[Sci]

Remember harder.

1:23:26 said:
Rushing: So, one of the things, as we kind of come to "The End," is the whole DTI situation, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this may have implication in maybe the next couple books that we see where we can possibly line up the novelverse with the "Picard" universe.

Beyer: You think? Does that sound like something I have any interest at all in doing? I mean, do you know me at all, Matthew?

Unknown Timecode said:
Beyer: Some of [the ending] was agreed upon to service future things.

Those quotes are extremely vague. I don't think they necessarily mean she was foreshadowing Coda.

As for the rest, I'm going to practice what I preach, and while I may have needed to write it, you don't all need to read it. Suffice it to say, death and endings are not the same, that's what it all boils down to. That's what Neil Gaiman was talking about. Not that in the real, secret book of the world, all stories just keep going, and going, and going, until there's nothing but a cold, dark universe of formless, evenly distributed atoms, and stories that end before that are lies for the weak.

To be clear, I am not saying that stories that function to deny the inevitability of death are for the weak. Human beings could not function if we didn't go into some level of denial about the inevitability of death, and stories that take the "Denialism" option can be legitimate, especially if the story itself isn't about death or loss. Articles of the Federation, for instance, is fundamentally not a story about the inevitability of death, and that means that it would not have served its narrative properly if it had featured, say, Bacco spending a lot of time contemplating how death cannot be avoided. It was appropriate for Articles of the Federation to essentially choose the "denialism" option on the topic of death, because Articles is about life.

But Coda was inherently going to be about loss, because it was about the end of the Star Trek Literary Continuity. And which means that, yes, it had an artistic obligation to deal with death. And that meant picking between nihilism or existentialism.