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

[Damian]

My take on Coda is that it's beyond just dying for a greater cause. In a sense they never died because they never existed in the first place now.

I think of 20+ years of stories that no longer happened now. My issues is much more fundamental than our characters just dying. The story was pretty clear that they never existed. That version of their lives never really died because they never existed in the first place.

I understand that going in the characters knew what they were sacrificing.

Ultimately it's just a matter of opinion whether someone likes that story thread or not. I didn't care for it. I didn't like that the way to reconcile the two disparate timelines was to erase one completely from existence. I always felt, and there is precedent in Star Trek even for this, that the two timelines could co-exist together quite happily. In one we have the Picard timeline, in another parallel reality we have the litverse timeline. My hope was that Coda was going to offer us a concluding story for the litverse that still left that timeline intact. I knew there would be no future books in that timeline, and I was fine with that (though I of course wouldn't have minded if those storylines had continued in future books-- but I know that's not how things work with Star Trek). I don't even have a problem with the Devidian plot overall, though I was expecting the Krenim to be the villains here and I could easily see them as such (certainly fits with their MO). Apparently there was some things that went on behind the scenes to nix that which I was not aware of.

When we learned Wesley inadvertently was what the Devidians used to cause the catastrophe I was thinking, oh, ok, they'll find a way to prevent it from happening in the first place. Going back to the first novel it seemed older Wesley was trying to guide him down a different path than before.

Like I said, I would have preferred a story where they faced down this crisis, saved the multiverse (and the so-called prime timeline) and then sailed off into the sunset intact. We all figured the litverse would be a parallel timeline as it was. There's certainly enough precedent in Star Trek, and even science, to make that a possibility. Did it really need to be erased from existence?

At the end of the day it is what it is. The litverse timeline is erased from existence. It's not like I expected books in the litverse to continue anyway. I knew Coda would be the end. I just had hoped it would have ended on a bit of a happier note. I guess part of it is I'm growing tired of the 'galaxy (or universe even) is in peril season' plot thread Discovery and Picard have been running with lately. And this was another one of those stories. I seriously hope Strange New Worlds gets back to some exploring and even just a plain old story of the week episode. So it's possible that might have colored my perceptions a bit, like here we go again.

 

[F. King Daniel]

What I'm learning from this thread is that people are way too invested in which imaginary stories did and did not happen.

 

[Christopher]

I think of 20+ years of stories that no longer happened now. My issues is much more fundamental than our characters just dying. The story was pretty clear that they never existed. That version of their lives never really died because they never existed in the first place.

Well... as I've said before, I don't accept the premise that anything in the multiverse can have "no longer happened"; the idea is a logical contradiction and a physical impossibility. A timeline may cease to advance moving forward, it may merge with a parallel timeline and have its information erased from that point forward so it's as if it had never occurred; but chronologically speaking, if two or more different versions of events happened on the same specific moment in time, they are by definition simultaneous, not consecutive, and so they both/all exist at once, and are physically and mathematically real parts of the multi-branched timeline of the multiverse.

But if I accede for the sake of argument to the fanciful conceit of events being made to have "never happened," then such events in the Trek universe include McCoy saving Edith Keeler (and the entire alternate life he lived in Crucible: McCoy), the near-entirety of "Yesterday's Enterprise," everything that occurred on the surface of the planet in DS9: "Children of Time," the near-entirety of ENT: "Twilight," etc. Even if those events "never happened" from a cosmic point of view, they still happened from a narrative point of view and have meaning and relevance to the audience.

Indeed, it's not just time travel stories that are about things that never happened. There are episodes about dreams, illusions, hallucinations, holodeck adventures, etc. Their objective reality does not define their importance to the audience.

Ultimately it's just a matter of opinion whether someone likes that story thread or not. I didn't care for it. I didn't like that the way to reconcile the two disparate timelines was to erase one completely from existence. I always felt, and there is precedent in Star Trek even for this, that the two timelines could co-exist together quite happily.

Sometimes the fact that we dislike the outcome of a story is the whole point of telling it that way. Even the optimistic Trek universe has its share of tragic endings (Edith Keeler, Miramanee, Tyree's planet, Tasha Yar, K'Ehleyr, Tuvix, etc.).

 

[Mike Doyle]

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.

When I read that I took his musings as he’s desperate to serve on a Starship. Could easily be interpreted as he wants to get back on a starship.

 

[Damian]

What I'm learning from this thread is that people are way too invested in which imaginary stories did and did not happen.

Well I wouldn't say invested. Disappointed, sure. But I'll get over it. Certainly not something I'm losing sleep over.

 

[The Wormhole]

What I'm learning from this thread is that people are way too invested in which imaginary stories did and did not happen.

And while that is a legitimate point and one I've said myself, or variations on it in the past, I still feel the criticisms about Coda essentially saying the Litverse "never happened" are just as legitimate. After all, the whole purpose to Coda was to give the Star Trek Litverse a closure the Star Wars Legends continuity never got. Though honestly, walking away and leaving plot threads dangling sounds like a much better deal than everyone dies, the universe is destroyed and prevented from existing.

But then, I suspect the decision to end the Litverse in this manner was made to preempt any "bring back the Litverse" campaigns similar to the "bring back Legends" ones that have been going in with Star Wars ever since the old EU was abandoned.

 

[David cgc]

But then, I suspect the decision to end the Litverse in this manner was made to preempt any "bring back the Litverse" campaigns similar to the "bring back Legends" ones that have been going in with Star Wars ever since the old EU was abandoned.

Hey, if Michael Chabon can swan in and get his Nemesis reset-button fix-fic filmed, then as far as I'm concerned, we're all just one Pulitzer Prize away from bringing back the Litverse however the hell we want.

 

[Brendan Moody]

Here’s the rub: if it doesn’t particularly matter which stories “really happened” (and I agree that it doesn’t), why even make the First Splinter a fake timeline and erase it from existence? The fact that the authors thought that undoing the timeline was somehow more meaningful than “just” killing everybody in it off to save the multiverse suggests that they may be among the people who are way too invested in the realness of imaginary stories. That, to me, is the irony of all the “you’re just emotional about the litverse ending” deflections that have been aimed at critics of Coda: for me, at least, the problem with the trilogy is that’s so driven by an adverse emotional response to the litverse ending that it’s very clumsily constructed as a work of fiction rather than a metafictional mood piece.

 

[VDCNI]

I'll be happy to go back and reread the litverse and enjoy the stories in the same way I to this day enjoy DC stories that were wiped out of continuity in Crisis.

I just didn't enjoy Coda in the end because it was just a massacre of characters I liked and little more. I can see why the choices were made but they didn't work for me.

 

[Damian]

I'll be happy to go back and reread the litverse and enjoy the stories in the same way I to this day enjoy DC stories that were wiped out of continuity in Crisis.

I just didn't enjoy Coda in the end because it was just a massacre of characters I liked and little more. I can see why the choices were made but they didn't work for me.

I think that was just it in the end in a nutshell. Almost all the litverse and even TV show characters were killed or wiped out before we even get to the climax. I just found it all very sad and depressing. A character here and there. Sure, I get it, and that's happened before. But almost all the characters were killed before we even get to the climax.

Perhaps I would have felt differently had Captain Picard been on the bridge of the Enterprise, Ezri with the Aventine, and so on, fighting the final battle, with most of the crews intact united in a mission of shared sacrifice for the good of the universe. I did kinda find it odd the Enterprise was absent in most of the last 2 novels.

I get the themes they were trying to portray, and that they were trying to conclude the litverse since the voyage was effectively over. I also realize they wanted to avoid the mistakes I hear the Star Wars franchise made and actually tie loose ends up. I just wish the end didn't require the erasure of the litverse from existence. I just found it depressing.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm sure I've said this before, but it brings back Blakes 7 finale vibes.

 

[Cake Is Eternal]

I wrote a review: The Fire and the Rose https://warpfactortrek.com/a-reflection-on-oblivions-gate/

 

[David Mack]

I wrote a review: Oblivion’s Gate https://warpfactortrek.com/a-reflection-on-oblivions-gate/

I know I've thanked you before for writing this thoughtful rumination on Oblivion’s Gate, but I’d just like to thank you again. It means a lot to know my work has resonated this profoundly with someone.

 

[Cake Is Eternal]

I know I've thanked you before for writing this thoughtful rumination on Oblivion’s Gate, but I’d just like to thank you again. It means a lot to know my work has resonated this profoundly with someone.

You’re so welcome, David. Your heart spoke to my heart in this novel, and that is a precious gift in a book.

 

[Sci]

Well... as I've said before, I don't accept the premise that anything in the multiverse can have "no longer happened"; the idea is a logical contradiction and a physical impossibility. A timeline may cease to advance moving forward, it may merge with a parallel timeline and have its information erased from that point forward so it's as if it had never occurred; but chronologically speaking, if two or more different versions of events happened on the same specific moment in time, they are by definition simultaneous, not consecutive, and so they both/all exist at once, and are physically and mathematically real parts of the multi-branched timeline of the multiverse.

This. The First Splinter Timeline happened, and the lives its inhabitants led were meaningful, and their sacrifices saved the multiverse.

Even if those events "never happened" from a cosmic point of view, they still happened from a narrative point of view and have meaning and relevance to the audience.

Indeed, it's not just time travel stories that are about things that never happened. There are episodes about dreams, illusions, hallucinations, holodeck adventures, etc. Their objective reality does not define their importance to the audience.

Exactly. "Erased from history" is just a fancy plot-device word for "killed."

Here’s the rub: if it doesn’t particularly matter which stories “really happened” (and I agree that it doesn’t), why even make the First Splinter a fake timeline and erase it from existence?

Because it's a metaphor for the irreversible finality of death.

 

[Christopher]

Exactly. "Erased from history" is just a fancy plot-device word for "killed."

That wasn't my point at all in the part you quoted here. I meant that the events of a story don't have to be considered objectively real in-story to have narrative value. Erased timelines, dream sequences, holodeck games -- what matters is whether they have emotional weight to the audience.

 

[Cake Is Eternal]

That wasn't my point at all in the part you quoted here. I meant that the events of a story don't have to be considered objectively real in-story to have narrative value. Erased timelines, dream sequences, holodeck games -- what matters is whether they have emotional weight to the audience.

Case in point: Voyager’s “Year of Hell”

 

[Christopher]

Case in point: Voyager’s “Year of Hell”

My point was more about things like "The Inner Light," "Frame of Mind," Vic Fontaine, Captain Proton, etc. I'm trying to put timeline-erasure stories in a wider context by showing that they aren't the only kind of story that asks us to care about things that don't have objective reality. We care about them not because their events are physically real or have tangible impact on the universe, but because what we or the characters felt during an unreal experience carries narrative value. Fiction is not about what "really" happened. It's not about factoids to enter in a wiki. It's about the emotions it makes you feel for something unreal -- even if it's also unreal within the story.

 

[Cake Is Eternal]

My point was more about things like "The Inner Light," "Frame of Mind," Vic Fontaine, Captain Proton, etc. I'm trying to put timeline-erasure stories in a wider context by showing that they aren't the only kind of story that asks us to care about things that don't have objective reality. We care about them not because their events are physically real or have tangible impact on the universe, but because what we or the characters felt during an unreal experience carries narrative value. Fiction is not about what "really" happened. It's not about factoids to enter in a wiki. It's about the emotions it makes you feel for something unreal -- even if it's also unreal within the story.

I reach.

 

[WebLurker]

Just got through the last book and, honestly, as a finale to the so-called Novel Verse, was a severe letdown.

To be fair, the craftsmanship, from plot structure to the actual writing, is unquestionable. Beyond certain franchise installments (e.g. anything not TNG, DS9, Titan, or the Mirror Universe books) getting the short shrift in terms of being relevant to this Crises story, there's a lot of deep lore, from stuff that does come back to Easter eggs, and the Dividians were a decent choice as the antagonists. There were some touching character moments along the way. I think it was the best version of what it was designed to be.

For me, though, the decision to make the Novel Verse finale be its utter destruction did not fly at all. For starters, no matter how much its wreathed in "worthy sacrifice" and "giving the ending meaning," the sole point of the story is to destroy something in a drawn out fashion that is neither a worthy sendoff for the continuity it's bringing to an end and nor anything but numbing the longer it goes on. As TV Tropes put it, "Too Bleak, Stopped Caring" is the through line. Even as a "kill them all" story, the latter books simply don't have time for us to process the character deaths and actually "mourn" them.

Moments Asunder actually managed that pretty well, with many of the characters having time to grieve their losses, so giving us time to grieve with them. My favorite Novel Verse only character was Lt. T'Ryssa Chen and, since she was one of the killed off characters, I appreciated that she was given a relatively decent death and a substantial eulogy at the end of that book. I'll never be okay that it happened, but, at least it was given respect and there was time to come to terms with it all. By the time we got to Oblivion's Gate, it was like watching an endless slaughter. (I do get that there were moments to catch one's breath and humanity in the proceedings, but it got harder and harder to care the longer it went on).

(As an unrelated aside, the insane Riker subplot grated on me. Not only did making him clearly the bad guy ruin the drama of him and Picard being opposed -- the writers cited Captain America: Civil War as the inspiration, but that story worked because both sides were right and sympathetic -- but the Titan crew and everyone else in the Galaxy had to cling to the "Idiot Ball" for dear life to keep the plot running. I mean, once Riker was disobeying direct orders from his superiors in front of the bridge crew, that should've been the end of it, but he continues to run the show til the final act of the trilogy despite becoming even further unhinged. It just didn't work for me at all.)

I respect that the authors were in a no win scenario (given all the factors and problems with the possible endings and that they couldn't please everyone) and that they set out to deliver the best Novel Verse conclusion possible. However, I honestly think that destroying the Novel Verse was the worst possible outcome. It retroactively taints all the preceding stories, since we now know the awful end it's going to come to. The drawn out nature of it is less a celebration of this arm of the franchise than a Red Hour Festival. I can appreciate the meta level of stuff (how the book fictionalizes the Novel Verse ending so that the Prime Universe can continue, the question of how can the stories matter once their setting is no longer "valid," etc.), but the nihilism of the work outweighs the hope injected into it. Some readers might have gotten a worhty Klingon-esuqe last stand, all I felt was like I was watching a cat be slowly killed by multiple knife stabs.

It's been on record since the beginning that Coda was made as a response to Star Wars Legends, specifically the decision to cancel the Star Wars Expanded Universe without any kind of closure. Speaking as someone who was also into Legends back in the day, Coda gave me a new appreciation for how LucasFilm's solution allowed it to continue to exist as its own thing that still counts on its own terms. As said before, I think Coda was written with the best of intentions and all power for those who like it. However, to quote a certain Ferengi, I think it was an execution for the Novel Verse, with no honor and no glory. It deserved better.