Continuity Overload

[Nathan]

I am always sorta amazed about how the obsession with canon and continuity with the ENITRE Star Trek Saga.

Personally, I'm just happy (and prefer) a Historian's Note at the start of the book....this book takes place xx months before (or after) this episode (or book).

I think reading everything in publication order is probably the safest bet. Yep, you can probably think of a few examples to read Trek Lit other than pub. order, but in general, I think publication order is best. (I do miss the listing in the back of the books, but I've adapted)

I just read a trek book -- I don't really want to review the book so I'll keep it nameless -- but it just seemed to be an exercise in tying in all trek books, episodes, and comics together with a zillion references -- half that I only got -- and half of the ones I got, I thought "Gee, is this really helping the story?"

Just wondering how important TrekBBSers feel about how exact the continuity has to be.

And to clarify, I always like (and prefer) the Historian's Note -- which can even be as simple as (this story takes place in between TV Season 4 & 5).

And yep, I do like the reference to another episode, but sometimes I think an author or two thrives on connecting everything together and the story suffers.

Your Thoughts?

 

[stardream]

I am always sorta amazed about how the obsession with canon and continuity with the ENITRE Star Trek Saga.

Personally, I'm just happy (and prefer) a Historian's Note at the start of the book....this book takes place xx months before (or after) this episode (or book).

I think reading everything in publication order is probably the safest bet. Yep, you can probably think of a few examples to read Trek Lit other than pub. order, but in general, I think publication order is best. (I do miss the listing in the back of the books, but I've adapted)

I just read a trek book -- I don't really want to review the book so I'll keep it nameless -- but it just seemed to be an exercise in tying in all trek books, episodes, and comics together with a zillion references -- half that I only got -- and half of the ones I got, I thought "Gee, is this really helping the story?"

Just wondering how important TrekBBSers feel about how exact the continuity has to be.

And to clarify, I always like (and prefer) the Historian's Note -- which can even be as simple as (this story takes place in between TV Season 4 & 5).

And yep, I do like the reference to another episode, but sometimes I think an author or two thrives on connecting everything together and the story suffers.

Your Thoughts?

I have read one book like that. It was otherwise a well written book with a good story but at one point I was "Ok. We get it. You watched the Original Series. You don't have to keep reminding us!"

Yes. I like the History Notes.

 

[Greg Cox]

I've been accused of overloading my books with references to old eps, and I'm probably guilty as charged, but it's not so much about showing off my knowledge of TOS as trying to get into heads of the crew and figuring out how they will react, based on their past experiences.

In real life, people remember stuff that happened to them--especially traumatic stuff like being split into your good and evil selves, switching bodies with your crazy ex-girlfriend, having to kill your best friend when he turns into a evil demi-god, or whatever.

So it always seems to me that of course Kirk is going to flash back to such events when he encounters a similar situation. Because people do remember the important events in their lives and carry them with them as they move on into the future.

Heck, I was in a minor traffic accident a few years ago, and I still tense up whenever I go through that intersection. Hard to imagine that, say, McCoy doesn't still remember that time his lost love was replaced by a Salt Vampire.

That's the kinda thing that sticks with you.

 

[Paradise City]

Respect continuity as a question of courtesy and to create another layer to amuse the fan but do not be shackled by continuity. Breeches in continuity generally aren't detected and when they are, they are typically forgiven.

 

[stardream]

I've been accused of overloading my books with references to old eps, and I'm probably guilty as charged, but it's not so much about showing off my knowledge of TOS as trying to get into heads of the crew and figuring out how they will react, based on their past experiences.

In real life, people remember stuff that happened to them--especially traumatic stuff like being split into your good and evil selves, switching bodies with your crazy ex-girlfriend, having to kill your best friend when he turns into a evil demi-god, or whatever.

So it always seems to me that of course Kirk is going to flash back to such events when he encounters a similar situation. Because people do remember the important events in their lives and carry them with them as they move on into the future.

Heck, I was in a minor traffic accident a few years ago, and I still tense up whenever I go through that intersection. Hard to imagine that, say, McCoy doesn't still remember that time his lost love was replaced by a Salt Vampire.

That's the kinda thing that sticks with you.

I remember thinking that way about one of your early ST books. I'm sorry I can't remember which one but I decided to give you a pass because at the time you were new to the whole lit-verse and your style was new to me. I had seen similar things happen with other authors on their first time out and wondered if it was some kind of editorial requirement.

 

[Christopher]

When I do references to past events, I also try to work in references to things that weren't on TV, like missions undertaken by other starships, or experiences the characters had before the series began. For instance, in the TOS novel I'm currently writing, I found an opportunity to have Sulu mention an experience he had years ago on his first mission after the Academy. (At least, it's currently Sulu. I'm not 100 percent certain I won't change it to another character.) As a rule, I like to fill in the gaps, to establish new information beyond what's onscreen rather than just referencing events we already know of. I find it artificial when the only things that get referenced in a novel are things that we saw in previous episodes. Surely the stuff we see onscreen is just a narrow cross section of what's going on in the universe. So if I reference stuff from the past, I try to make the familiar stuff only a part of it. Like, say, in Ex Machina when I listed computer intelligences that Starfleet had dealt with in the past, I didn't just mention things like Landru and Vaal, but referred to some unseen mission where, IIRC, the Lexington and Commodore Wesley had saved a planetary population from computer enslavement.

 

[Plaristes]

I'm totally on board with what both Greg and Christopher said. The illusion of realism is enhanced both when characters remember similar events we've seen in other stories as well as when events we haven't seen are referenced. :-)

 

[Greg Cox]

I've been accused of overloading my books with references to old eps, and I'm probably guilty as charged, but it's not so much about showing off my knowledge of TOS as trying to get into heads of the crew and figuring out how they will react, based on their past experiences.

In real life, people remember stuff that happened to them--especially traumatic stuff like being split into your good and evil selves, switching bodies with your crazy ex-girlfriend, having to kill your best friend when he turns into a evil demi-god, or whatever.

So it always seems to me that of course Kirk is going to flash back to such events when he encounters a similar situation. Because people do remember the important events in their lives and carry them with them as they move on into the future.

Heck, I was in a minor traffic accident a few years ago, and I still tense up whenever I go through that intersection. Hard to imagine that, say, McCoy doesn't still remember that time his lost love was replaced by a Salt Vampire.

That's the kinda thing that sticks with you.

I remember thinking that way about one of your early ST books. I'm sorry I can't remember which one but I decided to give you a pass because at the time you were new to the whole lit-verse and your style was new to me. I had seen similar things happen with other authors on their first time out and wondered if it was some kind of editorial requirement.

Nah. It wasn't an editorial requirement. That's just one of my personal tics. People have occasionally made the same observation about my other tie-in books, regardless of the franchise.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Darmok and Jelad at Tenagra.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Hard to imagine that, say, McCoy doesn't still remember that time his lost love was replaced by a Salt Vampire.

He might not. That was like the first thing that happened to him when he signed up. The crew then went on apparently thousands of adventures over the next five years.

 

[Greg Cox]

Hard to imagine that, say, McCoy doesn't still remember that time his lost love was replaced by a Salt Vampire.

He might not. That was like the first thing that happened to him when he signed up. The crew then went on apparently thousands of adventures over the next five years.

I don't know. I think if my ex got replaced by an alien and tried to kill my friends, I would not easily forget that.

Having Kirk and crew remember their colorful pasts just seems realistic to me.

 

[Christopher]

Having Kirk and crew remember their colorful pasts just seems realistic to me.

Sure, up to a point. But it's probably more realistic if a) they don't automatically go into reminiscing about past episodes every time an opportunity arises (since a lot of those events probably would've faded into the mass of other adventures) and b) they also reminisced about past experiences that weren't shown to us on TV. After all, the adventures we saw occupied only three years out of several decades' worth of life for these characters, so it follows that they'd make up a commensurately small percentage of their reminiscences. If all their reminiscences are episode references, that's actually unrealistic.

There's also the case to be made that TOS was not a show that referenced its own past very much, because '60s TV episodes were designed to be as self-contained as possible. There were only a few cases where they really reflected back on adventures we'd seen -- for instance, in "By Any Other Name" when Kirk suggested that Spock repeat his tactic from "A Taste of Armageddon," or in "The Cloud Minders" where the Vulcan mating cycle from "Amok Time" was referenced (albeit in a way that rather contradicted "Amok Time" by having Spock cavalierly chat with a near-stranger about something that was a shameful secret from his best friends less than two years earlier). Usually, when they reflected on their pasts, it was in reference to things we hadn't seen -- the death of Pike's yeoman on Rigel VII, those rodent-things on Dimorus, Kirk's time at the Academy or on earlier ships, reminiscence of old flames like Ruth and Areel and Nancy Crater and Irina Galliulin, Scotty's past as an Aberdeen pub-crawler, things like that. When Kirk tried to prove who he was in "Turnabout Intruder," he cited "The Tholian Web" and "The Empath," but when Spock tested Kirk's memory in "Whom Gods Destroy," he mentioned a Romulan encounter we never saw onscreen.

So the case could be made that if you want to capture the flavor of TOS episodes, then having the characters refer back to past episodes at every opportunity actually works against that.

 

[Greg Cox]

So the case could be made that if you want to capture the flavor of TOS episodes, then having the characters refer back to past episodes at every opportunity actually works against that.

True, but, to be honest, that was always a minor pet peeve of mine when it came to TOS. Everything was "like nothing we've ever encountered before."

Even when it wasn't.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, as with most things, the key is to find the balance. In this case, the balance between acknowledging important past events from the show and remembering that they have lives and memories that extend beyond what we saw in the show.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

. . . or in "The Cloud Minders" where the Vulcan mating cycle from "Amok Time" was referenced (albeit in a way that rather contradicted "Amok Time" by having Spock cavalierly chat with a near-stranger about something that was a shameful secret from his best friends less than two years earlier).

Well, it was Droxine who brought up the subject of Pon Farr. There is no logic in refusing to discuss a subject with someone who is already aware of it (although Spock was undoubtedly quite puzzled at how she managed to find out).

 

[The Wormhole]

I've never minded all the copious references to episodes or movies, chance are if you're reading a Star Trek novel, you're enough of a fan you're intimately familiar with the show.

Back in the days when the novel continuity started I was a bit annoyed when they began incorporating references to other novels or other tie-ins. I'm okay with it now, and looking back I think it had more to do with the authors still playing with the new novelty of their own continuity they were still experimenting on how to deal with it. Back then there was a lot of referencing stuff from novels that had no real relevance to that particular story, it was just, "oh hey we can do this now, so let's do it."

Indeed, the cohesive continuity Pocket has developed for its Star Trek novels really is one of the more impressive shared universes that are so in vogue these days. Especially since there's no group of "canon consultants" or whatever it is Disney employs for its Star Wars tie-in material.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

. . . or in "The Cloud Minders" where the Vulcan mating cycle from "Amok Time" was referenced (albeit in a way that rather contradicted "Amok Time" by having Spock cavalierly chat with a near-stranger about something that was a shameful secret from his best friends less than two years earlier).

Well, it was Droxine who brought up the subject of Pon Farr. There is no logic in refusing to discuss a subject with someone who is already aware of it (although Spock was undoubtedly quite puzzled at how she managed to find out).

Well, heck, rewatch "Dagger of the Mind" some time and notice how secret, personal, and rarely-done the Vulcan Mind Meld was supposed to be. That was forgotten more and more each time it was used on TOS.

 

[Bibliomike]

One of the few edits the powers that be made to my story in SNW 2 was to serve ongoing series continuity. I didn't like it at the time but wasn't going to raise a stink about it, and looking back, they made exactly the right call. If Spock is up against a powerful telepath who can reshape the landscape with their mind, it only makes sense that he's going to flash back, however briefly, to Gary Mitchell.

I think there are levels of past events/episodes; some are more memorable than others (both in-universe and out!). So it goes to what Christopher said about "balance." We all have key points in our lives that stick with us longer than others. I like to see those referenced when appropriate in Trek fiction.

Sometimes (most times?) the tie-in writers are better about this than the folks who made the show/movies. I still get annoyed that when Kirk said, in Star Trek V, "I lost a brother once," nobody thought even for a second that he was talking about George ("only you call him Sam"...). I think J.M. Dillard rectified this in her novelization, but I don't recall exactly.

Speaking of ST V, I appreciated Greg referencing Sybok in Foul Deeds Arise - like the movie or not (and I kinda sorta do), Spock's heretofore unknown half-brother showing up and hijacking the Enterprise would, I would think, qualify as a memorable experience! So nicely done.

 

[Greg Cox]

Speaking of ST V, I appreciated Greg referencing Sybok in Foul Deeds Arise - like the movie or not (and I kinda sorta do), Spock's heretofore unknown half-brother showing up and hijacking the Enterprise would, I would think, qualify as a memorable experience! So nicely done.

Just to tease, Sybok is also mentioned in my new book, coming out next week.

 

[Christopher]

Sometimes (most times?) the tie-in writers are better about this than the folks who made the show/movies. I still get annoyed that when Kirk said, in Star Trek V, "I lost a brother once," nobody thought even for a second that he was talking about George ("only you call him Sam"...).

Nowhere near as bad as The Wrath of Khan. "I've never faced death. Not like this. Not even when I lost my best friend Gary, the love of my life Edith Keeler, my brother Sam and sister-in-law Aurelan, or my wife Miramanee and my unborn child. Oh, and the first two of those died as a result of my own actions, but no, I've never actually faced death before."