Countdown/Novels

[Stevil2001]

- TV Movie
- novels phase 1 (The Eight Doctors through Interference)
- audios phase 1 (Storm Warning through The Girl Who Never Was)
- novels phase 2 (Interference through The Gallifrey Chronicles)
- DWM comics
- audios phase 2 (Blood of the Daleks through ???)

Isn't that roughly Andrew Kearley's suggested order?

Beats me. It's adapted from someone but I forget who.

I have a few objections to putting the DWM comics after GalliChron. The eighth Doctor isn't traumatized in the early DWM comics; if anything, I think the DWM eighth Doctor is probably the most innocent version of the character. Oh, and the nuking of the gothic cathedral control room in GalliChron poses problems with Eight/Izzy using it if those stories come after.

Part of me is tempted to split the comics up into two phases as well, putting phase 1 (the Izzy stories) before audio phase 1 and phase 2 (the Destrii stories) before audio phase 2. The problematic thing is that all the ranges start with an innocent eighth Doctor who is gradually darkened.

I forgot about the console room, but console rooms can be rebuilt easily enough.

I can sort of see how a bunch of stories can happen in the middle of Interference, though. It's the way the framing sequence for the book is set up. But I don't see the Doctor ditching the "new" Fitz and Compassion for an extended period of time to joyride around with Charlie.

I don't like it either, but it's the most natural break in the EDA narrative, I think.

And I'm not really a fan of stuffing things into the three year gap inside Vampire Science.

As far as I'm concerned, nothing should go there except what we know goes there: The Dying Days, the Radio Times strips, and some standalones.

I could see the Doctor having an extended series of adventures during the "Search for Sam" sequence. Maybe around the time of Legacy of the Daleks. And much of The Flood (collection, not the storyline specifically) can come at any point late in the eighth Doctor's life. I like the idea that The Flood comes late, just because it was intended as the Eight-to-Nine regeneration story.

Yeah. I think the Lucie audios should go last because they're the only eighth Doctor adventures that are an ongoing concern, and that the Destrii ones should precede them because they would have ended with a regeneration.

I wonder if The Company of Friends is going to codify the order in which the eighth Doctor travelled with Izzy, Fitz, and Mary Shelley. I actually hope it's vague. I also hope there's UST with Benny.

I'm sure it'll be vague... though I seem to remember someone saying on OG that one of the stories would come after the Lucie adventures. And if there's not sexual tension with Benny, I am turning in my Lance Parkin Fan Club Membership Card.

 

[Sci]

Of course not. The Ministry is just hiding them.

Well, then, just tell yourself the Ministry was hiding "Margaret's" penis. Problem solved!

Oh I'm sure there are plenty of Lefties (including myself) who could buy that given the way she was throughout her region.

As for when the opening chapter of Half Blood Prince is, I thought it was mid 1997 and thus Tony Blair not 1996 and the cricket loving numpty John Major.

Chapter Eight of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, "The Deathday Party," takes place on Sir Nicholas's 500th deathday. In that chapter, Sir Nicholas is established as having died on 31 October 1492. This sets the series's chronology as follows:

Harry's and Neville's births: Summer 1980
Murder of Lily and James, Voldemort's exile: 31 October 1981
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: 1991-1992
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: 1992-1993
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: 1993-1994
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: 1994-1995
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: 1995-1996
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: 1996-1997
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 1997-1998
Deathly Hallows Epilogue: 2017

The chronology is confirmed by the death dates on James's and Lily's tombstones in Deathly Hallows.

In short, Fudge was contacting the Prime Minister in the Summer of 1996 in Chapter One of Half-Blood Prince, which would in real life mean he's contacting John Major. So, either you wink your way out of the discontinuity with reality somehow -- "Oh, that Fudge, he was so ignorant and such a liar, he even claimed to have met the prior Muggle Prime Minister when he obviously didn't because he was a she!" or "The Ministry was hiding Margaret Thatcher's penis!" -- or you just shrug and say it doesn't quite fit in with reality.

 

[Brendan Moody]

Dudley's PlayStation must give you fits.

 

[Stevil2001]

Yeah, the Harry Potter books are pretty clearly set in comic book time.

 

[DimesDan]

Well, then, just tell yourself the Ministry was hiding "Margaret's" penis. Problem solved!

Oh I'm sure there are plenty of Lefties (including myself) who could buy that given the way she was throughout her region.

As for when the opening chapter of Half Blood Prince is, I thought it was mid 1997 and thus Tony Blair not 1996 and the cricket loving numpty John Major.

Chapter Eight of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, "The Deathday Party," takes place on Sir Nicholas's 500th deathday. In that chapter, Sir Nicholas is established as having died on 31 October 1492. This sets the series's chronology as follows:

Harry's and Neville's births: Summer 1980
Murder of Lily and James, Voldemort's exile: 31 October 1981
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: 1991-1992
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: 1992-1993
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: 1993-1994
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: 1994-1995
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: 1995-1996
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: 1996-1997
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 1997-1998
Deathly Hallows Epilogue: 2017

The chronology is confirmed by the death dates on James's and Lily's tombstones in Deathly Hallows.

In short, Fudge was contacting the Prime Minister in the Summer of 1996 in Chapter One of Half-Blood Prince, which would in real life mean he's contacting John Major. So, either you wink your way out of the discontinuity with reality somehow -- "Oh, that Fudge, he was so ignorant and such a liar, he even claimed to have met the prior Muggle Prime Minister when he obviously didn't because he was a she!" or "The Ministry was hiding Margaret Thatcher's penis!" -- or you just shrug and say it doesn't quite fit in with reality.

Okay, let me clarify a few things with you. One it's great you've just either gone onto Wikipedia or used your own knowledge to explain this away which is great (I guess), but it's a book series set in a non real world thus making it meaningless. Hell, the Prime Minister in Half Blood Prince could be potentially the best PM England has never had (John Smith) if he had not died and Blair had taken over New Labour or there was an election at somepoint in the mid ninties or even dare I say it, The Sun had not ran there infamous headline may the last person in the country please switch off the light and ran with something a bit more pro Labour and in 1992 Neil Kinnock could have won and thus he would be PM. But that is besides the point as the world that Harry, Ron and Hermanie inhabit is not real.

Secondly, I have read Half Blood Prince twice, one when it was released in hard back four years ago and again in paper back two years ago before Deathly Hallows was released so that is what I meant by thinking it was Tony Blair and I've never felt the need to retcon my own personal opinion to that of John "Back to Basics" Major.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Isn't that roughly Andrew Kearley's suggested order?

Beats me. It's adapted from someone but I forget who.

No worries. I've seen a suggested order like that, and it sounded like one that Kearley would have put together.

Part of me is tempted to split the comics up into two phases as well, putting phase 1 (the Izzy stories) before audio phase 1 and phase 2 (the Destrii stories) before audio phase 2. The problematic thing is that all the ranges start with an innocent eighth Doctor who is gradually darkened.

And who loses his mind. Who was it that said that the eighth Doctor loses his mind the way normal people lose their socks? I'm thinking it was either Parkin or Cornell.

(I'm counting the storyline where the eighth Doctor loses his mind and wakes up married to Grace as the amnesia storyline there. Otherwise, that eighth Doctor is the odd man out. Sort of.)[/quote]

I don't like it either, but it's the most natural break in the EDA narrative, I think.

That's true. I think my other objection to the eighth Doctor abandoning Fitz and Compassion for a time is that "Toy Story" makes it unlikely that the TARDIS would let the Doctor run off without Compassion. But then it depends on how far past the Doctor picking up "new" Fitz and Compassion the framing sequence on Dust happens. If it's a few months (which Interference suggests, if I recall correctly), then perhaps the TARDIS hadn't yet taken Compassion for a "drive," so to speak. Or hadn't figured out how.

As far as I'm concerned, nothing should go there except what we know goes there: The Dying Days, the Radio Times strips, and some standalones.

I'm a contrarian anyway; I don't like even putting The Dying Days there. I prefer to see that as coming well into the eighth Doctor's life; he tells Benny that he's now 1200, and he was only a little past a millennium when she knew him as the seventh Doctor. (It occurs to me. The Dying Days could be the first time Benny sees the eighth Doctor, but it might not be the first time the eighth Doctor sees Benny.)

And if there's not sexual tension with Benny (in The Company of Friends), I am turning in my Lance Parkin Fan Club Membership Card.

Eight/Benny = OTP. Rose fans can suck on it.

 

[Brendan Moody]

Okay, let me clarify a few things with you... it's a book series set in a non real world thus making it meaningless... But that is besides the point as the world that Harry, Ron and Hermanie inhabit is not real.

OMG seriously? Next you'll be telling us that the world of Star Trek isn't an accurate projection of our future!!!

Of course the world that Harry, Ron, and "Hermanie" (Hermione's cross-dressing brother?) inhabit isn't real. But that doesn't mean that readers can't pretend it's real in whatever way they like, just as the underlying absurdities of Star Trek don't prevent people from making timelines and then acting surprised when everything doesn't line up neatly. You may not think it's an interesting way to spend time, but is there any point in offering a (perhaps unintentionally) patronizing dismissal to those who do?

 

[TheAlmanac]

Besides, why even try to "handwave?" Why not just accept that a story isn't part of the same "reality" as another story and doesn't have to be forced into consistency? When I watch Batman: The Animated Series, I don't try to force it into consistency with the Batman comic books, because I know it's not meant to be in the same reality and I can just enjoy it as an independent, alternative take on Batman.

I think the difference there is that Batman: The Animated Series makes no pretense to being set in the same continuity as anything other than Batman: The Animated Series. Pocket's novels, however, are in continuity with the television shows and movies. Therefore, they are set in the same "fictional reality" as the television shows and movies. IDW's comics are also in continuity with the television shows and movies. Therefore, they are set in the "fictional reality" as the television shows and movies. It seems pretty reasonable to me that a reader would expect that if A and B connect, and B and C connect, then A and C would also connect.

This is my perspective as well--which I've mentioned before, even using Batman as an example.

Different franchises have different pretenses, creating different expectations in the audience. This is why cross-franchise comparisons don't always work in these discussions...

Stories about Batman can be told in multiple media (and multiple actors can play Batman in the same medium), and they're set up as distinct takes on Batman's life; while stories about someone like Indiana Jones can be told in multiple media (and multiple actors have played him), but they're set up as stories from different points in the life of the same Indiana Jones.

Similarly, the back-and-forth in this thread about the Eighth Doctor presupposes that there is only one Eighth Doctor being chronicled.

Meanwhile, a franchise like the James Bond films create a kind of in-between expectation, where you can create a "loose" continuity between films or take each one (or at least each actor in the role) on its/his own terms.

(I've noticed in a lot of these discussions lately that the examples given of franchises with multiple different takes are often those which centre around a single character, which might make such distinctions easier.)

No, and that's because reality is a different thing from Star Trek.

Exactly.

I think we apply different "rules" to "fictional reality" than we do to "actual reality" when it comes to continuity, so using an actual historical event makes for a poor example. If five different television series mention Barack Obama, we accept that they're each referencing a real-world figure on their own; but if John Munch (as played by Richard Belzer) appears on five different television series, we call those crossovers.

Like Steve, I find it "reasonable" that readers/viewers expect stories to connect when they share elements of their "fictional reality" in common and aren't explicitly told that there's an alternate timeline at work--even if it's possible to retroactively argue in favour of such "branching."

 

[Stevil2001]

(I'm counting the storyline where the eighth Doctor loses his mind and wakes up married to Grace as the amnesia storyline there. Otherwise, that eighth Doctor is the odd man out. Sort of.)

It's made up for by the fact that the audio eighth Doctor is on his sixth amnesia plot-line (Minuet in Hell, Zagreus, Terror Firma, Something Inside, The Girl Who Never Was, and now Orbis).

I'm a contrarian anyway; I don't like even putting The Dying Days there. I prefer to see that as coming well into the eighth Doctor's life; he tells Benny that he's now 1200, and he was only a little past a millennium when she knew him as the seventh Doctor. (It occurs to me. The Dying Days could be the first time Benny sees the eighth Doctor, but it might not be the first time the eighth Doctor sees Benny.)

I think, though that The Dying Days just works better early on. It caps off the NAs and his relationship with Benny, and that's just a weird throwback if all the EDAs happened first.

And if there's not sexual tension with Benny (in The Company of Friends), I am turning in my Lance Parkin Fan Club Membership Card.

Eight/Benny = OTP. Rose fans can suck on it.

Personally, I just can't think of anything more fantastic than Lisa Bowerman flirting with Paul McGann.

 

[captcalhoun]

Dudley's PlayStation must give you fits.

grey market import.

 

[Brendan Moody]

Nope; the PlayStation hadn't released anywhere in summer 1994. If you really want to play this game, an early prototype would be a better bet. One that featured a game called Mega-Mutilation Part Three, apparently.

 

[Christopher]

I still don't see why a world that has a hidden realm of magic and wizards and supernatural creatures can't have some variations on when things happened in the Muggle world as well. Anachronisms are part of fiction. Heck, Shakespeare's Ancient Rome had clocks that struck the hour.

 

[Sci]

Dudley's PlayStation must give you fits.

I just try to pretend that Vernon had a friend who worked for Sony he bribed.

Yeah, the Harry Potter books are pretty clearly set in comic book time.

?

If you mean that they use a sliding timescale, not really. I was actually really surprised when I realized that Rowling established specific years for the events of the HPverse instead of just saying it happened "X years ago" and never defining when "now" was. The HP chronology is fairly consistent; the books take place between 1991 and 1998.

Oh I'm sure there are plenty of Lefties (including myself) who could buy that given the way she was throughout her region.

As for when the opening chapter of Half Blood Prince is, I thought it was mid 1997 and thus Tony Blair not 1996 and the cricket loving numpty John Major.

Chapter Eight of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, "The Deathday Party," takes place on Sir Nicholas's 500th deathday. In that chapter, Sir Nicholas is established as having died on 31 October 1492. This sets the series's chronology as follows:

Harry's and Neville's births: Summer 1980
Murder of Lily and James, Voldemort's exile: 31 October 1981
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: 1991-1992
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: 1992-1993
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: 1993-1994
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: 1994-1995
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: 1995-1996
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: 1996-1997
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 1997-1998
Deathly Hallows Epilogue: 2017

The chronology is confirmed by the death dates on James's and Lily's tombstones in Deathly Hallows.

In short, Fudge was contacting the Prime Minister in the Summer of 1996 in Chapter One of Half-Blood Prince, which would in real life mean he's contacting John Major. So, either you wink your way out of the discontinuity with reality somehow -- "Oh, that Fudge, he was so ignorant and such a liar, he even claimed to have met the prior Muggle Prime Minister when he obviously didn't because he was a she!" or "The Ministry was hiding Margaret Thatcher's penis!" -- or you just shrug and say it doesn't quite fit in with reality.

Okay, let me clarify a few things with you. One it's great you've just either gone onto Wikipedia or used your own knowledge to explain this away which is great (I guess), but it's a book series set in a non real world thus making it meaningless.

Um, yes. That was my point in my original post on the topic. As I said in that post, the desire to put everything in a little box and make everything conform can end up being an arbitrary desire that sets needless limits on creativity. My point was to say that I understood the urge, even as I disagreed with it, by pointing out a minor contradiction between the fictional HPverse and the real world. As I said in my post, I like to pretend, when I read the books, that it's all "real," and the contradiction between HP and reality bothers me slightly when I run across it because it makes it hard to pretend. It's a minor, minor thing, and I don't let it get in the way of my enjoying the books; I was just explaining that this minor issue illustrates that I understand the urge to make everything "fit" so that it all seems more "real," even though I disagree with it.

When I then responded to your Blair/Major comment, I was simply trying to be informative about the HPverse chronology, not trying to make a big deal out of what certainly is not a big deal.

Secondly, I have read Half Blood Prince twice, one when it was released in hard back four years ago and again in paper back two years ago before Deathly Hallows was released so that is what I meant by thinking it was Tony Blair and I've never felt the need to retcon my own personal opinion to that of John "Back to Basics" Major.

*shrugs* I mean, interpret things as you like. All I'm saying is, Chapter One of Half-Blood Prince takes place in the Summer of 1996, not 1997.

I still don't see why a world that has a hidden realm of magic and wizards and supernatural creatures can't have some variations on when things happened in the Muggle world as well. Anachronisms are part of fiction. Heck, Shakespeare's Ancient Rome had clocks that struck the hour.

Sure, and that was my point: It isn't actually a big deal at all. After all, it's all fiction, even if we have fun pretending that it's real for a bit. But I still understand why seeing an anachronism can cause a ripple in the mental illusion one creates to pretend it's real.

 

[Stevil2001]

Yeah, the Harry Potter books are pretty clearly set in comic book time.

?

If you mean that they use a sliding timescale, not really. I was actually really surprised when I realized that Rowling established specific years for the events of the HPverse instead of just saying it happened "X years ago" and never defining when "now" was. The HP chronology is fairly consistent; the books take place between 1991 and 1998.

Are there any absolute date references other than that? Everything else I can remember is relative. And as we've said, from the PlayStation and Tony Blair references (who I'd always pictured in that scene as well), each book seems to be set in the "present."

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Dudley's PlayStation must give you fits.

I just try to pretend that Vernon had a friend who worked for Sony he bribed.

Another possibility. We're already in Alien Space Bat territory here anyway, so we posit that it's an alt-history where the PlayStation was what it was originally intended to be -- the Sony-made attachment for the Super Nintendo, released in '94, to compete with Sega CD.

 

[Sci]

Yeah, the Harry Potter books are pretty clearly set in comic book time.

?

If you mean that they use a sliding timescale, not really. I was actually really surprised when I realized that Rowling established specific years for the events of the HPverse instead of just saying it happened "X years ago" and never defining when "now" was. The HP chronology is fairly consistent; the books take place between 1991 and 1998.

Are there any absolute date references other than that? Everything else I can remember is relative. And as we've said, from the PlayStation and Tony Blair references (who I'd always pictured in that scene as well), each book seems to be set in the "present."

As I noted above, the tomb stones of James and Lily Potter, seen in Deathly Hallows, firmly establish Harry's parents to have died on 31 October 1981. So while there are only two absolute dates referenced in the series, they're both consistent.

As for Blair -- I see no particular reason that the Prime Minister in Half-Blood Prince has to be considered any Prime Minister in particular. There's nothing particularly "Blair"-ish -- or Major-ish -- about him. Hell, for all we know, he could be Jim Hacker!

ETA:

I forgot. Rowling has also shown hand-made notes and her own Black family tree. The Black family tree included dates of death for Sirius, which she put in, if I recall correctly, 1997 (a mistake, since Book 5 transpired from 1995 to 1996 according to the dates given in both Books 2 and 7). But, either way, it's clear that Rowling's intent was that HP take place at specific years in the 1990s.

 

[Geoff]

Countdown rather casually asserts a lot of things that would be seismic game-changers for the TNG novels: Data's resurrection and captaincy of the Enterprise, Picard's and Geordi's retirement from Starfleet, Worf's transfer to the Klingon fleet. If those things happen, I have to wonder, could there even be any more TNG novels? Would it still be TNG if Data were the only TNG character still serving aboard the Enterprise (since presumably Beverly would leave along with Picard)? If the TNG novels followed what Countdown established, I think that would pretty much be the end of TNG novels as an ongoing series.

Really? Wow. Myself, I can think of lots of creative ways to bridge the current TNG novel continuity with the status quo in Countdown... and I'm only on my second cup of coffee.

After all, there's about six years of interim story time to play around with.

 

[Christopher]

Countdown rather casually asserts a lot of things that would be seismic game-changers for the TNG novels: Data's resurrection and captaincy of the Enterprise, Picard's and Geordi's retirement from Starfleet, Worf's transfer to the Klingon fleet. If those things happen, I have to wonder, could there even be any more TNG novels? Would it still be TNG if Data were the only TNG character still serving aboard the Enterprise (since presumably Beverly would leave along with Picard)? If the TNG novels followed what Countdown established, I think that would pretty much be the end of TNG novels as an ongoing series.

Really? Wow. Myself, I can think of lots of creative ways to bridge the current TNG novel continuity with the status quo in Countdown... and I'm only on my second cup of coffee.

After all, there's about six years of interim story time to play around with.

That's not what I meant. I'm not talking about how to get from where the TNG novels are now, in 2381, to where Countdown is in 2387. I'm talking about the potential for TNG novels set after 2387 if we chose to reconcile the books with Countdown. I'm saying, yes, we could publish a bunch of TNG Relaunch novels that show the characters progressing from where they are now to where they are in Countdown -- but what do we do afterwards? It seems to me that Countdown pretty much marks an endpoint for TNG as we know it, so if we did make the books converge with Countdown as of 2387, then there'd be no more TNG stories to tell beyond that point. However, if we keep the books separate from the comics continuity, then we can continue telling TNG stories up through 2387 and beyond. A TNG Relaunch that's consistent with Countdown is finite, with only six more years of story time at most; one that's independent of Countdown is open-ended.

Of course, six years of story time could translate to 10, 12, 15, 20 years of real time. Heck, the DS9 Relaunch has taken seven years to cover roughly one year of story time. So it may be a moot point anyway.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

In what way does Countdown represent any sort of endpoint? The 24th-century still exists. There are some significant changes that happen in the story that need to be dealt with. (How does the destruction of Romulus and the death of billions of Romulans affect the galactic order?)

Star Trek: The Next Generation was always an ensemble series. Not every book needs to have every NextGen character. The series' unique "family" was already broken with Nemesis. Showing how they split further apart -- and the adventures they have separately -- wouldn't be any different from, say, Keith's Diplomatic Implausibility (which was published as a Next Generation novel, even though it was a solo Worf novel). Maybe it makes the individual books a harder sell; a casual buyer looking for a novel with Picard and the gang might not be as invested in a novel that focuses solely on Sector General Worf of the Klingon Empire. But there's no reason that events beyond Countdown can't be chronicled. If anything, I think, given the circumstances at the end, I really think they should be.

My only concern would be that it might force storylines that bring the characters back together for yet another round-up (which was my objection to the Ordover-era post-Star Trek VI novels, where this tendency reached ridiculous heights).

I do see where you're coming from, Christopher. I really do. I just don't agree with you.

 

[Christopher]

In what way does Countdown represent any sort of endpoint? The 24th-century still exists. There are some significant changes that happen in the story that need to be dealt with. (How does the destruction of Romulus and the death of billions of Romulans affect the galactic order?)

I'm being heavily misunderstood on this point. I never said it was an endpoint for ST in general, just for TNG. In the Countdown continuity, nobody from TNG is serving on the Enterprise anymore except Data. Picard is off doing ambassadorial duties, Beverly is either with him or at home somewhere, Riker and Troi are still on Titan, Worf is with the Klingon fleet for some reason, Geordi is retired to civilian life. They're not a crew anymore. And I saw no sign in Countdown that anyone like Kadohata or Choudhury or Chen is still aboard either. If any new adventures of the Enterprise were told after Countdown, they'd have to feature Data 2.0 and a bunch of new characters. And I question whether that would even qualify as TNG. And if you wrote about the independent adventures of the various characters, I don't see those being called TNG either, any more than Titan bears that label.

Star Trek: The Next Generation was always an ensemble series. Not every book needs to have every NextGen character. The series' unique "family" was already broken with Nemesis. Showing how they split further apart -- and the adventures they have separately -- wouldn't be any different from, say, Keith's Diplomatic Implausibility (which was published as a Next Generation novel, even though it was a solo Worf novel). Maybe it makes the individual books a harder sell; a casual buyer looking for a novel with Picard and the gang might not be as invested in a novel that focuses solely on Sector General Worf of the Klingon Empire. But there's no reason that events beyond Countdown can't be chronicled. If anything, I think, given the circumstances at the end, I really think they should be.

A valid point. I never said there were no stories to tell, just that I question whether you could publish them under the title of The Next Generation as opposed to just Star Trek in general.

My only concern would be that it might force storylines that bring the characters back together for yet another round-up (which was my objection to the Ordover-era post-Star Trek VI novels, where this tendency reached ridiculous heights).

I agree. Though I'd submit the tendency was just as ridiculous in the post-TWOK movies.