Dear TOS novel writers, it's not you. It's me.

[Idran]

Given what we know about Michael Piller, though (and the fact that TFF had hit theaters only a month or two before "Evolution" aired), we can pretty much safely assume he was referring to the Enterprise-A with that line of dialogue, as a "nod" to the then-just-released latest movie. This is probably one of the dating-referents used by the Okudas when calculating that film's chronology-placement (along with the "Balance of Terror"/Nimbus III information).

What Christopher said. All that you have to use is the text of the episode. Behind-the-scenes details are informative, but not prescriptive.

 

[Leto_II]

Even if the behind-the-scenes intent was for that to be a nod to TFF, it doesn't count unless they explicitly tied it to that in onscreen dialogue, and they didn't.

And really, it's annoying when the only historical events that ever get referenced in Star Trek are ones that we happened to see in previous episodes. The universe shouldn't be that small and incestuous. There has to be stuff happening to ships that aren't named Enterprise.

"Occam's Razor," though, says that is that it was clearly the Enterprise-A and the events of that film being referenced there by Piller in his script, regardless of whether Data actually named the ship or not. There are plenty of other oblique, offhanded references made onscreen throughout Trek's history that have gotten definitively tied into other canon over the decades. This one should be no exception.

And I agree with you that there are more Starfleet ships out there having adventures than just the Enterprise, and that the greater universe should reflect that (this bugs me to no end too), but in this one particular case, it is what it is.

 

[WebLurker]

The Chronology is not canonical gospel. It's an interpretation, like anything else. It states explicitly that its interpolations of events between canonical episodes and films are merely conjecture and are not meant to stifle other people's creativity. (Note that some of the STC's conjectures were contradicted by later canon. The first edition put Cochrane's first warp flight in 2061, and First Contact made it 2063. And it put the end of the 5YM in 2269, but Voyager later established that it was 2270.)

Fair enough. Maybe what I should've said was that, going off of memory, the Chronology dates didn't seem to leave a window for a second mission. I tend to assume that the Chronology is accurate except where it contradicts the TV shows, so that's personally the thing I filter the novels through. Your mileage may vary, as always.

But there is absolutely no reason to discount further missions post-TMP, whether a 5YM or Crucible's 7-year mission or something else. It makes zero sense to assume that Kirk, immediately after fighting passionately to get out from behind a desk and reclaim starship command in TMP, would then abruptly give it up again and spend the next 12 years doing nothing but sitting behind a desk. The more reasonable assumption, and the one that's been all but universally accepted by tie-in authors working in the period, is that there was a years-long post-TMP mission before Kirk went back to the admiralty.

Okay, fiar enough. (Wonder how Kirk talked the brass into it, given that his leading the V'Ger mission was supposed to be a temporary thing?)

Just because the First Frontier timeline and the Forgotten History timeline both lack humans, that doesn't require that Vulcan history had to go exactly the same way in both. It's quite egocentric to assume that human existence or nonexistence is the only factor that could possibly affect Vulcan history. It's quite possible that in the FF alternate history, the Kir'Shara was never lost, or the Syrranites managed to rediscover it without Archer's help. I established in Uncertain Logic that the Vulcan aggressiveness of the High Command era was the result of cultural and political influence by Romulan infiltrators; if history had been altered in such a way that that infiltration never happened, then the Vulcans would not have gone down that path to the same extent. There are countless ways it could've gone differently.

Good points. The line that always lodged in my head was when Kirk and Spock are discussing the effect that humanity's absence on Vulcan history would have, and Spock says that it would be minimal, at best. While it's not Diane Carey and James Kirkland's fault that the ENT TV show had humans play a key role in Vulcan history, that line still cracks me up, since in "reality," it's a very real possibility that Vulcan history went a different path than the TOS norm.

I also didn't really like the books whole suggestion that without humans, the Galaxy was plunged into war without end. I suppose it upped the stakes, but it didn't really seem to make that much sense.

I already gave the reason -- because PAD said there was one in The Captain's Daughter, and a lot of modern-continuity books have referenced TCD.

Okay, fair enough.

For me, if a book contains an overt, major contradiction with canon or the novel continuity, then I simply count it as separate. I only refer back to older novels that I feel are still consistent. Other novelists seem more willing to reference elements of older books that do have inconsistencies, but I see that more as paying homage than anything else.

Cool.

I guess I don't mind "recanonizing" (so to speak), older books with discrepancies, if the discrepancies are minor enough that they can be glossed over without too much trouble or undermining the original story (case in point, the aforementioned First Frontier novel feels generally consistent with the novel-verse, even if we have to squint in a few places).

TWOK/TSFS are 2285. TWOK is generally assumed to begin on March 22, since Kirk's birthday is equated to Shatner's. So TSFS is probably in April. TVH is explicitly 3 months later, so maybe July '85. The trial takes an unspecified amount of time, but it's unlikely to be months, and the book The Genesis Wave contains a reference setting it only a couple of weeks after the main events of the film. The interval between TVH and TFF seems very short, but Harve Bennett has said there was a 6-month shakedown cruise between them, so that pushes it to January or February 2286. I just can't see pushing it all the way to 2287. The Chronology's conjectural dating of the movie era has never made sense to me.

Kudos on your research, first of all.

I'm not sure if the March 22 birthdate is that useful. Yeah, it was used in an Okudagram in "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II" (ENT), but said Okudagram also had other discrepancies and was hard to read, so I don't consider it "binding," the way I would if the specific date was mentioned in dialogue (like First Contact's exact date, in the movie of the same name).

The March date does make hash with the Chronology, which puts the TOS movie trilogy at the end of the year. It also doesn't mesh with the intended conversion of the Kelvin timeline stardates, which put Chris Pine's Kirk's birthdate on Jan. 4 -- albeit possibly slightly premature -- (also, a case in point reason why I don't think the Kelvin stardate conversion is "real").

If, hypothetically, we were to assume that we didn't know when Kirk was born (since the two possible dates are both mutually contradictory and of really questionable canoncity and accuracy in the first place), do you think the Chronology's dating makes more sense in this regard?

 

[Jinn]

.Exactly. I remember being taken slightly aback, after referencing Yesterday's Son in No Time Like the Past, to see posts and reviews proclaiming that I had "officially" restored that book to the novel continuity. To be honest, I hadn't been aware that it had ever gone missing.

I'm glad you brought that up again, as I still have this picture lying around on my desktop taking away valuable space without being used once.

Spoiler

Even if the behind-the-scenes intent was for that to be a nod to TFF, it doesn't count unless they explicitly tied it to that in onscreen dialogue, and they didn't.

And really, it's annoying when the only historical events that ever get referenced in Star Trek are ones that we happened to see in previous episodes. The universe shouldn't be that small and incestuous. There has to be stuff happening to ships that aren't named Enterprise.

*cough cough* Voyager *cough cough* Defiant *cough cough* errr... Ok you've got a point..

 

[Idran]

"Occam's Razor," though, says that is that it was clearly the Enterprise-A and the events of that film being referenced there by Piller in his script, regardless of whether Data actually named the ship or not. There are plenty of other oblique, offhanded references made onscreen throughout Trek's history that have gotten definitively tied into other canon over the decades. This one should be no exception.

Okay, but that's not binding. If you're going with canon, there's nothing forcing you to assume that it was the Ent-A. This isn't science, and there's no reason to hew to parsimony.

(Besides, even if it was, Occam's Razor isn't actually "always take the simpler explanation", because that would be ridiculous as there are many times when the simpler explanation is false because it provides different, incorrect outcomes in other situations that haven't yet been encountered. Occam's Razor is that when you have two explanations that provide exactly the same results in all circumstances [like Many Worlds vs. Copenhagen, or special relativity vs. Lorentz ether theory], and therefore there is no conceivable way to perform an experiment to determine which is the "true" explanation, the one with fewer assumptions is preferred. "Always take the simplest explanation" is simply a bad guideline because it fails so often in practice.)

 

[Christopher]

"Occam's Razor," though, says that is that it was clearly the Enterprise-A and the events of that film being referenced there by Piller in his script, regardless of whether Data actually named the ship or not.

Yes, in real-world terms, obviously Michael Piller, a human being who actually existed and wrote an imaginary television show, probably intended it to be a reference to TFF. But that has absolutely no relevance to a conversation in which we pretend the imaginary television show was a real universe. In the context of that conversation, the intentions of the writer don't matter because there is no writer, just real people talking about real events. All that matters when having an in-universe conversation is the actual information and evidence that exists within the story itself. And within the story, Data does not specify what ship he referred to.

Fair enough. Maybe what I should've said was that, going off of memory, the Chronology dates didn't seem to leave a window for a second mission.

Okay... I just checked, and both the first and second editions of the Chronology explicitly postulate a second 5-year mission after TMP. The original 1993 edition says on p. 71, "U.S.S. Enterprise embarks on KIrk's second five-year mission of deep space exploration. Conjecture." The 1996 revised edition says on p. 81, "U.S.S. Enterprise embarks on another five-year mission of exploration under the command of James T. Kirk. Conjecture." And according to Memory Alpha, there are no other editions. So I don't know where you're getting your information from.

I also didn't really like the books whole suggestion that without humans, the Galaxy was plunged into war without end. I suppose it upped the stakes, but it didn't really seem to make that much sense.

Well, ENT established something similar, in a way, albeit without going for a Campbellian "humans are better than everyone else" mentality. It established that humans were able to become the heart of the alliance that became the Federation because they were the newcomers that nobody had a grudge against, so they were able to be a neutral party and win the others' trust and bridge the gaps between them. Which I thought was a very clever way of doing it.

I guess I don't mind "recanonizing" (so to speak), older books with discrepancies, if the discrepancies are minor enough that they can be glossed over without too much trouble or undermining the original story (case in point, the aforementioned First Frontier novel feels generally consistent with the novel-verse, even if we have to squint in a few places).

I've always counted First Frontier in my personal continuity and I've referenced it in my books. I don't recall any serious inconsistencies with canon or other modern novels.

If, hypothetically, we were to assume that we didn't know when Kirk was born (since the two possible dates are both mutually contradictory and of really questionable canoncity and accuracy in the first place), do you think the Chronology's dating makes more sense in this regard?

Not really. Even if we assume Kirk's birthday was December '85, that puts TVH in only April '86, and you'd have to really stretch out the trial and the shakedown to force TFF into '87. Also, it's better if TWOK is early in '85, because it's supposed to be 15 years after "Space Seed," which would be early 2282. Stretching that to 18 years is bad enough; I'd rather not push it to nearly 19.

 

[Leto_II]

Yes, in real-world terms, obviously Michael Piller, a human being who actually existed and wrote an imaginary television show, probably intended it to be a reference to TFF. But that has absolutely no relevance to a conversation in which we pretend the imaginary television show was a real universe. In the context of that conversation, the intentions of the writer don't matter because there is no writer, just real people talking about real events. All that matters when having an in-universe conversation is the actual information and evidence that exists within the story itself. And within the story, Data does not specify what ship he referred to.

Christopher, c'mon, man...that's splitting a hair that's growing atop another hair, that's growing on top of still yet another hair. I'm not arguing that real-world intentionality is necessarily the same thing as "in-universe" assumptions. I agree with you on that, but we're veering slightly into metafiction now. I'm simply pointing out that, until evidence arrives to the contrary, that we don't know that it wasn't the 1701-A under discussion in that scene, either. As you mention, it's technically not specified in the episode, but that argument actually cuts both ways in this case.

Not really. Even if we assume Kirk's birthday was December '85, that puts TVH in only April '86, and you'd have to really stretch out the trial and the shakedown to force TFF into '87. Also, it's better if TWOK is early in '85, because it's supposed to be 15 years after "Space Seed," which would be early 2282. Stretching that to 18 years is bad enough; I'd rather not push it to nearly 19.

Same here. We're already having to apply tons of continuity-spackle to that dialogue as it stands.

 

[Christopher]

I'm simply pointing out that, until evidence arrives to the contrary, that we don't know that it wasn't the 1701-A under discussion in that scene, either. As you mention, it's technically not specified in the episode, but that argument actually cuts both ways in this case.

But there is no way in hell that you can get from "We don't know that it wasn't" to "It absolutely had to be." Those are two utterly dissimilar statements. You're trying to claim that a complete lack of information somehow proves your point beyond question, and that is completely illegitimate.

The burden of proof is on the person making the less probable claim. What is the probability, in-universe, that it was the Enterprise being referenced? Logically, there must have been hundreds of Starfleet vessels in operation in 2287, if not thousands. Therefore, the probability that a single specific vessel was being referenced is well below 1%. So the probability that the ship in question was not the Enterprise is immensely greater than the probability that it was. Therefore, in the absence of evidence either way, the favored conclusion is that it was not the Enterprise. If you want to demonstrate that it was, then the burden of proof is on you. You need to produce actual evidence that confirms it was that ship.

 

[WebLurker]

Yes, in real-world terms, obviously Michael Piller, a human being who actually existed and wrote an imaginary television show, probably intended it to be a reference to TFF. But that has absolutely no relevance to a conversation in which we pretend the imaginary television show was a real universe. In the context of that conversation, the intentions of the writer don't matter because there is no writer, just real people talking about real events. All that matters when having an in-universe conversation is the actual information and evidence that exists within the story itself. And within the story, Data does not specify what ship he referred to.

Was this reference to the starship that completely malfunctioned and has since created the popular fan theory (used in some licensed materials, in fact), that it was the Excelsior, who's transwarp drive failed, creating the accident, shutting down the project, and explaining why the ship suddenly seemed to have a normal drive in TUC?

Okay... I just checked, and both the first and second editions of the Chronology explicitly postulate a second 5-year mission after TMP. The original 1993 edition says on p. 71, "U.S.S. Enterprise embarks on KIrk's second five-year mission of deep space exploration. Conjecture." The 1996 revised edition says on p. 81, "U.S.S. Enterprise embarks on another five-year mission of exploration under the command of James T. Kirk. Conjecture." And according to Memory Alpha, there are no other editions. So I don't know where you're getting your information from.

I was going off of memory and was wrong about the details. Mea culpa.

Well, ENT established something similar, in a way, albeit without going for a Campbellian "humans are better than everyone else" mentality. It established that humans were able to become the heart of the alliance that became the Federation because they were the newcomers that nobody had a grudge against, so they were able to be a neutral party and win the others' trust and bridge the gaps between them. Which I thought was a very clever way of doing it.

Agreed.

I've always counted First Frontier in my personal continuity and I've referenced it in my books. I don't recall any serious inconsistencies with canon or other modern novels.

I don't tend to put novels into a "personal canon," but this is one novel I would "canonize" for an RPG session I was running, unless I wanted to adapt it for a story arc (it would make a fun game session). So, I guess I agree with you.

Not really. Even if we assume Kirk's birthday was December '85, that puts TVH in only April '86, and you'd have to really stretch out the trial and the shakedown to force TFF into '87. Also, it's better if TWOK is early in '85, because it's supposed to be 15 years after "Space Seed," which would be early 2282. Stretching that to 18 years is bad enough; I'd rather not push it to nearly 19.

Okay.

 

[Leto_II]

But there is no way in hell that you can get from "We don't know that it wasn't" to "It absolutely had to be." Those are two utterly dissimilar statements. You're trying to claim that a complete lack of information somehow proves your point beyond question, and that is completely illegitimate.

The burden of proof is on the person making the less probable claim. What is the probability, in-universe, that it was the Enterprise being referenced? Logically, there must have been hundreds of Starfleet vessels in operation in 2287, if not thousands. Therefore, the probability that a single specific vessel was being referenced is well below 1%. So the probability that the ship in question was not the Enterprise is immensely greater than the probability that it was. Therefore, in the absence of evidence either way, the favored conclusion is that it was not the Enterprise. If you want to demonstrate that it was, then the burden of proof is on you. You need to produce actual evidence that confirms it was that ship.

So, wait a minute...how is arguing what you personally think Data "intended" in that scene any more valid as a line of deterministic reasoning? You're claiming some type of fictional omniscience where none exists, purporting to speak on behalf of the character in that moment and bringing inapplicable metafiction into the mix, but as I pointed out, you're still arguing a flimsy technicality at best.

I don't disagree that there would've been hundreds of ships in service to Starfleet at that point in history, but short of a pack of hunting dogs, an Oujia-board, and a seance to contact the ghost of Michael Piller ("authorial intent" evidently counting for nothing, here), how is everything else you mention even remotely hard evidence, and how the hell can someone even begin to make a counter-argument?

 

[Christopher]

So, wait, how is arguing what you personally think Data "intended" in that scene any more valid as a line of deterministic reasoning? You're claiming some type of fictional omniscience where none exists, purporting to speak on behalf of the character in that moment, but as I pointed out, you're still arguing a flimsy technicality at best.

What the hell are you talking about? Here is the actual line from the episode:

There has not been a systems-wide technological failure on a starship in seventy nine years.

That is not my opinion. That is an objective fact. He said only that and no more. He said "a starship," period. That is not "personal," it is simply the facts on the ground. I am not "claiming" any knowledge beyond the actual words that were spoken in the episode and that you can read as clearly as I can. So you have no right to sink to this unjustified personal abuse, especially over something so inconsequential.

how is everything else you mention even remotely hard evidence, and how can someone even begin to make a counter-argument?

I explained the concept of the burden of proof to you. I'm not the one who needs to cite evidence, because I'm only saying that we don't know what ship was being referenced, that the statement was ambiguous. You're the one claiming that it's absolutely certain the Enterprise was being referenced, so the burden of proof is entirely on you.

 

[Leto_II]

Oh, Jesus, Christopher, where did I personally "abuse" you in that post?

 

[Christopher]

If someone tells you that you stepped on their foot without noticing, you're not the one who gets to decide whether they're actually in pain.

 

[Leto_II]

Seriously, though...what was it I said that was even remotely injurious and triggering to the average, typical person in that post? Because I'm not really seeing it.

 

[Idran]

Was this reference to the starship that completely malfunctioned and has since created the popular fan theory (used in some licensed materials, in fact), that it was the Excelsior, who's transwarp drive failed, creating the accident, shutting down the project, and explaining why the ship suddenly seemed to have a normal drive in TUC?

Oh huh, I never actually heard that fan theory before. Neat!

 

[Dayton Ward]

I seem to recall the Excelsior bandied about as a possibility a while back. I don't remember the specifics of that discussion, but the "79 years" bit does seem to work out about right.

 

[Leto_II]

^ It does, yeah. All we know for sure is that the experiment failed at some point prior to 2293, but it very easily could've been in 2287.

 

[Dayton Ward]

If we go with the notion that "Evolution" was in 2366 and ST3 was in 2285 (per the Chronology, anyway), then it's rather imprecise for Data.

Otherwise? That makes more sense than the Enterprise, which had problems, but not a shipwide systemic failure in STV.

 

[Christopher]

If we go with the notion that "Evolution" was in 2366 and ST3 was in 2285 (per the Chronology, anyway), then it's rather imprecise for Data.

But that system failure was the result of Scotty's sabotage, so it wouldn't have been the one that caused the program to be abandoned. Presumably it was later tests, without sabotage, that demonstrated the unfeasability of the transwarp design. That could be what happened in '87.

Although I still prefer the idea that it was some ship we don't already know about.

 

[Dayton Ward]

But Data didn't give specifics, so we don't really know. The fact that the Excelsior was so susceptible to sabotage is itself worthy of concern, and may have uncovered a host of other design problems that with everything else eventually led to abandoning the project.

I mean, since we're pulling explanations and whatnot out of the air and all.