Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

Was it just me or did they just toss Desperate Hours? Admittedly we’re not seeing the whole situation yet, but can anyone still make those events fit?

 

Also, did anyone else catch the onscreen dating of when Pike took command of the Enterprise during the viewscreen-scene? It’s now canonically 2250, which is about a year before when most fandom chronologies had him taking over from Robert April in 2251, along with the Early Voyages comics making several references to him first coming aboard three years prior to the start of the series along with his first yeoman (the one who later dies on Rigel VII).

Unless maybe we can now move those first two issues backwards just slightly to late 2253, with “Our Dearest Blood” and “Nor Iron Bars a Cage” now taking place in veeeery early 2254, around New Year’s (I think I always had “The Cage” TOS episode as taking place in the rough spring of that year anyhow, per some dating-references given in the Seasons of Light and Darkness e-novella).

 

Also, this episode gave us the first-ever canonical confirmation that Captain Pike commanded at least one 5-year mission of his own aboard the Enterprise prior to Kirk assuming command, which a number of novels and comics (including Early Voyages) conjectured prior to DSC. Very interesting.

 

Looks like that novel isn’t canon. A pity

 

Not that the novel itself was ever canonical, but was there anything in the episode that flat-out contradicted the book in terms of Burnham and Spock’s relationship? This could be misremembrance on my part, but I think the only thing she actually says at one point (to Sarek on the bridge) is something along the lines of, “I didn’t expect to see Spock again so soon,” rather than anything about not having seen him in many years or decades (it’s only been around two-and-a-half years or thereabouts in-universe since Desperate Hours took place).

I could be wrong here, as it’s been almost a year-and-a-half since I last read David’s novel, and I plan on rewatching the episode again to take some deeper notes, too.

 

It’s implied that she hasn’t met Spock for a longer period than in the novel. Plus she doesn’t already know Pike

 

Yeah, the bit where Michael says it's also been "years" since she spoke to Spock fits. But now I'm wracking my brain trying to remember if Pike ever actually met Saru and Burnham. All I remember clearly are the one-on-one crossovers; Pike and Georgiou, Saru and Number One, Burnham and Spock. I mean, I feel like Pike should've known them (and apparently I'm not the only one), but I can't remember if that's because we saw it, or because it's the sort of thing that you'd expect to happen when they're all in the same book.

 

You should bring this up with @Jbarney.

 

Yeah I can definitely see the ‘years’ thing fitting, and I could fudge the part about it seeming like they’ve never met. But the ‘feeling’ the episode gave was that Spock and Burnham have major unresolved issues from their adolecences, and while I can’t remember exactly how they left their relationship at the end ofvthe book, it sure doesn’t seem like that fits.

 

Something else I caught: Stamets mentions he knows an ethno-botanist serving aboard the Enterprise. Sulu?

 

Sulu's interest in botany was a hobby, not a profession.

 

I wouldn't put anything past them though. They may decide to make botany Sulu's first profession.

 

It seems likely to me that they just said "ethnobotanist" because Stamets is a mycologist so they'd be related professions. It's a stretch to think it's meant to be Sulu -- although this show is so addicted to continuity porn that I suppose it's not out of the question.

 

Chance are you're probably right. Besides that I doubt Sulu would be on the Enterprise this early on in his career.

 

Yes -- he should probably still be the Academy at this point (2257).

 

I actually just read Desperate Hours a couple weeks ago. It takes place about a year before the first episode of DSC. Episode 3 was six months later and, if memory serves, the end of season 1 is nine months later. So by the time Pike is on the Disco, it's been almost two years. In "Brother," Sarek says it's been years since he's seen Spock and I think Michael said, "me too." If that's true, I suppose two years could be considered "years" since it's more than one... As for how things were left between Michael and Spock at the end of the book, it sounded like Spock was still in a pretty rough place with their relationship. The book ended with him ruminating on how much attention Michael got from Amanda.
"What I would not have given, he realized, what I would not give even now, to feel the courage in my mother's love that Michael got to know for so long..." Sounds to me that, as in the show, the book portrayed Spock as pretty jealous of the relationship between Michael and Amanda.
The real kicker for me is if Saru and Number One meet in the series and it is the first time they've met. Or if Number One's name is anything other than Una. Or if Pike notes that he's never met Georgiou before.

 

I'm willing to overlook things like changed names, since it's easy to substitute the canonical names in your mind (e.g. in the Starfleet Academy Worf books by Peter David, I just mentally substitute "Nikolai" for "Simon" when Worf's foster brother appears). Discrepancies that affect the actual plot are harder to resolve, though.

 

It was never canon.

 

One other thing:

I recently finished Una’s new DSC novel, and by happenstance I clicked over on Memory Alpha to Sylvia Tilly’s entry, where I was surprised to notice that the name of her mother (“Siobhan”) is apparently canonical, since it appears in the closed-captioning of the Short Treks episode “Runaway,” but also that the names of Tilly’s father and grandmother from the novel are still classified as Apocrypha in the entry.

Given the months-long lead times involved in writing a novel, was the name Siobhan devised by Una McCormack for the book, or was this something originally conceived by the webisode scriptwriter and given to Una in time for her to use in her book? I’m not sure exactly when the webisodes were filmed last year, but we can take a reasonable guess as to when the novel was probably written prior to publication, going by general averages.

 

I wonder if the show is just going to lead up to 'Spock is bitter about Michael's relationship with Amanda' thing as being their rift. I keep trying to pretend their ending relationship in DH is what Michael is hinting at in the episode but it seems like a stretch.

But then again, people are hypothesizing that Michael was involved in Spock's Pon Farr (gross!) and that's the drama.