Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

[Christopher]

They could just do the multiverse rout and say the new show is set in a timeline that bridged out or is somewhat distinct from the novelverse

The problem with trying to pass off alternative creative interpretations of a fictional universe as "alternate timelines" is that it doesn't work if the different creators take radically different approaches to the portrayal of things that should be consistent in every timeline, like the appearance and evolution of an alien race. For instance, Star Trek Online's versions of the Iconians, Tzenkethi, and other species look and act completely different from the novelverse versions. An alternate timeline doesn't explain that. Ultimately it's just a different way of telling the story.

 

[David cgc]

I'll admit, you make one of the more compelling arguments I've seen regarding sticking with novel continuity.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to bet the house on it, but the little tidbits we’ve heard today have moved the prospect of continuit-izing (if not canonizing) the novelverse from “unthinkable” to “practical” in my mind. Plus, there’s always the stuff we don’t know on the business side. Have Star Wars book sales been goosed by having each one be an opportunity to fill in the blanks in the new movies and TV shows, instead of disposable status-quo-preserving stand alones? Does Pocket relish the opportunity to do a marketing blitz of years of their back-catalog filling in the new lost era for TV-only fans? Does CBS want some of that sweet, sweet multimedia franchise juice that Star Wars and popular video game franchises have been hogging?

Or, worst-case scenario, the next TNG book is going to turn out the lights on the novelverse, a la the original conception of Cold Equations, and we move on from there. C’est la vie.

But I feel absolutely certain the Borg are happening.

All things are possible through faith. The Borg could be revived in a similar manner to the Daleks in Doctor Who, returning as an ongoing, though no longer existential, threat. Or, if they want to do something fun, they could do something like the Toclafane, a Borg-like alien revamped for the 21st century from the ground-up. Sure, you’d lose the personal connection to Picard, but he’s a smart man, he could analogize his experiences to give him a similar antipathy to the not-Borg.

Mind you, I hope they're doing something more ambitious with a Picard centred 24th century revival than a sequel to TBOBW and First Contact, but it is a story I could easily see happening.

From your mouth to God’s ears.

 

[ryan123450]

This, basically, although it hit me just a short while ago that, probably some bleak afternoon next winter, I'm finally gonna have to sit down at my computer, open up my Microsoft Word personal-continuity document, and essentially "mass-swipe-and-delete" about 30 pages of material set after 2379.

Don’t do it! If you do give me a more recently updated copy first.

Your books are not going away. They're not going to break into your house and steal them.

Just like with the Star Wars EU, no one is claiming that. But I want more stories with the Full Circle Fllet, the crew of the Titan, the crew of the Aventine, etc. I don’t want new stories in this continuity to stop.

 

[Voth commando1]

And that is another thing they could do-keep the old novelverse continuity going at least at a smaller scale.

I doubt it, but I still want my Hobus Trilogy.

 

[ryan123450]

If they know they have no intention of making the Litverse fit with the new canon, maybe the next two years will see a general wrap up of all the storylines, culminating in the destruction of Romulus miniseries. If the Litverse ended like that, it would be an epic ending.

 

[ATimson]

What an odd thing to say. Sure, you don't have to read anything you're not interested in, but it's weird to phrase that as if it were some kind of boycott.

@The Wormhole said that readers might have to "deal with ... novel continuity being discarded". I was just trying to point out the other choice readers would have in that event.

The novels have to follow the lead of the TV shows. That's what they're under contract to do. Pocket had to drop its '80s continuity when TNG came along, but the books went on, and if any readers did walk away as a result, there were other, new readers to take their place.

True. Certainly seems to be the case for Star Wars, seeing as how the books are still regularly hitting the bestseller lists. (Or my purchasing habit changes there are an outlier, per KRAD's quote in my signature. )

 

[ATimson]

Plus, there’s always the stuff we don’t know on the business side. Have Star Wars book sales been goosed by having each one be an opportunity to fill in the blanks in the new movies and TV shows, instead of disposable status-quo-preserving stand alones?

Umm... current Star Wars books are disposable status-quo-preserving stand alones, unlike the older books that had the opportunity to flesh things out. So I would say no, they haven't been goosed by that.

(The books are no longer hitting #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list like they used to, but they are at least still making it onto the list, so it seems like they're roughly in the same ballpark. There could be other explanations for the drop besides changes in sales volume - shift to ebooks, other books selling more since the list is relative, etc.)

 

[Greg Cox]

(The books are no longer hitting #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list like they used to, )

As it happens, STAR WARS: THRAWN: ALLIANCES by Timothy Zahn just debuted at #1 on NYT Bestseller List this week.

https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/hardcover-fiction/

 

[Tuskin38]

It was a great book, it’s well deserved.

 

[Christopher]

@The Wormhole said that readers might have to "deal with ... novel continuity being discarded". I was just trying to point out the other choice readers would have in that event.

I don't see how "stop supporting the books" works as an alternative choice. It wouldn't change anything. The books would still have to adjust to the new screen continuity, because that is what tie-ins are for.

And "supporting" the books means supporting the authors. Even if the screen continuity changes, it'll still probably be the same bunch of authors writing the books. We'll still be telling Star Trek stories to the best of our ability. They'll just be a different version of Star Trek stories. It happens.

 

[Leto_II]

I can imagine that the check CBS had to write Patrick Stewart had many, many zeroes in it. I wouldn't worry about continuity-problems, here. Probably Picard just hangs out at the family plantation and complains all day about Andorian Space Millennials™.

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[Voth commando1]

Forgive my cynicism-but this seems like a way to reinvigorate the IP after the Kelvinverse didn't do so well and discovery has likely not produced the results Paramount wants.

Patrick Stewart is 78 years old and will be around 80 as I understand it when this new series starts-and his age was showing in Nemesis. I'm not sure if he can carry the show as well as he did in say season 5 of TNG.

 

[David cgc]

Patrick Stewart is 78 years old and will be around 80 as I understand it when this new series starts-and his age was showing in Nemesis.

I blame that entirely on Stuart Baird. I think Nemesis is the second-best TNG film (distantly), but even I can tell how tired everyone is in that movie. And then consider that NEM is about as long after “Farpoint” as TWOK was after “Corbomite.” And TWOK was about how old everyone was!

Look at Stewart in, say, the X-Men films since 2003, and it doesn’t seem like he’s lost his pep.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The problem with trying to pass off alternative creative interpretations of a fictional universe as "alternate timelines" is that it doesn't work if the different creators take radically different approaches to the portrayal of things that should be consistent in every timeline, like the appearance and evolution of an alien race. For instance, Star Trek Online's versions of the Iconians, Tzenkethi, and other species look and act completely different from the novelverse versions. An alternate timeline doesn't explain that. Ultimately it's just a different way of telling the story.

The Needs of the Many already passed off the novelverse as an AU relative to Star Trek Online. Obviously it doesn't work if you look too closely, but neither does Discovery compared to TOS and that's the flagship show of Trek's reinvigorated franchise.

I can imagine a Crisis on Infinite Treks-style event rebooting the novelverse, with all those incompatibilities being glossed over or ignored until the big reset, when following novels switch to the new versions of everything.

Forgive my cynicism-but this seems like a way to reinvigorate the IP after the Kelvinverse didn't do so well and discovery has likely not produced the results Paramount wants.

Whereas I tend to think that if Kelvin was a disappointment and Discovery too, Trek would have faded away for awhile instead of having loads more money thrown at it (remember also they're working on an Academy series and a cartoon, and over in Paramount Land 2 more movies)

 

[LK3185]

Yeah, I don't think Trek is really struggling, its more that they know Picard is one of the most popular characters in all of Trek and Sir Patrick is one of the best actors.. They also have CBS All Access which this new show will only help.

Not saying it goes for the next 5 years, but CBS has done this sorta of thing before with other actors.. bring an actor back and give them a starring role... I'm just glad its not some reboot..

 

[thribs]

The worst CBS can do is turn it into another NCIS clone like MacGyver.

 

[Sci]

They have 13 years in-universe to play with and correct anything they need to make line up with the show. Right now I can only think of two things that would be hard to fix:

• Ages/names/genders of kids.

Ah, c'mon, kids' names and genders are already changeable in real life! If, say The Picard Chronicles establishes that Picard in 2399 has an adult daughter named Marie, the novels could easily reconcile it with the post-NEM novels by saying that Rene had grown up to realize he was suffering from gender dysphoria and had transitioned into a woman. Not really a problem.

Oh, what's that? Marie's age doesn't match Rene's? Wow, it's amazing how Marie ran into one of those child-snatching time portals from "Time's Orphan," isn't it!

A visit to the station formerly known as Terok Nor.

*coughcough retcon DS9 wasn't destroyed only severely damaged and it took two years to repair not two years to build a whole new station cough cough*

I'm not going to be devastated if they overwrite the last ten years of novels, honestly. At the same time, if the Picard show is 20 years post-Nemesis, it could be done in such a way to not overtly overwrite the novel continuity.

Though bringing the Borg in would be quite the trick.

Oh, I dunno. A Singular Destiny already established that at least some Borg technology survived. You'd have to squint a bit, but I bet you could find a way to reconcile Destiny with a hypothetical appearance of the Borg in The Next-er Generation.

Just like with the Star Wars EU, no one is claiming that. But I want more stories with the Full Circle Fllet, the crew of the Titan, the crew of the Aventine, etc. I don’t want new stories in this continuity to stop.

Oh, I dunno. When "In A Mirror, Darkly" established that the USS Defiant had been transported to the 2150s Mirror Universe rather than that it had been retrieved by the Starfleet Corps of Engineers in the 2370s, they didn't nullify the entire Litverse -- they didn't even nullify the entire Corps of Engineers series. When the Vulcan Reformation arc in ENT Season Four established Andor as an icy moon instead of a temperate planet with a tropical zone, that didn't nullify the entire Andorian arc (nor even most of Andor: Paradigm).

If Star Trek: The Next-er Generation nullifies Picard's arcs in the Litverse, that doesn't mean they'll necessarily throw out the whole Litverse.

Forgive my cynicism-but this seems like a way to reinvigorate the IP after the Kelvinverse didn't do so well and discovery has likely not produced the results Paramount wants.

The Kelvinverse films saved Star Trek and proved it is still a viable franchise after Rick Berman drove it into the ground. Paramount Pictures is planning a third sequel to ST09 almost ten years later! And DSC has re-established Trek on television and made it a meaningful part of the modern Golden Age of Television!

I mean, seriously, in what universe do you live in that a giant corporation reacts to underperformance from an expensive genre I.P. by giving it spin-offs and sequels?!?!

Edited to add: Also, Paramount doesn't give a damn how well DSC does, because DSC isn't their show. DSC is from CBS; Paramount only has the films.

Patrick Stewart is 78 years old and will be around 80 as I understand it when this new series starts-and his age was showing in Nemesis. I'm not sure if he can carry the show as well as he did in say season 5 of TNG.

I doubt his role will be action-oriented.

 

[LK3185]

Hmm Sir Patrick could still kick my ass I think..

but seriously, I don't think he's gonna be Trek chopping his way thru people

 

[flandry84]

Your books are not going away. They're not going to break into your house and steal them.

The stories still happened in your mind.

Plus they were never canon in the first place, so they technically never happened in the show's continuity.

Dunno about them breaking into my house...I hear noises...

And lots of stuff happens in my mind...
Glad to have been part of a decades long circlejerk.
So why not try the old Bobby Ewing shower retcon...is that what Trek is reduced to?

 

[Sci]

Glad to have been part of a decades long circlejerk.
So why not try the old Bobby Ewing shower retcon...is that what Trek is reduced to?

The Once and Future King by T.H. White is not in continuity with The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Does that mean it was just a circlejerk? Does the fact that Batman: The Animated Series is not in continuity with the Dark Knight trilogy mean one or the other was just a decades-long circlejerk?

Listen, I love the Litverse too, and I hope it continues. But the mark of a good story is that it be a good story, not that it never come to an end or that it always have perfect continuity.

The rule of TrekLit has always been that books must be consistent with the canon as it exists at the time of publication, but that the canon has the option of not being consistent with the books and may go in whatever creative direction it wants. This has always been the case.