Um, isn't that a non sequitur? We were talking about the issue of whether the show would acknowledge its earlier tie-in novels. You're talking about a comic that was written after the Mirror Universe episodes.
No,
I was talking about whether the show would acknowledge its tie-ins going forward.
You were talking about how they were merely trying, successfully, to avoid early-installment weirdness which, I pointed out, they actually didn't.
And yes, Kirsten was a credited author on both, but she's just one member of a larger team in both cases, and in neither case is she the senior member. So her influence over the ways the show and the comic were separately revised would've been limited, even if she'd had the time to meticulously check every step of both processes, which I doubt she did, because she's also the mother of a small child and has an actual life.
Which I'm far more sympathetic about when you're not saying that's the kind of thing that's prevented now that would've slid by before.
Come on. There were many, many books that were massively contradicted by later productions over the years; just because I didn't post an exhaustive list of them all doesn't mean they don't exist. Look at the novel Federation vs. First Contact for a famous example.
Mosaic and
Pathways would be a better fit, since what happened then is exactly what I'm speculating is happening now. Showrunner writes/requests book of backstory, showrunner leaves, successor doesn't feel bound by the book or the BTS concepts (like not actually crossing over with TOS) that went into it. I was just saying that, with an old-style approach, we could've gotten something like
The Siege instead of a book specifically shaped to avoid areas where the show was likely to go that ended up exactly in the path of where the show went
.
I figure the only reason Lucasfilm can pull it off is because their core work is a series of movies that come out only once every few years, and their other screen productions are animated shows whose production lead time is much, much greater than it is for live-action TV. So that makes it easier for books and comics to keep up.
They're also generally segregated by time-period and cast to minimize cross-over, but are centrally coordinated in any cases of potential over-lap. That has a familiar ring, doesn't it?
Star Wars has two live-action shows, two cartoons, some number of movies, ten books, uncountable comics, and a theme park ride announced and in varying stages of production. The MCU has three movies a year, about a half-dozen TV shows in preproduction, production, or that haven't publicly been canceled, and, IIRC, comic tie-in prequels to films which I imagine don't make enough noise to be worth contradicting, though I haven't read them so I can't be sure if someone bothered to overwrite when Rhodes got the second War Machine suit or whatever. Back in the day, the Stargates were so cocky about how much they talked to each other they had both their shows running back-to-back for three years. At the time, I didn't realize how good we had it, and thought it would've made sense for them to bring a Zat gun to Atlantis. At this point, I'm afraid the Picard show will forget if it's in the timeline without a Vulcan or without a Romulus.
There's a reason the modern Trek Lit continuity didn't really begin until 2000. It wasn't possible to build a consistent 24th-century novel continuity until there were no longer any 24th-century shows being made.
The movies and TV shows were barely on speaking terms then, and they were being made by the same people. Remember the turf war over whether or not the
Defiant would be blown up in First Contact? Nobody bothering to figure out when Worf was taking a week off in DS9 season 6 or 7 to be in a movie? Of course coordinating with novels and comics was out of the question. Forgive me for thinking the trends of the present day, not to mention the invention of the Google Doc and the fan-wiki, might've altered the status quo a little.
If you thought "TPTB" were ever saying that the books would be canonical, then you misunderstood them.
I don't recall ever using the c-word. Let's see what I do recall, which I won't put in quote tags because after all these years I'm fed up with the board not nesting quotes anymore and I want to make it more convenient for you to tell me how I'm wrong.
September 28, 2017 on TrekCore:
David Mack:
I was allowed to compile information about the minor characters, new aliens, and the principal starships into a pseudo-bible for the series. Where there were gaps, I was given latitude to fill them in. Consequently, I got to name half the bridge crew of the Shenzhou, including Keyla Detmer, Troy Jannuzzi, and Kamran Gant. Some of the characters never named in the pilot include Ensign Proat (the bald blue guy with plugs in his head) and Lieutenant Jira Narwani (the girl in the Daft Punk video helmet). I wrote full bios and profiles for all of these characters, as well as for Ensign Danby Connor (ops), Ensign Britch Weeton (engineering), and Doctor Anton Nambue, and also expanded bios for Georgiou, Burnham, and Saru.
Fun detail: some of those bios ended up being shared by the show’s producers with the actors playing those supporting roles, to provide them with a foundation for their performances.
April 6, 2018 on Twitter:
Ted Sullivan:
Well, I look at things this way - it's canon unless we do something that invalidates it (b/c we find a story we NEED to tell that contradicts it). But we here at @StarTrekRoom think it's a beautiful story and treating it as canon!
John van Citters:
And the view from the other side of the fence - we work hard to craft stories that tie into canon so nicely that @StarTrekRoom will never have that need.
So, yes, forgive me for entertaining the possibility that the show's production team might've read the book the show's co-creator requested that was directly relevant to the plot they were doing, that was written in consultation with them, and that they thus might deign to add words like "again" to phrases like "Good to meet you, Captain Pike," an unreasonable imposition upon their creative process. It was truly an outrageous, unprecedented flight of imagination that such a thing might be possible, never mind the idea that the show's clearances person might've sent back a note saying, "You know, we published a book literally called 'Section 31: Control,' so maybe a different codename might avoid brand confusion, unless that's what you're going for."
The one-way mirror between filmed and all other Star Trek remains impregnable, and could never have been otherwise. There is no canon but canon.
Well she wasn't a cyborg or robot, at least not according to BTS stuff. It's just a tactical helmet.
Oh, she could have anything going on under there. If it's not on-screen, there's no obligation!
Meme? Not sure if you're using that word correctly.
The irreducible unit of thought, which passes from person to person, analogous to a gene in biology. Or, nowadays, a picture of a cat saying a funny thing. In this case, the idea that the tie-ins were the tail being wagged by the dog, as opposed to the flea riding on the dog.
