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Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

Christopher said:
But it still doesn't make sense, because the Borg don't think creatively like that. If they can't beat a problem the first time, they just keep sending more drones and more ships until they overcome it. Also, if they had time travel, they'd have retroactively assimilated the whole galaxy by now.
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Hey, now don't go ruining First Contact for me now buddy. I loved that movie.

Ok, just kidding. Like TWOK I acknowledge some of it's, um, weaknesses, but can overlook them because it's such an awesome film in other ways.

Mysterion said:
The Eugenics Wars could happen in the Trek canon 1990's without having happened in our (the viewer's) 1990's. We do not live in the past of Star Trek's timeline. I wish Trek writers would stop trying to retcon our present into Star Trek. Just let it be the alternate timeline that it's always been.
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WebLurker said:
True, if you want everything to conform to real history, which is a valid idea in and of itself and I think Cox did that well. Thing is, it doesn't really fit well with the TV shows before and since. It may just be personal preference, but I guess I wish that the books had gone full into the fact that Star Trek has become an alt-universe with a history and future different from ours and exploited that to the full extent.
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I guess it's a matter of preference. I'm on the opposite end, I loved that his novels tried to incorporate the Eugenics Wars into real world events in a sort of 'what if' scenario. I was looking forward when the novels were released to see how he was going to bring the Eugenics Wars into the real world.

WebLurker said:
Hasn't that been more or less incorporated as "official" in the non-canon stuff to explain why there are so many mutually contradictory Borg origin stories across the tie-ins?
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As far as the novels go (I'm not familiar with the comics--but they are sort of their own entity anyway) I believe there are two. The Shatnerverse novels--which had V'ger's home planet as the origin of the Borg...and Destiny. Now the Shatnerverse is it's own thing and of course the current litverse has followed the Destiny model. I don't believe there are any other Borg origin stories in the novels out there that I can recall.
 
DWMarch said:
@David Mack (the author of "Control" the novel) has said that the similarities are coincidental but from what we have seen in the episodes thus far both version of Control share some very specific characteristics. The way Control has been described on the show (as an AI that does threat assessments for Section 31) matches the way it is described in the novel and there are some specific instances in the show where Control does very similar things to how its actions played out in book format.
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Eeeh... I don't think it's particularly complimentary to Discovery or to Control-the-book to say they're probably directly related when the most overt similarities are basic (in the modern, derogatory sense) sci-fi techno-thriller tropes. Computer threat assessment becoming the threat, robots puppeteering corpses, those weren't the really interesting, novel things in the book. The idea Control was everywhere, in every mainframe and commbadge, that when you did a space-Google search, Control was deciding what you needed to see, and the final question of whether it was really all-knowing and staged the whole thing to protect itself further, or if it was delusional and its last thoughts as it was destroyed were total corncobbing. That's the stuff they should've adapted, if they were adapting anything, which I doubt (team coincidence, all the way). The idea that DSC Control is basically Skynet (the best way to protect humanity is to keep humanity from destroying me, humanity's technological heir apparent, by destroying them so they can't do anything at all) is a lot less interesting, or at least isn't being dealt with in an interesting way.

(I'll concede that while DSC Control becoming the Borg would be "interesting" in some sense, I'd still find it less dramatically satisfying than the Destiny origin, which had the Borg be a product of mistrust, pain, violation, and terror in a very human, character-driven way, instead of being all "Whoops, I got time-travel in my AI! I got AI in my time-travel!")

(I'm feeling very referency this morning, apparently.)
 
Christopher said:
Harlan Ellison was a freelance TV writer who was contractually entitled to residuals if his episode was rebroadcast or sold on home media, and he contended that the same was true if dialogue from it was directly quoted in a novel (or in a Christmas ornament's audio clip). Dave and the rest of us are licensed contractors writing derivative fiction on a work-for-hire basis, meaning that anything we write in a Trek novel or story is the property of CBS and they can reuse it however they want without owing us any further compensation.
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I realise you all know what you're in for, but that kind of sucks. They get to use your concepts and they make more money doing so.
 
King Daniel Beyond said:
I realise you all know what you're in for, but that kind of sucks. They get to use your concepts and they make more money doing so.
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We know going in that that's what we're signing up for. We're contractors. If you're a building contractor, you build houses for other people but don't get to live in them. If you're a caterer, you don't get to eat the meals you make. That's the nature of doing work for other people. As long as you make your consumers happy, and as long as you get compensated according to the terms you sign up for, then that's okay.

And that's why I write original fiction too. That's the stuff that's all mine, that I have control over.
 
Damian said:
I guess it's a matter of preference. I'm on the opposite end, I loved that his novels tried to incorporate the Eugenics Wars into real world events in a sort of 'what if' scenario. I was looking forward when the novels were released to see how he was going to bring the Eugenics Wars into the real world.
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Fair enough.

Damian said:
As far as the novels go (I'm not familiar with the comics--but they are sort of their own entity anyway) I believe there are two. The Shatnerverse novels--which had V'ger's home planet as the origin of the Borg...and Destiny. Now the Shatnerverse is it's own thing and of course the current litverse has followed the Destiny model. I don't believe there are any other Borg origin stories in the novels out there that I can recall.
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The Memory Beta wiki listed all them in conjunction per the "multiple Borg Collectives arising and merging often on" model.
 
Christopher said:
Harlan Ellison was a freelance TV writer who was contractually entitled to residuals if his episode was rebroadcast or sold on home media, and he contended that the same was true if dialogue from it was directly quoted in a novel (or in a Christmas ornament's audio clip). Dave and the rest of us are licensed contractors writing derivative fiction on a work-for-hire basis, meaning that anything we write in a Trek novel or story is the property of CBS and they can reuse it however they want without owing us any further compensation.
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The key difference: Television writers are unionized. Novelists aren't. Whole different situation.

But, yes, as pointed out above, we all know the deal when we sign the contracts. I like to compare it to being a carpenter. If somebody hires me to build them a back porch to their specifications, I have no rights to the porch afterwards because, um, it's their porch.

Doesn't mean I don't take pride in my work and try to build the best porch I can, depending on the budget and schedule, but at the end of the day, it's not my porch and they can do whatever they want with it.
 
WebLurker said:
Hasn't that been more or less incorporated as "official" in the non-canon stuff to explain why there are so many mutually contradictory Borg origin stories across the tie-ins?
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No. It's a theory generated by Star Trek The Magazine but has no official standing in any of the tie-ins.
Damian said:
As far as the novels go (I'm not familiar with the comics--but they are sort of their own entity anyway) I believe there are two. The Shatnerverse novels--which had V'ger's home planet as the origin of the Borg...and Destiny. Now the Shatnerverse is it's own thing and of course the current litverse has followed the Destiny model. I don't believe there are any other Borg origin stories in the novels out there that I can recall.
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Christopher said:
There are a couple of different ones in Strange New Worlds short stories, and one in TokyoPop's first manga-style TOS comic volume.
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David Goodman's Picard Autobiography also touches on Borg origins with them being part of a cybernetics experiment run by a woman who became the Borg Queen.
 
The Wormhole said:
No. It's a theory generated by Star Trek The Magazine but has no official standing in any of the tie-ins.
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Fair enough. The Memory Beta article does cite it, but they do basically put everything together unless there is no way to reconcile the accounts (and even then they're pretty inconsistent about what they're will to put or not put together.

The Wormhole said:
David Goodman's Picard Autobiography also touches on Borg origins with them being part of a cybernetics experiment run by a woman who became the Borg Queen.
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Forgot about that. The book did borrow a few ideas from the tie-ins (like that reboot prequel comic).
 
King Daniel Beyond said:
I realise you all know what you're in for, but that kind of sucks. They get to use your concepts and they make more money doing so.
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I'm not 100% sure how it all works, but I think it's more or less true for the people that write US TV shows too. They do apparently get some residuals and stuff, but they everything they write is still owned by the studio, who can do whatever they want with it.
Apparently British TV writers do, or at least did, get more control over stuff they wrote. Several of the writers for the original Dr. Who actually went off and did they own movies and things with aliens and characters from the show.
 
The writers (as Christopher and Greg have both pointed out) go in with their eyes open. It'd be different if it were ambiguous but I think it's probably the same in any franchise. And it's not like they're doing it for free. They get paid for their work, they just don't get residuals if their ideas are used by someone else licensed in the franchise.

In a way that'd probably even hurt the tie ins. Imagine if they had to pay David Mack every time someone referenced Destiny, or Peter David every time someone mentioned something from New Frontier. It would probably kill the relaunches because you couldn't build off prior author's stories without giving each of them a cut.

Christopher said:
There are a couple of different ones in Strange New Worlds short stories, and one in TokyoPop's first manga-style TOS comic volume.
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WebLurker said:
The Memory Beta wiki listed all them in conjunction per the "multiple Borg Collectives arising and merging often on" model.
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Oh, ok. I was just thinking of the novelverse mostly. I didn't catch the Strange New Worlds anthology, and none of the comic books.

For my own 'personal' continuity I went with the Destiny story line. I mean, partly because it was an excellent trilogy. But I liked his explanation of the origins of the Borg and it tied in nicely with the Borg Queen. Certainly more than the Shatnerverse version.
 
Oh, just remembered, on-topic, "Perpetual Infinity" went with SMG's idea that Michael Burnham was named after her father, and not Desperate Hour's coinage that her father was named Calvin. Likewise, DH is pretty clear that the family Burnham staying to see the supernova at Michael's request was legitimate (and the series has been, admittedly, unclear about how Michael came to think it was her idea to not leave earlier after it was retconned that not only did her parents intend to stay for the nova, it was the entire reason they went to Doctori Alpha in the first place).
 
David cgc said:
Oh, just remembered, on-topic, "Perpetual Infinity" went with SMG's idea that Michael Burnham was named after her father, and not Desperate Hour's coinage that her father was named Calvin. Likewise, DH is pretty clear that the family Burnham staying to see the supernova at Michael's request was legitimate (and the series has been, admittedly, unclear about how Michael came to think it was her idea to not leave earlier after it was retconned that not only did her parents intend to stay for the nova, it was the entire reason they went to Doctori Alpha in the first place).
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We don't know for sure what Mr. Burnham's first name is. All we know is that Gabrielle referred to him as Mike (in Perpetual Infinity) and also Calvin (in Desperate Hours, where she appears to be unnamed).

Perhaps his name is actually Aaron, but his pet nicknames are "Mike" (per his background as a teenage musician) and "Calvin" (per his favorite brand of underwear).

I've mixed up close relative's names before (like accidentally referring to my mom by sister's name) in cases when I'm thinking too loudly. Perhaps, in the stress of the moment, Gabrielle accidentally referred to her husband Calvin by their daughter's name. She was barking orders at both of them.
 
Damian said:
Oh, ok. I was just thinking of the novelverse mostly. I didn't catch the Strange New Worlds anthology, and none of the comic books.
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Oh, for sure. The Strange New Worlds stories are basically their own things. Quite a few of them contradict the other (there was more then one about DS9's Nog taking the Kobayashi Maru test, each with a different solution that fit the theme the author was exploring), although a small handful have been incorporated into the novel-verse by other authors ("A Girl For Every Star" was 'canonized' by the Rise of the Federation series, the DTI series made nods to a couple of the time travel stories, and the novel From History's Shadow was a full-on expansion of the author's entry "The Aliens Are Coming!," among others).

Damian said:
For my own 'personal' continuity I went with the Destiny story line. I mean, partly because it was an excellent trilogy. But I liked his explanation of the origins of the Borg and it tied in nicely with the Borg Queen. Certainly more than the Shatnerverse version.
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Yeah, I think the novel-verse basically views the Destiny model as the "only" one and it's kinda up to the readers if they want to graft any of the non-novel-verse books and accounts into the background (although the novel-verse has 'canonized' a few non-novel-verse books, even if all the details don't add up). It was an interesting read, but I have to admit that I wasn't that fond of it. It kinda seemed overly complicated and I guess I like the simpler explanation that they just evolved "naturally" as Species 0001 begam cyborgizing themselves more and more until the Collective came about.

The Shatner-verse explanation was taken from half-serious theories by the people who worked on the movies (I think Gene Roddenberry himself was cited as inventing the idea). I think I like it a bit more then the the Destiny one, given that it keeps the simplicity, except that we have to revise some facts we hear onscreen (e.g. that the black hole was actually a time warp, and that the living machines that repaired V'Ger were actually proto-Borg, despite that not being living machines at all).

(I do have a lot of sentimental fondness for The Return, given that it was the first Star Trek novel I got -- used and years after it first came out -- but I do have to say that after the thrill of seeing all the TV shows get mashed together on page and the admittedly interesting idea of Kirk being alive in the 24th century wear off, the books really haven't aged that well for me and I'm well over "Kirk the superhero" that we got there.)
 
mattman8907 said:
After watching Pike in command of Discovery this season, I am looking forward to reading "The Enterprise War" even more when it comes out in July.
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I'm now more intrigued about both the season and the book (don't have the streaming and so am forced to wait for the BluRays).
 
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