The most popular one who posted on this forum (an individual I'm pretty sure hasn't posted here in years) was of the opinion that "canon Trek" was only Trek Roddenberry was involved with, meaning seasons 1 and 2 of TOS, TMP, and seasons 1-5 of TNG.
Do you want ongoing novels on the Kelvin Universe
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I'm pretty sure that already happened. And it happened in the 90s.
Even though Roddenberry's failing health meant that he was effectively out of the game by the end of TNG season 1, except in a consulting capacity.
Hey, I'm just relaying what that guy said. Indeed, this particular poster indicated he actually didn't care for TNG, but included as part of his personal canon anyway because of Roddenberry's involvement in the first five seasons.
Sad to imagine a "personal canon" that includes "The Omega Glory" but not The Wrath of Khan . . ..
Yes, it was clear that you were relaying someone else's words. And it was that other person's attitude that I was reacting to.
Same thing happened with me and the Marvel and DC comic books. I really wasn't that interested until I started watching the TV series and movies, and now I'm a big fan, as you can probably tell from my avatar.
One positive side to reboots: they tend to call attention back to the previous versions, increasing the the odds that modern audiences might check them out. Sure, a certain percentage of the audience is only going to be interested in the hot, new version and have no interest in the older versions, but the latest version may also pique the curiosity of new viewers, who may or may not be inspired to revisit the older material, to varying degrees.
And, again, this isn't a binary, either/or thing. It's a spectrum with extremes at both ends. Some may want to delve deeply, going all the way back to TOS, while others may simply choose to sample one or all of the latter-day series. And that's all good.
It's funny. I occasionally see people pronouncing the new movies a failure because they're not driving enough people to go back and watch the "real" STAR TREK, which strikes me as missing the point. Yes, ideally, it would great if the new stuff increased awareness of the earlier material, but that's not the main goal nor the standard by which the reboot should be judged. The idea is to move the franchise forward and capture today's audience, not to create more VOYAGER fans or whatever.
I wonder if some people are worried that the reboots will "take over" the franchise to some extent, so that this becomes the default tone for all future Star Trek projects. That has happened before. Case in point in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Although the source material (which would ostensibly the "purest" form of the franchise) was the Mirage comics, it's the '80s cartoon (which, for good or bad, was a very unfaithful adaptation) that's defined the TMNT franchise ever since. Name a detail of about TMNT and it's probably not from the original comics, [in Cajun accent] I'll guarantee.
Shredder being the Turtles recurring blood enemy, the mutagen rules, Splinter being a human mutated into a rat, April being a reporter, Dimension X, Krang (or the Kraang, if you're a Nick TMNT fan), Bebop and Rocksteady, even the Turtles' bandana colors and love of pizza are not from the comics and were invented for the first cartoon. (Now, I myself don't like the tone of the original comics, since the 2012 TV show is my gateway to the franchise, but the point that the reboots completely overwrote the original iteration of the franchise to the extent that version that try to go back to the roots still use elements from the '80s still stands.)
For Star Trek, regardless of continuity errors in the reboot, I'm not a big of this style of Star Trek and would like some future TV shows or movies more in tone with the originals (regardless of internal continuity). But, if the reboot creates the idea in people's minds that this's the "only" way to do Star Trek (the way the '80s TMNT cartoon is always the basis for all future projects in its franchise), then I'm going to be depressed, since something I've always been a big fan of no longer has a place for me. It's fine if there's stuff that appeals to other people, but the rest of us would like to be able to have new things, too.
That's a very good point to remember (and one that's hard for those of us who the new stuff has changes enough that the stuff that made us fans in the first place is no longer there).
Sad to imagine a "personal canon" that includes "The Omega Glory" but not The Wrath of Khan . . ..
You never know what parts of something matter to some people and what parts ruin it for them. I'm a Spider-Man fan, but I've found that all the new comics and most of the new media in general have really stripped everything I liked about the character (excusing that Renew Your Vows entry in the Secret Wars comics and the Civil War movie), so, for me, I find it the most rewarding to look for Spider-Man stuff that fits with the version that I like (stuff that's like the original movies and original Ultimate comics, in this case), and leave the rest be.
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Not really. The 2003 animated series was extremely faithful to the comics, adapting many of their story arcs directly and taking a more serious tone than the previous cartoon (at least until the last couple of seasons where it was more kiddified). The current animated series blends elements from both previous shows and the comics, and has its own distinctive tone and style. The first live-action movie was also relatively serious and was the first adaptation to draw on the "retreat to April's family farmhouse" arc from the comics, which has been a staple of most subsequent adaptations (even taking up nearly the entire third season of the current show). That's one of a number of elements that have recurred in multiple adaptations but were never seen in the '87 cartoon, including Shredder's daughter Karai (first seen onscreen in the '03 series, also featured in the animated movie and the current series), the Purple Dragons gang (featured in the second and third animated series and slated to appear in the next feature film), and the outer space arc with the Triceratons and the Fugitoid (featured in both the second and third animated series -- although the Triceratons did briefly appear in a single episode of the '87 series).
This was not the case in the original live-action movies or the 2003 series. Both of those went with the comics' version where he was Hamato Yoshi's pet rat. (Which never made sense to me, really, since it required the rat to be fairly anthropomorphized even before his mutation.)
This was not the case in either the 2003 animated series (where she was a scientist who then became an antiques dealer) or the current one (where she's a schoolgirl training under Splinter as a kunoichi). She was an adventurer in the '07 animated film, although that was a loose sequel to the original film trilogy, so presumably she was a former reporter there.
Again, none of these were featured in the original movie trilogy, its 2007 sequel, or the 2003 series. The '03 series used the Utrom, the aliens from the comics that Krang was very, very loosely based on. The current show's Kraang are basically evil Utrom -- something that was made explicit in a recent story arc, revealing that the species is actually called the Utrom and the Kraang are a militant faction that took over their civilization.
These are the only elements introduced by the '80s cartoon that actually have been kept in every adaptation. The bandana colors were kept because they're simply a good idea; the Turtles were too hard to tell apart in the original comics. (Note, though, that none of the other adaptations have kept the '87 Turtles' initialled belt buckles.) As for pizza... well, who doesn't like pizza? (I don't think it was played up quite as much in the '03 series, though.)
As I've said before, it makes no sense to expect a television series in this universe to have the same action-heavy emphasis as the movies, because they simply couldn't afford to. TV shows are a different medium from movies with their own distinct strengths and weaknesses. The previous Trek movies tended to be more action-driven and spectacle-driven than the TV series they shared a reality with. And look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- compare something like Age of Ultron to something like Jessica Jones. They're totally different in tone, style, and emphasis. Big-budget movies tend more toward action and spectacle, TV series tend more toward plot and characterization. Those are their respective strengths, in any continuity.
Heck, part of the value of a multi-series franchise is that it lets you incorporate multiple different storytelling styles and tones. There'd be no point in expanding a continuity across different series or different media if they were all exactly the same. Look at the stylistic differences even between things in the same medium, e.g. Deep Space Nine vs. Voyager, Torchwood vs. The Sarah Jane Adventures, Arrow vs. Legends of Tomorrow, etc.
Yeah, no doubt. Take the piles of unproduced scripts and ideas from the shows. How many pitches did they get and reject? Not all of them were bad, either, just hard to make or needed more work than they could give to it or ahead of their time.
I only wrote a couple of Trek fanfics in high school, but I cannibalized alien character names from one of them in both Orion's Hounds and "As Others See Us." Aspects of the "cluster entity" in Greater Than the Sum were based on a concept from my TNG spec script, and the subspace confluence idea in Forgotten History was from a Voyager episode pitch.
Which was the TOS book?
MIASMA, which originally focused on Chakotay and Tuvok, not Spock and McCoy.
From the "Never Throw Anything Away" file, I originally pitched From History's Shadow as a DS9 novel, following on from the events of "Little Green Men" in both timelines. Marco didn't go for it at the time (this was right around the time they went from 2 books a month to 1) and I left it in its folder on my hard drive. I pulled it out of mothballs several years later when I was asked, "Want to do a TOS novel for the 2013 schedule?" and I needed something fast, and retooled it accordingly.
The 20th century bits, and the parts that would've taken place on the station. I should've said "timeframes."
I'm not particularly keen on having novels set in the Kelvin timeline. I enjoy the JJ movies as quite a different take on Star Trek, but its far more action-oriented than deep plot driven, which I don't think translates as well to books. While I'm sure that many of the writers doing trek these days could make it work, id rather read a book set in the more "cerebral" prime universe.
As I've said, there's no reason why works in different media have to tell their stories in exactly the same way just because they're set in the same universe. That's missing the whole point of doing stories in different media. The Prime-universe movies are more action-oriented than the Prime TV shows and novels already. That's not about the Kelvin Timeline, it's about movies. So there's no reason why Kelvin TV shows or books couldn't be just as "cerebral" as Prime shows and books. Kelvin isn't about a mandatory quota of action, it's about younger versions of the TOS crew in their formative years, in a reality where Kirk grew up without a father, Spock and Uhura are lovers, Vulcan was destroyed, and Chekov is inexplicably 4 years older.
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