Does the TNG relaunch improve after Resistance?
- Thread starter Kelso
- Start date
I had been interested in/fascinated by Katharine Hepburn before I had become a Janeway fan. I've had her autobiography for...jeez, for at least a few years now, but I had forgotten about it until recently.
Of course, because of the Mulgrew-Hepburn comparison and connection, that just makes the reading even more interesting when I compare the two.
I guess you're right. I just would have liked the new crew/supporting players to have been more settled from the first of the so-called "relaunch" books. There was a lot of turnover in crew.
Cool. However, the quality of Q books have not been consisent, e.g. I, Q for example, however in KRAD I trust.
Does KRAD post here any longer? I saw some earlier posts in my review of older threads, but nothing recently.
Well, I just finished 'Resistance', but am now reading 'Taking Wing', and I believe this is a bit of a 'two-hander' with 'The Red King', so I might read that next before going back to the TNG relaunch with 'Q&A'. Hopefully if I time my books right I will have the reading order of:
Titan: Taking Wing/The Red King
TNG: Q&A
Titan: Orion's Hounds
TNG: Before Dishonor
Titan: Sword Of Damocles
TNG: Greater Than The Sum
...then on to Destiny* having all caught up!
Am undecided about whether or not to include 'Articles of the Federation' in this list. The characters didn't exactly grab me in the 'Time to...' books, and there doesn't seem to be any hooks in the plot that drag me in either, but still, if it informs the events from these books, I feel I should read it. Any thoughts from those who have as to it's 'essentialness'?
*I assume I don't need to have read anything from the original Voyager relaunch to understand what's going on with that lot in the Destiny novels..?
Titan: Taking Wing/The Red King
TNG: Q&A
Titan: Orion's Hounds
TNG: Before Dishonor
Titan: Sword Of Damocles
TNG: Greater Than The Sum
...then on to Destiny* having all caught up!
Am undecided about whether or not to include 'Articles of the Federation' in this list. The characters didn't exactly grab me in the 'Time to...' books, and there doesn't seem to be any hooks in the plot that drag me in either, but still, if it informs the events from these books, I feel I should read it. Any thoughts from those who have as to it's 'essentialness'?
*I assume I don't need to have read anything from the original Voyager relaunch to understand what's going on with that lot in the Destiny novels..?
Articles isn't necessary to Destiny (heck, many would tell you that nothing is essential to reading any other book, they just improve the story).
Having said that, if you read "A Singular Destiny" after the Destiny trilogy, then Articles of the Federation will fill in some of the backstory. Still not necessary though.
The Christie Golden Voyager novels can be "ignored" pre-Destiny, and if you read the new re-relaunch ones, then the first chapter (or so) summarizes the relevant and important information from those novels.
Having said that, if you read "A Singular Destiny" after the Destiny trilogy, then Articles of the Federation will fill in some of the backstory. Still not necessary though.
The Christie Golden Voyager novels can be "ignored" pre-Destiny, and if you read the new re-relaunch ones, then the first chapter (or so) summarizes the relevant and important information from those novels.
My advice would be: Yes to Articles, No to Christie Golden. Articles does a lot of work tying up and/or developing a bunch of random little plots (B4, Romulans, Zife's "resignation") in some really satisfying ways. Golden's books are just... very shallow. As in, if you read the plot developments that occur in a summary, you'll have had the same experience as actually reading the book. There just isn't anything else there.
Doesn't reading Articles of the Federation help when you read Singular Destiny? Isn't there an overlap of Fed/UFP bureaucrats.
As I noted above... it helps, but it isn't necessary.
As I've said before, the books are generally written to be understandable independently of one another. We're not deliberately trying to confuse people. The larger interconnectedness among books is merely meant as a bonus, not something necessary for comprehension. If you like reading about the UFP government characters in A Singular Destiny, you can pick up Articles and see some of their other experiences. It's not about needing "help" from one book to understand another, it's just about getting to revisit the characters.
And when a story relys heavily on past events, a huge amount of the narrative can be devoted to filling in the back story which can be detremental to the story telling.
I can't think of any Star Trek novels that have overdone "filling in the back story". Maybe some "A Time..." duologies, but that depends on whether you've been reading them all in one lump or staggered across months/years.
I can actually. 'twas Greater than the Sum. And if memory serves, Christopher even said that some of exposition he included was too much and also detrimental to the story. There are others, but that's the one that has stuck in my mind.
^That was the idea. The goal is always to make each book accessible to people who haven't read any of the previous books. The trick is trying to balance that with the need to avoid boring those readers who are familiar with the previous books.
As a reader, I appreciate that.
That's why I rather liked the idea of Miranda Kadohata, a character who was probably just offscreen throughout the seven years of event in TNG, and therefore useful for narrating fresh recaps of essential past episode incidents, from the perspective of someone we didn't necessarily see in the thick of the action at the time.
Resistance spoilers below:
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So much time, energy and lives were wasted trying to deactivate the Queen when beaming in a quantum torpedo with a short fuse would have done the same thing. I liked Resistance, but the Enterprise crew unnecessarily took the longer and more costly way to do everything, IMO.
^Admittedly that's true of a lot of TV/film Trek. Many useful abilities and technologies are quickly and quietly forgotten. Mass amnesia strikes these people with alarming regularity.
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