Enterprise Relaunch Novels = Amazing!
- Thread starter VulcanMindBlown
- Start date
I read "The Good That Men Do" and "Kobayashi Maru" a few years ago and really liked them. With the release of "Live by the Code" I've decided to jump back into the series. Currently on "The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing" and LOVING it!
The Good That Men Do was wonderful. Maybe a bit too much fanservice in fudging the events of "These Are the Voyages..." in order to keep Trip alive, but screw it, these books should be fanservicey. I thought Kobayashi Maru was kind of a disappointing follow-up, though, and The Romulan War duology was even moreso. I don't know what happened to break up the Andy Mangels/Michael A. Martin writing partnership, but it's a shame it happened, because something was clearly lost with Mangels gone.
But I've really enjoyed Christopher's relaunch of the relaunch, so to speak, in Rise of the Federation. In truth, this was the Trek story I was always interested in: the years immediately following the founding of the Federation, watching these four totally different species learning to coexist together for a better tomorrow. And so far I think he's done a great job with it, on top of continuing the development of the ENT cast and following up on a number of little plot hooks left over from the TV shows. I'm about 75 pages into Live by the Code but I hope we get at least a couple more in this series before it's all said and done.
But I've really enjoyed Christopher's relaunch of the relaunch, so to speak, in Rise of the Federation. In truth, this was the Trek story I was always interested in: the years immediately following the founding of the Federation, watching these four totally different species learning to coexist together for a better tomorrow. And so far I think he's done a great job with it, on top of continuing the development of the ENT cast and following up on a number of little plot hooks left over from the TV shows. I'm about 75 pages into Live by the Code but I hope we get at least a couple more in this series before it's all said and done.
You all have convinced me to read these books. I need to do something while waiting for the next Voyager book and while I love DS9 it's so confusing to figure out which order to read what. I've stalled a bit on the Typhon Pact series but I will eventually catch up.
Do I need to watch TATV again?
Do I need to watch TATV again?
If you remember the basic gist of it, you should be fine. I wouldn't subject anyone to watching that again.
Nope. The Good That Men Do retells its events in a modified way, so anything that's relevant to later novels is present in that book anyway.
I have really mixed feelings about the ENT relaunch.
I know that this's an unpopular opinion, but I would have preferred a novel series that was consistent with "These Are the Voyages..." With the alterations, it feels less like the "real thing" and more like a "what if?" story, and, since I have no love for the J.J. Abrams reboot, that's become a lot more important to me.
That said, if we grant the books their premise of the ENT finale being..."a faaake!" (little DS9 joke), I guess their okay. I prefer the Rise of the Federation half more than the Romulan War books, since I think the former are better constructed in story and pacing (although I will admit that the Ware subplot, while intriguing, was something that I didn't feel the urge to read two books about).
I know that this's an unpopular opinion, but I would have preferred a novel series that was consistent with "These Are the Voyages..." With the alterations, it feels less like the "real thing" and more like a "what if?" story, and, since I have no love for the J.J. Abrams reboot, that's become a lot more important to me.
That said, if we grant the books their premise of the ENT finale being..."a faaake!" (little DS9 joke), I guess their okay. I prefer the Rise of the Federation half more than the Romulan War books, since I think the former are better constructed in story and pacing (although I will admit that the Ware subplot, while intriguing, was something that I didn't feel the urge to read two books about).
"This is an imaginary story. Aren't they all?" Every work of science fiction -- every work of fiction, in fact -- is a "what if?" story to begin with. None of them are real anyway, so what difference does it really make? Lots of fictional universes have multiple continuities and interpretations -- even multiple canonical realities (e.g. DC Comics or Godzilla). None of them are any more "right" than the others. They're just different hypotheticals to explore.
Besides, strictly speaking, the books are consistent with TATV. They're consistent with the fact that a 24th-century holoprogram exists portraying the events of Enterprise's final mission in a certain way, and that people in the 24th century believe that account to be historically accurate. Since TATV was set entirely in the 24th century, there is no actual contradiction of canon. Otherwise, The Good That Men Do would never have been approved by CBS. (Although TATV arguably contradicts "The Pegasus" to begin with. TATV's Riker/Troi scenes don't fit very well into the events of the TNG episode.)
Lots of stories in series fiction rely on revealing that what an earlier story showed was an illusion or a misunderstanding. The archvillain didn't actually die, it was his robot double! That wasn't really the heroine who turned evil, it was her clone! The hero faked his insanity as part of a grand master plan! The heroine's father didn't really assassinate her mother, they faked it so she would be free to hunt down the real villans! It doesn't mean the stories aren't still part of the continuity, it just means they don't mean what we were led to believe.
By showing the events surrounding Trip's apparent death solely in the form of a historical reconstruction, the writers of TATV left an ideal opening for it to be retconned. They probably did it that way on purpose to leave themselves an out in case of the show's miraculous renewal. Heck, even the holonovel didn't actually show Trip dying, just being slid into the medical scanner and then being reported dead afterward. It's pretty clear that they were hedging their bets. The novels just took advantage of that very wide opening that the episode itself left.
Yeah, preferring the novels to be closer to the TV show rather than overwriting some stuff is just my personal subjective preference (and I suppose I should've said "consistent with the intent of "These Are the Voyages...") and shouldn't be taken into account when discussing the actual quality of the books in question.
I'm not actually against tie-ins that don't match the TV show (unless they're supposed to, like the canonical Star Wars material). Diane Carey's First Frontier (with Kirk's dad on the Enterprise's secret first mission) is one of my favorite Trek novels despite the fact that it doesn't match the canonical version of the franchise. I'm also fond of Dark Mirror, Strangers From the Sky, and The Final Reflection, which don't fit the TV shows anymore (part of the fun of the older ones is seeing what the authors correctly predicted and what they got wrong in those stories). I even liked the Myriad Universes series, who's whole point was to take place was to tell stories that didn't match the on-screen stories (to Pocket Books, more of that series, please).
To take it beyond Trek, I've got a soft spot for both non-canon Star Wars Legends tie-in fiction and the new canonical materials, and like the original Spider-Man movies, Ultimate Spider-Man comics, and Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, despite them being mutually exclusive versions of that character. I enjoy most versions of TMNT I've seen, and my preferring the Evolution cartoon version of the X-Men characters hasn't affected my enjoyment of the live actions movies.
So, the overwriting of the ENT finale isn't a deal breaker (like, say "Spider-Man: One More Day"), since I'm okay with different iterations of the same franchise and do find it interesting to see the Trek novels play a little loose and take risks with the setting (like Andoria's brief succession from the Federation) without "really" affecting the canonical prime universe. It's just that in this very specific case, I would've chosen an ENT relaunch that followed the spirit of the TV show over one that decided to change the story for a new one (the fact that the original relaunch novel criticized that final episode to the point of feeling mean-spirited didn't help things for me).
But, hey, I'm enjoying the Rise of the Federation part of the ENT relaunch for what it is and looking forward to book five.
As I said, I think the intent was to leave wiggle room to bring Trip back in the event of a continuation, and the novels just took advantage of that. TV writers usually like to leave themselves an out, since it's such an unpredictable business. (There was an old sitcom, Sledge Hammer!, whose producers thought it was going to be cancelled for sure and thus ended the first season with the inept hero setting off a nuclear bomb and killing everyone in the show. Then they got renewed. They dealt with it by asserting that the season finale had happened 5 years after the rest of the season, to give themselves plenty of room for a long run. Then they got cancelled after just 19 more episodes.)
Except that every tie-in novel is obligated to stay consistent with the canon as it exists at the time. When Final Frontier came out, it didn't actually contradict anything in the canon that existed up to that point, even if some of its interpretations were a little unconventional. But it came out right at the beginning of TNG, so the new screen canon that emerged over the next several years ended up establishing a lot that contradicted FF and other older novels.
And the exact same thing happened with Star Wars. The tie-ins were always required to be consistent with canon, and once the EU started, they chose to keep them consistent with each other, but the makers of the movies were never, ever actually under any obligation to stay consistent with the books, so new movies (and eventually shows) ended up conflicting with older books. Now they've reset with a plan to keep it all consistent, but it's a safe bet that 20 years from now, the new "canon" continuity will include just as many contradicted and discarded tie-ins as the old one did before its reset.
That's the thing about fiction. Any prediction or speculation it makes is subject to being overwritten by reality. That's not limited to tie-ins -- it's been an occupational hazard for science fiction writers from the beginning. We know now that Mars doesn't have canals, Venus doesn't have jungles, Mercury doesn't keep one face toward the Sun, Jupiter doesn't have a solid surface, computers can be based on more advanced things than vacuum tubes and punch cards, etc. But that doesn't mean we can't still enjoy older books and stories that were written with those operating assumptions. And by the same token, even the most well-researched hard science fiction written today will probably seem just as obsolete and erroneous to readers 50 years from now. You can try your best to stay as current as you can, but that won't shield you from future changes.
I think the books do follow the spirit of the show even if they don't follow the spirit of that particular episode, whose writers have admitted that it was a failure. Manny Coto even said he considered "Demons" and "Terra Prime" to be the true series finale and TATV just a "coda." So you could argue that undoing that episode's mistakes is staying true to the spirit of the rest of the series.
The fact is, TATV is a very problematical episode. It feels like it was meant to be set in 2155 and hastily rewritten to be in 2161. It's 6 years in the future yet nobody's been promoted, there's no mention of the Romulan War, and Troi gets that bizarre line about how "this alliance will give birth to the Federation" rather than actually being the Federation. So the story doesn't really fit in 2161, which is something that Mangels & Martin picked up on and used in their novel. If you ask me, TATV was the real offender in continuity terms. It just doesn't fit the series that preceded it. (And it contradicts "The Pegasus" too.)
Oh, I was under the impression that had ENT been picked up for a another season, they would've treated the finale as a flash forward and then picked up season five after "Terra Prime," much like your Sledge Hammer! example. So, even if ENT had been renewed, wasn't Trip's goose already cooked? (Star Trek has never really gotten into the habit of decanonizing episodes and movies -- Roddenberry notwithstanding, so I don't see any other out for Trip on TV, except for new "old" stories.)
Yeah, I understand that. But I came to those books after they had been disproven. My only point was the fact that they didn't conform to the canonical version of the franchise didn't adversely affect my enjoyment of them.
I'm a big Star Wars fan and was following the tie-ins. There is a distinct difference in the way Disney is handling it then when it was being handled before. Prior, the tie-ins were given pretty much the same treatment as they are in Star Trek; they need to conform to the onscreen materials, but the movies ignored them and contradicted them at their leasure. (Same thing with the CGI Clone Wars show, although there were a few homages and cherry-picking).
But, unlike Star Trek which just decided to let the tie-ins be after being disproven, LucasFilm decided to retcon and patch things up, to keep as much together as possible, so that the tie-ins were still "in continuity," a practice they kept up until the Disney sale and the reboot.
So, I'm going to call your bet on that the new canon will be full of "contradicted and discarded tie-ins" because of one simple fact. Unlike Star Trek and pre-Disney Star Wars, where there was no concern about whether the tie-ins matched or not, LucasFilm is going out of their way to keep things consistent and interconnected. And so far, they've delivered. Part of The Force Awaken's backstory was established in the Dark Times era-Servants of the Empire series, which crossovered with Star Wars: Rebels. The fate of Geonosis was established in the Darth Vader ongoing comics and re-iterated in Rebels. Clone Wars is being continued in novel form. I listened to a podcast in which a Star Wars author was interviewed. He said that the people creating this stuff are seeding material for projects years in the future. Now, some mistakes will arise (which is unavoidable in a large franchise), but in this case, I think they're in it for the long haul, since they're committed to keeping everything canon, which is a stark difference from most other multi-media franchises, which could care less.
Agreed.
I'll agree with the spirit of the show, but I think that the "Trip faking his death to become a super spy" was far less plausible than the TV show's version, which is a large reason for my dislike of this specific element of the ENT relaunch. I don't have much of a problem with the rest of it, really.
TATV was also a holodeck simulation of historical events that had to have first of all been reconstructed (since I doubt that there was a crewperson following the senior staff with a camera all over the place) and then being converted to make it a computer game that people can play. While I think that we can (as as far as canon goes) accept the outline of the story Riker follows as historically accurate, I've no problem with assuming that there are some minor inaccuracies and simplifications in regards to minor details (what people said, events, etc.).
Just because the Romulan War wasn't mentioned doesn't mean it didn't happen prior. Absence of proof is not proof itself. Troi's comment could be taken literally or figuratively.
But Martin and Mangles version doesn't really work either. Their version rests on the idea that Trip was ostensibly killed after "Terra Prime" and that the records were altered to place his death six years later. That would be quickly found out, the Tucker family, for sure would've set the record straight years ago (and Section 31 wouldn't have needed to keep the subterfuge after Tucker was dead; it'd be a waste of energy and resources).
TYTV isn't the first episode to have inconsistencies (TNG's "Tin Man" claimed that only artificial constructs can enter warp drive, despite the earlier "Datalore" future ENT "The Catwalk" having creatures and storms traveling at warp). Other Star Trek shows that were not that well written or have mistakes in them are still considered part of the canon. Why should TYTV be given special treatment? It's hardly the worse episode of the franchise.
Also, most of the Pegasus inaccuracies (which can be reasoned away, if you want to) are not part of the holodeck simulation, so the Martin and Mangels version doesn't so much remove the show's problems but makes the whole story loose any coherency. (Also, TVTV gets slammed for its mistakes, a lot of which are so minor that they hardly shatter suspension of disbelief, but most fans forget that it also fixed the inconsistency of the Treaty of Algeron that had been brewing ever since the original "Pegasus" episode.
Hey, look, I don't want to get into fight. I can sum up my main reasons for holding my unconventional views on TVTV and the ENT relaunch as stemming from the facts that I don't think that the episode was quite a bad as people say, I hold that the fix was worse than the perceived problem, and that the treatment of the episode (as a flawed show with mistakes) is different than how other episodes of it's kind are treated, for no discernible reason.
But, Mr. Bennett, I thank you for your Rise of the Federation series and making the relaunch into something that I've found enjoyable, even if I disagree with all the creative decisions.
Sure, they would've treated it as a flashforward, but still -- it was a simulation, and the death wasn't actually shown on camera even in the simulation. That's two escape hatches in one. If they'd wanted to have Trip alive after 2161, they could've arranged it just as easily as Arthur Conan Doyle arranged for Sherlock Holmes's offscreen death to turn out to be fake. I have a hard time believing that was an accident.
On the contrary. Every episode after "The Alternative Factor" ignored its treatment of antimatter and dilithium (since it contradicted what prior episodes had already established, although it did coin the word "dilithium"). Every 24th-century series ignored the fifth movie's depiction of the travel time to the center of the galaxy. DS9 contradicted virtually everything TNG: "The Host" established about the Trill aside from their existence and symbiotic nature. There have been a number of cases where canonical episodes have been quietly, unceremoniously swept under the rug. After all, that's how retcons usually work. People don't like to advertise that they're doing it; they just hope relatively few people will notice, or that they'll be okay with playing along.
I heard there was a Finn prequel that's already been contradicted. And my recollection is that the early '90s EU tried just as hard to keep things consistent. But it's all but impossible to live up to that in practice. The old EU didn't stop doing it because they cared less about it -- it's just so very much harder than saying "We will do this" and effortlessly achieving that. When there are so many different people telling stories, perfect consistency is prohibitively difficult. And if there's a conflict between a future movie and a past tie-in -- as there inevitably must be, because nobody has perfect foresight -- the movies are always going to take precedence. No matter how much people want to keep it all consistent, there are limits on what's achievable. I've seen it before. The first set of Babylon 5 novels were written with the intent of being canonical, but only two of them ended up "counting" in the long run.
Not the point. I'm talking about the real-world creative process here. Those inconsistencies are evidence that the story was sloppily written, and perhaps that it was meant to be set in 2155 and hastily, inadequately rewritten. It's a poor fit to the time it's supposedly set in, and the novelists picked up on that and used it.
Anyway, the real point is that being true to the spirit of the series does not require being consistent with TATV, and if anything may require contradicting it.
Heck, that contradiction goes back to the original series. Kirk says in "The Lights of Zetar" that "no natural phenomena can move faster than the speed of light," even though the vampire cloud in "Obsession" did exactly that.
Again: All we saw in TATV was a simulation. TGTMD was absolutely consistent with what TATV actually showed, that a simulation depicting that sequence of events existed in the 24th century. It just gave a revisionist explanation for the origin and legitimacy of that simulation. That does not contradict canon, because if it did, then CBS would never have approved its publication. Nothing we do gets published unless CBS thinks it's okay, and they thought that retconning TATV was okay.
And it's not unique. Other books have retconned events from canon. Peter David's Vendetta exposed the flaw in "The Doomsday Machine"'s assumption that the planet-killer was from another galaxy (how did it fuel itself in the intergalactic void?) and retconned its origin to be just outside our galaxy. The String Theory trilogy massively retconned the events of VGR: "Fury" to undo its version of Kes's fate. The Eugenics Wars retconned the title conflict into a secret war to reconcile it with real 1990s history. I've offered revisionist explanations of a number of things in my own novels, like the true nature of Miri's planet. This is something that many tie-ins do. Tie-ins are about filling in the gaps, addressing unanswered questions, and reading new possibilities between the lines, and sometimes that means postulating "secrets" hidden behind the canonical facts, or explaining away contradictions, or "fixing" things that frustrate the fans and the writers. You may not like the results in every case, you may feel some work better than others, but it's hardly unique or unprecedented, and it's just part of the game.
Okay, some interesting points. I'd like to respond (and I'll be working to keep this friendly.
I guess the way I look at it is, since Trip was officially declared dead at some point, then the character could not be known to the general public to be alive, and at that point the character would need to be retired. So, I don't really see how that's an escape hatch (but maybe we'll just have to disagree on this).
True, but those stories are still part of the canon, as that they really happened.
Okay, I know the book you're talking about. It's a novella called Before the Awakening that gives backstory to Finn, Rey, and Poe Dameron. I have a copy of it and it hasn't been contradicted. I think what you may be referring to is how the novelization handled Finn's trooper career. (Going forward, novelizations are considered canonical, but, since there are unavoidable inconsistencies with the movie, you need to approach it with common sense that some parts are inaccurate or present canonical material and backstory through inaccurate means; it's kind of squishy).
In the novelization by Alan Dean Foster, there is a part where Gen. Hux describes Finn as a completely unremarkable trooper, while the novella makes it clear that he's top of his class. However, the canonical junior novelization, written by Michael Kogge after Foster's novel, actually corroborates Before the Awakening, since in this version of the afore mentioned scene, Finn is described as the top cadet he was in the novella. So, Before the Awakening is still safe. (The other complaint, that the novella has Finn undertaking a mission before his first mission in the movie, misses the point that the movie showed his first combat mission.)
The difference (and why I think the new canon will last a long time) is that George Lucas, who was steering the franchise before, said: "I'm not going to make movies that conform to the books." So, it was all on the licensing employees to keep things consistent, since that was not the priority. Now, LucasFilm, who has replaced Lucas as the captain, has said: Everything is canon and we're making sure it stays that way," and have even created a committee who's specific job is to make sure everything adds up and so far, they've done what they've said.
As I understand Babylon 5, it was the creator who was making those decisions and that he didn't have as much control over the early stuff in the first place, so I'm not sure how good an analogy it is (compared to a franchise where the creators have been working with the stuff for years and have the structure in place to actually carry out their plans). We don't know what the method that Disney is planning for releasing the future Star Wars films, so we can't say how they'd handle future conflicts (for all we know, they would say: "No, we covered that in comic book #204, you need to do something else"). The fact though, that Episode 8 director Rian Johnson helped with the story for the Star Wars novel Bloodlines is telling, though, that their plan to make everything fit is more than just a publicity stunt to boost sales.
(I will concede you have more experience working with tie-ins than I ever will; I'm just basing this off of their track record so far, and that says that it's going to happen. My theory is that if there is a third reboot, it'll be a complete one, start back from square one and reimagine everything, like they do with each iteration of TMNT.)
Have the writers actually said that? I've never heard this before. (Now, I'm not defending the quality of the episode anywhere, here. I'm just asking if stomping over it was the best call.) But still, even other sloppy Star Trek shows are assumed to have really happened, no second guessing.
However, the relaunch could've remained consistent with the episode and still have the spirit intact. The Romulan War books could've been set between "Terra Prime" and "These Are the Voyages...," which would've allowed them to use Trip as a character (and have him as part of the crew like the show, and not by himself playing James Bond). I shouldn't speak fro Rise of the Federation, since that's your baby, but how much of it would be affected by Trip being dead? Some of it would, but the main idea (the Federation's early years as it tries to figure out what kind of government it's going to be) would seem to remain the same -- at least to this armchair critic.
So, I think both ways could've worked, the only question is which is the better story, and that will always be purely subjective.
But the relaunch changes the intent of the episode. We, the viewers, are supposed to assume that the episode tells the factual account. So, the books may keep canon from a certain point of view, but they're violating the spirit of the episode, changing how we're supposed to understand it. We might as well just not watch it and just read the book. And this is a franchise where the onscreen stuff is more important than the books.
There's a fine line between filling in holes and patching than overwriting another story. The ENT relaunch is the first to do that, as far as I can tell (I haven't got through "String Theory" yet, but I'd like to).
Like I've said before, I like that some of these alternate explanations are not in canon; I get to see the other possibility without changing the original sand castle. The thing for me, though, is that the changes to the story don't make it feel like an actual continuation of the TV show, but a continuation of a parallel universe version of the show, and I read this stuff to get the former.
So, I'm not trying to pick a fight or be argumentative (since I do like your writing overall). I'm just not a big fan of loose continuity in a franchise that's built on a strong internal consistency and little changes taking something farther away from the source material; I've seen how Marvel did that to Spider-Man, rendering it into something that bears no resemblance to the real thing now.
I guess the way I look at it is, since Trip was officially declared dead at some point, then the character could not be known to the general public to be alive, and at that point the character would need to be retired. So, I don't really see how that's an escape hatch (but maybe we'll just have to disagree on this).
True, but those stories are still part of the canon, as that they really happened.
Okay, I know the book you're talking about. It's a novella called Before the Awakening that gives backstory to Finn, Rey, and Poe Dameron. I have a copy of it and it hasn't been contradicted. I think what you may be referring to is how the novelization handled Finn's trooper career. (Going forward, novelizations are considered canonical, but, since there are unavoidable inconsistencies with the movie, you need to approach it with common sense that some parts are inaccurate or present canonical material and backstory through inaccurate means; it's kind of squishy).
In the novelization by Alan Dean Foster, there is a part where Gen. Hux describes Finn as a completely unremarkable trooper, while the novella makes it clear that he's top of his class. However, the canonical junior novelization, written by Michael Kogge after Foster's novel, actually corroborates Before the Awakening, since in this version of the afore mentioned scene, Finn is described as the top cadet he was in the novella. So, Before the Awakening is still safe. (The other complaint, that the novella has Finn undertaking a mission before his first mission in the movie, misses the point that the movie showed his first combat mission.)
The difference (and why I think the new canon will last a long time) is that George Lucas, who was steering the franchise before, said: "I'm not going to make movies that conform to the books." So, it was all on the licensing employees to keep things consistent, since that was not the priority. Now, LucasFilm, who has replaced Lucas as the captain, has said: Everything is canon and we're making sure it stays that way," and have even created a committee who's specific job is to make sure everything adds up and so far, they've done what they've said.
As I understand Babylon 5, it was the creator who was making those decisions and that he didn't have as much control over the early stuff in the first place, so I'm not sure how good an analogy it is (compared to a franchise where the creators have been working with the stuff for years and have the structure in place to actually carry out their plans). We don't know what the method that Disney is planning for releasing the future Star Wars films, so we can't say how they'd handle future conflicts (for all we know, they would say: "No, we covered that in comic book #204, you need to do something else"). The fact though, that Episode 8 director Rian Johnson helped with the story for the Star Wars novel Bloodlines is telling, though, that their plan to make everything fit is more than just a publicity stunt to boost sales.
(I will concede you have more experience working with tie-ins than I ever will; I'm just basing this off of their track record so far, and that says that it's going to happen. My theory is that if there is a third reboot, it'll be a complete one, start back from square one and reimagine everything, like they do with each iteration of TMNT.)
Have the writers actually said that? I've never heard this before. (Now, I'm not defending the quality of the episode anywhere, here. I'm just asking if stomping over it was the best call.) But still, even other sloppy Star Trek shows are assumed to have really happened, no second guessing.
However, the relaunch could've remained consistent with the episode and still have the spirit intact. The Romulan War books could've been set between "Terra Prime" and "These Are the Voyages...," which would've allowed them to use Trip as a character (and have him as part of the crew like the show, and not by himself playing James Bond). I shouldn't speak fro Rise of the Federation, since that's your baby, but how much of it would be affected by Trip being dead? Some of it would, but the main idea (the Federation's early years as it tries to figure out what kind of government it's going to be) would seem to remain the same -- at least to this armchair critic.
So, I think both ways could've worked, the only question is which is the better story, and that will always be purely subjective.
But the relaunch changes the intent of the episode. We, the viewers, are supposed to assume that the episode tells the factual account. So, the books may keep canon from a certain point of view, but they're violating the spirit of the episode, changing how we're supposed to understand it. We might as well just not watch it and just read the book. And this is a franchise where the onscreen stuff is more important than the books.
There's a fine line between filling in holes and patching than overwriting another story. The ENT relaunch is the first to do that, as far as I can tell (I haven't got through "String Theory" yet, but I'd like to).
Like I've said before, I like that some of these alternate explanations are not in canon; I get to see the other possibility without changing the original sand castle. The thing for me, though, is that the changes to the story don't make it feel like an actual continuation of the TV show, but a continuation of a parallel universe version of the show, and I read this stuff to get the former.
So, I'm not trying to pick a fight or be argumentative (since I do like your writing overall). I'm just not a big fan of loose continuity in a franchise that's built on a strong internal consistency and little changes taking something farther away from the source material; I've seen how Marvel did that to Spider-Man, rendering it into something that bears no resemblance to the real thing now.
Oh, lots of fictional characters are believed to be dead by the general public. Will Eisner's classic comics hero The Spirit was a policeman who was believed dead and used that anonymity to become a masked vigilante. Knight Rider had a very similar setup for its protagonist, who was officially considered dead but had actually been given a new face and identity in the pilot episode. There's the '70s The Incredible Hulk: "David Banner is believed to be dead, and he must let the world think that he is dead until" yada yada. In recent DC comics, Dick Grayson (Robin/Nightwing) faked his death and became a secret agent headlining a comic called Grayson. There was a story arc on Charmed where the lead characters faked their death at the end of one season and then used a magic glamour to disguise themselves as new people for the following season. And so on. So being believed dead absolutely does not require "retiring" a character.
No. Again, decanonizing a story is not something that gets announced proudly with blaring fanfare and spotlights. It's done quietly by just pretending the story never happened and hoping people don't notice. Almost every TOS episode has been referenced again somewhere. But aside from keeping the name "dilithium," no subsequent Trek episode or movie in any franchise has ever acknowledged that "The Alternative Factor" ever happened. Similarly, later canon has not only contradicted ST V in some ways, it's also never acknowledged it. Novelists have even been allowed to blatantly contradict ST V, like when D.C. Fontana's Vulcan's Glory had Spock assert he was an only child, or when David Mack's The Body Electric portrayed the center of the galaxy in a manner consistent with real science, ignoring the whole Sha Ka Ree mess. And, again, the studio let them do that. Canons can and do ignore parts of themselves.
This is the fundamental mistake that people in the general public make about canon. "Canon" does not mean "this really happened." Of course it didn't "really" happen, it's fiction for Pete's sake. It's just pretend. And that means you can fix your mistakes by pretending they never happened. Almost every long-running canon will have stories in it that turned out so badly that the creators just swept them under the rug and quietly removed them from continuity. Canon is not synonymous with continuity. It just means the stories told by the original creators or copyright owners as distinct from stories told by other people. And either set of stories can be revised or retconned or rethought, because that's the difference between fiction and reality.
Like I said, intent will not magically make it happen. It's been tried before and it's turned out to be a lot harder than people thought. And you're out of your mind if you think that the makers of a multigazillion-dollar movie are going to shut down a great story idea just because it contradicts a detail in a years-old comic that only a few thousand people read. No. If the moviemakers are determined to tell their story that way, if that's what the movie needs, then they will be given freedom to contradict the comic, and the tie-ins will just have to make up some kind of retcon. The movies are where the money is. They're the juggernaut, and the tie-ins are following along behind as best they can. They are by no means equal in importance.
Straczynski did have approval over the Dell novels, of course, because it was his show. But he was also busy making the show at the time, and that left him a limited amount of time to supervise the novels. The reason the later Del Rey novels could be kept consistent with canon is because the show was over by that point, so JMS actually had the time to devote his full attention to it.
However hard the Disney "machine" may try to keep everything consistent, the people in charge are the people making the movies. And they don't have the time to micromanage every tie-in. That's being delegated to other people who will try their best, I'm sure, to coordinate everything, but who are still secondary to the core decision-makers of the movies. This is just how it works.
I never said it was "just a publicity stunt." Don't twist my words. What I said was that, even with the most sincere intentions to make it work, it's just not practical to keep a tie-in line perfectly consistent with an ongoing screen series, because the demands of the screen series must take priority and the tie-ins must therefore be delegated to others, and that means some inconsistencies are all but inevitable even if everyone tries their very hardest to avoid them. You're saying the intent is there, and I don't dispute that. I'm saying that the intent does not guarantee success. The intent was there just as strongly in earlier cases, and those cases failed. Don't devalue the intentions of those earlier creators just because they didn't have the magical power to guarantee that reality would reshape itself to their wishes.
"So far" is exactly the issue. At this point, there's little enough "new canon" that it's relatively easy to keep it all straight. But as more and more of it accumulates over the years -- and as more and more people move on and get replaced and new people come in with their own ideas and possibly a less than complete understanding of their predecessors' view of things -- then even with the most diligent and committed effort, inconsistencies will become increasingly difficult to avoid.
Could've. Didn't. You can always say that a work of fiction could've gone differently, but so what? If there were only one inevitable way to tell a story, why would even need creativity? Different creators have different ideas, different intentions. If I'd been hired to write the first post-finale ENT novel, I'm sure I would've approached it differently than Andy & Mike did. If Dave Mack had been hired to do it, he would've done it in yet another completely different way. There are a hundred different ways it could've been done, and each of us would've had our own approach. But Andy & Mike were the ones hired to do it, and they did what they did. That was their job. They were the ones who got hired to make that call. If CBS hadn't been okay with their choice, they wouldn't have approved the outline.
Not my call. If I want the complete freedom to establish the ground rules, I write original fiction -- and even there, I limit myself to realistic physics and astronomy. When I do tie-ins, I'm starting out with a given set of assumptions and starting conditions and my responsibility is to work within them. My job was to continue the story Andy & Mike started. That's what I've done.
And sometimes stories do that. "Crossover" arguably changed the intent of "Mirror, Mirror" by showing that Goatee Spock's revolution didn't turn out all that well. Later DS9 changed the intent of "Emissary" by elevating the wormhole aliens to literal deities who'd been watching over Bajor for millennia rather than extradimensional aliens who didn't even understand the concept of corporeal existence and linear time. This is just something that stories do. Fiction is a dialogue between past and present. Writers respond to the work of the writers who came before them, sometimes by reinforcing it, other times by critiquing or challenging or changing it. That's just part of what makes creativity dynamic.
What a disturbing thing to say. Stories aren't meant to compel viewers to blindly accept a single interpretation! Good grief, what a horrific notion! Stories are supposed to encourage people to think. To broaden their minds and wonder and question, not be passive, submissive zombies. I mean, hell, how would I have ever become a tie-in writer if seeing the episodes didn't inspire me to ask questions and read between the lines?
An episode whose own writers have acknowledged that it was a bad idea. So why should we value its spirit over the spirit of the rest of the series? Some stories don't deserve to be adhered to. It's not healthy to insist that mistakes should be given equal weight to successes. We can't improve if we remain shackled to our mistakes.
I've read pretty much the entire run of Amazing Spider-Man up through a few years ago, and a lot of what's come since, and I've seen Spidey's story change in many ways over the decades. "The real thing" has never been just one thing. I think the recent stuff from Dan Slott has been mostly excellent.
Yeah, faking death can work in fiction. I guess I'm just not sure how the ENT would've chosen to undo Trip's death in the event of renewal, since everyone believed in the future that he died at that specific point, and still keeping it plausible that he was still a regular character on the show.
Well, the official Star Trek websites and reference materials treat every episode has having happened (even if there are a few inconsistencies), and just because the events of a specific episode are never mentioned in dialogue doesn't mean that the episode is supposed to be "forgotten" or considered to have not "really" happened. Since books aren't part of the official canon, they can do their own thing, since it doesn't affect the "real" stuff.
Yeah, people have used the word "canon" to both mean "stories told by the copyright owners" and "this is reality in the fictional world, or continuity." (I've been told that a lot of squabbling in the Star Wars fan base over the validity of the reboot is because the Wars franchise Powers That Be used the word for different purposes when making official statements). However, at this point, I think it's safe to say that "canon" has taken on both meanings (languages do change over time and this one has become rooted already) and you need to use common sense about what people mean. (I've been using the word as a concise way to say "the stuff that 'really' happened and I think my thoughts have been made clear.) Besides, even if people are misusing the word, it doesn't disprove the opinion or argument.
And I do get that fiction stuff never really happened. I'm just analyzing it within the context of it's own setting; what "really" happened in the fictional world. I find that fun.
Sorry about twisting what you were saying. Only time will tell how long Disney will keep their plans for Star Wars intact. I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt do so far mostly because they've kept to it, have shown that they're thinking long-term to keep things working, and this's the first time that the franchise has been committed to this form of canon (most of the reasons for the earlier bugs was that the company members disagreed on how to handle the tie-ins). I'm as curious as you if and when they reach a point where the new canon is as patched up as the old one was.
Yeah, I won't argue with this, since I agree with it, even if I'm not the biggest fan of the decision made.
All right, I respect that.
But "Mirror, Mirror" never said what mirror Spock decides (and a lot of the sequel stories in TV and the tie-ins came up with different answers that were equally valid at the time of their creation). I don't mind retcons that add information. Ones that say, forget about that, this is the real deal, are ones that I have a harder time accepting.
I probably didn't explain myself very well. Fiction should always inspire thinking. But if the foundation of the story is so shaky that we're questioning if the story is an accurate representation of its own events, then we're being asked the wrong questions (unless that's part of the point of the story, like say 1984). Case in point, the TNG show "The Drumhead" is supposed to be a thinking piece, but within the context of the story we're not supposed to be asking if Adm. Satie was lying about her involvement in uncovering the season one bluegil conspiracy.
I'm not sure what the theme of "These Are the Voyages..." was, but I'm sure when the episode was filmed, we weren't supposed to watch with the assumption that Trip dying was falsified info. The books are within their rights to ask what if he didn't die, but that's not the story that the episode was intending to tell. As I mentioned before, probing deeper is fine, but if we're supposed to be questioning the axioms of the story itself, how can we analyze it correctly? If the TV show's story is so loosey goosey that anything can be thrown out at the drop of a hat, why should I trust the people making them that it's supposed to be part of the same story?
I like the X-Men movies as much as anyone, but that series is constantly changing its mind about what counts and what doesn't, to the point that the series beyond the original four movies doesn't hold up as a single entity, which was the point of making it one series in the first place. I mean, at what point do you draw the line?
Some of the best stories in franchises have been taking the bad elements and making them good in later installments without throwing them out. The Klingon Augment Virus arc from ENT redeemed both the original ENT Augment episodes and fixed the problem between the TOS and TNG/DS9/VGR/ENT Klingons.
And sometimes "correcting" a mistake makes the situation worse. In the Jurassic Park novels, the second book claims that the "T. Rex can only see moving things" idea from the first book (and the movies) was bogus, despite the first novel not only establishing that as a fact, but also explaining why (if my memory is correct). A change like that undermines the illusion that these two stories fit together. How do you, as an author, know when changing something is okay and when it's better to leave alone or just not mention the contentious stuff at all? (I'm asking as a curious reader, not as a debater in this case.)
But the "real thing" was always a (mostly) organic evolution from the basic concept, where I have a hard time seeing how the current comics have anything to do with the power and responsibility theme that's the central idea of this character. I've tried to read Dan Slott's stuff I and I loathe it. The problem for me is that everything from "One More Day" onwards has stripped everything I liked about the character from the series. The main thing that makes Spider-Man appeal to me over other superheroes is that he otherwise leads a normal life compared to the antics of his superhero life.
The fact that he was married, had a middle-class job, at best, was a bit of an outsider in the superhero community, and had bad publicity, made him distinct from all the other characters. Taking those elements away has lead to the character becoming an Iron Man clone. If I wanted to read about Iron Man stuff, I'd read Iron Man, I read Spider-Man to read about Peter Parker doing Spider-Man stuff. There's no value in it for me, anymore.
I've noticed that Slott's writing tends to run out of steam at the end, but I think most of my beef with his stuff is that he's not working within the traditional framework of the franchise. I really like his Renew Your Vows mini series, which was a return to the traditional set-up of the character, so I think if he had been tasked with writing that setting rather than being given leeway to do whatever he wanted, I'd probably think he was a decent author, too.
It's fine if you like the current direction (IDIC after all).
P.S. Thanks for having patience with this fan who doesn't know all the behind the scenes stuff about creating fiction on this scale.
I'm not saying it was a perfect plan. I don't think anyone would say that about any aspect of TATV. I'm just saying that's it's pretty normal for writers to give themselves a way out when they kill a character, and if you analyze it on the level of writing technique and choices, it seems pretty clear to me that TATV was designed with an escape hatch in place.
Again, people don't generally like to advertise it when they sweep a bad episode under the rug. Series fiction relies on the illusion of a consistent reality. But sometimes that illusion is maintained by quietly ignoring a past mistake and just pretending it all still holds together. It's the fans who get all fixated on what's "real" in an imaginary universe. That's because they only see it as a fixed end product and expect it to remain fixed. But creators see it as the end result of a long process of trial and error and evolution, and so the "reality" of it all looks a lot more tenuous and mutable from our end. We're not historians presenting an authoriative scholarly account, we're magicians trying to sell an illusion and hoping you don't look closely enough to see the cards up our sleeves. What I'm saying is that if you look beneath the surface claims, it's evident from practice that some episodes are effectively disregarded.
No. You're still not getting it. It's the opposite of this. Only canon has the freedom to do its own thing. The books are required to stay consistent with the canon. The only reason TGTMD's retcon of TATV was even possible was because TATV itself made it possible by presenting the events as a simulation after the fact. If TATV hadn't left that opening, if it had shown Trip's death in "real time," then the books would've had no choice but to accept it as fact. All the novels did was take advantage of the opening the episode itself created.
Fans use it in the latter sense because they have the luxury of doing so. Creators are the ones building the illusion, working with the machinery behind the scenes, and so we have to have a clearer sense of how mutable it really is -- and how mutable it needs to be at times, especially if we realize we've made mistakes and need to try to fix them. Keeping it all consistent is the ideal, sure, but perfection is impossible, and sometimes a correction after the fact is called for.
Of course that was the intent, but as I said, that doesn't mean they didn't leave in some wiggle room. Series writing is an unpredictable business. So even if you write a story with a specific intent, you often leave in just enough of an escape hatch that you can retcon it later if you need to. Arthur Conan Doyle intended to kill off Sherlock Holmes for good in "The Final Problem," but he conveniently wrote it so that the death happened "offscreen" and was only presumed, which made it easy to reveal years later that Holmes had faked his death. And a lot of people believe Doyle wrote it that way on purpose just in case. It doesn't mean the original intent didn't exist -- it just meant that there was a Plan B, a way out if it became necessary.
"Correctly?" There's no "correctly." This isn't a math test. Analyzing fiction is subjective.
And no, I'm not saying every meaning needs to be thrown out. I'm saying there's room for it if there's a valid story reason for it. There shouldn't be the kind of rigid, absolute restrictions that you seem to want. Heck, even in real life, it's important to keep an open mind and realize that your conclusions about the world might be wrong, might need to be revised if further information comes along. That doesn't mean you're not allowed to believe in anything, it just means you need to avoid becoming inflexible. Go with the preponderance of evidence, don't assume facts not in evidence, but don't close your mind to new evidence that might alter your conclusions.
Because nobody should be forbidden to correct a mistake. The T. rex thing wasn't just a matter of storytelling, it was a scientific fact that was wrong. If a writer incorrectly says that, say, New York City is the capital of New York State, should they be forbidden to correct it to Albany in the next installment? Writers are human. We goof up. Why should we be deprived of the right to correct our mistakes like everyone else? One of the worst attitudes in society today is this belief that people who make mistakes should deny them and double down on them rather than admitting and fixing them. Fixing your mistakes is the only way to improve. Writers who goof up should get to fix their goofs. It happens all the time. Vonda McIntyre depicted CPR wrong in her Wrath of Khan novelization, so in her Search for Spock novelization she had the character abashed that he did it wrong and almost killed the person he was trying to save. Heck, sometimes you can get a whole new story out of fixing a mistake. Larry Niven wrote The Ringworld Engineers because his readers pointed out to him that the Ringworld was dynamically unstable, so he wrote a book explaining how it maintained stability.
You talk about the change "undermining the illusion," but you're forgetting again that the reader is not a passive absorber. It's called willing suspension of disbelief because you choose to do it. Something only undermines the illusion if you let it, if you refuse to play along. If you understand that the writer is correcting a mistake, that it should never have been done X way in the first place, then you forgive the inconsistency and accept the revised version as the more accurate one.
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