Enterprise : The First Adventure out of sync with canon

[JWolf]

#Why was Enterprise : The First Adventure allowed to be so out of sync with canon? It has McCoy as chief medical officer on Kirk's first mission and it has Sulu as the helmsman. We saw in TOS that McCoy was not the chief medical officer on Kirk's first mission as captain of the Enterprise and we know Sulu was in a different department before becoming helmsman. So why did the powers that be allow such glaring in your face errors to be written?

 

[Dayton Ward]

Because it was written and published in a time before such things as "canon" were a consideration, and less attention was paid by Paramount/Roddenberry/etc as to what went into the books. One of the last, actually. They were wholly separate from the television series and films (all three of 'em!). It wasn't until TNG came along that more attention was focused on tie-in products like books, comics, etc. to conform to the wishes of a more "involved" license holder.

I haven't read the book in ages, but weren't explanations offered for all the apparent discrepancies?

Also, and just to muddy the waters even further, there's nothing in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" that indicates it's Kirk's first mission. Plenty of wiggle room to address the book's YATIs.




(YATI = Yet Another Trek Inconsistency)

 

[Christopher]

^^Quite right. If anything, "Where No Man" makes it pretty clear that Kirk and his crew have been serving together for some time, Dehner being the only exception.

Presumably, McIntyre was trying to write a novel that would appeal to general audiences who were familiar with (or interested in) McCoy rather than Piper, Uhura rather than Alden, helmsman Sulu rather than astrophysicist Sulu, Chekov rather than Mitchell, Rand rather than Smith. So McCoy was onboard from the start, Mitchell was injured and unavailable, etc. Perhaps a disappointing choice for those who would've liked to get to know the second-pilot cast better, but a satisfying one for those who were more comfortable with the established cast.

It would appear that the new movie is going the same route, since all the "big seven" are in the movie but there's no sign of a Mitchell or Kelso or Alden. It's an understandable choice for a work meant to appeal to a broad audience, and it's not impossible to reconcile with what we know. Heck, Mike Barr's "First Mission" comic book from DC had McCoy onboard at the start, though it mentioned that he'd subsequently be taking a leave of absence with Piper taking his place.

 

[Csalem]

This is one of the books I read last year and based on memory I think Piper has a cameo. Kirk contacts him while trying to locate McCoy IIRC.

 

[Therin of Andor]

JWolf said:
Why was Enterprise : The First Adventure allowed to be so out of sync with canon?

This novel, the first "giant" MMPB, was written to celebrate the 20th anniversy of Star Trek, and Vonda McInytre was asked to present the cast that the public was celebrating about. The argument being, that casual fans would buy a novel about TOS in the media frenzy for the anniversary and expect to see the main TOS cast. McIntyre did cover most of her set-ups with explanations - eg. she'd already added Chekov to the first season cast in the novelization of ST II - but her choices (about who else was already aboard when Kirk arrived) were at odds with Mike Barr's choices in his first DC comic annual, which was being written at the same time. A shame, because Pocket and DC had already attempted several brainstorms about interconnections on previous works.

It was fans asking Gene Roddenberry and the stars at conventions things like, "Why did Kirk do this in (certain episode/movie) when we know that in (certain novel) the opposite had already happened?" - even worse with questions about "Enterprise: The First Adventure" because Roddenberry had acclaimed it on the back cover - which led to the Star Trek Office creating its policy on "ST canon".

Other sticking points included the Rihanssu debates, and FASA slipping a few manuals out without the proper Star Trek Office vetting taking place.

Towards the end of TNG Season One, in the middle of TNG's writing team continuing to shuffle about like a revolving door, all ST tie-in licensing contracts were renegotiated, and new restrictions came in for 1989. The birth of "What is canon?"

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

JWolf said: We saw in TOS that McCoy was not the chief medical officer on Kirk's first mission as captain of the Enterprise

Not necessarily. McCoy could have been on leave, with Piper filling in as a replacement.

and we know Sulu was in a different department before becoming helmsman.

Officers *can* transfer to different departments, you know.

 

[JWolf]

Babaganoosh said:

JWolf said: We saw in TOS that McCoy was not the chief medical officer on Kirk's first mission as captain of the Enterprise

Not necessarily. McCoy could have been on leave, with Piper filling in as a replacement.

and we know Sulu was in a different department before becoming helmsman.

Officers *can* transfer to different departments, you know.

But, Sulu was transferred to the Enterprise as helmsman. When we clearly saw in the TV series that he was originally in astrophysics.

As for Piper, it does make more sense for him to still be onboard after the change of command and then go for retirement after.

 

[KRAD]

There were several things that threw me about E:TFA. I got why McCoy and Uhura were there -- leaving aside any other considerations, seeing the early days of the McCoy-Spock feud was worth the cover price of the book all by itself -- and why Sulu was at the helm and why Mitchell's role was reduced to a cameo, but I never understood why Lee Kelso was missing, instead giving us the rather pointless character of Marietta Cheung.

Also, in retrospect, it didn't make any sense that Scotty and Uhura served under Christopher Pike (something also postulated by Mike Barr in the similar comic book), because if they had, wouldn't they have been involved in the events of "The Menagerie" in some way? The way the frame of "The Menagerie" was set up, Spock really had to be the only member of the Enterprise crew who served under Pike.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

KRAD said:
Also, in retrospect, it didn't make any sense that Scotty and Uhura served under Christopher Pike (something also postulated by Mike Barr in the similar comic book), because if they had, wouldn't they have been involved in the events of "The Menagerie" in some way? The way the frame of "The Menagerie" was set up, Spock really had to be the only member of the Enterprise crew who served under Pike.

I would have to agree with that. The problem was made worse by DC Fontana's Vulcan's Glory novel, which has Scotty signing onto the Enterprise at the same time Spock does. It seems that if this were the case Spock could have called Scotty as a witness during The Menagerie to at least confirm that some of the events in the Talosian broadcast were real.

I was also bothered by the fact that Spock is established as Kirk's First Officer during this time. While I can understand him taking the role while Mitchell was still in the hospital, I also think that Micthell was very obviously First Officer in Where No Man Has Gone Before (it is he that announces to the Captain that the Dept Heads had been assembled, which seems like something the XO would be doing). But I know thats a bit of a contraversy among some.

 

[C.E. Evans]

The odd thing about "Enterprise: The First Adventure" is that it's in sync with James Blish's adaptation of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" written many years earlier.

-Piper is listed as a temporary replacement for McCoy while he was on leave from the ship.
-Sulu is mentioned as moving from helm to astrophysics.
-Mitchell is more or less someone who wasn't on the ship originally but became very popular with the crew since coming aboard.
-I think (but I'm not sure) that Alden was said to be a temp for Uhura.

Like I said, it's odd...

 

[KRAD]

I was also bothered by the fact that Spock is established as Kirk's First Officer during this time. While I can understand him taking the role while Mitchell was still in the hospital, I also think that Micthell was very obviously First Officer in Where No Man Has Gone Before (it is he that announces to the Captain that the Dept Heads had been assembled, which seems like something the XO would be doing). But I know thats a bit of a contraversy among some.

Actually, we went back and forth on this when we were plotting out Mere Anarchy (the first installment of which takes place prior to "Where No Man Has Gone Before"), because there's evidence in "WNMHGB" to support both notions -- that Spock was the first officer and that Mitchell was. One biggie in support of Spock was that he was wearing command gold rather than sciences blue, even though he was identified as the science officer in the episode. Ultimately, we went with that, with Mitchell as second officer, because Spock was acting like an XO in the episode....

 

[Christopher]

C.E. Evans said:
The odd thing about "Enterprise: The First Adventure" is that it's in sync with James Blish's adaptation of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" written many years earlier.

-Piper is listed as a temporary replacement for McCoy while he was on leave from the ship.
-Sulu is mentioned as moving from helm to astrophysics.
-Mitchell is more or less someone who wasn't on the ship originally but became very popular with the crew since coming aboard.
-I think (but I'm not sure) that Alden was said to be a temp for Uhura.

Well, Blish did that because he did the adaptation fairly late in the series and needed to justify why the cast was different than it was in previous tales. Also, WNMHGB was the third episode to be aired, and showed up in that order in syndication packages for the first couple of decades, so to most viewers it must have seemed as though the established cast abruptly changed for a week and then went back again. (Also the uniforms, sets, and equipment changed, but none of those would've been evident in Blish's adaptation.)

What McIntyre did had different reasons behind it. She was writing from the assumption that WNMHGB took place before the rest of the series, but she still chose to do a book that featured the characters the readers were most familiar with. So that also, independently, led to the interpretation that the crew in WNM had gone through some temporary changes from the familiar bunch. (An interpretation that's likely to become canonical with the new movie.)

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

KRAD said:
Actually, we went back and forth on this when we were plotting out Mere Anarchy (the first installment of which takes place prior to "Where No Man Has Gone Before"), because there's evidence in "WNMHGB" to support both notions -- that Spock was the first officer and that Mitchell was. One biggie in support of Spock was that he was wearing command gold rather than sciences blue, even though he was identified as the science officer in the episode. Ultimately, we went with that, with Mitchell as second officer, because Spock was acting like an XO in the episode....

I had forgotten about him wearing a command division shirt in that episode. My only question is if he was wearing it because he was First Officer then why did he never wear it again?

Having said that, I really can't fault your interpretation. Since nobody was actually called "First Officer" it is a bit up in the air.

 

[foravalon]

EliyahuQeoni said:
I had forgotten about him wearing a command division shirt in that episode. My only question is if he was wearing it because he was First Officer then why did he never wear it again?

My guess is that when the uniforms changed and the Red Shirts were introduced (I wonder if the number of landing party deaths was lower before this?) that more specificity regarding department identification was introduced. Did the WNMHGB uniforms have specific department emblems as they later uniforms did? I can't recall. But I am given to understand that the practice of having a first officer simultaneously filling the role of science officer may not have been a conventional one. Thus, Spock may have viewed his expertise as a science officer as having precedence over his role as a first officer and petitioned the quartermaster accordingly. Just a two bit theory.

 

[Therin of Andor]

KRAD said:
it didn't make any sense that Scotty and Uhura served under Christopher Pike (something also postulated by Mike Barr in the similar comic book)

I'm sure I recall Uhura arriving fresh in Barr's "All Those Years Ago...", with the male bridge officers whispering their approval.

 

[Saul]

JWolf said:
#Why was Enterprise : The First Adventure allowed to be so out of sync with canon? It has McCoy as chief medical officer on Kirk's first mission and it has Sulu as the helmsman. We saw in TOS that McCoy was not the chief medical officer on Kirk's first mission as captain of the Enterprise and we know Sulu was in a different department before becoming helmsman. So why did the powers that be allow such glaring in your face errors to be written?

Because it was a pilot episode and many things were changed after the second pilot in an effort to polish things up for the full series. Not everything was fully established and developed even in the first few episodes of Season 1 you can see Spock been a little more emotional and impish with a little smile.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Christopher said:

C.E. Evans said:
The odd thing about "Enterprise: The First Adventure" is that it's in sync with James Blish's adaptation of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" written many years earlier.

-Piper is listed as a temporary replacement for McCoy while he was on leave from the ship.
-Sulu is mentioned as moving from helm to astrophysics.
-Mitchell is more or less someone who wasn't on the ship originally but became very popular with the crew since coming aboard.
-I think (but I'm not sure) that Alden was said to be a temp for Uhura.

Well, Blish did that because he did the adaptation fairly late in the series and needed to justify why the cast was different than it was in previous tales. Also, WNMHGB was the third episode to be aired, and showed up in that order in syndication packages for the first couple of decades, so to most viewers it must have seemed as though the established cast abruptly changed for a week and then went back again. (Also the uniforms, sets, and equipment changed, but none of those would've been evident in Blish's adaptation.)

What McIntyre did had different reasons behind it. She was writing from the assumption that WNMHGB took place before the rest of the series, but she still chose to do a book that featured the characters the readers were most familiar with. So that also, independently, led to the interpretation that the crew in WNM had gone through some temporary changes from the familiar bunch.

Yes, but all that makes the fact that these otherwise separate works fit together all the more an interesting coincidence. Unintentional synchronicity, if you well...

 

[Turbo]

Of course, there's always the possibility that Vonda McIntyre had read the James Blish novelization at some point and decided to use several of the same retcons.

 

[Holytomato]

Vulcan's Glory says that Scotty and Spock arrive on the Enterprise at the same time. Great stuff.

Oh ya, Piper was never said to be the Enterprise's CMO when Kirk became her captain. Nope. That's CANON tm.

For Star Trek XI, no Violation of Canon tm complaints will be made about Spock being a Vulcan instead of a Martian, Kirk having a T. instead of an R., and Sulu being the Helm officer instead of astrophics.

Nope. Not going to happen.

But...

Uhura wearing P A N T S will be a Violation of Canon tm.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Therin of Andor said:

KRAD said:
it didn't make any sense that Scotty and Uhura served under Christopher Pike (something also postulated by Mike Barr in the similar comic book)

I'm sure I recall Uhura arriving fresh in Barr's "All Those Years Ago...", with the male bridge officers whispering their approval.

Yeah, the page before that also had Uhura turning down a marriage proposal and excepting the posting to the Enterprise. She is seen at the change of command by Sulu and Kelso, who, as you stated, whispered their approval. Sulu tells Kelso that's their new comm officer, while Kelso states that he'd like to open "hailing frequencies."