Final Frontier by Diane Carey

[Garth Rockett]

I recently reread Diane Carey's Final Frontier for the first time since I originally read it circa 1988-89. It was the first Star Trek novel I read and at the time, I had probably seen less than five episodes of TOS (I had become a fan through the movies and TNG, and none of my local stations were running the original episodes at that time). While I enjoyed the book both times, needless to say I got a lot more out of it this time.

As I re-read it, I began thinking about a few things in the novel that aren't necessarily "canon compatible" these days, and was hoping to tap the collective memory and opinions on the board for some more insight.

1. The Rihannsu. I honestly can't remember what I made of this the first time through - I'm certain that I wouldn't have known Rihannsu = Romulan until halfway through the book, when the Enterprise encounters them and the term "Romulan" appears. Of course, I also hadn't seen "Balance of Terror" the first time I read it, so there were a lot of things about the Romulans that would have gone over my head. However, I got to thinking about the whole Rihannsu thing this time around. When did that name for the Romulans first appear? Did it originate with Diane Duane's novels or did it precede that, either in other novels or in fan circles? I know Blish's adaptation of "Balance of Terror" says that they don't call themselves Romulans, so the seed for another name had been planted early on. I'm just curious when this particular name first arose.

2. The dating of George Kirk's letters to Jim (2183) and Robert April turning over command of the Enterprise to Pike (2192). These dates are based off the Spaceflight Chronology, I believe, which was as official a Trek timeline as was available at the time. Prior to TNG's "The Neutral Zone" locking the timeline into some specific dating, the Spaceflight Chronology made a lot of sense. However, by the time this book was written (1987), that timeline had taken a serious blow with Kirk's statement that he was from the "late" 23rd century in TVH. Does anyone remember what the prevailing thoughts were on reconciling Kirk's line with previous assumptions on the timeline? Was the Spaceflight Chronology already being considered obsolete in many quarters?

3. Does anyone remember fandom's general reactions to the Enterprise's skeleton crew becoming aware of what Romulans actually looked like? Top secret mission or not, I would think that someone would have said something to Starfleet Command if no one else, and given that, would expect command-grade officers whose duties would (or could) take them near the Neutral Zone (like Kirk) to be briefed on such an important bit of intel.

I had a lot of fun re-reading this one. I'm going to have to break out some of my other old Trek novels and give them another read soon.

 

[Christopher]

1. The Rihannsu. I honestly can't remember what I made of this the first time through - I'm certain that I wouldn't have known Rihannsu = Romulan until halfway through the book, when the Enterprise encounters them and the term "Romulan" appears. Of course, I also hadn't seen "Balance of Terror" the first time I read it, so there were a lot of things about the Romulans that would have gone over my head. However, I got to thinking about the whole Rihannsu thing this time around. When did that name for the Romulans first appear? Did it originate with Diane Duane's novels or did it precede that, either in other novels or in fan circles? I know Blish's adaptation of "Balance of Terror" says that they don't call themselves Romulans, so the seed for another name had been planted early on. I'm just curious when this particular name first arose.

It was indeed coined by Diane Duane in My Enemy, My Ally in 1984.

2. The dating of George Kirk's letters to Jim (2183) and Robert April turning over command of the Enterprise to Pike (2192). These dates are based off the Spaceflight Chronology, I believe, which was as official a Trek timeline as was available at the time. Prior to TNG's "The Neutral Zone" locking the timeline into some specific dating, the Spaceflight Chronology made a lot of sense. However, by the time this book was written (1987), that timeline had taken a serious blow with Kirk's statement that he was from the "late" 23rd century in TVH. Does anyone remember what the prevailing thoughts were on reconciling Kirk's line with previous assumptions on the timeline? Was the Spaceflight Chronology already being considered obsolete in many quarters?

If anything, the SFC interpretation was the minority view all along. Repeating what I said in an earlier thread:

Many fan reference works put TOS in the 2260s, including the 1980 Star Trek Maps -- the Introduction to Navigation booklet that accompanied the maps said that Cochrane invented warp drive in 2050, that the Romulan War and the "Archon class" were in the 2160s, and that the "time barrier" was broken in 2243. And all its references to TOS episodes place them in 2261-63. The fan-made Federation Reference Series, by TrekBBS member aridas sofia, also used this scheme, putting the Organian conflict in 2261 and the change to TMP uniforms in '66. The '77 Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual from Eileen Palestine, Geoffrey Mandel, and Doug Drexler puts the destruction of Ingraham B and the discovery of the Horta somewhere around 2260 in its rough medical timeline chart. Drexler and Mandel's 1980 Enterprise Officer's Manual puts Kirk's birth in 2229 (which would put "The Deadly Years" in 2263, a slight discrepancy), "Where No Man" just after 2260, and Kirk's promotion to admiral in 2265. (It puts the loss of the Valiant in 2071, by the way.) The '87 Ships of the Star Fleet Volume 1 puts ST:TMP in 2267... and ST III in 2287, which I guess is their attempt to reconcile with Morrow's "20 years old" line, but makes no sense otherwise.

Indeed, other than the Spaceflight Chronology, the only pre-TNG tech manual/reference-type works I can find that use the earlier dating scheme are the ones by Lora Johnson (known as Shane Johnson at the time -- she's recently transitioned). Both Johnson's 1985 Uniform Recognition Manual and the '87 Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise put the end of the 5-year mission in 2212 and TMP in 2217, oddly enough -- and even more oddly, the latter puts TVH in 2222, which doesn't add up at all.

3. Does anyone remember fandom's general reactions to the Enterprise's skeleton crew becoming aware of what Romulans actually looked like? Top secret mission or not, I would think that someone would have said something to Starfleet Command if no one else, and given that, would expect command-grade officers whose duties would (or could) take them near the Neutral Zone (like Kirk) to be briefed on such an important bit of intel.

I only know my own reaction, which was that it seemed to stretch the limits of canon a bit much.

 

[Stevil2001]

FASA used the Spaceflight Chronology dates for its RPG materials, too, right?

I remember being a young lad who couldn't figure out why the dates in Final Frontier didn't match with my Star Trek Chronology.

 

[Christopher]

FASA used the Spaceflight Chronology dates for its RPG materials, too, right?

I get that impression from Memory Beta.

 

[Garth Rockett]

If anything, the SFC interpretation was the minority view all along. Repeating what I said in an earlier thread:

I didn't realize that. Thanks for the info, and the link to the other thread. I wasn't in fandom at the time those works were published, and haven't gotten them. I had just assumed that the SFC was generally accepted prior to "The Neutral Zone" based on things I'd read here and there.

I only know my own reaction, which was that it seemed to stretch the limits of canon a bit much.

Agreed.

 

[Christopher]

I had just assumed that the SFC was generally accepted prior to "The Neutral Zone" based on things I'd read here and there.

It seems to be better-known today than those other references, for whatever reason. Perhaps it's because its timeline was also used by FASA and some of the novels, so it gets more attention on Memory Beta and the like. But there were always two schools of thought. TNG didn't pull its dating assumptions out of thin air; they just chose the later of the two existing dating schemes. Arguably that scheme makes more sense, given the 2283 date for the Romulan ale in TWOK, and the 235 years between Cochrane's birth and "Metamorphosis."

 

[Desert Kris]

It was the first ST novel I kind of sort of read, when I was really little. I've read it properly two times since then. The first time around, I obviously had no inkling of the whole Rihannsu culture developed by Diane Duane. I also hadn't seen Balance of Terror, so I had no idea about the Vulcan/Romulan connection. So I was introduced to that concept by Final Frontier.

I really liked the whole setup of the Enterprise's maiden voyage under Captain Robert April, who came before Pike. Again, this was the first I learned about April. I was fascinated by the idea of the first, alternative crew of the Enterprise, and that set up brought me back for Best Destiny, hoping to see more of those characters (Best Destiny turned out quite different, but that's okay).

The second and third time I read through FF, I still was not familiar with the Rihannsu culture-concept. I'm armed with knowledge now, for the next time I read it.

 

[Garth Rockett]

But there were always two schools of thought. TNG didn't pull its dating assumptions out of thin air; they just chose the later of the two existing dating schemes.

Right - I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. Poor choice of phrasing on my part.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I really liked the whole setup of the Enterprise's maiden voyage under Captain Robert April, who came before Pike. Again, this was the first I learned about April.

That (along with April and his CMO being husband and wife) was established in TAS The Counter-Clock Incident, but it originated in Roddenberry's earliest series format drafts, and his earliest drafts of The Cage. April became Pike (with or without an intervening "Captain Winter"), who in turn became Kirk; then, The Menagerie, in order to use the existing pilot footage as an extended series of flashbacks, made Pike Kirk's canonical immediate predecessor, and so The Counter Clock Incident simply followed The Menagerie's lead.

 

[Avro Arrow]

It seems to be better-known today than those other references, for whatever reason. Perhaps it's because its timeline was also used by FASA and some of the novels, so it gets more attention on Memory Beta and the like.

Doesn't it make sense though, that FASA, the novels and Mr. Scott's Guide would use SFC dates, and it would be more well-known? It was the only officially licensed chronology at the time, so other licensed products probably used it then in much the same way that current licensed products tend to use the dates from The Star Trek Chronology.

Federation Reference Series, Enterprise Officer's Manual and Ships of the Star Fleet were all unlicensed, and the Medical Reference Manual predated the release of SFC. So it sounds like the only licensed work to use the 2260s dating after SFC's release is Star Trek Maps, and that really only came out eight months later, and I don't know how long it was in development.

So the SFC dates may have been the minority view, but it was basically the "official" view, so I guess I'm just not really surprised that other official products at the time tended to line up with it.

FWIW, Worlds of the Federation (1989), also by Lora Johnson, uses a lot of SFC historical references, and seems to use their dating system too. There doesn't seem to be anything in there that gives a specific year for anything that occurred in TOS, but it mentions the Romulan War lasted from 2106 to 2109, which is directly from SFC, and that would imply that BoT took place sometime in the first decade of the 2200s.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I think Lora said (either in an interview somewhere or here on TrekBBS) she was asked to use the Spaceflight Chronology/FASA dates when she wrote Mr Scott's Guide.

 

[Christopher]

Doesn't it make sense though, that FASA, the novels and Mr. Scott's Guide would use SFC dates, and it would be more well-known? It was the only officially licensed chronology at the time, so other licensed products probably used it then in much the same way that current licensed products tend to use the dates from The Star Trek Chronology.

Federation Reference Series, Enterprise Officer's Manual and Ships of the Star Fleet were all unlicensed, and the Medical Reference Manual predated the release of SFC. So it sounds like the only licensed work to use the 2260s dating after SFC's release is Star Trek Maps, and that really only came out eight months later, and I don't know how long it was in development.

So the SFC dates may have been the minority view, but it was basically the "official" view, so I guess I'm just not really surprised that other official products at the time tended to line up with it.

When talking about tie-ins, "official" doesn't mean "real." It's not some declaration that the content has some kind of canonical value or endorsement. Its only meaning is business-related, that the owners of the franchise have licensed its publication and that it can therefore be legally sold under the Star Trek label. Different "official" publications have often contradicted each other in many particulars, because it's never had anything to do with content, only the legal right to market the product.

And in the '80s, there was absolutely no policy in place requiring different licensed tie-ins to acknowledge each other in any way. There was a loose, strictly voluntary continuity that gradually developed among some of the Pocket novels in the later '80s, but that was the exception to the rule. The norm at the time was for each tie-in to go its own way. Authors only referenced other tie-ins if they wanted to. (Heck, it's still the same way today. The Pocket novelverse isn't compulsory, it's something that developed because the authors and editors enjoyed referencing each other's works.) And while some novels used the SFC dating scheme -- The Final Reflection and Final Frontier being the main ones -- I do seem to recall there were at least one or two others from that period that used a later scheme. I have a vague recollection of encountering that discrepancy and having to disregard date references in one or two books to reconcile them with my preferred scheme (which was essentially the SFC scheme until TNG debunked it -- although I never knew at the time that it came from the SFC, since I got it from one of the Best of Trek volumes).

The Chronology dating scheme was obligatory for authors to follow because it was the work of staffers on the shows in production, Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda, and so the studio licensing folks presumed it to represent the chronological assumptions that the shows' own producers were using, until proven otherwise. But at the time the SFC came out, the only member of its creative team who'd been connected with any screen production was Sternbach, an art department staffer on TMP and an artist on the SFC. And note that the SFC's dating assumptions directly contradict TMP. Will Decker said that Voyager 6 was lost over three centuries earlier, which would require TMP to take place sometime later than the 2270s (because Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in the 1970s -- indeed, allowing for the building of four more probes and the time it would've taken the probe to reach the black hole, it implies a date decades after the 2270s). The SFC put it in the 2210s. So clearly the SFC's dating assumptions did not represent any kind of "official," filmmaker-authorized chronology.

 

[Stevil2001]

When talking about tie-ins, "official" doesn't mean "real." It's not some declaration that the content has some kind of canonical value or endorsement. Its only meaning is business-related, that the owners of the franchise have licensed its publication and that it can therefore be legally sold under the Star Trek label. Different "official" publications have often contradicted each other in many particulars, because it's never had anything to do with content, only the legal right to market the product.

And in the '80s, there was absolutely no policy in place requiring different licensed tie-ins to acknowledge each other in any way. There was a loose, strictly voluntary continuity that gradually developed among some of the Pocket novels in the later '80s, but that was the exception to the rule. The norm at the time was for each tie-in to go its own way. Authors only referenced other tie-ins if they wanted to. (Heck, it's still the same way today. The Pocket novelverse isn't compulsory, it's something that developed because the authors and editors enjoyed referencing each other's works.) And while some novels used the SFC dating scheme -- The Final Reflection and Final Frontier being the main ones -- I do seem to recall there were at least one or two others from that period that used a later scheme. I have a vague recollection of encountering that discrepancy and having to disregard date references in one or two books to reconcile them with my preferred scheme (which was essentially the SFC scheme until TNG debunked it -- although I never knew at the time that it came from the SFC, since I got it from one of the Best of Trek volumes).

The Chronology dating scheme was obligatory for authors to follow because it was the work of staffers on the shows in production, Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda, and so the studio licensing folks presumed it to represent the chronological assumptions that the shows' own producers were using, until proven otherwise. But at the time the SFC came out, the only member of its creative team who'd been connected with any screen production was Sternbach, an art department staffer on TMP and an artist on the SFC. And note that the SFC's dating assumptions directly contradict TMP. Will Decker said that Voyager 6 was lost over three centuries earlier, which would require TMP to take place sometime later than the 2270s (because Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in the 1970s -- indeed, allowing for the building of four more probes and the time it would've taken the probe to reach the black hole, it implies a date decades after the 2270s). The SFC put it in the 2210s. So clearly the SFC's dating assumptions did not represent any kind of "official," filmmaker-authorized chronology.

I don't think @Avro Arrow argued any of the things you've spent three long paragraphs arguing against? I think he was just observing that most tie-ins that used dates used the SFC ones since it contained the only official ones (and not "official" in the sense of "real").

 

[Christopher]

I think he was just observing that most tie-ins that used dates used the SFC ones since it contained the only official ones (and not "official" in the sense of "real").

I don't agree with the premise of that last sentence, though. A few of the tie-ins used SFC dates -- mainly just The Final Reflection and Final Frontier/Best Destiny. It wasn't anything like a systematic pattern. One exception is Spock's World, which came out just 8 months after Final Frontier. Its Sarek chapter says that Sarek met Amanda Grayson sometime after the summer of 2212, that they were married after an unspecified period of getting to know each other, and that it took five years of genetic research and engineering to conceive Spock, not counting his gestation. So that would put Spock's birth no earlier than 2219, which would seem to put TOS in the 2250s, unless Duane was assuming Spock was in his 40s in TOS.

And Star Trek Maps was just as officially licensed as the SFC, and it used a different dating scheme. Okay, it was from Bantam rather than Pocket, but there's no basis to conclude that made a difference.

So officialness had nothing to do with it. Different authors used whatever schemes they individually chose, for their own reasons. It probably depended on what references they happened to have in their personal collections, or which scheme was favored by the fans they consulted with, or whatever.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I think Lora said (either in an interview somewhere or here on TrekBBS) she was asked to use the Spaceflight Chronology/FASA dates when she wrote Mr Scott's Guide.

The norm at the time was for each tie-in to go its own way. Authors only referenced other tie-ins if they wanted to.

If KDB's recollection is correct, these two statements would appear to contract each other.

 

[F. King Daniel]

If KDB's recollection is correct, these two statements would appear to contract each other.

Here's the quote from Lora

 

[Avro Arrow]

^ That's pretty definitive!

 

[Christopher]

If KDB's recollection is correct, these two statements would appear to contract each other.

Not necessarily. Johnson's quote refers to the policy at the time Mr. Scott's Guide was written, and that book came out in 1987. It doesn't tell us just how long that policy was in effect before then; as she said, matters were very much in flux at the time with TNG coming out, which was probably why Paramount Licensing was trying harder to define some kind of consistent standard. I'm taking a more global perspective, talking about the evolution of the chronology debate in the years before TNG, particularly the early '80s. After all, both the SFC and ST Maps came out in 1980.

And the fact that Spock's World was able to contradict the SFC dates in 1988 suggests that their "official" standing was not all that binding even at the time. Again, things were in flux. Paramount's "SFC is official" policy can't have lasted very long, since "The Neutral Zone" in 1988 blew the whole SFC dating scheme out of the water with a single throwaway line -- "By your calendar, two thousand three hundred sixty-four."

I think the problem is that fans today are so used to things like the Star Wars tie-ins where there's a top-down approach to maintaining a tight grip on tie-in continuity, so they expect the same thing to have been the case in the past. But it wasn't really. It used to be that studios couldn't care less about tie-in continuity; they just wanted the books and comics and toys and games and such to create attention for their franchises and bring in more money for them. They didn't start worrying about continuity until it became clear that fans were obsessed with it. So even to the extent that there may have been some effort to maintain consistency in Trek tie-ins in the later '80s, it was something that developed gradually and was a lot looser than the sort of thing fandom has come to expect today.

 

[Saul]

I really like this book, it has a nice prequely feel to it. I like Captain April and George Kirk working together and the Enterprise herself gets her due appreciation.

Top secret mission or not, I would think that someone would have said something to Starfleet Command if no one else, and given that, would expect command-grade officers whose duties would (or could) take them near the Neutral Zone (like Kirk) to be briefed on such an important bit of intel.

That's one of my problems with the ST:ENT Romulan War books. I don't think you can keep something like that covered up and it seems that starfleet purposely kept a lid on it all those years.

 

[Garth Rockett]

That's one of my problems with the ST:ENT Romulan War books. I don't think you can keep something like that covered up and it seems that starfleet purposely kept a lid on it all those years.

I haven't read those books yet. I recently bought the first one but haven't started it yet; I'm interested to see how they handle it but I suspect I'll come to the same conclusion you did.