What is this one? Are you saying the four-issue IDW Hive miniseries gets its own continuity?
That's... one crazy 'verse!
How many continuities are there in Trek Literature?
- Thread starter Extrocomp
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What is this one? Are you saying the four-issue IDW Hive miniseries gets its own continuity?
That's... one crazy 'verse!
They are what others call continuities, though.
That is, the term being applied to "a set of fictional works in a mutual shared universe" is a pretty common usage of the term, even if it's not one you apply yourself; and by the context of the first post, that's the usage that Extrocomp meant. Even if you object to that usage of the term (which is fair, I can see your usage as making sense too), why not just respond according to the meaning of the question rather than the specific wording?
Basically, Extrocomp wants to know: if you split up the set of all Trek Expanded Universe works into groups of works intended to be consistent with one another, how many groups bigger than a single book would you end up with?
Yeah, that seemed self-explanatory to me. Although I don't think I'd count miniseries like Hive or Dark Passions, because they're still single stories despite being told in separate installments. (Indeed, there are probably far more people -- myself included -- who've only experienced Hive as a single trade paperback than there are people who bought it as separate issues.) And if we included every standalone Trek tie-in, we'd have an enormously long list.
This is a great discussion and I have wanted to post for a while. Finally getting the chance to. With respect to the 80s continuity, which you have all done a nice job discussing....used to be at the point where I would try and read each trek story fitting all of them into the same universe, timeline, continuity....etc....
I am at the point now, where rationalizing things away makes little sense. Sometimes it works fine, and when it does, that is great. As much as it pains me, I think I moved over to the different reality/alternate timeline position. There are so many different interpretations of some of the same times (the first mission of the FYM, the last mission of the FYM, the events of the Lost Years, etc) and the 80s continuity is its own unique place.
I like to think of the main trek universe....the one we all follow and enjoy, as the primary thread. Any alternative stories or inconsistencies, at least for me, end up being strands or individual strings along that primary universe. Sometimes there are minor differences, or sometimes, like in the case of Black Fire, the differences lead to totally different events. I tend to think they are the same universe, but the moment page one starts to "unfold" an alternative possibility has started to play out.
Just my opinion, but the discussion of the 80s continuity got me thinking about how I view the timeline(s).
I've even go so far as thinking that many of the alternate timelines somehow wrap themselves back into the main continuity, which, for me is a nice way of thinking about it when newer novels reference older works. This way of looking at it probably wouldn't pass the "that couldn't have happened" camp under hard analysis, but oh well.
Forged in Fire referenced a mountain of material from the early books.
I am at the point now, where rationalizing things away makes little sense. Sometimes it works fine, and when it does, that is great. As much as it pains me, I think I moved over to the different reality/alternate timeline position. There are so many different interpretations of some of the same times (the first mission of the FYM, the last mission of the FYM, the events of the Lost Years, etc) and the 80s continuity is its own unique place.
I like to think of the main trek universe....the one we all follow and enjoy, as the primary thread. Any alternative stories or inconsistencies, at least for me, end up being strands or individual strings along that primary universe. Sometimes there are minor differences, or sometimes, like in the case of Black Fire, the differences lead to totally different events. I tend to think they are the same universe, but the moment page one starts to "unfold" an alternative possibility has started to play out.
Just my opinion, but the discussion of the 80s continuity got me thinking about how I view the timeline(s).
I've even go so far as thinking that many of the alternate timelines somehow wrap themselves back into the main continuity, which, for me is a nice way of thinking about it when newer novels reference older works. This way of looking at it probably wouldn't pass the "that couldn't have happened" camp under hard analysis, but oh well.
Forged in Fire referenced a mountain of material from the early books.
A while back, I basically decided that this was the way of looking at things that would prevent my eventual personal descent into "Trek madness" :
Onscreen Trek = "History"
Everything else (novels, comics, etc.) = "Historical fiction"
It's not all going to fit. It was never going to fit, and no amount of pushing, pulling, curling, twisting, and/or stuffing will ever make it all fit. But, there are stories from each of the various eras/platforms of Trek storytelling that I personally love for one reason or another, so jettisoning them for the sake of trying to manage a single "continuity" seemed silly. This is especially true of anything pertaining to the original series characters and the five-year mission era in particular. As I still like writing 5YM stories, I opted to quit worrying about that other stuff.
YMMV.
Onscreen Trek = "History"
Everything else (novels, comics, etc.) = "Historical fiction"
It's not all going to fit. It was never going to fit, and no amount of pushing, pulling, curling, twisting, and/or stuffing will ever make it all fit. But, there are stories from each of the various eras/platforms of Trek storytelling that I personally love for one reason or another, so jettisoning them for the sake of trying to manage a single "continuity" seemed silly. This is especially true of anything pertaining to the original series characters and the five-year mission era in particular. As I still like writing 5YM stories, I opted to quit worrying about that other stuff.
YMMV.
A while back, I basically decided that this was the way of looking at things that would prevent my eventual personal descent into "Trek madness" :
Onscreen Trek = "History"
Everything else (novels, comics, etc.) = "Historical fiction"
It's not all going to fit. It was never going to fit, and no amount of pushing, pulling, curling, twisting, and/or stuffing will ever make it all fit. But, there are stories from each of the various eras/platforms of Trek storytelling that I personally love for one reason or another, so jettisoning them for the sake of trying to manage a single "continuity" seemed silly. This is especially true of anything pertaining to the original series characters and the five-year mission era in particular. As I still like writing 5YM stories, I opted to quit worrying about that other stuff.
YMMV.
I don't think anyone's saying jettison, though. Not including something in a continuity isn't a value judgement or anything, it's just saying "this doesn't go with that". Myself, I don't think of any of the works as more or less fictional than any other, even if they don't fit with one another. I mean, my "primary thread" (to use @Jbarney 's term just now) is the modern Litverse and the various works that connect into it one way or another. And I'll admit, I can't fit Q Squared or the Q-Continuum trilogy into my overall personal mental Litverse construct, as much as I've tried. But it doesn't mean I think of them in a separate category even if they don't fit, and it doesn't mean I want to dump them from anything.
It's all fiction already, after all.
My two cents: It's probably possible to get too hung up on trying to sort the novels into various discrete continuities. I mean, I've been writing Trek novels for over twenty years now and, as far as I'm concerned, they're all just STAR TREK novels, presumably set within the same fictional universe, which takes it cues from the actual movies and TV shows.
Or have I been writing in different "continuities" without even knowing about it?
Or have I been writing in different "continuities" without even knowing about it?
You likely have, to one degree or another. Some of the early stories I wrote no longer "fit," thanks to some bit from a TV episode or film or even another novel/etc. that came later. Or, a slight deviation in the history of a character was introduced in a later work, because it better served the story being told. Things like Gorkon's backstory, or the end of the five-year mission, for example. Or, a change is introduced as a result of a simple goof, because humans are involved and stuff happens. It's unavoidable when we're talking about Trek, with stories being told in the same setting for fifty years, with multiple stories being offered on different, often incompatible platforms (novels, comics, games, etc.). None of it's real. Or, all of it's real.
Or, only Captain Proton is real, and the rest of it is fake.
Or, only Captain Proton is real, and the rest of it is fake.
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I've been lucky to avoid having any of my published Trek tales massively contradicted by canon, though there have been a few bits I've had to finesse after the fact. (And that's only because Seek a Newer World was cancelled. It would've been hard to reconcile with Into Darkness, since they covered some of the same ground in terms of character arcs and themes.) I also quite enjoy building connections between my various works, e.g. picking up on some alien species I mentioned in passing years ago and doing something more with them in a new work. So the whole thing's pretty tightly interwoven.
On the other hand, in my original fiction, I'm trying to sell a spec novel that expands on my first published story in a way that supersedes and decanonizes it in its original form. So I'm trying to contradict myself there, though only out of necessity (there were conceptual problems that just had to be resolved). And then there was the major continuity error I allowed to slip into my Hub stories in Analog (the name of a major character's species changing in the second story) and corrected in the e-book collection.
On the other hand, in my original fiction, I'm trying to sell a spec novel that expands on my first published story in a way that supersedes and decanonizes it in its original form. So I'm trying to contradict myself there, though only out of necessity (there were conceptual problems that just had to be resolved). And then there was the major continuity error I allowed to slip into my Hub stories in Analog (the name of a major character's species changing in the second story) and corrected in the e-book collection.
The Decipherverse's unique traits include the STVI Federation president being an Atreonid named Eteon tar-Chereos and the felinoid aliens from STIV being called Regulans instead of Caitians.
I think The Final Reflection is closer to the FASAverse than the Rihannsuverse, since both use the same version of Klingon culture and the same assumption that TOS happened in the 2210s.
How are the Byrne comics linked together and do they have anything which separates them from other continuities? In what way do the Marvel comics and the Novelverse not completely fit together?
The newspaper strips are definitively a distinct continuity since Ilia was still alive and Sulu's first name was Itaka.
Actually, STO has one tie-in novel and a number of short stories published in Star Trek Magazine.
The Crucible trilogy had McCoy dying in 2366 which contradicts almost every other continuity.
The Shatnerverse could've easily been part of the Novelverse, since it included Novelverse characters like Christine Vale and Aili Lavena. All you had to do was ignore the brief mentions of Kirk being dead. Now that the Novelverse has introduced its own version of the mirror universe, that's no longer an option.
Hive involved the destruction of the Borg in a completely different way from what happened in Destiny. Also a major character died who is still alive in the Novelverse and STOverse.
Interestingly, the Shatnerverse has likewise been referenced in the so-called "mainstream" Litverse on occasion, such as the discussion of Androvar Drake's downfall and the Enterprise-A's destruction over Chal in James Swallow's Cast No Shadow. Although in these cases, it's more that those specific, individual events are basically cherrypicked and integrated into the Litverse-continuity where appropriate, not entire novels (like, say, The Return or Spectre).
But contradicting other continuities does not make Crucible its own continuity, it just makes it unattached.
Although, didn't one of the Litverse continuity novels once pay lip service to the idea that Kirk could still be alive in the 24th century. Something like "Kirk's dead" "That's not what I heard."
But TFR and the Rihannsu novels are both part of the loosely integrated '80s continuity. There's more than one book that references both Ford-style Klingons and Duane-style Rihannsu. I believe Dwellers in the Crucible was the first to do so, and Time for Yesterday included Ford's and Duane's books among the multiple other novels it referenced.
The Byrne comics have lots of recurring story threads and continuity elements. There was a story arc that began in Assignment: Earth, continued in Crew, and reached its climax in Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor. I believe that same climactic storyline also tied into elements from Byrne's Romulan arc for IDW. His version of Number One as the nameless commodore in command of the Yorktown has been featured in several of Byrne's works, including his photo comics. And so on.
As for inconsistencies with other continuities, the Byrneverse actually clashes with post-TOS canon in a couple of ways -- for instance, he has a Klingon emperor in the 23rd century, conflicting with TNG: "Rightful Heir," and Frontier Doctor shows Kirk actively supervising the Enterprise's refit even though TMP showed that he was unfamiliar with the refit vessel's specs. Byrne doesn't seem to be that familiar with post-TOS Trek, and CBS seems content to let him do his own thing. And there are numerous inconsistencies with the novelverse. Byrne's version of Gary Seven's career and the events in the Romulan Empire preceding and surrounding "Balance of Terror" are distinct from those in the novels.
Off the top of my head, the version of Pike's father in Early Voyages conflicts with the novel Burning Dreams. Untold Voyages doesn't fit with the novels in its portrayal of post-TMP events such as Saavik's upbringing. (It might be possible to reconcile issue 1 of Untold with Ex Machina if you squint some, but I'm not sure.) And there's an Unlimited TOS story that shows Demora Sulu being born late in the 5-year mission, contradicting the version in The Captain's Daughter. There are surely others.
Ilia appeared only in the first two storylines, and was only named and given lines in a single strip. Those strips were drawn before TMP came out, and once they realized the mistake, they quietly eliminated the character.
That's not correct. The same trilogy that borrowed the Titan characters also massively contradicted the chronology of major events in the novelverse -- its first volume had Bajor still considering UFP membership years after it had joined in the novelverse, and its second volume had Titan spend a year on its relief mission to Romulus and not have its initial first contact until more than a year after that happened in the novelverse. I believe the Shatnerverse also had Janeway alive during the time when she was temporarily dead in the novelverse, though I'm not sure of the timing there.
I think I've heard people say that there's not really anything in Ashes of Eden that would prevent it from being part of the novelverse. That's purely second hand though, since I haven't read it myself.
They are what others call continuities, though.
That is, the term being applied to "a set of fictional works in a mutual shared universe" is a pretty common usage of the term, even if it's not one you apply yourself; and by the context of the first post, that's the usage that Extrocomp meant. Even if you object to that usage of the term (which is fair, I can see your usage as making sense too), why not just respond according to the meaning of the question rather than the specific wording?
Basically, Extrocomp wants to know: if you split up the set of all Trek Expanded Universe works into groups of works intended to be consistent with one another, how many groups bigger than a single book would you end up with?
DRG referenced Serpents Among the Ruins in Crucible, right? Meaning that Serpents takes place in the Crucible continuity as well.
Well, yeah. If the same episodes and movies take place in all the different book and comic continuities, it's possible that a given book or comic could be considered part of two different continuities as well.
Because Crucible is a story that spans more than a century, from the TOS era through the TNG era.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.