Is it time for Peter David to go?

[LaBarre]

Ktrek, looking forward to seeing you put your money (or at least your creative intelligence) where your mouth is. Where's your output....

I'm craving for you to get us all over this "creative slump." Come on, don't be shy. We are all waiting breathlessly for your contribution. Don't keep us waiting.

PAD is dead. Long live....

What? Nothing?!

I will neither defend PAD or attack him, but don't you think this response is a little silly? His original post clearly specified that it was his opinion. And the idea that someone has to be an expert in a subject of better than the person being criticized is just silly. Ktrek doesn't have to be a better author than Peter David to criticize his work.

Thanks for this. It got me thinking.

My post might be considered silly by you but given that you consider the original questioner's post constitutes "opinion," how is my response any sillier than what I was responding to? After all, it was certainly my opinion.

I just happen to think that we - the readers - have to be somewhat humble in our criticism of published authors. I'm not published. Are you? Is Ktrek? I mean, c'mon guys - it is time for Peter David to go? - give me a break.

If I was going to be so ballsy about calling for an published author to move along, I'd want to be able to back it up with...something. I didn't think Ktrek did, hence my response. If I've offended, my apologies.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I am no respecter of persons just because they happen to frequent this site or other Star Trek book sites I am involved with.

I would hope you'd respect anyone you've only met online at least until they give you reason not to respect them.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I always thought it was really silly to bring out both thin parts of a duology in the same month, or two parts of a new trilogy.

I asked J.J. about that once -- in the summer of '97 when New Frontier and Day of Honor were released, four books each, why were they released in batches of two over two months, instead of releasing one book of each four months in a row? Thus, for someone who had no interest in New Frontier, there was something familiar on the shelves new.

His reply was that Pocket couldn't really market two projects at the same time. The message, he said, would have become muddled.

 

[Stevil2001]

I just happen to think that we - the readers - have to be somewhat humble in our criticism of published authors. I'm not published. Are you? Is Ktrek? I mean, c'mon guys - it is time for Peter David to go? - give me a break.

If I was going to be so ballsy about calling for an published author to move along, I'd want to be able to back it up with...something. I didn't think Ktrek did, hence my response. If I've offended, my apologies.

Being published is and most certainly should not be a prerequisite for criticism.

I asked J.J. about that once -- in the summer of '97 when New Frontier and Day of Honor were released, four books each, why were they released in batches of two over two months, instead of releasing one book of each four months in a row? Thus, for someone who had no interest in New Frontier, there was something familiar on the shelves new.

His reply was that Pocket couldn't really market two projects at the same time. The message, he said, would have become muddled.

It's interesting to note that, in 2003, Pocket did do this with The Lost Era, releasing one of those books and one other book each month for six months.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I just happen to think that we - the readers - have to be somewhat humble in our criticism of published authors. I'm not published. Are you? Is Ktrek? I mean, c'mon guys - it is time for Peter David to go? - give me a break.

If I was going to be so ballsy about calling for an published author to move along, I'd want to be able to back it up with...something. I didn't think Ktrek did, hence my response. If I've offended, my apologies.

Being published is and most certainly should not be a prerequisite for criticism.

That's very true. Even in art criticism, I am often able to critique well above my own grade of what I can actually draw for myself. Even though I can't do a better job myself, I can often see what's working and what isn't in a professional artist's work, and I know how to let them know in a balanced way. Even though having at least some base knowledge of the art form from an artist's perspective helps (i.e. if you know what CAN be accomplished), writing a balanced criticism is a separate skill from the actual production of a work. I have found many cases where people who produce great work can't articulate a constructive critique on somebody else's. Now, this is probably more common in the visual-arts world than it is with writers--but I STILL see it in writers, who seem unable to temper their criticisms with balance and tact. Some might think that's pulling punches, but I can tell you that if you deliver a balanced critique, if you pick your battles, the things you DO criticize are more likely to be taken seriously and improved on by the recipient the next time around.

I will be honest...when it comes to Peter David, I lost my patience with him a very long time ago. I have very often found his tone to be out of step with the way the Star Trek franchise has come across to me through five shows. I know some people might like the Pythonesque feel, but to me...it makes his work feel like a parody of Trek, not the other way around--all the more so when he gets off on the New Frontier series. I've never felt like NF was something that Pocket Books ever should've allowed. His writing seemed tighter to me in the past, much stronger when he was writing things like Vendetta that had to maintain a serious tone. And oddly enough, his "young-adult" works made the right release for his humorous side while also keeping the outright farcical stuff to a minimum (not to mention the gratuitous sex jokes and so on, that to me don't add anything to a book).

 

[Trent Roman]

I enjoyed Before Dishonor for what it was and this was after giving up on New Frontier. If you don't like it, vote with your wallet. That's the best way to handle it.

Problem with that scenario is, I didn't know how bad Before Dishonor would be before I bought and read it. True, I could have read the reviews from when it came out, but I wanted to remain unspoiled because... well, it was Peter David, writing the Borg and TNG! A guaranteed great, right? Mutter grumble...

Of course, I could then refuse to buy the next PAD book... but, as said elsewhere, this was an exception to the rule when it comes to my PAD appreciation, so I'll probably go ahead and buy his next anyway (the paperback reprint of Traitor?) This is one of the reasons why sales are a poor indicator of quality (and I just want to say that I have no idea what BD's sale figures are like; I'm speaking in the abstract).

Being published is and most certainly should not be a prerequisite for criticism.

Quite. Do a poor enough job in any field, and any non-expert will be well-equipped to criticize you. An expert could do so with more subtlety, and perhaps catch failings non-experts would not, but I don't have to be, say, a politician to say politician X is doing a poor job, or particularly familiar with economics to say that investmenk banker Y's performance sucks equine phallus. As for being published... heck, I'm published, but nowhere near PAD's usual level of literary proficiency. If one were to follow the experience argument, it would be like the guy in the mail room telling a VP how to run the company. Criticism can be informed by being a writer, but stems primarily from being a reader and a consumer, something we all qualify as.

Creditorly yours, the Rent Woman

 

[Leaf]

Go? Where are we going?

...where PAD went.

Suppose PAD went nowhere?

Well then, this'll be our big chance to get away from it all.

 

[Defcon]

I've never felt like NF was something that Pocket Books ever should've allowed.

PAD and NF paved the way for series like Vanguard, Titan, Stargazer, I.K.S. Gorkon and I would even argue for series like the DS9 Relaunch in it's current form. If he hadn't delivered the proof with his series that a book only series is a viable thing, I'm not so sure that those series had come to pass.

You can think about his writing and NF what you want, but I think you have to give him and the series credit for the positive influence on Trek Literature they had.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I would say the Invasion! series gets more credit as far as the relaunch and other crossovers are concerned--until Invasion!, New Frontier was off in its own little corner, not affecting anybody or anything. I think that was the real groundbreaker.

 

[Defcon]

I would say the Invasion! series gets more credit as far as the relaunch and other crossovers are concerned--until Invasion!, New Frontier was off in its own little corner, not affecting anybody or anything. I think that was the real groundbreaker.

What crossovers have to do with what I said? The so called "crossovers" most of the time where (just) a bunch of standalone novels about the different TV series with a common theme anyway. And quite frankly most of those "events" had no real influence on TrekLit one way or the other.

New Frontier on the other hand showed that it was possible to successfully have a series that is TrekLit exclusive and by that paved the way for the diverse line up we have these days.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

In retrospect, what's interesting about Invasion! is not how radical it was for the time, but rather how conservative it was.

Invasion! didn't do anything that the monthly books weren't already doing. Each book was self-contained. If you only wanted to read the DS9 book in the series, you could. Except for the carryover of a single character from the TNG to the Voyager book, this series had no real crossover elements. They were as similar as, say, four books about the crews dealing with a Romulan threat in their own separate ways would have been. The only thing that tied them together was that the threat had never been seen before.

What made New Frontier different was that the stories could now be meaningful to the characters. As original characters (or pilfered characters not being used elsewhere), these characters could grow and change.

If Invasion! was an experiment to see if the novels could support an "event," then New Frontier was an experiment to see if readers would read stories about characters they had never seen on television before. Invasion!'s legacy was the multibook epics. New Frontier's legacy was the original-to-novels crews. Different legacies.

 

[Dayton Ward]

The Invasion series was, really, just a crossover; something which had already been done to one degree or another for years. (DC comics, Federation, "Unification" and "Relics" on TNG, etc.).

New Frontier was the result of what Pocket wanted to prove to Paramount: that a series which didn't take its lead from one of the shows could work, and that fans would embrace this notion and the potential it offered precisely because it wasn't forced to abide directly by events transpiring on screen. Once it proved successful, the gate was opened not only for establishing similar series with their own casts of characters, but also for taking established screen characters in new directions once their time on screen was over.


Edit: Sorry, Allyn. I was replying to Nerys Dukat, and you covered the bases better than I did, anyway.

 

[Brendan Moody]

until Invasion!, New Frontier was off in its own little corner, not affecting anybody or anything.

Apart from what everyone else has said, New Frontier didn't exist until a year after Invasion!, so I'm not real sure what you mean by this.

 

[Defcon]

until Invasion!, New Frontier was off in its own little corner, not affecting anybody or anything.

Apart from what everyone else has said, New Frontier didn't exist until a year after Invasion!, so I'm not real sure what you mean by this.

Well, I guess it was in it's only little corner of PAD'S mind, and really wasn't affecting anybody or anything else.

 

[KRAD]

It's easy to forget now in this age of crossovers and prose-only series, but both Invasion! (which was in the summer of 1996) and New Frontier (summer 1997) were incredibly radical at the time, and also big risks, ones that John Ordover had to fight Paramount to approve. Keep in mind that Invasion! was conceived in 1995, only four years after Gene Roddenberry's death and the removal of Richard Arnold, and the production time in publishing can be quite quite long. (As a for-instance, while John O. left Pocket in 2003, it won't be until January 2009 that the last project he commissioned will be published, that being the final Errand of Fury book.) Internovel continuity was still verboten, and it wasn't until 2001 that a more concerted effort started being made to do it for the entire line, not just the crossovers and New Frontier.

In both cases, Paramount was willing to try it once. Obviously it worked. (BTW, Paula Block famously -- or infamously -- wrote a five-page memo to John explaining why she didn't think New Frontier would work. To her credit, she freely and happily admits now that she was wrong...)

 

[captcalhoun]

wow, i'd love to see that memo...

 

[Allyn Gibson]

The Invasion series was, really, just a crossover; something which had already been done to one degree or another for years. (DC comics, Federation, "Unification" and "Relics" on TNG, etc.).

Modala Imperative in 1991 was a bit sticky, as I recall. The use of Spock in the TNG half was a sticking point, as he hadn't appeared on the series to that point. (Remember, Modala Imperative predated "Unification" by several months. I bought the first TNG issue the day the news broke that Nimoy was going to do the guest shot on the series.) McCoy was okay, because he'd been in "Encounter at Farpoint." But Spock? We knew that Sarek had a son that Picard had met (from "Sarek"), but beyond that? The comics would have been "establishing" something, and that was something Richard Arnold didn't care for.

And Federation had a long road to publication, which Kevin Dilmore covered in his interviews with the Reeves-Stevens in the omnibus of Memory Prime and Prime Directive.

I don't know of any issues with DC and Malibu's DS9/TNG crossover. I always found it curious that Ro appears only in the DC chapters of the story, so I wonder if there may have been an issue.

Malibu's Maquis mini-series was supposed to be a crossover. It's already the DS9 fallout to the events of "Caretaker," but it was planned to have some content set aboard the Voyager. Altman liked mixing and matching -- Lightstorm was a DS9 prequel to Generations -- for instance, and in interviews where he's talked about his Star Trek comics work he's usually been less-than-happy with how his crossover elements were watered down (Lightstorm) or stripped out almost completely (Maquis: Soldiers of Peace).

Edit: Sorry, Allyn. I was replying to Nerys Dukat, and you covered the bases better than I did, anyway.

No worries.

 

[Ferd Burfel]

Ktrek, looking forward to seeing you put your money (or at least your creative intelligence) where your mouth is. Where's your output....

I'm craving for you to get us all over this "creative slump." Come on, don't be shy. We are all waiting breathlessly for your contribution. Don't keep us waiting.

PAD is dead. Long live....

What? Nothing?!

I will neither defend PAD or attack him, but don't you think this response is a little silly? His original post clearly specified that it was his opinion. And the idea that someone has to be an expert in a subject of better than the person being criticized is just silly. Ktrek doesn't have to be a better author than Peter David to criticize his work.

Thanks for this. It got me thinking.

My post might be considered silly by you but given that you consider the original questioner's post constitutes "opinion," how is my response any sillier than what I was responding to? After all, it was certainly my opinion.

I just happen to think that we - the readers - have to be somewhat humble in our criticism of published authors. I'm not published. Are you? Is Ktrek? I mean, c'mon guys - it is time for Peter David to go? - give me a break.

If I was going to be so ballsy about calling for an published author to move along, I'd want to be able to back it up with...something. I didn't think Ktrek did, hence my response. If I've offended, my apologies.

That is a good point. And it is certainly as much your opinion to be humble as it is to criticize. I just often see people declare you cannot criticize unless you do better, and that bothers me. Criticism is often meant to make people stop, think and re-evaluate. It can be taken too far and made personal, but I didn't get that from him (IMO). Maybe it was more dramatic than it needed to be (is it time for him to go), but it wasn't inappropriate (IMO). What I was getting at is that if you want to counter what he said, do it with defense of PAD or reasons why he is mistaken, not jumping to "well can you do any better?". Again, my opinions on this one. I just like to see dissent filtered more towards logic and reasons than simply "not uh". And I in no way mean any disrespect to you and I await your response.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The comics would have been "establishing" something, and that was something Richard Arnold didn't care for.

Yeah. "Modala Imperative" ended up establishing that Spock had white sideburns, which TNG chose not to go with in "Unification".

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Clearly, Spock was using Just For Vulcans hair coloring during his Romulus mission. He brushes it in, and the grey goes away.