Tiaru Jarok. In the novels, she is a child during the Dominon War. In STO, she is already an adult and military officer.
Multiple versions of the same story
- Thread starter JD
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I had no idea her name originated from the Novel'verse. neat. According to Memory-Beta she was only mentioned in a TNG Short story.
I suppose there's Vonda McIntyre's version from the movie novelizations. There's Michael Jan Friedman's version from Faces of Fire. There's Peter David's DC annual "Starfleet Academy" showing their relationship at the Academy (which is not necessarily incompatible with the previous two, since it doesn't cover their later relationship or anything to do with David). And there's Howard Weinstein's version from DC's "Star-Crossed" 3-parter, which starts with the Academy and ends with Kirk's promotion to the admiralty after the 5-year mission. There's S.D. Perry's Inception. That's all I can think of.
OMG that's terrible.
Is that really a problem? I don't play STO, but my understanding is that it takes place in 2410. The Dominion War ended in 2375... that's a 35-year difference.
I still think that it would be tricky to do that in a way that doesn't confuse the audience (esp. in a TV show airing before Nexflix, home media, and binge-watching were commonplace, much less even possible), but I do see your point.
Since Star Trek has always played loose with how sociaities change over time (like how the TV characters are always able to interact with minimal problems in modern-day times), I guess I took this specific form of suspension of disbeleif as a given.
(To play devil's advocate, we only saw one Ferengi crew in ENT, so we don't know that much about 22nd-century Ferengi culture. The "Yankee traders" and materialism aspect was already established to have been around for centuries prior in other shows, so that was already a given and accurate. We did see that the Rules of Acquisition have changed over time -- since more were added between ENT and TNG/DS9/VOY and at least one was re-numbered. An earlier version of the Ferengi whip was also brought back, which was a cool touch, IMHO.)
Still, at the end of the day, you do have an interesting point worth considering.
Cool, you might be the first person I know who liked it (I was actually pretty indifferent, although I think the initial suggestion that only a few Vulcans could mind meld was very problematic with continuity, at best -- good thing they fixed that!).
Well, "Judgement" (ENT) did tell us that Klingon culture was moving away from the more traditional values and norms into the one we saw in TOS, and then we catch up in TNG where the traditional has come back again. So, there is some stuff there.
If I recall correctly, the terms were phased out before it was established if the Klingons and Romulans were that specific or if they meant them to refer to humans in general, regardless of how accurate the label was (I favor the latter, since when they were used, it was in context of all of humanity, but your mileage may vary).
I haven't seen the Andoian ENT shows in a long time. Was it wide-spread in use, or only used by Shran? Because white humans were the first ones Shran encountered, so it could make some sense that he would see white humans as the "default" of the species, regardless of how accurate such a generalization is.
I meant that in STO Tiaru Jarok is a veteran of the Dominion War.
Yeah. Jim and Carol's relationship is decent part of the autobiography, and it is kind of heart breaking
Which is also different from how its handled in the Star Trek VI novelization.
Here's another: In Star Trek: The Return, we learn that V'Ger was assimilated by an early iteration of the Borg, while the "[Alpha and Omega]" story in Strange New Worlds 08 says that they were separate entities.
Speaking of the Borg, both The Return and Vendetta state that the Borg always assimilate a "Speaker" Borg to represent themselves to a species they're planning to assimilate (Picard was one such Speaker), while later canon stories, they don't and Picard was an unusual exception. The Return also gave us a far more techno/organic fused Borg than we got else where in canon and non-canon (like ships that had flesh inside the walls, Borg drones that where mutated beyond normal humanoid cyborgs, a crab-like robot with a organic brain inside the chest of a massive brawler drone, etc.) The Shatnerverse attempted to reconcile their Borg by suggesting that there were different branches of the Borg Collective with differences; your mileage may if you think that works with canon (I personally don't).
Oh, I see. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I think I saw a bit of a STO short story, where Tiaru Jarok and Nog need to figure out how to work together. I remember liking that, rather than being untrustworthy at best, like most Romulan characters are, she was presented as an honorable character and the conflict essentially turned out to be two honest people who wanted the same thing trying to overcome the fact that their sides had been historically enemies.
What the novels and STO more or less have in common is that D'Tan rises to prominence among Spock's Romulan underground reformists.
Except that, as I think we've both pointed out already, there were instances where ST did just that -- portraying a species as not being absolutely monolithic, as having diverse cultures or different nations within itself. This was done whenever the story called for an internal conflict within the species. TOS did it with Tyree's people and the Ardanans, for instance. TNG gave us the Reunification movement among the Romulans. ENT did a great job with this, showing diversity in Vulcan culture and establishing that not all Klingons were part of the warrior class.
The audience isn't stupid. It's not that confusing to understand that a species can have more than one culture or language or fashion sense. That's something we all know is true of the human species, so why would anyone find it confusing about an alien species? It's just common sense.
That's not playing devil's advocate, because that's been exactly my point about "Acquisition" from the beginning -- that we can't assume the raiders in that episode necessarily called themselves "Ferengi," because they were from 200 years earlier and could've had any number of cultural differences from the Ferengi Alliance of the 24th century. Sure, they spoke what sounded like the same language, but they could still have had a different label for themselves. For instance, what if "Ferengi" is a nationality rather than a biological designation? "Ferengi" could mean "person from Ferenginar." The people in "Acquisition" could've referred to themselves by the name of a smaller nation on Ferenginar instead, if the planet wasn't yet politically unified.
That's not from later canon, it's from "The Best of Both Worlds." When the Borg demanded surrender rather than simply taking the ship, Shelby said she thought they were only interested in technology and Riker said "Their priorities seem to have changed." Later, when the Borg took Picard, they themselves said "To facilitate our introduction into your societies, it has been decided that a human voice will speak for us in all communications." That indicates that it wasn't their standard practice, but a new adaptation, something they'd just "decided" to try. (Although that's silly, because it's not like they wouldn't have encountered authority-based societies before. It was a blatant contrivance to add more personal stakes to the story. It would've made more sense if it had been their normal practice. But what's in the text of BOBW is that it was an innovation.)
Which is actually a more sensible portrayal than canon was able to achieve. It would've been nice to see something like that in First Contact, with the feature budget to work with. Personally, I've always felt that the "human with bits of boxy technology stuck on randomly" design from TNG was a ridiculously clumsy portrayal of cyborg life, and the "veiny space zombie" modifications they made for FC and VGR weren't that much of an improvement, although the attempt to retcon nanotech into it was appreciated. Really, though, if their tech were nanite-based, then there's no reason for those big clunky parts or for the alternating bits of plastic and skin. I imagine something more like a sleek humanoid form completely covered in a dynamic nanotech membrane.
In my head, the reason for the Borg treating humanity different always had something to do with their Destiny origins. It doesn't really make sense but meh...
Another explanation could be that the Borg Sphere from FC included a special warning in their message to the DQ. In hindsight the assimilation of Picard was an advantage for the Federation, so.... I dunno...
In that case, I guess Star Trek did it well when it happened?
"Body Parts" [DS9] establishes that the first Grang Nagus lived 1,000 years before the 24th century, strongly implying that the Ferengi Alliance was founded by then.
Sure, they spoke what sounded like the same language, but they could still have had a different label for themselves. For instance, what if "Ferengi" is a nationality rather than a biological designation? "Ferengi" could mean "person from Ferenginar." The people in "Acquisition" could've referred to themselves by the name of a smaller nation on Ferenginar instead, if the planet wasn't yet politically unified.
That's actually kind of my point. The novels ran with the idea and made it a standard practice, while the TV shows implied that the Borg tried it once and then decided not to do it again. (And don't see it as silly, as First Contact established that the Borg had more than one reason for assimilating Picard.)
I did think that The Return Borg were cool, but I kind of prefer the canon ones. However, given the Borg's dislike of flesh and belief that technology is superior, I don't see it as a problem that they would use overtly obvious hardware implants. It would further distance them from their normal humanoid origins.
That's reason enough for me to bring up the question of Sisko being a Bajoran. His home was located on Bajor, so naturally he would be considered a Bajoran legally, wouldn't he? Or would he just be viewed as a Federation citizen?
Not necessarily. The same title can be used by the leaders of different political entities -- for instance, President of the United States vs. President of the United Federation of Planets. The German "Kaiser" and Russian "Czar" were both derived from "Caesar," the Roman title for an emperor.
That's not what I'm saying at all. I have no problem with the tech being obvious. I have a problem with it being so crude-looking, so big and clumsy and sloppily grafted onto the flesh. It's got to be the most simplistic, backward way possible to interpret the idea of a cyborg. I mean, look at how much sleeker and more streamlined technology gets as it advances. Compare a big, bulky 1980s mobile phone to a modern smartphone. The latter is still obviously a technological device, but it's much simpler-looking, more minimalist, with fewer moving parts. The Borg are supposed to be an enormously advanced civilization, far superior in technology to the Federation. From FC onward, they've been presumed to be based on nanotech. Either way, the "big clunky pieces randomly stuck onto the body" design looks far too primitive for the level of advancement the Borg are supposed to have. More, it doesn't look integrated. The Borg, as conceived in "Q Who," were beings that had technology incorporated into their bodies almost from infancy. The divide between the organic and the technological should've been invisible; they should've been completely blended together to a degree that it's impossible to define where one ends and the other begins. And that doesn't mean they should've looked purely organic with the technology invisible; on the contrary, it means they should've looked like a complete integration of biology and technology, every body part having elements of both. (Which is what I tried to suggest with the far-future Zcham species in Watching the Clock.) Instead, we just got fleshy bits over here and metal and plastic bits over there. Even when it first appeared in the late '80s, I found it conceptually backward as a portrayal of cyborg life.
That's the frustrating thing about ST's tendency to treat species name and nationality as one and the same thing. It leads to confusions like that. Yes, Sisko should be a Bajoran by nationality and a human by species. But the standard is to use "Bajoran" as a species name and that makes it harder to express that idea.
The closest thing we got to that is the distinction between Terrans and humans not native to Earth in on of the post-Unity pre-Destiny DS9 novels.
In the Iron Man comics for a while Tony had nanotech inside him that produced a special body suit that he had under the armor. Would something like that be closer to what you have in mind for the Borg?
Here's a picture.
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