Need to know questions about Borg books and other Star Trek items

[Christopher]

I've never understood the bizarre hatred some Star Trek fans feel for stories that are not considered canon. The novels are licensed by CBS/Paramount which means those stories are just as real as the TV episodes and movies.

Well, only in the sense that none of them are real, since it's all fiction. Licensing does not at all mean that tie-ins have equal weight to the screen canon; it simply means that the publishers have the owner's permission to publish and sell them. A license is a business contract to create and market a product. It's not about whether the product "counts," it's just about permission to use the intellectual property. You can get a license to put Spock's face on a lunchbox, but that doesn't mean the lunchbox is part of Federation history.

After all, Pocket, IDW, and the makers of Star Trek Online are all licensed to create and market Star Trek fiction, but they all contradict each other's continuities. None of them is "real" in each other's continuity; all they have in common is consistency with the onscreen material. Tie-ins are conjectures based on the canon. They're might-have-beens. But since the canon itself is equally a might-have-been, since it's all totally invented and imaginary anyway, it doesn't matter if two different unreal stories are consistent with each other, as long as they're both entertaining.

 

[Idran]

Well, only in the sense that none of them are real, since it's all fiction.

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[Doom Shepherd]

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[Danlav05]

Well, only in the sense that none of them are real, since it's all fiction. Licensing does not at all mean that tie-ins have equal weight to the screen canon; it simply means that the publishers have the owner's permission to publish and sell them. A license is a business contract to create and market a product. It's not about whether the product "counts," it's just about permission to use the intellectual property. You can get a license to put Spock's face on a lunchbox, but that doesn't mean the lunchbox is part of Federation history.

After all, Pocket, IDW, and the makers of Star Trek Online are all licensed to create and market Star Trek fiction, but they all contradict each other's continuities. None of them is "real" in each other's continuity; all they have in common is consistency with the onscreen material. Tie-ins are conjectures based on the canon. They're might-have-beens. But since the canon itself is equally a might-have-been, since it's all totally invented and imaginary anyway, it doesn't matter if two different unreal stories are consistent with each other, as long as they're both entertaining.

To add to that, IDW have published comic mini series that contradict each other! Thy have no internal continuity like Online & Pocket do.

 

[Christopher]

^Yup, and not all of Pocket's books are in continuity with each other either, nor have they ever been. A lot of the TOS books these days are standalones.

 

[The Wormhole]

Although stuff from the novel continuity is used in the TOS novels anyway, for example the Andorian naming custom.

 

[Danlav05]

^Yup, and not all of Pocket's books are in continuity with each other either, nor have they ever been. A lot of the TOS books these days are standalones.

Yes, like the Shatner/Reeves-Stevens series and the Online tie in, it's only the modern TNG era ranges that are really tied together

 

[Christopher]

Although stuff from the novel continuity is used in the TOS novels anyway, for example the Andorian naming custom.

I said some of the TOS novels were standalone, not all. And that doesn't mean the books are forbidden from making continuity references, just that it's optional.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

As I recall, back in the Richard Arnold era, there was a time when books were forbidden to be in continuity with ANYTHING other than canon. An edict that cut off Diane Carey's "Piper" books (which I still regard as a brilliant example of "Mary Sue" done right, even if I find her habit of wearing her politics on her sleeve a bit irritating) after only two, and eliminated some character-sharing among authors from about that time (wasn't there a young Vietnamese junior officer who appeared in several TOS novels by different authors, then abruptly disappeared as if she'd never existed?)

 

[Christopher]

As I recall, back in the Richard Arnold era, there was a time when books were forbidden to be in continuity with ANYTHING other than canon.

Indeed. DC's Trek comics had to drop their recurring characters and story arcs, even though the series was theoretically a single continuity. Nothing was allowed to compete with the regular characters by sticking around beyond one storyline.

An edict that cut off Diane Carey's "Piper" books (which I still regard as a brilliant example of "Mary Sue" done right, even if I find her habit of wearing her politics on her sleeve a bit irritating)

I don't think "Mary Sue done right" is the best way of putting it, because "Mary Sue" originally meant a featured female guest star done badly. There's nothing intrinsically wrong about centering a story on a guest character instead of the leads; it was actually a common practice of '60s and '70s TV drama and something TOS did on a number of occasions. And early fan and pro writers tended to add strong, prominent female characters to their Trek fiction to compensate for the lack thereof in TOS, which is certainly understandable. The problem is that the bad examples, the "Mary Sues," became so well-known as a meme that it tainted people's perception of the whole practice.

And really, what makes the Piper novels distinct from other books centering on original female characters is that they weren't just about Piper interacting with the TOS cast. They were more of a "Lower Decks" narrative, an attempt to explore what the Trek universe would look like from the perspective of the Enterprise's junior officers instead of the command crew, with a whole cast of new characters taking center stage -- Piper, Sarda, Merete, and Scanner paralleling Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty. (That said, Piper did become more Mary Sue-ish in the second book, where she was suddenly in Kirk's inner circle and proved instrumental in defeating a second internal Starfleet conspiracy in as many months.)

(wasn't there a young Vietnamese junior officer who appeared in several TOS novels by different authors, then abruptly disappeared as if she'd never existed?)

Ensign Lisa Nguyen was pretty much exclusive to J.M. Dillard's books, as far as I recall. (Oddly, there's no Memory Beta article on her, so I can't verify that.) She was part of Dillard's continuing security cast including Ingrit Tomson, Jon Stanger, and Lamia.

 

[5billionof5billion]

What's a Vendorian? I would think if a Founder were to battle any of the shapeshifting aliens long enough he or she would lose because the Founder would have to return to liquid form while one of the others could maintain their form forever. Since the Sulibans do it with technology, I don't consider them to be true shapeshifters. I know what the Ausomorphs and the Chameloids are. There was also a novel by Simon Hawke that had shapeshifters. It came out just before DS9 started. I don't know if that was a coincidence or not.
Here's a couple Star Trek jokes that some might consider stale.
What would a person do if he wanted to claim insurance money on his car and he was dishonest? Start wreck (Star Trek).
What did the Vulcan science officer from Enterprise say to a man who was making unwanted advances to her? What are you trying T'Pol?
I hope Paramount's willing to recognize the Data resurrection book as being part of the official Star Trek universe and won't contradict it in a future show. His last screen as Data wasn't Nemesis. It was in the final episode of Enterprise These are the Voyages. You couldn't see the android himself, but you could hear him talking when he took it literally when Troi asked him if he would take a rain check. The reason I don't care that much for Marina Sirtis is because I don't like Troi. Anyone who would freak out in front of a mirror for no reason doesn't have much stability in my book, and she did that in the episode about the Paxans. When she's not acting that way, she's annoying. If they would've killed her off in the movies permanently and kept Data alive, that would've been fine by me.
God bless, Jason Irelan

 

[JD]

There's almost no chance that a major plot point from a book, like Data's ressurection is just going to dropped into the new show. They might set it in the Prime Universe and bring Data back, but it's very, very doubtful it would play out the way it did in the books.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Yes. Lisa Nguyen, Ingrit Tomson, Jon Stanger, and Lamia. Thanks. I didn't mention that they had originated in Dillard's works, but I had kind of figured as much. My understanding is that they were at least intended for other writers to pick them up, although I can't recall whether or not that actually happened. And I find it odd that Memory Beta includes a number of other characters named Nguyen, but not Lisa.

As to the "Mary Sue" genre, I've always understood it to mean stories in which an obvious author-surrogate character, completely original to the author, takes center-stage in a milieu that is not original to the author, completely upstaging the milieu's regular characters. (In my aforementioned fanfic, the interviewer is a character whose name I contrived to share my own initials, an unabashed author-surrogate, but he's not really center-stage enough to be a "Larry Stu" character.)

And "5Billion," a Vendorian was featured in the TAS episode, "The Survivor," impersonating the wealthy philantrhopist, Carter Winston (who was both introduced and killed off in the episode's backstory).

 

[Christopher]

As to the "Mary Sue" genre, I've always understood it to mean stories in which an obvious author-surrogate character, completely original to the author, takes center-stage in a milieu that is not original to the author, completely upstaging the milieu's regular characters. (In my aforementioned fanfic, the interviewer is a character whose name I contrived to share my own initials, an unabashed author-surrogate, but he's not really center-stage enough to be a "Larry Stu" character.)

That's the original definition, and it's the way the guest-star-centered story was abused as wish fulfillment by certain authors. But as I said, the label has become such a pervasive meme that people assume it applies to any guest-star-centered story rather than just the bad, self-indulgent ones. And for many, it's just become a catchall label for "any female character I dislike," often with an undercurrent of misogyny and the implication that it's illegitimate for a female character to be as capable as a male (see: some fans' complaints about Rey in The Force Awakens). And once a label gets co-opted to that extent, it's probably time to find a new label.

 

[borgboy]

I still use Mary Sue as a term in the purest sense - a character who's a thinly disguised author insert who is idealistic, adored, etc. I use the term in a gender neutral way. I'm aware of the Larry Stu/Gary Stu alternative option, but I think Mary Sue works just as well for either gender, and it's a recognizable term in a way the male versions aren't.
I find it disgusting that people are using Mary Sue as an insult for capable female characters.
I think Dwellers in the Crucible is a good example of a Trek novel with interesting well developed (and female) characters that are very much the lead characters, are original characters, and are not Mary Sues.
I don't care at all for Piper - I read her two books last year, but I'm not a big fan of Carey's although some of her books are better than others. Her pushy political agendas can get obnoxious and ham fisted, and her quality is inconsistent.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Hmm. As far as I'm concerned, anybody who regards Rey as a "Mary Sue" character has more than just an "undercurrent" of misognyny. (More like "male sexist pig.")

And as to Piper as Diane Carey's avatar, the character reads as so blatant an author-surrogate, and she upstages all the regulars so completely and so frequently, that I can't imagine that there wasn't an element of wish-fulfillment on the part of Carey. But (at least IMHO), the storytelling is so brilliant that the wish-fulfillment doesn't matter. Hence, "a Mary Sue done right."

To me, the characteristics of Mary-Sue-ness , the criteria for deciding whether a character -- and a story -- is a Mary Sue are (1) is the character BLATANTLY an author-surrogate, inserted in a milieu the author didn't originate, and (2) does the character frequently upstage the regulars in that milieu.

And yes, I already mentioned that I find Carey's tendency to wear her hardcore-Libertarian politics on her sleeve (which tend, even in fiction, to deny the principle that one person's freedom to swing his or her harm ends where the next person's nose begins, and which, in the real world, are usually more "deregulatarian," i.e., in opposition to any attempt to regulate unfair or harmful business practices, than "libertarian," i.e., supporting individual freedom) gets annoying.

 

[Christopher]

And as to Piper as Diane Carey's avatar, the character reads as so blatant an author-surrogate, and she upstages all the regulars so completely and so frequently, that I can't imagine that there wasn't an element of wish-fulfillment on the part of Carey.

I don't see the upstaging, except in the sense that the story is deliberately designed to focus on characters other than the TOS leads, like "Lower Decks" for TNG, "A View from the Gallery" for Babylon 5, or "The Other Guys" from Stargate SG-1. The books stress that Piper and her friends are pretty consistently five steps behind Kirk, Spock, and the rest, and are just trying to keep up. They're stumbling through their efforts to get a handle on the crisis, and eventually they make their way to where Kirk, Spock, Scotty, etc. are already midway through their own escape/rescue/etc. that they performed off-camera. The idea wasn't to steal the thunder from Kirk and his team -- it was to show what Kirk and his team looked like from the perspective of the crew working under them while they performed their miracles. If Piper is Carey's self-insertion figure, she's inserting herself as a fan and admirer of Kirk, as someone who would wish to be led and mentored by Kirk, not as someone who outperforms or sidelines him.

I think the Piper novels are deeply and unfairly misunderstood. They were trying to do something very experimental. They were the first attempt to tell Star Trek stories from a perspective other than the lead cast, something that's been done many times now with book series like New Frontier, SCE, Vanguard, Seekers, DTI, etc. But since it was the first, and since it came out before we had any of the spinoffs, it was still set aboard the Enterprise, so it wasn't as overtly separate as those others. Still, the Piper novels were the first Trek novels written in the first person, something that's very rarely been done since, and only in a few short stories, never in another novel as far as I recall. I've always found them very innovative for trying to tell Trek stories in something other than the usual formulaic manner. It's like, if TOS is Superman, the Piper novels are Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. Or if TOS is Hamlet, they're Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Or Justice League and Young Justice, or Doctor Who and "Blink" or "The Lodger," or Torchwood and "Random Shoes"... hell, there's a whole subgenre of "tell the story from a viewpoint other than the hero's" fiction, so why doesn't anyone ever realize that the Piper novels are part of it?

 

[Extrocomp]

To add to that, IDW have published comic mini series that contradict each other! Thy have no internal continuity like Online & Pocket do.

I wasn't aware of this. Which IDW miniseries contradict each other?

Ensign Lisa Nguyen was pretty much exclusive to J.M. Dillard's books, as far as I recall. (Oddly, there's no Memory Beta article on her, so I can't verify that.) She was part of Dillard's continuing security cast including Ingrit Tomson, Jon Stanger, and Lamia.

Nguyen also appears in Brad Ferguson's A Flag Full of Stars. You can search for a character's name in Google Books to find which novels the character has appeared in.

 

[borgboy]

I do remember Piper intuitively understood the true nature of Vulcan emotions more than anyone else.
I found her annoying and didn't care for the books, but I admit there was worse examples of Mary Sues out there.

 

[Extrocomp]

Still, the Piper novels were the first Trek novels written in the first person, something that's very rarely been done since, and only in a few short stories, never in another novel as far as I recall.

The Captain's Table novels are partially first person (the framing story parts are not).