Interesting question. Given that we don't know where the TV shows will go they'll likely have to basically say adieu to everything.
Spoilers NO SPOILERS FOR CODA - A Lit-verse Grand Finale...What We Know (Spoilers for Entire Lit-verse)
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On a semi-related note, I assume that we will see James T. Kirk on screen soon enough because that is way too juicy of a plot point not to use, just as there was never any hope of Picard using the Borg dissolution idea from Destiny and associated novels. Soon enough Strange New Worlds will override Enterprise: The First Adventure, My Brother's Keeper, The Captain's Oath, etc.
Again, I'm hoping they'll remember the line from "The Menagerie" and avoid having Kirk and Pike meet. Obviously they wouldn't be bound by the novels, but they do theoretically try to stay consistent with canon. Then again, DSC ignored TWOK's line about Starfleet keeping the peace for a hundred years...
On the other hand, TWOK's line about Starfleet keeping the peace for a hundred years ignored clear references from TOS to major combat operations in the recent past.
The potential storytelling is worth far more than one line (which is excused in my earlier post, and then followed up by Mendez saying Pike is Kirk's age...)
Worth it? Is it really? Bringing in Kirk seems like low-hanging fruit to me, too easy and obvious. Star Trek has relied way too much on nostalgia over the past dozen years. Okay, it's a show about Pike and young Spock, but there's still a ton of wide-open space to explore in terms of Number One, the supporting characters, and the adventures they go on. And they said they want to do an episodic show. And come on, seriously, the literal title is Strange New Worlds. So let's see a show that goes new places and takes chances.
Yeah, but TOS contains references to major combat operations in its past, including the Battle of Donatu V and the conflict that Captain Gar resolved which saved the Federation. So I'd say that the decision of the DIS creators to establish that the UFP and Klingons fought a major war in the 2250s is justified, and that the implication of TWOK's line about Starfleet keeping the peace for 100 years that the UFP had not had a major war in a century is itself in apparent contradiction to lines from TOS.
In other words: Star Trek has had minor continuity contradictions since day one, and if ignoring a minor line allows for a good story, it's fine. (And yes, DIS S1 is a good story.)
Combat operations don't have to be huge wars, just local skirmishes. "Keeping the peace" doesn't require an absolute lack of any conflict at all. Indeed, conflict can be part of keeping the peace, e.g. fighting pirates to protect shipping, or fighting off aspiring raiders or invaders before they can attack a civilized world. The idea of keeping the peace is that you allow the civilian population to live in peace and safety, even if that means military personnel on the front lines have to fight to keep them safe.
After all, an interstellar federation is a huge thing. This comes up in discussions of "The Wounded" and how its retconned recent Cardassian war seems impossible to reconcile with the peaceful Federation of TNG seasons 1-2. It can work if you assume it was a border conflict that never affected the bulk of the Federation, just a handful of worlds on its outskirts.
So the problem with DSC was that it made the Klingon War so gigantic, so long and extreme. If it had been a briefer, less sweeping conflict, it would've been easier to reconcile.
Also, you're reading a hell of a lot into the vague details we were given about Captain Garth's military history. The phrase "saved the Federation" is never uttered in "Whom Gods Destroy." All that's mentioned is his victory at Axanar, and Kirk saying "there was a time when war was necessary." But it's the peacemakers who came afterward that Kirk gives credit for "a dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars." http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/71.htm
I just question whether going for the most obvious nostalgia move possible constitutes a good story. Yes, of course it's theoretically possible to get a good story out of anything. There could very well be a good story to do about Kirk in SNW. But the mere fact of including Kirk, in and of itself, does not automatically make a good story. Nostalgia or familiarity is the simplest, laziest way to catch an audience's interest. By itself, it's not intrinsically good. You need something more to make it worth doing -- something that meaningfully adds to what we know and deepens it, like how DSC: "Lethe" deepened what we knew about Sarek's rift with Spock over Starfleet. If it doesn't have that deeper meaning, that worth beyond mere nostalgia, then the nostalgia alone does not justify it.
"Keeping the peace" is also, paradoxically, a euphemism used for a superpower utilizing military force to control tumultuous states from attacking them or others. I don't think that's exactly what Carol meant in TWOK, but perhaps she was just referencing Starfleet's existence in the past 100 years as the largest military force dealing with both minor skirmishes and at least one major war (Klingon) but always coming out on top and restoring peace and good order when all was said and done.
David was upset about what he saw as brutish soldiers marching in, but Carol was taking the opposite view, that they were peacekeepers here to make the galaxy safer for everybody and more democratic or something.
David was upset about what he saw as brutish soldiers marching in, but Carol was taking the opposite view, that they were peacekeepers here to make the galaxy safer for everybody and more democratic or something.
Incidentally, the first mention of the Federation being at peace for a century was in TAS: "The Infinite Vulcan," so it wasn't just TWOK.
Star Trek has been about noatalgia since the original movies. I've always been more a fan of the characters than the Planets of the Week, and I can imagine them going for a 2009ish vibe where Pike takes Kirk under his wing, Kirk and Spock start off hating each other, everyone meets Uhura too etc. 10 episodes of that as a backdrop while they explore new worlds and get into whacky TOS-style adventures appeals to me greatly.
I don't agree. The only one that brought back a TOS character was TWOK, and that told an entirely new (and in my view, inferior) story about Khan rather than rehashing the old one. And while TMP tried to reset the crew to the old formula as if little time had passed, TWOK embraced aging and change and tried to set the stage for a new generation (Saavik and David) to take over. It's true that later movies did hit the reset button again for the sake of nostalgia, but that wasn't the defining purpose of the movies from the start.
As for TNG, after a brief flirtation with nostalgia in "The Naked Now," that series aggressively avoided TOS rehashes for years, and it, DS9, and VGR all added new characters, new storylines, new facets to the universe. They were moving the franchise forward instead of dwelling on its past. Even ENT, while nominally going backward, charted new territory in the way it filled in the historical gaps. It's really only from ENT season 4 onward that the franchise has become preoccupied with revisiting its own past storylines and retreading previously explored time periods.
That's a hell of a false dichotomy. You've learned nothing about me after all these years if you think I don't prioritize character in fiction. But James T. Kirk is a character we've seen thoroughly explored over the past half-century. SNW has the opportunity to explore a wealth of new characters, the Pike-era Enterprise crew beyond the three familiar ones. It has the opportunity -- indeed, the obligation -- to develop more 23rd-century characters who aren't heterosexual American white cismale humans, to give us new and fresh perspectives on the Federation.
Why would that be desirable? We've already seen that done. The show would be rightfully savaged for unoriginality if it did something that derivative. The only worthwhile way to bring Kirk in would be to do something new with the character. And that's exactly why I'm reluctant to see him on Pike's show -- because it's ground that's already been trodden.
I don’t know the reliability of this but post it without further comment
http://trekcentral.net/news-first-plot-details-on-star-trek-coda-trilogy-and-ds9-revenant/
http://trekcentral.net/news-first-plot-details-on-star-trek-coda-trilogy-and-ds9-revenant/
Thanks @David Weller for alerting us to this.
I continue to just get more and more excited for this. And this answers my last remaining concern, in that it looks like DS9 will also be getting a proper wrap up.
Thank you again @David Mack @Dayton Ward and @James Swallow for giving us this amazing gift!
I continue to just get more and more excited for this. And this answers my last remaining concern, in that it looks like DS9 will also be getting a proper wrap up.
Thank you again @David Mack @Dayton Ward and @James Swallow for giving us this amazing gift!
Nothing to "worry" about really, on the TOS front. It's not as though there's some grand, over-arching, interconnected narrative to mess with since the TOS movies pretty much covered the post-series era and we've mostly just been filling in the blanks with standalone adventures. Sure, this or that random novel may be rendered apocryphal by a new TV ep, but that's always been the case, probably for as long as there have been STAR TREK novels. Heck, TOS novels have been known to contradict each other over the course of the last forty-plus years.
Just business as usual.
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Speak for yourself. All my TOS novels fit together into a common continuity, and they reference a number of others, including some of yours.
But of course, getting your books contradicted by new canon is the occupational hazard of any tie-in writer working with an ongoing franchise, just as getting your books contradicted by new science or future events is the occupational hazard of any science fiction writer. All we can do is base our fiction on our best current understanding, and then when things change, we just write new stuff.
Nostalgia isn't the bad thing a lot of people make it out to be. There's the argument that if you move too far away into all new stuff, you might as well drop the Trek connection altogether. I liked the mix in Discovery season 2 and would enjoy more of the same.
Well the rumours about Kirk specified this version would be bisexual. Whatever happens, I love the character and would enjoy another "young Kirk" take. Each to their own. We've got several other series' exploring new characters, and enough shows that we can have new and old.
Because a TV series version would have far more depth than a 2 hour movie. That's why I love the classic Superman movies and Smallville.
Fascinating! Temporal Apocalypse it is. Well, if that report is accurate. I wonder...
If like at the end of many time travel/reset stories there's always one character who "remembers" the original continuity, who will it be? I'm guessing a Treklit OC to avoid any potential conflicts with shows bringing back past characters
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