Spoilers Picard Autobiography by David Goodman - Discussion and Review Thread

It didn't rule them out either. That's the point. Nothing in the novels' portrayal is impossible to reconcile with canon.

 

Hmm. Assuming that the ploidy of Andorians is tetraploid, that would make the shen's egg haploid, and the sperm of the thaan and chan both whatever half of haploid is called (is there a molecular geneticist in the house?)

An alternative that retains the idea of the zhen not contributing genetically would be if Andorians were triploid, and the thaan, chan, and shen gametes all being whatever one calls 1/3 of complete ploidy. Yet another alternative would be for Andorians to be tetraploid, with all four Andorian genders having (like the version quoted above) 1/4 of the normal ploidy in their gametes.

"All twelve of the Sulamid sexes claimed to be male, especially the ones who had the children." -- Diane Duane, The Wounded Sky.
Talk about complicated ploidy . . . not to mention complicated lovemaking . . . .

 

This doesn't explain what makes eschewing four genders "more Star Trek", though. If you dislike it and your interpretation of events differs, fine, there's nothing innately wrong with holding that opinion. But what about the concept lacks the innate qualities that you associate with the franchise? It can't simply be the apparent contradiction as you see it, since Star Trek, like any creative work, is more than the bare facts of the narratives stripped of context and theme; that's just the scaffolding. It can be enjoyable to collect, talk over, and quibble about, sure, but one wouldn't say that a dry recounting of various pieces of trivia contained within an episode, movie, or book are equally as "Star Trek" as that same episode, movie, or book itself. Contradiction of bare fact is hardly enough to say that something is "less Star Trek", or else there would be no such thing as something manifesting a feeling of being "Star Trek" to begin with, since the core content contains so many internal contradictions as it stands. It already doesn't hold together entirely consistently, so how can that be the basis to judge on?

 

Bought and started to read a couple of days back on the Kindle app. About a third of the way through. Loving it so far, with Picard just promoted to Captain of the Stargazer. Every important detail touched upon without it seeming like a repeat, and interspersed with some new characters and subplots. Eagerly looking forward to the rest.

 

IGN has posted a new interview about the Picard book with David A. Goodman.

 

I was late to start. The most interesting piece was seeing Phlox and why no Denobulans were seen from TNG onward.

 

Just finished reading it. I enjoyed it as much as the Kirk autobiography. Loved how Picard viewed his career almost as failing upward, that it surprised him that his Stargazer years were required reading at the academy.

Although, I missed the Discovery reference in the book. Maybe I was reading the book to damn fast. Anyone catch it?

 

I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but to recap.

Spoiler

When talking about the events of the episode Sarek, specifically Picard experiencing Sarek's memories after the mind meld, several of Sarek's memories are mentioned in the narrative, including one which is a very vaguely worded accounting of Sarek rescuing Michael Burnham after the bombing of the Vulcan school.

 

And the reason is?

 

Spoiler

They shifted Denobula into another dimension. Also, years later, the Hoban people attempted to do the same thing with their homeworld, but due to a Romulan attack at the moment the shift was to occur, there was a cataclysmic explosion which triggered the Hobus incident.

 

Eh, shit happens.

 

Thanks! I just reread that section and I did blow past it in my first read through.

 

Why would they do that?

 

To throw a monkey wrench into the (admittedly non-canonical) backstory for how the Abramsverse came to be. Just as what the Denobulans did, they did only to throw a monkey wrench into any appearance of Denobulans in or beyond the TNG era.

 

Spoiler

The Denobulans shifted Denobula to get away from a universe of war. The Hobans had the same idea, but the Romulans wanted access to the technology.

 

Where they no doubt

Spoiler: uh oh

found even worse problems awaiting them?

 

I wonder how many different explanations we'll end up getting for Hobus as time goes on? We got one from STO, now this one, and I'm expecting to books to give us a different one once they reach that point.

 

It's the modern version of the Klingon Forehead Thing. They were engineered hybrids to better interact with humans, they were "southern" Klingons then finally ENT did it's Augment Virus thing which was totally ignored by Discovery.

 

Or the ridgeless Klingons didn't yet rise to prominence they had in TOS.

 

Or the genetic purge leading to the prominent Klinzhai brow...which is I think from early TNg novels