Planet O' Week or Gritty HBO-esque serial story
- Thread starter Nathan
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I feel like a false dichotomy has been set up here. My favorite Treklit concepts were the Deep Space Nine relaunch and Titan. The former of those was pretty well serialized, but included a number of "x of the week" plots (especially Mission: Gamma), but was never particularly gritty. The latter (at its best) had "planet of the week" adventures, but no reset buttons, as the character dynamics carried over from story to story. You don't have to be "gritty" and super-political (which is not my Star Trek preference) to have an ongoing story.
My favorite type of story is a good story. Good or bad stories can be found in any given category. And if all the stories we saw were of the same type, that would be boring.
I've more than had my fill of Planet of the Week stories as well as secret spy missions. I prefer Treks which delve into the existing mythos, or which focus on the character relationships.
My thoughts exactly.
However, I do like variety as well. So far, there's always been something for my taste in TrekLit.
Same here..I like a little variety but the pure stories set with canon characters get a little tired after a while..I like the original series which have more uncertainty of outcome
I really like serialized story-telling, where each book doesn't exist in its own vacuum, but I don't think it really needs to be gritty.
For Planet of the Week, I think it would be nice to see more planets we already know of but don't know much about. I thought the Typhon Pact miniseries was a great way to explore some of the lesser known powers like the Gorn and the Breen. I think I would prefer that to a new planet and species every book.
For Planet of the Week, I think it would be nice to see more planets we already know of but don't know much about. I thought the Typhon Pact miniseries was a great way to explore some of the lesser known powers like the Gorn and the Breen. I think I would prefer that to a new planet and species every book.
Couldn't have put it better myself...
As others have also said, a good story is really the most important requirement. The thought also occurs to me that a hard science fiction story (which was one of my choices) can also be a planet of the week story (which was not). Over a Torrent Sea comes to mind here.
One of the reasons I read very little TOS fiction these days is the abundance of planet of the week stories. But it's also because of my general feeling that with TOS I know how things will turn out because we know so much of the history and eventual fates of the characters. I do have an interest in books set during the movie era, because it seems like there's more room there for surprises and learning something new about the characters.
In the end, I think my ideal is character-driven stories that develop over several books, but with the primary plot of each book being self-contained, or covering a few books. More or less what we were getting with the early DS9R, perhaps with a few more "stand-alone" books with interwoven character arcs.
(On the other hand, I'm in the middle of Disavowed right now and really enjoying it even though Tom Clancy style espionage was not one of my choices, so . . .)
One of the reasons I read very little TOS fiction these days is the abundance of planet of the week stories. But it's also because of my general feeling that with TOS I know how things will turn out because we know so much of the history and eventual fates of the characters. I do have an interest in books set during the movie era, because it seems like there's more room there for surprises and learning something new about the characters.
In the end, I think my ideal is character-driven stories that develop over several books, but with the primary plot of each book being self-contained, or covering a few books. More or less what we were getting with the early DS9R, perhaps with a few more "stand-alone" books with interwoven character arcs.
(On the other hand, I'm in the middle of Disavowed right now and really enjoying it even though Tom Clancy style espionage was not one of my choices, so . . .)
Mudang Harada
Lieutenant Commander
I would love to read more military sci fi/commando stuff. By Tom Clacy the OP also means that?
Pretty much my feelings. I loved Vanguard however, because it was serialized AND set in the TOS era with new (and expendable) characters/ships...and as much as i like the fact Vanguard characters are in SEEKERS, I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to hang with the 'Planet of the Week' angle they are planning to run with...time will tell.
All of the above- something for everyone.
Novels don't necessarily need to be serialized. After all, serialization on tv allows it to be more like novels where a story can unfold over a long period of time.
What we really are asking for are stories where there are real stakes, characters face genuine jeopardy, and things change over time.
That the problem with the TOS novels. There is never any jeopardy. We know how things will turn out in the end and there is no real character growth.
The 24th century novels have been able to move away from that. Change and growth have been a part of that story telling since we don't know how it all ends.
The need for change is one of the reasons that I was pissed that they resurrected Janeway. Allowing characters to die should be part of the process. Yet what we end up with is no jeopardy since we know that no one ever stays dead....especially if they have a rabid fan base.
What we really are asking for are stories where there are real stakes, characters face genuine jeopardy, and things change over time.
That the problem with the TOS novels. There is never any jeopardy. We know how things will turn out in the end and there is no real character growth.
The 24th century novels have been able to move away from that. Change and growth have been a part of that story telling since we don't know how it all ends.
The need for change is one of the reasons that I was pissed that they resurrected Janeway. Allowing characters to die should be part of the process. Yet what we end up with is no jeopardy since we know that no one ever stays dead....especially if they have a rabid fan base.
Well, that was true of TOS itself. At the time, dramatic TV series were expected to maintain a constant status quo indefinitely. After all, episodes could be aired in any order at the networks' whim, and without home video, there was no guarantee you'd ever get to see an episode you missed; so the emphasis had to be on making each installment complete and self-contained. So since the main characters couldn't change, the emphasis was placed on introducing guest stars who had interesting stories of their own, stories that the main characters got emotionally invested in and helped them to resolve. The character growth is in the guest stars' stories.
Which doesn't mean that the main characters were undeveloped, though. Rather, the stories helped to explore and reveal the main characters' personalities, to develop them by deepening them and challenging them rather than changing them. It's not so much that they evolved as that our understanding of them evolved as we learned more about how they'd react to different situations and interactions. So there was still character development, just not in the same way as it standard today.
Perhaps the problem is just that by now we've seen the TOS cast in so many stories that it's hard to find a situation that reveals something new about them. And building stories around interesting guests is no longer as popular a practice as it was in the '60s and '70s, since we tend to dismiss such guests as "Mary Sues" (even though that term was originally meant to refer specifically to badly written featured guests).
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