Rank the miniseries!

[Thrawn]

Under Ordover's reign, every year there'd be another one of these huge miniseries event things in Treklit. (For this thread, I'm referring to the ones that were pre-planned, not ongoing narratives, had more than one author, and lasted longer than 3 books. I'm also leaving out Mission Gamma because I feel it's part of the ongoing DS9 Relaunch narrative; you can include it if you like.) My list would be Invasion!, Day Of Honor, Captain's Table, Double Helix, New Earth, Section 31, Gateways, The Lost Era (just the original 6), and A Time To...

In this thread, rank them in order from the one you enjoyed the most to the one you enjoyed the least. I'm curious how much agreement there will be. (If you didn't read all of them, just rank the ones you did.)

My ranking would be:

The Lost Era
Section 31
Captain's Table
Invasion!
A Time To...
Gateways
Day Of Honor
Double Helix
New Earth

Lost Era was brilliant, Section 31 was fun, Captain's Table produced a couple of major standouts, and Invasion! was the first and most obvious crossover idea, lots of fun. Those were the ones I really liked. The next couple, A Time To and Gateways, had their moments but were really hit or miss for me, Day Of Honor was kind of bleh, not really good or bad, and then Double Helix and New Earth were just boring and repetitive for the most part.

Your thoughts?

 

[toughlittleship]

The Invasion! and Gateways series would have been completely pointless if they hadn't produced Time's Enemy and Demons of Air and Darkness.

 

[RandyS]

The Lost Era
Section 31
Captain's Table
Invasion!
A Time To...
Gateways
Day Of Honor
Double Helix
New Earth

Your thoughts?

I've read all of those except the Captain's Table series, and my ranking pretty much agrees with yours. The only change I would make would be to put Section 31 at the top, and move Double Helix to second place. Gateways, while good, had a huge problem. With each book ending on a cliffhanger, to be resolved in book 7, By the time I got to book seven, I had forgotten what Kirk and crew had been doing way back in book one. Same with the Challenger crew, Picard in book three, etc, etc.

 

[Thrawn]

The Lost Era
Section 31
Captain's Table
Invasion!
A Time To...
Gateways
Day Of Honor
Double Helix
New Earth

Your thoughts?

I've read all of those except the Captain's Table series, and my ranking pretty much agrees with yours. The only change I would make would be to put Section 31 at the top, and move Double Helix to second place. Gateways, while good, had a huge problem. With each book ending on a cliffhanger, to be resolved in book 7, By the time I got to book seven, I had forgotten what Kirk and crew had been doing way back in book one. Same with the Challenger crew, Picard in book three, etc, etc.

You liked Double Helix enough to put it in second place? This seems very strange to me. Why?

 

[RandyS]

^Because I thought it was a good story.

 

[JD]

My rankings would go:
The Lost Era: I only read The Sundered, Serpents Among the Ruins, and Art of the Impossible
A Time To...: the last three cancel out the first two
Gateways: I only read Doors Into Chaos, Demons of Air and Darkness, and Cold Wars. I really enjoyed the first two, but the third was only ok.
Captain's Table: I only read Once Burned and most of the stories in Tales..., but I did really enjoy them.
Section 31: Only read Abyss and I really enjoyed it.
Double Helix: Only read Infection, and Double or Nothing. I liked DoN, but I don't remember anything about Infection.
Never read any of Invasion or New Earth.

 

[Claudia]

The Lost Era - only read The Sundered, Serpents..., and Art of the Impossible... but loved all three of them.

New Earth - I really liked that mini-series, especially, of course, #6 Challenger. It's really a shame nothing came out of it.

Section 31 - read all 4, but only Abyss and the TNG-volume made it into my longterm memory. But especially Abyss was quite an exciting novel.

Captain's Table - I only read Once Burned - still one of my favourite ST-novels.

Gateways - "Chainmail" is always going to be a special place in my heart, despite its resolution in "What you leave behind". DS9 and NF's entries were quite exciting - the others not worth mentioning IMO.

Double Helix - only read and enjoyed immensely Double or Nothing

Invasion! - read TOS and DS9-volumes... but unfortunately can't remember much about them. *g*

A Time To... - not read
Day Of Honor - not read

 

[RonG]

My ranking would be:

1. The Lost Era (all in all, fantastic books - except Deny Thy Father and Well of Souls)
2. A Time To... (Mack and KRAD's novels are the basis for "modern" TrekLit continuity)
3. Section 31 (3 great books and one Voyager one..)
4. nvasion! (for being the first of its kind)
5. Captain's Table (for the masterpiece that is Once Burned)
6. Gateways (the DS9, TNG and NF were quite good...)
7. Day Of Honor

can't rank:
- Double Helix - haven't read it except Double or Nothing)
- New Earth - read only the last book...

 

[Man of Steel]

My ranking would be:

1. The Lost Era (all in all, fantastic books - except Deny Thy Father and Well of Souls)
2. A Time To... (Mack and KRAD's novels are the basis for "modern" TrekLit continuity)
3. Section 31 (3 great books and one Voyager one..)
4. nvasion! (for being the first of its kind)
5. Captain's Table (for the masterpiece that is Once Burned)
6. Gateways (the DS9, TNG and NF were quite good...)
7. Day Of Honor

can't rank:
- Double Helix - haven't read it except Double or Nothing)
- New Earth - read only the last book...

My List reads like this:

1) Time To:

Thought the first 4 were weak but Hate/Love Kill/Heal and War/Peace were well worth the wait and very, very well written.

2) Lost Era:
a) Sundred and Serpents were ok.
b) Art of the Impossible was outstanding
c) Well of Souls.... Blah
d) Deny thy Father.... An kay read but not that exciting.
e) Catalyst of Sorrows... Interesting

3)Section 31:
Abyss was great but the others were mediocre at best.


4) Invasion:

I can't remember if this was the first ever crossover event but it was a great series from all involved.

5) Double Helix:

Awful, awful series that never should have happened. I read 2 books from it and I couldn't bring myself to finish it.

6)Day of Honor

Without this, we wouldn't have had the excellent Voyager episode

7) Gateways

All I read from this was Demons of Air and Darkness which yet again had excellent writing from the great KRAD....

New Earth: Can't rank this cause never read it.

 

[RonG]

several things come to mind when looking at the list of mini series:

First, one should differentiate between actual miniseries which are presented as independent from the main series (i.e. Gateways, Section 31 etc) and continuing storylines running inside their respective series (i.e. New Earth, Double Helix, Invasion! etc.). In that regard, Mission Gamma is also a viable choice...

Second, another division should be between miniseries which have continuing storylines (like Gateways, Double Helix, New Earth, A Time To.. and Invasion!) and those that have common themes but unrelated stories (The Lost Era, Section 31, Captain's Table).

Upon considering these elements (and only including the multi author rule), I'd also add the Terok Nor and Badlands miniseries as well as VGR's String Theory (which I haven't read as yet).

My updated lists would be:

(1) Continuing Storylines:
- A Time To..
- Invasion!
- Mission Gamma
- Terok Nor
- Gateways
- Badlands

(2) "Common Theme" mini series
- The Lost Era
- Section 31
- Captain's Table
- Day of Honor

 

[Thrawn]

Ron; if those divisions make sense to you then more power to you, but I don't see how Invasion! is a continuing storyline in one particular series...

I also wanted to include only the really big events, so nothing less than four books, and I defined miniseries as self-contained, which in my mind would rule out Mission: Gamma (as it's pretty hard to just read that on its own), but would leave A Time To... since that was intended to specifically lead up to Nemesis, and can be read without continuing on any further. (And The Badlands had only one author, btw.)

Sorry, I know this is picayune stuff, just wanted to make sure you knew where I was coming from! Thanks for the post.

 

[RonG]

Well, Thrawn, AFAIK all Trek miniseries are comprised of somewhat standalone books i.e. you can start from practically any point and get a fairly complete story.

What I meant by continuing storyline was more along the lines of premise or ongoing plot element such as the Furies' invasion, the Gateways crisis etc. This cannot be applied to any of my "second group", as there is nothing really binding the various books in the series other than a recurring backgroud theme with basically no plot connections.

As for Badlands - I stand corrected

 

[Thrawn]

Well, Thrawn, AFAIK all Trek miniseries are comprised of somewhat standalone books i.e. you can start from practically any point and get a fairly complete story.

What I meant by continuing storyline was more along the lines of premise or ongoing plot element such as the Furies' invasion, the Gateways crisis etc. This cannot be applied to any of my "second group", as there is nothing really binding the various books in the series other than a recurring backgroud theme with basically no plot connections.

As for Badlands - I stand corrected

Fair enough. It looks like, that aside, your rankings lined up with mine pretty well, except you didn't include New Earth and Double Helix - I assume because you didn't read them? If so, good call; I don't think they're really worth the time.

 

[LutherSloan]

The problem for me is, I read those so long ago I barely remember what happened in HALF of them at most. I know that I purposely skipped most of the 'A Time To..' series except for the last 2-3 entries that dealt with the Enterprise-E at Tezwa. I never read any of the 'Day of Honor' books. I skipped the Challenger entry in 'Gateways'. I still need to read the last two entries in the original run of 'The Lost Era', which are 'Deny Thy Father' and 'Catalyst of Sorrows'. I wish I hadn't read 'Well of Souls', which was the Enterprise-C story. At some point I also have to read the Terok Nor trilogy, but I sometimes have difficulty with Bajoran-centric novels.

 

[ronny]

The Lost Era, A Time To...
- both great series, each has a low point or two but lots of great stuff. i guess if you start throwing in the Terok Nor trilogy and The Buried Age to the Lost Era mix then that starts to pull away.

Section 31
- i liked the series, tng book was great, heck, i even liked the voyager book

Invasion!
- the ds9 book is the standout here. rest are ok

New Earth
- they attempted something different and it shows diane carey can write books i don't hate.

Double Helix
- i thought it was a great idea but the execution wasn very uneven. and major points knocked off because red zone or red sector or what ever it's called is either the most annoying or 2nd most annoying ST book i've read, it's down there with Ship of the Line.

Gateways, Day Of Honor, Captain's Table
- not going to rate them because i've only read the DS9 and NF books in each series.

 

[RonG]

Well, Thrawn, AFAIK all Trek miniseries are comprised of somewhat standalone books i.e. you can start from practically any point and get a fairly complete story.

What I meant by continuing storyline was more along the lines of premise or ongoing plot element such as the Furies' invasion, the Gateways crisis etc. This cannot be applied to any of my "second group", as there is nothing really binding the various books in the series other than a recurring backgroud theme with basically no plot connections.

As for Badlands - I stand corrected

Fair enough. It looks like, that aside, your rankings lined up with mine pretty well, except you didn't include New Earth and Double Helix - I assume because you didn't read them? If so, good call; I don't think they're really worth the time.

Thanks, Thrawn, and your'e right - I only read the last New Earth book (which did prompt me to read the Challenger book in Gateways) and the NF crossover in Double Helix (book 5 IIRC)

 

[Trent Roman]

The problem for me is, I read those so long ago I barely remember what happened in HALF of them at most. I know that I purposely skipped most of the 'A Time To..' series except for the last 2-3 entries that dealt with the Enterprise-E at Tezwa. I never read any of the 'Day of Honor' books. I skipped the Challenger entry in 'Gateways'. I still need to read the last two entries in the original run of 'The Lost Era', which are 'Deny Thy Father' and 'Catalyst of Sorrows'. I wish I hadn't read 'Well of Souls', which was the Enterprise-C story. At some point I also have to read the Terok Nor trilogy, but I sometimes have difficulty with Bajoran-centric novels.

I've read all of them but the New Earth series, but have failed to come up with a ranking. Can't do it. Tried copy/pasting Thrawn's list and moving things about, but couldn't make up for the fact that some of these series have both solid and terrible entries. I then tried to evaluate each on the basis of what fraction of the total books I liked, but even that doesn't correctly gauge some of the massive internal gaps in quality. Plus, a yes/no choice often feels too harsh. Also, I've realized that I don't remember what some of the older books were actually about. Short story long: I got nothin'.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Silent_Bob]

When it comes to New Earth just read books one and two. The other four recycle the plot of these two repeatedly to the point there is no point reading them. The only reason why i did was because i managed to buy the entire series for £3 from discount bookstore 'The Works' in the uk. Even then it probably wasnt worth it.

Of the Miniseries ive read id say the Gateways batch of novels was probably the best, followed by section 31 , then Invasion and then in a far far last place, New Earth

 

[HIj'Qa]

Gateways, while good, had a huge problem. With each book ending on a cliffhanger, to be resolved in book 7, By the time I got to book seven, I had forgotten what Kirk and crew had been doing way back in book one. Same with the Challenger crew, Picard in book three, etc, etc.

It doesn't really matter with the TOS part of Gateways. There is a Klingon battlecruiser gearing up to attack Kirk and crew at the end of One Small Step, but no mention of the whole Klingon side of the story in One Giant Leap.

I have all the New Earth books [Xmas gifts] but I haven't managed to crack their spines yet. I just can't get into them.

I liked Invasion and The Lost Era books best.

I felt the other series deteriorated into one note wonders, and the subjects didn't really interest me.

I like the idea of crossovers, dragging Voyager in from the Delta Quad was sometimes a stretch, but time-spanning issues are quite plausible in Star Trek.

 

[Paris]

I liked a lot of these books, but I haven't read every book in all the series. My list would be:

1- The Lost Era: I still have to read Well of Souls...I loved how we got some of the gaps in continuity filled in, and my favorite of the run was KRAD's Art of the Impossible
2- A Time To...:I haven't read #4-6, but books 7-9 were awesome. My top book from this run is #9 (Peace/War). I'm a big Bacco fan!
3-Captain's Table: Once burned is one of my top trek books of all time, and I really liked the anthology.
4-Gateways: I haven't read the first 2 parts as I just got them on ebay a little while ago (besides, i'm waiting to read New Earth first before I read Chainmail)
5-Double Helix: Decent series, but it has been awhile since I checked it out.

All 6 New Earth books as well as the DS9 Section 31 book are all in my que of stuff to read next. I read the first books of both Day of Honor and Invasion! (both awhile ago), and neither held my interest.