Retcons in TrekLit due to canon additions (not so much changes)

[Avro Arrow]

^ Are you referring to

Spoiler: Just in case

Allegiance in Exile

? If so, there were Bajorans and a Bajoran colony, but there were never any scenes on Bajor itself, were there?

Although it certainly does fit the criteria of the OP's question.

 

[Enterprise1701]

No, no scenes on Bajor.

Though in Mirror Universe - The Sorrows of Empire, Bajor does not appear but is mentioned as a longtime conquered *cough cough* colony world of the Terran Empire.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

First major example is they published a TOS Section 31 novel called Cloak, of course the concept of Section 31 did not exist for another 30 years!

You're forgetting that ENT established the existence of Section 31 in the 22nd century. Danlav05 is referring to the real-world fact that Section 31 was conceived in a television series made three decades after TOS.

As I recall, wasn't there a line of dialogue in one of the Section 31 DS9 episodes that their existence was made possible by some minor clause in the original Federation Charter? I think the implication was supposed to be that Section 31 had always been there in some fashion but they remained undiscovered until the 24th Century. But I suppose it's possible that they started out as a secret-but-still-benevolent organization and gradually became corrupted over time.

I remember enjoying the novel Cloak quite a bit. It used the elements from the sequel series well but it was still a TOS story.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Another possible retcon in the novels is that some of the early Trek novels from the 1980s like Strangers From The Sky and The Final Reflection used the then-in-vogue Starfleet Chronology dates for historical events. Those dates are pretty incompatible with the official Okuda Chronology that came out in the 90s.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Hmm. And if you go all the way back to the Bantam years, you find, in Death's Angel (one of my favorites from the Bantam era), something called the Special Security Division -- kinder, gentler, more open, and with more explicit official sanction.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ I would hardly describe the Special Security Division as "kindler, gentler" anything...they were just jackbooted thugs. Even the Judges from 2000 AD were more easygoing than them. If the SSD ever had official legitimacy from the Federation, I'd have a hard time believing it - really, the SSD is no better than Section 31, the Tal Shiar, or the Obsidian Order.

(Oh, and speaking of the SSD, Elizabeth Schaeffer is one of the most obvious Mary Sues in Trek history. Almost as blatant as Piper.)

Much better to have the current novelverse's Federation Security Agency.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Uh, there's very little that I wouldn't rate as "kinder, gentler" than Section 31. Were it not for the fact that the Gestapo and the SS were tragically all too real, I'd be inclined to rate even them as "kinder, gentler" than Section 31.

And rather remarkably, I'm pretty sure I've seen Kathleen Sky in person (she and Stephen Goldin did a mini-con at Huntington Center Mall, many decades ago, long before I was old enough to drive; I caught their lecture, but missed Alan Dean Foster's), and though Schaeffer is certainly as Mary-Sue as Piper (and Dr. Katalya Tremaine [Vulcan!] at least twice as Mary-Sue as Schaeffer and Piper combined), neither, from what I could picture based on descriptions in the text, actually look the slightest bit like her (as I recall, if anything, she looks more like the descriptions of Metika Spyroukis in Trek to Madworld, by her "were-koala" [now ex-] husband).

 

[Avro Arrow]

I would hardly describe the Special Security Division as "kindler, gentler" anything...they were just jackbooted thugs

Yeah. This is just going from really old memories, but didn't they supposedly have the legal right to just execute anybody they wanted, without trial? That doesn't really sound very Federation-like. (Although in general, I don't have a problem with the thought of an elite security division within Starfleet. Just not one that acts more like a Gestapo.)

 

[LutherSloan]

The biggest example I can think of a book being retconned would be Starfleet: Year One, which was written almost immediately before Enterprise aired. I know some of the ENT: Romulan War and Rise of the Federation books have tried to keep certain aspects of what the book presented though.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

In the Vanguard books we're introduced to Ganz as a big powerful Orion crime boss, but then in the later books, after the Enterprise episode "Bound" revealed that women were in charge, we found out he had a female boss.

Something about that set up (Orion females actually having 'mind control' over all males) has always bothered me since I saw "Bound", but I can't really say why.

The biggest example I can think of a book being retconned would be Starfleet: Year One, which was written almost immediately before Enterprise aired. I know some of the ENT: Romulan War and Rise of the Federation books have tried to keep certain aspects of what the book presented though.

I loved "Year One", more so than I did the first couple seasons of Enterprise. Part of me wishes the series had been more like that book, emerging from a devastating war and trying to figure out how a United Federation of Planets Starfleet actually works in practice.

 

[Christopher]

The biggest example I can think of a book being retconned would be Starfleet: Year One, which was written almost immediately before Enterprise aired. I know some of the ENT: Romulan War and Rise of the Federation books have tried to keep certain aspects of what the book presented though.

That's not a retcon, though. A retcon is where you say something was part of the continuity all along even though the audience didn't know it -- e.g. First Contact retconning the Borg Queen into the events of "The Best of Both Worlds," or Section 31: Cloak retconning Admiral Cartwright as a Section 31 member. This is just a book being overwritten by later canon, which is something that happened countless times during the years that TNG, DS9, VGR, and ENT were on the air.

And I haven't tried to keep anything from Year One in Rise of the Federation. I considered it at first, but I found that book's version of early Federation history to be completely irreconcilable with ENT canon. So I decided just to do my own thing that was completely distinct from it, so they could stand as two alternative conjectures. The only points of overlap I'm aware of are things that both works borrowed from canon, such as Bryce Shumar and the other Essex crewmembers established in TNG: "Power Play."

Something about that set up (Orion females actually having 'mind control' over all males) has always bothered me since I saw "Bound", but I can't really say why.

Perhaps because it plays into old, sexist stereotypes about women's sexuality being the source of their power and making them a danger to men's self-control. Heck, the whole idea of irresistible Orion "animal women" from "The Cage" is a blatant example of that stereotype, a misogynistic trope that goes back to Circe and the Sirens in Greek myth, and that underlay the atrocities of the Salem witch trials. You can see that trope in a lot of Roddenberry's work. His failed 333 Montgomery Street lawyer-show pilot with DeForest Kelley opened with a voiceover narration talking overtly about how women were a dangerous, devious force that lured men to their doom. Ilia's irresistible Deltan sexuality in TMP was a milder iteration of the trope. There's also the Venus drug in "Mudd's Women," Nona in "A Private Little War," the succubus in the Spectre pilot movie, etc.

 

[Jinn]

There's also the Venus drug in "Mudd's Women," Nona in "A Private Little War," the succubus in the Spectre pilot movie, etc.

I rewatched that episode some time ago and I was shocked by all the sexism and that I didn't remember it at all.

Would lesbians be affected by the Orion females' pheromones?

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Perhaps because it plays into old, sexist stereotypes about women's sexuality being the source of their power and making them a danger to men's self-control. Heck, the whole idea of irresistible Orion "animal women" from "The Cage" is a blatant example of that stereotype, a misogynistic trope that goes back to Circe and the Sirens in Greek myth, and that underlay the atrocities of the Salem witch trials. You can see that trope in a lot of Roddenberry's work. His failed 333 Montgomery Street lawyer-show pilot with DeForest Kelley opened with a voiceover narration talking overtly about how women were a dangerous, devious force that lured men to their doom. Ilia's irresistible Deltan sexuality in TMP was a milder iteration of the trope. There's also the Venus drug in "Mudd's Women," Nona in "A Private Little War," the succubus in the Spectre pilot movie, etc.

Put for more eloquently than I could've myself and rings very true.

 

[Christopher]

Would lesbians be affected by the Orion females' pheromones?

I would think so. In ROTF, I've established that the bisexual Devna is able to be aroused by female Orion pheromones, rather than irritated by them as "Bound" said other women would be.