I don't follow your logic. Writers of standalone ST novels and mini-series can excel at tying in to the show (indeed, they have to), and can offer very fresh flashbacks, missing scenes and new directions.
should PARAMOUNT take over?
- Thread starter RobertScorpio
- Start date
I don't follow your logic. Writers of standalone ST novels and mini-series can excel at tying in to the show (indeed, they have to), and can offer very fresh flashbacks, missing scenes and new directions.
Can, but don't always do--they often fail the "fresh" part of that description.
Don't worry about.
. You should hear how people pronounce my Jewish name.. And they are Jewish themselves.. And anyway in America, Marc is commonly spelled with a K.
Everywhere. I was meaning I usually spell your name with a "c".
I assume the "Marc" spelling originally derived from Marcus.
By the way, Ian, I'm not sure that this is true. I believe that the Spock/Saavik arcs take place well after the events of The Fire and the Rose. Because of that, I think that Crucible could indeed exist side-by-side with the Spock/Saavik stories.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Which is why they should just reboot the book series back to where this new movie stops...and anything between here and the next Trek movie would be cannon...this would have the effect of shunting all the books of TNG-DS9 and the others into another universe..but oh well...thats the whole point.
I think the better of the trek authors, some of whom populate this board, could make it work!!
Rob
Scorpio
David,
Can you tell us what the extra content will include in the hardcover version of Crucible and why it was left out of the original? If we don't buy the hardcover version with new stuff, are we losing out?
Why are you so eager to make the novels canonical? You really think more people will flock to them because Paramount branded them as missing movie arcs?
Then JJ Abrams and his screenwriters would have read every ST novel written between ST XI and ST XII, or at least very detailed summaries - and somehow anticipate the events of all books still in production and which would appear before the next film. Then, he'd have to read every ST novel between ST XII and ST XIII, and anticipate more books underway. And perhaps have to scrap some great story ideas because the novels claimed otherwise.
Leave the books right were they are.
Who said it was "left out"? Maybe David recently thought of some new bits. Maybe he is linking the stories closer to some events in ST XI?
Yes. Because we'll have read something extra by David George that you don't have! Unless you buy the book (or read the new bits in Borders' coffee shop).
is there a way to create a poll about this within the thread
I'm not following. Why does the fact that the Crucible and Vulcan's Noun series could be creatively interpreted to take place within the same fictional continuity mean that the books should just be rebooted to where the new movie ends?
Why do opportunities for creativity disturb you so much?
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Why are you so eager to make the novels canonical? You really think more people will flock to them because Paramount branded them as missing movie arcs?
Yes..I do. I think if they rebooted the books and said that any new book really 'mattered' they would sale more..BUT more importantly, just one book every two months or so so as not to overload on them...
Rob
Scorpio
Yes..I do. I think if they rebooted the books and said that any new book really 'mattered' they would sale more..BUT more importantly, just one book every two months or so so as not to overload on them...
Rob
Scorpio
Just for shits and grins... what makes you think this? What's your empirical evidence, or your ancedotal evidence, or even your semi-relevant bit of data, that could possibly convince you (let alone someone who actually makes a living thinking about these things) that saying "THIS BOOK 'MATTERS'!" will do jack shit in the marketplace?
No, they wouldn't. I think you've got the cause and effect backward there. The reason books can't be treated as equal in status to canonical material is because they don't sell more. Only 1-2 percent of the film or TV audience reads the books. Even if you quadrupled that, the vast majority of the audience for screen Trek would have no idea what was going on in the books.
Sure, there's a faction of fandom that says "I won't read anything that isn't cannnnnnon," but that's just a faction, no more representative of the buying public as a whole than any other faction of fandom, and they're probably just using canon as an excuse for their reluctance to read in general.
Besides, why do you keep assuming the books would need to be rebooted in order to be compatible with canon? All Trek novels are required going in to be consistent with existing screen canon. The only cases where they aren't consistent are those where an episode or film contradicted a book after it came out (or, in some cases in the past, where a significant continuity error slipped through, but that's rarer these days). Most of the books published in the past decade are still compatible with canon, even when they aren't compatible with each other.
Besides, as said before, even if a book is stamped "canon" tomorrow, no power on Earth will stop Paramount from ignoring it if the book gets in the way of a good movie idea. Because Paramount is smart and sensible enough to know that nobody except maybe a couple hundred fans worries about "canon" anyway. (And that's a really generous estimate.)
In the real world of making movies and books, "canon" doesn't matter.
That may sound harsh, but it's true. And all the on-line polls in the world aren't going to change that.
In the real world of making movies and books, "canon" doesn't matter.
That may sound harsh, but it's true. And all the on-line polls in the world aren't going to change that.
Well, the first two "THIS BOOK 'MATTERS'!" Babylon 5 novels were also the only two reprinted by the second publisher to pick up the license. So they obviously thought that there was a bigger demand for those two than for the other seven novels.
Or, the first two reprints sold so poorly, they didn't do the next seven.
I can imagine the complaints about ST XII right now.
"I loved JJ Abrams first movie, but now I hear that I must read six novels in order to understand what's happening in ST XII."
RobertScorpio is insisting that more than 1-2% of the general cinema-going audience must read books to get every nuance of a blockbuster movie. How does that make new ST movies more accessible?
You know, no one ever said, back when Bantam Books had the license, that their ST books didn't matter. Richard Arnold was still a schoolboy at the time and no one had told anybody that only live-action ST was canonical.
Readers make up their own minds about which books - and which episodes of ST - matter to them.
What about us? In order not to overload the general movie-going populace, the rest of us must do without as many ST novels per year?
Or are you saying we can still have our monthly ST novel releases, but they aren't all allowed to be marked "THIS BOOK MATTERS"?
And they just happened to start with books #7 and #9, as opposed with, oh, #1 and #2?
Hardly--he's asking that the movies not contradict the books, not that they depend on the books.
And they just happened to start with books #7 and #9, as opposed with, oh, #1 and #2?
It's good marketing sense to start with your potentially strongest sellers. When Titan Books UK started reprinting the Bantam/Corgi novels in the 80s, they started with "The Galactic Whirlpool" by David Gerrold, one of the last in the original run, but a strong story by someone connected with an actual script. They eventually published the whole run, but were very selective over the order.
Which means that the scriptwriters will have to invest significant time and effort - which will grow expotentially between each sequel, as new books are published and plotted - to avoid quashing a novel, or future novel still in manuscript stage, that will only ever be read by a tiny minority of the viewing audience.
When I saw ST:TMP in December 1979, I'd just read the novelization. I felt as if I knew everything there was to know about Decker and Ilia's background, Kirk's wife who was just killed in the transporter accident, and what was going through Spock's mind when he "heard" Vejur's approach during his Kolinahr ceremony. When I told my new friends - who were all puzzled but avid ST fans - that they could always read the novelization to find out more, they just shrugged. They said if it "mattered" it should have been on the screen, not in a book.
