Small Universe Syndrome

[Tara]

The only book I've read recently that probably fits the "Small Universe Syndrome" tag is the Uhura Lost Era novel Catalyst of Sorrow in that it featured characters from TOS, TNG, DS9 and VOY all during the period before TNG began. However what I really liked about that cast of characters was how much sense it made. Each character, from Beverly to Sisko to McCoy was chosen for a very specific reason, to fill a particular role. Sure, those roles could have been filled by original characters (and in times gone by, probably would have been). But the creative brief of that series was to fill in gaps, and as such, I accepted that when I plunked down my hard-earned cash for the book. I went in with my eyes wide open, and it didn't feel contrived to me.

I think much of it depends on what you as a reader bring to the work. Do I think overkill exists? Yes. But whereas I didn't feel like it was overkill, I can see where a different reader, with different expectations might. But when I reading derivative fiction (be it licenced tie-ins or fanworks) what draws me to the work tends to be love of the canon characters and wanting more of their story. While I can be lured in by a premise set in an existing universe with a whole new cast, as a fan, I trend more towards stories about canon characters than OCs. And when there are original characters, I prefer for them to blend in, rather than stand out.

OCs have always been a bone of contention with fans, when it comes to derivative works. Some folks love them, some folks hate them. When they love them, they really love them. And are often just as passionate in the opposite direction.

It's easy for me to look at OCs, and see why Lia Burke in Diane Duane's Doctor's Orders doesn't ping for me as a Mary Sue, while Tailkinker-to-Ennein in Uhura's Song by Janet Kagan does. And while I really enjoy reading about Captain Robert April in IDW comics and Diane Carey's giant novels, I really am turned off by Mackenzie Calhoun. I recognise that there are plenty of day players in TOS and other Trek televised series that share similar traits. I know objectively Tailkinker is a distant cousin of the Outrageous Okona, and Burke is standing in for Chapel. Piper and Sarda and Meret and Scanner as small-scale mirrors of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty. And probably had Calhoun not beeing a sooper-seekrit Starfleet Intelligence operative with violet eyes, a prominent facial scar, and an Celtic-sounding name despite being from a distant planet I was reading about, but instead was played by an actor's whose performance I enjoyed on-screen I might have given him much more of a free pass as a reader. But he wasn't, and those books just in the end weren't for me. But they do satisfy other readers, and it's not my place to say my tastes are universal, or that I speak for all fans.

But those are tastes I as a reader bring with me to the printed page. And I don't know if authors can (or should) really write with every single audience member in mind, but instead aim to entertain as many of the audience as they can, without watering down characters until they are bland amalgams of traits and common backstory elements.

Ideally, as an author, I find I write the story of story I want to read--particularly if no-one out there IS writing the stories I want to read--and I assume that there are others out there who would want to read that same story.

At the end of the day, I think most authors want to reach as many people as possible with their work, be creatively satisfied and, even when it's work for hire, want to feel they've earned their paycheque.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

"If would have never believed that such a thing could happen, except then it did!"

I loved how Ambassador Spock caught up with Arex and M'Ress in "New Frontier", and was noticed having an animated discussion with them. Good ol' PAD.

Yeah, you can always count on him for "cute" jokes like this that totally pull you out of a story. Its lines like that that make me avoid his Trek books.

 

[Elemental]

Yes, I liked how all the series had a cameo by a character from the previous series (until ENT which couldn't really use a VOY character for obvious reasons). I wouldn't call Quark or McCoy the most popular character from their series, however. And like I said, I don't take issue with the use of any character, but using Picard in the first novel of four 24th century novel series (not including post-NEM TNG)?! That fits my definition of over-doing it.

The thing is, this is a business. Sometimes, concerns of popularity and profit take precedence over story balance. Like it or not, TNG is by far the most popular 24th-century series. Therefore, if you're introducing a new 24th-century series, it makes sense to have a TNG cameo to launch it.

I fully understand the reason why it is done, but it doesn't change the fact that for me, as a fan of all Star Trek, Picard appearing in 4 other series premieres feels like overdoing it. Can you imagine the flack the TV producers would have faced if they used the same character cameo for every new series premiere? All the rationalizing in the world isn't going to change this impression.

Everyone knows that "sex sells" when it comes to shows and consumer products, but that doesn't change the fact that it usually strikes me as comical pandering.

Anyway, I think you're overstating things by citing Picard as the featured character in the SCE launch. That was actually Geordi, who was in the first three SCE installments. Not to mention Scotty, who was virtually a regular for a while. Picard and the rest of the Enterprise crew had a more peripheral role to play in books 1 and 3.

I never said he was the "featured cameo character", only that he appears in each and every one of these series launches. It doesn't get closer to "small universe syndrome" than this.

 

[Broccoli]

About Countdown, it wasn't the Picard or Geordi cameos that bothered me. It was Worf's.

Picard, B4/Data, and Geordi popping up didn't bother me. Neither did Worf. What did was that Worf in the comic looked nothing like Michael Dorn. Especially since the other established characters had very good likenesses, imo. Perhaps it was a license issue, but I had to go back and reread a few times to figure out if it was Worf or just another Klingon happened to be named Worf.

To be honest, I tend to assume that people buy STAR TREK books because they want to read about Picard or Spock or Major Kira or whomever, not Captain Mimsey O'Roarke of the U.S.S. Asparagus.

But O'Roarke is almost as badass as Capt. Robau. Almost.

I loved how Ambassador Spock caught up with Arex and M'Ress in "New Frontier", and was noticed having an animated discussion with them. Good ol' PAD.

That was partly the reason why I checked out from New Frontier. The cast of characters already one-shot character filled enough for my tastes, and then they brought over the Wonder Twins of TAS in, what I felt, was a bit of a forced way.

 

[JarodRussell]

Anyway, I think you're overstating things by citing Picard as the featured character in the SCE launch. That was actually Geordi, who was in the first three SCE installments. Not to mention Scotty, who was virtually a regular for a while. Picard and the rest of the Enterprise crew had a more peripheral role to play in books 1 and 3.

I never said he was the "featured cameo character", only that he appears in each and every one of these series launches. It doesn't get closer to "small universe syndrome" than this.

Second that.

 

[Christopher]

Well, look at it this way: TNG itself canonically established that Picard was the Starfleet captain most likely to be involved in every major event that happened in the Federation and its neighbors. He was the primary point of contact with the Q Continuum, he was the guy assimilated by the Borg, he was the Klingon Arbiter of Succession, he exposed multiple sequential Romulan warmongering schemes, he saved Zefram Cochrane from the Borg, he was intimately involved in Shinzon's coup, etc. Credible or not, canon established that he was pretty much Starfleet's go-to guy and had a knack for becoming involved in important situations. So having him show up in multiple book-series premieres is really just staying true to canonical precedent.

Besides, those different premieres came out -- and took place -- years apart. To someone catching up with the books after the fact, reading them closer together, Picard's appearances might seem more repetitive than they did originally.

 

[Broccoli]

Well, look at it this way: TNG itself canonically established that Picard was the Starfleet captain most likely to be involved in every major event that happened in the Federation and its neighbors. He was the primary point of contact with the Q Continuum, he was the guy assimilated by the Borg, he was the Klingon Arbiter of Succession, he exposed multiple sequential Romulan warmongering schemes, he saved Zefram Cochrane from the Borg, he was intimately involved in Shinzon's coup, etc. Credible or not, canon established that he was pretty much Starfleet's go-to guy and had a knack for becoming involved in important situations. So having him show up in multiple book-series premieres is really just staying true to canonical precedent.

You know, I kinda wonder if Picard or Kirk, for that matter, ever once just turned to someone during a major crisis and said, "How do I get myself involved in these things?"

 

[rahullak]

^
Happened onscreen. Sorta. From ST: Nemesis

JANEWAY (SMILES WRYLY, ON VIEWSCREEN):
The Son'a, the Borg, the Romulans, the
evil Soran and that pesky Nexus. You
seem to get all the easy assignments!
PICARD:
Just lucky, Admiral.

 

[Christopher]

^Wait, were those lines about Soran and the Nexus in the script? They weren't in the final film, thank goodness.

 

[Dayton Ward]

^ Yeah, because that line would've just ruined the whole movie.....

 

[Therin of Andor]

^ Yeah, because that line would've just ruined the whole movie.....

See, they shoulda killed off Janeway before she became Admiral!

 

[rahullak]

^Wait, were those lines about Soran and the Nexus in the script? They weren't in the final film, thank goodness.

Oh yeah. I got the lines from a script through the first hit off of google. Might not have been the final draft used in the movie. And thank goodness they didn't use "evil Soran and pesky Nexus".

 

[Greg Cox]

I think that's the title of my next book: THE PESKY NEXUS.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I think that's the title of my next book: THE PESKY NEXUS.

But is there an "Evil Soran" in your Pesky Nexus?

 

[21Spike65]

I always kind of wished they had put some other kind of reference there in Nemesis. The line made it seem like the Enterprise-E had done nothing during its run except what we saw in the movies.

 

[arch101]

[QUOTE

I plan to read The Buried Age soon, but the description already puts me off a bit. 9 years before TNG, Picard goes on a mission and is helped by Data, Troi and Guinan? And someone told me that at some point, Picard is about to make Janeway First Officer of the Enterprise? Well, I'll see how that turns out, but they could have printed "Small Universe Syndrome" on the cover as well.[/QUOTE]

You've really got to read this book. It's not just good Trek, it's a terrific novel in general.

 

[Section 31]

Arch101 said:
I plan to read The Buried Age soon, but the description already puts me off a bit. 9 years before TNG, Picard goes on a mission and is helped by Data, Troi and Guinan? And someone told me that at some point, Picard is about to make Janeway First Officer of the Enterprise? Well, I'll see how that turns out, but they could have printed "Small Universe Syndrome" on the cover as well.

You've really got to read this book. It's not just good Trek, it's a terrific novel in general.

Agreed. It's one of the best trek books I've read in the last few years. As Christopher pointed out, the cameos by established characters don't happen all at once, but are spead out over the nine year period. Picard clearly had preexisting relationships with them, so the book is only fulfilling its purpose by exploring the origins of their associations.

Christopher said:
Well, we now know thanks to VGR: "The Q and the Gray" that the Q had never procreated before (unless you count the two Qs who became human and gave birth to Amanda Rogers), so that explanation can't work. Before then, it couldn't be ruled out, but I still consider it to be a textbook example of why Small Universe Syndrome is a problem. Think about it. The universe is 13.7 billion years old; humanity is about 40,000 years old. So the number of really, really ancient species in the galaxy must be far, far greater than the number of species that are rough contemporaries of humanity. Given the Trek conceit that old, advanced species eventually evolve into superbeings of one sort or another, that means the superbeings must hugely outnumber the corporeal races. So the odds that any two given superbeings happen to be related are infinitesimal.

Agreed that there would be a large number of ancient races, but I would expect natural selection and other factors to have played a role in causing their eventual extinction, rather than their continued evolution. In my opinion, evolution into noncorporeal beings was a little over-used in Trek. Most ancient races would likely have died out due to disaster, disease, war, etc.

JarodRussell said:
This is why I like Deep Space Nine so much. It's almost a completely free spinoff, and there's almost no continuity porn as with often in the literature. The pilot episode has Sisko meeting Picard, and a transfer of O'Brien, and that's it. Q appears only one time. And the rest of the time, the series stands on its own feet. Worf's appearance makes absolute sense. He IS the only Klingon in Starfleet after all.

Don't forget Vash, Lursa & B'Etor, and Thomas Riker.

Paris said:
In terms of the whole Janeway thing...Picard had met her when she was a younger officer, an exchange we get to see, and when it was time to choose an XO for the Enterprise, she was on his short list of candidates to look into, as Picard had been impressed with her abilities. As many of us continuity hounds know, Janeway was already a captain at this point (the USS Billings, IIRC), so he needed to look somewhere else.

From what I remember of the episode (and referencing Memory Alpha), Janeway was a command officer (not the commanding officer) of the Billings, holding the rank of commander and probably the first officer. I've never seen anything to indicate that she had a command of her own prior to Voyager.

Allyn Gibson said:
Jarod, I'm inclined to agree with you, that Starfleet must, because of the volume of space the Federation controls, be rather significant in size.

At the same time, however, the various series give the sense that it's maybe a thousand ships at most, and more likely closer to 500. If the fleet is under a thousand ships, then Starfleet Academy would have a student body of roughly the same size as the United States Naval Academy, in which case it's absolutely possible that everyone knows everyone's name.

Well, the other thing that confuses the issue -- is everyone an officer, or are there enlisted personnel? If everyone has to go through the Academy, then the Academy would by necessity be several orders of magnitude larger than the Naval Academy would be.

In a lot of ways, I think the perception of Starfleet's size has been one of the biggest victims of Small Universe Syndrome. What seems plausible to me is that Starfleet measured somewhere around a few dozen ships in Archer's time, a few hundred during TOS, and a few thousand in TNG. The series that gives the best ballpark idea of the size of the fleet is Deep Space Nine (really just the last two seasons). Starfleet would have to have a few thousand ships to have been able to sustain two full years of heavy, sustained conflict. If 98 ships were lost in one of the early battles, Starfleet would have to have had well over 1,000 to sustain itself over the next 24 months and have anything left at the end. While shipyard workers undoubtedly would have been employed around the clock to build new ships, only the smallest designs (Saber, Defiant) could have been built in a few weeks, with anything larger taking a few months even on an accelerated schedule. The Dominion War, especially the first year, would have been largely fought with what Starfleet already had in commission or under construction at the time of its outbreak. Other metrics backing up the "large fleet theory" are the number range of starship registry numbers in the 24th century, the number range of starbases, and the number of fleets mentioned (elements of two fleets amounted to approximately 627 ships in the mission to retake Deep Space Nine).

Regarding enlisted personnel, the issue is a bit muddled, I believe, largely by Gene Roddenberry's utopian idea that "everyone's an officer". After his passing, the idea of enlisted personnel became a little more common, but wasn't always executed well. For instance, how could O'Brien as a Chief be the operations officer in charge of all maintenance at a starbase facility? I think perception has a role, as well. Most of the episodes focus on senior-level crew that would all be officers, whereas enlisted folks would be focused on some of the more mundane tasks in the background (fixing shuttlecraft, maintaining science lab equipment, inventoring phaser rifles in the ship's armory, etc.). Short answer, yes there certainly are enlisted personnel in Starfleet, but they're not usually where we see them (on the bridge, in the observation lounge, etc.).

Smitty said:
SUS or not, I have to mention something I really appreciate. I really dig that Christopher L. Bennett publishes annotations for his books on his website. It fun to read the book or chapters and then cross reference back and see if you picked up all the background stuff. Heck, it sometimes leads me off to read other things.

I wholeheartedly agree. Annotations are a lot of fun to read through. I greatly appreciate the effort that's put into books nowadays to weave in a lot of continuity to make it seem like one thoroughly integrated universe, vice a hodgepodge of random stories that sometimes contradict each other.

William Leisner said:
"Small universe syndrome" was something that was mentioned in the "pet peeves" thread, but I'm interested in hearing some more detailed opinions from folks. As someone who, as a reader and a writer, enjoys the interconnections of the broader Star Trek universe, I'm curious about better understanding the objections to this kind of thing. Where is the line between, "It was cool to see X in a story again after so many years," and "Why drag X into the story instead of using a new character?"? What are some examples of well-handled and appreciated character cross-overs, and what makes them work?

Finally, to answer the original question: I agree with previous posters that a balance of new characters and old ones is the best way to go. I'm certainly not one to complain about an occasional nostalgic appearance by a character we know and love. I really liked seeing Geordi La Forge as the captain of the U.S.S. Challenger in the Voyager episode "Timeless", for instance. Some appearances can seem overly gratuitous, like using Spock in Before Dishonor. Occasionally a different admiral besides Jellico or Nechayev would be nice. The challenge for the authors is that each reader will have his/her own individual threshold between what is a welcome appearance and an unneccessary gratuitous cameo. However, as long as there is a balance between new and old, I don't think you can go too far off the mark.

One thing I will say, though: obvious homages or references to other genres and franchises annoy the hell out of me. I still groan inside every time I read about the Sti'ach character in Titan.

 

[Christopher]

Agreed that there would be a large number of ancient races, but I would expect natural selection and other factors to have played a role in causing their eventual extinction, rather than their continued evolution. In my opinion, evolution into noncorporeal beings was a little over-used in Trek. Most ancient races would likely have died out due to disaster, disease, war, etc.

Even if that's true, there would be so many more older races than younger races that there would still be numerous survivors. Indeed, we know for a fact that there are many such ancient races in the Trek universe, because Kirk couldn't seem to go three months without running into one. Therefore, it remains highly unlikely that any two randomly chosen ancient races are related -- especially when they have as many clear differences as Trelane had from the Q. As I said, the worst kind of "small universe" connection is the kind where you take one vague similarity as a basis for a relationship and ignore all the other differences in order to force it to fit.

From what I remember of the episode (and referencing Memory Alpha), Janeway was a command officer (not the commanding officer) of the Billings, holding the rank of commander and probably the first officer. I've never seen anything to indicate that she had a command of her own prior to Voyager.

Then you must have missed the episode "Revulsion." At the start of that episode, at Tuvok's promotion ceremony to lieutenant commander, Janeway says:

The first time I met Tuvok, he dressed me down in front of three Starfleet admirals for failing to observe proper tactical procedures during my first command. My human ego took a little bruising, but of course he was right. Over the past nine years I've come to rely on his insightful and unfailingly logical advice.

This is the same backstory given in Jeri Taylor's novel Mosaic, although the dates are slightly inconsistent; but the onscreen reference (which takes precedence, of course) pegs the date of Janeway's first command as 2365, a good six years before she took command of Voyager.

 

[BrotherBenny]

This may refer to her first major command assignment rather than a starship command, because she seems to be rather an inexperienced captain at the start of Voyager, and no nine year veteran could be that inexperienced.

Personally, I think the writers retconned her into being an experienced commanding officer. They were wildly inconsistent with her behaviour over the seven seasons of the show and this is just ones of those times. And it would certainly bruise a mere Commander's ego more than it would a Captain's ego, even an inexperienced one.

 

[Christopher]

This may refer to her first major command assignment rather than a starship command, because she seems to be rather an inexperienced captain at the start of Voyager, and no nine year veteran could be that inexperienced.

I have no idea where you're getting the impression that Janeway was an inexperienced captain. In fact, that is exactly the opposite of the intent of the show's creators. The writers' bible says:

Janeway is by no means the only female captain in Starfleet. But it is generally regarded that she is among the best -- male or female.
...
Janeway was on a track for a career in science. Her natural leadership abilities manifested themselves quickly, however, and she was rapidly promoted to ever-more-responsible positions.

If she had no prior experience as a captain before being lost and presumed dead, then it couldn't have been generally acknowledged that she was one of their best captains. Obviously she was meant to be an accomplished veteran commander. And that's not a retcon. That's from the original bible, back when her name was "Elizabeth Janeway." It was the original intention for the character.

Also, Mosaic makes it quite explicit that Janeway was a full captain at that point in 2365, both in rank and position. This book was written by Jeri Taylor, who more than anyone else created and developed the character of Janeway. The book came out in October 1996, between the second and third seasons of the show, which means it was probably written fairly early in the second season and outlined even sooner. I'm sure it reflects the ideas Taylor had in mind for the character from the very beginning.

Personally, I think the writers retconned her into being an experienced commanding officer. They were wildly inconsistent with her behaviour over the seven seasons of the show and this is just ones of those times.

Actually she was pretty consistent in the Taylor years. After all, Taylor more or less based Janeway on herself, so it's not like the head writer of the show lacked a clear idea of who the character was. It was after Taylor left that Janeway became inconsistent.