So, What Happened To The DS9 Novels ?

[Therin of Andor]

People will complain either way; and obviously a lot of people aren't happy at all with the direction DS9 took

How quickly we forget. Before "Destiny", one could say that "obviously a lot of people aren't happy at all" that the DS9 saga was running slower than the other relaunches.

so why not just carry on with the story rather than just abandoning it and all the characters?

Who's abandoned? "What You Leave Behind" split up most of the series characters. The novels had been slowly reintroducing them. Make them all stick together on the station, in perpetual holding patterns, and you get the same complaints that people have made about the TOS movies and pre-"Nemesis" TNG stories. In real life, work colleagues eventually go their separate ways.

 

[Sho]

I'm guessing he was also referring to the new characters introduced by the relaunch.

 

[JD]

This seems silly to me. To suggest that Margaret should completely ignore everything that had been established with the DS9 books to bring it into line with the rest of the Trek fiction, because following on with the story in her own manner would upset people doesn't even make sense.

That's not what I'm saying. First off, she didn't "ignore" anything by jumping the chronology forward, any more than TMP "ignored" TOS by taking place several years later. Sometimes an ongoing continuity includes a time jump. It's hardly unprecedented.

And I didn't say it would "upset" people. I said that a creator can do a better job being oneself than trying to emulate someone else. Different creators can be very different from each other, and sometimes trying to stay the course works out badly. Look at The West Wing. After Aaron Sorkin left, the show floundered for a season. When it tried to stay the course with new people in charge, it just fell apart. It finally recovered somewhat in the sixth and seventh years, but only by making itself over into a very different show, one that better fit the interests and sensibilities and talents of the new people in charge. In a lot of ways, they might've been better off skipping that transitional year and just making a clean break. (And as I recall, they actually did make a time jump of sorts to get into the next presidential election season sooner.)

I also said that it's a nearly universal practice that when a new person takes over as the creative lead of a series, they bring their own distinct approach to that series, and sometimes they do so by making a clean break and starting fresh rather than trying to stay the course. This is hardly the first time in recorded history that that's happened.

Consider this: sometimes a new editor or producer or whatever might simply not want to tell the story the same way their predecessor did. It happens. You can't do your best work as a creator (or an editor shaping the direction of a series) unless you're doing something that inspires and engages you. The stuff your predecessor was doing might hold no interest for you, or maybe you have ideas of your own that you're eager to explore but that can't work unless you make a clean break with the past. It's about exercising your prerogative as a creator to tell your stories the way you want to tell them.

My own experience of Marco and Margaret is that they're two very different people with very different approaches and preferences. I don't know Margaret's exact reasons for making the choice she did, but it doesn't surprise me that she chose to go in a very different direction from Marco. Margaret has her own preferences and she's not afraid to assert them.

This seems to a pretty common practice in comics. I've only recently started getting into comics, but it seems like a lot of the time when a new writer comes in they pretty much just start over with their own stories. It seems like we're pretty much getting the same thing in the DS9 books right now.

I think it's worth pointing out that we did get references to events between The Soul Key and Rough Beasts of Empire, so obviously either DRGIII or the current editor has some idea what happened during the gap. I find it hard to believe that they won't continue to fill in that gap in some form, even if it is just through dialogue and exposition.

While I would like to see that gap filled in in depth, at this point I'm more interested in where the series is heading in the future more than I am in where it was in the past. I think we really need to just accept that DS9 has changed, embrace that change and move on.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I'm guessing he was also referring to the new characters introduced by the relaunch.

Same same. In real life, work colleagues eventually go their separate ways. In any case, who is "abandoned", apart from maybe Jast the Bolian?

 

[Relayer1]

In real life, work colleagues eventually go their separate ways.

True, but in literature as opposed to real life we can continue to follow them in their new careers.

I would have said that it is entirely possible that not much has happened to them since we last saw them - surely, even in Trek, there must be periods when the crew get up, go to work, come home, relax a while and then go to bed !

Unfortunately, we know this isn't the case - most of the major players are in new situations and places without much in the way of explanation...

 

[Julio Angel Ortiz]

Just my $0.02: I think the jump wouldn't have mattered as much had the Ascendants storyline, which had been hinted at and been building up since 2003 (beginning in Rising Son IIRC) and the pretty important related cliffhanger in 2005 / early 2006 (looking at you, Olympus Descending) were wrapped up. Instead, the *impression* is that these things were swept aside as "present-day" DS9 fiction (Zero Sum Game, Rough Beasts of Empire) continued to move in whatever new direction they're going with little reference to those events.

Then, Margaret begat Jamie Costas begat Ed S. in the editorial ladder, so who knows where the series is going now.

 

[Therin of Andor]

How often, and for how long, have the ST authors let a plot thread dangle and not get it woven back into the Star Trek tapestry? Usual answer: Not very long.

We waited a while before reading about Calhoun and Shelby's supposedly eventful honeymoon. We waited a while for a conclusion to "The Lost Era". We waited a while for a final "Rihannsu" novel. But not too many others. If the Ascendants arc is that much of an important story to tell, it won't stay fallow forever. Have the authors been told not to ever pitch Ascendants stories?

Some of you are just impatient.