Spaceflight Chronology

[Neopeius]

Right after The Motionless Picture came out, my brother bought this classic. I remember when I was six, reading each entry with glee. I was sure that this was a sneak preview of our future. Sure, they drew the Bonaventure wrong, but it was so official looking.

Now, of course, it's been completely superseded, and yet I can't help but think of that Chronology as the real history of our future.

The only thing that bugged me is that there are no female captains in the entire book. Maybe that was to be consistent with Turnabout Intruder, but it was annoying.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Neopeius said:
Right after The Motionless Picture came out, my brother bought this classic. I remember when I was six, reading each entry with glee.

by Fred and Stan Goldstein.

It had a few other TAS Easter eggs in it: the Terra Ten colony, Robert & Sarah April, and Carter Winston. And its timeline and first contact details inspired two "giant" novels: Margaret Wander Bonanno's "Strangers from the Sky" (the author had to memorize the details in a shop, because she couldn't afford to buy the book) and Diane Carey's "Final Frontier".

The book also gave me the Andorian sign-off I use, "Thiptho lapth".

 

[Warped9]

I remember having this book so very long ago, but I haven't a clue as to what happened to it. Then again I don't miss it much since it had a lot I didn't agree with in it.

My biggest beef I recall was the depiction of a Matt Jefferies' drawing as the "starliner" Enterprise. I don't have a problem with adapting MJ's early concept ideas, but I've since learned that MJ intended this design as an early exploratory starship and not a starliner. And thats how I think of the ringship, as the actual first exploratory ship named Enterprise and not the pretender that was the NoXous-01.

 

[Kryton]

I stumbled across my first-printing copy just the other day (at the same time I discovered my first-printing copy of "The Making of Space:1999"...they were right next to one another).

My FAVORITE log entry was of the ship who'd first visited Sigma Iotia and left behind their copy of "Gangs of Chicago". Another memorable entry was the drawing of the Alpha Centurian (which, as it had been suggested in TOS, was the original home of Zephram Chochrane...later it was retconned that he perhaps MOVED there sometime after his warp drive breakthrough).

The Alpha Centurions were certainly humanoid, but definitely a variation on what we saw in Glenn Corbett. Of course, the book came out a decade after TOS shut down...the Klingons had already been retconned to being lobster-heads, so apparently Cochrane was also retconned in the book.

I think THIS was the book that caused fans to go into uproar because the Vulcans didn't have RINGED ships in either First Contact or (most of) Enterprise...correct me if I'm wrong.

Honestly...back in the day I remember reading it over and over again. Now it's been probably 25 years since I've thumbed through it. Perhaps I'll give it another look this weekend.

 

[Borjis]

On the cover right after Stan and Fred it reads:
"Illustrated by the brilliant artist of the space age, Rick Sternbach."

My jr high school library had it.

I can't recall how many times I checked it out.

Just got a used copy on amazon.

My favorite drawing is the USS Moscow. It was "also" the first vessel to have a transporter.(page 148-149)



There's a log entry in 2020 about Colonel Shaun Jeoffrey Christopher on the UNSS Lewis and Clark. :thumbsup:

 

[Doomsday]

I used to have this book also, though I have no idea what happened to it. Therefore, I haven't seen it or read it in a long time.

But I seem to remember that this book, while not canon by any means, contained the most reasonable and plausible explanation for the TMP era Klingon look.

Rather than a bunch of med-techno-babble about genetic engineering gone amuck, the writers of the Chronology proposed a very simple and logical explanation. The Klingon empire covered many star systems, and was therefore comprised of many different races.

The ridge-head Klingons were the "Imperial Race", presumeably from Kronos, and the dominant race on Kronos.

The Imperial race Klingons had not yet been seen, and I believe the article indicated that the intercepted Klingon distress call at the beginning of TMP was the first time the Federation had ever seen an Imperial Race Klingon.

The TOS-era Klingons were legitimate Klingons, in terms of being part of the empire, but were from not from the Imperial Race, and were used in interaction with the Federation because of their similarity with humans. I can't remember if the book said this was to hide their true form for military/espionage reasons, or what.

Anyway, this simple multi-race explanation seemed to make so much more sense, and easy to explain, than what eventually happened in Enterprise.

 

[Tomalak]

I have this somewhere - excellent read. I had loads of those books from the 70s and 80s on the "future" of spaceflight. They were so optimistic describing how by 1990 we'd have a permanent base on the moon, and we'd be on Mars by 2000.

When you consider that from the first man-made satellite to the first moon landing took only 12 years, the last thrity seem like a wasted opportunity.

Damn real world getting in the way of childhood dreams!

 

[Warped9]

Doomsday said:
I used to have this book also, though I have no idea what happened to it. Therefore, I haven't seen it or read it in a long time.

But I seem to remember that this book, while not canon by any means, contained the most reasonable and plausible explanation for the TMP era Klingon look.

Rather than a bunch of med-techno-babble about genetic engineering gone amuck, the writers of the Chronology proposed a very simple and logical explanation. The Klingon empire covered many star systems, and was therefore comprised of many different races.

The ridge-head Klingons were the "Imperial Race", presumeably from Kronos, and the dominant race on Kronos.

The Imperial race Klingons had not yet been seen, and I believe the article indicated that the intercepted Klingon distress call at the beginning of TMP was the first time the Federation had ever seen an Imperial Race Klingon.

The TOS-era Klingons were legitimate Klingons, in terms of being part of the empire, but were from not from the Imperial Race, and were used in interaction with the Federation because of their similarity with humans. I can't remember if the book said this was to hide their true form for military/espionage reasons, or what.

Anyway, this simple multi-race explanation seemed to make so much more sense, and easy to explain, than what eventually happened in Enterprise.

And it still makes more sense than the ENT bunk. Thats why so many of us just ignore ENT bunk.

 

[Kryton]

Some of you ignore the entirety of ALL of TWOK/TSFS/TVH/TFF/TUC/GEN/FC/INS/NEM/TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT.

 

[Neopeius]

Kryton said:
Some of you ignore the entirety of ALL of TWOK/TSFS/TVH/TFF/TUC/GEN/FC/INS/NEM/TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT.

I certainly do.

Or, I should say, I take them on their own merits.

 

[Nebusj]

Kryton said:
Some of you ignore the entirety of ALL of TWOK/TSFS/TVH/TFF/TUC/GEN/FC/INS/NEM/TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT.

There's a squadron that ignores everything after ``The Menagerie''.

 

[Kryton]

So I've noticed...and so whose opinion I've decided to compartmentalize.

 

[Psion]

This wasn't too dissimilar to FASA's explanation given in their Klingon products for "Star Trek: The Role-playing Game". Here, the Imperial Klingons created Human/Klingon fusions specifically engineered to counter the expansion of humanity. They also had Human/Romulan fusions specifically intended to deal with Romulans.

Personally, I was happy with just accepting both variations as the same; that is, the only difference between TOS Klingons and every Klingon from ST:TMP onward was budget, time, and makeup technology. DS9's "Trials and Tribblations" ruined that approach, however.

 

[Kryton]

T&T didn't RUIN it. It EMBRACED it, IMO. It said, yeah...there's a visual difference. Ignore it.

Which was the ultimate correct answer and the ENT episodes (as interesting as they actually were...Manny Coto, where were you for seasons 1-3?) only irritated the truth, IMO.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Psion said:
This wasn't too dissimilar to FASA's explanation given in their Klingon products for "Star Trek: The Role-playing Game". Here, the Imperial Klingons created Human/Klingon fusions specifically engineered to counter the expansion of humanity. They also had Human/Romulan fusions specifically intended to deal with Romulans.

FASA's take on Klingons was derived from John M Ford's Pocket Books novel, "The Final Reflection". FASA then employed Ford to help them develop their Klingon RPG support manuals.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Doomsday said:
I used to have this book also, though I have no idea what happened to it. Therefore, I haven't seen it or read it in a long time.

But I seem to remember that this book, while not canon by any means, contained the most reasonable and plausible explanation for the TMP era Klingon look.

Rather than a bunch of med-techno-babble about genetic engineering gone amuck, the writers of the Chronology proposed a very simple and logical explanation. The Klingon empire covered many star systems, and was therefore comprised of many different races.

The ridge-head Klingons were the "Imperial Race", presumeably from Kronos, and the dominant race on Kronos.

The Imperial race Klingons had not yet been seen, and I believe the article indicated that the intercepted Klingon distress call at the beginning of TMP was the first time the Federation had ever seen an Imperial Race Klingon.

The TOS-era Klingons were legitimate Klingons, in terms of being part of the empire, but were from not from the Imperial Race, and were used in interaction with the Federation because of their similarity with humans. I can't remember if the book said this was to hide their true form for military/espionage reasons, or what.

Anyway, this simple multi-race explanation seemed to make so much more sense, and easy to explain, than what eventually happened in Enterprise.

But in DS9 these non-Imperial Klingons show up looking like Imperial Klingons.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Nerys Myk said:
But in DS9 these non-Imperial Klingons show up looking like Imperial Klingons.

Easy. Kor is known to be from a noble house, but obviously his ancestors were affected by the ENT virus. In TOS he commanded a ship of non-Imperial(?) Klingons, and could even pass among them as if one of their own. By the time of DS9, the restoration process suggested in ENT had been perfected and his noble family head bumps were restored.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Thats my theory too. I was just pointing out that DS9 was the show that skuttled the multiple race idea.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Nerys Myk said:
Thats my theory too. I was just pointing out that DS9 was the show that skuttled the multiple race idea.

But there are still multiple races, if not different clines, of Klingons and subjugated peoples, plus examples of interbreeding, to produce many different types. Look at the crests of TMP's Klingons; the spinal column arches up and over the head! Kor, Koloth and Kang in TOS all have different skin colourings. And so on.

Why should it be either/or?

 

[Psion]

Therin, I'm sorry to disagree with you, but I was aware of "The Final Reflection" months before it was released precisely because it was talked about in FASA's first "Klingons" supplement, copyrighted in 1983. FASA did work with Ford so that the two sources were in agreement, but since the FASA product was released first, it's difficult to say that it was based upon Ford's book. Rather, Ford collaborated with Guy McLimore and research on both projects contributed to each other. A section of the introduction to FASA's supplement reads,

When we discovered we were working on parallel projects, we couldn't resist a collaboration of sorts. Thus, the research on the Klingon Empire for his upcoming novel The Final Reflection (from Pocket Books) became the basis for the background material for this expansion se. The Final Reflection promises to be the definitive fictional work on the Klingons (as well as a rousing good adventure story), and I feel sure it will shape the way the Klingons are presented in the STAR TREK universe from now on....

The research-sharing went both ways on the project, with background data on the STAR TREK universe in The Final Reflection sometimes being based on data presented in STAR TREK: The Role Playing Game. In this way, the STAR TREK universe inhabited by game players and the novel's characters remain consistent, and support each other in richness of detail. Thus, what you hold in your hands is not just a game supplement, but is also a background on the Klingon Empire. With its detail and background supported both by the game framework and a major piece of professional STAR TREK fiction, it can lay claim to being an "official" look at the universe.

Gosh, I so miss those years when there was an effort to keep Trek consistent between games, books, and primary source material.

Kryton, I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you said "Trials and Tribbleations" embraced "it". From where I sit, that was the first time an official Trek production acknowledged that there was a difference between original series Klingons and the modern incarnations. Until that time, it was possible to simply pretend 1960s TV sets weren't clear enough to show the forehead bumps on Kor's head, but T&T said, "Yep, they changed. And Klingons are embarrassed to talk about it."

This is where the roll-eyes smiley should go.