Star Trek Books and Comics Timeline-ing Discussion

[Christopher]

Yeah it seems The Latter Fire is the outlier here, with regards to when Arex joined the crew.

As I said, I made The Face of the Unknown consistent with The Latter Fire regarding Arex. It's the one time to date, I think, that I've deliberately contradicted a detail from one of my own older books, but I felt a whole book expressly depicting Arex's first mission on the Enterprise should rightfully outweigh a single throwaway line about him in my book. Of course, we aren't strictly required to make the TOS novels consistent with one another as we are with the 24th-century stuff, but I liked TLF and wanted to stay consistent with it.

 

[ryan123450]

Well I just mean all the other references over the years to Arex being onboard the ship earlier, during TOS.

 

[Christopher]

Well I just mean all the other references over the years to Arex being onboard the ship earlier, during TOS.

Yeah, but I mean that TLF is not a sole outlier, because my book is consistent with it. And there aren't that many books that have mentioned Arex being aboard earlier -- the only ones mentioned in this thread so far seem to be The Galactic Whirlpool, Ex Machina, and That Which Divides. So it's not a sole outlier, it's as many as 40% of the Arex-referencing books under discussion.

 

[Jbarney]

While I hesitate to throw a data point out there that I personally haven't investigated, and this wasn't my part of the timeline when we put Voyages of Imagination together.....but we have speculated as part of the footnote for The Galactic Whirlpool that Arex and M'Ress were on Enterprise shortly after "Who Mourns For Adonais?". I believe the reference comes from God's Above.

I don't think that reference was added after timeliners got organized again....but I am trying to get ready for work and finish my coffee....VOI is on the other room on the book shelf.

So I think the chronological arrival of the two characters might depend on how people have their Vanguard dates organized....but if the God's Above reference is solid and accurate I think we are talking August-ish for their arrival on Enterprise.

The specifics of individual timelines may very though.

This discussion has reinforced the overall point that I was raising with That Which Divides, though, that many of us are willing to take open interpretations as to how and when Arex and M'Ress got on the ship....measured against Chekov's work in late 2269.

 

[Leto_II]

Yeah it seems The Latter Fire is the outlier here, with regards to when Arex joined the crew.

That novel is now pretty much my definitive "go-to" version of Arex's arrival aboard the ship, since it's Litverse-compatible and drills down more deeply into the hard specifics than probably any other version of that story, but John Byrne produced another, slightly-conflicting (but entertaining) version of Arex's arrival in his New Visions comic series roughly around the same time as the publication of Swallow's novel.

 

[Jbarney]

Oh....that will be worth a footnote. Will have to look up the New Visions comic.

 

[ryan123450]

I think I mentioned that to you when you and I talked about New Visions a while back Jay.

 

[Leto_II]

Oh....that will be worth a footnote. Will have to look up the New Visions comic.

I think it was in the same issue as the Apollo/Carolyn Palamas sequel-story ("Of Woman Born"), if that helps any.

 

[JD]

Personally, I wouldn't be to concerned with trying to line Byrne's stuff with any other Trek, it's not even consistent with the post-TOS TV shows.

 

[Leto_II]

I have relatively fewer Byrne New Visions stories in my own personal continuity, since (A) as you mention, many of them are pretty inconsistent with the greater Litverse, and (B) a large share of them are clustered during the final year of the 5YM, which is already rather jampacked with tales as it stands.

That said, the alternate continuity he's created is pretty great (tying backwards even into his various Romulans and Crew series), and I've been able to fit in several of the more standalone ones here and there, where they don't step on the toes of other stories. I think most of the ones I've used tend to fall much earlier during the 5YM overall.

 

[Garth Rockett]

I think it was in the same issue as the Apollo/Carolyn Palamas sequel-story ("Of Woman Born"), if that helps any.

Yes, #11. It's a short one-page backup ("I Sing of Arms and Heroes"). He also did a one-page story with M'Ress coming aboard the Enterprise in #16.

 

[Garth Rockett]

I'm doing some preliminary work on placing IDW's "The Light of Kahless" mini. Keeping this spoiler free: There is one part of the story that indicates "one Qo'noS year" passes between pages. Has there ever been anything to suggest how long a "Qo'noS year" would be?

 

[Christopher]

Has there ever been anything to suggest how long a "Qo'noS year" would be?

The books have consistently, and strangely, depicted a Qo'noS year as being pretty much exactly the same length as an Earth year. As I put it in my DTI Calendar Notes:

The various works of prose and comics featuring the Klingon calendar have consistently treated a Year of Kahless as being the Common Era year minus 1374, from Kobayashi Maru (2155 CE = YK 781) to A Singular Destiny (2381 CE = YK 1007). (Note that Year of Kahless 1 in this system, oddly enough, would be 1375 CE, c. 500 years after Kahless died.) This is a span of 226 years, so for this to be the case, the Klingon year can differ from an Earth year by no more than 1.6 days per year.

 

[Leto_II]

I'm doing some preliminary work on placing IDW's "The Light of Kahless" mini.

Speaking of, I recently timelined the series to date in my own personal continuity, and it's pretty unclear as to when, exactly, the flashbacks in the first two issues actually take place -- the framing story obviously takes place in the minutes following T'Kuvma and Georgiou's deaths aboard the Sarcophagus-ship, but near as I can tell, the flashbacks to T'Kuvma's childhood might take place at some unspecified point in the 2240s (the early 2240s?). Though the series offers no real chronological clues/cues as to this dating, not even in the latest issue.

 

[Garth Rockett]

Speaking of, I recently timelined the series to date in my own personal continuity, and it's pretty unclear as to when, exactly, the flashbacks in the first two issues actually take place -- the framing story obviously takes place in the minutes following T'Kuvma and Georgiou's deaths aboard the Sarcophagus-ship, but near as I can tell, the flashbacks to T'Kuvma's childhood might take place at some unspecified point in the 2240s (the early 2240s?). Though the series offers no real chronological clues/cues as to this dating, not even in the latest issue.

I've been wondering the same thing. I've currently got it around 2245 just as a placeholder, pending any new information in #4. My first thought was to use the convention of assuming T'Kuvma was the same age as Chris Obi during the Battle of the Binary Stars, and that young T'Kuvma was the same age as Thamela Mpumlwana in the flashbacks. But that would put the flashbacks around 2225, which is way too early for the progression of events in this story. Even putting it in 2245 would mean T'Kuvma spent the better part of a decade at Boreth, which just feels like too long. Right now, I'm just waiting to see if #4 tells us anything that might help placement. Barring that, I'll be open to suggestions.

 

[Christopher]

^If it helps, consider that Klingons have been shown to mature fairly rapidly (certainly Alexander did), so an adult Klingon might well be significantly younger than the actor playing him.

 

[lawman]

Ooh. Just discovered this thread, and I love it!...

My personal continuity is put together from screen canon (minus a few episodes like "The Alternative Factor" and "Threshold") and those tie-in stories that I feel are consistent enough and good enough, although there are some stories that fit better than others. And my choices of what to include have been continuously evolving over the decades...

Hear, hear. Very much my own approach (although I'm sure many of the specific judgment calls are different).

As a set of general rules: chronological references that are canonical trump anything else for me. (E.g., Kirk is 34 in "Deadly Years," there are 15 years between "Space Seed" and TWOK, the FYM ends in 2270, S1 of TNG ends in 2364, S7 of VOY ends in 2378, and so on and so forth.) Within that framework, I try to be as accommodating as possible for (most of) the Pocket TOS novels (but not the Bantam ones). Comics-wise, I incorporate most of the DC series, but I consider the Gold Key, Marvel, and (most) IDW comics to be apocryphal. (This is based more on aesthetic considerations than chronological ones.) When it comes to TNG, I've hardly read any of the pre-Litverse novels, so I can't honestly account for them.

Roddenberry’s change of World War III from something in the future of the 60’s to something in the future of the 80’s strikes me as the first manifestation of the trend among some creators and fans to constantly be wanting Star Trek to be a truely possible future from ‘now’. Rather than the default in my mind, which is that Star Trek is a fictional universe that needs not correspond to our idea of the future as we might think of it today, at the expense of continuity with what’s already been established in the Trek universe.

It’s the overal mindset of Discovery which I don’t appreciate as much...
Just my pet peeve, which 90% of fans and certainly the general audience would never agree with.

FWIW, I completely agree with you. I'm not quite so cynical as to assume that 90% of fandom disagrees, either.

Although where 21st century warfare is concerned, it's worth remembering that as far back as "Savage Curtain," we did have "Colonel Green, who led a genocidal war early in the 21st century on Earth"... although it wasn't specified as WWIII.

So Ryan, wasn't there a John Byrne comic where they visit the "Gold Key" universe?

That sounds interesting! When was it published, what was it called?...

Just finished That Which Divides and was curious where other people have it in their timelines. It doesn't appear to align with The Latter Fire, The Face of the Unknown, or Allegiance in Exile 100% as far as treatment of Arex and M'Ress....the arrival of those characters on the ship. Chekov's involvement in security training is also a bit of an issue.

Dang, I haven't read any of those particularly recently. FWIW, though, going strictly from notes, my own personal take is that Face of the Unknown and Latter Fire come right on the heels of the four-month "gap" caused by Prime Directive, and lead right into TAS, which in my timeline is basically packed into late Jun - late Nov 2269. After that come That Which Divides and the Enterprise Experiment comic (both of which feature both Arex & M'Ress and Chekov), wrapping up FYM year four, followed by the opening of Allegiance in Exile. Seem reasonable?

In the realm of trying to make small details work (this is just in my mind, not trying to convince anyone) we know that Arex and M'Ress were possibly on the ship as a "lower decks" type characters as early as late 2267 with the Galactic Whirlpool.

I'm partial to Christopher's view that an entire story involving Arex's first mission as a bridge officer should take precedence. That said, there's no reason to assume he didn't have a temporary assignment on the Enterprise a couple of years earlier, to accommodate Galactic Whirlpool, right?...

 

[ryan123450]

Although where 21st century warfare is concerned, it's worth remembering that as far back as "Savage Curtain," we did have "Colonel Green, who led a genocidal war early in the 21st century on Earth"... although it wasn't specified as WWIII.

That’s a really good point.

 

[Christopher]

That said, there's no reason to assume he didn't have a temporary assignment on the Enterprise a couple of years earlier, to accommodate Galactic Whirlpool, right?...

I don't think The Galactic Whirlpool can be reconciled with modern Trek canon. Its historian character in Chapter 16 tells this big, sprawling saga of the 21st-century energy wars and the L5 colony becoming this hugely influential factor and facilitating travel and trade between Earth and the Martian and Jovian colonies and so on. It's a much more robust version of 21st-century space colonization than the current canonical view, in which the Martian Colonies weren't established until the early 22nd century. Maybe you could cram the two histories together if you fudged some details, but the Gerrold version is just too big a saga to leave so little imprint on canonical history. Honestly, it's such a massive story that it's implausible that Kirk and the others need their ship's historian to remind them of it.

 

[Leto_II]

Dang, I haven't read any of those particularly recently. FWIW, though, going strictly from notes, my own personal take is that Face of the Unknown and Latter Fire come right on the heels of the four-month "gap" caused by Prime Directive, and lead right into TAS, which in my timeline is basically packed into late Jun - late Nov 2269. After that come That Which Divides and the Enterprise Experiment comic (both of which feature both Arex & M'Ress and Chekov), wrapping up FYM year four, followed by the opening of Allegiance in Exile. Seem reasonable?

Pretty much my own timeline exactly, right down to the months. Prime Directive creates this huge gap in the timeline if you count it, but I do, so it meant that other stories ended up either getting dropped altogether or else shifted around a bit, but that novel's such an epic barn-burner that there's no way in hell I'm not including it in my continuity.

Like Christopher mentioned earlier, it's clear that Chekov's back onboard the Enterprise after what seems like only just a few months away at most (since he's present for That Which Divides, Year Four: The Enterprise Experiment, AND Allegiance in Exile), so grouping those stories together at the very tail-end of 2269 makes a great deal of sense from this standpoint, leading straight into the final year of the 5YM.

Looking at my document, I also have the 2269 flashbacks from the IDW Flesh and Stone one-shot comic book taking place in this same span of weeks as well, since the exact year of "2269" is flat-out given to us in the story, and Arex is present, which would place it in either late October, November or December (I have it occurring in mid-December, immediately before the opening of Allegiance in Exile, simply due to the volume of stories happening during this period, but it's a pretty flexible, self-contained vignette, and you could probably stick anywhere during that timespan without too much trouble).