The books that were co-written by Mangels and Martin just seemed to have a much more brisk pace about them. Martin alone just seems to go on and on.
Star Trek Enterprise Relaunch Novels
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The books that were co-written by Mangels and Martin just seemed to have a much more brisk pace about them. Martin alone just seems to go on and on.
I really liked Kobayashi Maru, so I was looking forward to Beneath the Raptors Wing... what a let down that book ended up being. Considering the other two Mike Martin books I've read, I'll be steering clear of the Enterprise relaunch going forward.
The gay references in Andy Mangels books barely registered as a blip on my radar... YMMV.
Oh, please. You can't not notice a good deal of them and they're obnoxious. Some of them, like Trip's sister being offhandedly mentioned as gay were completely inoffensive and worked just fine as offhand mentions. The Klingon admiral and his husband was laugh out loud funny and I'm not entirely sure it was supposed to be.
Edit: When I say inoffensive, I mean that it didn't seem jarring to the story; not that being gay is in any way offensive. Just wanted to made that clear before anyone jumps down my throat.
People single out Andy Mangels for making "gay references," but the fact is, he doesn't do it any more than a lot of other Trek prose authors do. Dave Mack gave us T'Prynn and Anna in Vanguard, Keith DeCandido introduced Bart Faulwell in Corps of Engineers and a pair of gay male Klingons in Enemy Territory, I featured a lesbian married couple in The Buried Age and established Aili Lavena as pansexual in Over a Torrent Sea, David R. George III has established several GLBT characters including Gell Kamemor in Serpents Among the Ruins and Capt. Sinclair-Alexander in Crucible, Peter David has featured various GLBT characters in New Frontier, etc. There's a good overview in this post: http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=2896626&postcount=66
Star Trek is supposed to be about diversity and inclusion, after all, so many Trek authors are dedicated to living up to that in our works. In that regard, Andy Mangels is no different from the rest of us, and he's striven in his books to portray all kinds of human diversity, whether sexual, racial, ethnic, or cultural.
Star Trek is supposed to be about diversity and inclusion, after all, so many Trek authors are dedicated to living up to that in our works. In that regard, Andy Mangels is no different from the rest of us, and he's striven in his books to portray all kinds of human diversity, whether sexual, racial, ethnic, or cultural.
I agree with that for the most part and again want to make it very clear that I have no problem with the inclusion of gay characters. For me, his execution of it is the problem. The random drop-ins that seem way out of place are very jarring to me and others. Every character and situation you mentioned that I'm familiar with wasn't smacking me in the face and telling me that it's time for a message. T'Prynn and Anna was very natural (and to give at least SOME credit to Mangels, Keru is very naturally written as a gay character too).
My irritation stems from the fact that if the scenes I'm talking about were written as heterosexual scenes, they would seem just as awkward, jarring, and out of place if not moreso. They're included just for the sake of including them and that, in my opinion, is shoddy writing.
No it's not. TOS was the future as seen in the 1960's, and Enterprise (and STXI, for that matter) is the future seen from the 2000's. It's like having a novel explain why Chris Pine's eye colour is different from William Shatner's, or why Saavik looks totally different between STII and STIII.
I was similarly annoyed at the bit in Ex Machina, where Christopher tried to "fix" the oversized rec room on the Enterprise by saying it was in the middle of the saucer instead of the rim, and that the windows were holograms. IMO it wasn't at all necessary - particularly since none of Star Trek's supposed ship sizes hold up under scrutiny.
Trip's sister was gay? I thought it was his brother Albert?
Anyway, about the ENT relaunch in general I've generally disliked more with each succeeding book. I loved Last Full Measure (technically not a relaunch book I gather, but its the first ENT novel I read and I believe it was published after the show's end). I also like Good that Men Do, mainly because I couldn't stand TATV and I liked the guts Trek Lit. took in changing or adding to the events of ENT's finale to give Trip a more proper send off.
Things started to go off the rail with Kobayashi Maru. I didn't like a lot of the creative choices. Some spoilers follow...
I didn't see the need to kill off Mayweather's family or to have the Coalition declare war. It just felt like they rushed into it. I also didn't find the Kobayashi crew all that endearing. Despite my misgivings I picked up BTRW, but I put it down about 100 pages in. It's just not that compelling. I wish it would focus more on ENT and the war instead of trying to create this epic with a lot of obscure or new characters that I could care less about. And I think the conceit of Trip kept alive is stretching credulity the longer he stays in Romulan space.
If anything, the Romulan War should've been a four or five book miniseries, e-book or paperback, done by a group of Trek authors. I'm not the biggest fan of M & M works in comparison to some of the other Trek writers, however, I think Mangels's absence makes the ENT relauch less enjoyable. One thing I have liked about the M&M ENT novels is their take on Travis in Last Full Measure and Kobyashi Maru. It's one of the few bright spots.
That's probably what I was thinking - whatever - I've pushed most of it out of my mind, I just remembered him mentioning one of his siblings was gay.
Beneath the Raptors Wing has been absolute torture to get through... much like Seize the Fire and The Needs of the Many.
Titan is my favorite Trek series, but Seize the Fire was the weakest entry and surprisingly clunky in spots. I was definitely missing Andy's input in that novel.
DS9: Cathedral (Mission Gamma 3) was co-written by him and pretty painful to get through (the MG parts anyway).
You're misremembering. I didn't address the problems with the rec room set. What you're thinking of is the officer's lounge set from the scene in which Kirk and McCoy debriefed Spock after his arrival on the Enterprise. Due to budget shortfalls, the set that was designed for that scene, and which matched the windows behind the bridge module (and was seen in miniature when Spock's shuttle approached the docking port), could not be built, so instead they cannibalized some pieces from the rec-room set and constructed an alternate officer's lounge out of them. The result is a set that doesn't match any of the windows on the miniature. And to give credit where it's due, it was Andrew Probert himself, during the production of TMP, who did a design sketch rationalizing this set as an interior room. The Shane Johnson illustration of the officer's lounge on p. 49 of Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise is based on Probert's sketch and identifies the set's "windows" as viewing screens.
So all I did in Ex Machina was incorporate behind-the-scenes ideas that Probert and others had already come up with, just as I did in many other instances in that book and Mere Anarchy: The Darkness Drops Again.
^In that case, please accept my apologies.
Was the Good that Men Do well recieved? Do folks here recommend it?
Thx. I just picked up Kobyashi Maru so am interested in the historical event that influenced TOS' KM simulation. I also just purchase THE Kobyashi Maru (TOS story) online, so will read those back to back... at some point. The ENT story first and then the TOS story. I imagine there will be some inconsistencies, but that'll be part of the fun.
Cool. I like to get the immediately-post-TV-series-finale books like Avatar for DS9. So, I'll pick up the GTMD just to see where the lit series goes from the TV finale.
Oh look, another day, another "I'm not attacking them for having gay characters but..." driveby from Bishop76, who, of course, blames any poor writing on the gay author.
Because it's inconceivable to him that, just perhaps, Mike may have had a part in the characters as well. Bishop's ignorance is especially interesting here in that the character singled out for ridicule (Trip's brother) was Mike's idea (as I recall), and I believe solely written by Mike in every scene he's ever appeared in.
I'll cop to writing the gay Klingon doctor and his husband, which was indeed meant to partially be a funny scene (well, at least an awkwardly funny scene as I recall, based on true experience - it's been like 4 years since I wrote it), so I'm glad it read that way. I also wrote the brutal fight scene leading up to that, which many people have cited as one of the most nasty-brutal fights they've read in Trek. So, I guess us gay boys can fight too (personally, I can't wait to start boxing again).
And if Mike's not including gay characters now in his solo novels, more's the pity. From the reviews here and elsewhere, it appears there are a lot of things he's not including that fans want to see.
Because it's inconceivable to him that, just perhaps, Mike may have had a part in the characters as well. Bishop's ignorance is especially interesting here in that the character singled out for ridicule (Trip's brother) was Mike's idea (as I recall), and I believe solely written by Mike in every scene he's ever appeared in.
I'll cop to writing the gay Klingon doctor and his husband, which was indeed meant to partially be a funny scene (well, at least an awkwardly funny scene as I recall, based on true experience - it's been like 4 years since I wrote it), so I'm glad it read that way. I also wrote the brutal fight scene leading up to that, which many people have cited as one of the most nasty-brutal fights they've read in Trek. So, I guess us gay boys can fight too (personally, I can't wait to start boxing again).
And if Mike's not including gay characters now in his solo novels, more's the pity. From the reviews here and elsewhere, it appears there are a lot of things he's not including that fans want to see.
It's not about whether or not I miss gay characters... gay characters have never mattered to me one way or the other as long as it doesn't distract from the story being told. It's that the novels feel bloated and clunky. Whether this is caused because you're no longer writing with him or because the current editors aren't reining him in, I don't know? But I do notice this started with the novels that have only his name on them.
Well, glad you didn't find MY work that painful then.
Just as a point of reference, I wrote most of the DS9 parts and a little of the MG parts, and Mike wrote most of the MG parts and a little of the DS9 parts.
As stated in a lot of interviews, we would revise each others' material after one wrote it, and we plotted the books together, but there are very clear chapter-by-chapter breakdowns as to who originated what.
