Star Trek: New Frontier--from the beginning

[Charles Phipps]

Actually, Ronny Cox started out playing nice guys for most of his early career. Then he was cast as a bad guy in RoboCop, but that was deliberate casting against type. But he was so good that it became his pigeonhole after that.....

The nature of typecasting according to Ricardo Montalban (who I recall did SOMETHING in Star Trek ) was that it was actually desirable to a point because it meant you had made an impression in the minds of executives that they thought of you for a role.

I also love his "five stages of an actor."

• Who is Ricardo Montalbán?
• Get me Ricardo Montalbán.
• Get me a Ricardo Montalbán type.
• Get me a young Ricardo Montalbán.
• Who is Ricardo Montalbán?

 

[David cgc]

I prefer the earlier books too when the issues were confined to one sector of space and were not universe-ending events that came later. Stone and Anvil would have been a good place to end the series.

The cgi Excalibur on the cover of Dark Allies also made me laugh. Covers back then could be just as bad as some now.

Agreed on S&A being the perfect finale to the series. It never really found its feet again after the time-skip. Things just got weird, and repetitive (were there two or three pocket universes?), and we'd have little check-ins with, like, Moke once a book to remind us that Calhoun was still, inexplicably, a single father making it work despite being married and a starship captain. I think the only post Stone NF stories that really captured the old vibe were the Shelby Captain's Table short, and the guest appearance in Before Dishonor (where all the Second-Gen New Frontier weirdness was reserved for the Enterprise crew).

I was perturbed by the Dark Allies cover because I'd been imagining that when they referred in the first books to the Excalibur being "refitted" after the events of First Contact, it was in the TMP sense of the term, and I'd been imagining a much sleeker version of the ship (actually, something a lot like the original Probert concept design that was realized years later).

• Get me a Ricardo Montalbán type.

I can't remember who, but I remember a story of an actor or comedian thinking he was a shoe-in for a guest role on a TV show (Seinfeld?) because they were explicitly looking for a "him-type." He didn't get it, which caused some amount of existential angst.

 

[dupersuper]

They remind me of a mix of the Orville and Discovery. Orville humour and the character of Calhoun reminds me of Lorca.

I...don't see it.

Because they’re too old now, and Ashley Judd has disowned her Star Trek role.

When did she do that?

His Shelby was wishy-washy, his Lefler was an airhead, and his Selar was cray-cray.

His Shelby and Lefler read the same to me. Selar we really didn't know anything about from her one TV appearance, and she did go through quite the traumatic even shortly before the series started.

There are still a number of loose ends I'd love to see resolved from "The Returned" though I doubt we'll see any future NF books.

I could see IDW doing a comic...

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

In "Fire on High", I always saw the Robin/Morgan story as the A Plot, with the woman and her weapon being the B Plot.

I found the loss of the Ambassador-Class Excalibur to be a blow, especially when it was replaced with a Galaxy-Class. The time jump also really bothered me, too much was changed and the reader was left trying to catch up with the new norm that the characters were used too but the audience wasn't--a collection of short stories bridging this gap would've helped keep me invested.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Ashley was joking last time I heard her talk about it. This was about 2012, though.

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[thribs]

Frakes said that Judd disavowed Star Trek in a convention panel. He may have been joking but I don’t know why

 

[Damian]

Actually, Ronny Cox started out playing nice guys for most of his early career. Then he was cast as a bad guy in RoboCop, but that was deliberate casting against type. But he was so good that it became his pigeonhole after that.....

I loved him in "Total Recall" as well. He actually played a pretty good bad guy, and perhaps some of that tainted my view of Jellico in "Chain of Command"

It's all his fault for playing a jerk so well

Plus, let's me honest, for an actor it has to be more fun to play a bad guy then a good guy

 

[Damian]

The time jump also really bothered me, too much was changed and the reader was left trying to catch up with the new norm that the characters were used too but the audience wasn't--a collection of short stories bridging this gap would've helped keep me invested

Yeah, that was a tough pill to swallow as well. I felt like a was missing an entire season of a TV series and was trying to play catch-up.

DS9 had a similar time-jump. However in that case, as the books went on, they filled in much of what happened during that time frame so I felt like I had a good idea of what happened during those missing years (at least in broad strokes). NF had none of that. It was just bam, you were there. No explanations. I guess Peter David was trying for something different but NF suffered I think for not having any idea what happened during that time frame.

So it dropped a bit for me after the destruction of the first ship, though I did enjoy the "Excalibur" trilogy. Then another drop off after the time jump.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Yeah, that was a tough pill to swallow as well. I felt like a was missing an entire season of a TV series and was trying to play catch-up.

Especially with such massive changes. He pretty much ruined Soleta, who was my favourite character.

DS9 had a similar time-jump. However in that case, as the books went on, they filled in much of what happened during that time frame so I felt like I had a good idea of what happened during those missing years (at least in broad strokes). NF had none of that. It was just bam, you were there. No explanations. I guess Peter David was trying for something different but NF suffered I think for not having any idea what happened during that time frame.

I've not read any of DS9 books in ages, but what I've been able to pick up from various source doesn't impress me all that much. Shame really.

So it dropped a bit for me after the destruction of the first ship, though I did enjoy the "Excalibur" trilogy. Then another drop off after the time jump.

The Excalibur trilogy was really good. I just wish when they'd commissioned the Excalibur-A they had gone for something other than yet another Galaxy-Class (especially at the loss of one of my all time favourite starship classes).

 

[Damian]

I've not read any of DS9 books in ages, but what I've been able to pick up from various source doesn't impress me all that much. Shame really.

I liked the DS9 novels to the end. I keep saying whenever it comes up that I want a DS9 finale novel like Voyager is getting and apparently TNG got with "Collateral Damage" before Picard started (at least Collateral Damage tied up some big loose ends).

But I know for some the DS9 relaunch lost them, and that seems to be around their own time jump as well. And at first I had the same feeling about that time jump--'whoa, what happened'. It was a bit jarring. But in the succeeding novels some of that missing history was filled in, enough that you know the general storyline of those missing 3 years I think it was.

New Frontier just seemed to ignore their missing time frame. I recall very little being revealed about that missing period of time. You kind of had to figure out what happened based on 'empirical evidence'. And yeah, I liked Soleta as well. It was kind of interesting seeing her and her first officer flying space alone in their experimental ship after the Romulan Empire basically wrote them off and the rest of the crew was killed. But the magic was gone. I agree with another poster that a couple more books with the team altogether would have been nice. I was just really getting to enjoy the crew and the stories when poof, it was all gone.

 

[Charles Phipps]

From what I understand there was something behind the scenes about the fact DS9 had a huge epic multi-book plotline about there being a third group of Prophet worshipers who are a horrifically evil bunch and a threat to everyone. Then someone put the kibosh on it and it was resolved by someone saying, in-book, "Wow, glad that was all resolved."

So someone used the time skip to get rid of a plot they didn't like (or something).

I admit, sadly, I tend to follow stand alone series and single books versus the entirety of relaunches so I don't know as much about that as possible or whether I'm wildly misrepresenting it.

 

[Damian]

From what I understand there was something behind the scenes about the fact DS9 had a huge epic multi-book plotline about there being a third group of Prophet worshipers who are a horrifically evil bunch and a threat to everyone. Then someone put the kibosh on it and it was resolved by someone saying, in-book, "Wow, glad that was all resolved."

So someone used the time skip to get rid of a plot they didn't like (or something).

They did actually go back and resolved that. I think it was the Ascendants. They did disappear for a while but then they reappeared and then they went back and talked about what happened to the Ascendants during those missing years.

They also went in more detail about Sisko's daughters kidnapping. So I have a feeling even though they had the time jump in DS9, they always intended to cover some of the major events during that time. They laid out little hints once they did the time jump, then went back and covered some of those 'hints' in more detail.

In NF I remember Peter David's foreword at the beginning of the first book when the time jump occurred basically saying he jumped ahead and he really had no intention of discussing what happened in those years. And he pretty much didn't.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I didn't have a problem with the New Frontier time jump because I got the impression that PD was attempting to shake up the formula. It worked for me because it invoked a sense of, "This is terrible that our heroes are scattered across the galaxy."

 

[Csalem]

I think the time jump might have worked better if it matched reality. If there had been three or more years between books it night have been more interesting as it would have felt the same. But instead it felt a bit jarring. We had the similar but opposite problem with Blind Man's Bluff and The Returned.

 

[David cgc]

They did actually go back and resolved that. I think it was the Ascendants. They did disappear for a while but then they reappeared and then they went back and talked about what happened to the Ascendants during those missing years.

They also went in more detail about Sisko's daughters kidnapping. So I have a feeling even though they had the time jump in DS9, they always intended to cover some of the major events during that time. They laid out little hints once they did the time jump, then went back and covered some of those 'hints' in more detail.

I haven't done it yet, but I had a feeling after reading the more recent DS9 books that if you went straight through the series, without multiple years-long gaps, the way DRG3 integrated the flashbacks to the time-skip into the present-day stories would make the whole thing seem to hang together a lot better and feel a lot more intentional.

 

[Stevil2001]

I feel like I was already losing interest with the first big status quo change-- the eXcalibur trilogy-- and so the big time-skip killed it by jumping into another one. It reminds of one of those comic books that lurch from event to event, actually, so you never get to enjoy the thing the comic book is ostensibly about. My memory is vague on the specifics of After the Fall and Missing in Action, but them and Before Dishonor all felt like Peter David on autopilot.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Does anyone remember which book focuses on Shelby and her ship? I was interested in re-reading that book.

 

[Csalem]

Does anyone remember which book focuses on Shelby and her ship? I was interested in re-reading that book.

I think it is the third book in Excalibur trilogy - Restoration. One story is about Mac and the other is Shelby with her first command, though by the end she is onto her second command. The following books do have some of their story set on her ship. Think she battle giant bees / wasps in her story in Restoration.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I think it is the third book in Excalibur trilogy - Restoration. One story is about Mac and the other is Shelby with her first command, though by the end she is onto her second command. The following books do have some of their story set on her ship. Think she battle giant bees / wasps in her story in Restoration.

Thanks!

 

[DS9forever]

Did NF skip ahead in time because of the Dominion War?