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Spoilers Star Trek: Prey Trilogy - general discussion thread

So did DS9. Bajorans, Cardassians, Ferengi, Trill, wormholes to the Gamma Quadrant, Wolf 359, it all originated in TNG. The basic premise of DS9 was essentially a mix-and-match of TNG concepts. Even shapeshifters were something they'd done on TNG, though not the same species, of course. Plus, naturally, you have the O'Brien family, and eventually Worf and all the Klingon-politics baggage he brought with him.
While I would argue that shapeshifters and wormholes are in no way concepts that TNG came up with and I don't remember a specific wormhole in TNG to the GQ, just to the DQ. I agree with the rest though. However except for Worf and (maybe) O'Brien none of the main characters continued their personal story from TNG, as they didn't appear there. Riker on the other hand was arguably one of the two most important TNG maincharacters. His journey was further chronicled in Titan, after Nemesis.

However I don't disagree with you saying that Titan is a spin-off. That's what it is objectively. Just in my head I've always counted it as a subseries.

Edit: Also sorry for the late reply, but I kinda forgot about this thread...
 
While I would argue that shapeshifters and wormholes are in no way concepts that TNG came up with

Obviously not, but they were part of TNG, and DS9's developers were all TNG staffers, so they were drawing on the ideas that had been used in TNG.

Also, the only prior use of "wormhole" in Trek had been in TMP, and it was portrayed very differently there as a dangerous result of a warp drive malfunction, one that only sent the ship a few light-years off course at most. TNG's "The Price" was the first portrayal in Trek of a wormhole as a stable, traversable phenomenon that spanned most of the galaxy.

Which makes sense in the larger context; wormholes were a fairly obscure solution of General Relativity, rarely explored in either theory or fiction, until Carl Sagan's 1985 novel Contact popularized them, with physicist Kip Thorne taking a closer look at the theory at Sagan's request and discovering new possibilities that made the idea of wormholes more plausible and interesting to physicists as well as fiction writers. So the mention of wormholes in 1979's TMP was actually a rarity for its time, and it's no wonder it's different from the version we're used to. Indeed, other than TMP, "The Price" is, as far as I'm aware (and as far as Wikipedia lists), the earliest screen portrayal of the now-commonplace idea of a wormhole. (At least under that name; there had been some earlier depictions of black holes/white holes serving as traversable passages, e.g. "The Magicks of Megas-tu" and Filmation's Blackstar, as well as Disney's The Black Hole.)

and I don't remember a specific wormhole in TNG to the GQ, just to the DQ.

The Barzan Wormhole in "The Price" originally linked to the Gamma Quadrant but then moved to the Delta Quadrant, which was how they found out it was unstable. That episode actually introduced the quadrant naming system. It also introduced the idea that a wormhole could be a strategically and economically valuable resource that governments would compete to control, a key aspect of the original DS9 premise. It was also the first episode that portrayed the Ferengi as businessmen and negotiators rather than as a military threat, as well as the first episode to present them comedically. So "The Price" is a clear antecedent of DS9 in multiple ways.
 
Also, the only prior use of "wormhole" in Trek had been in TMP, and it was portrayed very differently there as a dangerous result of a warp drive malfunction, one that only sent the ship a few light-years off course at most. TNG's "The Price" was the first portrayal in Trek of a wormhole as a stable, traversable phenomenon that spanned most of the galaxy.

Which makes sense in the larger context; wormholes were a fairly obscure solution of General Relativity, rarely explored in either theory or fiction, until Carl Sagan's 1985 novel Contact popularized them, with physicist Kip Thorne taking a closer look at the theory at Sagan's request and discovering new possibilities that made the idea of wormholes more plausible and interesting to physicists as well as fiction writers. So the mention of wormholes in 1979's TMP was actually a rarity for its time, and it's no wonder it's different from the version we're used to. Indeed, other than TMP, "The Price" is, as far as I'm aware (and as far as Wikipedia lists), the earliest screen portrayal of the now-commonplace idea of a wormhole. (At least under that name; there had been some earlier depictions of black holes/white holes serving as traversable passages, e.g. "The Magicks of Megas-tu" and Filmation's Blackstar, as well as Disney's The Black Hole.)
Wow, I never realized that, nor do I know much about science fiction history. That's really interesting.

The Barzan Wormhole in "The Price" originally linked to the Gamma Quadrant but then moved to the Delta Quadrant, which was how they found out it was unstable. That episode actually introduced the quadrant naming system. It also introduced the idea that a wormhole could be a strategically and economically valuable resource that governments would compete to control, a key aspect of the original DS9 premise. It was also the first episode that portrayed the Ferengi as businessmen and negotiators rather than as a military threat, as well as the first episode to present them comedically. So "The Price" is a clear antecedent of DS9 in multiple ways.
Ah, yes I forgot that. Stupidity on my part here, sorry.
 
I enjoyed this one. I find a lot of modern trek books about 100 pages longer than they need to be, so I'm hoping the plot can live up to three books, rather than feeling too stretched out.

I do wish we'd get Data back in some TNG novels, though. I enjoyed his solo book, but it does just feel like the characters we care about are spread way too thin (same with DS9). Not a criticism of this book, just the current state of the novel-verse.

Some of the lit-only characters are well developed (e.g. Vale) but a lot of them are just blank slates I don't care about. Smrhova couldn't be less interesting if she tried. How many lines of text has Elfiki even had across the years?

That said, looking forward to book two!
 
This was my first real exposure to Smrhova and it made me intrigued enough to want to read more. The new half Vulcan First Contact specialist seems great.
 
The new half Vulcan First Contact specialist seems great.

T'Ryssa Chen was introduced in Greater than the Sum, which was a few years ago now. - Having just checked Amazon, that was published a little over eight years ago.
 
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I enjoyed this one. I find a lot of modern trek books about 100 pages longer than they need to be, so I'm hoping the plot can live up to three books, rather than feeling too stretched out.

I do wish we'd get Data back in some TNG novels, though. I enjoyed his solo book, but it does just feel like the characters we care about are spread way too thin (same with DS9). Not a criticism of this book, just the current state of the novel-verse.

Some of the lit-only characters are well developed (e.g. Vale) but a lot of them are just blank slates I don't care about. Smrhova couldn't be less interesting if she tried. How many lines of text has Elfiki even had across the years?

That said, looking forward to book two!
There's a review thread up for the first Prey book, you might want to at least go vote in the poll if you've finished it.
 
There's a review thread up for the first Prey book, you might want to at least go vote in the poll if you've finished it.
Actually, I already have. This just seemed to be where the discussion was happening, rather than in that thread.
 
I tend to lean more heavily on the screen characters when multiple ships result in a huge number of officers for the reader to keep track of, but there's more of Chen and Smrhova to come. And some familiar Klingon names we've yet to see.
 
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Found book two this past Saturday and started reading it. About a hundred pages in and action has picked up. Kinda surprising but Picard doesn't show up til page 71
 
Several copies of The Jackal's Trick have shown up at my local sci-fi bookshop, too, and I see most copies of Hell's Heart have disappeared :)
 
Read through the book in a single day! Reading in English is so much easier than in German!
 
And some familiar Klingon names we've yet to see.

Klag? Wol? Toq? B'oraq? Leskit? Kurak? Ba'el at the embassy? Or the missing man himself, Rodek/Kurn???? Really, where the hell is he?* Hopefully not dead in 2381 :(

Basically, anyone from Gorkon??*

* I hope @KRAD can someday return to that story if you haven't added him in here. Worf is the worst brother as well as the worst father ever! And who does not want to write for Tony Todd's majestic voice?

*Ditto that whole group of characters.
 
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