Spoilers Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and the Novels
- Thread starter David cgc
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1. It can be explained away. Like, is Golem Picard still JL Picard.
2. In the 2020s it is unacceptable that the writers enshrine the „Jup, black man abandons his son and pregnant wife, never to be seen again“ fallacy of DS9.
3. I hope the memorial wall does represent historic officers‘ final rank. Paris stuck at lieutenant forever? Thug this.
2. In the 2020s it is unacceptable that the writers enshrine the „Jup, black man abandons his son and pregnant wife, never to be seen again“ fallacy of DS9.
3. I hope the memorial wall does represent historic officers‘ final rank. Paris stuck at lieutenant forever? Thug this.
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Nog and Bashir also don't make it past Lieutenant, and Riker never makes Admiral, if those are the final ranks.
It lists Garak as an ambassador, canonizing his career path from the "First Splinter" Litverse while contradicting that Raffi centered Picard novel from a few years ago.
IIRC, that novel said he’d been an ambassador after DS9 but before he was hung out to dry.
But why would Garak be listed on a wall of honor at Starfleet Academy? Unless SFA absorbed the Cardassian equivalent at some point and he (and others, like Gul Dukat and Gul Evek) were viewed as SFA grads. But that seems very weird to me.
Well, yeah, the way he was hung out to dry like that in the novel makes it less likely Starfleet would list him on their memorial wall.
Heh, I was just typing that very question when I got the notification about your post.
Problem there is the crew of the Valiant from the DS9 episode of the same name is also there. Including Dorian Collins, the one who survived, yet she's listed with the same provisional rank she held in that episode.
Agreed, it was pretty brutal in some instances.
No Admiral Uhura either, but I guess that was just a First Splinter thing, anyway. But at least she made captain; Paris, Nog and Bashir stuck as lieutenants just seems wrong. But at least @Oddish will be happy with Admiral Kim!
Although it does have some oddities: when would Wesley Crusher ever become a lieutenant junior grade? And I'm not sure it's him, because someone is in the way, but they seem to show Kirk as an admiral, when he died as a captain?
At first I thought "VADM Drake" was a Shatnerverse reference, but he actually had a first name. Other than Ambassador Garak mentioned above, does anyone spot any other novel references?
And if this is supposed to be a memorial wall for people who lost their lives in the line of duty.... shouldn't it be, well, a lot bigger? (Maybe it's a display and the names rotate.)
Would midshipman Peter Preston and the cadets from Red Squad (aboard the Valiant) have been instructors?
ETA: Anyone know what "CHAN" means in this context? Chancellor? Weird that they would use their position instead of actual rank.
Demora Sulu is listed as a Captain.
That's a clever idea... but when would Peter Preston have been an instructor? Or Wesley Crusher?
The packaging for the Star Trek: Generations figures had Kirk as an admiral. Possibly he got a bump to Rear Admiral when he retired? (But then it raises the question of why he's wearing the captain's pin, and he's referred to as captain in the movie.)
Or... Kirk is revived somehow after Picard season 3, and Kirk is promoted to Admiral again in his second life.
It seems strange that nothing seems to change for all of those characters after the last time we saw them.
I don't like the implication that Sisko never came back, I can't imagine he would have broken his promise to Kasidy. And it plays into the racist stereotype that Avery Brook objected to when they were putting together What You Leave Behind.
It seems like they just pulled up a bunch of random TNG-Voy era names and ideas, but didn't put any real thought into what they were actually saying about them with this.
I don't like the implication that Sisko never came back, I can't imagine he would have broken his promise to Kasidy. And it plays into the racist stereotype that Avery Brook objected to when they were putting together What You Leave Behind.
It seems like they just pulled up a bunch of random TNG-Voy era names and ideas, but didn't put any real thought into what they were actually saying about them with this.
I'm tempted to assume this is another case of uncritical over-reliance on Memory Alpha, but while that seems to have been the case with Pike getting a Cardassian award on his record, the theory that Chapel has commander's stripes on SNW because she's listed as a commander on MA thanks to TVH was disproven by the fact that no one's stripes on SNW makes sense, so history isn't exactly a solid guide.
I've heard Star Wars writers are specifically ordered not to use Wookiepedia, and instead to refer to their in-house reference and continuity czars. I was going to ask if there was a similar policy for Trek, but I realized that's not the issue. The question is, if there was such a directive, would it apply to production designers?
The ones on Trek seem to be left to figure things out for themselves. For instance, after quizzing me about phaser emitters on starships, my friend who did some animation for Prodigy later asked if I knew about a decent on-line Klingon translator so he could have somewhat authentic Klingon text in an episode rather than gibberish or english in a font; IIRC, Bing had had one to tie in with ST09 or STID, but it was offline by the time he needed it. And there's all the stuff with Brian Tatosky talking about how filling out the PIC and SNW CG starship library with legacy designs has been extra work he's been pushing on his own out of professional pride.
I've heard Star Wars writers are specifically ordered not to use Wookiepedia, and instead to refer to their in-house reference and continuity czars. I was going to ask if there was a similar policy for Trek, but I realized that's not the issue. The question is, if there was such a directive, would it apply to production designers?
The ones on Trek seem to be left to figure things out for themselves. For instance, after quizzing me about phaser emitters on starships, my friend who did some animation for Prodigy later asked if I knew about a decent on-line Klingon translator so he could have somewhat authentic Klingon text in an episode rather than gibberish or english in a font; IIRC, Bing had had one to tie in with ST09 or STID, but it was offline by the time he needed it. And there's all the stuff with Brian Tatosky talking about how filling out the PIC and SNW CG starship library with legacy designs has been extra work he's been pushing on his own out of professional pride.
What bugs me about the wall of names, whatever it may represent, is how high the percentage of familiar names is. I mean, ENT through PIC cover only about 250 years, but SFA is set in a Federation that's about a millennium old. So logically, somewhere around 3/4 of the people, places, or ships that get mentioned should be brand new. For that matter, it should be much more than 3/4, because the characters we know about from the 22nd-24th centuries would still represent only a fraction of the important Starfleet personnel from those eras.
Although if this is Starfleet returning to its San Francisco campus for the first time in 120 years, I guess maybe the wall could be 120 or more years old. Although that only puts a slight dent in the problem.
Although if this is Starfleet returning to its San Francisco campus for the first time in 120 years, I guess maybe the wall could be 120 or more years old. Although that only puts a slight dent in the problem.
Eh, if they weren't filling it with names of characters from the other shows, they'd just have names of various production people instead. Might as well go with the option that generates discussion and publicity amongst the fandom, as this clearly is.
They've done both. Erin McDonald and Kristen Beyer and Tawny Newsome are all on it.
Or he came back in secret. Or the course has a clickbait name.
My knee-jerk reaction to that image was annoyance, but I'm thinking now that the framing of it doesn't actually preclude the fact that he did come home. For all we know the course ends with the instructor revealing that:
Sisko did die in the fire caves.
Sisko did live on in the celestial temple.
Sisko did return from there to help raise his child with Kasidy.
I miss the days when the discussion about a show focused on how cool the show itself was, instead of what older shows it reminded people of. Restating the existence of characters whose existence we already know about is less interesting to me than the new characters, species, and ideas they've introduced, or at least the remixes of old ideas in fresh ways. Like the Klingon cadet who's interested in studying medicine -- does that suggest that 32nd-century Klingon culture has become more peaceful, as I've often hoped it would have (rather than just rehashing the same old Klingon stuff yet again)? And the character who's a Klingon-Jem'Hadar hybrid -- how the heck did that happen? (In general terms, I mean...) Or Holly Hunter's character being half-Lanthanite -- does that mean she's centuries old and has life experience that can fill in the history we've missed?
I like it that at least the main cadet characters are mostly new species, and I hope their respective cultures have interesting attributes that get explored. If we're going to talk about how the show relates to the novels, then as a novelist I'm excited by all the new history and worldbuilding seeds they're about to plant, giving us novelists a lot of new possibilities to explore and gaps to fill in.
Even in the novel, the sudden turn around on Garak as a war criminal was something that was controversial in-universe and presumably discovering the circumstances of the novel would exonerate him in the public eye. Basically, the premise being a Nazi hunter who discovers that the Nazi he's hunting actually smuggled everyone away to safety.
But yes, I actually like the implications for a large number of characters.
Like Mariner never makes Captain but Boimler might (and is the most rule breaking captain of them all)
But yes, I actually like the implications for a large number of characters.
Like Mariner never makes Captain but Boimler might (and is the most rule breaking captain of them all)
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