Starfleet Academy Tie-Ins

[Greg Cox]

Did you use a lot of white out?

Thankfully, I had progressed to WordPerfect by then.

 

[Greg Cox]

I wonder how many seasons have to go by before a demand builds up for novels.

Back in the day at least, you wanted to get the books out as soon as possible, to capitalize all on the hype and excitement surrounding the new show.

And, when it came to TV tie-in books in general, you didn't want to run the risk of the TV series getting cancelled before the books even hit the shelves. (This has been known to happen outside of Trek, sticking the publisher with a "lame duck" series of books based on a TV show that is already history.)

As I used to joke, all TV shows (and "Major Motion Pictures") are hits -- until they open.

EDIT: Oops. Sorry for the double post. I got carried away, catching up with this thread.

 

[ace2k]

And, when it came to TV tie-in books in general, you didn't want to run the risk of the TV series getting cancelled before the books even hit the shelves. (This has been known to happen outside of Trek, sticking the publisher with a "lame duck" series of books based on a TV show that is already history.)

What examples do you have of this? I'm genuinely curious.

I also feel like TV tie-in books outlasting the series are rare. Star Trek did it, of course, but Murder She Wrote and Firefly come to mind too.

 

[Turtletrekker]

What examples do you have of this? I'm genuinely curious.

I believe The 4400 is one example. However, that gave the authors the opportunity to tie up all the shows hanging threads.

 

[FredH]

Even earlier, the DC Trek comics set in the TOS movie era had to avoid storylines that might conflict with future movies, in much the same way as the Marvel Star Wars comics that came out between the original three films.

Or pretend that their comics that had retroactively conflicted with the films, hadn’t really — which is how they ended up with an entire run of Spockless stories of Kirk’s continued command of the Enterprise between TWOK and TSFS, and then an entire run of his command of the Excelsior (after adventures on the Bird of Prey first) between TSFS and TVH. Both runs give themselves fig leafs at the end (iirc) to explain how they fit in, honest, but both plainly run counter to the intent of the eventual films that ended each. And both were really enjoyable runs!

 

[Christopher]

Or pretend that their comics that had retroactively conflicted with the films, hadn’t really — which is how they ended up with an entire run of Spockless stories of Kirk’s continued command of the Enterprise between TWOK and TSFS, and then an entire run of his command of the Excelsior (after adventures on the Bird of Prey first) between TSFS and TVH. Both runs give themselves fig leafs at the end (iirc) to explain how they fit in, honest, but both plainly run counter to the intent of the eventual films that ended each. And both were really enjoyable runs!

But the writers of those comics didn't know what future movies would do, which is my point. They did the best they could to avoid areas the studio told them to avoid, which is why they gave Spock a separate command in the post-TSFS comics so that he wouldn't interact much with the rest of the crew and the risk of contradiction would be minimized. Once they did know what TVH would do, they were able to write a story resetting the status quo and leading into it, reconciling as best they could (albeit with the massive logic hole of the Klingon Bird of Prey being retconned as small enough to fit in the Excelsior's shuttle bay, when the Mirror Universe Saga earlier in the run had correctly depicted it as large enough to require mooring it beneath the Excelsior's undercut).

Although really, the argument doesn't apply to their initial run of post-TWOK comics, since all they were doing was continuing the status quo established at the end of TWOK, with Spock dead and Saavik taking over the science officer role. They were unaware that TSFS would pick up right after TWOK, although they didn't really make any effort to reconcile the timing difficulties. (One, that Phil Morris's cadet asked if there'd be a ceremony for Spock when they returned to Earth, which in DC continuity they'd already done 8 issues before. Two, that the Genesis wave somehow didn't start to regenerate Spock's remains until after the events of those 8 issues.)

Although the battle with the Romulans that the Enterprise got into in issue 8 helps explain the movies' continuity error of the Enterprise having much more battle damage at the start of TSFS than it had at the end of TWOK.

 

[Therin of Andor]

"Major Motion Pictures"...

Ah, yes, She-Hulk did a movie for that organization:


"The Sensational She-Hulk" #12 by Peter David by Ian McLean, on Flickr

 

[bdub76]

Back in the day at least, you wanted to get the books out as soon as possible, to capitalize all on the hype and excitement surrounding the new show.

And, when it came to TV tie-in books in general, you didn't want to run the risk of the TV series getting cancelled before the books even hit the shelves. (This has been known to happen outside of Trek, sticking the publisher with a "lame duck" series of books based on a TV show that is already history.)

As I used to joke, all TV shows (and "Major Motion Pictures") are hits -- until they open.

EDIT: Oops. Sorry for the double post. I got carried away, catching up with this thread.

Makes sense.

But it seems like fewer people are reading today. I'm not sure how much this impacts science fiction and fantasy, but the overall trend seems to be going down. However, now, we have a new trend of folks buying books and never reading them, so that's interesting. I'm sure that happened before now. I know that I'm guilty of doing this. I can read only so many books a years that some collect dust.

I wonder if novels will be commissioned for this series. Maybe a YA series?

 

[bdub76]

If I remember correctly Ghost Ship was the one written before TNG aired. Diane Carey said she only had the series bible to work off of.

I was mistaken.

 

[JD]

The problem with Star Wars tie-in fiction for the Sequel Trilogy is that tie-in fiction could only work apart from the specific parameters involving the main characters and narratives. So the novels that came out during that period dealt with the backstories of secondary characters and situations; many times they were inconsequential to the films. Since I wasn't all that interested in the secondary characters I gave up reading Star Wars Tie-In novels.

This is not true, several of the books also dealt with the sequel's big three, Rey, Finn, and Poe before the movies, and then there is also Spark of Resistance and Spark of the Resistance, which both take place between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. If we include comics, then there is the Age of Resistance series, which focuses on the main characters and supporting characters before, during, and in between the movies.

Star Trek's episodic storytelling has naturally lent itself to tie-in fiction. Of course, I'm sure that changed with the new streaming, serialized Trek.

Not true again, there are quite a few books for the new series, with some prequels focused on individual characters, and some set between seasons. Strange New Worlds is more episodic, so they've been able to set the books during the series, just like they did with the pre-Paramount+ series. We're also getting a new Picard novel set after the series later this year.
The same is true for comics, we've gotten a pretty good mixture of miniseries, and even ongoing series set before and during the series.