"The door to her cabin swung open"

[Lee]

My apologies in advance if this has been discussed before ad infinitum!

I'm rereading one of my favorite novels, The Entropy Effect, and I came across this sentence:

"The door to her cabin swung open."

There are other references as well to people opening and closing doors, written in such a way that it's clear that on this novel's Enterprise, doors have hinges and doorknobs.

It's clear from the novel that Ms. McIntyre is intimately familiar with the show, so I'm mystified as to how this boo-boo got past her, the editor, and anyone else who may have read the manuscript. After all, the automatic sliding doors are one of the most instantly recognizable hallmarks of Trek. Although I suppose I should cut the editorial staff some slack, since this was Pocket's first original Trek novel.

Are there other novels that contain similarly eye-opening differences to what was seen on-screen?

 

[JWolf]

You mean the doors to the non-existent bathrooms.

 

[JD]

Well, it's not Trek, but in Peter David's Battlestar Galactica novel where he kept talking about everyone looking at the viewscreen, even though there is no viewscreen on Galactica's CNC. I remember there were other mistakes like that, in fact there were so many that I just stopped reading the book.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Lee said:
it's clear that on this novel's Enterprise, doors have hinges and doorknobs.

The only door handle in canonical TOS is the door to injured Pike's quarters on the starbase in "The Menagerie". Cruel!

Are there other novels that contain similarly eye-opening differences to what was seen on-screen?

There has been a ST novel where a TOS character slaps at a comm badge to make a report to the ship, and where TOS characters use the term "away team".

Jedda is a bald Deltan in ST II's novelization. A male Deltan has long rose-coloured hair in ST IV's novelization. In ST VI and several other novels, the white-haired Federation President is described as a Deltan. In the Blish novelization of "Gamesters of Triskelion", the Andorian thrall is a red alien "thing" with a nose flap covering his nostrils.

Data was created by unknown aliens on Kiron III in the novelization of "Encounter at Farpoint".

Kirk dies differently in the hardcover edition of "Generations" (and international trade paperback edition), but correctly in the paperback reprint a year later.

Also, early VOY novels where the EMH is named Dr Zimmerman, because the VOY Writers' Bible said he would eventually take on that name.

Lots more!

 

[-Brett-]

I seem to remember DS9 novels where they referenced "turbolift doors" in ops. No such doors were ever seen in the series.

 

[Morwen]

Therin of Andor said:
Data was created by unknown aliens on Kiron III in the novelization of "Encounter at Farpoint".

This is consistent with the story in the early TNG bible. Gerrold wrote both, of course... That novelisation has a lot of stuff from the bible that ended up contradicted, or at least ignored.

Therin of Andor said:
Kirk dies differently in the hardcover edition of "Generations" (and international trade paperback edition), but correctly in the paperback reprint a year later.

And this ending is too, the originally planned (and indeed filmed) ending.

 

[Therin of Andor]

^I'm fully aware of that. The original poster's question was "Are there other novels that contain similarly eye-opening differences to what was seen on-screen?" and I figured if I didn't mention them someone else would.

 

[Ben]

JD said:
Well, it's not Trek, but in Peter David's Battlestar Galactica novel where he kept talking about everyone looking at the viewscreen, even though there is no viewscreen on Galactica's CNC. I remember there were other mistakes like that, in fact there were so many that I just stopped reading the book.

There actually is a viewscreen. It's not a Star Trek style viewscreen, but there is a computer screen that gives some information.

 

[JD]

Yeah, but from I remember it was described like a Star Trek style viewscreen. They seemed to be looking at actual images, instead of just the DRADIS.