I'm not a big fan if the Titan series. I've said before that Trek's got enough exploration/planet of the week stuff in the show and in print. I really don't need any more. Having said that, I did enjoy Taking Wing and particularly liked Torrent Sea, which was excellent. The diversity issue needed addressing - Starfleet seems very human centric, but the topic hasn't been handled that well in Titan. In many cases I just didn't like the characters, in others it felt like tokenism. Reading new Titan novels is usually something of a bind. I really wouldn't miss it if it was cancelled...
I kind of agree with the sentiment that the idea of a diverse crew is fine, but the execution has been a bit hit-and-miss. It stands to reason (for me at least) that a Federation composed of 150+ planets would result in crews with far more species represented than we've seen onscreen, even if we take into account that some species would have incompatible environmental preferences. I enjoyed the exploration of different cultural backgrounds in the earlier novels. Orion's Hounds is one of the best examples (and as such, also one of my all-time favorite novels), with the differering opinions on the hunter/prey issues sparking debates among the crew because of the mission. This resulted in a sort of "exploration of the crew" as well as exploration of space that played really well together. Now, I do understand that some of the characters are not for everyone. One could be critical of a talking dinosaur, a mermaid in a spacesuit, a two-foot Disney character as counselor, and a cyborg ostrich (if we take their descriptions to extremes), but on the whole I've never really had issues with most of them. The later novels have suffered a bit, IMHO, because they've moved away from the exploration concept too much, and as such lost the "fuel" for the above formula. Perhaps that is also the reason that some posters have said the diversity feels as if it's been shoehorned in these days...
People seem to forget that Diane Duane's novels had a more diverse TOS crew than depicted on TOS. She introduced members of the Enterprise crew who were Horta, Eseriat, Sulamid, Altasa, Hamalki, and whatever race was green, scaly Amekentra.
On the one hand, I don't agree with how far the OP goes in his first post on the subject. On the other hand, the TITAN books do have a huge problem with talking more about the diversity than doing anything with it. Its what put me off the books almost immediately. I actually really like when books give the ships a bunch of aliens (some of the old TOS books liked to do that, and I always enjoyd when that happened), and I liked all the unusual ones in the Titan books I've read, but I swear the first Titan book was just giving readers a run down on how diverse the ship was, with a little bit of plot thrown in because someone told the writer he had to actually have a story in his book Now, to me the series never actually recovered from the start and eventually the Titan part of the Star Trek Novels just became something I loathe whenever it comes up, but I think the diversity was one of the few things it does well. Honestly, I'd like to see how the exact same crew/set up could be used by other ST writers like Peter David. The books have interesting diversity, but they have a problem using it well without being only about it, and they also sucked at making the individual characters likeable. The Titan stuff eventually even turned Troi and Riker into two of the most unlikeable idiots in ST, and stuff like that is what Titan's problem is to me, not the fact that its diverse. I'll gladly read about super tall people or giant lizard doctors, in more books than just the Titan books. I just wish the Titan books had used the diversity as just part of the story, not the entire focus to the point of ignoring a actual plot, and had actually tried to make more of the characters likeable, as opposed to seemingly go out of there way to not do it, while simultaneously sabotaging Riker and Troi as characters. Its too late for the Titan books, since that line is basically done after the events of the Fall, but I'd like to see some of its aliens and ideas used in other ST books, just with different writers and likeable characters to go along with the cool alien species and more diverse crew.
They're not forgotten, they're just not part of the TNG-era continuity that the modern novels like the Titan series were set in. Surely we'd all love to be writing in a Duane-style universe with a gleefully diverse Starfleet full of Sulamids and Denebians and all those other guys, but unfortunately we were saddled with the TV Starfleet where every damn background extra in a uniform was human. So we had to find a way to stay consistent with that portrayal while still trying to move back in the direction of a more diverse, Duane-like Starfleet.
Kirk5555, After re-reading again my first post, I wish your comment was the OP -- I suppose I was a harsh on the whole diversity thing. But what you stated, I thought was spot-on about the Titan series.
The later novels have suffered a bit, IMHO, because they've moved away from the exploration concept too much, and as such lost the "fuel" for the above formula. Perhaps that is also the reason that some posters have said the diversity feels as if it's been shoehorned in these days...[/QUOTE] Agreed.It seems a pity that Titan can be recalled back to Fed space all too readilyAt the start of the series I was looking forward to the ship really being on the final frontier actually exploring( real away teams and all) but that idea seems to have been abandoned in favour of Seekers....ie. new flavour of the month.
"Flavor of the month"? I'm sorry, I think you have our new literary series confused with Chunky Monkey.
Chunky monkey ....mmmm Homer drool. What I meant was that it seems odd to me that Titan appears to be parked( right or wrong,that is how it looks). So a series featuring a deep space exploratory ship is parked in favour of a new series featuring ( a less sophisticated) deep space exploratory ship.
I thought the exact same thing. The diversity seemed too "forced" instead of a natural flow. I read the first novel in the series but couldn't finish the second. It just didn't feel like Star Trek to me.
But a nice 'diverse' ship whose crews are not screaming 'look how diverse we are' - continuing on from Vangaurd? Anyway wider Treklit has done so well to make everything feel more diverse - whether in the somewhat controversial manner of Titan or just the incredible diversification of races mentioned in other series - and all of the writers must be thanked for this.
Jarvis, you are right, TrekLit overall has done well to make everything more diverse, Titan was just "Diversity on Steroids"!!!!
IDIC is all good and well and a goal well worth visualizing... but it has to make sense as well. I think it's important not to forget that pink skinned humanoids are only a small part of the ST-universe, that diversity in race, culture, religion etc only add to a much richer universe. However, is it practical to include crewmembers who have little to no common ground with the rest of the crew? Is it not disadvantageous for some crewmembers to have to run around in a environment suit all the time? And who decides on the environment settings in the common areas of the ship? Etc. These are but a few of the questions I kept asking myself in Titan and which were quite distracting from the characters themselves...
A lot of people argue that it's not "practical" to make allowances for the blind or the deaf or people in wheelchairs. But that's not a fair attitude. People who are members of a free and equal society have a right to be included if they so desire, and it's up to the society and the individuals involved to figure out how to make it work, not to make excuses for denying them that right.
Chris, you can't equate not being "practical" to a fair attitude. It isn't practical to have a ship full of mermaids in a suit, 2 ft Disney tall characters, dinosaurs, and people who prefer to live in zero G. Yeah, it can be done but it isn't practical. Whereas it a little more practical to have humans, Vulcans, andorians, and tellarites mix it up on a ship...yeah there are some environmental differences but not as much as the first example. If a school bus route only has to pick up one kid in the morning that lives 10 miles outta town, and the school district sends a mini-van to get the kid instead of the 77 passenger bus...the school district isn't "Denying them that right" to ride in a 77 passenger bus, but being practical in getting the kid in a mini-bus to school.
If you're going to reduce the characters to labels intended to ridicule and depersonalize, then clearly your mind is too closed to discuss the matter fairly or intelligently. Also, you're completely ignoring the fact that quite a few books have already established that it is practical. After all, every space environment is artificial to begin with, so an Earthlike environment is no more "natural" or "normal" than any other. A spaceship itself is a technological construct that allows organisms to survive in an environment other than their natural one. So it is a grotesque leap of illogic to argue that it is somehow impossible for a spaceship design to accommodate personnel who exist in different environments. If the technology can let humans survive in the middle of the vacuum of space, surely it's a much smaller engineering challenge to let a Selkie walk around in an oxygen atmosphere. That's not more practical, just more familiar and easy, and more comfortable to the xenophobic. But Starfleet is not made up of xenophobes. At least, it aspires not to be. What a completely nonsensical analogy. Sure, that's how they adapt to that specific situation, but obviously a different situation would require a different adaptation. I mean, come on, how far apart are Earth and Vulcan? Or Trill and Bajor? It's a given that the crew of a multispecies starship are going to come from very widely separated places. The question is what happens once they're all together in the same place. Since that's the challenge that needs to be resolved, it's entirely possible to find ways to make it work. Your problem is that you're deliberately looking for ways to prevent it from working, which says all that needs to be said about your mindset.
Sidebar note for my own amusement: if we go by starmap.whitten.org for Trill-Bajor? And if Whitten's right about Wo 9417 for Trill's homestar? Just under 46 light-years. I suspect there's probably regular commercial traffic between those systems by now.
How is it not more practical? I would think it would be more logical to have a crew of Selkies and other aquatic species together on a ship designed for their natural environment, rather than forcing them to wear a special suit to survive in an environment designed for humans.
^Who's forcing them? If they choose to participate alongside humans, they should be accommodated in that choice. And why is it so hard to understand that racial segregation is a bad thing???? Saying that people who have differences should be kept apart forever is a horrible attitude and a horrible misreading of what the Federation is about. You're all going out of your way to invent excuses for segregation and racial isolation, and that's exactly the kind of thinking that Americans, South Africans, and others have had to fight long and hard to overcome in order to create fair societies. "Separate but equal" does not work.