TNG RELAUNCH? WHY THE NEGATIVITY?

[8of5]

I can certainly understand some of it, but I'm really surprised by the strength of negative opinion towards these books.

I was disappointed by the start of TNGr; Death in Winter I just found rather dull and engaging and was really put off by its use of the Stargazer characters. I was really looking forward to Resistance kicking off the relaunch proper and using the Borg (I being the only person to not to hate them it seems...) but was rather underwhelmed there too - the book seemed rushed, Picard’s master stroke of becoming Locutus came out of nowhere and the Enterprise seemed utterly empty, with not even a mention of characters beyond the very tight core at the center of events. On the flip side it set up T'Lana magnificently and did some good stuff with Worf so not a total disappointment.

Then we got Q&A, which was probably my favourite book from last year and thank god finally started to build up the TNGr setting a bit more. I can’t say I really liked Zelik or Miranda, but they were magnificently introduced, and I appreciated seeing a little more of the crew beyond the really main characters, it felt like it had a crew at last.

I really enjoyed Before Dishonor too, I thought the development of the Borg was much more interesting and successful than Resistance and the whole book was fun to read. However what it did to the new main characters was horrific. The mutiny was horrible and they were off from what had been established - both in terms of characterisation and basic continuity, things like Miranda threatening the return of her husband when Q&A established he was on Cestus!

In general, I think TNGr suffers from being comparable to DS9r which so brilliantly got things going right from the start with strong story arcs and characters. TNGr isn’t thaaat bad, in fact I think some of it was very good indeed, but it has it flaws and in comparison they are painfully obvious.

One thing that really annoys me about what we have from the new characters so far is that everyone but T'Lana is Human. Ok a reasonable diverse range of Humans but all that one species none the less, it doesn’t feel right to me, and seems a wasted opportunity to explore some of the species we’ve not had the chance to get to know so well yet.

 

[wahwahkits]

Hmmm.. an interesting point there about majority of new characters being human. I think it just might be intentional, with Titan having a majority of non-human and also the majority of DS9 being the same it looks like they have made TNG the direct opposite.

 

[8of5]

Hmmm.. an interesting point there about majority of new characters being human. I think it just might be intentional, with Titan having a majority of non-human and also the majority of DS9 being the same it looks like they have made TNG the direct opposite.

Oh indeed, and I wouldn’t expect them to be anywhere near as diverse as Titan say, but I think (off the top of my head) T'Lana is the only non-human crew person we've seen? Nave, her boyfriend, Jon Stephens (who I loved, shame he was Q) all Human. It's the flagship of the Federation's space force, surely it should be a little representative!

 

[wahwahkits]

I would be nice to see something different, what about a ferengi chief of security? His/her relationship with Worf would be very interesting.
On this forum Christopher L. Bennett said he would be introducing new characters, so maybe they will be alien? I'm hoping that Picard gets rid of Leybenzon and Kadahota, how can he trust them now? If I was him I would make sure they spend the rest of their careers on a freighter.

 

[Christopher]

On this forum Christopher L. Bennett said he would be introducing new characters, so maybe they will be alien?

There are several nonhuman Enterprise personnel appearing in Greater Than the Sum -- including the pre-existing character of Dr. Tropp, the Denobulan chief surgeon who's been with the ship since the A Time To... series. And of course including Worf.

 

[Rabid Trekkie]

On this forum Christopher L. Bennett said he would be introducing new characters, so maybe they will be alien?

There are several nonhuman Enterprise personnel appearing in Greater Than the Sum -- including the pre-existing character of Dr. Tropp, the Denobulan chief surgeon who's been with the ship since the A Time To... series. And of course including Worf.

Of course you don't have to answer but is there any chance we'll see more of Geordie in this book? He was the only character from the series that I felt has been kept to the back in the relaunch and I'd like to see more of how he's doing after Data's death.

 

[Christopher]

Geordi is a prominent presence in Greater Than the Sum -- not a central player, perhaps, but I did make a point of trying to bring him more to the foreground than he was in some of the preceding volumes. I tried to make good use of all the main ensemble members.

 

[8of5]

On this forum Christopher L. Bennett said he would be introducing new characters, so maybe they will be alien?

There are several nonhuman Enterprise personnel appearing in Greater Than the Sum -- including the pre-existing character of Dr. Tropp, the Denobulan chief surgeon who's been with the ship since the A Time To... series. And of course including Worf.

Excellent. I completely forgot Worf was Klingon :P And good ol' Tropp, he got into Q&A didn't he? I'm glad he stuck around on the Enterprise.

Of course you don't have to answer but is there any chance we'll see more of Geordie in this book? He was the only character from the series that I felt has been kept to the back in the relaunch and I'd like to see more of how he's doing after Data's death.

He had a pretty significant role in Before Dishonor.

 

[Trent Roman]

ok guys, let's leave the religion debate to another time and keep this thread on topic of TNG relaunch.

Spoilsport.

There was always room for the Borg to come back imho. I'm just one of those people who can't get enough of them. Cast your mind back to the novels of the 80's and early 90's when 95% of the novels involved going down to some boring planet where 1 or 2 of the landing party would be imprisoned for something. Now that's repetitive!! I can understand wanting new plots etc but there's years ahead for that!

Those were repetitive. Which is why I was glad when the editorial policy change in favour of a more diversified approach to the line. So, after a fashion, this repeated emphasis on the Borg as villain is actually something of a throwback.

I've never hated the Borg. I think it's a shame they've been weakened (which, indeed, is partially because of overuse), but I've also argued in the past that Voyager actually contributed a number of interesting aspects to their overall culture. But Voyager also gave the Borg a good ass-whuppin' in "Endgame", which ought to have taken the Borg out of the equation for a good while. So I felt that if you were going to bring back such a major element of the mythos, you needed to do something interesting with them. Not only have the recent books failed to do that, but they've laundered the Borg by transmuting them into even more conventional villains.

I thought the relaunch WAS epic, from planet eating cubes to huge space battles to god like beings.

Like I said, it tries to be epic. That's obvious from the plots. The problem is the disjoint between what's happening and how it's presented. For Before Dishonor, for instance, I don't see how admirals cracking wise as annihilation sweeps down on them produces anything but a bathetic effect.

Maybe there's no big direction on par with DS9-R but surely that's to come with Destiny...

And why not from the get-go? When you launch a series, you want to have the hooks in from the first, not 'somewhere down the line'. The wormhole was discovered in the premiere, not five episodes later. Voyager was lost in its premiere, not halfway through the first season. If there is an overall arc, it should have begun... well, at the beginning. It doesn't have to be anything telegraphed (the major threats in the DS9-R took a goodly while to manifest), but at least some sense of journey begun.

Surely Vanguard and Titan are the series to visit if you want new characters.
I think the characters we have are strong enough (inc the new ones intr in Q&A) not to need new characters. (besides I'm still holding out for the return of Data!!

Eh? So if Vanguard and Titan have great new characters, that means the TNG Relaunch shouldn't bother? That's bizarre reasoning. Needless to say, I don't agree at all, nor with your opinion that the new characters we do have are strong enough. I felt they were flat in Resistance and Q&A, and Before Dishonor reduced, rather than added to, their dimensionality.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Dayton Ward]

There are several nonhuman Enterprise personnel appearing in Greater Than the Sum -- including the pre-existing character of Dr. Tropp, the Denobulan chief surgeon who's been with the ship since the A Time To... series.

That Tropp, he's quite the playah, ain't he?

 

[wahwahkits]

Wow Trent, thanks for taking the time out for such a comprehensive reply. It's obvious that we are never going to agree on a lot of points but I have a few points I'd like to make....
1) The Borg HAD to go in this direction, they were always soulless autmatons and you can't go even more soulless, the only way to go is to give them character. Thsese guys are now serious bad-asses! No more of that 'we will ignore you if we do not percieve you as a threat' it's now 'we will kill you on sight Starfleet!'. For me that is a great way for the Borg to go. They had to evolve, they kept on getting defeated every time they came near Federation space.

2) For me Before Dishonor WAS epic. In fact I would have loved to see it on the big screen, imagine seeing that whole flying into the sun/ giving birth to new ships on the big screen, not to mention getting Ronny Cox back as Jellico!

3) As for the humour, I liked it. It didn't seem to me to be in bad taste.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

1) The Borg HAD to go in this direction, they were always soulless autmatons and you can't go even more soulless, the only way to go is to give them character.

Why did they have to change at all? Why not keep them as they were? By giving them "character" they've been changed into something completely different. Why not create something new rather than making the old unrecognizable?

 

[Christopher]

Why did they have to change at all? Why not keep them as they were?

How can you tell multiple stories about a single entity without revealing more about it or allowing it to evolve? There's no point in telling the same story over and over.

Besides, the Borg as originally conceived were a very, very limited idea -- in fact, I've frankly always thought they were a pretty bad idea, storytelling-wise. You can't get many stories out of an impersonal force of nature, since stories are about characters and their interactions. Heck, Michael Piller understood that, and he changed the Borg in their very second appearance. In "Q Who," Q had told us outright that the Borg had no interest in people, only technology (the concept of assimilation didn't exist yet; Borg drones were shown to be vat-grown from infancy). But then "Best of Both Worlds" changed that by having them suddenly, arbitrarily decide they needed to abduct Captain Picard to serve as a "spokesman" to ease the process of assimilation. Why would they have bothered? It's not like the Enterprise beat them in their first encounter -- they only survived because Q saved them. It's not like the Borg had suffered any setback to force them to change their tactics. The only reason they were changed is because a storyteller couldn't do much with them as originally conceived.

 

[wahwahkits]

^^ Thank you Christopher!! I couldn't agree more. Once they made the decision to use the Borg again it was 100% correct to evolve them.

 

[Enterpriserules]

I think that the main issue is that we were so spoiled with the DS9-R. The reason that DS9-R was so good, is because the source material was so rich. The characters already had so much depth for the authors to mine and the new characters had to live up to that high expectation that we all had for crew member from DS9.

On TNG the characters never had that same amount of depth. The Time to series really added this depth, finally, only to see Riker and Troi leave; just as they were getting interesting. Then, when the relaunch comes, the characters just seem flat. Then there is the problem of the same story being retold over and over, with the Borg. The problem that I see is the problem of galaxy hoping. DS9 had this great canvas because it is more stationary. The Enterprise never played well with Star Trek lore and the universe. DS9 mines that universe and plays in it, mixing it up and taking us deeper. TNG always just skimmed the surface. It's characters barely grew throughout the seasons. Also the show was much less serial than DS9 or even ENT. This makes the books seem a bit out of place, since they are all so serialized now (I think that this is great, but they are going to have to do a better job of editing and continuity to make this work. They have done it with DS9 and ENT, they can do it with TNG). This leaves the TNG-R in a state of deficiency compared to the DS9-R or even that of the ENT-R.

What needs to happen, I think, is to begin to explore the characters more. It needs to mine the universe more. TNG at its best gave us Klingons that we know now and even worked well on the Romulans. Give us more of that. What excites me about Destiny, is the mixing of series. VOY, DS9 and TNG are all in the same quadrant now, they should be working together more. It makes sense and it makes it more interesting.

 

[wahwahkits]

I agree that we've been spoiled by DS9-R & ENT-R and up to a certain point I agree that TNG-R hasn't explored the characters as much but that can be remedied with GTTS and the Destiny trilogy.
For me the TNG-R have been fantastic adventures. Nothing more. Nothing less.
With the books we have years (hopefully) of more TNG adventures and i'm certain that we will be exploring the galaxy fully with the crew of the Enterprise E.

 

[Rosalind]

As for the editing thing.....

there's a button at the right hand bottom of each post, click on that and you can edit your post.

also, as per board rule, more than two posts in a roll is considered spamming, click the multi-quote button on each of the post you want to reply to, and at the last post you want to reply, click "quote" and then you'll be able to answer all.

 

[VanCardboardbox]

^The DS9r succeeded of the bat in part because the series left two meaty dangling threads to pick up, namely the admission of Bajor into the Federation and the return of Benjamin Sisko. The fact that the TV series ended up not resolving the Bajoran story arc it built itself on gave the DS9r writers something build towards that was tied directly to the show. IMO this and the anticipated return of the Emissary gave the Avatar-to-Unity set of novels a real Season Eight feel.

In comparison Nemesis left TNG with little, and what little there was has been put to use by the first couple of Titan novels. The-Return-of-the Borg as a new TNG arc seems merely a safe fall back position, and one that doesn't interest me much.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Christopher - You make a good point, I hadn't thought about it that way.

 

[Enterpriserules]

^The DS9r succeeded of the bat in part because the series left two meaty dangling threads to pick up, namely the admission of Bajor into the Federation and the return of Benjamin Sisko. The fact that the TV series ended up not resolving the Bajoran story arc it built itself on gave the DS9r writers something build towards that was tied directly to the show. IMO this and the anticipated return of the Emissary gave the Avatar-to-Unity set of novels a real Season Eight feel.

In comparison Nemesis left TNG with little, and what little there was has been put to use by the first couple of Titan novels. The-Return-of-the Borg as a new TNG arc seems merely a safe fall back position, and one that doesn't interest me much.

This is my point exactly. There just is not the depth there. Even ENT left more for the writers to pick up on and run with.