TNG The Captains' Honor - Kzinti

[DrBeverly]

I thought this was an interesting nugget.

The Captains' Honor is an early Pocket TNG book, featuring a feline species named the M'Dok who have previously been at war with the Federation and want to enslave the population of a planet, presumably so they can.

Memory Beta points out that this species' backstory bears a striking resemblance to the Kzinti in TAS.

I was just reading Masks, the previous Pocket TNG book, and it features The Captains' Honor as 'coming soon' - and in the blurb, it refers to the Kzinti as the antagonist. So presumably a last-minute change (instigated by Richard Arnold?).

I thought it was a cute little thing, and to be honest, it's a shame it gets changed, it would be more interesting for it to be the same species we'd already encountered rather than a new, very similar one.

 

[Corran Horn]

In Voyages of Imagination the author mentions that large portions of the book were rewritten by the editor and it was a quite difficult process throughout. The Kzinti are not mentioned, though.

 

[Faldor]

Probably due to the Kzinti predating TAS from Niven's Known Space books.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Probably due to the Kzinti predating TAS from Niven's Known Space books.

And Baen began publishing the Man-Kzin Wars anthologies around the time. It may have been a case where Pocket thought they were in the clear to use the Kzinti, and then it's like, "Hey, wait a sec..." Niven talks in one of the MKW intros about a fan writer wanting to write a Star Trek story about a Kzinti on "a Federation battlewagon" for a fanzine, and while he was interested to see how it would develop, he also didn't want the competition.

 

[Therin of Andor]

And Baen began publishing the Man-Kzin Wars anthologies around the time. It may have been a case where Pocket thought they were in the clear to use the Kzinti, and then it's like, "Hey, wait a sec..." Niven talks in one of the MKW intros about a fan writer wanting to write a Star Trek story about a Kzinti on "a Federation battlewagon" for a fanzine, and while he was interested to see how it would develop, he also didn't want the competition.

Yep. Niven had also been negotiating the rights for a Known Space/"Ringworld" RPB at the time.

"Star Fleet Battles", a quasi-licensed RPB had also included kzinti (and even associated Heritage white-metal figurines). That was a minefield, because Franz Joseph had a loophole in his licence deal contract that allowed him to license out material in "Star Fleet Technical Manual" and the blueprints to the creators of "Star Fleet Battles", and they had added kzinti and other elements from TAS.

So the kinti were overwritten as the M'dok Hegemony, just another antagonistic felinoid race, for "The Captains' Honor" and the Mirak Star League, yet another antagonistic felinoid race for the licensed "Starfleet Command" computer games, which were based on the troublesome "Star Fleet Battles" RPG.