Spoilers TOS: No Time Like the Past by Greg Cox Review Thread

[JD]

One thing I thought was interesting that I read on a thread here, I think, was that the book was originally a Kelvin Universe story with Spock Prime in the Seven of Nine role. I'm kind of curious how that would have worked, would they have been visiting the Kelvin versions of the different planets for the first time, instead of going back to them?

 

[Greg Cox]

The whole scavenger hunt through past TOS words was new to the Seven of Nine version, since I had to come up with a whole new reason for Seven to arrive from the future and put her back where she belonged by the end of the book. I mean, I couldn't exactly have her hurled into an alternate timeline by Red Matter while trying to stop Romulus's sun from blowing up . . . .

In the end, I'd estimate that only a third of No Time Like the Past was cannibalized from the aborted Kelvin book. Mostly the action stuff with the Orions.

Turned out replacing Spock Prime with Seven, and turning a Kelvin novel into a TOS book, required a lot more rewriting than I anticipated.

 

[Christopher]

In the end, I'd estimate that only a third of No Time Like the Past was cannibalized from the aborted Kelvin book. Mostly the action stuff with the Orions.

Turned out replacing Spock Prime with Seven, and turning a Kelvin novel into a TOS book, required a lot more rewriting than I anticipated.

I managed to include somewhat more of my unpublished Kelvin novel into The Face of the Unknown, mainly most of the business with the aliens, the worldbuilding, and the action, but the character business was mostly new, and I added more subplots and material that made it longer than the original novel. So while more than 2/3 of the scenes from the Kelvin novel were salvaged in more or less altered forms, the recycled material makes up less than half of the final novel. But I kept nearly all the best parts, and the one part I really liked that I couldn't fit into TFotU ended up getting reused in The Captain's Oath.

 

[JD]

The whole scavenger hunt through past TOS words was new to the Seven of Nine version, since I had to come up with a whole new reason for Seven to arrive from the future and put her back where she belonged by the end of the book. I mean, I couldn't exactly have her hurled into an alternate timeline by Red Matter while trying to stop Romulus's sun from blowing up . . . .

In the end, I'd estimate that only a third of No Time Like the Past was cannibalized from the aborted Kelvin book. Mostly the action stuff with the Orions.

Turned out replacing Spock Prime with Seven, and turning a Kelvin novel into a TOS book, required a lot more rewriting than I anticipated.

OK, thanks for explaining.