Yep I would call it an ongoing mission as well. Lots of it was told in the DC Comics and a few novels.
Agreed, and it seems that, as you correctly point out, the vast majority of stories told aboard the
Enterprise-A were published within the pages of the two DC Comics series, from early 1987 to 1988, and then from 1989 to 1996.
Chronologically speaking, the series covered much of that vessel's eight-year service history, from early 2286 (immediately post-ST IV) to at least 2290 (we see Sulu's commmand-taking of the
Excelsior during the series, and him leaving the
Enterprise-A behind forever), but it appeared to end maybe a year or two prior to the events of
Star Trek VI (though still working characters like Admiral Cartwright and Valeris into those pre-movie storylines).
By contrast, we actually received very, very few original prose stories set aboard the
Enterprise-A in the Pocket novel series, not counting the movie novelizations themselves. From what I remember, the list is a pretty short one:
-
Star Trek IV (novelization)
-
Star Trek V (novelization)
-
Star Trek VI (novelization)
-
Probe
-
Best Destiny (framing sections)
-
The Rift (post-Capt. Pike sections)
-
Mind Meld
- The Ashes of Eden
- Sarek
- Shadows on the Sun
- The Captain's Table: War Dragons (post-TOS sections)
-
In the Name of Honor
- Starfleet Academy (novelization)
Also, the excellent novel
Cast No Shadow by James Swallow contains at least one flashback-chapter to the years of the
Enterprise-A's service, but even when you factor in the movie and video game novelizations, that's a pretty damn small list of stories.
What's worse is that most of those books feature separate narrative or chronological threads, meaning portions take place aboard other starships in previous eras, with only some portions occurring during the later movie era proper. Novels like
The Rift and
Best Destiny, for example, both devote considerable page-space to events taking place decades earlier, with the
Ent-A sections sometimes serving as mere "framing" narratives.
Even more interesting is the fact that Pocket and Paramount commissioned so many stories that were set aboard the NCC-1701-A, but
after the events of
Star Trek VI, when that starship was supposedly to be set for decommissioning. Suddenly, we see the ship putting in for a month of orbital drydock over Vulcan to bring her back into serviceable condition following the battle over Khitomer in the movie, ostensibly for future novels to come.
It's pretty easy to see why this was done -- at that point in time (early 1992 to around early 1994, or thereabouts), the storyline of the projected seventh feature film had not yet been officially announced or locked in stone, and there was no inkling yet that the
Enterprise-B would feature prominently in the opening of
ST: Generations, as it eventually would do.
Thus, authors like A.C. Crispin and Michael Jan Friedman had what was for those months and years a temporary wide-open playing field to continue using the
Enterprise-A, until plans for the seventh movie were at last announced, and the destruction of the NCC-1701-A in
The Ashes of Eden became a viable concept.
Getting back to the original post above, again, most of the eight years' worth of voyages of the
Enterprise-A are chronicled not in the pages of the Pocket novels, but rather in the two DC Comics series, all issues of which are now available on the recent DVD-ROM collection; and there are some excellent stories told during those years of her service history.
Indeed, I've always found it a rather peculiar phenomenon that more stories set between
Star Trek IV and
Star Trek VI were never commissioned by Pocket Books and Paramount; coming off of the rather-catastrophic and far-reaching events of the "Genesis trilogy" of films, there's far more emotional depth to be mined there with the original crew than in previous eras, in my opinion.
And given how much more ephemeral and less visible comic book stories and issues tend to be in the public's eye as a general thing, most of that era's storytelling has been harder to keep track of (barring trade paperback reprints), compared to the far more visible novels (which tend to get reprinted and circulated into "mainstream" outlets like libraries, far beyond the scope of comic books).
