What happened to the timeline of post Nemesis novels?

[Mike Scully]

In the years prior to the release of Discovery I got through the Star Trek drought by reading the post nemesis novels of Star Trek Titan, TNG, DS9 etc. They told truly wonderful stories and they showed the evolvement of the Star Trek universe, the rise and fall of powers and alliances and federation presidents from 2379 to 2387. They developed the well known characters and introduced interesting new ones. But after watching Picard I was really stunned to learn that all this never happened. Or did I missunderstand something? The dissolvement of the borg collective in Star Trek Destiny - never happened. The resurrection of Data by taking over Noonien Soongs own android avatar - never happened. The unmasking and destruction of Section 31 and Picard's related court martial - never happened. Will Riker becoming admiral - never happened. I just don't understand why. They could have easily piggy bagged the Star Trek Picard story on that with a few minor modifications. Instead they wiped out this timeline in a heartbeat. And when I look into the planned releases of novels this year it seems that these stories won't be continued at all. Very sad and again. Why?
Again - did I miss something? Is there a third timeline beside the main one and the Kelvin timeline? Does someone has any explanation?

 

[marlboro]

Likely retconned or ignored, I suppose. It's the nature of tie in media. Some of those books are excellent, imo. Hopefully fans will still check them out eve though they aren't compatible with current continuity.

 

[Christopher]

Star Trek tie-ins have never been canonical. They're essentially the "historical fiction" to the screen canon's "history" -- conjectures about what might have happened offscreen. And the novels have never been the only tie-in continuity. There have been separate, mutually incompatible continuities in the IDW comics, the Star Trek Online RPG, and so forth. There has never, ever been a single uniform tie-in continuity in Trek, just multiple different conjectures.

This has happened before. In the '80s, many of the Pocket novels shared a loose continuity (though other novels went their own contradictory ways), but when TNG came along, it defined aspects of the universe (such as Klingon and Romulan societies) differently than the novels had portrayed them, and so that novel continuity was dropped, because it has always been the job of tie-ins to follow the lead of what's onscreen, not the other way around. And in the years that followed, there were many, many standalone novels that were eventually contradicted by later episodes or movies.

Of course, it shouldn't matter. Canon is just as imaginary as anything else, and there are plenty of fictional franchises that manage to have multiple contradictory continuities at once in different media, like Marvel, DC, Godzilla, Transformers, Sherlock Holmes, you name it. Different stories don't have to agree with each other to be enjoyable.

 

[TrekMD]

I still have several of those books to finish reading. I really enjoyed what they had done with the unified Star Trek universe in the novels. Has PocketBooks decided to not continue publishing books in that continuity they created?

 

[fireproof78]

But after watching Picard I was really stunned to learn that all this never happened.

At the risk of sounding pedantic did you read it and enjoy it? Then it happened. Similarly, Shatner has his novels where Kirk doesn't die in Generations. Both are enjoyable stories but one obviously contradicts the other. Some things can just be enjoyed independently.

 

[DEWLine]

As far as I'm concerned? The continuity of those novels happened...somewhere else, in another corner of Trek's multiverse. Those versions of the characters might pop up some day, if/when it suits the people who work on the various TV series and movies. Another episode like TNG's "Parallels" would be perfect for that. I'm not pushing.

 

[Christopher]

Has PocketBooks decided to not continue publishing books in that continuity they created?

I don't know what Pocket's specific plans are in that regard. I've been working in the TOS time frame lately, and that's not affected by the new continuity introduced in Picard. Indeed, nothing in the books set pre-Nemesis has been affected by anything in Picard so far.

But the decision ultimately isn't up to Pocket Books, because it doesn't own Star Trek. CBS does. Pocket's job as a licensee is to tell stories that are consistent with the onscreen continuity. So when the original work establishes new information that conflicts with past tie-ins, then new tie-ins have to adjust to remain consistent with it. It has always been that way. The only reason Pocket was able to build such an elaborate 24th-century continuity over the past two decades is that there was no new onscreen 24th-century content during that time, so nothing was contradicting what the books did. Just as Pocket was able to build a novel continuity in the '80s because there was no new screen content except the occasional movie -- but once TNG came along, the official continuity grew and changed too fast for the books to do more than tag along for the ride as best they could. Tie-ins trying to keep pace with an ongoing series are in a very different situation than tie-ins to a dormant or concluded series. There's a reason that those few tie-ins that are counted as canonical are nearly always ones that come out after the flagship series has already ended. (Although those tie-ins are written or supervised by the shows' own creators, which is what makes them canonical by definition. That's never been the case with Trek tie-ins.)

 

[Mike Scully]

Good to know that this wasn't the first time. As this was my first stint of novels I guess I had higher expectations.

 

[Mike Scully]

The continuity of those novels happened...somewhere else, in another corner of Trek's multiverse.

and the "somewhere else" timeline has been born. I like that.

 

[fireproof78]

As far as I'm concerned? The continuity of those novels happened...somewhere else, in another corner of Trek's multiverse. Those versions of the characters might pop up some day, if/when it suits the people who work on the various TV series and movies. Another episode like TNG's "Parallels" would be perfect for that. I'm not pushing.

Honestly, when I was reading Trek comics they pretty much did their own continuity. My favorite comic of all time is the Mirror universe saga, which is right after TSFS. But, there is no way it lines up with the other films. Still a great story.

 

[Christopher]

Honestly, when I was reading Trek comics they pretty much did their own continuity. My favorite comic of all time is the Mirror universe saga, which is right after TSFS. But, there is no way it lines up with the other films. Still a great story.

DC did their best to try to reconcile their ongoing comics with the films, but that was hard to do when they didn't know what the next film would do. There were areas they avoided dealing with to reduce the risk of contradiction, but it was still hard to keep everything consistent.

 

[The Wormhole]

They could have easily piggy bagged the Star Trek Picard story on that with a few minor modifications. Instead they wiped out this timeline in a heartbeat. And when I look into the planned releases of novels this year it seems that these stories won't be continued at all. Very sad and again. Why?

Same reason why Star Wars erased their novel continuity when development began on TFA.

 

[thribs]

No one knows yet. Apparently there is a plan.
Hopefully they didn’t just reset everything to fit this new continuity as it’s just too depressing for my liking.

 

[fireproof78]

I always miss this need for books to be canon to enjoy stories...?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Good to know that this wasn't the first time. As this was my first stint of novels I guess I had higher expectations.

It won't be last. Just read the books and enjoy them. Watch the shows and enjoy them.

 

[Christopher]

Same reason why Star Wars erased their novel continuity when development began on TFA.

Actually it's exactly the opposite reason. When Disney acquired SW, they decided they wanted everything to be a single consistent continuity, so that the films would be consistent with the books and comics as well as the other way around. But the old books had covered a lot of the same post-ROTJ ground they wanted to cover in the sequels, and that meant the only way to have a consistent continuity going forward was to make a clean break with the past tie-ins. But in the case of Star Trek, the tie-ins have never been binding on canon and probably never will be. So they were never formally "decanonized" because they were never anything more than conjectural to begin with. The shows just do what they want without consideration for the tie-ins, and the tie-ins keep what they can and change what they have to in order to keep up.

For many years, before the Disney acquisition, the Star Wars "Expanded Universe" dealt with new screen canon pretty much the same way Star Trek and other tie-ins did -- they acknowledged the new canon and retroactively ignored or rewrote the parts of their continuity that no longer fit (e.g. when The Clone Wars' version of Mandalore contradicted an entire novel series). That was the way tie-ins usually work in most franchises, and it's the way it's always worked for Star Trek and still does. The Disney-era Star Wars approach is the exception, not the rule.

 

[fireproof78]

It won't be last. Just read the books and enjoy them. Watch the shows and enjoy them.

Exactly. Canon status has no bearing on enjoyment.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

I completely get that readers want the stories they read to feel like they happened off screen, between episodes or during the gaps between series or films, and although it's unavoidable I also get how people don't like stories they like being contradicted on screen.

Take Federation's detailed depiction of Cochrane's development of the warp drive and the resulting fallout for example, which is superior to First Contact's depiction in my opinion.

 

[Christopher]

I completely get that readers want the stories they read to feel like they happened off screen, between episodes or during the gaps between series or films, and although it's unavoidable I also get how people don't like stories they like being contradicted on screen.

You can always believe a story "happened" while you're reading it. That's independent of whether alternate continuities exist. I mean, when I'm reading a Superman story, I don't have to worry about whether The Rockford Files "happened" in its reality. When I'm watching a Stargate episode, I don't have to worry about whether Gilligan's Island exists in its universe. When I'm reading Sherlock Holmes, I don't have to worry about whether he shares a reality with the Power Rangers. We can treat separate fictional continuities as independent entities and not worry about connecting them, because the question of their "reality" only matters within themselves. So if we can switch mental gears that way with separate franchises, then it's not that hard to do the same with alternate continuities of the same franchise. Just let each one be "real" within itself and not worry about fitting them together. I mean, sure, it can sometimes be fun to fit them together, to play around with crossovers, but it's just an entertaining option, not an absolute requirement.

Once you start worrying over whether a story has some "reality" that persists after you're done imagining it, then you're forgetting how imagination works and flirting with delusional thinking. It's all just pretend. As children, we instinctively understand how pretending works. While I was playing with my friends, I could absolutely believe that my front porch was a starship bridge and the yard was either the prow of the ship or the surface of an alien planet as needed; but at the same time I still knew it was just a porch and a yard and I could turn off the illusion when I was done. It's not that hard for the imagination to contain multiple incompatible "realities" at once. We did it all the time when we were kids. It's just that when we grow up, society pressures us to "face reality," to stop daydreaming and settle on a single consistent view of the world. Which makes sense as far as actual reality goes, but it's not supposed to be applied to fiction. When we enjoy fiction, we should reawaken that childhood wisdom, that ability to transpose effortlessly between different perceptions of what's "real."

 

[jaime]

I was tiring of them anyway, thank goodness, but it does make me wary of investing time and more importantly money, in the books again. This wouldn’t matter if they hadn’t been going for a continuity based approach, but they did so it does. I *already* felt things were being dragged out, and now that won’t even have a conclusion. Makes me think twice before I bother again tbh. And they borrowed som much from the books for screen, but usually the worse stuff (in my opinion of course) and as has been pointed out, jettisoned other stuff that needn’t have mattered. My interest in the books was already on life support, Picard just turned off the EMH. Picard itself suffers from the same problems as the later books (and seems common in much media these days) in that it mistakes “dark” for interesting, gore for dark, and can’t stick a decent ending... while trying to cover those failings in a paste of a given definition of fan service and flash bang.