Indeed. I see it ruining story experience as often as it enhances it.
What happened to the timeline of post Nemesis novels?
- Thread starter Mike Scully
- Start date
I remember Myriad Universes and the problem there for me was retreading on past events. These were things that we knew went a certain way and it was almost continuity-porn being played with.
I wonder if entirely new series were set up that moved forward would have more success. I mean it’s kind of what was done with Titan and IKS Gorkon. The idea being to have interesting new adventures in “the future” in parallel universes.
I suppose the post-Nemesis novels will now just exist in their own little bubble. A possible timeline instead of a probable timeline.
Why not let them be their own thing?
Wait wait wait. Are you implying that the purpose of reading a novel or watching a film or TV show is something other than assembling the bare information from it for a wikipedia article???
For me, the "alternate timeline" justification rarely works, because it doesn't justify any random difference. Alternate timelines would branch from the same origin and thus have the same laws of physics, and presumably would have the same inhabited planets and the same evolutionary history for their species, so if a story posits a physical phenomenon working a different way or an alien species having a totally different appearance (e.g. Star Trek Online Iconians or Tzenkethi vs. the novel version), I don't see that as justifiable as a parallel timeline.
Of course, if a work of fiction explicitly states in-story that its alternate realities work in such an illogical way -- like the Arrowverse did in Crisis on Infinite Earths when it folded other DC shows and movies into its multiverse -- then I play along because it's part of the explicit rules of the universe at that point. But left to my own devices, I prefer not to go there unless it makes sense. It's good enough just to accept them as what they are -- different creative interpretations of a work of imagination. They only have to be "real" within themselves while you're reading or watching them. It's not essential to connect them to alternate versions.
Of course, if a work of fiction explicitly states in-story that its alternate realities work in such an illogical way -- like the Arrowverse did in Crisis on Infinite Earths when it folded other DC shows and movies into its multiverse -- then I play along because it's part of the explicit rules of the universe at that point. But left to my own devices, I prefer not to go there unless it makes sense. It's good enough just to accept them as what they are -- different creative interpretations of a work of imagination. They only have to be "real" within themselves while you're reading or watching them. It's not essential to connect them to alternate versions.
The Star Trek Online novel The Needs of the Many already took the Crisis route, placing the Kelvin Universe and Novelverse as parallel realities to it's own version of Trek which Dulmer could perceive due to his temporal psychosis.
Which has not been reflected by any other book. That whole chapter was just one big continuity-porn in-joke that didn't really work (since it rode way too hard on the X-Files parallel, while Lucsly and Dulmur in the actual episode were nothing like Scully and Mulder in personality, despite the names).
:: I remember a time when Star Trek fans celebrated these continuity differences, and worked to come up with creative ways in order to justify them. Not throw their drinks at the TV screen and yell "Nuh uh."
Some of them always did that. They just didn't have the Internet to amplify their every complaint and drown out everyone else. They had magazine letter columns and such, but those were curated and edited to give a balanced sample of the range of opinions, and the more angry, incoherent, entitled rants probably ended up on the reject pile. Still, you got the occasional letter like one from a 1982 Starlog, I think it was, from someone insisting that ST:TMP and TWOK couldn't possibly be in the same reality as TOS because of all the inconsistencies.
Indeed. Fans could rationalize away any difference and still have fun. But, now, it's all about canon.:
Certainly that word is used far more often now (ad nauseam), but the idea existed even then. For instance, there were always people who refused to count the animated series, long before the Roddenberry memo that supposedly "decanonized" it.
Nostalgia is an illusion. We always imagine the past was more idyllic and didn't have the problems we have today, but it always had the exact same problems. It's just that we focus more on remembering the better parts, and a lot of the bad, annoying parts end up not having a lot of impact in the long run. There were just as many complainers and canon fanatics back then as there are now, but their griping never had any real impact on the franchise, so we forgot about them. And the same goes for the complainers today. They're full of sound and fury, but in the long run it will signify nothing.
Haven't they always been?
Apparently not. Canon status is necessary now.
It's been a long time since I've seen the episode, but I recall Lucsly and Dulmur giving off more of a Friday and Gannon vibe.
Definitely. When I read the novel and there was a BTS bit about that I couldn't really believe they thought it was an X-Files vibe. Because, not really.
Yes, as William Leisner recognized and illustrated in his Strange New Worlds story "Gods, Fate and Fractals," a Dragnet pastiche narrated by Lucsly. That story was an inspiration for my own portrayal of Lucsly and Dulmur in my DTI novels.
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