What pet peeves do you have about trek books?

[Garm Bel Iblis]

I think mine is the over-used “RECAP” filler.
There was a line in one of the “Time To” novels were they’re approaching an asteroid field and Riker asks Picard. “Care to take the helm again?”
We then get page-ish episode recap of “Booby Trap.”
This really takes me out of the book and I find myself glossing over large sections. Is this information relevant to the book? Is it an explanation for the non-informed, or just filler, like extra long couch gags on the Simpsons when they’re short on time like Peter Griffin’s chicken fights?
What are some of your Trek book pet peeves?

 

[Fer]

I think mine is the over-used “RECAP” filler.
There was a line in one of the “Time To” novels were they’re approaching an asteroid field and Riker asks Picard. “Care to take the helm again?”
We then get page-ish episode recap of “Booby Trap.”
This really takes me out of the book and I find myself glossing over large sections. Is this information relevant to the book? Is it an explanation for the non-informed, or just filler, like extra long couch gags on the Simpsons when they’re short on time like Peter Griffin’s chicken fights?
What are some of your Trek book pet peeves?

Recaps like those generally work for me, because I've only seen most of the episodes once, and I don't remember all the details.

My biggest pet peeve is none of the books look boring anymore. I used to be able to skip the occasional Star Trek book so I could read something else, but nooooo, now they have to be all so darn interesting that I end up reading them all.

And I'm totally serious about that.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I think mine is the over-used “RECAP” filler.
There was a line in one of the “Time To” novels were they’re approaching an asteroid field and Riker asks Picard. “Care to take the helm again?”
We then get page-ish episode recap of “Booby Trap.”
This really takes me out of the book and I find myself glossing over large sections. Is this information relevant to the book? Is it an explanation for the non-informed, or just filler, like extra long couch gags on the Simpsons when they’re short on time like Peter Griffin’s chicken fights?
What are some of your Trek book pet peeves?

I hate those too and a good writer doesn't need them. KRAD does not fill up his books with such stuff. I skip them even if I don't recall the episode--who CARES about the episode, I'm reading a new story.

And Fer I agree, none look boring any more! The story arcs, the relaunches, the cover art.. these books look fantastic.

 

[Steve Roby]

If I have a pet peeve, it's that IDW is doing trade paperback reprints of comics that have already been reprinted in trade paperback in the last few years. I have almost all of the Trek comics (aside from the Gold Key comics; I mainly have those in reprint collections), I have the DVD ROM, but I still like trade paperbacks, and there's a lot of stuff that hasn't been reprinted in that format yet.

For that matter, I wish Checker would finish its Gold Key reprint books. I half expect to find out that they've lost the rights and IDW is going to start reprinting them from the beginning yet again.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Actually of late I have developed a new pet peeve:

Too much death.

How many billions died from the Big Borg Offensive? And this following so closely on the Dominion war.. I feel like topping previous Huge Death stories is getting to be too much. I am weary of whole worlds being destroyed.

 

[Kelso]

I think mine is the over-used “RECAP” filler.
There was a line in one of the “Time To” novels were they’re approaching an asteroid field and Riker asks Picard. “Care to take the helm again?”
We then get page-ish episode recap of “Booby Trap.”
This really takes me out of the book and I find myself glossing over large sections. Is this information relevant to the book? Is it an explanation for the non-informed, or just filler, like extra long couch gags on the Simpsons when they’re short on time like Peter Griffin’s chicken fights?
What are some of your Trek book pet peeves?

Ha! The third "A Time To" book was even worse. I'm not sure if it was meant to be humorous, but I couldn't stop picturing Peter Griffin, "This reminds me of the time..."

 

[JD]

Actually of late I have developed a new pet peeve:

Too much death.

How many billions died from the Big Borg Offensive? And this following so closely on the Dominion war.. I feel like topping previous Huge Death stories is getting to be too much. I am weary of whole worlds being destroyed.

Yeah, but we have been promised many times that this is the last time we will be seeing that kind of stuff for a long time.

 

[shadowedgalaxy]

Inserting random characters from previous ST shows/movies but not adding anything to the plot.

*cough*Before Dishonor*cough*

 

[RonG]

for me, it's filling unnecessary "gaps" (unnecessary to me, of course ), such as:

what were Kirk and co. doing after STVI:TUC, but before ST:GEN... (one *more* mission in Best Destiny, The Last Round-Up, etc.)

what were Picard and co. doing after ST:GEN but before ST:FC (while the ENT-D was used for scrap and ENT-E being comissioned..)

 

[Nardpuncher]

I guess this is a pet peeve, but I don't like the TNG books going farther and farther into the future. I mean that they are trying to be realistic (as it has been 7 years real-time since Nemesis came out) but I wish for more books set during their original 7 years on the Enterprise D with Data and Riker and everyone else where they 'belong'.

 

[Paris]

^But this has been done to death. I say leave the seven year run from the Enterprise-D alone for good, just as they should leave the original 5YM from TOS alone. These types of stories don't allow for anything world-altering to really happen as everything needs to be "put back" when the story wraps up. Moving the timeline forward is the only way to make the stories feel as though there are any consequences. IMO, of course .

 

[Danoz]

Probably that I'm a little burned out on stories involving the mirror universe in any way whatsoever.

 

[JoeZhang]

Probably that I'm a little burned out on stories involving the mirror universe in any way whatsoever.

Agreed - I find the modern mirror universe very boring.

 

[Frontier]

This one will sound a bit odd, but, it's a pet peeve after all.

One thing that bugs me? Rarely if ever do we have a secondary or side character named something "simple" like Jenkins, or Jones, or Thompson, or Parkins. I know, I know, Trek is diversity! It's just, on the show, so many of those secondary characters are named "simple" names and then in the books they're all much less common names and so... it just irks me because it clashes.

 

[Smitty]

I guess this is a pet peeve, but I don't like the TNG books going farther and farther into the future. I mean that they are trying to be realistic (as it has been 7 years real-time since Nemesis came out) but I wish for more books set during their original 7 years on the Enterprise D with Data and Riker and everyone else where they 'belong'.

I second this one! I like Titan series and others but there is no reason some could not be written standalone in the original 7 year mission (or even 5 year mission of TOS)

 

[Christopher]

One thing that bugs me? Rarely if ever do we have a secondary or side character named something "simple" like Jenkins, or Jones, or Thompson, or Parkins. I know, I know, Trek is diversity! It's just, on the show, so many of those secondary characters are named "simple" names and then in the books they're all much less common names and so... it just irks me because it clashes.

Globally speaking, names like Jenkins and Thompson are much less common than names like Chang, Singh, and Mohammed. There are 57 million Chens in China and only 2.5 million Smiths in the United States.

 

[Steve Roby]

One thing that bugs me? Rarely if ever do we have a secondary or side character named something "simple" like Jenkins, or Jones, or Thompson, or Parkins.

Those aren't "simple" names, they're names for people of British descent.

I know, I know, Trek is diversity!

So's real life. Where I started high school, there were probably more people with Ukrainian, Italian, and French names than anglo names. Where I used to work, there were people from Kenya, Uganda, Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, Hungary, Lebanon, Syria....

It's just, on the show, so many of those secondary characters are named "simple" names and then in the books they're all much less common names and so... it just irks me because it clashes.

So the book writers have spent more time thinking about both the real world and Trek's fictional universe than the TV writers? Sounds like a good thing to me. There's no shortage of white, English-speaking people in Trek.

 

[JD]

This one will sound a bit odd, but, it's a pet peeve after all.

One thing that bugs me? Rarely if ever do we have a secondary or side character named something "simple" like Jenkins, or Jones, or Thompson, or Parkins. I know, I know, Trek is diversity! It's just, on the show, so many of those secondary characters are named "simple" names and then in the books they're all much less common names and so... it just irks me because it clashes.

It always amazes how much people's opinions can differ. This has actually been one of the things I've loved about the books, the added diversity among even the human (is human capitalized?) characters. We've even gotten some humans from places other than Earth, which I don't think we ever got, or at least did not see often, on the TV shows. The non-Earth born humans include Reyes (Lunar colony), Choudhury (Deneva), Vale (Izar), Kadohata (Cestus III), and of course Nan Bacco (also Cestus III).

Sorry but I have a quick semi off topic question. It says on Memory Beta that Kadohata is of Japanese/European descent, and I was just wondering where the Japanese thing came from because I don't remember that being mentioned anywhere?

 

[David Mack]

^ Her last name is Japanese.

 

[Christopher]

We've even gotten some humans from places other than Earth, which I don't think we ever got, or at least did not see often, on the TV shows. The non-Earth born humans include Reyes (Lunar colony), Choudhury (Deneva), Vale (Izar), Kadohata (Cestus III), and of course Nan Bacco (also Cestus III).

Not sure if you're counting half-humans, but according to my original character notes, T'Ryssa Chen was born on Starbase 11.