What's the worst non-canon decision in the history of Trek?

[Steve Roby]

I see the gestation of Gene's Vision 2.0 a little differently. I don't think it stems from the development of TNG as much as it's a byproduct of Paramount firing him after Star Trek: The Motion Picture and handing Harve Bennett the franchise, because it was a way to differentiate "his" Star Trek from what Bennett was doing and gave him a rhetorical cudgel he could use against Bennett privately in memos and publicly at conventions in the 1980s. Then in 1987 he was back in a position where he could make good on the "vision" that formed in his mind over the preceding six years, he married it to David Gerrold's ideas for a new Star Trek series, and, BOOM!, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Oh, yeah, Gene's Vision 2.0 definitely precedes TNG by years, but that's where it really became noticeable. It was developing during all those university lecture tours. Distinguishing himself from the Bennett/Meyer Trek was a big part of it, but the other factor was Roddenberry believing all the press he'd been getting about being a progressive visionary. His book Report From Earth was going to be a deep and meaningful look at how wonky human society would seem to an alien civilization, but the bits he trotted out during the lecture tour I saw him on were about as deep as a comedian saying, "What is it with airplane food anyway?" So the anti-military thing (and the utopian thing and the perfect humans thing) was, I think, as much about "hey, I'm a visionary and a deep thinker" as it was about "Wrath of Khan isn't my Star Trek." It's funny that the whole "we don't have money in the future" thing came from one of the GRless movies, though.

 

[David cgc]

lHis book Report From Earth was going to be a deep and meaningful look at how wonky human society would seem to an alien civilization, but the bits he trotted out during the lecture tour I saw him on were about as deep as a comedian saying, "What is it with airplane food anyway?"

I remember how Roddenberry was using the same hackneyed, “Richard Dawkins Has a Cold and is On Deadline” criticism of organized religion as both a trenchant insight from an intellectually superior Vulcan in “The God Thing” and as a dumb, superficial nitpick from the unenlightened in “Letter From a Network Censor,” both in the mid-to-late ‘70s.

I was equal parts surprised and disappointed years ago when I actually figured out the dates involved and found that both those perspectives were written less than a year apart, so there probably wasn’t an accompanying epiphany shifting the thought from “insightful” to “stupid” (or vice-versa, I can’t remember which would’ve come first).

 

[Markonian]

Coming back to the threat title:
1. killing Janeway in the First Splinter timeline.
2. The Denobulan resolution in the Picard biography.
3. Coda wiping out TrekLit instead of retiring it to greener pastures.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Coda wiping out TrekLit instead of retiring it to greener pastures.

This. I've only read about three Star Trek books, but even as a fan of the Litverse from a distance I don't see the need to go the route they did.

 

[somebuddyX]

I haven't ready any of the novels so I can't say about the execution but if Coda was basically the Ragnarok of the novelverse then I can't blame the writers for taking a swing at it. There is something fascinating about going out with a literal bang. On the one hand it's something I thought that would have been interesting to do just before Flashpoint or one of those DC comic book resets in the comics, with an all out epic battle between good and evil, but on the other I also was kind of upset when that sorta did go and happen to the Ultimate Universe and it was trashed like three or four times over it's life before getting blown to bits, and was stoked when Bendis brought it back at the end of Spider-Men 2.

 

[Captain's Coffee]

Coming back to the threat title:
1. killing Janeway in the First Splinter timeline.
2. The Denobulan resolution in the Picard biography.
3. Coda wiping out TrekLit instead of retiring it to greener pastures.

This, especially point 1. If someone wants to @ me that killing Janeway was the right thing to do, especially the way Peter David did it, I don't care that I'm a 5'6" 130-ish lbs woman I will challenge them to a sumo match to the death right then and there.

I haven't read Coda, but I've read of Coda. And what I've read sound like a miserable slog and a shite way to send off the characters we've grown to know and love for hundreds of book, so I'm glad I waited until the trilogy was complete before deciding whether I should invest my time into it.

 

[Christopher]

a sumo match to the death

How would that work? I think it would only be possible if the ring were surrounded on all sides by a pit of spikes or something.

 

[David cgc]

Now, that’s the ultimate evolution of the martial arts!

 

[Avro Arrow]

Now, that’s the ultimate evolution of the martial arts!

But only if it has this playing over the speakers:

 

[Smiley]

Now, that’s the ultimate evolution of the martial arts!

I thought it was anbo-jitsu. Did "The Icarus Factor" lead me astray?

 

[XCV330]

I will note that NASA is very scrupulously not military, even if a large number of active astronauts are active-duty military, and most of the rest are, at the very least, peacetime veterans (Neil Armstrong, for example, was a Naval Aviator in the Korean War, but resigned his commission in 1960). And it's that way because it evolved from the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, and because President (and decorated retired General) Eisenhower, deliberately seeking to be as different as possible from the Soviet space program, wanted it that way. Even though he also specifically wanted test pilots as the first astronauts.

I would maybe use a more obscure (defunct) government initiative that had been setup purely for exploration but DID go armed. the US Corps of Discovery. It did fall under the military but (AFAIK) only its officers were military and its primary job was specific to the Lewis and Clark expedition. Of course it only ended up being attached to the Lewis and Clarke expedition.

curiously, the National Geospace Intelligence Agency considers itself a spiritual successor, of sorts, to the CoD.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

This, especially point 1. If someone wants to @ me that killing Janeway was the right thing to do, especially the way Peter David did it, I don't care that I'm a 5'6" 130-ish lbs woman I will challenge them to a sumo match to the death right then and there.

While I do agree that the way Peter David did it was not right, I will say, for the record that, right or wrong, Janeway’s death and how it was handled once KMFB got to explore the fallout... Those novels were helpful for me and processing my grandmother’s death right around that same time.

It was a story I needed in that time, once the right author was telling the story. Whether that means it was the right thing period... Well, that’s a separate question.

 

[dupersuper]

This, especially point 1. If someone wants to @ me that killing Janeway was the right thing to do, especially the way Peter David did it

Didn't she come back after that?

 

[Captain's Coffee]

Didn't she come back after that?

She did, but that doesn’t change the fact that Before Dishonor is atrocious and insulting. Also, when they originally killed her off it was with the intent that it would be permanent.

 

[Captain's Coffee]

While I do agree that the way Peter David did it was not right, I will say, for the record that, right or wrong, Janeway’s death and how it was handled once KMFB got to explore the fallout... Those novels were helpful for me and processing my grandmother’s death right around that same time.

It was a story I needed in that time, once the right author was telling the story. Whether that means it was the right thing period... Well, that’s a separate question.

trying to avoid the sumo match, I see

Joking aside, I, too, love some of the stories that resulted from her death, like Full Circle and The Eternal Tide.

 

[flandry84]

I thought that the characters of Eden and Batiste were horribly treated.And even though the C.Golden introduced crew were rather bland they deserved better than the “Alpha flight” ending they received.
Once the deadening presence of Janeway returned that was that for Voy-lit as far as I was concerned.

 

[Christopher]

Also, when they originally killed her off it was with the intent that it would be permanent.

I wonder if that's true, given that both her death and her resurrection were editor Margaret Clark's ideas. It wouldn't be the only time that Margaret played a long game. When I wrote Greater than the Sum for her, she suggested I begin it with Picard and Crusher already married, to whet the readers' curiosity about the wedding as a setup for a later story focusing on it.

 

[Vox24]

I agree that a bad decision was killing Janeway. I wasn't really reading the novels at that time (I picked up an occasional book but those were usually the ones set during the series proper) and when I saw this news it made me mad. I felt there was no way they would kill off Picard or Sisko or Kirk (if the movies hadn't already killed him). As a big Voyager and Janeway fan that made me stay away from the novels for a long time.

I also agree with flandry84 that Beyer killing off all of Golden's character was bad. Sure, some of them I had never clicked with, but it left a bad taste in my mouth that the new author killed off all the previous author's character and then introduced her own, especially since I absolutely hated Cambridge. I mean, couldn't some of Golden's characters have transferred?

Coda. Killing off the entire universe is something I will never agree with.

The death of Jasminder Choudhury. I felt it was so unnecessary and seemed to exist to give Worf more pain (which he had enough of already) and to make the Breen commander seem like a bigger threat which didn't work since I can't even remember his name. It also came at a time when the Enterprise crew was finally stable after a lot of books with changing cast members. The fact that it was followed by two more somewhat prominent female deaths in the next two books in the trilogy, and then followed up by the death of yet another major female character in the first The Fall book was just a bad look. Note, I'm not accusing any of the authors of hating women or taking glee in killing them. It was just bad timing that they all died so quickly together.

The New Frontier crew helping a race commit genocide because some members of that race did the same to Calhoun's people. New Frontier's crew were always a bit more morally ambiguous but that crossed the line for me, and I knew I would never read another NF book after that, which was made easier by the fact that was the last book.

I was not a fan of how the Illiana Ghemor/Ascendants plot was finally wrapped up. I thought Ghemor made for a great villain and the Ascendants were this mysterious race I wanted to learn more about. The build-up was good but then when it is finally revealed what happened it just... peters out. The Ascendants and Ghemor don't really do anything. I was very disappointed.

I didn't have as big of a problem with Sisko abandoning Kasidy and Rebecca as others did but that's partly because I didn't really have to wait to see how that played out. I knew he got back together with them. I still thought it was a bad plot to use with Sisko. I also didn't like that, before the time jump, Sisko still seemed to have a connection to the Prophets and at least an inkling about events to come and was active in trying to stop it. After the time jump Sisko is adamant that he is no longer the Emissary, has nothing to do with the Prophets, and has no way to help them deal with the Ascendants.

 

[ThetaSigma]

This, especially point 1. If someone wants to @ me that killing Janeway was the right thing to do, especially the way Peter David did it, I don't care that I'm a 5'6" 130-ish lbs woman I will challenge them to a sumo match to the death right then and there.

I haven't read Coda, but I've read of Coda. And what I've read sound like a miserable slog and a shite way to send off the characters we've grown to know and love for hundreds of book, so I'm glad I waited until the trilogy was complete before deciding whether I should invest my time into it.

I don't know Coda was a fun read once you realized just ho 'kill em all' it was and I sort of got the meta narrative they were going for - the novel characters had helped keep the franchise alive but had to die now the show was returning to the screen.

All in all it has it's flaws, I think Ezri was killed too early and should have stuck around till the second book, the Worf K'Ehlyr thing was wrong on so many levels, I didn't like the way the other show's cast seemed expendable to get the TNG cast to the finish - they should have mixed them up a bit. Spock felt underutilized in book 3 where I'd been sure they were setting up a confrontation with Riker given all the references to Ambassadors have the equivalent of Vice-Admiral rank and Riker as only a Rear Admiral.

I still think they should have left it ambiguous whether a version of the Splinter timeline could continue in our heads if we wanted but that's just me.

Long story short, if you know what you're in for and sit back you can just enjoy the ride, I especially loved the whole 'Stealing the Enterprise' homage.

 

[Enterprise1701]

I thought that the characters of Eden and Batiste were horribly treated.And even though the C.Golden introduced crew were rather bland they deserved better than the “Alpha flight” ending they received.

I don't quite get that reference. What did Marvel Comics do to Alpha Flight?