Star Trek: Discovery

[Dynaman]

In Universe the Enterprise is a prize as well,  Everyone and their uncle wants to be the Captain of a Constitution class.  It is considered a prestige posting.

[Seto Kaiba]

19 hours ago, Mommar said:

Except the guys at Trekyards did scaling for every ship from discovery and ALL of them are oversized, even the new Enterprise is larger than the Enterprise.  Their scaling is just JJ levels of wrong.

One reason among many that Discovery's critics continue to insist it's actually a Kelvin timeline show, or a third timeline altogether.

(Frankly, I'd like to lump it into the same category as several of the aborted Star Trek ideas that got a "take that!" in Watching the Clock... the ones like that grimdark Star Trek cartoon proposal that they take a shot at by saying it was a bad future created by the Temporal Cold War and erased from the multiverse by the Temporal Accord signatory powers.)

 

16 hours ago, Thom said:

I know, Discovery is the 'hero' ship. It would be like Admiral Adama choosing to save the Pegasus as his flagship over the Galactica. 

I'm torn between thinking it's an attempt to introduce a character who's actually likeable, and being just a shameless attempt to get existing Star Trek fans to stop boycotting the show.

 

16 hours ago, Thom said:

I would also counter that Enterprise is faaar more important than Discovery ever will be.

Poor Pike, being asked to stand aside on the finest ship in the fleet to play hall monitor aboard the starship of misfit officers.

 

12 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Ugh. Every time I think about that sheer bit of stupidity in the 2009 movie, I shudder. 

I still can't bring myself to watch Star Trek: Beyond.  Fratboy Kirk annoyed me so much in the 2009 movie and watching Bandersnatch Cumberbund sh*t all over Ricardo Montalban's grave with that godawful take on Wrath of Khan leaves me feeling ill as it is.

 

11 hours ago, JB0 said:

Okay, yeah. Pike DEFINITELY needs to dump the entire crew in the mirror universe and just call it a wash. The Terran Empire will doubtless be glad to see them.

Or maybe just set the ship to self-destruct, lock out all the lifeboats, and beam back to Enterprise.

 

6 hours ago, Dynaman said:

In Universe the Enterprise is a prize as well,  Everyone and their uncle wants to be the Captain of a Constitution class.  It is considered a prestige posting.

Not just as captain... the Constitution-class ships were the prestige assignment at any grade back in that era.  Above and beyond being Starfleet's favorite problem solvers and their biggest stick when hostilities broke out, they were Starfleet's biggest, best-equipped, fastest, longest-ranged ships for sending out into uncharted space on missions of exploration.  They were where the adventure was.

Enterprise doubly so, since she was held to be the finest example of the class and the one to break the most ground scientifically and diplomatically.

[JB0]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I still can't bring myself to watch Star Trek: Beyond.  Fratboy Kirk annoyed me so much in the 2009 movie and watching Bandersnatch Cumberbund sh*t all over Ricardo Montalban's grave with that godawful take on Wrath of Khan leaves me feeling ill as it is. 

I was okay witht he first one, though it REALLY felt like Abrams would rather be doing Star Wars(and he got his chance, and it was bad).

The second one, though... what in Primus' name did they think they were DOING?  That was a failure at every possible turn.

And yeah, I gather NO ONE watched Beyond because Into Darkness was so freaking  bad.  I've also heard Beyond was actually... kinda good?

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Or maybe just set the ship to self-destruct, lock out all the lifeboats, and beam back to Enterprise.

Doesn't it take three officers to engage a self-destruct? I watched Search for Spock(several times).

[Dobber]

Beyond is really quite good. It’s a shame that ID really hurt the movie so much.

Chris

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

I was okay witht he first one, though it REALLY felt like Abrams would rather be doing Star Wars(and he got his chance, and it was bad).

All told, I only really had two issues with J.J.'s Star Trek.

The first is Jim Kirk being an insufferable fratboy sh*thead who really does deserve the contempt his fellow cadets heap on him in the first part of the film, and whose every action screams "I am a Mary Sue".  Going straight from Cadet to Captain is the dumbest sh*t I've ever heard from a Star Trek story, and I've read Star Trek novels written by Shatner!  There were hundreds of people on the USS Enterprise more qualified for the center seat than this version of Kirk.

The second is that Jar-Jar Abrams felt compelled to turn the Star Trek setting into a generic grimdark science fiction setting with Starfleet being heavily militaristic and mildly xenophobic.  It's so utterly antithetical to Star Trek that I can't begin to describe what an idiotic thing it was.

 

 

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

The second one, though... what in Primus' name did they think they were DOING?  That was a failure at every possible turn.

Presumably they thought that since Wrath of Khan was such a perennial favorite with Star Trek fans, remaking it would bring in the fanboys by the thousands.  As it happens, that was a terrible idea.

The whole plot was just imbecilic start-to-finish.  I'm not sure what the worst part actually was... that someone was stupid enough to defrost Khan Noonien Singh and try to blackmail him into working for them, that Admiral Marcus secretly built a terribly fanfic-y secret evil starship named USS Vengeance and somehow managed to keep it secret despite HAVING A MODEL OF THE DAMNED THING ON HIS DESK, or that whole sequence at the climax where Kirk somehow climbs into a warp core and kicks it until it starts working while mysteriously NOT being incinerated by the plasma stream (and where's the dilithium?) and McCoy cures his case of dead with a blood transfusion... apparently missing that he'd discovered the cure for DEATH in the process.

 

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

And yeah, I gather NO ONE watched Beyond because Into Darkness was so freaking  bad.  I've also heard Beyond was actually... kinda good?

It'll be a long, cold day in Gre'thor before I give it a try.

 

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

Doesn't it take three officers to engage a self-destruct? I watched Search for Spock(several times).

It seems to vary by the writer.

It needed three people in Star Trek III: the Search for Spock and Star Trek: First Contact, but in TNG and DS9 we frequently saw that the sequence could be set up with just two people.  On a few occasions we've seen it set or disarmed by one person, though the bulk of those were under Janeway... who many would argue IS Voyager's self-destruct system.

[Thom]

19 hours ago, Keith said:

To be fair, Adama "should" have chosen to save the Pegasus, it had onboard Viper factories, a lot more room (which would have saved the crew for sardine conditions). Most importantly, the Pegasus wouldn't have had a jump fatigued hull.

True. But the show wasn't Battlestar Pegasus. And I would have been fine with him making that choice!

 

23 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Frankly. the Discovery looks like a hood ornament attached to someone's partially disassembled hard drive.

HA! Spot on.

 

On 7/25/2018 at 4:40 PM, Mommar said:

Except the guys at Trekyards did scaling for every ship from discovery and ALL of them are oversized, even the new Enterprise is larger than the Enterprise.  Their scaling is just JJ levels of wrong.

I ignore their stupid over-sizing. There was never any reason for. The only time I get into trouble with it is when the model companies go by those sizes too, which makes it hard to keep the ships 'in-scale.'

[Thom]

2 hours ago, JB0 said:

And yeah, I gather NO ONE watched Beyond because Into Darkness was so freaking  bad.  I've also heard Beyond was actually... kinda good?

 

1 hour ago, Dobber said:

Beyond is really quite good. It’s a shame that ID really hurt the movie so much.

Chris

 

15 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It'll be a long, cold day in Gre'thor before I give it a try.

I'll preface that I did like Star Trek 09. It was a fun movie and I felt the cast really played the characters rather than trying to make them into something too new. Into Darkness unfortunately, while having some good moments, was to much of a rip-off of WoK. That scene where Spock screams Kahn in a reversal of their positions, was totally absurd. But I think the hate for ID started when JJ claimed it would not have Kahn in it.

But Beyond was very good. I felt it was a solid story with good action and personal moments and it is well worth a watch.

[Sildani]

I imagine that Cumberbatch’s character wasn’t Khan himself, but a member of his crew. Khan’s still under ice. With that in mind, ID becomes more enjoyable. 

Beyond was very nice. It was more Trek than the previous movie and a good time. There were some moments that made me groan internally, but hell, that’s been the case for every Trek I’ve ever seen. I really enjoy the cast acting their parts, I have to say. They’re all respectful towards the way the characters have been made by their predecessors, but they’ve put their own touches on all of them. It’s really nice to see. 

[Dynaman]

The only real problem with Into Darkness was the villain was a waste.  The actor did a fine job with what he had to work with but the characterization was off.  The main cast character moments in that film were spot on however.  

[Dobber]

4 hours ago, Sildani said:

I imagine that Cumberbatch’s character wasn’t Khan himself, but a member of his crew. Khan’s still under ice. With that in mind, ID becomes more enjoyable. 

Beyond was very nice. It was more Trek than the previous movie and a good time. There were some moments that made me groan internally, but hell, that’s been the case for every Trek I’ve ever seen. I really enjoy the cast acting their parts, I have to say. They’re all respectful towards the way the characters have been made by their predecessors, but they’ve put their own touches on all of them. It’s really nice to see. 

I thought the same thing. Make Cumberbatch’s character one of Kahn’s lieutenants would solve a big problem. Imagine if that last shot of Kahn in Kryo would have shown Ricardo Montalban instead. 

Chris

[SMS007]

23 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(Frankly, I'd like to lump it into the same category as several of the aborted Star Trek ideas that got a "take that!" in Watching the Clock... the ones like that grimdark Star Trek cartoon proposal that they take a shot at by saying it was a bad future created by the Temporal Cold War and erased from the multiverse by the Temporal Accord signatory powers.)

You have read Christopher L. Bennett's Watching the Clock? Oh wow I finally meet someone else outside a Trek forum who has!

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Sildani said:

Beyond was very nice. It was more Trek than the previous movie and a good time. There were some moments that made me groan internally, but hell, that’s been the case for every Trek I’ve ever seen.

Star Trek has always been a bit camp, so the groan-inducing moments never really felt unnatural in the "Prime Continuity" titles.  J.J.'s Star Trek movies take themselves completely seriously though, a move that makes the intentionally campy bits feel incredibly forced and the unintentional ones feel narmy as hell.

Discovery's got the same problem of trying to be Serious Business... which is enough to take several characters like Tilly who would otherwise have merely been late-TNG Wesley levels of obnoxious to the status of "The Most Annoying Sound".  I get that they're trying to be inclusive by having one of the recurring minor characters be someone on the spectrum, but Tilly would've been annoying in a regular Trek show and in a grittily serious attempt at Trek she just becomes a Hate Sink.

 

33 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

You have read Christopher L. Bennett's Watching the Clock? Oh wow I finally meet someone else outside a Trek forum who has!

I've had @Talos twisting my arm to get me to read more Star Trek novels for years.  It started with the relaunch books, then Starfleet Corps of Engineers.  Lately, it's moved on to Vanguard, the short DTI series, and some of the older stuff.

I just finished Shield of the Gods in the DTI series the other day.  

The writing in the novels these days is SO MUCH BETTER than what's coming from Discovery and the movies.  Well, except for the Star Trek: Voyager relaunch... the writers there made the dual mistake of accurately replicating Janeway's bipolar, incredibly self-destructive behavior from the TV series and continuing Voyager's serial escalation to the point that every new book seems to require a universe-ending event that is incredibly traumatic for Janeway.  (I mean, really... where do you GO from being responsible for saving the Q Continuum from an apocalypse?)

[SMS007]

 

On 7/21/2018 at 1:10 AM, JB0 said:

The eugenics wars are a pretty problematic lump in Star Trek's "timeline", and has been.. well, since the 90s. I'm assuming that some of the time travel shenanigans between Space Seed and now wildly altered the timing and scope of events, since the eugenics wars clearly didn't happen before 2011.

Why 2011? If Enterprise's opening is canon, the ISS is a part of Star Trek history. We can safely assume that an ongoing global war would've disrupted construction of the ISS, even assuming that the space shuttles and Soyuz rockets needed to construct it were still usable*.

And on the other hand the existence of technology on the level of the Botany Bay would've made the ISS hopelessly antiquated, so clearly the ISS wasn't constructed AFTER the Botany Bay left.

THEREFORE, the eugenics wars HAVE to have begun after the ISS was completed.

 

On 7/21/2018 at 11:28 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Thus far, the only semi-official attempt I've seen made at addressing the subject of the Eugenics Wars occurring when they did is in the Relaunch novels Department of Temporal Investigations series.

The Suliban cabal's sponsor, referred to by the DTI as just "the sponsor" until a new recruit starts sardonically referring to him by the ENT production nickname of "Future Guy", figures prominently in the novel Watching the Clock which ties up a number of the loose ends left by the hasty conclusion of the Temporal Cold War arc in Enterprise.  On several occasions, the DTI agents in that novel voice a popular-but-unconfirmed theory the agency has that the Eugenics Wars was a front in the Temporal Cold War.  The theory holds that the unnaturally rapid progression from the discovery of DNA in the 1950s to workable genetic enhancement of human subjects in under twenty years was the influence of an unknown party from the future giving anachronistic technology to Cold War era nations to try to derail humanity's development.  

  Reveal hidden contents

Late in the novel, a joint effort by the 24th century Department of Temporal Investigations, the 29th century Temporal Integrity Commission, and 31st century Federation Temporal Agency results in the capture of Future Guy and in exchange for his being tried in the more lenient/less draconian 31st century he confesses that a lot of what he'd done was efforts to close a "Spock loop" bootstrap paradox resulting in his own existence.  As a 28th century augment, he communicated back through time to ensure the emergence of the technologies and organizations that would result in his own creation.  He neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the Eugenics Wars, but he did admit to a raft of other cases of introducing anachronistic tech to other worlds.

One of the accompanying revelations is that the Borg didn't assimilate time travel technology from anyone... it was given to them by the Sphere Builders as a last kind of hail mary attempt to prevent their defeat by the Federation in the 26th century.

A related theory that the DTI was able to prove thanks to events that occurred in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's episode "Little Green Men" was that the unusually advanced-for-the-time technology of the DY-100 series sleeper ships was based on technology which the US Government had analyzed when they briefly captured the Ferengi ship Quark's Treasure in Roswell.

 

 

The ISS is definitely a part of Star Trek's history.  Captain Sisko had a model of it in his ready room on DS9.

It's possible, given the above, that the ISS in the Star Trek universe also contained (and was built with) anachronistically advanced technology.

I should mention that the DTI novel Watching the Clock closely ties into both canon and non-canon Trek story material (a talent of the author, Christopher L. Bennett), and thus it acknowledges Greg Cox's The Eugenics Wars novel duology which chronicles Khan Noonien Singh's life and interactions with Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln. The way that The Eugenics Wars and subsequent novels dealing with 20th/21st century Trek portray it, the canon terms "Eugenics Wars" and "death toll in the millions" from "Space Seed" are retroactive umbrella labels by future generations on the many loosely-connected often hidden from the public conflicts in the 1990s revolving around the Augments.

Cox's The Eugenics Wars treats many real life 20th century events as cover-ups for the "true history" of the Augments of Project Chrysalis and the Aegis's attempts to stop the Augments from running rampant on Earth. For example, India's first nuclear test in 1974 was really Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln destroying young Khan's laboratory birthplace. Mount Pinatubo's 1992 eruption enlarging the hole in the ozone layer was in fact Khan misusing an atmospheric manipulation technology invented by the contemporary Flint (from "Requiem for Methuselah"). And the 1993 Latur earthquake in India was in fact an artificial earthquake and assassination attempt on Khan by one of his Augment rivals.

As one of these authors recently pointed out on The Trek BBS (while discussing a similar TNG novel, Hearts and Minds, which deals with the later years of Mestral from "Carbon Creek"), in real life, today in 2018, people in general in the First World U.S. ignore crap that happens everywhere else on the globe. Plenty of Third Worlders are dying all the time, but First Worlders basically acknowledge no significance in their deaths. In a future wherein Earth and humankind are united as one, surely by then all historical deaths would be treated with less ethnonational bias.

As for the DY-100 class Botany Bay being too advanced for real life, The Eugenics Wars treats it as a top secret project born out of the events of "Little Green Men". Then in 1996 when the so-far one-of-a-kind experimental vessel is about to undergo its first flight, Shannon O'Donnell (from "11:59") throws away her career to help Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln steal the ship to send Khan's forces away.

When you think about it, Kirk's crew would of course know about the early DY-100 program because they are not average people, they are space otakus at their jobs.

Interestingly, Greg Cox has more recently written the TOS novel The Rings of Time, depicting the 2020 Saturn mission mentioned in "Tomorrow in Yesterday". In the novel, a grown-up Shaun Geoffrey Christopher thinks about how much North American/EU space exploration has suffered in terms of public popularity as of late, reflecting that even space exploration-themed TV fiction doesn't get that much attention anymore. Hopefully by the real 2020 that will have changed, but as the author has pointed out, we don't live in the First Space Age anymore. Governments could have tons of cool advanced crap but the public won’t care. 

Edited July 28, 2018 by SMS007

[SMS007]

On a related note, I am amused that in the DTI novel Watching the Clock, we get to see Lucsly and Dulmur's reaction to the events of "Endgame".

Spoilers for the Destiny novel trilogy within:

 

As it turns out, the time police of the future consider Janeway's temporal crime of getting home in 2378 to be necessary for history. If Janeway had not blown up the Borg's transwarp network, the Borg would not have invaded the Federation in 2381 on a mission of absolute genocide, only to meet their subsequent dissolution at the hands of the Caeliar. In any other course of history, the Borg would have gone on to successfully assimilate the galaxy by the year 2700. The galaxy simply does not have any other practical means to achieve such the staggering feat of eliminating the Borg threat once and for all. Ergo, the only feasible way to get rid of the Borg, a goal every sane person wants, Janeway has to be allowed to get away with it.

Edited July 28, 2018 by SMS007

[JB0]

Janeway: she's better than the Borg.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 7/27/2018 at 2:17 PM, SMS007 said:

As for the DY-100 class Botany Bay being too advanced for real life, The Eugenics Wars treats it as a top secret project born out of the events of "Little Green Men". Then in 1996 when the so-far one-of-a-kind experimental vessel is about to undergo its first flight, Shannon O'Donnell (from "11:59") throws away her career to help Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln steal the ship to send Khan's forces away.

It makes you wonder if that guy from "The Neutral Zone" who went on to become the UFP Secretary of Commerce ever told his new employers he bankrolled Project Chrysalis and was thus indirectly responsible for the Eugenics Wars.

 

On 7/27/2018 at 2:30 PM, SMS007 said:

On a related note, I am amused that in the DTI novel Watching the Clock, we get to see Lucsly and Dulmur's reaction to the events of "Endgame".

Spoilers for the Destiny novel trilogy within:

  Reveal hidden contents

As it turns out, the time police of the future consider Janeway's temporal crime of getting home in 2378 to be necessary for history. If Janeway had not blown up the Borg's transwarp network, the Borg would not have invaded the Federation in 2381 on a mission of absolute genocide, only to meet their subsequent dissolution at the hands of the Caeliar. In any other course of history, the Borg would have gone on to successfully assimilate the galaxy by the year 2700. The galaxy simply does not have any other practical means to achieve such the staggering feat of eliminating the Borg threat once and for all. Ergo, the only feasible way to get rid of the Borg, a goal every sane person wants, Janeway has to be allowed to get away with it.

IMO, it did make the events of "Endgame" a bit easier to stomach with the implication that the reason Janeway didn't face charges for her many flagrant breaches of the Temporal Prime Directive was because 31st century Federation Temporal Agency agents bent a few ears in the 24th century.  It's a bit of fridge horror that Agent Noi's assurances that things would work out and Janeway would absolutely suffer karmic retribution later were what mollified Dulmer and Lucsly, considering...

Spoiler

... Janeway's comeuppance would be being responsible for the two bloodiest Borg invasions in history, one of which she personally led after being assimilated by a rogue Borg cube and turned into a new Borg queen.  It's actually kind of amazing she didn't suffer a total psychological collapse after being brought back to life by Q2 and finding out her little stunt cost over sixty billion Federation lives.

 

21 hours ago, JB0 said:

Janeway: she's better than the Borg.

She definitely has more apocalypses under her belt... plus at least one entire civilization that thinks she's Space Napo-Hitler.

[JB0]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

She definitely has more apocalypses under her belt... plus at least one entire civilization that thinks she's Space Napo-Hitler.

Scale counts, though. She wrecked a few dozen planets, maybe a star system or seven. But she didn't even take out a quadrant, much less the whole galaxy. And she left witnesses!

 

Tangentally, the "Janeway is Space-Hitler in the history books, also the doctor's backup is online in the future" episode is one of my favorites in the admittedly slim pickings Voyager offers. I wouldn't mind finding out what happened to Doctor Two.

Edited July 29, 2018 by JB0

[Seto Kaiba]

34 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Scale counts, though. She wrecked a few dozen planets, maybe a star system or seven. But she didn't even take out a quadrant, much less the whole galaxy. And she left witnesses!

Hey now, don't be selling Janeway short.  One of the first things she did upon getting stranded in the Delta Quadrant was use an illegal subspace weapon to destroy the Caretaker's array... and she started as she meant to go on.  She destabilized all of Kazon space, got into a shooting war with the Krenim, poked her oar into the Borg's war with Species 8472, she unleashed the Vaadwaur on an unsuspecting quadrant, picked a fight with the Voth, picked a separate fight with the Borg TWICE, her crew invaded the Q Continuum to get involved with their civil war, etc.

That's not counting the relaunch, where her actions in "Endgame" causes two more Borg invasions that caused an assimilation virus to spread on Earth, destroyed dozens of planets, and left 63 billion dead and wiped out 40% of Starfleet, almost destroying the Q Continuum and the universe at the same time, destabilizing the largest Delta Quadrant government, makes the war between the Rilar and Zahl so destructive that one side resorts to bringing troops in from alternate realities, and may be headed into ANOTHER war with the Krenim.

 

 

34 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Tangentally, the "Janeway is Space-Hitler in the history books, also the doctor's backup is online in the future" episode is one of my favorites in the admittedly slim pickings Voyager offers. I wouldn't mind finding out what happened to Doctor Two.

It's kind of amazing that the Federation hadn't made renewed contact with that bunch in seven centuries... Starfleet launched its first quantum slipstream starship barely six years after USS Voyager left their system, so they would've had it for 694 years by the point the Doctor was reactivated.

[SMS007]

On 7/27/2018 at 2:11 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

I've had @Talos twisting my arm to get me to read more Star Trek novels for years.  It started with the relaunch books, then Starfleet Corps of Engineers.  Lately, it's moved on to Vanguard, the short DTI series, and some of the older stuff.

I just finished Shield of the Gods in the DTI series the other day.  

The writing in the novels these days is SO MUCH BETTER than what's coming from Discovery and the movies.  Well, except for the Star Trek: Voyager relaunch... the writers there made the dual mistake of accurately replicating Janeway's bipolar, incredibly self-destructive behavior from the TV series and continuing Voyager's serial escalation to the point that every new book seems to require a universe-ending event that is incredibly traumatic for Janeway.  (I mean, really... where do you GO from being responsible for saving the Q Continuum from an apocalypse?)

Vanguard is a highly praised serialized story in my Trek circles.

The DTI series is a brilliant exploration in Trek time travel and continuity.

I can certainly share your criticisms of how the Voyager TV series and Janeway character was written, but I enjoy the relaunch Voyager novels with gusto. New York Times bestselling Kirsten Beyer is VERY GOOD at writing compelling stories, I assure you.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, SMS007 said:

I can certainly share your criticisms of how the Voyager TV series and Janeway character was written, but I enjoy the relaunch Voyager novels with gusto. New York Times bestselling Kirsten Beyer is VERY GOOD at writing compelling stories, I assure you.

Eh... honestly, I think Kirsten Beyer is doing rather too good a job at emulating the TV characterization of the Star Trek: Voyager cast.

Spoiler

Kathryn Janeway is still written with all the inconsistency that caused Kate Mulgrew to opine that she suffers from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder, she has a moral compass that's so inconsistent she probably uses it as a coffee grinder, and she seemingly becomes emotionally compromised and irrational at the drop of a hat. 

Chakotay is still a wooden, unlikeable cigar store indian whose "Native American" background is pure New Age BS (it's actually kind of impressive how Beyer manages to capture Robert Beltran's phoned-in performances so faithfully).

Tom Paris is still a man-child desperate for a "well done, son".

Torres is still in a semi-perpetual bad mood with a small mountain of literal daddy issues, only now she's also a vehicle for every pregnant woman cliche EVER.

Harry Kim is still the very wettest blanket and is so bad with women he makes Geordi look like a Casanova.  

The Doctor's been flanderized to the extent that his whole character is that one episode where he reveals he's in love with Seven.

Seven is still a Relationship Sue and her only significance to the plot besides being the object of unwanted affections is as a dispenser of swiss army molecules.

Fortunately, Tuvok escaped the mess by jumping ship to Riker's USS Titan.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Has anyone taken a whack at the three Star Trek: Discovery novels released thus far?

Looks like the first one was penned by one of my least favorite Trek authors, David Mack.  Dayton Ward did the second one, and the third by James Swallow (whose work I know more from WH40K).

All three appear to be prequels to the first season of the TV series.  Desperate Hours looks to be the story of how Burnham got the XO position on the Shenzhou, Drastic Measures is about the Tarsus IV massacre focusing on Lorca and Georgiou's involvement (I guess this may be the only story thus far which features the real Lorca), and the third Fear Itself is a Saru-centric story.

[SMS007]

https://www.trektoday.com/content/2018/08/first-star-trek-books-for-2019-announced/

Yes! Pocket's novel license has finally been renewed and more Trek novels will start appearing next year!

On 8/1/2018 at 12:41 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Has anyone taken a whack at the three Star Trek: Discovery novels released thus far?

Looks like the first one was penned by one of my least favorite Trek authors, David Mack.  Dayton Ward did the second one, and the third by James Swallow (whose work I know more from WH40K).

All three appear to be prequels to the first season of the TV series.  Desperate Hours looks to be the story of how Burnham got the XO position on the Shenzhou, Drastic Measures is about the Tarsus IV massacre focusing on Lorca and Georgiou's involvement (I guess this may be the only story thus far which features the real Lorca), and the third Fear Itself is a Saru-centric story.

I have read all three.

But, uh, I like Mack's Trek work in general. You sure you want me to go on?

Edited August 4, 2018 by SMS007

[Seto Kaiba]

On 8/4/2018 at 12:42 PM, SMS007 said:

Yes! Pocket's novel license has finally been renewed and more Trek novels will start appearing next year!

Just as well, I was running out of unread Star Trek relaunch novels. 

All I had left was the Star Trek: Prey trilogy, the TNG relaunch novels Headlong Flight and Hearts and Minds, the DS9 relaunch novels Force and Motion, Enigma Tales, and Original Sin, and the Voyager relaunch novel Architects of Infinity.  I'll probably be through that lot by the end of August.  I shot through about half of the first book of the Prey trilogy last night while I was doing some computer maintenance.

Spoiler

I confess I'm not really impressed with Star Trek: Prey.  The post facto attempt to make Kruge out to be a celebrated strategic genius, Klingon patriot, and hero to his men doesn't really work.  It doesn't fit with the Kruge we saw in Star Trek III: the Search for Spock, who was more a violent, shortsighted thug who had an unfortunate tendency to kill his own crew.  Prey kind of makes it worse for Kruge despite insisting he was a genius by also revealing that Kruge's failure left their next-generation Bird-of-Prey prototype (IKS B'rel) in Starfleet's hands.

Kruge's supposedly hyper-competent would-be adopted son doesn't exactly come off as being especially bright either, especially since it took him a full century to assassinate a small group of indolent nobles.

 

On 8/4/2018 at 12:42 PM, SMS007 said:

I have read all three.

But, uh, I like Mack's Trek work in general. You sure you want me to go on?

Yeah, why not?  I'm probably never going to read them, since I find the Star Trek: Discovery crew so hopelessly unlikeable.

[SMS007]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Just as well, I was running out of unread Star Trek relaunch novels. 

All I had left was the Star Trek: Prey trilogy, the TNG relaunch novels Headlong Flight and Hearts and Minds, the DS9 relaunch novels Force and Motion, Enigma Tales, and Original Sin, and the Voyager relaunch novel Architects of Infinity.  I'll probably be through that lot by the end of August.  I shot through about half of the first book of the Prey trilogy last night while I was doing some computer maintenance.

Don't forget the German-original Prometheus trilogy. I liked the first two that are out in English, though I concede not everyone may enjoy some of the fanfiction-y elements present.

For my part, I am very excited for the upcoming TNG novel Available Light since it directly follows up on the Min Zife affair storyline from Section 31 - Control and TNG - Hearts and Minds, themselves continuing on from the "A Time to..." TNG miniseries from last decade.

And saddened that the upcoming Picard TV series will in all likelihood override the post-Nemesis novels.

[TehPW]

On ‎8‎/‎6‎/‎2018 at 2:17 PM, SMS007 said:

Don't forget the German-original Prometheus trilogy. I liked the first two that are out in English, though I concede not everyone may enjoy some of the fanfiction-y elements present.

For my part, I am very excited for the upcoming TNG novel Available Light since it directly follows up on the Min Zife affair storyline from Section 31 - Control and TNG - Hearts and Minds, themselves continuing on from the "A Time to..." TNG miniseries from last decade.

And saddened that the upcoming Picard TV series will in all likelihood override the post-Nemesis novels.

Who says it will? Nobody outside of CBS believes that the Discovery exists in the Prime universe timeline (as if all those bald Klingons were actually Klingons... oh wait, Season 2 will have even different Klingons... are Discovery's Klingons the equivalent to Gamalans?)

 

[Seto Kaiba]

56 minutes ago, TehPW said:

Who says it will? Nobody outside of CBS believes that the Discovery exists in the Prime universe timeline (as if all those bald Klingons were actually Klingons... oh wait, Season 2 will have even different Klingons... are Discovery's Klingons the equivalent to Gamalans?)

Yeah, I was unsurprised when CBS announced that Star Trek: Discovery season two was going to redesign the Klingons again.

I have a feeling the Discovery Klingons will be written off one of two ways:

• As with the TNG Trill, they'd be written off as an ethnic minority on their home world... presumably, in this case, one given to extremes of religious fervor.  (I'd expect CBS to go this route, and only notice that it turns undercover Voq's casting into fridge racism after people start biting their heads off for it again.)
• Another species or subspecies of Klingon that evolved in parallel with the modern Klingons, ala Neanderthals or the Menk from Enterprise.

Since the writers seem to be trying to take Discovery back towards TOS territory, my money's on a cosmetically advanced version of the TOS and TNG Klingons with familiar uniforms but more advanced prosthetics.

 

On 8/6/2018 at 2:17 PM, SMS007 said:

And saddened that the upcoming Picard TV series will in all likelihood override the post-Nemesis novels.

They've brought in a relaunch writer to help sort it out, and it's to be set four years after the "present day" of the relaunch novels (2386) and one year after the prime universe events that precipitated Star Trek (2009).  They've got room to maneuver.

Maybe what's keeping Picard from a retirement job in the diplomatic corps or from an admiral's desk is the lingering stigma of his involvement with Section 31's coup against President Zife... especially since the truth would be fresh in everyone's minds in the wake of the op against Uraei and the publication of most of Section 31's database in 2386.

[SMS007]

1 hour ago, TehPW said:

Who says it will? Nobody outside of CBS believes that the Discovery exists in the Prime universe timeline (as if all those bald Klingons were actually Klingons... oh wait, Season 2 will have even different Klingons... are Discovery's Klingons the equivalent to Gamalans?)

 

37 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They've brought in a relaunch writer to help sort it out, and it's to be set four years after the "present day" of the relaunch novels (2386) and one year after the prime universe events that precipitated Star Trek (2009).  They've got room to maneuver.

Maybe what's keeping Picard from a retirement job in the diplomatic corps or from an admiral's desk is the lingering stigma of his involvement with Section 31's coup against President Zife... especially since the truth would be fresh in everyone's minds in the wake of the op against Uraei and the publication of most of Section 31's database in 2386.

Well, consider every major fiction franchise that can have bursts of major productions years apart. When have the mainstream creators ever felt beholden to stories that a far less numerous fanbase cares about? Loath as I am to admit it, Trek novel fans are far outnumbered by the mainstream audience that will consume the Discovery TV series. It's standard industry practice to do a Disney and dump out the ancillary expanded universe in favor of telling their own story.

I am impressed that some elements in the novel Desperate Hours made it onscreen, but that was due to Mack writing the novel in cooperation with the TV writers just as the entire series began production, a set of extraordinary circumstances.

Beyer already supervised the recent Succession comic miniseries that went with a completely different take on the mirror universe than Pocket's late-2000s early 2010s novels.

I would love for the novel continuity to be preserved, but historical precedent says that's an unlikely chain of events.

Edited August 8, 2018 by SMS007

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Well, consider every major fiction franchise that can have bursts of major productions years apart. When have the mainstream creators ever felt beholden to stories that a far less numerous fanbase cares about?

Fairly often, in fact... though it varies from franchise to franchise based on how official the franchise's supplementary works are and how much oversight there is.

One of the most overt recent examples was the 2009 Star Trek movie.  That entire film was set up by a comic miniseries that explained the supernova event, its threat to the galaxy, Spock's involvement, how the Narada came to possess Borg technology, and why Nero is so incredibly butthurt about all of it.  The film's plot only really makes complete sense if you've read it.  Star Trek: Enterprise season five was also headed that way before cancellation, vis a vis tapping TAS for ideas.

Star Wars does this fairly frequently too... though less often under Disney as they used to, if only as the inevitable result of ditching almost the entire Expanded Universe.

I'm given to understand, from a coworker, that Halo also does a lot of referencing its side stories with recent titles.  

Most any superhero TV show practically runs on this and nothing else.

Gundam practically runs on minutiae from its "for fans" side stories these days... they're literally on their third TV series about Gunpla, never mind animated features like Gundam Unicorn that run on MSV designs.  The whole franchise is coasting on nostalgia, in-jokes, and homages to stuff that the casual viewer probably hasn't seen.

Macross also gets into this pretty heavily, though it's usually not the focus of the story.  There have been quite a few points where supplemental materials "for fans" are the only ones explaining WTF was actually going on, like how Macross Perfect Memory is the only place to get an explanation of what occurred during the timeskip in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, or Macross Delta's entire backstory being set up in side story manga titles.  

 

10 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Loath as I am to admit it, Trek novel fans are far outnumbered by the mainstream audience that will consume the Discovery TV series. It's standard industry practice to do a Disney and dump out the ancillary expanded universe in favor of telling their own story.

Perhaps... perhaps not.

CBS's boasts about Star Trek: Discovery not needing the existing Star Trek fandom to succeed didn't last very long once the series went to "air".  Pride cometh before the fall, and all that.  By the show's mid-season break they were almost literally begging Star Trek fans to watch the show, and Netflix's management ended up rather unhappy with the ROI on the season.  The second season looks to be shaping up to the film equivalent of standing outside a girl's bedroom window begging her to take you back, with Discovery going well out of its way to reference classic Star Trek as much as it can as if to say "we're a real Star Trek show, honest!".

Standard industry practice is to dump expanded universe content that hasn't been pre-vetted by the franchise creative staff... not necessarily ALL expanded universe content.  One thing that sets the Star Trek relaunch continuity apart from the standard EU material is that there's a rigid set of controls on content instead of unfettered silliness like what went on in the Star Wars EU that Disney tossed.

 

10 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Beyer already supervised the recent Succession comic miniseries that went with a completely different take on the mirror universe than Pocket's late-2000s early 2010s novels.

Yeah, but that's comics... with one or two exceptions, those have never been regarded as canon by even the relaunch novelverse.

Also, it's the Mirror Universe.  As long as it's stupidly grimdark and gritty nobody really cares.  There isn't even really a guarantee that the same mirror universe is being visited between different shows, thanks to the quantum nature of alternate realities in Star Trek.

 

10 hours ago, SMS007 said:

I would love for the novel continuity to be preserved, but historical precedent says that's an unlikely chain of events.

Much more likely than it would otherwise be, given the presence of a relaunch writer on the show's staff AND the recent renewal of Pocket Books's license.

[Dynaman]

> One of the most overt recent examples was the 2009 Star Trek movie.  That entire film was set up by a comic miniseries that explained the supernova event,

That one at least doesn't count - the comic was written as an adjunct to the movie so the movie was not conforming to the comic, the comic was conforming to the movie.

[Chronocidal]

1 hour ago, Dynaman said:

> One of the most overt recent examples was the 2009 Star Trek movie.  That entire film was set up by a comic miniseries that explained the supernova event,

That one at least doesn't count - the comic was written as an adjunct to the movie so the movie was not conforming to the comic, the comic was conforming to the movie.

Still a lousy way to run a franchise, in my opinion.  I have to wonder whether the lure of outside merchandising is just too great, or if people are literally just incapable of writing a self-contained story anymore.

It's actually leading me to develop an interesting preference with regard to EU-like materials for multiple franchises.  I'm just realizing that I'm perfectly happy calling a universe "done", and disregarding all further additions past some point.  With Star Wars, I called it quits after the "Hand of Thrawn" books, and Trek pretty much ended for me right before Nemesis happened.

Doesn't mean I won't sometimes be entertained by material that comes after those points.. but I've completely divorced myself from the concept of an official canon, to the point that I just treat everything new as alternate universe fanfic.  Everything is a reboot, and nothing has any consequences on previous incarnations, just like comic books have been for decades.  Actually has made it much easier to enjoy some of the material, if I don't consider it officially connected to the original.  

Essentially, comes down to how much mental effort I have to expend on the backend.  If screenwriters and authors don't feel like writing coherent stories, I don't feel obligated to do that work for them.

Edited August 8, 2018 by Chronocidal

[Seto Kaiba]

6 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Still a lousy way to run a franchise, in my opinion.  I have to wonder whether the lure of outside merchandising is just too great, or if people are literally just incapable of writing a self-contained story anymore.

That kind of tie-in merchandising seems to be used most often as an attempt to hold the attention of fans of a given metaseries who aren't particularly keen on a new installment.

Star Trek (2009) did it partly to reassure the existing Star Trek fandom that J.J. Abrams's new film was not going to be a reboot that that it wasn't retconning previous Star Trek titles out of existence.  The comic was, for all practical intents and purposes, an attempt to forestall the kind of boycott that Star Trek: Discovery is currently facing from something like half the fandom.

You need a steady following to achieve long-term success with this kind of fiction, and fandom does tend to want things to be organized and sensible.  Fans don't like it when The Order of Things gets messed with... so when you DO mess with The Order of Things, you need a ready distraction.

[Chronocidal]

Tie-ins I get, they help make a bigger universe.  With Trek 2009 though, it was more a specific problem that can really be best summed up by that old Mona Lisa analogy about the changes in recent years regarding games and DLC.

If a story doesn't stand on its own apart from the tie-in, I can't call it a tie-in anymore, and it sounds like a money grab aimed at viewers who want a complete story.

[JB0]

5 hours ago, Dynaman said:

That one at least doesn't count - the comic was written as an adjunct to the movie so the movie was not conforming to the comic, the comic was conforming to the movie.

On the other hand, the prequel novel to Bayformers 1 was completely ignored by the sequels, despite being in that same situation.

[tekering]

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

On the other hand, the prequel novel to Bayformers 1 was completely ignored by the sequels, despite being in that same situation.

Toy commercials like Transformers can't be held to the same continuity standards, since their primary purpose isn't explicitly narrative.  The original cartoon contradicted itself regularly, but nobody cared at Sunbow or Hasbro so long as kids bought the toys.

Doctor Who, on the other hand, has no such excuse.   

 

[JB0]

1 minute ago, tekering said:

Toy commercials like Transformers can't be held to the same continuity standards, since their primary purpose isn't explicitly narrative.  The original cartoon contradicted itself regularly, but nobody cared at Sunbow or Hasbro so long as kids bought the toys. 

Doctor Who, on the other hand, has no such excuse.   

 

At the time they did the first Bayformers movie, Hasbro was insisting there was a new strict continuity policy going forward and everything was going to be in a coherent shared universe(a statement clearly intended for adult fans, since they're the only ones that CARE about the continuity of plastic robots). It was a far cry from the 80s cartoon's policy of "Make sure your writing is dumb enough to be followed by 5-year-old boys that are high on meth."

Said policy lasted about two media releases. As soon as they COULD contradict themselves, they did.

 

Doctor Who, on the other hand, can always claim it is a result of changes to the past affecting the present.

...

Maybe Transformers can too. I BLAME THE PORTAL ON DINOBOT ISLAND FOR ALL CONTINUITY GAFFES!