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Alternate History in Star Trek Part 24: DS9 Spinoffs ask “WHAT YEAR IS IT?”
- Thread starter Gary Oswald
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I suspect this era got his by a combination of increasing saturation of spin-off works and canon works which meant that having to then deal with a shifting setting rather than being able to get your own long arc done was a franchise killer rather than just a frustration.
Since writing this one I came across another example with "The Mist" (the Sisko one of the Captain's Table books) which really struggles to try to do the 'geopolitical' angle (and really doesn't need to given the scope of the story). It ends up being told during the Dominion War as a flashback to just before "The Way of the Warrior" but they have a fight with the Klingons then too, and it even has Sisko's inner monologue say actually, he thinks that was when the crisis with the Klingons started. No, you can't just do that, spinoff writers.
"Harry Enfield also did this joke"
Kevin & Perry Boldly Go Large
Kevin & Perry Boldly Go Large
It is a measure of the cultural impact of a film or book how many parodies are made of its title, and there were A LOT for Four Weddings and a Funeral, and not only in the UK either.
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Agreed on Objective: Bajor, without the Star Trek elements, feeling like some lost mid-century science fiction tale. Or, for something more recent, the works of Liu Cixin right down to the long explanation of the aliens' history as a denounment.
As far as the frequent complaints about timescale, don't most of these come from an assumption that of course comics and novels must take place concurrently with the television stories that were airing during their release? Not sure if this was ever given as an indication on the covers, but I just wouldn't assume that. Albeit, that's coming from two novel spin-off series I was interested in more than Star Trek both coming after the main work had ended (or so it seemed): Star Wars and Doctor Who.
As far as the frequent complaints about timescale, don't most of these come from an assumption that of course comics and novels must take place concurrently with the television stories that were airing during their release? Not sure if this was ever given as an indication on the covers, but I just wouldn't assume that. Albeit, that's coming from two novel spin-off series I was interested in more than Star Trek both coming after the main work had ended (or so it seemed): Star Wars and Doctor Who.
Ah, that is a good comparison. I forgot to mention how one thing the author does is have the aliens constantly quoting the scriptures whose tampering with is part of the backstory, which makes it feel like solider worldbuilding and not something that only comes up for the plot twist.
Yeah, I personally would've been fine with them saying "this is set in between (episode) and (episode)" but authors tended to be averse to this, I think there was a stigma about it. (The comics, especially the DC ones, were better about this). So you ended up with this odd, handwavy 'pretend this is now even though it's not' compromise. The problem IMO is that this worked really well for TNG, which was pretty stable after season 3 at the latest, but not for DS9.
Later I'll be looking at the DS9 trilogy "Millennium" which came out after the show ended, and that one is much more open about saying when it's set and how it relates to the overall timescale.
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It's one of those problems that could easily have been solved if those involved had the inclination... moving along.
If spin-off novels had maintained their popularity into the present era then can certainly see this being something that would have been given better care. Especially with serial style storytelling becoming the norm for a while.
This is perhaps not a new take (and might have come up elsewhere) - but I find it interesting just how "big" the Maquis were in sort of, Trek lore/canon at this time - as demonstrated by constantly showing up in spinoffs.
"This is really going to matter" - "oh no, it doesn't."
"This is really going to matter" - "oh no, it doesn't."
Yes, I was reminded of that while researching this. The narrative you got from season 2 DS9, "Preemptive Strike" in TNG and all the pre-release leaks and rumours about VGR were "the Maquis are the Big New Thing and the Way we're going to make Star Trek More Morally Grey, because a load of them are ex-Starfleet officers and now they're having to fight their old comrades and what is right and wrong etc. etc." and then...no. Not surprising the spinoff writers ran with that narrative, especially their obsession with Ro being in the Maquis (because, TBF, that is what the show had implied would be a big deal rather than never mentioned again).
One thing I found weak is that the Maquis are said to be terrorists but only manage to hit Cardassian military targets (IIRC one thing that seemed civilian wasn't) and we never hear about anything happening to the Cardassian colonists in either newly-Starfleet colonies or who've moved (except for how they're brutalising humans). The Maquis generally end up being bad because they're making life difficult for Sisko.
Von Callay
Getting Grilled by Special Agent Nixon
Pining for the alternate universe episode where a Cardassian from one of the colonies that ended up on the Federation side of the line graduates from the Academy and gets posted to her first assignment on DS9 by the third-worst computer glitch in Starfleet history.
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Would you think someone who makes life difficult for Sisko is in any way good?
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Libel! Quark only makes life difficult for Odo, he makes life interesting for Sisko.
Ro Laren's last episode in particular... But after Michelle Forbes turned down DS9*, we never got a Maquis protagonist again. Chakotay was very much exMaquis, and we never got to see Eddington's real (as opposed to assumed) values and thoughts.
*speaking as a fan of both Kira and Ro, I think Kira made for a better DS9, having an actual Bajoran resistance leader, not accountable to Star Fleet made I think a better narrative than a Bajoran who was a disaffected Star Fleet officer (although she'd have presumably got Eddinton's arc in the end)
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I can understand the writers obsession with the Maquis, given that 1) Star Trek hadn't really done something like that before, a recurring group of human antagonists/deuteragonists; 2) they certainly seemed to be the next big thing given how they were seeded across two separate television shows and were intended to be a core part of a new one. As with almost everything in Star Trek since its debut, perhaps the blame should be placed on Voyager's sheer lack of cojones in never actually doing much with what was meant to be one of their major conflict drivers. That left DS9 to carry the Maquis, but when they simply had too many storylines running they sacrificed wrapped up their red-headed stepchild instead of something they came up with themselves.
Not that it ever would have gotten as morally grey as @Charles EP M. identifies as a weakness and @Thande mentions as a rumour at the time. As much as Voyager might be rightly pointed as lacking chutzpah, never forget that one time The Next Generation wanted to do terrorist Sons of Liberty and wound up doing the cuddly PIRA instead. The same episode where they predict Northern Ireland's invasion of the Republic in 2024.
Not that it ever would have gotten as morally grey as @Charles EP M. identifies as a weakness and @Thande mentions as a rumour at the time. As much as Voyager might be rightly pointed as lacking chutzpah, never forget that one time The Next Generation wanted to do terrorist Sons of Liberty and wound up doing the cuddly PIRA instead. The same episode where they predict Northern Ireland's invasion of the Republic in 2024.
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I had the pleasure this weekend of getting to interview and spend a bit of time beyond panels with John Peel at the Doctor Who convention I’m involved with. We got to talking about Objective: Bajor and he confirmed a nugget of a rumor I’d found online: the Hive were originally meant to be the Borg. A suggestion that Paramount turned down because of a vague idea that the Borg might appear on DS9 which, of course never happened.
Something else Peel talked about was that because the novel was coming out ahead of the introduction of the Defiant on the series, Paramount asked (via his editor) that he include its introduction in the novel as a preamble to its appearing on-screen. As such, he got sent the script for the season opener MONTHS ahead of its airing with warnings not to reveal its contents to anyone beyond what he could use in the novel!
Something else Peel talked about was that because the novel was coming out ahead of the introduction of the Defiant on the series, Paramount asked (via his editor) that he include its introduction in the novel as a preamble to its appearing on-screen. As such, he got sent the script for the season opener MONTHS ahead of its airing with warnings not to reveal its contents to anyone beyond what he could use in the novel!
How exactly would it have worked with the Hive as the Borg? Seems like that would be a totally different plot.
The impression one gets at the time was that every writer was eager to use the Borg and got told no, and even the cover art at times seems intended to mislead the casual shopper into thinking the Borg are in books that they aren't in.
Interesting titbit about the Defiant.
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Oh, it would have been. Thankfully, it happened at the pitching stage and Peel was told by his editor that Paramount was almost certain not to let it happen (which proved to be correct). As Peel himself acknowledged, the fact that he had to create the Hive instead meant that a better story came out of it by having to think outside the box and create an original alien culture. He also revealed that the only reason he got into writing Star Trek to begin with was because he was commissioned to do Alien Nation, with the TV series and book range being canceled at the same time. Trek was offered as a sort of apology commission, but something that Peel enjoyed doing as he deliberately went for things he felt they wouldn't have been able to do on TV.
On a related note to that, Peel is friends with Peter David, who tried to warn him off doing it! Going so far as to show the 20+ pages of notes from Paramount to Peel that he'd received on one of his novels. Peel did it anyway, bracing himself when he wrote the first TNG novel. Except the only notes he got back were on a single page, with the most notable being "Starfleet is one word." It was something that bemused Peel and apparently led to David going "You Rat!"