Star Trek: The Paracanon

[starlady]

So thanks to melannen, I will be modding the "Star Trek beyond the canon" panel at Con.TXT next month in Maryland. \o/ If anyone in this comm is going to the con and is interested in being a co-mod for the panel, please let me know--basically you will be sitting up front with me and we will be each other's backup in the unhappy event that the audience runs out of things to say to us.

All that said, there are some questions I've been thinking about in relation to "the paracanon", which I think for our purposes is primarily the books, but can and should also include Star Trek Online, the Animated Series, and the games and comics--and I'd love to hear what fellow members of this comm have to say, since I trust your instincts. ^^

# Trek books before and after Pocket Books! Which do we prefer, and why? Do we like or resent the increased editorial control which has woven all the books since about 2004 into one single storyline?

# What are our favorite Trek books? The slashiest? The absolute worst?

# OMG the crossovers: Which were the best, which the worst? Too labored, too uneven, too awesome? Did the crossovers provide a balance between editorial control and authorial invention, or not?

- Invasion!
- The Captain's Table
- Day of Honor
- Double Helix
- New Earth
 

# What about the post-all canons single storyline? Is it too much of "everything but the kitchen sink", or is it cool to see Geordi and Spock saving the galaxy from the Doomsday Machine (to take just one example)? Which authors do we love, and which should be given the boot?

# Speaking of which, New Frontier! Is it too much of Peter David going off the res, or do we think that he's managed to revive the spirit of classic Trek in the 24th century and beyond?

# The paracanon and the AOS! Given the fact that the writers of the new Trek movie were inspired by some of the big names of the book canon, particularly Diane Duane's Spock's World, should we actually consider some of these paracanon items canonical? Is the distinction between canon and paracanon completely meaningful any more, or is Trek just a weird Moebius strip folding back in on itself?

# These questions go double for the Animated Series, which is both canon and not-canon according to Gene Roddenberry and others. Which Animated Series episodes are the most awesome? Which the most LOLarious or fail-tastic?

# And finally, what about the post-AOS storyline that's going on in the original universe? (See Michael Martin and Jake Sisko's new book Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many, which ends about 25 years after Spock disappears from the original universe at the beginning of the AOS.) Is Spock being required to suffer for the needs of the Trek franchise (again)? Are the Trek Powers trying to have their cake and eat it too, or have the subordinate canons been given a license to go off and do what they like, out of view of the in-motion media?

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

Darn, I wish I could go to that con! Anyway, I can't separate Spock's World and its view of Vulcans from canon--that is Vulcan, to me. Don't forget Best Destiny, which was also listed by the writers of the new movie as formative for their view of James T. Kirk.

[starlady]

I don't think any of us can separate Spock's World from canon now!

I hadn't heard that about Best Destiny--that's the one by, um, J.M. Dillard? Do you have a link or do you remember what the writers said about Kirk's portrayal in that book?

[beatrice_otter]

A: To us "canon" is considered the original series onward, including the novels.

UGO: Even including the novels! Wow.

A: To some degree. There are actually some things that are very interesting. In the novels and even, to some degree, in the shows vs. the movies there are different interpretations of events, and some blank spots that are open to interpretation. So, in approaching it we saturated ourselves in everything, including the novels Best Destiny and Spock's World.

http://www.ugo.com/movies/exclusive-star-trek-photo

The book is about a young Jim Kirk, who is an absolute snotty teen. And he gets dragged out into space by his Dad and is forced to grow up when they get attacked by pirates.

[starlady]

I really hope when they say "even including the novels" such gems as Spock, Messiah! aren't actually included in that statement. *g*

Thanks for the link! Yeah, I can see the dragged-into-space-forced-to-grow-up idea in the AOS movie without much trouble.

I remember Dillard being a decent writer, but I'm not sure what zie wrote that I actually read. I read a lot of Trek books back in the day...

[beatrice_otter]

Best Destiny was written by Diane Carey, not Dillard.

[starlady]

All the more reason for me to read it, then. Diane Carey is one of the two best Trek writers ever as far as I'm concerned. :-)

[starfish]

I stopped reading the novels before they left Pocket, I think; I'm sad to hear they may have gone downhill.

It's kind of exciting and weird to me that ST is getting such a lot of interest in the mainstream now. I don't know what to do with my secret fandom now that I can talk about it with Muggles.

It is possible I may be insane enough to co-mod this with you, if you get no other offers (like, say, from someone you know). (I am signed up to mod the due South panel, which will be my first ever, and I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, I suppose.) (Public speaking is scary.) In any case, I will definitely try to attend.

[starlady]

They're still with Pocket, but there's now a single storyline continuity going on, as opposed to what Pocket did while the shows were running, which was let authors write whatever. (It is my personal opinion that most of the writers they have now are bad, but that's another discussion entirely.)

It's like when the Lord of the Rings movies came out, and suddenly all of us who were in the secret community of people who had read The Lord of the Rings had to decamp to the secret community of people who had read The Silmarillion. *g*

I would love to have you! From what I understand there's no guarantee that we will have that large an audience, but I'm planning a book swap as part of the panel and I'm going to post in the LJ comm about it, so maybe free books will lure people in. I should write the con organizers back that I absolutely don't want the Trek panel scheduled against the Due South one, since there were so many awesome panels that I was like, "I don't know which one I absolutely want to see, there are so many!"

[starfish]

Bookswap! About 20 years ago I foolishly sold 2/3 of my high-school collection (kept my absolute faves), and I'm still mad at myself.

(I think my copy of Spock Must Die! cost $1.25 new.)

[starlady]

Wow. I remember when the books were $4.99 and it seems like an age ago.

[ariadne_chan]

i consider tas as canon, because there is alot of writer of televison shows who work for tas as you can see in the interview with DC Fontana they were on strike, but writing for a cartoon don't break the strike so they do scripts to tas, there were a lot of them who would write for the 4 season did never comes up. so i find tas a canon.
inside of actors or the writers about an episode for me are also canon, like deleted scenes, or part not used for scripts when they didn't use for time or money, because it was intended in the episode or movie.

i think canon is like law so you interpret canon as you can interpret law.
the history of the law is part of the law because it was the intention of the creators of it. same case to canon.either think with the TMP novelization because it was done but the creator of the series.

Maybe being a lawyer give me strange insight, but i really think we need to think canon is more big that only the things are in the tv or in dvd movies.

in another note HI!