It’s tough not to feel a rush of melancholy popping open the cover of the first book in the Star Trek: Coda trilogy, the fabulous Moments Asunder by Dayton Ward.
I have been a loyal fan of Star Trek books and the expanding efforts by Simon & Schuster, CBS, and a legion of authors to continue the stories of our favorite characters beyond their respective series, from the moment that they launched.
I vividly remember receiving my copy of the first book in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine relaunch series, and being immediately enraptured by the possibilities that the books would hold by continuing the story of Deep Space Nine and its characters beyond the end of “What You Leave Behind.”
As the years went by, that excitement only grow – eventually The Next Generation and Voyager would get their own relaunches – and as the literary continuity grew, so did the book lines that all tied into one overarching narrative. The Star Trek literary continuity, the shared story that developed over the last 20 years, has been a constant presence in my life and served up so many terrific moments.
Whether it was seeing things we’d never seen before on screen — like a fist fight between a Jem’Hadar and a Hirogen, sweeping action packed adventures that totally shook up the Star Trek universe like Destiny, or introspective character pieces that allowed for relationships that the shows never cultivated, like that between Janeway and Chakotay —the books have served up as many thrilling adventures that have filled my imagination as Star Trek on television has.
And they helped keep my love of Star Trek alive, when Trek itself was off our television screens between the finale of Enterprise in 2005 and the launch of Discovery in 2017. Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to have Star Trek back on television more than I can say, and loving every moment of this new take on the expansion of the franchise and its legacy. But I cannot deny a certain sadness that the Star Trek literary continuity must end as a result, and so it took me a few minutes after sitting down to begin reading Moments Asunder, to actually open the book and begin to read.
As we discussed in our interview with Dayton Ward earlier this week, this trilogy is designed to provide a rousing finish to fans of this 20 year narrative. And though this is only book one, and the end game for how everything will be wrapped up is still unclear, I am pleased to report that this series is off to a terrific start.
Much to my embarrassment, I’ve never been a particularly fast reader. And it’s the rare book that will suck me in so completely that I am unable to put it down until I have finished it. David Mack’s Destiny trilogy accomplished that, as did the Section 31 novel Control. But I can now add Moments Asunder to that list, because it grabbed me in chapter one and wouldn’t release me all the way until the end.
Moments Asunder is a gripping book, imbued with shocking events, a surprising villain, some welcome character returns, and some gutting character deaths. The book focuses primarily on the Enterprise-E, and provides some important wrap up to lingering story threads from Ward’s TNG relaunch novels that he has been writing since 2015. In addition, the Aventine under the command of Captain Ezri Dax also has a sizable role to play in the story, but to say more would be to spoil it.
The whole story is imbued with a persistent and delicious sense of dread that hangs on every page. Dayton Ward masterfully used my melancholy about the end of the book series to magnify the ominous mood that clings to Moments Asunder. I was genuinely unsettled by it, in the best way, and its story is sitting with me a feel week after I finished.
In our interview, Ward expressed his hope that Moments Asunder would be accessible to new readers, even if it is the last chapter of a 20-year story. I was initially skeptical about that, and I wondered if it would feel like reading the last chapter of a book rather than an entry unto itself.
But I am pleased to report that I thought Moments Asunder was highly accessible to new fans who want to jump in on the excitement of this book series and see what all the fuss is about. You will obviously enjoy this story more if you have that background in the books, but a handy timeline of major events up front will set you straight. In addition, there’s nothing so dense or obscure in here that the only way to understand it is to read 17 previous novels.
Captain Ezri Dax’s USS AVENTINE.
If you want to get in on the action and see what everyone’s raving about and you’ve never read one of these novels in the Star Trek literary continuity, you won’t be lost starting with Moments Asunder.
To go deeper in my review, at this stage, would be to risk spoiling you, and I think this book deserves diving right in headfirst without knowing who the villain is, who the surprising character returns are, and who dies in shocking fashion. Dayton Ward is making a play in this novel to claim the title of ‘Angel of Death’ from his fellow collaborator David Mack, who was given that moniker for never shying away from killing characters.
There are a lot of deaths — but I won’t say any more about this here. My review of the next Coda novel, James Swallow’s The Ashes of Tomorrow, will have more details on what happened in Moments Asunder, but for now… buckle up!
For all you music aficionados out there, the long wait for a Star Trek: Lower Decks soundtrack is finally over as the animated show’s first collection of recorded score is finally on the way.
Debuting from Lakeshore Records — the same label managing Discovery and Picard soundtracks — the first Star Trek: Lower Decks soundtrack will arrive on the usual array of digital services October 8 with a whopping 53-track collection of composer Chris Westlake’s music from the show’s first two seasons.
The news broke tonight at Film Reporter Monthly, where it was revealed that the fully-titled Star Trek: Lower Decks — Original Series Soundtrack, Volume 1 contains over an hour and a half of music.
Here’s the full track listing:
1. Main Titles (1:10)
2. Romulan Prison (0:44)
3. Leg Day (2:17)
4. Strange Energies (1:08)
5. The Time of His Life (0:39)
6. Riker’s Plan (3:15)
7. Stay Alert, Stay Alive (2:42)
8. Mistress Of The Winter Constellation (4:55)
9. The Black Mountain (0:48)
10. Mariner’s Secret (2:17)
11. A Compromise! (1:44)
12. Delicate Dooplers (1:39)
13. Ejecting the Warp Core (2:48)
14. Stumbling on History (0:42)
15. City Escape (2:15)
16. Pakled Spy (0:46)
17. Making Tendi Laugh (1:09)
18. Lord Agimus (1:01)
19. Marooned (2:23)
20. Agimus Reigns (3:55)
21. Temporal Black Hole (2:20)
22. The Lower Decks (0:39)
23. I Am Available for Chess (1:05)
24. A New Officer (2:14)
25. Red Alarm (2:49)
26. Death Battle (2:04)
27. What Are Your Orders, Captain? (1:38)
28. Departing Space Doc (0:30)
29. Getting Desperate (4:37)
30. I Can See (0:51)
31. Into The Unknown (2:42)
32. Standing Down (1:26)
33. Don’t Date Barnes (1:14)
34. Welcome to the Cerritos (1:21)
35. Humble Farmers (3:30)
36. Finding the Cure (2:45)
37. Swords and Spears (3:01)
38. Ransom vs. Vindor (1:21)
39. Saving Lives (2:44)
40. Failed Ascension (1:01)
41. Division 14 (1:39)
42. The Farm Cures All (1:45)
43. Saying Goodbye (1:57)
44. The Cleaner (1:26)
45. The Cerritos (1:27)
46. Today You Die! (4:48)
47. The Real Mariner (1:58)
48. Self Destruct Timer (1:30)
49. Pakled Attack (1:19)
50. Badgey Gets Loose (2:37)
51. Memory Loss (1:35)
52. End Titles (0:53)
53. Bonus Track: batlh vIpoQ! (0:50)
In writer Ann Kim’s “I, Excretus,” Star Trek: Lower Decks delivers another huge episode that finds a very fun way to drop our characters into familiar-to-us situations that their rank and station would likely never warrant.
Even though this show is about the lower decks of the Cerritos, I wondered how Boimler would handle the Borg Queen (voiced by Alice Krige, no less!) or how Mariner would handle the Mirror Universe — and now we know the answer!
Thanks to the array of training simulations, this episode lovingly references past Star Trek adventures — from well-known tales like “Mirror, Mirror” and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to lesser-remembered stories like “Ethics” and “Spectre of the Gun.”
From Ensign Boimler (Jack Quaid) being so bookish that he needs to redo the Borg simulation until he gets a perfect score, Ensign Mariner (Tawny Newsome) throwing herself out an airlock to end her “Naked Time” scenario, Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) deciding to use boots on his hands instead of gloves to open a hot door, and well-meaning Ensign Tendi (Noel Wells) being pushed aside in her “Ethics” experience while sickbay orderlies desperately attempt to beat a Klingon to death, there’s a ton to enjoy here.
And the underlying message about how the senior staff and the lower deckers need to understand and appreciate each other’s roles and responsibilities on the ship is an important one. The ensigns think playing captain is going to be cool — until it isn’t — and the senior staff think going back to the ‘simple life’ of lower-decks duty is easy, but find that it’s more difficult than it seems to be shut out of the loop.
If there’s one weakness to this episode, it’s a growing sense that Lower Decks is performing an extensive box checking exercise to reference back to absolutely everything unique about The Animated Series.
You know we love callbacks and references here at TrekCore, but I increasingly find myself wondering what kind of Animated Series connections each episode will hold before I begin to watch — and that feels like things are going just a bit overboard.
While there were a few joyful Animated Series references in Season 1, the growing TAS tie-ins this year — like Spock Two’s skeleton in “Kayson, His Eyes Open,” the Skorr in “An Embarrassment of Dooplers,” and the Kzinti ensign in “The Spy Humongous” — are starting to feel a bit like a slog. There is some humor to the Pandronian drill instructor Shari Yen Yem (Lennon Parham), from her bodily separation to the repeated “This one…” phrasing, but we’re fast running out of interesting concepts from the 1970s show.
But what’s also beginning to pay off, in increasingly hilarious ways, is the show has given names, faces, and personalities to so many of the secondary characters among the Cerritos crew. Characters like ‘so hot’ Ensign Barnes, Jennifer the Andorian (who gets a last name in this episode), and smarmy Winger Bingston Jr. drop in and out of the show, but when you get the whole crew together you really start to see how many additional characters there are that we know in some capacity.
It’s a nice touch that has grown over time.
TREK TROPE TRIBUTES
“Trapped in cowboy land? It’s a Starfleet classic!” Mariner’s joy about heading back to the Old West certainly is a longstanding Trek staple, from “Spectre of the Gun” in the Original Series and “A Fistful of Datas” in The Next Generation, all the way to “North Star” during Enterprise Season 3.
After being recovered from their spacewalk, Mariner and the ensigns warm up in the ever-present shiny metallic blankets, found in Starfleet sickbays for decades.
CANON CONNECTIONS
Shari Yen Yem is a Pandronian, previously encountered in “Bem.”
Mariner’s spiral armband in the Mirror Universe simulation is the same worn by Uhura in “Mirror, Mirror,” and mirror-Boimler’s agonizerdevice originated in that same episode.
The jagged knife which the Klingon patient presents to Tendi is the same design Worf wanted to be killed with in “Ethics,” while the orderlies (who are wearing red TNG-era medical scrubs) stress about how the Klingon has “so many backup organs!”
The ‘Naked Time’ simulation features both SINNERS REPENT and LOVE MANKIND graffiti, as in the original episode.
The ‘Old West Planet’ simulation is a direct callback to the Malkotian encounter in “Spectre of the Gun,” with both a bright red sky and only facades of buildings along the street.
Aside from the the “Ephraim and Dot” Short Trek, the ‘Needs of the Many’ simulation marks our first time seeing a refit Constitution-class ship since Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and the first time the red ‘monster maroon’ uniforms have been seen since Voyager revisited the USS Excelsior in “Flashback.”
The Cerritos‘ encounter with a Crystalline Entity is the first time one if its kind has been seen since “Silicon Avatar,” this time establishing that the space entity is a species and not just a one-off being.
While the Borg Queen will be played by Annie Wershing next season on Star Trek: Picard, this episode marks Alice Krige’s first turn as the cybernetic leader since “Endgame,” and she blows on Boimler’s bare arm like her intimate moment with Data in Star Trek: First Contact.
The cube has an “escape Sphere,” a concept introduced in First Contact.
The Cerritos warps off to rescue the time-looping USS Bakersfield during the teaser, which is likely another California-class ship.
Ensign Barnes, the Trill who’s been out on dates with Rutherford, works in Cetacean Ops aboard the Cerritos — so it’s no wonder she got such a high score on the ‘Whale Rescue’ simulation.
Mariner’s Andorian nemesis’ full name is Jennifer Sh’Reyan, a nod to the Andorian naming convention established in the Star Trek novel continuity.
The Mirror Universe logo used in this episode’s simulation is based upon the sword-and-globe design created by art house Styleworks Creative, later used for the ongoing Mirror Broken comic book miniseries from IDW Publishing.
Mariner’s “evil” Mirror Universe laugh is the same as her Vindicta laugh from “Crisis Point.”
Like a video game, the Borg simulation’s music repeats every time Boimler restarts the program; the score is Ron Jones’ “Captain Borg” track from “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I.”
While our Billups is stalwartly chaste — even in the “Naked Time” simulation, he’s just reading a padd while the rest of the crew gets busy with each other — Mirror Billups is “horny all the time.”
During Ruthorford’s “Needs of the Many” simulation, calling back to Spock’s sacrifice in Wrath of Khan, the holographic engineering room has an LCARS display of the refit Constitution-class ship designed in Star Trek: Enterprise-era graphic styling.
Shaxs gets in a dig at years of Star Trek cargo bay set dressing, as he frustratingly complains about the un-stackable shapes of Starfleet cargo containers.
“You’re on a California-class ship… Most of the Federation doesn’t even know you exist!,” Shari Yen Yem tells Captain Freeman, a nod to why we never heard about the “second contact” fleet until Lower Decks.
The black hole anomaly that Freeman takes the Cerritos into is right out of the Star Trek: Lower Decks opening title sequence, while the streaky “timequake” effect on the crew is right out of the wormhole encounter from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
A great many of the simulations are based upon previous Star Trek movies and television episodes.
MOVIES: ‘Carbon Based Units’ (The Motion Picture), ‘The Good of the Many’ (The Wrath of Khan), ‘Escape from Spacedock (The Search for Spock), and ‘Whale Rescue’ (The Voyage Home).
EPISODES: ‘Time Trap,’ ‘The Tholian Web,’ ‘Tribble Troubles’ and ‘Tribble Infestation’ (“The Trouble with Tribbles”), ‘Cause & Effect’ and ‘Time Loop’ (“Cause and Effect), ‘Evolution,’ ‘Chain of Command,’ ‘Hero Worship,’ ‘Naked Time,’ ‘Mirror Universe Encounter’ (“Mirror, Mirror”), ‘Medical Ethics’ (“Ethics”), ‘Old West Planet’ (“Spectre of the Gun”), and ‘Escape the Void’ (“Where Silence Has Lease”).
OTHERS: ‘From Q to Q,’ ‘Borg Encounter,’ ‘Natural Selection,’ ‘Survival of the Fittest,’ ‘Extreme Engineering,’ ‘Klingon Encounter,’ ‘Teleportation Death Tag,’ ‘EMH Tak[es Command]’ (?) and the classic ‘Kobayashi Maru’ simulation.
Overall, “I, Excretus” is a hoot of an episode that exposes our characters to fun scenarios from the Star Trek canon — without having to resort to time travel or other complications! — and gives fans a chance to revel in seeing the show’s takes on those franchise favorites in a way that’s entirely faithful to the Lower Decks way of doing things.
Star Trek: Lower Decks returns with “wej Duj” — that’s Klingon for “Three Ships” — on October 7 on Paramount+ in the United States and CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada, followed by Amazon Prime Video (in select international regions) on October 8.
If you’re anything of a Spock fan, you’re going to really enjoy this book, which capably weaves together this seminal character’s history and appearances throughout the Star Trek franchise in a thoroughly authentic way.
This book was delayed nearly three years from its original 2018 publication date — and even changed authors along the way. Originally, this was to be the third book in the series and authored by David A. Goodman, who had written the previous Kirk and Picard books.
But likely due to the decision by Star Trek: Discovery to include the character in its Season 2 storyline — there played by Ethan Peck — the book was pushed back for revisions, and Una McCormack stepped in to take over the project.
Thankfully, the book has benefited from the two years’ delay; given how important much of the character’s arc in Discovery was to his life, not to have included that would have made the book totally incompatible with the canon as developed.
As it stands, the book covers everything about the character’s life, from his early childhood, his shared youth with Michael Burnham, his long tenure on the Enterprise, his diplomatic work, and his turn towards trying to achieve reunification between the Romulans and the Vulcans later in life.
The conceit of the book is that it is part of the Vulcan tradition of a t’san a’lat, a “wisdom book,” which is written by a Vulcan who believes they may be at the end of their life.
The t’san a’lat allows them to look back and reflect. Spock’s t’san a’lat is written shortly before his journey to try and stop the Romulan supernova from destroying Romulus, as depicted in the first Kelvin Timeline Star Trek film — and perhaps most intriguingly, the book is written directly for Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (retired).
Unlike the other autobiographies, which are structured in sequential order of events in the person’s life, the Spock autobiography instead structures itself around the character’s relationship with others. These follow an almost chronological order of individuals who were important to the character at different times, including Michael Burnham, Christopher Pike, Leonard McCoy, Sarek, and Pardek (from “Unification”), and others.
The structure allows for Spock to deeply examine his relationship with each of them — and there are a couple of surprises in there — and reflect on his life.
And in another departure from the other autobiographies, there aren’t too many twisty revelations in here of things that happened in the character’s life that is not entirely rooted in canon. David A. Goodman’s Kirk and Picard books had some very creative angles on parts of the Star Trek canon, and even Una McCormack’s Janeway autobiography has a final twist that comes out of left field.
The Autobiography of Mr. Spock, on the other hand, plays it straight, largely because we know so much about the character’s life from the moment of birth all the way up through his death. It adheres very closely to canon, and even snuck in the full name of Number One from Strange New Worlds… revealed as “Una Chin-Reilly” back on Star Trek Day.
Rather than providing us with surprising twists and turns in the character’s backstory, instead McCormack decides to go deep into the character’s psyche, providing a lot of room for Spock to consider his role in events and his relationships with others. For such an introspective look at the character, it was essential that McCormack be able to capably thread together both the Leonard Nimoy and Ethan Peck versions of Spock, and to write so authentically as Spock that you can hear Leonard Nimoy’s voice strongly in your mind as you go.
I am pleased to report the book accomplishes this task and is probably the most successful book in some time in entirely capturing Spock’s voice and essence. You really do feel like you are getting to know the character better, and not just some pale imitation.
To that end, the character’s new backstory from Discovery seamlessly integrates into the story of his life and does not feel forced.
McCormack even comes up with an explanation for why his half-brother Sybok — who also gets his own chapter — is not seen in the Discovery flashbacks to young Spock and Burnham’s childhood. The role of Michael Burnham in Spock’s life is an important one because of Discovery, and that relationship is given room to breathe in the book. When you see the whole tapestry of Spock’s life, as written here, Michael Burnham fits comfortably within it.
There is one creative choices in the book, however, that is likely to be controversial: McCormack chooses to make this book be more about the relationship between Spock and Picard — due to the late 24th century nature of when it was ‘written’ — rather than Spock’s relationship with James Kirk.
Kirk is a constant presence throughout the book, with the exception of a short chapter at the end, but he does not really become one of the subjects that Spock considers. I think some people are going to be disappointed by that, though it seems to me that given how much fan debate there is over the Kirk/Spock relationship (including the potential for more), and how much has been written about it by other authors, perhaps that’s less interesting ground to cover and is likely to disappoint people in some way, no matter how it’s presented.
Overall, The Autobiography of Mr. Spock is another triumphant book for Una McCormack, who is absolutely the go-to author for introspective character work. That’s her true writing strength, and it shines through here as she tells a reflective story in the voice of Leonard Nimoy of Spock’s life and experiences as he senses he is nearing its end.
There is some sadness as a result, but both Spock and Leonard had full and rich lives, and that’s the spirit that book carries with it. It’s probably the most authentic character portrayal from these autobiographies to date.
In addition, stick around to listen to Sam’s wish for when a possible Starfleet Academy show might be set, and one of our listeners has a theory about another potential legacy character appearance in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds!
WeeklyTrek is available to subscribe and download each week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify— and we’ll be sharing the details of each new episode right here on TrekCore each week if you’re simply just looking to listen in from the web.
Do you have a wish or theory you’d like to share on the show? Tweet to Alex at @WeeklyTrek, or email us with your thoughts about wishes, theories, or anything else about the latest in Star Trek news!
This week continues Star Trek: Lower Decks’ second season, and we’ve got a new set of images from “I, Excretus” today!
Our Cerritos crew gets put through the paces in this week’s new episode, as both senior and junior officers must pass training simulations based on some of Starfleet’s most challenging experiences — including what looks to be a number of beloved Star Trek episodes and movies from decades past!
From run-ins with the Borg, the Klingons, a trip to the old West right out of “Spectre of the Gun”, and even a holographic trip into the Mirror Universe, this week is sure to have you Easter egg hunters working overtime as the visiting Pandroniandrill instructor oversees each scenario.
Here are eight new images from this week’s episode:
Star Trek: Lower Decks -- 'I, Excretus'
1 of 8
Ensigns in spacesuits. (Paramount+)
The senior officers don't look happy. (Paramount+)
Mariner in a Mirror Universe simulation. (Paramount+)
Mariner is left in sickbay. (Paramount+)
Tendi frets over a Klingon. (Paramount+)
Freeman and Mariner sqabble. (Paramount+)
T'Ana and Shaxs share a bunk. (Paramount+)
Mariner in the Old West. (Paramount+)
Here are a few additional screengrabs from the season trailers which to tie into this week’s episode:
Finally, here’s the trailer for the episode, released last night on social media:
I, EXCRETUS — A consultant arrives on the U.S.S. Cerritos to run drills that require the lower deckers and bridge crew to swap duties.
Written by Ann Kim. Directed by Kim Arndt.
Star Trek: Lower Decks returns on September 30 with “I, Excretus” on Paramount+ in the United States and CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada, followed by Amazon Prime Video (in select international regions) on October 1.
The biggest Star Trek literary event of the decade starts this week, as the Star Trek: Coda trilogy marks the closing chapter of over 20 years of Trek novel continuity.
The ongoing novel-verse continuity kicked off with Avatar, the opening entry 2001’s Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “relaunch” book series and for the last two decades has maintained an ever-growing, interconnected text-only universe that’s followed our Trek heroes since the end of the Berman-era television shows.
Since the launch of Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, the storylines of the non-canon books have been on shaky ground, but with Star Trek: Picard arriving in 2020, it’s become clear that the 24th century as represented in the novels is no longer compatible with on-screen Star Trek canon.
But that’s a challenge that the writing team of Dayton Ward, James Swallow, and David Mack have taken head on, crafting the three-part Coda saga as a natural conclusion for the Star Trek novel continuity — in a way that doesn’t just throw the long-running stories out the window, after so many fans have enjoyed the tales over the years.
To get an idea of just what went into this massive undertaking, we talked with Trek author Dayton Ward — writer of the first Coda novel, Moments Asunder — about his experience working within the Star Trek story continuity universe, the genesis of the Coda trilogy, and more.
TREKCORE: Though you wrote several books before it, your 2011 novel Paths of Disharmony was your first venture in to the post-series novel continuity. What was it like stepping into this world, years before we thought Trek would return to television?
DAYTON WARD: The Typhon Pact series was my first actual contribution to that post-movie continuity — after dipping my toes in the water withA Time To Sow, and the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series — and Paths of Disharmony, was part of the larger Typhon Pact mini-series.
It was interesting to try to dive into all that. It required a lot of homework, because I hadn’t really been paying that close attention to what was going on. And then they called me back to write the conclusion for The Fall mini-series, Peaceable Kingdoms, which was another political thing, another “Picard is in the throes of a midlife crisis” thing.
I basically asked my editor, Margaret Clark, “Okay at the end of this, when we do these five books, and we have this political thing… can I please set things up so the Enterprise goes back to being explorers again?”
And Margaret was all about it. I set it up so that whoever was going to write the next TNG book would have an open road and a clean slate. I left it as open as I possibly could for whoever was going to be next, not knowing for a second that it was going to be me. But then Margaret called me up and asked me to do another TNG book that takes place after The Fall.
At that point, I was like, “Well, I’m glad I set things up that way — now I get to go have fun.” Those things happen sometimes.
Taurik saw the future in ARMAGEDDON’S ARROW, a secret still unrevealed.
TREKCORE: You wrote four additional novels in the Next Gen “relaunch” series after The Fall concluded. How much thought had you put into where those stories were heading — before Picard was announced — like that thread where Taurik got a glimpse of the future in Armageddon’s Arrow?
WARD: I had a few ideas about what I could do with Taurik’s information and his future knowledge; nothing really nailed down. I just had some broad-stroke ideas that I could pivot to based on anything, whether I’m left to my own devices or another big cross-series project comes along where it would be good to use it.
Of course, at the time one of the considerations that was still out there, even though we weren’t sure if we’d ever be able to do it, was that the book timeline was inching closer to the Romulan supernova [as established in the first Kelvin Timeline Star Trek film].
That was always in the back of our minds — but at that time we were told we could not reference anything from the Bad Robot films. All that was off-limits, because of the separation between CBS and Paramount Pictures. For us, the Romulan supernova was a pin on the whiteboard of where things might eventually head, like, “Oh, you never know….”
The supernova was probably the leading contender for the story about Taurik’s future knowledge, but it was still a very remote possibility. But then we moved into the book version of the Control story, which was led by David Mack — and the fallout from that — so it was a while before we needed to come back to it.
The Romulan supernova, seen in the 2009 STAR TREK film.
TREKCORE: Did you ever actually have thoughts on how you would have tackled the Romulan supernova in print, if you had been given the chance?
WARD: I don’t remember any conversations about it, other than maybe just ballparking and throwing things around [with other Trek authors] to see what might stick. I don’t know that we ever actually cracked any serious story idea about it.
Of course, now Picard has retconned some of the details about the supernova. But what’s interesting is that there’s really still a lot of stuff out there about how and why, and what was behind the supernova from Picard. Who knows when they’ll decide they want to address that.
TREKCORE: What was your reaction to Patrick Stewart’s return in Picard, in terms of how it would impact the Star Trek novels?
WARD: In the early part of 2018, I knew that Picard was going to happen. Fellow author and Star Trek: Picard co-creator Kirsten Beyer called me, and said, “Hey, we’ve got Patrick Stewart to come back and play Picard!” I thought, “Wow, that’s going to be a problem for the books!”
I didn’t hear anything more about it for months and months and months. By the time they announced the show in at Star Trek Las Vegas in August 2018, I had a vague idea of the direction of the show. I had been given a document by Kirsten Byer where she had given the show’s new writers a primer document of all the relevant big-ticket events in time from across the Star Trek timeline.
That document also laid in key points of backstory specific to Picard that would inform its storyline, like the synth attack on Mars, and other things that they did not reveal until much later. That’s when I knew we were definitely dealing with an issue that was going to impact the novels.
Starting in the late summer 2018 is when I really started jotting down notes — and unbeknownst to me, my fellow author Dave Mack is doing the same thing. And once I started reading scripts for Picard, and I realized where things were going, I sat down with Dave in the summer of 2019 at the annual Shore Leave Convention to talk through it all
He had told me that he and another longtime Star Trek author, Jim Swallow, had started asking, “What do we do about the books?” Dave outlined an idea that he and Jim had put together — the only difference between what Jim and Dave were doing, and what I was doing, was that I had read the Picard scrips for Season 1, and they hadn’t seen them.
“Dude,” I told him, “We have got so much more work to do than you think, to make this work.”
The first PICARD novel, directly contradicting the ongoing novel-verse stories.
TREKCORE: So they were already trying to find paths to help guide the novel stories to wherever Picard was headed…
WARD: Yes — Dave was like, “We can bring back the Borg, and we can do all sorts of things to reconcile the two stories together!”
But the point of divergence for the novels and Picard start to go off the rails 15 years in the show’s backstory, at that point, the current time period in the books were like two or three years past that… which meant that everything that came after in the books was totally incompatible. We were already toast.
So we decided to turn our attention to coming up with something really cool, and epic, and insane, to give book fans closure. We pitched a few ideas, and we talked to Margaret Clark at Simon & Schuster, and we got her support. We got in-house editor Ed Schlesinger’s support, and then we got John Van Citters at CBS Consumer Products to bless the idea — and then we went to work.
WARD: Oh, absolutely it did. We did not want to do that. We did not want to go down that road. When we first started to get a sense of just what was involved in realigning the book lines with the new shows, we said we don’t want to do a Star Wars.
We definitely don’t want to tell people who’ve been buying these books for 20 years, “None of this counts, none of this matters, you wasted all your time and your money. Oh, and by the way, buy our new books which are tied back into the show now!”
How do you sell that? You don’t. The Star Trek book audience might not be as big as the Star Wars book audience, but I would argue that they are as loyal — if not more so — for sticking with us as long as they have.
We definitely did not want to do something like that. It was never even a serious conversation. Even our editors at Simon & Schuster and John Van Citters at CBS understood the need to do this, and told us to go forth and write.
Legacy STAR WARS novels were moved to the non-canon ‘Legends’ branding.
TREKCORE: While some of the arcs have reached natural conclusions, there were still a number of novel story threads still awaiting resolution, like Sisko’s daughter being part Prophet. How did you decide what to “wrap up” while developing Coda?
WARD: That was a tall order. We definitely sat down, and we figured out, “Okay, what do we have to work with? What’s still on the table?”
We had originally pitched four books, and I had actually proposed at least one book that I called a “stealth setup book,” which would seem to the reader like a standard adventure — either a TNG or DS9 book — and only after you started reading Coda would you realize we already had things moving into place ahead of time. But that part didn’t work out and we only got three books to tell the story.
We decided that we wanted to give as many characters a moment in the sun, so to speak, as we could — but we needed to find what unresolved storylines could have the maximum impact on Coda; where the stakes would be high, real, and the payoff would be worth it.
We looked for moments where we could make a reference to things, or include a quick scene for this person, or involve a crew that you haven’t seen for a while, that kind of thing. It took a lot of planning and coordination — all the emails, the Skype calls, the spreadsheets shared between Dave, Jim and myself were pretty maddening.
As a fan, I wanted to see this done right. There’s a very small roster of people that I would trust to do it, but we were limited by folks’ availability. We tried to get Una McCormack involved in Coda, for example, but she had other demands on her time.
The Trek Collective’s guide to the massive STAR TREK novel-verse continuity.
TREKCORE: While some people, like me, have been reading for 20 years, will these books going to be accessible tofans who might be using Coda as their first entry into Star Trek books at the end of this long-running thing?
WARD: Well, we knew that going in that these books that we were going to attract attention beyond the loyal folks who follow us book after book, so we wanted to make them accessible. Everything that we believe is critical to the storyline, and the larger continuity, is explained in the book in some manner.
Obviously, if you’ve been following along since day one, or you hopped on the train, and you caught up, and now you’re ready for Coda, you’ll get more out of it may be in some level than a person who’s dove right in. But we hope that when those readers get to the end of these books, it’ll make them want to go back and read all the stuff they missed.
This is the culmination of many years of storytelling in which many, many writers participated. We wanted to honor all of that — and at the same time, you can still look at them on the shelf and go, “Yes. Those stories matter, I can still count them in my ‘head canon,'” that kind of thing.
That’s coming as both a fan and a writer. I’ve been reading Star Trek books since I was 12. I grew up reading the old Bantam books in the stuff in the 70s. I hopped on Simon & Schuster’s train with the very first book they ever put out, and have been with them the whole 40-plus years.
TREKCORE: Not to spoil anything here, but what do you hope readers feel when they get to the end of Moments Asunder?
WARD: Pardon my French, but I hope they feel like, “Holy shit, what comes next?” That’s what I want — but I suspect I will catch some heat for some of my choices in there.
When I say “my choice,” I want to be clear that that these books are very much a collaborative effort, so even though my name is on this book, and Jim and Dave’s names are on the others, we hammered out the storyline together — down to the smallest detail.
If you look inside the title page, you’ll see that the story credit is by all three of us, and that’s across the three books. I did not unilaterally make some of the choices that are going to anger people in that book. So fans can be mad at all three of us!
TREKCORE: And when they’ve finished the trilogy, how to you hope fans will react?
WARD: I hope that they will come away knowing that we worked very hard to pay tribute to everything they’ve read for the past 20 years — and I hope that all the other writers who have participated in building this continuity feel like that their work and time was not wasted.
I also hope that readers don’t feel like we wasted their money. That was at the forefront of everything we were doing, it was always in our brain. It’s like, “How are the fans going to react to this?”
At the end of it all, I hope that readers come away with the idea this was a real labor of love that respects them and respects what’s come before.
TREKCORE: With the conclusion of Coda, is that it for Dayton Ward and Star Trek novels?
WARD: I cannot imagine I’m done with Star Trek, at least in some form. I’m still doing consulting work for ViacomCBS, and my fingers are in a number of different Star Trek pies right now.
But in terms of the novels, I don’t know. I never say never; we’ll have to wait and see. We have all these new shows, and other in development that they’re talking about, so there are a lot of different playgrounds to entertain ourselves with.
TREKCORE: Of the five shows happening now — Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds — is there one you’d really like to write for, given the opportunity?
Dayton Ward: If they gave me the choice, I think I would like to take a shot at Strange New Worlds because that’s close to The Original Series, and that’s my favorite.
At the same time though, I am very excited about Prodigy. I am very excited by what it’s attempting to do, and what it hopes to do — the potential there is just phenomenal.
If they came to me and asked me to write something tying into Prodigy, I would probably jump at it.
Read more from Dayton Ward at DaytonWard.com or on Twitter. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
When EXPLORER launches in a few weeks, each issue of the rebooted magazine is set to feature two short stories in each print issue, along with two additional stories in the digital companion supplement available to subscribers.
The standard and retailer-exclusive covers for STAR TREK EXPLORER – ISSUE #1.
The first issue, arriving November 2, will feature a quartet of stories all centered around omnipotent Trek trickster Q, in anticipation of John de Lancie’s return to the role in Star Trek: Picard Season 2 next year.
Also contributing fiction to the magazine are writers Lisa Klink (writer of over a dozen Voyager episodes, including “The Omega Directive,” “Message in a Bottle,” “Blood Fever” and more) and Chris Cooper, who has written several Doctor Who and Torchwood stories for that franchise’s magazines as well as the related Big Finish audio dramas.
John de Lancie reprises his character ‘Q’ in the upcoming second season of STAR TREK: PICARD.
Here’s the official word on the subject:
STAR TREK™ EXPLORER – Fiction Announcement
As well as in-depth interviews, fascinating features, and behind-the-scenes reports, Explorer will also feature 2 all-new and exclusive Star Trek short stories EVERY issue! Subscribers will also receive an additional 2 short stories with their exclusive digital supplement!
We’re thrilled to announce that the first selection of short stories to appear in the magazine will be themed around that staple of Trek lore, constant headache of Jean-Luc Picard, trickster, master manipulator and Machiavellian: Q!
As John de Lancie reprises his iconic role in season two of Star Trek: Picard, celebrated writers including Lisa Klink (Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine writer); James Swallow (BAFTA-nominated scriptwriter and New York Times bestseller); Una McCormack (New York Times bestselling science fiction author, and writer of Star Trek: Picard – The Last Best Hope, a USA Today bestseller); and Chris Cooper (writer of Doctor Who and Torchwood stories for official magazines and Big Finish audio dramas) will be crafting all-new short fiction centered around this neverendingly-intriguing character.
Issue 1 of STAR TREK EXPLORER magazine arrives on newsstands and for subscribers on November 2, 2021.
If you want to subscribe to the new Star Trek Explorer magazine, you can do so now here in the United States. New subscribers will receive four issues for $29.99, along with an exclusive digital supplement with every issue.
We’re just under a month away from the October 28 debut of Star Trek: Prodigy on Paramount+, but today Nickelodeon — where the show will eventually air after its first run on P+ — has revealed a set of new character images from the new animated series, giving our new heroes a moment in the spotlight.
Unveiled on Nickelodeon’s official Facebook page today, six new ‘posters’ show off the seven members of the USS Protostar crew: Dal (Brett Gray), Gwyn (Ella Purnell), Zero (Angus Imrie), Jankum Pog (Jason Mantzoukas), Murf (Dee Bradley Baker), Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui), and the holographic version of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew).
These character images follow the release of the official Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 key art poster which debuted on Star Trek Day, along with the full trailer for the upcoming first season.
We’ll learn more about Star Trek: Prodigy at New York Comic Con next month, as the series’ cast and creators take the stage on October 10.
Star Trek: Prodigy premieres October 28 on Paramount+ in the United States (and CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada), with a one-hour opening episode to kick of the show’s first season; specific international premiere dates have not yet been announced.
“Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” provides a welcome return for one of Star Trek’s favorite day players, some hilarious character work, and some great worldbuilding that feels just right for the franchise. I mean, a Jeffrey Combs guest role and a precocious mother set on making life difficult for one of our senior officers? Sign me up!
The concept behind the Hysperians — the descendants of a group of “Ren Faire types” who colonized a planet populated with dragons — is incredibly zany and perfectly-Lower Decks idea, brought to life this week by writer Garrick Bernard. It would not be that far amiss in an episode of the Original Series, either, and so it doesn’t feel too over the top to me at all.
Queen Paolana Billups, LOWER DECKS’ own unique take on Lwaxana Troi. (Paramount+)
There are a lot of fun touches throughout this episode, including all of the standard Federation engineering terms having been renamed so that it all sounds like magic. And the design of Queen Paolana’s (June Diane Raphael) Hysperian flagship, the Monaveen, is very cool. (I’d buy that Eaglemoss model in a heartbeat. Huzzah!)
And even though I thought the sex joke in “Mugato, Gumato” was gratuitous and a bit off-putting, the raunchy humor in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” totally worked for me. I think where the bawdy humor succeeded in this episode because was tied to character development that felt believable and authentic to the world that Lower Decks has created.
Coupled with his mother’s attempts to trick him into having sex, the idea that Andarithio “Andy” Billups (Paul Scheer) must defiantly remain a virgin — to keep his place in Starfleet and avoid having to take the Hysperian throne — is a genuinely funny one.
Andy nervously prepares to perform the ‘Royal Copulation.’ (Paramount+)
Because they’re tied to the character and the worldbuilding that Lower Decks has laid down, it works for me and does not feel weird or gross. It’s a really fine line, and ultimately a matter of personal taste, how much raunchy humor works in a Star Trek context, and this episode falls on the right side of the line for me.
When word came last year that we’d learn Billups was a virgin, it was a concern that he’d be portrayed as “less-than” because of that; aside from a few nervous moments for the engineer, it was good to see that wasn’t the case — and that Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) and the Cerritos crew was all about protecting him from his mother’s scheme… something the ship clearly has had to deal with before!
While Andy fends off his mother, Ensigns Boimler (Jack Quaid) and Mariner (Tawny Newsome) are tasked with taking a sentient, evil supercomputer called AGIMUS (Jeffrey Combs) back to the Daystrom Institute for imprisonment and further study, when they crash on a desert planet — and the computer seems to make the pair turn on each other when survival seems impossible.
The ensigns are nearly driven apart by AGIMUS’ emotional manipulation. (Paramount+)
Combs, who appeared in multiple roles in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, turns in a hilarious performance as AGIMUS in this episode, and gets the biggest star turn on Lower Decks of any legacy actor to date. Even Jonathan Frakes’ appearances as Captain Will Riker feel less considerable than AGIMUS’ role in this episode as a foil for Boimler and Mariner.
I am always a fan of more Jeffrey Combs, and Lower Decks delivers, slowly inching the veteran character actor up to Vaughn Armstrong’s record of the most distinct roles on Star Trek. The character work between Boimler and Mariner during this episode is also quite interesting, as Mariner underestimates Boimler’s readiness for making tougher decisions.
Boimler has grown a lot in the last year, especially since his return from the Titan, and I’m looking forward to seeing it continue.
Boimler defies Mariner’s expectations when he tricks AGIMUS into saving the day. (Paramount+)
TREK TROPE TRIBUTES
“Carol, you’re the closest ship in the quadrant!” Queen Paolana tells Captain Freeman, drawing upon the often used Star Trek plot device of our heroes just so happening to be the only ship close enough to go deal with a problem.
Queen Paolana joins a lineage of Star Trek family members who pop up to cause problems for our crew; Lwaxana Troi from The Next Generation being the obvious archetype.
Boimler and Mariner crash land on an alien planet after encountering a spatial anomaly — now that’s a trope! The shuttle Yosemite is brought down because of gravimetric shear, the same kind of space anomaly which caused problems for the Defiant in “Behind the Lines,” Voyager in “Gravity,” and the Enterprise NX-01 in “The Catwalk.”
The Daystrom Institute in Okinawa, seen in 2399 (top) and in 2381. (Paramount+)
CANON CONNECTIONS
Mariner suggests they bury Lord Agamus in the desert, just like Data’s head in “Time’s Arrow” — but Boimler quickly reminds her that Data’s head was left in a cave, not buried.
The ensigns are rescued in a Danube-class runabout, often seen in use around Deep Space 9.
AGIMUS is taken to the Daystrom Institute in Okinawa, Japan; the esteemed scientific foundation’s location was established in Star Trek: Picard.
The exterior depiction of the Daystrom Institute is based upon an establishing shot from “Remembrance,” and the D.I. logo used for the organization — also designed for Picard — is used on “Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage” signage.
The Daystrom Institute’s logo and clothing come from live-action Trek. (Paramount+)
OTHER OBSERVATIONS
The episode’s title comes from Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, from a thematically-appropriate passage about Renaissance-era sexual acts.
Once again this season, Dr. Migleemo appears on the Cerritos bridge, but has no dialogue.
The large Master Systems Display graphic of the Cerritos seen in Main Engineering labels the locations of the ship’s bridge, loading bay, shield generator, holodeck, mess hall, and captain’s ready room.
There is also an extremely-detailed version of the Cerritos MSD graphic in Billups’ quarters, a new graphic created for the show by Mike Okuda. This intricate graphic features both the 2370s-era Starfleet Command logo, and a new logo (also designed by Okuda) which represents the California-class starship design (with the California state flag, Starfleet delta, and Cali-class silhouette).
Here’s hoping we’ll get a better view of this detailed graphic soon! (Paramount+)
Hysperian engineering terms include dragon-breath engines (warp engines) and a dragonsblood flame (primary fusion reactor), each overseen by the chief blacksmith (chief engineer); the Hysperian fleet is known as the Royal Navy.
When played a certain way, Hysperian guitars can block internship communication.
Hysperian royal guards are trained from birth to skip foreplay — and they do not assume Billups is straight, as both male and female guards are assigned to assist in the Royal Copulation.
A cutaway diagram of the Hysperian starship Monaveen. (Paramount+)
AGIMUS’ “murder drones” bear a striking resemblance to the Minosian dronesencountered by the Enterprise-D in “The Arsenal of Freedom.”
When Boimler and Rutherford are crossing the uninhabited desert planet, the music by Chris Westlake has a real Star Wars vibe to it, as the pair trek through the desert to find a very large crashed ship in the sand.
I hope that by the end of this series, every character will have a surprising first name. Bradward Boimler, Samanthan Rutherford, and now Andarithio Billups – here’s hoping that “Jack” Ransom is more than meets the eye.
Lastly, one of the evil computers in storage at the Daystrom Institute bears the CBS ‘eye’ logo.
This computer has an all-seeing “Eye.” (Paramount+)
“Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” is a fun character episode that serves up a funny new culture, deepens the character of one of our senior staff, and gives us a great Jeffrey Combs villain.
I hope that Queen Paolana makes another appearance in Lower Decks, because I think there’s more fun to be had with Hysperian culture — as long as Billups doesn’t fall for another one of her schemes!
Star Trek: Lower Decks returns with “I, Excretus” on September 30– on Paramount+ in the United States and CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada — followed by Amazon Prime Video (in select international regions) on October 1.
Star Trek: Lower DecksSeason 1 Blu-ray
Star Trek: Lower DecksSeason 2 Blu-ray
