Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. It's Wednesday, which means it's time for this week's non review blog post. Today I wanna talk about three pieces of Star Trek media that aren't a movie or TV show that could be inspirations for the upcoming TV series, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Let's get into it.
While there has never been a movie or TV series that has been set at Starfleet Academy, the institution has been part of Star Trek lore pretty much since the very beginning of the franchise. There have also been several novels and comics that have Starfleet Academy. The ones I'm talking about today are ones where the majority of the stories's cast are completely original characters with established characters from the TV shows and movies appearing as background characters or supporting characters only. So, I won't be talking about the junior novels that have main characters from TOS, TNG, and Voyager as young adults at Starfleet Academy.
Published by Marvel comics from 1996 to 1998, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy was a 19 issue comic book series that focused on a group of cadets, with the only pre-established character as a main character in the story is Nog from DS9. Both Benjamin and Jake Sisko appear in issue #17, Pike appears in issues 9 and 10, and Charlie Evans appears in issue 8. Otherwise it's all original characters, including an Andorian, a Vulcan inhabited by a Romulan (don't look at me, I'm just looking this up on Memory Alpha), a Betazoid, and a Trill. While the time period of this series is set during the fourth, fifth, and sixth seasons of DS9 (seasons 2, 3, and 4 of Voyager), I'd say this series is probably the most likely out of all of these that Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau, the showrunners of the new TV show, took inspiration from for the show.
The next item on the list is the 1997 PC game, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Once again, while Kirk, Sulu, and Chekov appear in the game, as this game is set between Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the cadets are all original characters who don't appear in any other piece of Star Trek media outside of the novelization of the game. You play as Cadet David Forrester, a human, and your job is to assemble a crew that also seems to include a Vulcan and an Andorian. This game is unique in that it has full video cutscenes rather than animatic sequences or static images with text over it like the various console video games Star Trek had in the '80s and '90s.
As mentioned, there was a novelization for the game. It was published by Pocket Books in 1997, a few months before the game was released. Having never read the novel, I have no idea how much of the game's story is left out of the book being that the mediums are very different from one another. Memory Alpha only list Kirk, Sulu, Chekov and Forester (his name is spelled with two Rs in the game apparently) as characters in the novel, Memory Beta, the Wiki for Star Trek novels, comics, video games, and other tie in media, lists all of the characters from the game for the novelization. Being that I don't have a computer that can play the game, and even if I did, finding a copy of the game would be extremely difficult, the novelization might be something I can get my hands on at some point.
The final piece of media on this list is the 1998 Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, The Best and the Brightest by Susan Wright. Once again, all the cadets are original to this novel, but characters from TNG, DS9, and Voyager are either seen or mentioned throughout the book. The novel also spans from the end of the fifth season of TNG to the fourth season of DS9, and heavily features the destruction of the Enterprise-D in Star Trek Generations. Like with the comic and the game, this novel's cast includes other races besides humans. However, while a Vulcan cadet appears in the first chapter, he isn't part of the main cast, and doesn't appear after the first two or three chapters. However, there is a newly-joined Trill, a Bajoran, two humans, a Rex, which is a felinoid race, and an Oppalassan, which is a humanoid race who goes through puberty in their 20s rather than their early teens.
Any of these three stories would be easy to pull inspiration from for the upcoming TV show. While Star Wars's Expanded Universe of novels, comics, and video games is more well known, as is its impact on the Star Wars movies and TV shows, Star Trek's Expanded Universe has had just as much impact on the TV shows and movies. For example Kirk's middle name was Tiberius in the novels for about ten years, or longer before it was spoken on screen for the first time in Star Trek VI, as was Uhura and Sulu's first names, Nyota and Hikaru. Not to mention Star Trek: Early Voyages featured the adventures of Pike, Spock and Number One aboard the Enterprise both before and after "The Cage" similar to what Strange New Worlds is doing on television today.
The world of Star Trek novels and comics isn't as well known as the Star Wars Expanded Universe is. Likely because Star Trek is a TV franchise first and a movie franchise second, so while the novels and comics were especially important in the '70s and again between 2005 and 2017, because we haven't had a whole lot of periods where there hasn't been a Star Trek show airing or a Star Trek movie being released, the novels, comics, and video games have felt more like tie in material rather than carrying the bulk of the franchise due to the uncertainty of more movies being made the way the Star Wars Expanded Universe felt.
Nonetheless, the Star Trek novels and comics have evidently served as inspiration for a lot of things in the Star Trek movies and TV shows, with SNW being inspired by the novels and comics set during Pike's tenure as commanding officer of the Enterprise.
Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back soon for more reviews in the near future. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
.jpg)
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment