That's Taking Continuity Too Far

Star Trek: The Badlands Books 1 and 2 (1999)
Pocket Books
Susan Wright, author

This isn't the first time I've discussed prose novels. In fact, I've done it here, here, here and even here. But all of those instances were prose novels about comic book characters and their adventures.

While the various incarnations of Star Trek have all existed at one time or another in comics form, they are first and foremost a television and film medium. So this is still kind of a departure, and I admit that. But I wanted to talk about these books because of what I didn't care for about them, and it's a problem that crops up in comics from time to time, so there's still a bit of a connection. Besides, it's April Fool's Day, I've got no prank for you, so something different seemed in order.

After publishing many, many prose adventures for the various Star Trek incarnations for a number of years, Pocket Books hit upon the idea to publish novels that brought a common theme to each of the Trek franchises. As far as I know, the first experiment with this idea was the "Invasion!" series of prose novels in 1996. In the first book, the classic Enterprise crew from The Original Series responds to a distress call from the Klingons only to find the advance fleet of a much larger invasion force bent on conquering the known universe. The Original Series crew manages to throw a big enough monkey wrench into the invasion plans that the larger attack is halted for a number of decades, but the subsequent three novels all show the later Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager crews again dealing with the same invaders in their own century. Later came a "Day of Honor" series of novels and a "Section 31" series doing something similar.

These two "Badlands" novels attempt much the same thing, but on a smaller scale. Instead of four separate novels, "The Badlands" includes two novellas each in just two paperbacks. In the first book, TOS crew is ordered to the Romulan Neutral Zone on a mission and encounters a previously unknown phenomenon that threatens the ship and crew. Seventy years later, TNG crew encounters the same phenomenon, only managing to survive using the knowledge of the threat gleaned by TOS crew and adding to it. Then a few years later, the maiden voyage of the USS Voyager brings that crew into contact with the phenomenon, and it is left to the crew of the Defiant from DS9 to finally bring an end to the threat once and for all, in the second novel.

Susan Wright, the author of these adventures makes a couple choices that interfered with my enjoyment of these books. First, she doesn't just set the events of her tales within the vague time frame of each Trek series; she pins down exactly when each of her four tales occurs within the larger Trek tapestry. Now, that may sound like a fan's fondest wish: to be given the answer to when does this adventure occur in the context of the others. But Wright takes things way too far, incorporating events from episodes of the various Trek shows into her stories. Entire scenes of the Voyager installment, for example, are lifted directly from the pilot episode of that series. But Wright gets bogged down with details from the shows in many places because of this. In the DS9 segment, for example, the events take place at a point in the television show when one of the main characters has been captured by Dominion forces and is being impersonated on DS9 by a doppelganger for the purposes of espionage. This introduces elements into that portion of the "Badlands" story that unnecessarily complicate Wright's story and are never resolved within her story because they must continue on in the TV program.

For me, personally, another issue was being less familiar with the later Trek franchises. I grew up watching TOS in reruns, and it holds my first and best Trek love. I have seen episodes of each of the later series and know most of the main characters, but I am not familiar with every detail of TNG, DS9 and Voyager continuities. With the level of detail from specific episodes Wright includes here, I was sometimes lost reading about events I had no outside knowledge of and for which Wright did not provide enough context within her own story.

Now, I am willing to concede that the level of show detail Wright incorporates into her stories might simply be a matter of personal tastes. Maybe I didn't like these books because I'm not as familiar with the other three Trek franchises, but a fan of them might think Wright's stories are just grand.

Here's a further complaint, though, that I feel can't be dismissed as personal taste. There are a number of errors and inaccuracies in TOS portion of Wright's "Badlands" story. For instance, she constantly has characters onboard the Enterprise speak with each other by first tapping on their shirt badges. In all three later Trek shows, technology has advanced to the point that a character's shirt badge was also a communications device, but in TOS, those shirt badges are simply fabric patches sewn onto the uniforms. While onboard the ship, characters converse by using a wall- or desk-mounted comm panel, and when away from the ship, they used handheld communicators. The comm badges haven't been invented yet in TOS universe. This is just one glaring inaccuracy in one portion of Wright's overall tale. It makes me wonder, however, how many inaccuracies were included in the other three portions that I didn't catch simply because I'm not as familiar with those programs.

Overall, I'm sorry to have to recommend giving these two Trek books a pass. There is too much good Trek out there to enjoy to waste time on these books.