Star Trek has a huge library of additional reading in the form of a vast array of novels.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 Listen, we as writers, we love to read, okay?
00:03 And sometimes books don't always get the love that they should,
00:06 despite the amount of stuff that's going on in them, and I'm specifically talking about
00:11 Star Trek Beta Canon. So, without further ado, I'm Sean Ferdig for Trek Culture,
00:18 and here are the 10 biggest secrets revealed in Star Trek novels.
00:22 Number 10, Trlaine's true nature, Q squared.
00:28 Peter David's novel finally confirms what most people sort of assumed since the arrival of John
00:34 De Lancie's Q, namely that Trlaine, from the original series episode "The Squire of Gothos",
00:40 was in fact a member of the Continuum. As I say, this had been assumed for quite a long time in
00:45 Canon, but this was the first time it was actually out and outstated, and not only was he a member of
00:50 the Continuum, but he was one who had gone rogue. In the novel, Q seeks Picard's help to help track
00:57 down and basically take down Trlaine. William Campbell's Trlaine set the template for a lot
01:04 of what the Q would become afterwards, so to see this finally confirmed in the novel was a great
01:11 way of tying the original series episode into future versions. Number nine, Kirk's middle name
01:17 and a new type of Klingon ship, Star Trek The Motion Picture novelization.
01:22 Gene Roddenberry wrote the full novel of Star Trek The Motion Picture, with a story credit going to
01:28 Alan Dean Foster as well. In this novelization, it's the first time that Tiberius was confirmed
01:35 as Kirk's middle name. You might be sitting there going "Sean, you absolute idiot, that was said in
01:41 the animated series!" and you would be right, but you must consider that in 1979 the animated series
01:48 was not considered canon. That is because Gene Roddenberry kind of walked through life going
01:54 "yeah, I'll follow that rule today, maybe that rule tomorrow that rule can go and flip itself."
01:58 So this was Roddenberry finally confirming "yeah, right, Tiberius's name." This was explained away
02:05 in the novel that Kirk's grandfather had this obsession with ancient Rome, and particularly
02:11 the Caesars of Rome, so this is where Tiberius came from. It's also the first time that Kettinga
02:17 was confirmed as the name of the Klingon battlecruiser that first began appearing in
02:22 The Motion Picture and onwards, which was of course the D-7 beefed up with a motion picture budget.
02:29 Where was Geordi? Star Trek Picard The Last Best Hope
02:33 Dr. Una McCormack's novel is a prequel to Star Trek Picard's first season, and it deals with
02:40 what led up to the synth attack on Mars. We get a little bit of backstory expanding on Bruce
02:46 Maddox in this novel, we get to see a little bit more of Raffi and understand what led to
02:52 the breakdown of her marriage and her relationship with her son. Now what we also get is the crucial
02:57 bit of information of where was Geordi when everything was going down. Now as we know,
03:02 Geordi the Forge was in control of the entire mechanical side of the rescue mission to evacuate
03:08 Romulus. You would think he'd be a fairly large player, so where the heck was he in season one?
03:13 And that is something that still annoys me about the first season of Picard. You could have at
03:17 least shown the man surviving. Uhura's First Name
03:22 Star Trek II Biographies William Rossler wrote a tie-in novel when
03:27 The Wrath of Khan was being released. Effectively, it was a biography book with a breakdown of each
03:32 of the main characters. Now this was the first time in print that Neota was confirmed as Uhura's
03:39 First Name. There had been a couple of different names offered as her First Name before this,
03:45 but as has been stated on screen in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek 2009, Neota is now the accepted First
03:53 Name for this character. But it was all the way back in 1982 that we actually got this confirmed
03:59 in print. When Rossler proposed this, he actually went to Roddenberry, who in turn said, "Look,
04:05 it's fine with me, but you've got to square that with Nichelle Nichols before anyone accepts that
04:10 as the name." And so that's exactly what he did. He went to Nichelle Nichols, he explained why he
04:16 had chosen Neota, she agreed and was delighted with this, and from that point on, Neota Uhura
04:23 was confirmed as her name. Number 6. The Tomed Incident - Serpent Among the Ruins
04:28 David George III wrote what led up to the beginnings of the Treaty of Algeron,
04:34 and he also gave us a little bit of expanded story on the Enterprise B and Captain John
04:39 Harriman. As it stands, the only canon appearance of the Enterprise B and John
04:44 Harriman was in the opening of Star Trek Generations, in which the Maiden Voyage saw
04:49 Kirk sucked out into the Nexus. This novel expands on that and says that basically,
04:54 Harriman struggled throughout his career to kind of get over that. Certainly wasn't his fault what
04:59 happened to Kirk, but still, if the most famous officer in Starfleet basically gets sucked out
05:05 into space on your watch, that tends to stain a name. From this point on, he actually ended up
05:10 getting further and further involved in Romulan activity in the Federation, particularly as it
05:17 was building up toward an escalation of hostilities. The Tomed Incident was designed to effectively
05:24 quash this buildup of hostilities because it doesn't look good for Starfleet when you say
05:30 it like this. Basically, they faked a massacre. They organized that it looked like the Romulans
05:36 had destroyed thousands of Federation lives, which basically got them to back down. This led to the
05:42 Treaty of Algeron, which of course led to the Federation not being able to develop cloaking
05:46 technology and also a de-escalation of hostilities and the Romulans disappearing for about half a
05:52 century after that. Number five, Sulu's first name, the Entropy Effect. Vonda V. McIntyre
06:00 introduced Hikaru as Sulu's first name in this novel. This is set just after the events of the
06:06 motion picture. We have a beautifully long-haired Sulu on the cover of the novel as well. Hikaru
06:12 would only be said for the first time in Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country, which followed
06:18 more than 10 years after this. This was being used in print for the decade leading up to the
06:24 release of The Undiscovered Country. Now, this was good because much like Uhura, he was just
06:29 Sulu for years and years and years. It's like, do we get to give him a name? Do we just call him
06:36 Mister? The novel, while canon, wasn't actually confirmed to be using his real name until Star
06:43 Trek VI was released. Much like Star Trek II biographies, this was a nice tie-in between
06:48 printed media and the visual media, which meant kind of encouraging readers to go and read these
06:56 novels to see that there's a lot of information out there in them that might not necessarily have
07:01 the time to make it into the movies and television series. Number four, how did the Stargazer survive
07:08 the Buried Age? Christopher L. Bennett wrote the story of how the physical Stargazer ship managed
07:14 to survive the Battle of Maxia when everyone thought it was lost. When the Ferengi managed
07:19 to cripple the ship, Picard gave the order to abandon the ship, which was then, it was their
07:25 belief, set on a collision course with a gas giant. All of the surviving crew managed to escape in
07:30 escape pods, get out into space, and the last thing they saw was the Constellation-class ship
07:35 heading straight toward the atmosphere of this planet. Everyone gave it up as lost, and perhaps
07:40 a little understandably at that point. Now by a sheer stroke of luck, what happened was that the
07:45 ship bounced off the atmosphere of the planet and was then left adrift in space. Damon Bok then
07:50 arrived in his ship, discovering that his son had been killed in the battle. He tractor-beamed the
07:55 Constellation-class ship and began plotting his revenge against Picard and the rest of the crew
08:00 of the Stargazer. Number three, Garak's training and backstory, A Stitch in Time. While playing the
08:06 part of Garak in Star Trek Deep Space Nine, actor Andrew J. Robinson kept a bible along the way that
08:12 he used to make sure that he understood his character's motivations, where he was coming from,
08:18 and you know, different facets of his background. Once the show wrapped, he actually was approached
08:25 to expand this into a novel. A Stitch in Time was the result of this, and what that offers the
08:30 audience is a lot more about Garak that we didn't get to see on screen. We discover a lot of his
08:36 posting on Romulus, where he was posing as a gardener. We discover his training in the Obsidian
08:42 Order and his relationship with the Nabirantane. We also discover that he had somewhat of a
08:47 relationship with Dukat years before, insofar as he was responsible for the death of Dukat's father.
08:53 Perhaps somewhat understandable then that Dukat wouldn't be a massive fan of Garak. This novel
08:58 is essential reading for understanding this character. Number two, Captain Erica Hernandez's
09:05 fate, Star Trek Destiny. David Mack's Destiny trilogy is, in my opinion, essential reading for
09:12 any fan of Star Trek, and there's quite a few reasons for this. One is that it's a fantastic
09:17 crossover event where you get to see what's happening with Voyager, the Enterprise, E,
09:23 Ezri Dax is captain of the Aventine. There's an awful lot going on. But what it also does is it
09:29 offers a resolution to the story of Captain Erica Hernandez and the SS Columbia. We discover that
09:35 the Columbia travelled through a wormhole that ended up killing most of the crew, while Hernandez
09:41 and some of the crew survived. They were guests of the Coeliar, who were a race of immensely
09:48 powerful aliens who have a very direct connection with the Borg. There's a lot of time travel going
09:54 on. There's a lot of agelessness going on. But what we discover is that Hernandez is unable to
10:00 return to Starfleet after her encounter with the Coeliar. She in fact remains with them as
10:06 sort of an ageless being. In a way, it's a sad ending that she doesn't get to see any of her
10:12 friends and family anymore. But it's also similar to Decker's encounter with V'ger. She goes on to
10:19 effectively become a human ambassador with the Coeliar that allows them to help save Starfleet
10:26 at a critical moment in Federation history. It's quite a cathartic ending for the character who
10:32 was introduced in the fourth season of Enterprise, but just surely that there wasn't enough time,
10:37 we didn't get to see enough of her. Number one, the early years, the autobiography of Katherine
10:44 Janeway. Dr. Una McCormack returns on this list. She wrote the autobiography of Katherine Janeway,
10:50 which is just a fantastic novel, which explores much of the backstory to Janeway before she takes
10:59 over command of Voyager. Now, while it does discuss some of the events on Voyager, it's
11:03 really better for giving us a greater picture of Janeway's life pre-taking over as captain,
11:09 and particularly a lot of what went on between her and Mark. For example, after reading this novel,
11:14 the loss of Mark and the breakdown of their relationship due to being stranded in the
11:18 Delta Quadrant, it cuts a little bit deeper because you can see that they really did love
11:23 each other. We also get a much greater understanding of her motivations based on her
11:28 father's career and death, and understanding between her and her sister and her and her mother.
11:32 If you get a chance, you must absolutely pick up the audiobook version of this, which is read
11:37 by Kate Mulgrew. Seems like a no-brainer, but it seems like the only way that you should really
11:43 enjoy this particular story. Combine the audiobook with what you discover in it, and you get the most
11:51 complete picture of Katherine Janeway that really can be done. That's everything for our list today,
11:56 guys. If you reckon we missed anything, please let me know in the comments below. Please don't
12:00 forget to like, share and subscribe, and remember you can catch us over on Twitter @TrekCulture.
12:05 You can catch myself, Sean Ferrick, @jeanferrick on Twitter and Instagram as well. Whatever you
12:11 do, guys, look after yourselves. Until I'm talking to you again, live long and prosper.