That would be, respectively, none of it and all of it. Contrary to popular myth, things like Babylon 5 where an entire series was plotted out meticulously or Jim Butcher's Dresden Files where he had 20 books all mostly plotted, is VERY VERY MUCH the exception to the rule. Most of us are making it up as we go, and even if there's a vague plan, it rarely survives contact with the enemy, as it were, and it changes radically by the time it's executed. A lot of times you don't want to tie yourselves to a big-ass long-term plan because then Future You is stuck with some dopey-ass idea that Past You had and you have to execute it. Much better to keep it vague. To give a New Frontier example, when Peter wrote House of Cards, he had no idea what actually happened on the Grissom when Calhoun served there. It was, in essence, a placeholder which would be a springboard for Future Peter to tell a story when the opportunity presented itself. Said opportunity came in the Captain's Table miniseries.
Hey fun fact: Babylon 5's 5-year plan as JMS started writing season 1 is REALLY REALLY different from what the show ended up being (cf this write-up) so really JMS was a lot closer to the "plan doesn't survive contact with the enemy" version than people usually think... Which really just makes your point stronger.
Thanks KRAD! that makes Once Burned even more impressive. 9 – Dark Allies I liked this book a lot, perhaps New Frontier alternates between good even-numbered entries and weaker odd-numbered ones? Is that a thing Star Trek can do? Also, I’m going to suggest something that NF does not often get accused of here, This book felt a bit small. The Redeemers are a nasty piece of work, Trek often presents villains who are likeable in their own way, often to make the point that they are just misunderstood. You have the likes of Weyoun and Gul Dukat who are certainly not nice people, yet you kind of enjoy being in their company at the same time. But these guys are, irredeemable. The Redeemers are threatened by something called The Black Mass, it could be a natural phenomenon, it could be a lifeform. All great Star Trek fodder. So they turn to their greatest enemy, Captain Calhoun to sort it out, but not before taking a planet hostage to make sure he does. It all feels like it could be the season finale but the scale seems off. There feels like there should be enough here to stretch it out over another book instead it feels somewhat rushed. It was reading the reference to Riker in Chapter 4 that I realised Goodreads had failed me and this (and The Quiet Place) were set after Double Or Nothing. and Double Time. It’s interesting to see Calhoun’s relationship with Xyon and I’m curious what will happen next after how the book leaves things, Both presumably are left assuming the other is dead. I read this book at work and would happily have skipped the Double Helix entry and gone straight to The Excalibur trilogy to find out how that cliffhanger resolves!
FWIW, John Ordover said later that branding all of Double Helix as "TNG" was a mistake. Thinking back twenty-five years... oh, jeez, it's been that long?!?... I thought it wasn't a bad decision with solid reasoning behind it -- the TNG novels sold best at the time, none of the novels with characters from other series were representative of what those series were -- but the gains on the one side might not have fully captured the losses on the other.
New Frontier is the only one that really suffered for it, since none of the other series were serialized at the time (I assume, I never went back and read the other five books). As it turned out, you could've skipped the other unnumbered seventh New Frontier novel, Once Burned, with a lot less confusion over the long-term story, even though that was the one labeled "New Frontier." Well, maybe it would've been just as confusing that Calhoun suddenly had an extra back-up first officer who was also his ex.
Should do a TrekLit bookclub where everyone rereads Double Helix series from beginning to end as it mainly only appears in New Frontier threads or "Worse Book" threads. Be interesting to cover the series on its own.
Not that interesting. Really, almost any miniseries or ongoing series would be a better choice. I think the only one worse than Double Helix is New Earth? Maybe Day of Honor.
Hm, "rank the John Ordover event miniseries" would be a fun thread concept. (Which is worse, New Earth or Double Helix? I keep going back and forth here.)
Double Or Nothing I’ve not read the rest of the Double Helix novels and didn’t feel like I’d missed anything for it. I remember reading a review in Star Trek Monthly describing this novel as being like a Bond movie with Calhoun as Bond and Nechayev as M. For some reason I had misremembered that as being a review of Once Burned and spent much of that novel wondering when that would happen. There is a gag fairly early on during the battle with Sela where upon seeing Riker, she orders her crew to Fire at Will. I can’t believe no one has made that joke earlier, it tickled me. Riker getting to Captain the Excalibur was fun and it’s always great to see Calhoun and Picard spend time together. I was worried that this would take us away from the ongoing NF plot but we saw some interesting character growth and events that tie in with later books.
I got so damn tired of those gimmicky crossovers. I'll be predictable here for those who remember the old days. Double Helix was bad... but it only had one Diane Carey novel, so for my money it was less bad than New Earth,
I can almost go along with that, because the middle books were repetitive and not the best work by any of their authors, whereas Carey was actually excited about doing a he-man libertarian anti-Federation fantasy and put some work into her books.