If You Don't Like "Made Up/Non-Canon" Characters, Why Do You Play?
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Serious, non-trolly question, as if you're using licensed material it's guaranteed you'll be dealing with non-canon characters. From novels to comics to games, it's it's pretty much guaranteed you'll be getting non-canon characters in those.
Even non-canon versions of those characters who are canon abound in the novels and comics. Kirk and Spock being explicitly made lovers even made it past the editors for the first edition of Killing Time... Wish I still had mine, apparently it fetches a pretty penny these days!
We even had new central characters, with far more egregious faults than simply being an Augmented version of Jean-Luc Picard - Diane Carey's Lieutenant Piper first names may as well have been Mary Sue. And if you don't like musicals, you may want to take "How Much for Just the Planet" off your Amazon wish list (keep The Final Reflection though).
So why choose to play this game? It's entire premise leads to non-canon versions of the characters from the outset, along with costumed versions (which I actually do find to be stupid, I mean, galactic temporal crisis? Why change out of fancy dress? I'm sure being dressed as 19th century midshipman will help repelling a Borg incursion, or is Q just putting the Q into Queer Eye?)
All I ask is there is some inventiveness and originality in the non-canon versions, and I look forward to maybe Borg Emperor Lore and his sidekick Corrupted Data (where Descent ended rather differently) rather than merely tacking on "Mirror Universe" or "Augment" onto an existing character with minimal explanation.
Non-canon tales, officially licensed or very much not licensed but bound in sellotape at conventions, kept Trek alive between the end of TOS and TMP being greenlit, so I'm pretty grateful for all the non-canon stuff, especially as much managed to be better fare than some of the later canon stories, and it's popularity ensured Trek was still a viable property to milk for cash when sci-fi became fashionable again and gave us some amazing new Trek. Plus Voyager and Enterprise too, should you be into that sort of thing
So yeah, I grok hammering for DB for any number of things, but non-canon versions of crew? That's been a thing since the first fanfic raised it's hastily scribbled and badly plotted head. If you don't like it, then, just why would you bother with 90% of licensed material?
Even non-canon versions of those characters who are canon abound in the novels and comics. Kirk and Spock being explicitly made lovers even made it past the editors for the first edition of Killing Time... Wish I still had mine, apparently it fetches a pretty penny these days!
We even had new central characters, with far more egregious faults than simply being an Augmented version of Jean-Luc Picard - Diane Carey's Lieutenant Piper first names may as well have been Mary Sue. And if you don't like musicals, you may want to take "How Much for Just the Planet" off your Amazon wish list (keep The Final Reflection though).
So why choose to play this game? It's entire premise leads to non-canon versions of the characters from the outset, along with costumed versions (which I actually do find to be stupid, I mean, galactic temporal crisis? Why change out of fancy dress? I'm sure being dressed as 19th century midshipman will help repelling a Borg incursion, or is Q just putting the Q into Queer Eye?)
All I ask is there is some inventiveness and originality in the non-canon versions, and I look forward to maybe Borg Emperor Lore and his sidekick Corrupted Data (where Descent ended rather differently) rather than merely tacking on "Mirror Universe" or "Augment" onto an existing character with minimal explanation.
Non-canon tales, officially licensed or very much not licensed but bound in sellotape at conventions, kept Trek alive between the end of TOS and TMP being greenlit, so I'm pretty grateful for all the non-canon stuff, especially as much managed to be better fare than some of the later canon stories, and it's popularity ensured Trek was still a viable property to milk for cash when sci-fi became fashionable again and gave us some amazing new Trek. Plus Voyager and Enterprise too, should you be into that sort of thing
So yeah, I grok hammering for DB for any number of things, but non-canon versions of crew? That's been a thing since the first fanfic raised it's hastily scribbled and badly plotted head. If you don't like it, then, just why would you bother with 90% of licensed material?
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Mirror Next Generation crew? Yes. Makes sense and fits in with canon because mirror counterparts had to exist based on all the source material. Again, something like Augment Picard, no. Doesn't fit and can't seamlessly weave in and around the source material.
An with other licensed products where new characters might be created, it's going to be things like books that have a story. This is a game that has no story. It has window dressing to give the illusion of a story, but it's a card collecting game, not a new Star Trek novel.
So why do I play? Because I enjoy Star Trek, not because I enjoy, "Let's see how un-Star Trek we can get"
Last paragraph sums up my thoughts. Very well said Althea
“This is a game that has no story” runs 100% counter to DB’s statement that Timelines is a source for new Trek stories on a weekly basis and the existence of Episodes 1 through 8.
I also fail to see how Augment versions of Picard, Riker, and O’Brien are “un-Star Trek as we can get.” They come from an alternate timeline where likely the Eugenics Wars never happened, therefore never instilling humanity with a deep-seated aversion to genetic modification. How is that not 1) fascinating, and 2) appropriate to Trek?
I understand that people get upset when opportunities to have beloved canon versions of crew are missed in favor of a DB-created non-canon version. Personally, I would rather have seen Brian Boru O’Brien than an Augment version but I recognize that Augment Commander O’Brien fits the narrative they have created far better than an O’Brien dressed like an ancient warrior king. Barring any issues with obtaining rights in the future, I am sure we’ll see that O’Brien someday and am not reaching for the pitchforks because it simply isn’t necessary.
And I don't think that was always the case. 23rd Century Martok, for all the bad artwork, was an attempt at putting another perspective into Tribbleations. COP Founder Picard was this whole Second Battle of New York arc. (Which they got slammed for by the Archer fanbase.). Convergence Day Quark celebrated the anniversary of the game.
But now, yeah the non-canon created by DB we will see is mostly Augment... at least the Assimilated ones in the Borg event (looking at LaForge) made some sense in the mega storyline.
And I don't think we've had more than Janeway as far as Mirror and that was only during the Mega. (As far as non-canon specifically created by DB, the rest of the event was mostly non-canon from the comics which were not created by DB)
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
As a big Trek fan, I certainly would PREFER all canon characters, but at the same time without the Mirror Picards and Mirror Troi releases I never would have discovered those comics which I really enjoyed reading.
I think DB releases enough Canon and enough Non-Canon that everyone alike should have enough to not start their own Bell Riots BUT people these days like to have problems with things, it's just the way things are
First off, I've read the Broken Mirror comics, and overall enjoyed them. I was aware of them before the mega event, but knowing the event was coming, did actually encourage me to purchase them. I do think DB was intentionally trolling us with Mirror Janeway, but it was still pretty funny in my opinion.
They haven't touched them yet (and might not because they are Kelvin related), but there are comics (Star Trek: Boldly Go) out there that have a story arc (I.D.I.C.) involving alternate versions of TOS crew (I believe it has a vaguely similar concept to Timelines). One basically has gender swapped the characters.
Another has the crew as all androids.
As much as I generally dislike the Kelvin-verse, I would be perfectly fine seeing these used as well. It's a game based on fiction. I just try to enjoy it.
[edit]
Now where is our non-canon "Tuvok riding a Giraffe" ....
For the canon characters, you can watch the shows to see who they are and what they are about. Even for the non-canon Mirror TNG crew, you can look at the comics.
For the rest of them of the non-canon lot, you could maybe find a few lines of event dialogue reproduced on the wiki if you were willing to follow multiple links to first locate the character version on the (player-run) wiki and then click through to the event pages that they were released in.
Does this invalidate them? I don't know. But it certainly makes them... lesser... than the canon crew in the game.
Licensed products deviate from canon all the time. There are - literally - thousands of pages many of us have enjoyed across the decades that only fit in the canon with the help of a galaxy-sized crowbar (I still have a Star Trek Chronology from the 90's somewhere where there gave a good effort though), an awful lot of mental editing of material and would still leave a bucketload of suspension of belief.
No one, ever, is going to try and stick "Black Fire" as part of canon unless they love the idea of Spock playing at Jack Sparrow to the point of insanity.
And I disagree that the source material doesn't open those doors - "Parallels" popped that genie out back in the early 90's by having Worf go all Sliders on us, and that was merely an extension of the possibilities given to us by "Mirror, Mirror."
Augment Picard? Yup, logical extension of Worf's Excellent Adventure.
Now this is a failing on DB's part, you're quite correct it's a card collecting game, however it does have a story - albeit a rather threadbare one, and one only really used to bookend events and drive 'episodes', but that's a limitation of the medium too. All games have stories, but you can generally go back and replay them, and if you can't, then you'd better be churning out new material on a frequent basis.
That's fair enough, but as I've tried to display, non-canon has been part of the DNA of the franchise since day one.
Non-canon crew isn't un-Star Trek - quite the opposite. For me the most un-Star Trek aspects are some of the shuttle missions descriptions.
I wasn't aware of those, may have to track them as a bit of reading material for some forthcoming transatlantic flights. I've been a bit put off the comics with how they decided to crossover with Green Lantern, even though it's hardly the first time Trek has crossed over with comics - they've met the X-Men more than once, and it's been intimated that one of Spock's human ancestors was an ex circus-performer who ran around with a man dressed as a bat...
Although if DB did bring in Green Lantern Kirk, I suspect the board would go into full meltdown.
This I can wholeheartedly get behind, it's a really valid point, and maybe something for DB to expand upon and potentially cross-sell to other media. I'd certainly be interested in backstories.
For the Augment versions, there was a novella from the Myriad Universes collections set in a reality where Khan conquered Earth and some non-Augments set out in the Botany Bay and were discovered by Julian Bashir. A mirror of Space Seed really.
Been years since I read it (I had north of a 100 trek paperbacks which made their way to a charity shop when I acquired a Kindle, which I'd intended to re-purchase, however getting married put paid to that!) but it certainly didn't flesh out a whole universe of new characters.
I wouldn't agree with it invalidating them, but making them lesser? That's a good description and a reasonable critique.
I gotta admit, that meltdown sounds too good to miss! GL Kirk it is!
Augment Picard is well done, and I had no issues, augment Riker is hilariously sourced from the Ice Pirates movie poster, and he's fine but kinda cheesey for that fact.
Things like potato martok though are aggravating. The card makes bo sense, as if he is supposed to be Martok gone back to that time period, he's about 100 lbs too light, If he is Martok if he was from that time period, he has head ridges that don't fit, and if he is supposed to be Martok as a supposed young man who always had ridges, well he is missing an eye way early. When it was all pointed out, DB's art director just blamed it on the TOS klingon uniforms. (Meanwhile a beautiful 3* Koloth was released the same day)
I can deal with non-canon stuff if it's done with care and done well. Cobbled together randomness that doesn't make sense is frustrating, especially when there are canon alternatives that would even fit the supposed story better
This is an excellent point. Even the archived text on the wiki from events (when non-canon characters are featured in events) doesn’t really help expand on the backgrounds of said characters. It would be nice if DB would put together a paragraph or more for each crew member. It would be a large job and would it be in-game or on DB’s website (or added to the wiki), though I think it would be worth doing all the same.
In fact, be grateful it isn't much weirder than it is. The potential for all sorts of crazy is there, with enough imagination..
Check out our website to find out more:
https://wiki.tenforwardloungers.com/
I'm not going to stop playing or anything, but I am rolling my eyes when I see them and no force in the verse could get me to pay for them.
If anything, I'm actually looking forward to a non-canon legendary for this week, as it basically gives me a week off from the events (after I claim all the thresholds, of course).
The reason I enjoy collecting most of these crew is that I remember them from the show/movies. They have dimension/meaning/context for me as a result.
I remember when Q played the trumpet on the Bridge of the Enterprise D with his mariachi band; that scene resonates with me, and so does the character. So it's fun to have him in my collected crew.
I don't remember or have any context for Augment Picard. Who is this guy? How did Picard get genetically enhanced? So, while it's fun to think about the "what if" scenario of Picard being an Augment, it doesn't resonate with me at all.
Mirror Picard worked semi-okay for me because, while not from the show, the comics with that character were out at the time the character was introduced to the game and I was able to look them up online and get a sense of the character. That at least made it interesting.
Also, if the character is established with some sense of story within the game, I can buy into it. COP Founder Picard, for example, came about because of the in-game story.
But please, DB, don't just introduce random mashups because you can as part of a pack. I don't want to see a Cardassian Archer or a Xindi Picard or an Assimilated Spock. There are LOTS of crew from the shows/movies that could still be introduced to the game.
And if you have to create someone new, do it within an event and flesh out who this is and how they came to be.
Captain Level: 95
VIP Level: 12
Unique Crew Immortalized: 525
Collections Completed: Vulcan, Ferengi, Borg, Romulan, Cardassian, Uncommon, Rare, Veteran, Common, Engineered, Physician, Innovator, Inspiring, Diplomat, Jury Rigger, Gauntlet Legends
Boy did you get lucky....
First, there's the matter of heft.
When I look at a card like Enemy Lines Sisko, that carries some wight - because there's a story behind it. Avery Brooks' little hand tremor as he contemplated killing Keevan, moments after the death of Remata'Klan and his unit, his emotion-choked words, Keevan's callous indifference. Even a more generic card - Dr. Pulaski, or a one-off like Berlinghoff Rasmussen - comes from a character that had some time and effort put into its creation, and which was brought to life by an actor whose soul job was to sell you on the reality of that character.
The nature of Timelines - unlike, say, one of the Star Trek licensed novels - means that it can't provide that kind of anchoring and significance. 21st Century Martok was fine in theory, because he had a story purpose, but they've rerun his event three times and I *still* had to go look up what the plotline was. And when I tell you the plotline - a war between modern Klingons and 23rd century Klingons - I still can't tell you what caused the war, which side the various Klingon characters in the game came down on, or any other detail.
With an existing character, Timelines doesn't need to provide the anchoring story weight: they can borrow it from whichever TV show/movie did all that work. And they almost have to, because the way Timelines has been constructed means the game has great difficulty doing that itself.
That leads to the second issue: trust.
It would always be hard for a mobile game to sell new characters, but it would be even harder with DB's track record. When I say 21st Century Martok, the first thing that comes to mind is the botched art. The question of if he's in the 23rd century, why does he have ridges and why is he missing an eye, questions which Timelines couldn't be bothered to think about, much less answer.
This ties to the matter of flippancy. On the whole, I don't mind DB's little jokes - Wesley volunteering to go out the airlock, to pick one example. But it's hard to go from 'haha, Wesley was terrible and now he's dead' to 'this cool new character is relevant to the story and you should care enough to spend money on them.'
The one exception to this that I can think of were the aviator versions of Yar and Mayweather. Timelines made an effort to tie them to a larger story, the art was done beautifully, the characters were respectfully handled.
If all the DB original characters were treated with the same care and detail, I'd shut my mouth and enjoy the ride. But instead you have Augment versions of characters arriving without explanation, Federation Founder Picard showing up because DB hates Archer, and the like.
Basically, it's less a flat condemnation of new characters than it is of a company that doesn't care enough to put the necessary work into them.
There are likely intellectual property reasons why they aren't regularly pulling characters from books and comics.
The one that bothers me the most, I think, is Mirror Janeway. Because they shoved her into that event just to show the forums who's boss.
And can I be the first to say keep the Abrams movies Trek knockoffs out of here!
That said, there are still so many more canon crew (albeit minor characters) that aren’t present, especially if we’re considering episode-specific versions of crew members, as in this ds9 event. It would be nice to see more of them.
Non-canon isn’t always going to make sense, but canon doesn’t always make sense either - Mirror Ezri Tegan, really? Some random unjoined trill just happens to be on the same ship as all these other mirror versions of ds9 crew? This is characteristic of nearly all mirror characters, but they’re still enjoyable.
The more Trek, the better I say!*
*This statement does not apply to JJ-verse Trek
That is possible but anyone who wouldnt let db use their product is foolish. By having those characters in game then people would buy the books or comics those characters came from.
It is indeed a good point, Elynduil. A big part of what endears a character to me is their backstory, their depicted personality, their sense of humor/honor/integrity, their shades of gray. With many "non-canon" characters, it is harder to make as personal of a connection with the character, because you have to imagine much of that on your own, rather than having something more concrete to glom onto — unless you have access to a history & narrative for them which fills in those gaps.
Someone posted another thread today asking about the storylines in events and whether anyone actually reads them — and personally, I'd rather see the STT writers put to task creating backstories for the characters who we don't know that much about. I mean, it wouldn't need to be the length of your average bio on Memory Alpha, but a few paragraphs that flesh out certain characters would go a long way toward us players feeling more of an affinity for said characters, I believe.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Yeah exactly. "The Federation's gone, the Borg are everywhere! We're one of the last ships left!" We get one look at Borgverse Riker and like three lines, but he feels completely valid. Compare Augment Riker, who I really don't mind the art but I still have no idea who he is, he's got no in-game bio at all. Like, what's his story? Khan's takeover of the Enterprise succeeded in that timeline, and a century later Riker's backing a revolution of the mundanes against the other augment 'masters'? I honestly really like the alternate timeline idea, it just seems like the game doesn't make an effort to present those characters in a way that can stand up to the canon crew who've already got their weight of all their tv appearances in their favour.
And that's why we have Mirror Picard, but I imagine there are a lot of older works which publishers aren't really intersted in promoting now, and tracking down and obtaining rights to individual characters in old books may be more trouble than DB is willing to put forth. I think that's why we have Commander Nevesa who has 4 different names depending on which book you're reading or game you're playing.