Star Trek: DTI: Forgotten History
Page 29
James Kirk smiled. “So let’s focus on building the future instead.”
Acknowledgments
Forgotten History is both a sequel and a prequel to my previous novel, Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations—Watching the Clock. Readers curious about the scientific basis for the principles of time travel depicted herein may learn more in the acknowledgments of that book or on its annotations page at http://home.fuse.net/ChristopherLBennett/DTI_Annot.html. This novel is also both sequel and prequel to my debut novel, Star Trek: Ex Machina, whose post–Star Trek: The Motion Picture continuity I also revisited in Star Trek: Mere Anarchy—The Darkness Drops Again.
Agents Lucsly and Dulmur were introduced in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations” (script by Ronald D. Moore and René Echevarria, story by Ira Steven Behr and Hans Beimler and Robert Hewitt Wolfe). The timing and circumstances of the DTI’s formation were informed by the two DTI-related stories in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II: “Gods, Fate, and Fractals” by William Leisner and “Almost, But Not Quite” by Dayton Ward. The Chronal Assessment Committee was mentioned in All Our Yesterdays: The Time Travel Sourcebook from Last Unicorn Games, which also loosely inspired the Simok character.
The episodes of Star Trek from which this novel’s events are drawn include “The Naked Time” (written by John D. F. Black), “Miri” (written by Adrian Spies), “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” (written by D. C. Fontana), “The City on the Edge of Forever” (written by Harlan Ellison), “Amok Time” (written by Theodore Sturgeon), “Mirror, Mirror” (written by Jerome Bixby), “Assignment: Earth” (teleplay by Art Wallace, story by Gene Roddenberry and Art Wallace), “The Tholian Web” (written by Judy Burns and Chet Richards), and “All Our Yesterdays” (written by Jean Lisette Aroeste). The episodes of Star Trek: The Animated Series (TAS) informing this novel include “Yesteryear” (written by D. C. Fontana), “The Time Trap” (written by Joyce Perry), and “The Jihad” (written by Stephen Kandel). Grey, Aleek-Om, and Erikson are from “Yesteryear.” Gabler is from several TAS episodes, notably “Once Upon a Planet” (written by Chuck Menville). For their first names, and for the background of the Vedala civilization, I have drawn selectively on Alan Dean Foster’s Star Trek Log series, which adapted and expanded on TAS. Heather Peterson is from Deep Space Nine—Invasion!: Time’s Enemy by L. A. Graf. Watley is from “Trials and Tribble-ations.” Kirk saving the Pelosians from extinction and the five-year mission ending in 2270 were established in Star Trek: Voyager’s “Q2” (teleplay by Robert Doherty, story by Kenneth Biller), and Ex Machina established additional details of those events, which I expand on here.
The name Robert L. Comsol for the commanding officer of Starfleet during the 2250s–60s was seen on the General Order 7 paperwork in “The Menagerie, Part 1” (written by Gene Roddenberry), and also referenced in dialogue in that episode. Thanks to Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki, for bringing this to my attention. The name Satak for the captain of the Intrepid comes from the Star Trek Concordance by Bjo Trimble, most likely based on an early script draft for “The Immunity Syndrome” (written by Robert Sabaroff). The name Barak for the Klingon captain played by Mark Lenard in Star Trek: The Motion Picture is based on Harold Livingston’s 1977 first-draft script for “In Thy Image,” the television pilot episode that was reworked into Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Tunzos and his love of meat are from a 1980 Star Trek newspaper comic strip storyline by Thomas Warkentin.
Thanks to Doug Drexler and Rick Sternbach for technical input. My portrayal of the innards of the pre-refit Enterprise is based heavily on Drexler’s cutaway schematic at http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/1701-cutaway/. A version of this schematic appeared onscreen in Star Trek: Enterprise’s “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II.” I have also attempted to reconcile the onscreen engine room and the Drexler cutaway with the engineering locations depicted in The Animated Series. My description of the main energizer monitor section combines the engineering computer room seen in “Beyond the Farthest Star” and other episodes with the small engineering set seen in “The Alternative Factor,” and my description of the warp reactor core blends the core layout from the Drexler cutaway with the alleged “antimatter nacelle” interior from TAS: “One of Our Planets Is Missing” (written by Marc Daniels). The timeship’s service corridors are based on those from “In a Mirror, Darkly.” The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda provided insight into warp technology. The dual deflector/force-field defense system of the refit Enterprise was established onscreen and in production notes for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The limitations of ringship propulsion were explained by Michael Okuda in the centerfold to the Star Trek: Ships of the Line 2011 Calendar. The Capella-class survey vessel is a design from Masao Okazaki’s Starfleet Museum website at www.starfleet-museum.org.
Gary Seven’s second encounter with Kirk’s crew was depicted in the novel Assignment: Eternity by Greg Cox, and Clan Ru’s raid on the Guardian planet is from First Frontier by Diane Carey and Doctor James I. Kirkland. The Skagway mission occurred in The Rings of Time, also by Greg Cox.
About the Author
CHRISTOPHER L. BENNETT’s tenure as a distinct entity within the space-time continuum commenced several months after the Enterprise crew first encountered Gary Seven. Nearly half a Jovian year later, he discovered Star Trek and fell in love with space, science, and science fiction. After earning bachelor’s degrees in physics and history, he went on to author such critically acclaimed novels as Star Trek: Ex Machina (January 2005), Star Trek: Titan—Orion’s Hounds (January 2006), Star Trek: The Next Generation—The Buried Age (July 2007), Star Trek: Titan—Over a Torrent Sea (March 2009), and Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations—Watching the Clock (May 2011). He visited alternate timelines in Places of Exile in Myriad Universes: Infinity’s Prism (July 2008) and “Empathy” in Mirror Universe: Shards and Shadows (January 2009). Shorter works include Star Trek: S.C.E. #29: Aftermath (July 2003), Star Trek: Mere Anarchy: The Darkness Drops Again (February 2007), and the e-novella Star Trek: Typhon Pact: The Struggle Within (October 2011), as well as short stories in the anniversary anthologies Constellations (original series’ fortieth), The Sky’s the Limit (TNG’s twentieth), Prophecy and Change (DS9’s tenth), and Distant Shores (VGR’s tenth). Beyond Star Trek, he has penned the novels X-Men: Watchers on the Walls (May 2006) and Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder (January 2008) as well as several original novelettes in Analog and other science fiction magazines. His first original novel, Only Super-human, will be published in fall 2012 by Tor Books. More information and annotations can be found at http://home.fuse.net/ChristopherLBennett/, and the author’s blog can be found at http://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/.
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