Something for the Trek fans in my circles who either are watching Discovery or don’t mind spoilery stuff: I’ve just finished reading Desperate Hours, the first DIS tie-in novel. It’s set a year before the opening of DIS and a year after Pike’s Enterprise visits Talos IV (as seen in “The Cage”), and involves both the Shenzhou and the Enterprise under Captain Pike’s command. As such, it has to find a way to address some of the more obvious differences between the shows, and it doesn’t do a bad job, with some attempts at explanation, and some simple knowing wink-and-nod acknowledgements.
It’s also worth noting that according to the people behind DIS’s media tie-ins, this and any forthcoming DIS books and comics can be considered canon unless the show contradicts it.
Here are a few key things I noticed. Obviously, spoilers from here on down (though I’m trying to avoid spoilers for the actual plot of the book, and am concentrating just on the areas where the old and new overlap)…
p. 79:
Unlike many other types of starship in the fleet, Constitution-class vessels had no ready rooms for their captains. Most days, Pike didn’t miss having a ready room—except for those occasions when he received a classified transmission above the security clearance of his bridge crew, compelling him to return to his quarters to receive it.
p. 93:
In Georgiou’s experience, it was a bad idea for the captain to appear distracted on the bridge…. Thus had Starfleet adopted the tradition of a captain’s “ready room.” Though not all ships of the line had incorporated the concept, many had, and they were proving to be increasingly popular with commanding officers throughout the service. Georgiou was one of them.
p. 97:
In front of the bridge’s forward view of Sirsa III appeared a life-sized hologram of the commanding officer of the Enterprise. A grave expression darkened the human man’s youthful, chiseled features. “Captain Georgiou. I’m Captain Christopher Pike.”
So by this passage and others in the book, the Enterprise does have the holographic communications interface.
p. 97-98:
Responsibility for monitoring the wider theater of operations was actually the duty of Narwani, the junior tactical officer, whose head was encased in a gleaming metallic VR helmet designed for that task.
That’s the “Daft Punk” robot-looking character seen on the Shenzhou — not a robot, but an officer in a VR helmet.
p. 106:
Burnham had known Lieutenant Spock when they both were children, but it had been many years since they had seen or even spoken to each other in passing.”
The first mention of Burnham and Spock encountering each other in their youth.
p. 111:
“Time for full disclosure, Mister Spock. Who is the Shenzhou’s XO to you?”
“Her name is Michael Burnham,” Spock said. “She is…a friend of my family.”
Pike was confused. “How well do you know her?”
“She is a few years older than I am, so we rarely moved in the same social or academic circles. If not for her connection to my parents, I would barely know of her at all.”
So Burnham is slightly older than Spock. Also, this is one of Spock’s “technically not lying” statements.
p. 117:
A golden shimmer and a mellifluous droning washed away the familiar grey confines of the Enterprise’s transporter room and delivered Spock to its counterpart inside the Shenzhou. He noticed immediately that the two compartments were laid out very differently. Whereas the Enterprise’s transporter room consisted of a dias with six energizer pads in front of the console, on the Shenzhou the energizer pads were larger and mounted on a curved bulkhead behind a semicircular dais. Also of note to Spock was the darker ambience of the Shenzhou’s transporter room and its more spacious nature.
p. 118:
He fell in at her side as they left the transporter room and strolled the corridors of the Shenzhou. Once again Spock noted marked differences in the interior of the Walker-class ship from that of the Enterprise. Aboard the Shenzhou the grays were darker, and the bulkheads’ orientations more angular. It was clear to him that the two ships had been designed and constructed in different eras, according to very different aesthetic standards. Such drastic changes in a short span of time were not unusual among the humans of Earth, though it had proved a constant source of bemusement among their Vulcan and Andorian allies.
p. 119:
The doors closed, and the lift car shot into motion with hardly any sensation of movement. Spock noted the profusion of display screens that ringed the top of the lift car, and the complexity of the interface screens placed at eye level. He preferred the austerity of the Enterprise’s turbolifts, with their dearth of distractions and an optional control handle.
p. 145:
He stood at attention while he waited for the golden scintillation of the beam to resolve into the familiar shape of a humanoid female wearing a pale beige turtleneck tunic, black trousers, tall boots, and a small backpack.
First mention of the differences in uniform styles.
p. 157:
Gant and his team from the Shenzhou wore dark blue Starfleet utility jumpsuit uniforms with black trim, while the Enterprise team members sported pale gold or light blue jerseys over black trousers—a new uniform style that so far had been issued exclusively to the crews of Starfleet’s vaunted Constitution-class starships.
p. 273:
“What if we devised an automated delivery system, such as a drone, to deliver the gas?”
“If it’s remote controlled,” Gant said, “the command system would be crippled by the same scrambling field that’s blocking our transporters. And as I’m sure you recall, autonomous robotic attack systems—”
“Are prohibited by Federation law,” Saru said, finishing the citation. “A most nettlesome restriction, if you ask me.”
Ensign Fan turned away from the communications console. “That’s what the people of Earth used to think, right up until World War III. Every time I think about those killer ‘bots in the streets of Paris, I get a shiver down my spine.”
Interesting bit of in-universe history.
p. 330:
Gant pressed his index finger to his panel’s firing control. Outside the center viewport, a fierce storm of energy pulses erupted from the Shenzhou’s numerous phaser batteries. the barrage tore holes in the Juggernaut’s shields, which crackled into view like a tattered bubble of sickly green light. Then a pair of steady blue beams from the Enterprise pierced the green cocoon, sliced into the goliath, and flensed off large pieces of its hull.
The fearsome power of the Constitution-class starship’s state-of-the-art weaponry drew a gasp from Oliveira. “My God,” she said. “The new type-ten phaser banks can do that?”
“And a lot more,” Georgiou said, succumbing to a small twinge of envy.
p. 352:
Blue-shirted medical crewmen from the Enterprise parted from their white-uniformed counterparts from the Shenzhou….
p. 356:
“You seem different since you got back.”
Her assertion aroused Spock’s curiosity. “In what regard?”
“You seem…I don’t know. Older? No—calmer than you did before.” She tilted her head as she continued to study him and collect her thoughts. “You present yourself in a way that feels more centered. Better balanced.” Her smile broadened to a grin. “You have gravitas now.”
Recognizing the difference in Nimoy’s portrayal of Spock between “The Cage” and later episodes.
So that’s it. I enjoyed the book, and the nods to trying to explain — or at least recognize and maybe rationalize a bit — the differences between two series set only a decade apart, but produced half a century apart, were a lot of fun.