Star Trek Online Update: Cryptic Begins To Chart Its Own Star Trek History

Cryptic Studios has made another one of their ‘Path to 2409’ which tells the story of the Star Trek universe from Star Trek Nemesis (in 2379) to the 25th Century setting of the Massive Multiplayer game and its war between the Federation and the Klingons. They are now up to 2382 and starting to branch away from the history set forward in the books.  

 

The following is taken from the official site.

Path To 2409: 2382

The unstable situation of the Romulans continues to be a source of concern for the Alpha and Beta quadrants.

The loss of agricultural planets now claimed by the Imperial Romulan Empire threatens Romulus with severe food shortages. Romulus’ power plants and factories cannot increase output without the heavy metals and dilithium that once flowed from Remus.

To avert the looming civil crisis, Praetor Tal’aura reluctantly accepts food shipments from the Federation. But she refuses the Federation’s offer to facilitate negotiations between her and Empress Donatra, saying that it is an internal Romulan matter.

Tal’aura charges her proconsul, Fleet Commander Tomalak, with retaking the planets held by Donatra. Tomalak appoints Admiral Taris as his second in command and orders her to re-organize and mobilize Romulus’ remaining military forces.

Seeking to stabilize the homeworld, Tal’aura agrees to reform the Romulan Senate. A reorganization commission selected by Tal’aura votes to allow her to appoint senators directly rather than holding elections, and she packs the Senate with her supporters. Leaders of the Romulan-Vulcan Unification movement petition Tal’aura for representation in the Senate for themselves and the Remans, but Tal’aura declines to respond to their request.

The makeup of the Romulan Senate angers Romulan nobles, who dominated the Senate prior to Shinzon’s takeover but now hold only a handful of seats. Representatives of several of the noble lines argue that for centuries the Romulan Senate has been a partner with the praetor in governing the empire, something that a weakened body beholden to Tal’aura cannot be. The Line of Tellus goes so far as to denounce Tal’aura publically and withdraw its members from government service.

The Klingon Empire takes advantage of the weak position of the Romulans to stage lightning strikes into Romulan space, retaking Khitomer and the sector surrounding it. The Federation Council criticizes the move, but Ambassador K’mtok responds that the empire is simply reclaiming territory that belonged to the Klingons by right.

Thwarted in their attempts to find a role in the Romulan government, the Unification movement, represented by Ambassador Spock, presses its case with the Federation Council. The Council takes up the matter of formally supporting the Unificationists, but is heavily influenced by Councilor T’Los of Vulcan, who states that the result of the unification of the two races cannot be predetermined, while the probable course of the Romulans and Vulcans remaining separate can be reasonably predicted. Therefore, her only logical choice is to protect the Vulcan way of life by opposing unification.

The council does not reach a decision on whether or not to support the Unificationists, and votes to table the matter.

A legal issue of interest to analysts in the Federation is rights for artificial life forms. On Stardate 60334.46, Admiral Owen Paris of Starfleet Research and Development orders that the mobile emitter brought back from the Delta Quadrant by the USS Voyager be taken to Starfleet’s facility on Galor IV for study.

The Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH) known as The Doctor files a lawsuit to block the transfer of the mobile emitter, arguing that he is a sentient being who acted as a member of Starfleet during Voyager’s time in the Delta Quadrant and that the mobile emitter is necessary to his quality of life and performance of his duties. The office of the Judge Advocate General issues an injunction against the transfer of the mobile emitter until it can study the case and issue a ruling.

The Bajorans and their allies continue to press for the Cardassians to surrender members of its government and military to stand trial for war crimes. But over the course of four months, 472 Cardassians wanted by the Bajorans disappear from Cardassia Prime.

The Cardassian government reports it is attempting to determine the whereabouts of its citizens. The Bajorans respond by accusing the Cardassian government of willingly assisting fugitives.

Ro Laren completes her time in Federation custody and returns to Bajor. She accepts a commission in the Bajoran militia and is appointed head of security for Deep Space Nine.

[Source: StarTrekOnline.com]

Headed for three Trek futures – Does Star Trek need a little Star Wars in its EU?
All of the above is very interesting and moving towards a galactic war between two big factions (with their allies) makes all the sense in the world for a MMO, where you need to have two sides to make the game work (one of the many things that Perpetual didn’t seem to understand when they were making the game). Cryptic should also be applauded for how closely they have been following the history of Trek laid out in the Star Trek books that came after Star Trek Nemesis. But now they are at the end of those books, so the big question is: what happens now with the extended universe of Star Trek?

Although there are elements of the post Nemesis books in this latest update, we can now see that Cryptic is beginning to build the setting for the war between the Klingons and the Federation, along with the other alliances. Of course Pocket books also plans additional post Nemesis books past their Destiny trilogy, and it is pretty clear that these will chart their own path. In addition, the team behind the new Star Trek movie are about to release a comic book series with IDW that will take place in the same TNG era, and it appears to be on yet another path. This means that in 2009 there will be three different versions of Trek history after Star Trek Nemesis.

This is nothing new of course, Trek books and comics and filmed (TV and movies) have often ended up contradicting each other.  However, this kind of divergence in the extended universe is a big difference between the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises. In the world of Star Wars, the extended universe materials are considered canon (or at least ‘soft canon’) and there is a great deal of coordination between different media (games, books, comics, TV and film). For example, right now Bioware and EA are working on another Star Wars MMORPG called “Star Wars: The Old Republic” and not only does this game tie into previous story lines set in the Old Republic era, but it will coincide with a new novel that will tell the backstory for the game. There are currently no plans to do the same for Star Trek Online. Earlier this year LucasArts coordinated “The Force Unleashed,” a massive multimedia event with a video game, novel (and audio book), comics, action figures and toys, and more. Although Star Trek has pulled off that kind of coordination tied to TV shows and films, it has never been able to do it for the extended universe materials.

Some could argue the Star Trek way of each medium having its own version of history (and often multiple versions within a given medium) is part a richer tapestry of possible futures, but in reality it is mostly a function of the many stovepipes involved with the Star Trek property: Cryptic, Pocket Books, IDW, Bad Robot, CBS, Paramount and Orci/Kurtzman. Although it is easier for the LucasFilm empire to control the various parts of that franchise as it owns many of the subsidiaries, TrekMovie still wishes there were greater coordination between the Star Trek entities.

 

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Oh man, the canon people are gonna freak!

This could be the game that gets me into MMORPG! I’ve resisted for years over the objections of my friends who love this form of online gaming.

I just can’t wait to get my hands on that JJ Abrams TNG comic book!

Oh, hey, cool, they finally continued KOTOR! I hope HK47 is still alive! :D

The filing of a lawsuit by the good holo-doctor is an interesting development. An interest in law is one thing that separates ST from the SW universe.

Note: Most of the SWEU sucks.

Also, KotOR already retconned the appearance of technology from that era, so it’s not really a good example…

“The Line of Tellus”

Possible LUGtrek reference?

OMG OMG !!! This is FUN

I’m really looking forward to Star Trek Online! Can’t wait for it to begin!

NOT CANNON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I shall hereforthtoo condemn and boycott this game, and my crew at starfleet hq will mount a campaign to have the story re-digested to merge with proper canon.

Next year is the Year of the Romulan, apparently.

Too bad FASA’s version of Trek was left behind…. some of the overall backstory and the ship designs were pretty interesting.

It would be nice if they finally picked up on the idea of an Expanded Universe for Trek. Certainly keep the books a little easier to track.

#12:
Don’t worry, it will stay alive with me…

no please, the books..just-say-no (to fan lit masturbation)

It is impossible to coordinate a Star Trek EU. A franchise with hundreds of episodes as its building blocks is different from a franchise from 3 (now 6) movies. Star Wars benefited because for a long time, there were no new movies and so a consistent EU filled the gap. Star Wars also benefited because the new movies added in new “history” to the original three movies, but did not touch anything post RotJ which is where the majority of the EU takes place.

Star Trek can’t do that unless someone wants to plan out when all the new TV shows will be set.

I will suggest that Canon matters less for the lay person and more for the fans. This is important because the 80/20 principle applies here, 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers.

I have no problem with anything JJ Abrams has done, but the franchise will get the bulk of its money from a few over-dedicated fans, and they will want consistency that is currently not being provided, as ridiculous as that may seem.

Star Trek: entertaining TV, but kind of a lousy choice for an mmo. Here’s why…

I can forgive aliens that look just like humans with bumpy heads in a TV show because I understand they have a limited budget. I can forgive unimaginative kitbash ship-designs on a TV show for the same reason. Likewise with Holodeck plots (holodeck/time-travel plot = “we can’t spend the $ necessary for the sets & effects required for a space-adventure, so we’ll borrow period costumes & props from another part of the studio, and build a story around them in the form of a holodeck/time-travel story).

So much of Star Trek is the way it is because of the limitations of the television medium, but with a computer game there is no limit to what you can show. The special effects budget is limitless – you can literally show anything imaginable.

If you’re going to do a Star Trek mmo, there are 2 choices:

1. Stick with “canon”, and include all the elements which are forgivable in the context of TV, but which are completely lame in a modern video game (butt-headed human-looking ‘aliens’, lame kitbash ships, etc.). If this is what they’re doing I will not be playing this game.

2. Add a ton of new stuff to your background setting so as to make it interesting in a way that no TV show could be. Problem with this is, if you’re going to add that much new stuff to Star Trek, why not just do something wholly original and take us somewhere NEW?

Star Trek’s an entertaining TV show, but in the wider world of science fiction including books, movies, comics, and even video games it’s pretty shallow. Just compare Star Trek to Mass Effect.

1
you rang :D

12
I only have one ship rec manual
but can get more if i wanted

18
did you see sg1: wormhole eXtreme?

now back to the canon
i dont care what the st eu does

i would like the proper to use eu source material (make some of it canon). just dont over ride pre-existing proper canon in the prcoess.
ST has held up rather well over the years. sure it has some canon problems. I just dont want any of those mistakes made into canon. leave them as the oddity that they are (we all get a good laugh out of it) and continue. heck fix the problem if you can. but dont make a bad situation worse.

iirc jj is useing book material (great) just dont rewrite trek proper for it.

18 said “Just compare Star Trek to Mass Effect.” I have and have come to the conclusion that Star Trek is much better in every way. I don’t know what show you’ve been watching but the ships in Star Trek are better than any in sci-fi and have a clear purpose to their designs. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy Mass Effect or wasn’t impressed with the level of detail the game designers put into the game but Star Trek is better, imho.

“…it’s pretty shallow.” You obviously haven’t been watching Star Trek very long (or it’s been a while and you forgot) because if you remembered Trek you wouldn’t make that statement. Now let’s do a little comparison: Memory Alpha (the canon Star Trek wiki) has 29,373 articles and the Mass Effect wiki only has 3,350 articles. That means that Memory Alpha has 26,023 more articles than the Mass Effect wiki. Memory Beta (the licensed-works non-canon Star Trek wiki) has 41,532 articles. A difference of 38,182 articles. The numbers speak for themselves. Star Trek isn’t as shallow as you think.

Moving on to the EU, the new Trek books have taken a darker and grittier tone that seems to be all the rage in Hollywood. Since they have made lots of money using this approach, it makes sense that they would assume they could do the same in the new novels. Even still, you will notice that the darker and grittier Trek novels are still not as dark as the over-the-top negativity-hour show BSG. That said, I believe the reason that their are going to be 3 different versions of post Nemesis is because books, games, comic books, etc. are considered “non-canon” and therefore they can readily contradict each other. I enjoy reading the books and intend to continue to do so. The West Wing style “Articles of the Federation” book was especially good and clearly shows how the Federation government works. I do agree however that it would be nice if there was more continuity between the various EU’s.

18, if Star Trek were so “shallow” why would there be a group of fans dedicated to the preservation of canon? If you want to see a “shallow” show that’s all negativity with over-the-top story lines, soap opera relationships, and a basic backstory, watch BSG.

19, Stargate has a rich backstory, like Star Trek does, and characters that are likable and are easy to care about. That’s why I like it over BSG.

21 re 19
ot
do u mem the story that lead to id4 ?

Who knows though..all three could tie in quite easily and maybe they ARE all co-ordinated. We’d just have to wait and find out..

I think the Nero story is somethign which is happening in the star Trek Online described future with the troubles on Romulus. With Romulus in a mess he’s maybe going back in time to change history in favor of the Romulans?

22, no I don’t but in a franchise that I rewatch in reruns (and the new eps of Atlantis) and that’s 15 seasons long, I sometimes forget things. Please elaborate or point me to a site with more info if you wish me to comment on the storyline you refer to.

With all I’ve said about BSG, I am willing to give it one final chance to recapture my attention that it had during the first and, most of, the second seasons. I doubt that it will surpass Stargate in my opinion and I know that it won’t surpass B5 or Star Trek.

Cryptic said it best when they said that Trek had a rich universe and it was a “natural choice” for a MMORPG. The ships, the characters, etc. are all ready for a MMORPG. I’m counting the days until Star Trek Online comes out. Once STO comes out, I’ll be kissing WOW goodbye!

23, in the books the Romulan Star Empire isn’t in the greatest shape either. With Empress Donatra of the Imperial Romulan State holding on to key agriculture worlds, the RSE has seen better days. I’m actually concerned about this particular storyline. I have always like the Romulan Star Empire as much as I like the Klingon Empire and I’m concerned that the writers of Trek are paralleling the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire divided into the West and East Roman Empire’s. The East Roman Empire had most of the resources and continued to exist for a long time after the split while the Western Roman Empire (which included Italy and Rome itself) collapsed which led to the Dark Ages. I hope the same thing doesn’t happen to the Romulan Star Empire (which includes Romulus itself).

24

sorry i was sidetracked there for a sec.
no i wasnt refering to any ep of the show. justr asking if u heard the story of how id4 came about.
basicaly at the london premeir of SG a reporter noted the movie was about aliens coming to earth and asked the writers if they believed in aliens/ufo’s? the answer was no. on the plane ride home they took the question and make ID4. pileing in all the ufo mythology they could.

yes all. i know its a trek board so ill return to it.

its always interesting to see how writers get their ideas, influense etc. Like ENT ep ‘The Communicator’ was made only cause some one lost their cell phone.
boy i tell ya. the fecal mater hit the emrgency life suport, the day the fans got that one.

@ 21
Oh, I wouldn’t call BSG shallow. It’s different, but it’s not shallow. It’s tackled religion and science, social stratification, law and morality, ethics, sentience and life–pretty much themes that Trek covers–except in the context of a post-apocalyptic human civilization, or what’s left of it.

27
I like BSG initially (and still love the FX) but the characters have become SO flawed and SO imperfect that they seem more caricatures than ‘real’ people to me now. A positive and hopeful attitude in that rag-tag fugitive fleet is a one-way ticket to an airlock opening ceremony (or other gruesome death).

on topic:
Like others here, I am considering STO when it comes out and hope that they do a public beta so fans like me can try it out before hand.

This sounds like bad fan-fiction.

“The loss of agricultural planets now claimed by the Imperial Romulan Empire threatens Romulus with severe food shortages. Romulus’ power plants and factories cannot increase output without the heavy metals and dilithium that once flowed from Remus.”

Um, if we’re in HALF the frakkin galaxy and so are the Rommies, shouldn’t that involve tens of thousands of M-class planets, not to mention the space rocks that’re chock full of dilithium? Servicing Romulus should be easy. It’s the backwaters of the galaxy that would suffer.

also…
“Ro Laren completes her time in Federation custody and returns to Bajor. She accepts a commission in the Bajoran militia and is appointed head of security for Deep Space Nine.”
Thanks for saying she’s still alive, since on Voyager they pronounced ALL mah-quis dead dead dead.

#28: Agree.

In its first two seasons, BSG was a sharp blend of space-opera fun, strong episodic drama and well-drawn characters, all stewed in a very spicy set of questions well worth exploring set in a genre ideal for exploring them.

But then they started dumbing it down, dumbing it down, dumbing it down. Characters replaced with caricaturish mouthpieces, lazy arc material undermining the value of episodes, questions not only abandoned, but replaced with cheap gimmickry. Shallow, stupid, and functionally empty.

I keep watching for two reasons (1) inertia (2) Edward James Olmos, who can take the most ridiculously emptyheaded dialogue and invest it with a terrific sense of gravity and substance. Sadly, he’s now called on to do that pretty much every time they turn the camera on him.

I’ve always preferred to think of ‘canon’ as being limited to the TV episodes and films. Everything else is good fun, but it’s not canon. So I don’t have any canon concerns.

I actually quite like the idea of divergent histories. Some of the best legends and myths don’t really co-ordinate – Robin Hood and King Arthur being the two that immediately spring to mind. Star Trek is gradually taking on that kind of mantle – modern mythology. Quite cool, when you think about it!

32 – i agree…id consider the new abrams Star Trek Countdown prequel comics to be canon though

Food shortages? What about replicators?

Way too “Bermanish” for my taste. In this era of the new TOS themed movie, 24th century aesthetics and style are the odd man out. They should’ve waited and started from scratch using the new movie’s timeline instead.

Until Tom Riker, the transporter clone, is returned, there can be no peace in the Trek universe!

#34 Food shortages indeed are ridiculous. The Romulan “Star” Empire extends over thousands of planets that are M-class. They aren’t Somalia or Sudan….

#0 Terrible to see separate continuities set up, because the track record for them is very poor. I give you Gold Key comics, Star Fleet Battles, Blish’s Spock Must Die restriction on Klingons for a thousand years, FASA and all of its tomes, Klingonaase, and… Robert T. April, first captain of the Enterprise.

12 – Thank you for mentioning FASA. I was a big fan of FASA, and I think it a shame that some of the ship designs and lore they developed was not continued. The Chandley class frigate in particular is one of my favorite starship designs.

#35

I actually agree with you… I’m a little burned out with the TNG/Voy/DS9 timeline.

I would’ve preferred to have the game set in the new movie universe, or far into the “future”.

I’m still playing the thing on Day One, though! :)

actually theres more like 25+ different paths trek is taking if you count the various fanon stuff

If your so into canon just buy a copy of the rule book and try making a movie out of that in your head, see how boring it’d become very quickly…you can’t shackle creativity of the writers and directors by a bunch of slavering fanboys…GO JJ!!!

#1
Screw canon. It gets in the way of everything.

#41
I agree with you.

41

no
a writer yes. but a good/great writer can.
theres always constraints. eve in original material. half way thru ur script you go uh ho. oh wait but if i…. oh thats right i said blank and the blank.

its no differant with any thing else. just more things in your way. a great writer wont be stoped by it. kirk has brown eyes and thats not hard to make happen.

but the writing is not what ‘fanboys’ are crying over. since we realy dont know whats coming in terms of the story. but rather the storys design. the ship int/ext. etc. ariter can have kid kirk drive a fast old car but a director can get descriptive and make it an auto or a manual transmission. this is seen as a canon violation. we were told that canon violoations will have an explination. we’ll just have to wait and see.

this is what i was trying to get an answer to over porco. member when we got news of some carolyn porco being the science advisoir? and her previous work was the movie Contact? well me and every one in the theatre notice the nebula was backward. i asked here at trekmovie in that thread and never got an answer as to why. so i will ask again.

The question we (I) have is whos idea was it in the first place. who had creative control to make changes, and who has the final say in such matters.

new canon topic:
the ship ground or space ???

I am curious.
its been said (and shown, somewhat) that the 1701 dedication says San Francisco. right? But there seem to be two differant versions of it floating around right now. One says ‘San Francisco’. The other says ‘San Francisco, Cailf’. Now ‘San Francisco’ could be the city or an orbital yard named after (maybe geosinc over it). But ‘San Frincisco, Calif’ is a bit moere exact. this one seems to sugest that the ship was built on the ground.
before getting into our prefered non-canon explination. can any prove with a real photograph what the the TOS dedication said. not those bitmap/photoshop jobs that litter the web. A real picture of the original from the set. and did it change over the 2 (two) pilots an the run of the series itself.

Gad.

Just someone give me a awesome Kirk/Spock era game for the Wii. I wanna be Shatner-Kirk or Nimoy-Spock — or my own custom character –beaming down and kicking butt and outwitting nutty alien cultures.

Stuck in the past and wishing someone would give me the game I would love to play,

Scott B. out.

sorry your not getting my copy of JR

A canonically correct Star Trek game would have to play like Space Ace (if you’re really old school, ya know what I’m talkin about).

Sorry, you can’t do any move except XXY, because the Federation lost this battle.

Game excites me more and more every time I read a new one of these path to the future blurbs… I do have one comment. A Klingon v Federation War IS CANON! All good things showed s a future where the Federation and Klingons are embroiled in hostilities. Sure the future isn’t written in stone and Picard could have made efforts to change this however nothing says that is the case. The Klingons are traditionally a war-mongering type culture anyways and a huge war makes sense. The demise of the Romulan Empire only makes sense as far as canon goes as well. Corny as it may have been there entire leadership was killed in the last movie. When an event like that happens new alignments and power plays are made. Often governments fall when those happen.

Just some thoughts… Love it so far.

P.S. Why would you sit here and bash BSG? Just because you are defending what you like doesn’t mean you have to bash a show that a ton of other people (yes me too) love. On many levels to me BSG is more real than Star Trek will ever be but that doesn’t mean I bash Trek because of it. Besides in a Trek only article on a Mainly Trek site no need to bash a completely different show. Why don’t you go to a BSG site if you feel you have relevant comments to make? To scared that you will be out numbered? Trying to look good here? No reason at all? I don’t know but hey whatever floats your boat I suppose. It just seems a bit low and odd.

Take a deep breath, relax, and remember that this is star trek. If there’s a story line that you don’t agree with, just pretend that it’s an alternate reality or another mirror universe, like we all do with ST V. And for the record, those tied-together star wars books are completely suckish. Every one of ’em.

So is it true Nero kills old spock *SPOILER ALERT*