Treklit has some great offerings. The Relaunch universe books in particular developed coherent serialized storylines and a group of strong authors. There is also a deep library of standalone books from across all eras of the franchise.
By contrast, serialized Star Trek is struggling onscreen. Of the current era, only Prodigy has excelled in serialized storytelling.
So, why not look to the books? Not just to lift an idea like Control or the end of the Borg, but to actually tell a coherent narrative across a season or season?
On Netflix, Prime and Apple, it’s become established that successful streaming shows are often based on novels and novel series. Those streamers have come to understand that novelists, not scriptwriters, excel in laying out long form storytelling, and resources are often better put in having the screenwriters adapt than create from the whole cloth.
Reading a recent interview with Mick Herron, author of the critically acclaimed and popular Slow Horses on Apple, with a second show based on his other books launching this fall, I was struck by the interviewer’s assertion of this truism.
I thought about several of the non franchise shows I enjoy and how many of them are more or less faithful adaptations of books.
I was also struck by the thought that both Skydance and Paramount are quite capable of producing excellent book adaptations for Netflix and Apple. Murderbot is a very current example.
So, what’s holding back Star Trek from exploiting the Vanguard series or the Starfleet Core of Engineers books?
Why insist on giving showrunners resources to keep retelling franchise stories with legacy characters and tropes?
Why not exploit that IP that Paramount already owns by adapting the best of decades of TrekLit?
I want to get into Trek literature, what are some recommendations?
I really like The Borg, what are some good Borg based recommends?
I’m currently reading “Star Trek: Destiny” and the Borg are the big bad. Enjoying it so far (only about 1/3 into the first book of the trilogy).
There was a good recent thread on this. Much depends on your own preferences.
I posted the image of the first book of the TOS era series Vanguard because I think it would be excellent to adapt to television. It’s about Starbase 47 serving Starfleet in a region of Federation expansion and colonization. It’s somewhat dark and there’s a mystery at the core. Tholians get extensive treatment which is rare.
If you’re looking for the Alpha and Omega of the Borg, the Destiny trilogy is excellent. It’s basically the best Borg content out there.
If you’re into time travel, Christopher L. Bennett has a series of books about the Bureau of Temporal Investigations.
There was also a great anthology of novellas focused on the Starfleet Corps of Engineers.
There are numerous great standalones too.
Related question based on the image for the original post… Is the Vanguard series good? I grew up reading my dad’s collection of TOS novels and I have always thought that era of Trek translated well to a novel format.
Vanguard is darker even than DS9, so not everyone’s taste.
What it does have is not only Starfleet on-station but also 4 ships that are based there from a scout explorer to a Constitution class. It’s a lot of characters. Plus Tholians and Klingons. The mystery takes a bit to come together but it’s excellent.
The Enterprise and her crew show up occasionally but aren’t the primary characters. There is one Vanguard novel recently add that is Enterprise-focused and is one of the best books since Destiny.