Trivia / Star Trek: Coda

• Author's Saving Throw: The Ashes of Tomorrow is one for the Titan readership, as James Swallow finally resolves the Andorian clone storyline from Fallen Gods. This is a plot thread that has been left hanging for nearly a decade because of Michael A. Martin leaving the series (and also Titan then becoming caught up in The Fall and its aftermath). The Titan readers have been complaining about it ever since and with Coda being the last chance to tie it up, Swallow mentions in passing that the cloning scandal has been exposed.
  • By admission, this is something of the point of the trilogy itself, as the novel continuity of the last twenty years has to give way to the new canon of the current crop of shows - the authors explicitly compare the situation to the abrupt ending of Star Wars Legends and how they wanted the fans to have more closure than was offered there, and set about wrapping up as many various plot threads as they could, even if it just amounted to a single line of text.
• Creator Backlash: David Mack's admitted he wasn't happy initially with bringing back the Borg — or at least the alternate Borg of 2373 from First Contact — during Oblivion's Gate. He understandably had done all he wanted with the Collective during the Destiny trilogy when he took them off the literary playing field. However, Mack eventually warmed up to the idea of having the Literary Picard face his greatest fear and foe one last time as part of his sendoff.
• Executive Meddling: According to Mack, while Q was among the early candidates for the Temporal Apocalypse's Big Bad, they were ultimately barred from using the entity in any capacity due to the character's role in Season Two of Picard.
  • On a lesser note, Mack also confirmed that apart from Tom Paris, B'Elanna, and Tuvok, all of the Voyager characters were off limits at the request of editor and Voyager Relaunch writer Kirsten Beyer. The creators were fine with this one, though, as they respect Beyer and wanted to honor the ending she'd crafted for the Voyager Relaunch in To Lose the Earth.
• Follow the Leader: Like Star Wars, the Novel Verse is ending due to the unanticipated resumption of canon multimedia projects (Picard in this case, not to mention Lower Decks and Prodigy, plus Discovery changing its setting from pre-TOS to the far future, allowing it to draw from Picard plot points). Unlike the Galaxy Far, Far Away, however, Pocket Books and the creative team took note of the backlash to the abrupt termination of the pre-Disney Expanded Universe and set out to give their Expanded Universe a proper sendoff. Dayton Ward discusses this in an interview:
  Ward: When we first started to get a sense of just what was involved in realigning the book lines with the new shows, we said we don’t want to do a Star Wars. We definitely don’t want to tell people who’ve been buying these books for 20 years, “None of this counts, none of this matters, you wasted all your time and your money. Oh, and by the way, buy our new books which are tied back into the show now!” How do you sell that? You don’t.
• Milestone Celebration: The release of the Coda Trilogy overlaps with the 20th anniversary of the modern Novel Verse (which is accepted to have begun with the DS9 Relaunch in 2001).
• Reality Subtext: Ward, Swallow, and Mack were writing the trilogy throughout 2020, i.e. at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, it's arguably not hard to see the events of that year reflected in the plot as the Starfleet characters struggle with isolation, mental illness, unprecedented death and destruction, governmental dysfunction, etc.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Again, the entire existence of Coda is this due to the on-screen return to the 24th Century with Star Trek: Picard and the need to adjust and reconcile the tie-in literature with the new canon. Another factor might be the announced sale of Simon & Schuster (including Pocket Books) by ViacomCBS.
  • David Mack's revealed this happened during Oblivion's Gate and influenced why they ultimately had to select 2373 and the events of Star Trek First Contact as the divergence point between the Novel Verse and the Prime Reality. They knew going in that they were going to have to rewind the clock back to an earlier point to reconcile the two canons. Problem was, they quickly realized Picard had boxed them into a corner. The new post-Nemesis canon established by the show was so different from the Novels' post-Nemesis canon that they couldn't use the Synth Attack on Mars in 2385 as the divergence point without it coming off as an Ass Pull. Using Nemesis itself likewise was out given given similar irreconcilable differences (like the A Time To... series). It forced them to go further and further back through the TNG timeline trying to find an acceptable divergence point until Ward pitched using First Contact as temporal ground zero.
  • Meta example. Mack's also revealed this trope was a driving reason for splitting the writing of the trilogy between multiple creators. Given the scale and scope of the production schedule, and with fewer Trek publishing slots being available now compared to a decade earlier during Mack's Destiny or Cold Equations trilogies, it was logistically easier to have an entire creative team working on Coda rather than a single creator.
    • That said, Mack's also admitted he didn't mind being a co-collaborator instead of sole creator (as he can attest firsthand from Destiny and Cold Equations how challenging that is).
• Schedule Slip: The Ashes of Tomorrow was initially solicited for a mid-October 2021 release. It was later pushed back two weeks for a late October release.
  • Physical releases were also being complicated by the paper shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Trolling Creator: Of the Trilogy's trio of creators, David Mack in particular seems to be enjoying stoking the readership's fears about the death and destruction still to come.
• Troubled Production: Mack has acknowledged that, again, working on the trilogy throughout 2020 was understandably a trying experience for the entire creative team.
  • Mack's also revealed there was a great deal of creative conflict between him, Swallow, and Ward over the trilogy's ending and whether the Novel Verse should be definitively erased, or whether it should survive in some way that only the readership would be aware of.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to Ward, the original Coda pitch was for a quartet of novels rather than a Trilogy. Ward had also proposed an additional fifth novel that would have served as a stealth prelude.
    • Ward had also initially hoped to have fellow Trek novelist Una McCormack involved in the project, but she had a scheduling conflict and couldn't commit. James Swallow has likewise confirmed they had hoped to have David R. George III involved, but it didn't pan out.
    • Ward revealed more details of the development on the ''Literary Treks'' podcast for ''Moments Asunder'':
    • He nearly ended up writing the second novel, The Ashes of Tomorrow, rather than Moments Asunder (with James Swallow taking his place on the Trilogy's kickoff). They ultimately swapped writing orders for creative and logistical reasons (a scheduling conflict in Swallow's case).
    • Revealing Taurik's future information from his TNG Relaunch novel Armageddon's Arrow was tied to Coda was obviously not part of the plan originally (as Coda wasn't even on the drawing board back in 2015). Ward had several potential options for that future knowledge, including Taurik learning of the then-impending Romulan Supernova. However, for legal reasons, the tie-in literature could not use elements from the Kelvin Timeline at the time (pun intended). By the time Coda began development, Star Trek: Picard had of course incorporated the destruction of Romulus into its backstory. So, needing to conclude this plot thread, Ward decided ultimately to retroactively tie Taurik's information to the Temporal Apocalypse.
  • In the Afterword of The Ashes of Tomorrow, James Swallow admits he initially declined the invitation to work on the Trilogy. As a fan, he didn't want to partake in the destruction of the continuity he'd both followed and contributed to during the last 20 years. It was David Mack who ultimately talked him into it.
  • As detailed under Call-Forward on the main page, O'Brien's death in The Ashes of Tomorrow was originally a much more explicit nod to Star Trek: Lower Decks. Specifically, Swallow originally wanted to put in a line during O'Brien's death that set up his future statue but it was ultimately decided to be too on the nose.
    • In the above interview, Swallow also revealed that early in the development, the creators did consider using the Krenim Imperium as the Big Bad before settling on the Devidians. They ultimately rejected the Krenim because they wanted to respect what Kirsten Beyer had done with them — plus, they feared using them as the architects of the Temporal Apocalypse would only be retreading old ground.
  • Prior to the publication of Oblivion's Gate, David Mack revealed that he'd actually had the idea to make the Devidians a final antagonist for the Novelverse Picard as early as 2011 for the Cold Equations Trilogy. That idea was based on how it didn't seem Pocket Books was going to renew the Star Trek publishing license and Cold Equations would thus be the TNG Relaunch's de facto series finale. The premise would have seen the Devidians targeting an elderly, dementia-ridden Picard in revenge for the events of "Time's Arrow". Once the license was renewed, those early plans for Cold Equation got shelved...until Coda presented Mack with the chance to revisit and rework them.
• Working Title: According to Swallow in the Afterword of The Ashes of Tomorrow, working tiles for Coda included: Swansong, Reset, Long Goodbye, and, their personal favorite, Wormhole Death Canon.
  • In-Universe, and as detailed under Mythology Gag on the main page, Jake Sisko's working title for his new novel during The Ashes of Tomorrow is Crossings.