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Shows you'd like books of... (1 Viewer)

bmasters9

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With the plethora of shows that have had some form of printed matter about them, what show(s) would you like to have a book or books about?

One I'd like one about is Riptide-- I'd like to see how the people at BearManor Media will treat this great (at least I think it is) 1984-86 NBC detective/action/adventure series.
 

jcroy

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If I was younger, I would be into books of this sort.

As I get older, I find these sorts of books were almost always disappointing to read.
 

jcroy

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The main disappointing aspects of such books for me, is that I find out that the tv script writers were completely clueless and didn't know what they were talking about. Basically "winging it" in their writing, and making wild guesses without ever doing much in-depth research.

Also when the special effects are demystified in such books/articles, I realize how primitive they are and how it wildly shatters any and all previous "illusions" I ever had for the shows (or movies).
 
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jcroy

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I guess over the years, I got sick and tired of figuring out a lot of Star Trek and Star Wars canon and then finding out there were problems with resolving conflicting or outright contradictory canon.

Even more annoying is when the copyright holder slams down hard on the "reset button" which decanonizes all the previous canon, and starts again from a blank slate or partial blank slate. For example, such as what happened to the expanded Star Wars canon back in 2014, where Disney wiped it all out and started again from a partial blank slate with only the two movie trilogies.

I came to the realization that I'm better off wasting time my time looking at nuclear physics, where most of the data is precise and doesn't change much. Unlike Star Wars or Star Trek, where the canon/data can be changed on a whim by the copyright owners.
 

bmasters9

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Star Trek: DS9 had a magnificent companion book.

I always wished TNG and Voyager had books equal to that instead of just glorified episode guides.

So did I! I guess DS9 got the better companion because of the show's format (being set on a space station, and not really going anywhere; if that were the case, why did that show go under the Trek umbrella?); just my guess, though.
 

Xphile620

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I'd love an official series companion to Roseanne, but obviously the chances of that are abysmal. Series like The Golden Girls get really well-done companions and I'd love to see that for more series that had just as much cultural impact.
 

jcroy

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I suspect such books is highly dependent on whether there is a hardcore audence who is willing to spend cash on books.

As past precedents, long running shows like Criminal Minds and Law & Order didn't have many books released. The CSI franchise had some novels published back in the 2000s decade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_(novels)

Excluding Star Trek and Star Wars, the only other cases I can think of offhand where there was a significant market for books published under license, was stuff like Murder She Wrote, Buffy, etc ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Murder,_She_Wrote_novels
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Buffyverse_novels
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_novels


Nowadays there probabily isn't much of a market anymore for books on current long running tv shows, that isn't scifi or fantasy.
 

jcroy

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Nowadays for information about behind-the-scenes stuff about a particular tv show (or movie), I suspect it is also highly dependent on a hardcore audience to be widely published.

Unfortunately for many current/recent shows nowadays, tons of behind-the-scenes information and gossip is easily available online. So if a behind-the-scenes book were to be published, it would have to be written directly by an insider. Otherwise it wouldn't be much more than a compilation of second hand online gossip.
 

jcroy

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Back in the day, the only reason I ever picked up books on shows like the original Battlstar Galactica, Star Trek, X-Files, Babylon 5, etc ... was largely because information wasn't easy to come across if you didn't know where to look. (I didn't know it at the time, but the place to find tons of B5 information was on usenet newsgroups).

Otherwise such behind-the-scenes and canon information wasn't easy to find. Especially before the internet was popular.
 

JamesSmith

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I guess over the years, I got sick and tired of figuring out a lot of Star Trek and Star Wars canon and then finding out there were problems with resolving conflicting or outright contradictory canon.

Even more annoying is when the copyright holder slams down hard on the "reset button" which decanonizes all the previous canon, and starts again from a blank slate or partial blank slate. For example, such as what happened to the expanded Star Wars canon back in 2014, where Disney wiped it all out and started again from a partial blank slate with only the two movie trilogies.

I came to the realization that I'm better off wasting time my time looking at nuclear physics, where most of the data is precise and doesn't change much. Unlike Star Wars or Star Trek, where the canon/data can be changed on a whim by the copyright owners.

Agreed. Why pay attention to a series, when the people in charge of the franchise, don't care for the feelings of its fandom? And change its history or internal logic at any time? It's one of the reasons I'm disillusioned with current superhero comics and fiction.

James
 

jcroy

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Agreed. Why pay attention to a series, when the people in charge of the franchise, don't care for the feelings of its fandom? And change its history or internal logic at any time? It's one of the reasons I'm disillusioned with current superhero comics and fiction.

This first time I came across this, was the Crisis on Infinite Earths 12-issue limited series back i the mid-1980s.

I didn't quite know what to make of it at the time. With hindsight, I eventually realized it was a canon reboot of the DC universe.

Since then, it is somewhat disappointing DC was doing frequent reboots over the decades.
 

JamesSmith

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This first time I came across this, was the Crisis on Infinite Earths 12-issue limited series back i the mid-1980s.

I didn't quite know what to make of it at the time. With hindsight, I eventually realized it was a canon reboot of the DC universe.

Since then, it is somewhat disappointing DC was doing frequent reboots over the decades.

It doesn't stop. The "bigwigs" at DC act like the Crisis's are the Hand of God, but then they rewrite everything shortly afterwards. If someone doesn't care for the recent interpretation, they are kind of ignored. For example, I have a hard time swallowing the recent explanation of Crisis', due to Superman being the "crux" of every crisis and the incorporation of the Watchman characters being at odds with the DC universe.

I miss the seventies easier explanation of Earth I, Earth II, and respective heroes belonging on each none, before all the "mixes" afterwards.

It was so much better when comics were written for children in mind, rather than going to supposedly "dark" places and than rewriting them a few years later.

It's much more enjoyable when the series or franchises don't take themselves so seriously. I enjoyed reading "Not Brand Echo" stories this year. Who knew Stan Lee and Jack Kirby could poke fun at themselves this way. Remember the original Star Wars, how fun they were before they took themselves so seriously.

James
 

MatthewA

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I'd love an official series companion to Roseanne, but obviously the chances of that are abysmal. Series like The Golden Girls get really well-done companions and I'd love to see that for more series that had just as much cultural impact.

I had a problem with the way that Golden Girls book only covered select episodes.
 

MatthewA

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Likely because they wanted to keep it under 500 pages and because a complete episode guide was already published in the same book that covers all Disney/Touchstone TV productions up to 1997: The Wonderful World of Disney Television, by Bill Cotter.

Although Soap, which Witt-Thomas-Harris produced independently of a major studio and sold in reruns to Columbia, got all its episodes covered. But in that case, there are fewer than 100 to cover.
 

bmasters9

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Likely because they wanted to keep it under 500 pages and because a complete episode guide was already published in the same book that covers all Disney/Touchstone TV productions up to 1997: The Wonderful World of Disney Television, by Bill Cotter.

I see your point there! In other words, the studio that owns The Golden Girls put out an omnibus book about all that studio's shows to 1997, and the later publisher decided not to attempt to duplicate the guide in that first book? That's how I'm reading this.
 

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