Interview — Una McCormack on Writing Star Trek Novels

 

Dr. Una McCormack is a highly successful science fiction author with over twenty novels, numerous audio dramas, and short stories. She has achieved New York Times and USA Today bestselling status.

Una is particularly recognized for her contributions to TV tie-ins, having written over a dozen novels within popular franchises like Doctor Who, Firefly, Star Trek: DS9, Star Trek: Picard, and Star Trek: Discovery. Her work with Big Finish, an audio production company, includes projects set in licensed properties such as Doctor Who and Blake's 7.

Currently residing in Cambridge with her partner and daughter, Una shares her home with a life-sized Dalek and an extensive collection of books.

In this interview, Una talked about her Star Trek books, characters, and the challenges of writing.

Before we talk about your books and characters, can you share how Star Trek became a part of your life and how you started writing in this universe? 

Growing up in the UK in the 1970s and 80s, it actually wasn’t very easy to watch Star Trek on television. My TV loves were shows like Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who. My first encounter with Star Trek was therefore through the films, which I loved. By the time TNG was coming around, I was pretty much a Star Trek fan.

Again, though, getting to watch TNG wasn’t easy in the UK! It was shown on one of the new ‘satellite’ stations: you would be waiting a couple of years before ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ appeared on the BBC! TNG did, however, get released on video cassette, which you could hire from Blockbuster (this dates me). Every few weeks I would call in and see whether any new cassettes had arrived. There were only 2 episodes to a tape!

Some friends of mine used to get off-air tapes of TNG episodes mailed over from the US. Because the US and the UK didn’t use the same system, the tapes would have to be converted to be compatible with UK VCRs. Every couple of months a group of us would meet at the house of these friends, and watch a whole bunch of episodes of TNG. 

All of this is almost impossible to believe in these days of streaming, isn’t it? 

Around the same time, I started picking up TNG paperbacks from the library. I was writing a great deal of fanfiction at the time (this was around 1988, 1989), but, oddly, none of that was Star Trek. I only started writing Star Trek fanfiction after I watched the last episode of DS9 (the late 90s), and couldn’t cope with the destruction of Cardassia. 

(The story of how I got into DS9 is a nice anecdote in itself; you can find that here: https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/true-especially-lies-learned-stop-worrying-love-cardassia/)

 

You're known for exploring Cardassia and the Cardassians in a unique way. Why do you think Star Trek fans are so fascinated by the Cardassians? 

One reason is that the actors cast to play Cardassians are first-rate. Think of David Warner and Andrew Robinson: these are outstanding, deeply intelligent actors, who bring everything to these parts. They take what could be very one-dimensional ‘space Nazis’ and explore these characters in full. We are so spoiled to have actors like these, giving such compelling and fully-inhabited performances. 

And then of coursse DS9, because of the nature of the show, moving into story arcs, is able to give these recurring characters the space to breathe and grow. Not just Garak (or Ziyal), think about Casey Biggs’ incredible performance as Damar, taking him from sneering sidekick to hero of the revolution. I’m still not over the death of Damar. 

Cardassians are fascinating because we should – and do – find them repellent. They have done and do appalling things. But as DS9 progresses, we start to see glimpses of other aspects of their society: the radicals, like Lang, or the more thoughtful patriots, like Ghemor. And so we become invested in them, and watch in horror the tragedy of a civilization driving itself headlong into the ground. How, and why, could that happen? It’s a question that is arguably (and sadly) even more timely today than it was at the time of transmission. 

I particularly love the books Enigma Tales and The Never-Ending Sacrifice. From the titles, which directly refer to fundamental elements of Cardassian culture, to the construction of settings and characters, both books provide us with a comprehensive glimpse into the complex Cardassian society. What challenges did you face in turning characters with limited appearances in DS9, like Natima Lang and Rugal Pa'dar, into central figures in a novel? 

Thank you for the kind words about these books! I am particularly proud of The Never-Ending Sacrifice, which I think is one of my most successful books. 

I more or less had free rein with characters like Natima Lang and Rugal Pa’Dar, so the challenge was to inhabit them as fully as possible, and bring their personal dilemmas to the page. Rugal was a gift of a protagonist: the means whereby we could see the whole story of DS9 as it unfolds on Cardassia, but through the eyes of a character who is critical of the society in which he’s living. The idea for the book came from the editor of the books at the time, Marco Palmieri, and I am so grateful that he thought of me for Rugal’s story. 

As I recall, when I was writing TNES, I had very detailed chronologies where I mapped what we learned on-screen about what was happening back in Cardassia, and from these little throwaway lines I constructed what must have been happening. This gave me such rich material like the overthrow of the Obsidian Order, or the collapse of the civilian government. So much fun! 

(I recently wrote an essay on science fiction and historical fiction, which touches on both TNES and my most recent Picard book, Second Self, which can be found in this collection of essays: https://deadinkbooks.com/product/writingthefuture/) 

Natima Lang, again, was more or less a blank page: I think she, too, is only in 1 episode? So I was more or less free to invent the next chapter in her life story. I think the most fun I had was imagining the kind of books she would write. (I love making up fictional books (not least because I don’t have to write them). One of my favourite bits of the Janeway book was listing the children’s books she read: I had to think through what would be canonical American children’s fiction in the future.) 

I did have a final book in mind about Cardassia, a follow-up to Enigma Tales, which, amongst many other plotlines, would have wrapped up Natima Lang’s story. In my mind, she is the Castellan after Garak. I think I made it clear in Enigma Tales that was coming, but there would have been a great deal more about the transition from Garak to Lang. (We would have met Lang’s husband too, a Mathenite who looks uncannily like Quark.)

 

One of my favorite characters you created is Elima Antok from Enigma Tales. She seems to embody the impact of the Bajoran Occupation on Cardassian society. How did you develop this character?

Characters who cross borders are particularly interesting to me, and of course they are absolutely crucial to DS9, a major theme of which is the influence of different cultures and species on each other. This is obviously deeply problematic when it comes to the impact of the Occupation, and the show examines this through the character of Ziyal, with her double heritage, but also through Kira and her ‘adoption’ of Tekeny Ghemor as a father figure.

With Elima Antok, I was thinking of the orphans that we see in ‘Cardassians’, who have been left behind on Bajor because of their mixed heritage. I started to wonder whether any of these children had been born on Cardassia, whether they had been able to ‘pass’ as full Cardassian, and what changes would need to happen in Cardassian society before someone could live openly there as part-Cardassian, part-Bajoran. I find it really moving when, at the end of Enigma Tales, Elima feels she can put on her earring in public, and that her children will, hopefully, never have the sense that they have to hide away that part of their history. It tells us how far Cardassia has come.

 Now, talking about the autobiographies of Spock and Janeway that you wrote. What really grabs readers is how you made these characters come alive, making their voices feel real. What challenges did you face when writing this kind of book, especially in making the reader believe they are actually reading words written by Spock and Janeway? 

This kind of book does play to my strengths: I have a very aural imagination and love writing in first person. Writing Janeway was an absolute delight. Kate Mulgrew brings Janeway to life so vividly that all you have to do is channel her voice. Imagine my delight when she agreed to read the audiobook!

Writing Spock was so daunting! Not just that he is such a significant character in the Star Trek universe, but that so many different actors have played him now, and his personal story has become incredibly complex since Discovery! Weaving all those complex histories together was the biggest job. Writing about his childhood, for example, involved watching episodes of Disco, then the original series, then the animated series, then thinking, “I really should mention Sybok, his brother, here…” But I enjoy this kind of challenge! 

Getting the voice right, though – that was my chief concern. People have very definite ideas of how Spock should be and if you don’t get that right, the book will never work for them. It also took me a long time to think about how Kirk should feature in the book. He is, to my mind, the most important relationship in Spock’s life. How would Spock bring himself to write about that, and the loss of Kirk? It’s almost too painful for words. I found it very hard to put that down on the page. It was the last chapter that I wrote, it ended up very short, and I cried buckets over it. 

You also wrote two books in the Star Trek: Picard series. How is it different for an author to write books set in a universe that concluded decades ago versus a series like Picard that was still ongoing when you wrote The Last Best Hope? 

Certainly, with the ‘beta canon’ novels, which were mostly written when the franchise was off-air, we had a tremendous amount of freedom. I can’t believe how much I got to put into those books, like my lesbian anarchist Cardassians. All the anarchists I put into them, actually. 

When a series is on air, there are different constraints but these are fascinating in their own way. One of the things I’ve enjoyed most is working to get the ‘tone’ of the show right. A Discovery novel is going to feel very different from a Picard novel (at least, to my mind, it should do). Disco is optimistic, more wide-eyed; Picard is more melancholy. Disco is vibrant; Picard is autumnal. Getting that right, and feeling like you’ve matched the tone of the show in the book, is the biggest challenge for me. Also, I get to be a bit more sweary in Picard too, which I enjoy immensely.

The Star Trek publishing market in Brazil used to be significant, but it seems to have declined. The last official book was in 2016, and many Brazilian Trekkers don't read in English. What do you suggest Brazilian fans could do, perhaps through a campaign, to show interest in Portuguese translations of your books? 

What a shame that it’s been in decline: I wonder what the reason for that is. A lot depends on how successful the new shows have been in Brazil. 

Publishing is opaque to me at the best of times, and I can’t guess what might work in the Brazilian context. Perhaps looking at the German translations of the Star Trek books might be a place to start. These seem to be successful (they also have gorgeous covers). What happened there was that an established publisher took on the license, and invested in translations. 

I suspect what you need to find is an editor at an existing science fiction publisher who loves Star Trek, and can make a business case for publishing translations. I suspect it would be the books from the ongoing shows that would be most marketable in the first instance. It would be great to see them published in Portuguese! 

Thank you for these really interesting questions: I enjoyed answering them!