2. The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin (2007)
Separating yourself from canon and going your own way might be one thing, but going back and contradicting established events of the episodes themselves is a very brave move indeed. Unless that episode is These Are The Voyages... of course, in which case it's more than welcome. The finale of Enterprise featured TNG's Commander Riker interact with holodeck recreations of the original Enterprise crew, which are themselves set some six years after the bulk of the series. As much as this was a gamble which didn't pay off (something which Brannon Braga later apologised for) it was also something of a double edged sword, offering a loophole which the novels gladly exploited. As Riker's recreations were based on records over two centuries old, The Good That Men Do decided that they were actually falsified in order to cover-up Charles 'Trip' Tucker III's undercover operations on Romulus. Essentially retelling the same events as the episode, but in a more fan pleasing way, it also set up the telling of the Romulan War that Star Trek canon had already established (but never fully explored), and which occurred during those six years that These Are The Voyages... glossed over. Four Enterprise novels have been released since with another due this year, all of which follow this newly established continuity rather than that of the finale. As much as Braga's apology was appreciated, it was in the pages of books that the sins of the screen were atoned for.