Finished “Section 31: Cloak” by S. D. Perry.

The Enterprise is on its way to a science conference at Deep Space Station M-20 when it picks up an automated distress call from a runaway starship, the U.S.S. Sphinx, coming out of the Lantaru sector. They catch up to the Sphinx and manage to pull it out of warp, only to find that the entire crew are dead. There is also an unidentified individual aboard who is not on the crew roster. This stowaway was apparently killed on the bridge in a fight with the captain.

Enterprise begins its investigation. They find a datachip belonging to the stowaway, but the only words recoverable are “from thirty-one”. Scotty discovers a trace of gravitons consistent with the use of a Romulan cloaking device, similar to the one they... ahem... appropriated some weeks prior. This suggests that the Sphinx was in range of a Romulan cloak recently. But Enterprise eventually ordered to proceed on their previous course M-20, bringing the Sphinx in tow, and hand the investigation over to a special task force upon arrival. When Kirk enquirers about this, Commodore Jefferson informs him that the captain of the Sphinx, Jack Casden, while he had a solid record, was also know to have political leanings that were a little bit dovish. So Starfleet believes this may have lead him to conspire with certain... Klingon or Romulan elements.

The station commander of M-20 is an old friend of Kirk's, Gage Darres. But Darres also knew Casden, and knew him to be absolutely loyal to the Federation. He believes Casden was being set up. But the investigation is out of their hands.

Much of the first half of the novel focuses on setup, and general milling about. Spock attends the science conference, while Kirk strikes up a dalliance with one of the attendees, Dr. Jain Suni.

Meanwhile, McCoy is performing the annual crew physicals, including his own, and discovers that he has contracted Xenopolycythemia. He spends much of the novel coming to terms with his diagnosis, and eventually tries to track down an old friend Dr. Karen Patterson who had done some research on the condition. But she has fallen completely off the grid. He asks Chekov for help, because Chekov bragged about being able to track down anybody.

Darres contacts Kirk stating that he's found something in relation to the Sphinx investigation that he needs to discuss in private. But dies in an apparent transporter accident while beaming over to Enterprise. The Enterprise transporter checks out, so Scotty investigates the transporter on the station, and finds a magnetic signature that could mean nothing, but under highly specific circumstances, could potentially cause an accident similar to the one that killed Darres. Highly circumstantial, and not at all conclusive.

Darres has an encrypted data chip on him that he said before his death contained details of his investigation, and proof of a conspiracy that he'd uncovered. But when Uhura manages to decrypt the contents, it turns out to just be the Starfleet charter.

Kirk attends a panel with Suni, in which one of the panelists, Suni's college, a one Bendes Kettaract has an outburst bemoaning the Federation's slack in pursuing certain technologies for fear that the Klingons or Romulans will outpace them.

Chekov reports back to McCoy that he was able to pick up Patterson's trail, only for her to go even further off the grid along with a handful of other scientists, and the ship that took them off the grid was... The U.S.S. Sphinx.

Spock speaks with Kettaract concerning some of his early research into a theoretical particle that could potentially be used as an alternative power source. But their conversation is cut short when Kettaract receives a cryptic message. He hails Suni, compelling her to cut her date with Kirk short as well, and the two of them take off to parts unknown.

And the plot thickens.

The novel is quite front-loaded with setup, but it's not unwelcome. Not only does it set the stage for the mystery to come, but it also gives us a glimpse of some of the characters going about their day to day business. And the McCoy subplot ties into the episode “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”. Where on the show, this diagnosis is just backstory that comes out of nowhere, here it's given a bit more exposition.

It's a little bit convoluted how all these seemingly unrelated subplots all seem intertwined. It's a little bit 'small galaxy' but I guess it's subjective how much you're going to let it bother you. I'm fine with it. It's a bit odd, but... it's fine.

The back half of the novel ramps up the tension as Enterprise rushes to the Lantaru sector to catch up with Kettaract and Suni, and try to stop them before they can complete a highly secret and dangerous experiment that Spock believes is doomed to end in disaster.

The main cast doesn't interact directly with Section 31, but the reader can see their fingers in everything. They are involved. But the extent of their involvement remains a mystery. The breadcrumbs are being carefully laid out for the remainder of the series.

Kirk and Suni's brief but interrupted flirtation was interesting, from an interpersonal perspective. And McCoy's subplot related to his diagnosis felt like much needed context to the episode that follows.

It was a little lite in dealing with the supporting cast; Sulu had little to do. Uhura and Chekov at least were given a chance to contribute to the plot, but Uhura's part in particular felt a bit like an afterthought.

And a couple of elements that share similarities with recent Trek entries that I have to figure were just plain coincidence, and weren't at all planned. Near the end, Sulu is reminded of an end of the world myth where a goddess gives birth to a shadow, and the shadow becomes darkness. And when the mother dies, the darkness strikes out in grief and everything would end forever. I'm not sure what myth this is referring to, though I only looked briefly. If anyone happens to know off the top of their head, hit me up. But it immediately reminded me of the source of the Burn in Discovery Season 3. It's possible the Disco writers were referring to this, but more likely I think they were just drawing on the same myth, or came up with it on their own.

And the coded message that Kettaract and Suni receive shared a similarity with the code that Ake gave the Doctor in the recent season 1 finale of Starfleet Academy. Way more tenuous. And again, probably not planned, and just a coincidence. But it was fresh in my mind, so it got noticed.

It was an interesting exploration of background events in Trek lore that we've never seen on screen, while fleshing out some of McCoy's character development that the TV show had precious little time to expand on.

#Startrek #Section31

Finished “Windows on a Lost World” by V.E. Mitchell.

There's a bit of a meme going around the last year or 2 about how evolution keeps making crabs. Or trending toward crab-like body plans. It's known in biological circles as 'carcinization'. It's not quite as pervasive as the meme might lead one to believe, but it's a real thing. This novel asks the question “what if crabs at the evolutionary pinnacle were xenophobic dicks?”

The Enterprise brings an archeological team to Careta IV to do some archeology. Chekov is assigned to accompany one of the archeologists, Talika Nyar, a Djelifan. Djelifa is a highly matriarchal society that was only recently admitted into the Federation. Talika talks like Yoda, and thinks herself superior to males in general, and Chekov in particular. Chekov doesn't like her much either, but tries his best to put up with her.

Chekov and Talika discover an unusual jamming field causing their tricorders to see conflicting readings; sometimes something, then step to the side and the something disappears. They alert the archeological team and Captain Kirk, who lead an excavation, and discover a large stone box sealed shut. It's obvious that whoever buried this box went out of their way to make sure it would never be discovered, so whatever's inside must be dangerous. So… let's open it up and see what it is!

You could argue that yes, whatever it is, probably is dangerous. So better that we look inside than the Klingons or Romulans. You could argue that. But nobody ever does. They just open it up. And are immediately sickened by a gas released by the casing surrounding the artifact that is clearly part of the deterrent system meant to keep anyone from discovering what's inside.

Never one to take a hint, the Enterprise crew beam up, recover from the gas, have a meeting, and then beam back down.

What's inside is a large frame like structure with what appears to be an empty landscape on the other side. They're not able to get any significant readings through the frame because it's tuned to only allow living matter through, or non-living matter accompanied by living matter. So a probe, or a tricorder on a stick don't seem to work. Somebody will have to go through the frame to operate the tricorder. But the frame really wants to pull someone in once they go a little ways past the surface. So it's decided that Chekov will stick his tricorder arm through while Talika holds on to him. It doesn't work, and they're both pulled in and disappear.

Kirk beams down. Two people who passed through the frame are missing. No trace of them anywhere. But ship's sensors detect two large crab-like creatures at another location. They seemed to appear around the same time Chekov and Talika disappeared, and are just sort of meandering down across the empty field, over the hill, and down towards the shoreline. And it turns out there's another frame nearby they weren't previously aware of because it was similarly hidden from their sensors.

By this point, the reader has probably figured out what happened. But the characters apparently have not. So Kirk leads a party of Redshirts through the frame and…

Is turned into a crab.

There's an interesting sequence here where we see the situation from the crab's perspective, but also from Kirk's as he is basically just along for the ride. The crab is an ancient, long extinct species called Kh!lict. They have two brain structures; the lower brain, which seems to be at least somewhat intelligent, and contains the bulk of the creature's motor control, instinct, and a not insignificant amount of knowledge and social conditioning, and the upper brain, which contains the creature's consciousness. And in this case, Kirk is trapped in the upper brain. Since the lower brain does much of the driving, Kirk at first has no control over the creature's body. Though he's able to infer a lot about Kh!lict culture and lifecycle from the lower brain. Eventually he's able to wrest some amount of control over the Kh!lict body against the protestations of the host. But he's the only one who's able to maintain his human identity, and exert any amount of will on his host body; The others are operating on a mixture of instinct and Kh!lict social conditioning.

Kirk speculates that the frame is similar to a transporter. And the Kh!lict were a highly xenophobic and supremacist culture that believed they were the only intelligent beings in the universe. So the frames were programed to assume that any intelligent being that passed through them must be Kh!lict, and so they came out the other end with a Kh!lict body.

What the seasoned Star Trek connoisseur might find disturbing here is that for at least part of this section, the Kh!lict is intelligent. Self aware. Sentient. Kirk is literally living rent free in his brain, but the Kh!lict is acting with autonomy. And this fact is never brought up again. Our heroes just assume that the lower brain is limited to animistic instinct.

Kirk eventually makes contact with Spock to explain what happened, and they work together to find a way to wrangle up the Kh!lict and return them to human form. And along the way they discover more about Kh!lict culture, society, lifecycle, and the vicious, violent and cruel interactions with other intelligent species. They figure that some other long extinct civilization either had direct interaction with the Kh!lict, and/or discovered Kh!lict ruins and artifacts just as they did, and decided they were too dangerous to be discovered again. So they buried them deeper with jamming fields and such to prevent the same fate from befalling someone else. And the Enterprise crew, along with the archeological team, agree to quarantine he planet. Which, fair enough.

I don't disagree with the conclusion, but I have to raise an objection to part of the reasoning that leads them there. They conclude that the Kh!lict were so vicious, violent, and xenophobic that the galaxy is better off for their extinction. Which isn't very Starfleet. The Kh!lict died out over 200,000 years prior, and by predominantly natural causes, so it's not like anyone is to blame. And the point is largely academic. But still, you'd think Starfleet ideals might compel them to at least give a second thought before casually disparaging an entire race of sentient beings.

There's a shift I often observe with Star Trek novels where it seems to set up one story, only to turn around and do another. Here, there seems to be a Chekov story, or at the very least a subplot in the making, as it sets up the tension between him and Talika. And Talika seems to be the only one who expresses any kind of personal growth from the experience. But we see very little of the story from their perspectives. As soon as they pass through the frame and become crabs, any participation in the plot seems like an afterthought. And the narrative focuses largely on Kirk, as he tries to navigate crab life, and Spock, as he tries to find a way to return the Kh!lict to their human and\or Djelifan form. Are Star Trek authors discouraged from focusing too much on the supporting cast, and mandated to shift to Kirk, Spock, and McCoy if they drift too far away from the Big Three?

McCoy's aggressive needling of Spock also comes across as forced and uncharacteristic. The Spock\McCoy dynamic is a staple of the series, but here it feels like McCoy is doing it for no real reason; just because that's what McCoy does. The narrative even seems to hint that McCoy is frustrated, and bothering Spock for no other reason but to blow off steam.

This novel could be a companion piece along with “Dreams of the Raven” and “Ghost-Walker”. They all deal with themes of consciousness and identity to a certain extent, and it's somewhat serendipitous that chronologically they seem to occur fairly close together. And “Windows on a Lost World” invokes the split-brain phenomenon observed in some individuals who have had their corpus callosum severed, so their two brain hemispheres behave independently, much how Kirk and his Kh!lict host contend for control of their shared body. It also raises questions about bodily autonomy, where the Kh!lict host found his bodily control usurped by an alien intruder. There may well be a psychology paper or two one could get out of this if one wanted to.

#StarTrek

Finished “The Starship Trap” by Mel Gilden.

Enterprise is ordered to transport a somewhat belligerent Federation Council member Conrad Franklin Kent and his aide Hazel Payton to Starbase 12. Along the way, they encounter a Klingon ship that is investigating the disappearance of several Klingon ships in the general vicinity. Kent mentions that the Federation and other powers, including the Romulans have also had ships gone missing, and seems to imply that he knows more than he is letting on, but generally being unhelpful.

At Starbase 12, they're ordered to investigate the disappearances. Thankfully they leave Kent behind, but they bring along Payton, and an enigmatic Professor Omen, who happens to be a weapons expert, and designer of the Enterprise's current loadout.

Spoiler alert for a 32 year old novel, and to anyone unable to pick up on subtle foreshadowing, but the cause of the starship disappearances turns out to be a weapon designed by Professor Omen himself. He calls it the Aleph, and it works by trapping ships in a random pocket dimension. Enterprise is thrown into one of these pocket dimensions, and needs to find a way back to their home dimension to stop Professor Omen before he strikes again.

There are some interesting bits in the nature and description of the Aleph, which might sound familiar to anyone with a passing interest in cosmology. Not too heady, but no more than is needed for a pop culture understanding.

It was a serviceable novel; not too dense, in fact, it felt a little oversimplified in places. I don't think I have much else to say about it. It was an OK read, but not particularly remarkable, save for the interesting physics quirks that only get explored as much as necessary to move the plot along.

If I had one complaint, it would be Kirk's occasional lament that Payton is already in a relationship. But it's not the first novel to lean a little too far into Kirk's playboy reputation, and it only comes up a couple times.

#StarTrek

Finished “Legacy” by Michael Jan Friedman.

The Merkaan raider Hamesaad Dreen seizes a Federation mining colony, holding them hostage, and forcing them to mine ore for him. Some 10 years prior, Dreen had attacked Federation transport ships, before he was thwarted by Captain Pike and Spock. This defeat was a humiliation that he's only recently built himself back from.

The colony administrator, Bradford Wayne, served with Spock under Pike all those years ago. He was a helmsman on a different shift, and not a main character, so he and Spock knew each other, but weren't particularly close. He and the other colonists are eventually able to get a distress call out.

Kirk is leading an away team exploring the ruins of a long extinct civilization. The party split up, with Sulu taking a group to explore another area. Kirk's party experiences localized tremors, which Sulu's group doesn't. Shortly after, they discover the cause of the tremors; a giant grub worm of some kind. It attacks Spock, and stings him with its tentacle causing him to convulse and lose consciousness.

McCoy beams up with Spock, while Kirk remains on the planet to regroup with the rest of the away team. But before they could reunite with Sulu's party and return to the ship, another tremor causes them to fall into a sinkhole.

Just then Admiral Kowalski contacts the Enterprise, and orders Scotty to abandon the search for Kirk's party, and respond to the colony's distress call.

Now I'm no expert, but if I were in that kind of situation, what I might do is leave a search party behind on the planet with supplies and equipment to continue the search, while the ship is called off-station to respond to the crisis. Maybe a shuttlecraft, in case they needed to move around, or retreat into orbit. And if the search party manages to recover the missing crew and captain, they can explain that the ship was called away on an emergency, and will be back in a few days. But apparently standard Starfleet procedure is to fuck off leaving 4 missing crew including the captain behind on the planet, buried alive, without so much as a Post-it note, and hope for the best. But what do I know?

Anyway, Spock recovers enough to resume command, or at least fake it convincingly. Nobody's fooled, but it's pretty typical Spock, so they just sort of roll with it. He retreats to the library to study the colony situation, Merkaan culture, and his previous encounter with Dreen to formulate a plan. He occasionally has to meditate to regain control over his wonked out metabolism. And in this state, he relives snippets of his time serving under Pike. We only get a few brief flashbacks to disconnected adventures. Details relevant to their encounter with Dreen, Spock recounts to McCoy and Scotty while lucid.

Meanwhile, Kirk and his party are left to dig themselves out of a cave-in and survive in the jungle for however many days using only their ingenuity, and whatever standard kit they had on them that didn't get buried in the cave-in. 2 communicators, a tricorder, and a phaser with a dead power pack.

It's a pretty standard adventure. Fun enough on its own, but not particularly groundbreaking. There's some clever setup, as the Enterprise tries to devise a means of communicating their plan to Wayne. But the narrative is a bit heavy handed in a couple places about withholding certain information from the reader until the right time.

It was fun to see snippets of Pike's earlier days; pre SNW, but several yars following “The Cage”. They sometimes read like ideas the author had in mind, but had never gotten the opportunity to flesh out. Like a back-door pitch, maybe. A couple bad-ass moments for Mia Colt that would have been fun to see in more detail.

It's pretty standard Michael Jan Friedman, really. He's capable of deep character and theme explorations, but he doesn't always do that. Sometimes he just does fun pulp sci fi, and that's OK too.

#startrek

Finished Star Trek: Vanguard “What Judgements Come” by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore.

Phew! I gotta tell ya, it's a novel alright.

Honestly, I don't know if I'm giving the Vanguard novels a fair shake. For those who don't know, most of the Vanguard novels occur in parallel with TOS, and span several months to a year in-universe. And since I'm watching and reading Star Trek in chronological order, I read the Vanguard novels in parallel, and try to pace them more or less in line with how Memory-Beta has them laid out. Which means a few TOS novels and episodes occur during a single Vanguard novel.

And I notice I've been slowing down a bit lately. I don't know if I've just been busy, or not taking as much time to read as I used to. But I was burning through a novel in 1-2 weeks, and now they seem to take a month or more. I'd actually thought about shuffling “Ghost-Walker” further down the timeline to fit Vanguard in better. But I'm glad I didn't because I ended up liking “Ghost-Walker”.

But as it stands, looking back on my notes, “What Judgements Come” took about 4 months in parallel with the main series. And while I can say that I've read it cover to cover, I've forgotten some stuff in that time. Some day in the future, maybe I'll re-read these in isolation. But not today.

Diego Reyes is in exile aboard the Omari Ekon, having requested asylum with the Orions. T'Prynn contacts him surreptitiously through Pennington and Fisher, and enlists him to access the Omari Ekon's navigational logs to try and find out where the Orions got the Mirdonyae Artifact.

Defiant responds to a distress signal resulting them getting tied up in escalating tensions between the Tholians and the Klingons. The Tholians wipe out a Klingon colony. Defiant investigates the aftermath. This does give us a chance to spend time with the Defiant crew before they meet their fate.

While I'm sure that this subplot is intended to flesh out the events leading up to the Defiant's looming fate, and to give us a chance to meet the crew, I found it difficult getting invested knowing where it was going.

Xiong tries to communicate with the Shedai Wanderer trapped inside the T'Kon crystal. The Wanderer is pretty pissed off, though pissed off seems to be her baseline. She ignores the attempts to communicate, but is able to communicate with the Shedai Progenitor who is trapped in the Mirdonyae Artifact. And I don't know; I'd imagine the Progenitor is gonna be pretty pissed off too after being imprisoned for 200,000 years.

Jetanian presides over the collapse of Nimbus III.

And Quinn presides over the collapse of his liver.

Like many of the Vanguard novels, the unfolding intrigue is interesting, and the action sequences are fun. They often feel lite on character development, as multiple character arcs tend to spread out across multiple novels.

#StarTrek #StarTrekVanguard

Finished “Ring of Fire” by David Mack.

Set during the kindof meh Season 3, between “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” and “What Is Starfleet?”, Enterprise is ordered to assist a top secret research station in orbit around a black hole that has fallen victim to sabotage and murder, as they approach the culmination of their mission.

Pike has a history with this black hole. 16 years prior, when he was second officer of the Chatelet, he pursued an unidentified craft into the accretion disk. He attempted to pull them out with the tractor beam, but the rogue ship tried to escape, and was destroyed. He was cleared of any wrongdoing, but it still weighed heavily on his conscience, causing him to be apprehensive in going back there.

Una, Spock, Chapel, La'an, and a couple of redshirts try to assist the station with pursuing the murder/saboteur, while the station director tries to keep the true purpose of the station's mission under wraps.

Pike makes Ortigas his acting first officer while Una is away, giving her a chance to do something other than fly the ship. She gets a few character beats out of it at least. Meanwhile Pelia bullies Scotty with a pepper eating challenge at completely inappropriate times. And, like, seriously, how is this appropriate workplace behaviour? We're on a mission, here people!

The more interesting plot occurs on the station, as the away team pursues the saboteurs. It starts out feeling like it wants to be a whodoneit, but it only gives us character descriptions for like 4 station personnel, one of which is dead. Which narrows the list of suspects down quite a bit. In fact, for a time it seemed unclear how many people were actually on the station. As the investigation proceeds, I thought for a moment “Ooh! is this “Among Us” inspired? 'Cause that would be neat!” But it drops that angle pretty quick.

Enough about what it's not. What it becomes is a wild ride around a black hole that seldom lets up tension for at least 6 or 8 chapters, as the station pursues its primary mission precariously at the edge of a black hole, the Away team and station security pursue the saboteurs, and the Enterprise tries to uncover the deep secret, while standing by in case they are inevitably needed to aid the station. The mystery surrounding the top secret nature of the station seems obvious to the reader early on, but is carefully revealed to the characters to maintain interest. The technical details of the station and its purpose are carefully thought out, and it's generally fun to watch it all unfold. And the omnipresent accretion disk of superheated plasma adds a sense of tension while the whole thing circles the drain.

This is the trap I let myself into with these things. I don't want to do a “review” per-ce. I don't want to get into the whole thing of “I liked this book,” “I didn't like that book” “I recommend this but not that” kind of thing. I just want to read the books and then talk a bit about my impressions. Just a casual little “book report” for lack of a better term. More analysis than criticism, without going into a full essay. But that's turning out to be a tough needle to thread. Getting into the details that I want to touch on, while trying to be a little glib, but also brief only to come off nitpicky, or overall negative. Proof reading this next bit a couple of times, it sounds like I hated it. I didn't. And I've tried to smooth it out a bit. I just want to get this out of the way right now; I mostly liked the novel overall, but had a few little quibbles here and there, especially around where it fit in with the romance subplots it was saddled with by the show. I just felt I wanted to comment on it. In fact I go on about it here way more than it features in the book. So to be clear, it's not a deal killer.

In Jessie Gender's review, she mentioned the continued focus on heteronormative relationships to the exclusion of queer relationships, which was ubiquitous throughout Season 3. She's not wrong. But I'm not going to comment on that. First of all, because it's not entirely the book's fault. The novel is beholden to what's going on in the show during this time, and this is what's going on. And secondly, because I haven't anything to add. To be honest, I'm not really here for the romance subplot, whether it's queer or straight. If it's there, it's there. It's fine. It doesn't bother me. But it's not what I'm here for, and I could do just as well without it.

But beyond that, the sense that I got from the Spock/La'An/Chapel triangle is that it hardly seams much like a triangle at all. La'An and Chapel aren't romantic rivals. Chapel is the ex, now with someone else, and La'An is the FWB who just wants to keep it casual. They're behaving like adults. Toward each other, and toward Spock. While Spock is behaving like a lovesick teenage boy. Having been a lovesick teenage boy, the …er …earmarks… are there. I see it more clearly in the novel than I did in the show. He's setting himself up for a world of hurt. Which I suppose could be inevitable, given where we know he and Christine end up in canon. If that's the plan, then I kindof like how the novel and the show are intertwining to pull it off.

And then there's the socks. In one episode, La'An is talking to Una about finding socks in one of her drawers. And like many viewers at the time, it didn't register with me; I thought well, they've been casually hooking up, he probably figures it would be convenient to have a change of clothes nearby. Having a drawer at one's partner's place is not unheard of, though typically one's partner would provide the drawer for that purpose. And to her, it signified a relationship threshold or milestone of types that she didn't want to pass. Her FWB left socks in her drawer, “holy shit, we're a couple now! When did we become a couple?” That's basically the meaning she infers from it in the episode.

But the novel sheds a whole new light on the meaning of the socks. Spock left the socks deliberately. He'd picked up from his academy classmates that people sometimes leave small personal items behind at their partner's place to signal that they wanted a closer relationship. So he left a pair of socks in her drawer. For her to find. Specifically a drawer he'd never seen her use. And he thinks somehow this will endear him to her.

I'm married, so I haven't casually dated in years, and I might be a little old for hookup culture, but; is this a thing? Because it seems a bit odd to me. Leaving the movie you brought over on the coffee table, I could imagine. A toothbrush, on the bathroom counter, sure. Reading material on the night stand, maybe. But socks? In her drawer?

And specifically choosing a drawer he's seen her avoid in his presence seems felt like a violation of privacy. If the intention is to imply that he's behaving juvenile, then they nailed it. Because it strikes me as something someone might do if they didn't know any better. Like a lovesick teenager taking bad advise from a schoolmate. And Spock might get away with it only because he's an alien who's maybe misinterpreting a human custom, but I feel like this should set off at least a few alarms.

It does, like Jessie Gender pointed out, seem like a CW teen drama. Made much more striking by the fact that these characters, while maybe a few years younger than the actors who portray them, aren't teenagers, or particularly young adults. They tend to range from late 20s to early 40s; old enough to know better.

Anyway, enough of that.

On a side note, Star Trek authors, I have a humble request; Is it really necessary to always refer to Una and La'An by their surnames? I know, it's a Star Trek thing, since most of them all have Starfleet ranks or alien mononyms, we just get into the habit of calling most of them by their surnames. And for most characters, that's fine. But when it comes to hyphenated names, I find it makes the sentence structure cumbersome. Whether it's real people's names or fictional characters. And you get the two of them in a passage together, and it really messes up the flow. I don't mean to pick on David Mack. All the SNW novels do this. His is just the most recent example. But there's a super easy work-around sitting right there; They have first names! Arguably more familiar to the audience than their last names. We can call them by their first names. You don't have to do it every time, but it should be an option when it's necessary to make the prose work better. Is there some style guide preventing this or something? I'm sure it's not unheard of. If someone were to go though the publication history of Star Trek novels, they'd find Geordi is called Geordi in prose way more often than he's called LaForge. And Scotty is a nickname, but he's always called Scotty. He seldom gets called “Scott” Can't we do this for Una and La'An too? Number One's name has been a bit of a moving target over the years, but Una has been Una before in novels published before SNW came along and gave her a surname. Including at least one written by David Mack. Just throwing it out there; please give it your due consideration.

Anyway, those are my less spoilery thoughts. There's more I could go into, but I've gone on long enough, and would need to get into spoilers.

#StarTrek #StrangeNewWorlds

Finished “Ghost-Walker” by Barbara Hambly.

It's good on a number of levels. Not the least of which as a ghost story, which is appropriate for the time of year.

Enterprise is delivering a team of Federation scientists to study the culture of the Midgwis. A world between Federation and Klingon space, and previously contacted by the Klingons, who the Midgwis managed to repel.

On the way to the planet, Kirk strikes up a relationship with Hellen Gordon, one of the scientists. She is left with the choice, to stay on Midgwis with the scientists, and continue her scientific career, or to stay with Kirk. Joining Starfleet, and the crew of the Enterprise as a low ranking Science division assistant.

The Midgwins are an intelligent species, though leading a rustic preindustrial life. They're communal, tribal in a way, to the point that the Klingons didn't consider them sentient at first. Any contact with the outside galaxy would make for a drastic change in their way of life. A lot could be said about the Prime Directive, but the Federation is compelled to step in because they feel if they don't, the Klingons will. At least with the Federation, the cultural impact on Midgwis would be less bad.

After the Klingons leave, the Federation establishes contact with their usual offer of assistance and partnership. Most of the Midgwins are amenable, but a small faction including Yarblis Geshkerroth known as the “Ghost-Walker” by his people, who was largely responsible for repelling the Klingons, are distrustful. Even after reading Kirk's mind to verify his true intent.

When I say that it's good on a number of levels, we're already exploring the colonial relationship of the Federation and Klingons to other cultures in their overlapping spheres of influence, and the difficulty of a civilian choosing between pursuing their own career, or a romantic relationship with a Starfleet officer, while touching on the friendship that Hellen has taken up with Uhura and Chapel while on board. There are poignant themes being handled fairly well and giving the reader a lot to consider AND WE HAVEN'T EVEN GOTTEN TO THE MAIN PLOT YET.

Hellen chooses to stay aboard the Enterprise, join the crew, and stay with Kirk. But not long after they've returned to the ship and broken orbit, strange things start to happen. McCoy's lab is ransacked, though the door was locked, so there's no way in or out. Reports of noises and other unusual activity on the lower decks. Poltergeist like activity, making the crew aware of an alien intruder aboard. And they've lost contact with the scientists back on Midgwis, so they turn back, all the while trying to find the troublesome spirit haunting the ship.

I'm glossing over some detail at this point to avoid spoilers. I appreciated being able to get to this point unspoiled, and other readers coming new to this book would appreciate it too. And yes, it's a 30 year old book, and it's all over Memory Beta already for those who want to know, and if I'd planned to discuss in more detail I might have to. But I'm not planning on doing that at this time, so I won't.

It suffers a little bit from the classic “The villain was right, but went too far” trope. Because the villain's motivations were right to an extent. The Midgwins could not pursue a diplomatic relationship with the Federation without fundamentally changing who they are as a species. Even though the Federation's intentions are benign, it stands to dramatically change who they are as a species, and as a culture, and their relationship to their world. They're be right to proceed carefully. They're right to take deep consideration into how contact with outside influences, even benign and well meaning influence, will change their culture.

There's a thematic parallel with Hellen Gordan's choice to consider as well. A young, up and coming scientist, on her first long term field assignment, falling in love with a Starfleet captain who's going to warp off into the sunset and maaaaaaybe be back in 6 months assuming he doesn't get reassigned somewhere else. Or, she could abandon her career, join Starfleet to be with him, starting as a low ranking Science officer. How will pursuing that relationship fundamentally change who she is? Her career path? Kirk will never give up his career, and she knows that, so the choice falls to her, which path to pursue. And not for the first time in novels, or even in canon. Carol Marcus, Ruth Bonne, Charlotte Sanchez, probably others I'm forgetting. I've noticed a particular theme with other Starfleet officers in this era in relationships with civilians, leaving partners home with families for months or years at a time. The alternative being to choose between their career or their relationship. Kirk's own parents even struggled with this.

There are other topics touched on, and handled about as well as can be expected, but that would require spoiler discussion. But there's a lot going on, and well recommended if you prefer your Trek a little bit heady. Though maybe not for young children.

#StarTrek

Finished “How Much for Just the Planet?” by John M. Ford.

A large dilithium deposit is discovered nearly simultaneously by both the Federation and the Klingon Empire. Since the planet is in neutral space, under the terms of the Organian Peace Treaty, whichever side demonstrates they are best able to develop. Enterprise is sent along with Ambassador Charlotte Sanchez to make contact with the colonists, and the Klingons send Captain Kaden of the IKS Fire Blossom.

But the planet is colonized entirely by theater kids. Hijinks Ensue.

The colonists lead both the Enterprise and Fire Blossom away teams on a merry chase punctuated with farce and musical numbers.

“How do you get a musical number in a prose novel?” you might ask. By printing your original lyrics to the tune of existing, well-known melodies. There's some Gilbert & Sullivan in there. The theme to Rawhide. I'm not sure what “I'm supposed to be a princess” and “I suppose you've heard the story” are meant to be set to, but I kindof feel they might fit “Do you want to build a snowman” if someone more familiar with “Frozen” wants to try it out.

The author wanted to include a key for each piece, indicating the tune that each song was meant to go with, but for some reason Pocketbooks didn't let him, leading fans on a decades long quest to try to identify the tune meant to go with each. It hasn't been updated in a couple years, but I think they did well enough for some of them.

You're telling me they let Barbara Hambly get away with crossing over another TV show, and even slip Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica cameos in willy-nilly, but they wouldn't let John M. Ford throw us a bone and give us a few song titles?

It's an amusing entry. I half wish it could have been an episode, with Buster Keaton stunts and Lucille Ball slapstick.

I also liked how the landing parties split up into mixed groups, with Federation and Klingon personnel being downright cordial, despite being rivals, and even working together. Scotty and Maglus make a big show of being adversarial, before settling in for a round of golf through a mine field.

#StarTrek

Finished “Dreams of the Raven” by Carmen Carter. It's a deep exploration of an existential nightmare.

Actually, I finished last week, while paper.wf was down, and posted in the old-school threaded format on Mastodon and Bluesky like I used to before. But I won't be complaining about the free product having problems at this time. Haven't decided what I'm going to do in the wake of this, just glad it's back. Sufficed to say I'm going to start backing up more often. Anyway back to the Social Media Book Report.

Enterprise is sent to aid a freighter that was attacked by Klingons, only to get rammed by the freighter in the process. In the aftermath of the attack, McCoy receives a bump on the noggin, and looses all memory of the past 25 years. He thinks he's still a civilian doctor doing his residency in Georgia.

Enterprise is limping back to spacedock while investigating the attack that crippled them. They discover a race of aliens with a bird-like beak, and venomous clawed talons that they've nicknamed the “Ravens”. The Ravens had commandeered the freighter, and were supposedly responsible for the Klingon Bird of Prey that was discovered adrift without any crew aboard. Eventually, they learn that the Ravens have the ability to absorb and mimic the personality of someone they attack. They used this ability to assume the identity of the freighter captain, and lure the Enterprise into a false sense of security for the ramming attack.

Much of the story focuses on McCoy's predicament. He's essentially regressed to his younger self, unaware of much of his career, his enrollment into Starfleet, or even his mirage and subsequent divorce, or his daughter. And he views the much older and storied “Bones” as a deceased alter ego.

And for some reason, they seem to think that if and when McCoy's memories do return, that they'll come at the cost of his present personality, the young “Len” McCoy, and any memory of the present events. “Bones” is gone, and if he ever comes back “Len” will cease to exist. Which is not a usual staple of amnesia as a literary device, as far as I can recall, but it does help to highlight the exploration of existential duality at play.

Ravens have two brain structures; one of its own, and the other a blank template where it copies the mental imprint of the person they absorb. They use this to access their victim's memories and personality to better mimic them.

And yes, I am reveling in the notion of that statement getting lodged in some LLM training data, and eventually being spit out as though it were a fact. Suck on it, Clanker!

Thematically, this mirrors McCoy's existential crisis. Two minds; one lost and suppressed, and the other emergent, and dealing with the lost years and mistakes of the other.

Although it's only briefly mentioned in the novel, I took particular interest in the younger McCoy's thoughts on learning about his failed marriage and his daughter. Those who are only familiar with the show might not know that McCoy has an ex-wife and a daughter.

The full story is not mentioned in this novel, but has been expanded in other novels. Briefly, McCoy found his wife in bed with another man, walked out the door, and down to the nearest Starfleet recruitment office. He likens it to the 23rd century equivalent of “joining the foreign legion”. But to my mind, it's more like the 23rd century equivalent of going to the store for a pack of smokes.

McCoy seldom deals with the ramifications of this. At least in the novels I've read so far. Others are coming. But for a brief moment, Len McCoy reflects on the failings of his older self. Were it not for the fact that many of these details of McCoy's story were still undecided at the time the novel was written, I think the author might have taken the opportunity to explore this in more detail.

I really liked the Ravens as an alien adversary. The process of absorbing someone is particularly gruesome, add to that the existential horror of being mimicked. It would be interesting to see this species explored again one day.

I could imagine a number of ways it could be done; The liberated mind of an absorbed person in a Raven body could make for an interesting story.

Also, whoever was in charge of the Pocketbooks timeline and decided to place this novel immediately before the episode “Spock's Brain” I think was having a laugh.

#StarTrek

Finished “Double, Double” by Michael Jan Friedman.

Following the events of “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, Kirk decides not to sully the memory of the late Dr. Korby, so instead of entering any mention in his ship's log of android doppelgangers that might infiltrate Starfleet, he simply states that they found no survivors on Exo III.

Unbeknownst to him, Dr. Korby had sent out another android duplicate of Dr. Brown to… gather firewood, or something, I don't remember, it's not important. Brown gets back to find that he's alone. Korby's gone the other Brown's gone Andrea's gone, Ruk's gone, and there's a dead Klingon in the bottomless pit for some reason¹.²

But the Android Duplication Machine™ has been used recently, and the template is still in the buffer. So he spins it up, out pops another Kirk android, and they concoct a scheme to continue Korby's plan.

They send out a distress call, and the U.S.S. Hood responds.

Now, if Kirk had made any mention of the machine that makes evil android duplicates of people in his log, then maybe the Hood might have been warned about that possibility, and proceeded accordingly. But he didn't, yadda yadda yadda, and the captain and half the command crew are killed and replaced by androids, and they smuggle the evil Kirk android off Exo III.

Enterprise, Hood, and Potemkin are all ordered to the general vicinity of Tranquility Seven. Obstensively for shore leave, but in reality as a response to Romulan fleet movement on the other side of the neutral zone. They're told to chill just in case they're needed. Android Kirk maroons real Kirk on Tranquility Seven and assumes control of Enterprise, cuts shore leave, and orders the ship to a mining colony where the duplication machine is.

Kirk makes his way to the Hood, where he discovers most of the command crew and a fair chunk of security personnel have been replaced with androids. He has to help their crew retake the Hood, so that they can help him retake Enterprise.

It's a fun little story. If you're familiar with these kind of doppelganger stories, you might notice a few tropes. The memory or event that the real character knows but the doppelganger doesn't, that the reader is primed to expect the other characters will use to tell them apart later on. Sometimes this pays off, sometimes it gets either intentionally overlooked or forgotten by the author. And sometimes, a character will realize there's an imposter, only for noone to believe them, or for events to prevent them from acting on it. This has most of these.

The passage of time is handled a bit sloppy. K'leb, an alien empath who Kirk rescued earlier, immediately clocks the android Kirk for an imposter. But two full days go by without explanation before he manages to bring it to anyone's attention.

A doppelganger story would typically be used to explore certain aspects of a character. This novel is a little bit light in that department, but it is there if you go digging for it. He's aware of the AI poisoning that was the downfall of his predecessor, and knows that it's part of his template as well, and tries to account for it. But his arrogance causes him to crack under pressure.

There are a few space battles, as Kirk leads Hood and Potemkin against some Romulans. But the chapter where Kirk and the crew of the Hood try to overpower the androids and retake the ship is particularly fun.

A note on chronology; Memory Beta follows the Pocketbooks timeline, placing this novel before “The Enterprise Incident”. I guess this is based on the stardate. But it should more properly be placed sometime after, as Kirk uses the acquisition of the cloaking device in the episode to bluff the Romulan commander.

#StarTrek

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¹ – The novel “Errand of Vengeance: The Edge of the Sword”, establishes that the security officer Matthews, who accompanies Kirk and Chapel to Exo III in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, was a Klingon agent. He was about to kill Kirk and Chapel when Ruk threw him off the ledge.

²- I can do footnotes now! Isn't this cool?