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It is an even numbered month. You know what that means. Star Trek. It is the old column standby but if it's not broke don't fix it. At this point (August 9th, 2012) I'm two days behind on the reading selections. I have no idea which Captain's you will get to see. Well- aside from The Original Series's favorite James T. Kirk and Star Trek: Titan's William Riker. So ahead- Warp Factor Nine. I'm now two weeks behind where I should be. Mostly because I'm finally employed again but someplace that is physically exhausting.
- Star Trek: Doctor's Orders By Diane Duane (Book of the Month):
There is an old cliched plot found in many Star Trek novels and episodes. Kirk beams down to the planet filled with mysterious aliens. Something goes wrong. He disappears. Spock has to lead a mission to find him. Everything on the ship runs smoothly. Duane spins this idea on its head. Here- after McCoy makes one complaint too many Kirk decides, on a well intentioned whim, to leave Dr. McCoy in command of the ship. As always something goes wrong. Only it's up to McCoy to save the day using his well honed skills of diplomacy and tact. Wait- diplomacy and tact? This is Leonard McCoy. It's a given that not everything goes hunky dory. He ends up running into both the Klingons and a band of Orion Pirates. As with Spock's World there are a few technical details that don't seem to work. The early chapters make a big deal of the ship gaining 17 terrabytes of hard drive space installed. Now that might have seemed like a lot back in 1990 however assuming my computer enough USB ports and I had close to $1000 I could buy that much memory at Best Buy. There are also a few places (due to bad typesetting) where quotation marks don't close where they should. Other than that- it is a good mix of comedy and drama. This book could be a lost episode of the series. Before I begin the next selection I have one thing to say so don't get any complaint letters from one of those few Trek fans out there who is even more anal retentive than myself. Yes, I know only the Orion Slave girls existed in the original series. The pirates were an invention of the animated series so it couldn't be a lost live action episode. Plus the book features Chekov so it couldn't be a lost Animated episode. So what . . .
- Star Trek: Titan - Taking Wing by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels:
This is the start of a series so I expected a lot of plot danglers. There is a big cast (at first) and a lot of subplots. However they all begin to dovetail to a really nice and smooth ending. It does a great job setting up the status quo for the Romulan Empire and the Reman army of Star Trek Universe Prime. It's also a good mix of existing characters (Riker, Troi, Tuvok, Spock, Ogawa and Pazlar) and the new characters. Technically not all the new characters are new- having jumped ship from being book original characters over in TNG. The story does what Star Trek does best- social commentary and politics. It plays nicely off the events of 'The Time to' set as well as Star Trek: Nemesis. The most interesting thing about the first Titan book is the conscious choice by Martin and Mangels to do something that the novels, which are not bound by a TV budget, should have done a long time ago: presents a crew where standard homo sapiens are the minority. They supposedly comprise about 18% of the crew over all- and only 2.5 members of the eight member senior staff. (Councillor Troi is half human after all.) It's a really nice start. I'm looking forward to more.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Warpath by David Mack:
One of the few complaint I've had about the previous few post series Deep Space Nine books (the second half of the last Worlds of DS9 excluded) is that everything seemed to be moving at a very slow and very deliberate pace even when it didn't necessarily help the individual stories. Here we start right where the Dominion story ended and hits the ground running. Many of the mysteries of the past few books begin to take a shape. Right when the reader thinks they know what's going on- another obstacle pops up and another piece of the puzzle reveals itself. Some obstacles seem somewhat predictable but there are new twists and turns everywhere. The character interaction seem to sync right in with we know of the characters new and old. (Again, David Mack wrote or plotted a few DS9 episodes so this should surprise no one.) What was a surprise is what happens to one canon character. Usually Paramount does not approve novels where a canon character gets killed off, even ones that are not part of the main cast. For the most part- the action of this book does not stop rolling. There are a few chapters involving brief snippets of things from some of the other realities that slow the book down- but just enough. While their purpose is not revealed until very close to the end of the book it is clear that they are set up for the series next big villain. Or rather a villain the series had already had for two or three books now and the crew are just now becoming aware of. So all in all- a very strong book.
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