I think there’s also a problem with the whole “Kalinda sees ghosts” thing at this point - Star Trek has always skirted the line, but definitely prefers to take the position of things being scientific in nature, not supernatural, but the handling of this whole element feels very much plain supernatural, without having any kind of loophole for a science-based explanation. While it’d always been a bit of a thing with her, with it taking the stage like this, it’s far more obvious than before at this point. Like New Frontier had always been a very comic book-esque experience, considering Peter David’s experience, but this development feels more comic book based, where superheroes have scientific and mystical origins, and it doesn’t feel like it really jives with the franchise as a whole.
I actually had the reverse issue there with the fact that everyone treating Kalinda like she was crazy for seeing ghosts was something just nasty and mean-spirited. In Star Trek, yes, you can definitely take a stand against this but this is after they've fought Anubis with the help of Santa Clause. It felt like gaslighting and bullying were the behavior of the crew regardless of the strangeness of her claims that at least everyone should have at least given some sense of credulity to her for after this point. Would it have been more Trek to have someone say, "Well, the spatial rift that Kalinda was connected to could theoretically create constructs based on the quantum entanglement that Kalinda has with people she's met and psychically interacted with." You know, nonsense, but Trek nonsense? Yes, probably. Still, I was less worried about the supernatural in the book than how NASTY they were about it to her. I had a similar reaction to the Matrix plot of the 12th Doctor. It was full of anger at the concept of an afterlife--while presenting one made by science fiction.
Never mind just New Frontier, the entire social conception of death would be different in Star Trek. It's been repeatedly proven that the mind can exist independently of the body. Not just in energy beings or telepathic species like Vulcans, but even regular old humans have been displaced from their bodies, had merry adventures, and then returned, remembering everything that happened while they were spooky. Souls have been physically proven to exist. You might be able to scan one with your tricorder. But maybe once something has definitively happened, it loses its mystique. "Sure, Chakotay's mind was driven from his body and he possessed several other members of the crew, but does that really mean he as an entity would persist beyond his body's death in some other form of existence, another thing that's been explicitly scientifically proven and is totally uncontroversial in our world?"
Weirdly, I've always felt the Federation would have a very Buddhist view of consciousness versus a Western and that doesn't necessarily believe in the soul. Information certainly travels between people, places, and things pretty easily in Trek to the point that it is almost mundane but that almost kind of undermines the uniqueness of entities to their environment. Janeway becoming a Salamander destroys her continuity of consciousness and for all intents and purposes, she's dead for X amount of time but she's brought back with no real worry because they have backups in the transporter or whatever. The Federation doesn't really sweat the details of life and death even if Roddenberry's "we don't mourn in the future" isn't the case.
Star Trek: New Frontier: Blind Man's Bluff Book 18 Sypnosis: Captain MacKenzie Calhoun has faced incredible odds before, but nothing he has ever experienced could prepare him for the simultaneous threats from two of the most destructive forces he’s ever encountered. The first is the D’myurj—a mysterious and powerful alien race bent on either the complete domination of humanity or its destruction... a potentially massive risk to the very foundations of Starfleet, one that goes so deep it’s impossible to determine whom to trust. The second is even more alarming: Morgan Primus, once a living creature with a soul and a conscience, now an incredibly sophisticated computer simulation taking up residence within the very core of the U.S.S. Excalibur... and quickly becoming a growing menace for the Federation. MacKenzie Calhoun is playing a dangerous game as he attempts to outwit and outmaneuver these new enemies, with the fate of the Excalibur crew members and potentially the lives of billions at stake... Analysis: Blind Man's Bluff is yet another installment of the Dark Period and kills the entirety of the Xenexian race, including Mac's brother D'ndai. I never liked D'ndai much but he was a believable and interesting character. The book also kills Morgan Primus and possibly kills Admiral Nechayev but she gets better as that was never something Peter David was going to be allowed to do forever (probably). The premise is basically Morgan Primus is terrifying Calhoun due to her absolute control over the starship as well as near infinite ability to affect the Federation. This is a bit like my dislike of DISCO's Control and the novelverse version of CONTROL as well. Basically, it seems to act as if AI can just bypass cybersecurity at will and wield ultimate power because cyber-magic. It's not enough that she has absolute control over the EXCALIBUR, which is already a massively powerful battleship but she has to be an existential threat to the Federation as a whole. Ironically, my favorite part of the book is where Peter David takes a break from the New Frontier crew (that he seems to be honestly a bit tired of) and instead inserts 7 of 9 and the Doctor into the story. The questionable role of recruiting the Doctor into an assassination plot against a fellow AI is questionable and I wish he'd attempted to talk her down before realizing,. "No, sorry, you're an Agrimus or Landru not a Data" aside, there's some genuinely gut bustingly hilarious moments like Soleta's extensive anti-AI rant that the Doctor only hears, "You thought my novel was overwritten?" from. That was fantastic. Unfortunately, I can't say I recommend this book because of the sheer bleakness of the ending as well as the fact that it goes against so many Star Trek themes. Morgan points out that she is new life that the Federation is seeking but our heroes go to elaborate lengths to destroy her. Mac seeking a new life after freeing Xenex ends up in having the entirety of his species exterminated. Thus, essentially, rendering a massive amount of their plotline in the background to be pointless. The Demiurge and the Brethren are so wholly evil and vile that they are up there with the Daleks as well as Borg for, "these people should go." We even have hundreds of thousands of Thallonians wiped out by our heroes not being able to do much. Weirdly enough, I'm reminded of GI JOE: RETALIATION where the fact our heroes are so ineffective that Cobra gets away with killing ten million people in London. Like MAN OF STEEL or the ending of INTO DARKNESS, you start to wonder if our heroes were remotely effective in the greater spetacle of villain mass murder. An interesting tidbit here is that Tania Tobias and Kalinda have started a relationship so either Si Cwan wasn't in charge of the latter's body when they slept together last book or it wasn't a deal breaker. As much as I like Xyon and Kalinda, Peter David pulls no punches in making it clear which is the healthier relationship. Xyon doesn't even bother to check on his ex when he sees her with someone else and considers straight up murdering Tania when he sees it. It's an ugly look for our resident Outrageous Okona. Awkward beginning or not, is this the first queer relationship in the novels among "regulars"?
I now think of New Frontier as being like the Shatnerverse -- it's similar to the First Splinter, at some points very similar, but it's its own thing. The Shatnerverse was Novelverse-aware, the Novelverse was NF-aware, which is how the Titan and crew could appear in later Shatnerverse novels and Calhoun could appear in Before Dishonor, but Shatner's Titan was not Taking Wing's Titan, and Destiny's Excalibur is not NF's Excalibur. Peter David could kill Nechayev in a New Frontier novel while the First Splinter Nechayev lived on.
She ends up making her return in THE RETURNED anyway so it's a moot point. I admit, I tend to think of the continuities of my beloved franchises--even when they're trying to keep consistent with one another--to be more broad strokes rather than worrying about individual specifics. You do raise a very valid way of looking at them as a bunch of separate timelines with roughly similar characters, though. There's an Excalibur and its wacky crew in many realities but they're not the same crew. Sort of akin to most Marvel universes having their own version of he Avengers.
Star Trek: New Frontier: The Returned 1-3 Book 19-21 Synopsis: Captain Mackenzie Calhoun and the crew of the U.S.S. Excalibur are back, picking up three months after the stunning events depicted in New Blind Man’s Bluff. Calhoun's search of Xenex has failed to find any survivors, and now he is bound and determined to track down the race that killed them—the D'myurj and their associates, the Brethren—and exact vengeance upon them. His search will take the Excalibur crew into a pocket universe, where he discovers not only the homeworld of the D’myurj, but another race that shares Calhoun's determination to obliterate his opponents. But is this new race truly an ally…or an even greater threat? Analysis: I'm doing this book as one single review because I feel like the three novellas really are just one very good(ish) New Frontier novel that was divided into three parts. I feel like it is a questionable place to end the series, though, because there's a lot of unanswered questions. According to urban legend, Peter David supposedly did a Soleta-centric novel after this novel that he never got published and I would very much like to read it. If it exists, it makes me wonder if it's available on his Patreon. Either way, it saddens me there will never be another New Frontier novel and it is a bit like saying goodbye to a bunch of old friends. You can only speculate where the NF version of Robin Lefler, Shelby, Calhoun, Soleta, Xyon, Kalinda, and others may have ended up. The story is divided into roughly two parts with Mac suffering PTSD and obviously needing years of therapy before coming back to work, hopping back into work at the chance of getting revenge on the Demiurge race. Mac intends to commit genocide against them because, as we remember, he's a Conan the Barbarian-esque savage in a Star Fleet uniform. This doesn't surprise me as he's someone clearly not in his right mind but the fact that his crew indulges him right up to the point that he's planning genocide, well, doesn't sit well with me. The second part of the book is Robin Lefler, Mark McHenry, and Cwansi returning to New Thallon in order to secure the latter a place for his future rulership. Unfortunately, the cartoonishly evil Shintar Han is determined to invite them back solely for the purposes of eliminating them. The fact that Cwansi would not come of age for twenty years and could easily be a puppet doesn't enter Shintar's head as he just keeps trying to kill them all. Eventually, he summons the power of the Awesome who turns out to be Q in a plot that I don't think works very well for the TNG character. Q may be as close to a god as anything in the Trek universe but I can't really ever imagine him allowing himself to be worshiped or going out of his way to answer the prayers for a child's murder. He's undoubtedly killed many children with his games but its the very lack of care to the "small picture" is why I don't think he'd work with them. Props to the resolution, though. Honestly, these novellas are some of the darkest in Star Trek, which is part of why it's so strange that they remain so mostly lighthearted. There's sexual assault, the genocide of THREE races, our heroes help in the genocide of two even if they don't directly annihilate everyone, themes of suicide, and the constant attempts at murdering a baby that are played for a laugh. It doesn't help the Dayam (Damn?) are one-dimensionally evil Necromongers that want to kill all other life in the universe because, they're bad guys meant to be worse than the Demiurge. Mark McHenry and Robin Lefler become involved in this book and this is an interesting twist because Mark has a lot of Wesley Crusher elements at the end of his run. He's basically a Traveler, awkward, goofy, and probably resembles the adult Will Wheaton now in my head. I think it's a pretty good romance but comes a little quickly after the death of Si Cwan in-universe. Sadly, Cwansi is aged up as an adult, which is kind of terrible and would be incredibly traumatic in real life but fits the kind of "Cable/Nate Summers" logic that I'm fairly sure Peter David was drawing from. Oh and Mac gets raped. Yeah. No real way to talk around that, Soleta zaps his brain and they have sex without him having any choice in the matter. Except, it is played as an extention of Soleta being in love with him and her being a victim of Pon Farr. Then they end the series on her being pregnant with his kid. I feel like this was really not very well handled and makes pretty light of male sexual assault. Especially since, under other circumstances, I would have supported a love triangle between these two or Soleta/Mac. I can't even say I liked the handling of Xyon this book around since he ends up trying to kidnap a child to give to an evil Prime Minister, endangers the entirety of the Excalibur crew, and betrays his love of Kalinda in a way that makes him a complete scumbag. Even being called out as evil by his computer and working to make amends doesn't really make up for the fact a character who should really know better did some truly reprehensible things. Also, you'd think he'd have been even slightly more sympathetic to his dad during this or at least unwilling to destroy so many lives of people who were otherwise friendly to him. Kalinda is onboard the Excalibur for example. Yeesh. I am going to say this is the second set of New Frontier books I don't much care for. Way-way too dark and sadly a poor place to end. Still it was a fantastic run.
You should of course do whatever you'd like, but I'd love to read your thoughts on Vanguard next! This has been a great follow.
Yeah, I'm probably going to do Vanguard and it's various spin-offs next. It's the kind of work that has enough continuity between the various novels, alternate character interpretations, and so on that it is definitely something that could have a full discussion thread worth. As much as I like Starfleet Academy, I feel like it got hurt by the Telepath War and its short run time. Other options were the Klingon Empire books and the Department of Temporal Investigations. Some parting thoughts on New Frontier: Fourteen New Frontier Thoughts 1. Captain Calhoun remains one of my favorite Star Trek captains and is really a wonderful study in contrasts. I mentioned the comparison to Conan the Barbarian but I mean the Howardian very intelligent "barbarian" versus the dumb brute of pop culture. The story gets a bit "Commander Shepard will save us all" messianic at times but he's always shown to be primarily a superior warrior because of his mind and willingness to trust the eccentric crew underneath him. 2. I mentioned this was a major source of inspiration for my own writing, particularly my Space Academy books (that contain a dedication to Peter David). Star Trek comedy is an acquired taste but I absolutely just love the kind of Muppets-esque collection of weirdos and eccentrics that populate the Excalibur. The early books are hilarious before the darkness creeps in and poor Shelby finding herself as the only sane woman onboard only adds to it all. I think it is up there with Terry Pratchett, Jim Butcher, and Christopher Moore for my all time favorite laugh outloud books. 3. Soleta remains my third favorite character onboard the ship and probably above even Shelby if not for her weird detour into joining the Romulans and what she did to Mac. Basically, she gets the "Tom Paris vs. Lorcano" treatment where she's transparently an EXPY (see TV tropes) for Saavik but we get to see a lot more of her journey than we ever really got to see Kristie Alley or Robin Curtis' own. I especially like her attempt to do the Christian/Sarek thing by her rapist sperm donor and forgive him only to have him betray her because, of course he did. 4. I've mentioned that Mark McHenry probably wasn't intended to be a stand-in for Wesley Crusher but he actually shows a career path story-wise that would have been a lot more acceptable to fans I think. The child prodigy wunderkid who becomes the pilot of the ship despite coasting through math but being socially awkward in general. Also, who develops mysterious powers that he makes use of but never allows him to talk to Ashley Judd's character. It seems she has a type. 5. Speaking of Robin Lefler, it's interesting to see her character develop in such wild and interesting ways due to the fact the character from TNG didn't have much going for. She's suddenly Not-Number One's daughter, the consort of a Barsoom Martian Prince, and so many other oddball events in her life. I never quite bought her relationship with Si Cwan, though, because the character established by TNG didn't seem attracted to a martial arts dictator. 6. Si Cwan is a character that I never really warmed to but was certainly a source of a great deal of drama and made the Thallonian Sector come "alive." Really, you don't want to do any sort of story about investigating a land that is in the process of collapse without a local voice to provide context for their struggles. In this case, Si Cwan was our Major Kira. He remained an arrogant dictator to the end, though, but always an entertaining one. 7. My headcanon for the longest while was that Xyon and the Outrageous Okona were the same character under an alias. Billy Campbell even looks like Mel Gibson's possible sonj. Sadly, Xyon never seems to learn a damned thing on his entire quest and burned so much good will through the books that I actually hope he serves a few years in a rehabilitation facility because certainly he needs someone to set his head on straight. Heck, it worked for Peanut Hamper. 8. The series handling of LGBT issues was extremely progressive for its time and we have the non-binary/female relationship of Burgy with Selar as well as the Tania/Kalinda romance in an era where Willow/Tara was considered shockingly progressive. A lack of a male-male romance is noted but I think that Peter David did well for representation within his series. Some of it is a bit clunky but that was decades ago too and I don't hold it against him for not being a seer. Sort of like how I think of Xavin from the Runaways and nonbinary issues. 9. The series did suffer from "Cerebus Syndrome" where it just got too dark and angsty for its own good with so much of the cast dying or being traumatized. I think it's something that was in the air or just comes from being a comic book writer for so many decades. When in doubt, Spider-Man has his parents return to life only to melt or Harry die or something otherwise destroying his life. None of them are bad stories but the abundance of entirely evil irredeemable monsters and genocide as the ending to stories doesn't really leave me with a very Star Trek-y feel. I don't even like that Picard Season 3 killed off the Borg. 10. I absolutely loved meeting Beta Shift captain Kat Mueller. I think she could have easily handled three books of her own and that was part of the reason the cast deaths perhaps happened because there were whole new crews and groups that needed attention and were competing for space. It's kind of funny that when VOY was in its first seasons, the writers were terrified of its captain being taken seriously when they had so many fascinating women captains in the novels. 11. The New Frontier series is what I would definitely list as "space opera" versus "science fiction." I am not someone who really draws a line between fantasy and science fiction, so this is a wholly arbitrary distinction but it is as far from the harder Trek-world (warp speed and transporters aside) as you can possibly get. The Great Bird of the Galaxy, Space Gods, evil cults, seers, mediums, and our Conan-esque protagonist puts this somewhat closer to Star Wars or Doctor Who than TNG Star Trek. I don't think of this as a bad thing, though, and have always liked the comic book-y, goofier, and more over the top Trek. It's definitely a matter of taste, though. 12. Admiral Jellico's treatment in the novels is one I appreciate even if I am one of those people who actually felt that he was unfairly maligned by TNG fans in "Chain of Command." Here, Jellico is basically treated like he's Calhoun's version of JJ Jameson for most of the series but Peter David does something impressive in making them eventually become close friends. I liked that twist. 13. I really enjoyed the Xenexian culture and felt it was a very good deconstruction of your typical "Warrior" Race in sci-fi. They're definitely a hardy warrior people but they're never shown to be one-dimensional and have a lot of realistic elements as an oppressed people that are trying to build up their economy after decades/centuries of colonialism. That's part of the reason I feel like their destruction was such an incredible waste. 14. Kudos to bringing back M'Ress and Arex. No notes. Well, maybe that M'Ress needed to meet Morgan Primus and I could have done without ANOTHER case of sexual assault in the book. Oof. I did love Arex's family never realizing he was gone.
You know, for all the lousy stuff in the post-timejump NF books, the one that really itches at me is two villains from different pocket universes in a row. That's a lot of pocket universes for one fairly short series!