Spoilers Destiny: Lost Souls by David Mack Review Thread

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

It seems to me that anyone who was badly enough damaged by the Borg to be that vengeful is going to be too weakened to be able to afford starting a war with anybody. They'd have more urgent matters to deal with than petty vengeance.

And I don't see the logic in the argument that humans are "responsible" for the Borg. They were victims, the first drones. Okay, arguably you could say they were responsible for the circumstances that led to the creation of the Borg, but that's really a stretch. I mean, you can trace modern tensions between the Mideast and the West back to actions taken by Winston Churchill and Napoleon, but nobody blames them for 9/11.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

Brings up an interesting side thought I've been having for years now. Did the Klingons blame Earth for V'Ger? They built it and it ultimately destroyed three of their ships, if not more before the movie started.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

Try the French Crusaders a *lot* further back, who's actions led directly to the rise of Beybers, who more or less invented militant Islamic fundamentalism...

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

After Picard was turned into Locutus, was there a backlash against humans because of that? I don`t think that happened.

I am sure Sisko was not the only person who had problems with that, at least at the beginning. But as far as I know and remember, there was nothing serious.

Since then, more was discovered about the Borg and I think that the Borg consisted first of all of enslaved people should be widely known. I think most people will understand that these humans who became the first building block of the Borg collective were victims, not villains.

On the other hand, I am sure that although the Borg threat is gone there will be a minority who would be less understanding when the truth is revealed. I don`t see a danger of a war but definitely a danger of terrorism.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

^What you're saying at the end does make alot of sense Baerbel. I haven't read the book yet, but from what people have said here, I could definitely see some angry families of victims getting together and attacking UFP ships, and humans. That would certainly make a whole lot more sense then entire allied governments, and UFP members turing on Earth.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

Think about this: Have the Romulans caused anything even remotely like the kind of death, destruction and assimilation that the Borg have?

Even so, Section 31 felt strongly enough about the origin of the Romulans to send Trip undercover and *keep* him there (in TGTMD) because of the risk of letting word get out about it. And later: Look no further than Stiles from "Balance of Terror". I mean, here's a trained Starfleet officer reduced to little more than a racist bigot just *because* he found that out. You think he was alone?

As for the Borg: I still think it would be in Earth's best interests not to let word about humanity's role in the creation of the Borg get out. You can't be too careful.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

Are we all forgetting that if not for the Romulans ambushing the Columbia there would not have been a problem to begin with?

I think this could go back and back and back...

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

Yeah, but Section 31 is full of paranoid jackasses who fubar things all the time.

Probably, considering that we never heard about any problems with regards to Vulcans and Romulans sharing a common ancestry again.

Yes, you can. Keeping secrets like that undermines democratic governance by reducing accountability. Further, it encourages rage and hostility -- I can more easily picture the Klingons being pissed off about the fact that Humans kept their role as the Borg's first victim secret because of lack of trust than I can picture them sundering the alliance just because "they're looking for any excuse for a fight" (which is a complete misunderstanding of Klingon culture).

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

Whether it be by terrorism,or by government order there will be some strife if it becomes public that humans helped create the Borg with the Caeliar.

Since the Caeliar were the primary agents of both the beginning and the end of the Borg,it might stand to reason that civilizations destroyed by the Borg might wanna ask the Caeliar a few 'questions'.

Alas,they've taken off.

So with the primary culprits not available for comment, that leaves the Federation holding the bag.

Now, these events WILL be classified,due to the existence of the Omega Particle (and the consequences of its abuse).The human-Borg connection is icing on the cake.

Keep in mind,there may not even BE an inquiry into why the Borg went ape-shizzle.

They're Borg,and that for the majority stands as explaination enough of the atrocities they committed.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

I said the exact same thing.

This is a case of backtracking to a point where you're blaming the descendants of people who were making do with what they had. At this point, everyone who could be considered culpable for the whole thing is dead, so at most, you're blaming the species for something a small group of them did hundreds of years ago. At the moment, at least, recovery is a more pressing need than avenging the death against those who fought and died alongside you.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

I just looked up the current guesstimated population of Earth and I got 6.7 billion. If you put that into the total of 60 billion all together the Borg's Last Stand killed about 9 planet Earths* worth of people. That's a whole bunch of people.

*Early 21st Century Estimates.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

I don't know about Christopher, and the other people on this side of the argument, but I don't doubt that there will be problems. I just don't think everyone will immediately turn on humanity/the UFP.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

I can see a "hey you owe us...Why? Cause you started this shit!". Basically putting political pressures on Earth (note: Earth, not the Federation) to come up reparations and political favors of some type. And in the process, Earth will loss some of its political influence, while newer members might rise up to political positions of prominence.

I doubt the sum of what Earth (re: humanity) has been behind, in terms of our junk coming back to bite the galaxy in the ass, has ever fully be divulged.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

I still don't see how Earth is responsible for the creation of the Borg. Humans did not create the Borg on purpose. It is the Caeliar Sedin who was responsible for creating the Borg. The MACOS were victims just like any other drone. And the MACOS had every right to try to escape the Caeliar. They could not have known that their escape plan would backfire, sending the Caeliar ship back in time where they would become the first drones of an unstoppable enemy that would almost destroy the Federation thousands of years later.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

It doesn't matter whether or not the MACOS were in teh right, or that the merging that lead to the Borg was an attempt to survive. All that matters, to the whips that whip the paranoid, frightened, masses of refugees and and survivors, is that humans were at the root of the creation of the Borg. There was a singular moment where humans could have chose to die and the Borg never been born. The Borg Queen was human. It was human captains-- Janeway and Picard-- that had a chances to wipe out the Borg and didn't. And when it all came to a end, it was humans that allowed the collective to be evolved by another human into a superior form of life, and escape prosecuetion and punishment for their actions.


Never let facts and get in the way of a good game of blame, or underestimate frothing, paniced, angry masses looking to punish someone for the cause of their suffering.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

You're right,Earth wasn't wholly responsible for creating the Borg.

Catch is,we can't prove that to anyone.If we reveal the events to aliens who've lost entire worlds to the Borg,they're gonna have some questions about the specifics.

Point blank,they'll want to know why their planet died.And a statement that we were victims too,that it was all an accident by one Caeliar that caused the genocide of billions is gonna fly like a bar of latinum.

What'll really charge their disruptors is that the Caeliar being 'gone',the disposition of Sedin cannot be established.And if my homeworld got vaporized ,I'd like to see justice served to the culprits.

(Yes,I do realize Sedin was dealt with by the Caeliar,but Starfleet wasn't privy to the process)

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

Humans may have been instrumental in the creation of the collective, but they were also instrumental in its end. Hopefully that would help ease the anger from some of the other races.
But realistically I am sure it won't, as the end of the borg doesn't do anything to bring back loved ones or to replace lost worlds.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

You do have a good point about humanity being instrumental in the end of the Borg, I really do think that that could help calm some upset people down.

You we keep debating whether this will all lead to a war, but I realized that there could actually be just as much of a chance of the oposite happening. Perhaps as things start to settle down and people really focus on rebuilding maybe they will actually start helping each other, and sharring resources. IMO given how positive things tend to be (most of the time) in the Star Trek universe, I'm really thinking that perhaps this will actually be the more likely outcome. The battle alone brought alot of different species together, so how do we know that they won't stay together in order to rebuild?

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

I read Lost Souls a lot differently than you did, I think.

Had the MACOs agreed to join with the Caeliar in a planned way, as was suggested to them (and that the MACOs rejected), the situation would have been better -- and not as tragic. Circumstances would have been more controlled.

But because the MACOs waited -- and they had their reasons, from simple pride to the same feelings of resentment that the Columbia survivors in Mere Mortals felt -- circumstances were different. There was nothing planned in what happened. The Caeliar had already been perverted. They had become primal, reason had been lost.

I read the scene in Lost Souls as a sign that the last two Columbia survivors were the first victims of the Borg, not the first Borg themselves.

Except... she wasn't.

I think it was "Dark Frontier" that said that the Borg Queen was Species 14 or 16 or something like that. If the Borg Queen came into existence after the Borg began numbering the species they encountered, it's a fair bet that the Borg Queen wasn't modelled on Kiona Thayer.

Yes, in Before Dishonor the Borg Queen inhabited Kathryn Janeway's body as a vessel, but as we know, the Borg Queen can make itself felt anywhere within the Collective.

On the other hand, Janeway herself precipitated the events of Destiny. (See "Endgame.")

I'm not at all sure how you would "prosecute" or "punish" a force of nature. You might as well punish a hurricane for destroying a city, an avalanche for destroying a ski lodge.

 

Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade

I'm going to repeat myself, just because I can.

As I wrote just a few days ago, there's a heaping big difference between what Picard, Riker, and Dax know about the origins of the Borg and what the trio can prove.

They don't have any proof that what Hernandez told them about the relationship between the Borg and the Caeliar is true.

It's a hypothesis for which they can't get any evidence, because the Caeliar destroyed it all when they "assimilated" the Borg.

In fact, the Borg themselves provided the evidence that it's not true. If humans were instrumental in the creation of the Borg, why does humanity have a species designation in the four digits? Why wouldn't they be species 0 or 1?

I'm not arguing that what we're told in Lost Souls is wrong. I don't want any misunderstandings on that point. What I am arguing is that there is absolutely no way for anyone to prove that humans played a critical role in the genesis of the Borg because they don't have any evidence to prove it with.

Maybe there's a race out there that's trigger happy and itching for a fight, and they're going to take it out on Earth because it's handy. If they do, rumors of humanity's involvement with the Borg's creation is just a pretext; the reality is, they probably just want to fight.