Star Trek #66 (Pocket)/#61 (Titan) From The Depths Written By: Victor Milan Published: August 1993 Plot: The Enterprise is dispatched to the Okeanos, a planet that was colonized by humans a couple of centuries earlier who wanted to continue experiments in genetic engineering; experiments that had been outlawed on Earth and its colonies due to the Eugenics Wars. However, another species is now claiming that they were on the planet first and want the humans colony removed. And to show that they mean business, the Klingons have been invited to the planet as well. Review: I'm not quite done this book yet (I'm on page 272 of 280 as I write this), and while it's taken me close to a month to read this book, it is not because the book was boring. Quite the opposite. Unfortunately, with Christmas I just did not have the time needed to read this book quickly. In the past, I really have not enjoyed TOS era books, whether they be from the live-action/cartoon series timeframe, or the movies era. But this book felt different to me; it didn't feel like the "western story" that so many other TOS books have felt like. From The Depths had a very nice mix of TOS era action with TNG era action. From Voyages Of Imagination, I see that this book is set shortly after The Counter-Clock Incident, just after The Tears Of The Singers, but still quite a while before Star Trek The Motion Picture. But with TMP, From The Depths does offer a little bit of an explanation as to why the Enteprise needed a major refit. From The Depths also has Kirk and crew meeting and interacting with a number of bumpy-head Klingons. The general gist that I get from the author, at least when Victor Milan wrote the book, was that Klingons were smooth headed in their youth, and then grew their cranial ridges in as they got into their 30's and 40's; sort of like how humans grow baby teeth when they are an infant, and then grow their adult teeth around their pre-teen time. But, I must say, From The Depths really needed to be edited better than it was. For example, from page 123 you get this "wonderful" sentence: From The Depths is probably Trek's best candidate for the most tongue-twisters in one book. There are a few other sentences that are similar to the one above, but by far, that was the twistiest sentence in the book!
I think its more concerned with having "Review Thread" in the title than the actual poll options, as there might be some Review Threads that have no poll in them.
I'm pretty sure he did make a comment about the poll options need to be the same last time someone did a thread with different options.
The whole point of Sho's site is to collate poll results in order to rank the reviewed books. So yes, it is concerned with the polls.
It needs the exact wordings for the poll options as well, that's why he had to add my typo in the String Theory thread manually as an exception.
Yep, specifically it looks for threads containing "Review Thread" in the title and having a poll with and only with "Outstanding", "Above Average", "Average", "Below Average" and "Poor" poll options -- with two exceptions: "Excellent" is treated as equivalent to "Outstanding" (because there are some older threads that differ only in this one respect and I felt it was close enough) and "Avarage" is treated as equivalent to "Average" (to cope with a typo in one thread). It has to be that strict to avoid false positives.
My memories of From the Depths aren't positive. From the big three characters' apparent embrace of Milan's particular libertarianism to its consistent hostility towards the Federation as an oppressive agency (I do not see a sane Federation councillor as willing to commit genocidal acts against anyone, never mind against independent human colonies that haven't done anything), the book is dominated by the aforementioned ideological bias.
Tom - do you want me to amend your poll so it fits in with Sho's rankings? (I'm not sure off-hand if I can, but I'll give it a try) Also, sorry for being late to the game, still playing catch-up after Christmas
^ Not my place to say, of course, but I think if the poll were to be retrofitted it'd have to also be reset to no votes per option so it still compares well with the others.