VOY: The Eternal Tide by Kirsten Beyer Review Thread (Spoilers!)

[Halliwell]

Bringing Janeway back just to have her die again would be stupid. And would be playing with the minds of the fans that do enjoy her time on Voyager. If the end result in bringing her back is to die again then I say just leave her dead. Janeway was the only female Star Trek captain to lead a series. Out of all 5 of the captains Janeway is the only one to have been mishandled and what others says is true. Like Nick Meyer said, of course you can kill Spock as long as you do it well. Janeway's death was not handled well.

I have to say I've read both Full Circle and Unworthy but haven't read Children Of The Storm. I've been reading Trek novels for more than 20 years and I have to say that this era of novels has produced two of my favorites, DTI: Watching The Clock and Full Circle. I've read them over and over and never get bored in reading them. I'm hoping that Eternal Tide will be just as good and have faith it will.

[zarkon]

Halliwell wrote:

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Bringing Janeway back just to have her die again would be stupid. And would be playing with the minds of the fans that do enjoy her time on Voyager. If the end result in bringing her back is to die again then I say just leave her dead.

...that was a joke

Halliwell wrote:

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Janeway was the only female Star Trek captain to lead a series. Out of all 5 of the captains Janeway is the only one to have been mishandled and what others says is true.

Yeah, Kate Mulgrew was a brilliant casting choice but sadly the series runners/writers really messed the character around rather a lot.

Halliwell wrote:

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I have to say I've read both Full Circle and Unworthy but haven't read Children Of The Storm. I've been reading Trek novels for more than 20 years and I have to say that this era of novels has produced two of my favorites, DTI: Watching The Clock and Full Circle. I've read them over and over and never get bored in reading them. I'm hoping that Eternal Tide will be just as good and have faith it will.

Children of the Storm is by far the best of the three for my money.

[Christopher]

Halliwell wrote:

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Out of all 5 of the captains Janeway is the only one to have been mishandled and what others says is true. Like Nick Meyer said, of course you can kill Spock as long as you do it well. Janeway's death was not handled well.

So... I just imagined all those people who've been complaining for the past 18 years that Kirk's death wasn't handled well? And that's a canonical death.

[zarkon]

Oh was he specifically talking about death?

Because yeah, Kirk's was far worse then Janeway's.

[JoeZhang]

zarkon wrote:

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Hopefully even if she does return she's off to the alpha quadrant as soon as, or dies again(I'd pay to see that...again!).

My theory is that Chakotay gets Eden to wear a Janeway mask while they are having sexual congress.

[Christopher]

Well, you don't have to narrow it to death specifically. Search through the annals of fan and professional criticism and you'll find many complaints about Trek captains being mishandled at various times. There are plenty of people out there who think Kirk was mishandled in TMP or much of the third season of TOS, or that Picard was mishandled in NEM or in the novel Ship of the Line. I think Kirk was mishandled in TUC. Many think Archer was mishandled in season 3. Many think Sisko was mishandled in Rough Beasts of Empire, though others have reconsidered upon reading the subsequent duology.

So to claim that Janeway is the only captain who ever got handled badly, and that it must therefore be because she's a woman, is simply untrue. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of sexism in the world that legitimately needs to be acknowledged and fought (as a certain not-so-honorable Mr. Akin of Missouri has so vividly demonstrated in recent days), but that's exactly why there's no sense inventing imaginary charges of sexism and wasting energy on the wrong battles. Male Trek captains have not been immune from mishandling either.

[Paris]

Drago-Kazov wrote:

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Peopl hatetd Chakotay? They might had disliked or were bored by him. hated him seems strong. Neeelix might had been hated, but Chakotay...

LOL. You must be new

[JD]

The only reason I might be interested in seeing Janeway come back is to see what kind of an effect it has on her and the other characters. There's been a lot of developments since she did, so it could be interesting to see what kind of an effect her return has on those developments.

[Halliwell]

Christopher wrote:

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So... I just imagined all those people who've been complaining for the past 18 years that Kirk's death wasn't handled well? And that's a canonical death.

No it wasn't. Ron Moore, one of the writers, said so himself. Kirk's role in Generations was nothing more than a glorified cameo. He was only in the movie to have a bridge to the original series and nothing more. The actor himself hated it so much that he wrote an entire series reviving the Kirk character and while I know those don't fit into the novelverse continuity I feel that the books about Kirk's revival undid that. I'm hoping that Eternal Tide can do the same thing for Janeway. Beyer has the talent to do it. Even your book Watching The Clock made Janeway's death have more meaning, none of the uptime governments would have existed without her actions. DTI:WTC and Full Circle took away from of the sting of her death in Before Dishonor.

I guess I should have said that Captain Janeway hasn't been treated as well as she could have been in the novelverse as the other male captains have. Out of three female captains, Janeway, Kira and Dax, the only one still around now and in a leadership position is Dax. Kirk came back, Sisko came back, Picard never left and neither did Archer. Why is it that only the female leads are treated that way? I miss Kira being in command of the station as much as I miss Janeway being alive. It seems to me that the message to young women out there is you can achieve your dreams and accomplish much, but the men are the one's who get to fulfill those dreams until the end. I'm not a woman but I still see that there is a discrepancy there.

I don't blame any of the writers in any way. The last decade has been the best Treklit has ever been. But that's because the writers have been extremely talented. It's the editors who make goofy decisions like fast forward DS9 and having Janeway end up with the Q.

*I will say having Ro in command of DS9 now is cool. Knowing the back story of how Kira was meant to be Ro in DS9's creation is a bit of symmetry I like.

[Paris]

^What about Ro? She's the 'Captain' of DS9...and the Defiant by extension. Vaughan took over for Kira, but Ro took over for Vaughan. There are a few female captains in the Full Circle fleet as well. The commander of fleet, Afsarah Eden, is also a woman.

[Christopher]

Halliwell wrote:

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No it wasn't. Ron Moore, one of the writers, said so himself. Kirk's role in Generations was nothing more than a glorified cameo. He was only in the movie to have a bridge to the original series and nothing more. The actor himself hated it so much that he wrote an entire series reviving the Kirk character and while I know those don't fit into the novelverse continuity I feel that the books about Kirk's revival undid that.

What you feel has nothing to do with the topic under discussion. The books, by definition, are not part of the canon, therefore yes, Kirk's death was canonical, and his resurrection was not.

And whether or not you liked Kirk's death does not change the fact that it did happen, that someone wrote a story where Kirk died, just as someone wrote a story where Janeway died. And a lot of people do feel that Kirk's death was mishandled -- and evidently you're one of those people! So you're contradicting yourself when you say Janeway was the only captain whose fate was mishandled. It's simply not a statement that holds up to scrutiny.

Even your book Watching The Clock made Janeway's death have more meaning, none of the uptime governments would have existed without her actions.

Uhh, no, not really; you're confusing two different Janeway finales. It was her actions in "Endgame" that were important to the factions in the future, because they triggered the events that led to Destiny and the Caeliar's redemption of the Borg. The events of Before Dishonor were essentially peripheral to that.

I guess I should have said that Captain Janeway hasn't been treated as well as she could have been in the novelverse as the other male captains have. Out of three female captains, Janeway, Kira and Dax, the only one still around now and in a leadership position is Dax. Kirk came back, Sisko came back, Picard never left and neither did Archer. Why is it that only the female leads are treated that way?

They aren't. Come on, if you've really read the literature, you know the current crop of authors is dedicated to introducing new, strong female characters and to treating all characters equally regardless of their sex. You're manufacturing a pattern that doesn't exist, partly by fixating on captains to the exclusion of other characters who are often equally important in the literature.

It's been pointed out many times that the person who decided to kill Janeway in the novels was a woman, editor Margaret Clark, so it's completely ludicrous to claim that there was any sexism behind it. You'd have to ask Margaret what her reasons were, but I'd imagine she may have felt that as an admiral, stuck in a desk job, Janeway wasn't doing anything really interesting anymore, so it might serve her character better to let her go out with a bang saving the Federation one last time. Not a gendered decision, simply a decision based on the rank and status the character canonically ended up in.

As for Kira, yes, she left a leadership position for a different life, but let me remind you, so did Sisko. Right now, the situation is that Sisko is in command but Kira isn't, but five years ago it would've been the other way around, and there's no telling where it'll be five years from now. Again, it's nonsense to read anything gendered into it; it's simply the current slice of an evolving continuity.

Also, you're forgetting one female captain, Ro Laren, who's still in a leadership position in the DS9 novels. Not to mention Captain Sonya Gomez of the da Vinci, Captain Afsarah Eden in command of the Delta Quadrant fleet, Captain Regina Farkas of the Quirinal, Captain Clarissa Glenn (commander by rank but captain by title) of the Galen, Captain Claudia Alisov of the Everett, admirals such as Nechayev, and numerous civilian authority figures like Nan Bacco and Gell Kamemor. And captains from earlier eras like Erika Hernandez, Hallie Gannon, Atish Khatami, Saavik, Demora Sulu, etc.

On the male side, it's incorrect to say that Archer is "still" a captain. As of the most current time we've seen Archer, the founding ceremony of the Federation in August 2161, Enterprise has been decommissioned for more than a year -- and if you look carefully, you'll see that Archer is never referred to as "Captain Archer" in that chapter. Onscreen bio information from "In a Mirror, Darkly" suggests that Archer went on to become an admiral and the Starfleet Chief of Staff; it's quite possible he's already an admiral by that final scene in To Brave the Storm. But whatever his rank, he's not still in command of a starship as far as we know.

So you're interpreting the data very selectively in order to support an entirely illegitimate claim that male and female characters are being treated differently. It just isn't so.

[JD]

Christopher wrote:

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Also, you're forgetting one female captain, Ro Laren, who's still in a leadership position in the DS9 novels. Not to mention Captain Sonya Gomez of the da Vinci, Captain Afsarah Eden in command of the Delta Quadrant fleet, Captain Regina Farkas of the Quirinal, Captain Clarissa Glenn (commander by rank but captain by title) of the Galen, Captain Claudia Alisov of the Everett, admirals such as Nechayev, and numerous civilian authority figures like Nan Bacco and Gell Kamemor. And captains from earlier eras like Erika Hernandez, Hallie Gannon, Atish Khatami, Saavik, Demora Sulu, etc.

Don't forget about Rana Desai. I know she wasn't a starship commander, but she was still a Captain in a leadership position.
(Does anyone know who that is in the picture on MB?)

[Christopher]

JD wrote:

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(Does anyone know who that is in the picture on MB?)

It's Parminder Nagra, who was the authors' template for the character. Someone must've photoshopped her into a Starfleet uniform.

[JD]

Cool, thanks. I figured that's who it was, but I've never actually seen her in anything, so I didn't recognize her.

[Christopher]

Let's see, I think I've only seen Nagra in Bend it Like Beckham and the short-lived Alcatraz TV series from last season. Oh, and she had a voice role in the Batman: Gotham Knight DVD.