TNG: The Body Electric by David Mack Review Thread (Spoilers!)

[Hartzilla2007]

MatthiasRussell wrote:

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And yet the Q let Janeway decide on the judicial matter involving Quin,

Because she was the one Quin requested asylum from.

used her to resolve a civil war,

Which was resolving issues left over from the Quinn thing

and the Omega problem without bringing Picard in as well?

And now Q doesn't like her anymore because of it, besides that was the writer possibly exaggerating Janeway's importance. Plus I'm not a fan of Janeway getting out of the consequences of her arrogance.

I'm no Janeway lover, but I just don't think Picard's credentials outweigh hers in matters of galactic importance.

Yes they do by virtue of Picard being and always being a better captain than her, besides I'd trust Picard more than that arrogant Janeway. I mean seriously she thought one shouldn't be afraid of the Borg despite being able to kill the f@#k out of the federation when ever they felt like it.

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Do I sense some hostility to Janeway here? To me, she came off as no more arrogant than Kirk.

[Ronald Held]

Janeway has no SFC for nearly all of the 7 years to kerp her inline.

[Kirsten Beyer]

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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And now Q doesn't like her anymore because of it, besides that was the writer possibly exaggerating Janeway's importance. Plus I'm not a fan of Janeway getting out of the consequences of her arrogance.

(....snip...)

I mean seriously she thought one shouldn't be afraid of the Borg despite being able to kill the f@#k out of the federation when ever they felt like it.

None of these statements ring true for me. They are, in fact, so not what I've written that I'm a little confused. And I'm not sure how any of them except perhaps the last can be taken outside the context of the latest books...or from a Janeway as portrayed on TV position only.

I mean, like Janeway or don't like Janeway, that's entirely your call. That said, how exactly have we exaggerated Janeway's importance or let her out of the consequences of anything?

In TET, Janeway learns that the choice she made to work with her future self and get her ship home earlier than it had in Admiral Janeway's timeline created a problem. Had she not done what she did, her ship would have closed Omega on their own, losing Seven in the process and apparently erasing the Q from existence, but still....her choice in Endgame set other events in motion she could never have predicted. I don't see how this exagerrates the importance of her existence...any more than any other Starfleet officer who has ever been up against an existential threat. I'm pretty sure lots of our characters have faced the possible end of everything more than once and found a work-around.

TET is essentially a story of her choosing to return to help clean up a mess she had a hand in creating. How is that not the exact opposite of her getting out of the consequences of her actions? If you accept the premise of the story at all, the only way she gets out of anything is if she stays dead. Then everybody else has to deal with the problem without her.

Further, in no way whatsoever was returning to help and subsequently surviving that avoiding consequences. You think living with the knowledge of what her past choices, a future version of herself's choices, and her current challenges is going to be easy? It almost sounds as if you are saying that for some reason her past actions were all so horrendous that the only acceptable action was for her to die as a result of them. While I'm not going to suggest we sugarcoat any of her more questionable calls over the years, I hardly think any of them warrant death, especially as they were made in the interest of protecting her crew which was pretty much her job description.

For my money, dying at this point would be a hell of a lot easier than figuring out how to live with everything she now knows. But perhaps that's just me.

I know that the Q in Before Dishonor chose to highlight their sense of her arrogance. In that instance, however, I think we might do well to consider the source. And there is a tendency here from time to time to toss around this 'arrogance' thing as a character flaw. Personally, I don't see how anyone signs up for the job of starship captain without a healthy dose arrogance. I don't think most of the people currently in any civilian or military position of authority could do what they do were not a little arrogance part of their basic operating instructions. And if anything, we've stated pretty explicitly that all she has just endured has altered her perspective considerably. She's still a strong person, still Kathryn Janeway, but damn. Too arrogant? I don't think so. To stubborn? Maybe. Too determined? Maybe. But again, I think all of these are necessary in a captain and lots of officer of lesser rank, come to think of it.

Nor do I recall her ever suggesting that anyone shouldn't fear the Borg. Did she take some foolhardy risks as she moved through their territory from time to time? Sure. Did she do it without a healthy appreciation of the possible consequesnces of her actions or the destructive capability of the Borg...not really. Dark Frontier comes the closest I can recall to a situation she likely should have avoided, but even that quickly turned into a problem with Seven she had no choice but to try and solve.

She did, in FC, counsel against returning to the DQ to further investigate the Borg, but not because she didn't fear them...because she knew too well how much they were to be feared. Her suggestion was to use the intelligence her crew had gathered to fortify the Federation's defenses over sending one or a handful of ships out there to try and end the Borg on their own...a pretty tall order, I think. At any rate, I can't bring to mind one instance of her suggesting the Borg were not to be feared.

Bottom line, the direction the stories have taken may not work for you. Clearly, it doesn't. But these statements are a misreading of them, not a defensible argument, at least as I see it.

As you were.

Kirsten Beyer

[Elias Vaughn]

MatthiasRussell wrote:

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I just wish Titan could have gotten involved somehow; with Data and Wesley back in the mix. It would have been nice to have the whole TNG cast involved. Another reason to involve Titan is I don’t understand why Data was vitally needed to contact the Body Electric. Isn’t the Doctor an untethered sentient AI or what about the AI society White-Blue comes from? Would perhaps Torvig’s race of cyborgs or the Binars be good enough? Titan could have explored the cyborg angle, contacted White-Blue’s people, or even superseded Fallen Gods to show White-Blue still alive (why not, if IFM is cast out why not some Michael Martin books).

While, yes, other AIs exist, the Enterprise crew had neither a way to contact them nor a reliable way to get them to the center of the galaxy. They had the quantum thingamabob to contact Data, and the crew had to focus on their memories of Data for Wesley to even find him, much less get Data where he needed to go.

It is interesting that Q sends Wesley to Picard and not Janeway saying, "Do what I always do- go bother Picard." Seems Janeway has been more helpful than Picard in major crises. I also like that Q only had one small scene which explained why he wasn’t involved and then this book didn’t become a Q novel.

Q isn't exactly Janeway's biggest fan right now.

I understand Starfleet needs captains, but I think their expected promotion of Worf is a bad idea. He is a good officer under the shepherding hand of another but he thinks like a Klingon officer, not a Starfleet one. When Gatt comes aboard, Worf wants to throw him in the brig but Picard tells him how unwise that would be. Worf wanted to rush to a military solution to the Body Electric even though he witnessed the futility of this. If this story had taken place with Worf in command, the galaxy would have been screwed whereas Riker probably would have made the same wise decisions as Picard.

Starfleet would be a very boring place if every captain responded to similar situations in identical ways. IDIC and such.

[MatthiasRussell]

IDIC does not mean Starfleet needs hot-headed captains whose rush to fire torpedoes could result in diplomatic crisis or galactic destruction. Worf has not grown into a character with an itch of diplomacy unless he is dealing with Klingons and this book demonstrated that well in the instances I cited. Worf would be good as commander of a frigate on the UFP border but not as the CO of the federation flagship in charge of diplomatic issues. IDIC doesn't mean every personality can do every job.

[Hartzilla2007]

Kirsten Beyer wrote:

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In TET, Janeway learns that the choice she made to work with her future self and get her ship home earlier than it had in Admiral Janeway's timeline created a problem. Had she not done what she did, her ship would have closed Omega on their own, losing Seven in the process and apparently erasing the Q from existence, but still....her choice in Endgame set other events in motion she could never have predicted.

I'm not talking about the novel plot designed for bringing the character back from the dead.

I'm talking about altering the lives of billions possibly wiping many of the from history itself because she didn't like how everything turned out.

I don't see how this exagerrates the importance of her existence...any more than any other Starfleet officer who has ever been up against an existential threat.

My problem was the Janeway was the only one who could save the day thing, thats what exagerrates the importance of her existence

TET is essentially a story of her choosing to return to help clean up a mess she had a hand in creating. How is that not the exact opposite of her getting out of the consequences of her actions?

Because its a crisis in the story that doesn't deal with any of the other crap that was a result of Endgame.

She's still a strong person, still Kathryn Janeway, but damn. Too arrogant? I don't think so. To stubborn?

When you're questioning the captain of the freaking federation flagship who's pretty knowledgeable about the Borg and threatening disciplinary action WHEN HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THERE BEING A BORG SHIP yes she was.

Nor do I recall her ever suggesting that anyone shouldn't fear the Borg.

Actually she was during the first Christie Golden duology as part of her response to Starfleet's understandable paranoia about s Borg assimilation nano virus outbreak on Earth.

Honestly the main reason I'm annoyed with Janeway is you made Eden more likable than Janeway and then had her go away as part of bringing Janeway back not to mention I just don't care for character resurrections.

Plus it doesn't help that Janeway's last appearances before or set before her death involved her acting like she was better than characters I like more aka Picard and Martok.

[Christopher]

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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My problem was the Janeway was the only one who could save the day thing, thats what exagerrates the importance of her existence

But Kirsten's explained that. It wasn't about Janeway personally being extra-special. It was about the notion that altering history had unpredictable consequences. Admiral Janeway chose to change history to get her younger self home sooner, and that undid an event where Voyager happened to be in the right place at the right time to solve this cosmic crisis. So Q Junior decided that the only way to put it right was to put all the ingredients back in place where they'd been in the original timeine, and that included Kathryn Janeway. Everybody's gotta be somewhere, and it was just by luck that Janeway and Voyager were in a position to deal with the problem in the original timeline. But because Adm. Janeway undid that event, it created a problem that could only be solved by putting Capt. Janeway back where she'd been originally.

So it's more than anyone's actions and choices could turn out to have a domino effect that's crucial to the shape of history, so changing the past of someone who doesn't seem all that exceptionally important to the cosmos could end up having far greater consequences than could've been foreseen.

[MatthiasRussell]

Q Jr felt that Janeway was the individual best qualified to solve the problem. His decision in the matter was by no means unanimous. It isn't like the entire continuum agreed with his decision or the universe would have ended if Janeway were not involved in that situation. Also, Janeway had other minds helping her shape the correct course of action with Q Jr being the one who saved the universe. So I would say Janeway was invaluable to the story but by no means vital. (Wow, what a hornet's nest I stirred up)

[Kirsten Beyer]

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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I'm not talking about the novel plot designed for bringing the character back from the dead.

I'm talking about altering the lives of billions possibly wiping many of the from history itself because she didn't like how everything turned out.

And here, in a way, I agree with you. If we are talking about the Admiral Janeway who lived through 23 years in the Delta Quadrant and then chose to alter time and demand a re-do without considering all the good that might have been undone by such a choice...I have a problem with that too. There are so many implications in this I don't know if the writers of Endgame really thought through...the most significant to my mind being how much it weakens Kathryn Janeway as a character. I honestly don't see how the woman they spent 7 years writing became so selfish. She was many things over the years, but not so much that.

But...and this is a big but...the woman who did those things, is not the character who was resurrected in TET and alive at the end of it. Vice Admiral Janeway experienced many versions of herself and her death while with the Q and seemed pretty clearly horrified by the results of her choices. She is, by definition, a different person now. You may still not like her, but you can't hold her accountable for things she didn't do/hasn't done/and now will never do. Unless I missed a meeting and we're all living in that Tom Cruise movie where you get punished for crimes before you commit them.

You could argue that the Captain Janeway in Endgame who encountered her future self should have put the kibosh on the whole plan, and in a way, she did. Despite knowing she would lose Seven and eventually Chakotay and that Tuvok would lose his mind, her instinct wasn't to use the transwarp conduits to get home. Her choice was to eliminate as much of the Borg threat as she could by destroying the hub. Getting home early became gravy when Admiral Janeway chose to go up against the Borg Queen and give them that virus. But Captain Janeway and her crew were prepared to simply destroy the hub and stay in the DQ as long as it took, which to my mind, speaks well of them.

Bottom line, Endgame is an episode that has a lot of problems in it for me, but there is a lot more to the Kathryn Janeway we followed for seven years and are continuing to follow now than the actions of one version of herself in one timeline that I find disturbing.

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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My problem was the Janeway was the only one who could save the day thing, thats what exagerrates the importance of her existence.

Okay, but she wasn't. And didn't. As Chris pointed out, she had solved the problem once so Junior trusted that if he sent her back she could do it again. It got complicated later when he realized that her first resolution hadn't been as tidy as he'd hoped. And while I'm not minimizing Janeway's actions at the end of TET, she was instrumental in particular in helping Eden to make the right choice, ultimately it was Eden and Junior who saved the day. So again, your focus on Janeway and her exagerrated importance feels like a reading comprehension issue more than an intentional or unintentional attempt to elevate Janeway to some level you feel she does not deserve.

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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Because its a crisis in the story that doesn't deal with any of the other crap that was a result of Endgame.

And all I can say to this is that we had a lot of ground to cover in TET. But you might want to give us time...

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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When you're questioning the captain of the freaking federation flagship who's pretty knowledgeable about the Borg and threatening disciplinary action WHEN HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THERE BEING A BORG SHIP yes she was.

And while the "he was right so leave him alone" thing speaks to our desire in stories to always have our heroes do the right thing and be celebrated for their victories, that's not how Starfleet works. She gave him an order...not ignoring his fears or telling him he was wrong...she told him to wait until Seven got there so someone else with a great deal of perspective on the Borg could also weigh in before pursuing any action. Picard felt there wasn't time. The story suggests he was right and that if he hadn't acted when he did, the Queen would have been born and started doing bad Borg things before Seven had a chance to arrive. But there is a case to be made that his choices here....to have himself turned into a Borg again, albeit with tech that made him not completely Borg and able to hopefully destroy the Queen...was also not the best choice. He was assimilated again. It was his crew, particularly his wife and Worf who saved him.

And it's also worth noting that at the end of the day, Janeway chose not to take formal action against Picard for ignoring her direct orders. She wanted to because really, an organization that is based upon a chain of command except when you don't like your orders has problems. There are exceptions, and ultimately Janeway thought this was one of them, but it wasn't wrong or arrogant of her to be disturbed by Picard's choice to ignore orders. Particularly when he only survived his own fairly reckless decisions by the skin of his teeth.

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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Actually she was during the first Christie Golden duology as part of her response to Starfleet's understandable paranoia about s Borg assimilation nano virus outbreak on Earth.

No, actually, she wasn't. And I say this as someone who re-read Homecoming within the last several weeks. She was concerned. Starfleet was right to be concerned. Where she had a problem was in Starfleet's insistence that a group of people...her crew...who were uniquely qualified to assist in handling that threat...were tortured (Seven - I know...I was surprised to see that scene when I re-read it too...I must have blocked it out) and imprisoned rather than used as the valuable resources they proved to be when she forced the issue.

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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Honestly the main reason I'm annoyed with Janeway is you made Eden more likable than Janeway and then had her go away as part of bringing Janeway back not to mention I just don't care for character resurrections.

Plus it doesn't help that Janeway's last appearances before or set before her death involved her acting like she was better than characters I like more aka Picard and Martok.

And here, I can't help you because I liked Eden too and I was also sad to see her go. And your general views on character resurrections are not without merit. Like who you like. Read what you enjoy reading. Just don't try to justify those feelings based on innacurate depictions of the text. Recognize that your feelings are simply that...subjective reactions to stories to which you are absolutely entitled. There doesn't have to be any more to it than that.

Best,
Kirsten Beyer

[Fer]

I really enjoyed it! I loved seeing the older, more matured Wesley, and the story was a real page-turner. Persistence of Memory is still my favorite of the trilogy, but The Body Electric was a very close second. Thanks for a great read!

[Thrawn]

I realize this thread is well on the way to being truly derailed, but Kirsten's last couple of posts have been highly interesting.

In particular, I hadn't thought of Endgame that way. Instead of being annoyed, all of a sudden I'm thinking "I wonder WHY Janeway changed so much? That sounds like a hell of a story! Maybe we'll get it someday!"

[Paris]

Thrawn wrote:

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...In particular, I hadn't thought of Endgame that way. Instead of being annoyed, all of a sudden I'm thinking "I wonder WHY Janeway changed so much? That sounds like a hell of a story! Maybe we'll get it someday!"

THAT is a story I would like to see explored as well. What happened in the original timeline where voyager took 16 more years? How did everyone differ? How many times did they save all of creation?

I know that the Full Circle mission is only supposed to last until 2384, but maybe it will just be continuous instead. We may see some of those events still pan out.

[zarkon]

Thrawn wrote:

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I realize this thread is well on the way to being truly derailed, but Kirsten's last couple of posts have been highly interesting.

In particular, I hadn't thought of Endgame that way. Instead of being annoyed, all of a sudden I'm thinking "I wonder WHY Janeway changed so much? That sounds like a hell of a story! Maybe we'll get it someday!"

Just watch Tuvix, you can see her make that journey in the space of forty five minutes

[Thrawn]

I have a perhaps unusual opinion of Janeway; I thought the character was by far at her most interesting on occasions like Tuvix when she made a potentially morally questionable call, but stuck to it with all the force she could, damn the subtlety. It was a character beat most of the other captains, Picard especially, didn't really have.

My personal favorite, I forget the episode title, was the one where aliens were abducting people into holodeck recreations and stealing their ships. Janeway basically ruined their entire method of sustaining themselves because they pissed her off; I loved it.

I contend that Endgame is different though. That wasn't a questionable moral stand - it wasn't a moral stand at all. It was entirely selfish.