^ Point taken, but it's been a long time since I read the book - does PAD address any of that? As you are basically the resident champion of clever solutions to obvious plot holes, I'd think none of that would present much of a problem if it's a story you wanted to tell.
Maybe there's some sort of "omnipotent in-breeding" going on. Which could explain the seemingly erratic behavior of many of the "higher" beings we've seen over the years.
Key words: if I wanted to. I'd rather tell stories that expand the Trek universe, that make it feel like a big place with a lot going on beyond what we see onscreen, rather than invent gratuitous connections that make it all feel smaller and more limited. Don't get me wrong, Q-Squared is a terrific book, probably the best thing PAD ever wrote; but I would've been happier if it had portrayed Trelane just as a sort of "family friend" of Q's rather than a member of the same species. It would still have been the same story then. And just in general, I resist the tendency to assume that all advanced species are on a godlike level. Sometimes writers and fans tend to assume that every race more advanced than humans is on the same tier of power and advancement as the Q. I've seen the Metrons assumed to be energy beings even though there's absolutely nothing in "Arena" to suggest that beyond a bit of sparkling that's actually lens reflections from the Metron's shiny costume. I've seen the Preservers assumed to be godlike beings billions of years old even though "The Paradise Syndrome" didn't require them to have any technology beyond spaceships and tractor beams. Personally, I resist that kind of reflexive power inflation. I'd rather see more of a hierarchy, a lot of levels between human and omnipotent. Limits are good. Limits generate story. "The Squire of Gothos" gave Trelane a lot of clear limits on his power, and if I were writing about his species, I'd choose to work with those limits and use them to define his species as something distinct and individualized rather than generic alien gods.
Probably. And I wasn't quite sure what to make of that part with Lefler's mother at first, but I ended up liking where Peter David went with the character. His writing seems to have that effect. I'll start off not sure of something and end up changing my mind by the end.
I'm not a fan of this interpretation either. There's no evidence that the Preservers are more than a few thousand years old.
Strictly speaking, there's no canonical evidence they're more than a few hundred years old (as a spacefaring civilization). Miramanee's people were probably taken sometime in the 18th century, according to the Okudachron. Which makes sense, since the Preservers supposedly rescued endangered cultures, and indigenous North American populations weren't endangered until about the 17th or 18th centuries, when European diseases wiped out 90% of the Americas' population and European colonists began wiping out the rest. So the one confirmed instance we have of Preserver activity is more recent than Galileo or Newton, far more recent than Surak or Kahless, roughly contemporaneous with the start of the war between Eminiar VII and Vendikar. So why does everyone treat the Preservers as some unimaginably ancient, extinct race? By any meaningful standard, they're a modern civilization. They're probably still around in the ST "present." Personally, I think they're the Vians from "The Empath," since they have the same goals.
Heck, unless I'm completely misremembering, "The Paradise Syndrome" says the existence of a race of "Preservers" is only a theory, and whatever evidence there may be beyond Miramee's tribe that supports this theory is only vaguely alluded to. I actually wonder if The Preserver Theory was developed (in the minds of our friends in 1960s Hollywood) as a competing hypothesis to Hodgkin's "Law" of Parallel Development as an explanation for why all these planets have such strong resemblances to Earth at different historical periods.
I'm sure it was. Although the problem is that it doesn't really apply in most cases of parallel cultures, because they had different explanations, like the gangster planet and the Nazi planet, or were just too extreme to be Preserver worlds, like Miri's planet being an exact copy of Earth and Omega IV having Yankees and Communists thousands of years before Earth did. The one other world that I think could credibly be regarded a Preserver world is the Roman planet, except that doesn't explain them speaking modern English and having 20th-century technology. Personally, I'm open to the idea of the Preservers not even existing as a single civilization, but perhaps simply being a blanket label attached by Federation scholars to multiple groups -- perhaps connected, perhaps not -- that have transplanted cultures to other worlds. That might help account for some of the inconsistent theories of the Preservers offered in the books over the years. It seems to be used as a catch-all label for any unknown ancient alien power.
So, I rewatched "The Paradise Syndrome," and realized I'd misremembered quite a bit. The first mention of "The Preservers" doesn't come until the start of the fourth act, after Spock has been studying the obelisk symbols for two months. It's only when he cracks the code that we get this exchange: So, all we know of the Preservers is from their own self description, and a single seeded world. There's practically no objective evidence of who the Preservers were or what they'd accomplished, and no real reason for Spock to even postulate that "a number" of the humanoid-inhabited worlds were their doing. Oh, and Q-Squared... great book.
I love that book. I've read the objections to it, and I concede that some excellent points were made, but I just love it anyway. It's on my short list of favorite Trek books. Thanks for that dialog, William - I'd forgotten that, but it all comes back to me now.
I like PAD. He's on 'instant' read Trek author status for me. He writes like he's having fun and sometimes that's what I want. Fun.