Spoilers ENT: Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread

That was from Star Charts, but they made up a bunch of datapoints like that based on nothing and got a lot of stuff wrong in weird ways, so it's not really a reliable date. And for the sake of completeness, "Federation: The First 150 Years" said 2311 as the 81st member.

 

Well, there was never any hint that they were around during TOS. Sometime late in the movie era or early in the Lost Era seems to be the sweet spot.

 

Hey, Christopher, I've a question: Did you come up with a dedication plate of sorts for the Vol'Rala?
I'd love to have some words for a couple of renders I'm doing.

 

Nope. I don't know if that would be an Andorian practice. Did the Kumari have one in "Proving Ground?" Even if it had one, it'd probably be in Andorii.

 

Ah yes, that is a fair point. Ah well. Cheers!

 

Too late to be cagey, I already said it was 2311 in that book at the top of this page.

 

I am sorry to say I only gave this an average. Admittedly I have never been a huge fan of Klingon novels but I just found it difficult to get into. There seems to have been so many different plots going on that I found it hard to keep track of what was happening where and also who was who.
There also seems to have been a lot of build-up to different events and then all resolved one way or another very quickly. For me this is the weakest RotF novels but I haven't given up on the series and will buy the next one.

 

Okay, I’ve finally gotten around to doing my story notes and spoiler annotations for Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code. I’ve also restructured the site a bit, combining the individual book entries for ROTF on the same page (which still has “a-choice-of-futures” in its URL, since I didn’t know if I should change that). Here’s the master ROTF page, and you can scroll down to find the general notes on LBTC and the link to its spoiler notes. (I’ve kept the original pages for Books 2 & 3 in existence so I don’t break any links, but I’ve removed them from the top menu.)

I’ve also added a section on my new Analog story “Murder on the Cislunar Railroad” to my Original Short Fiction page. I’ll be adding spoiler notes for that story later.

 

Awesome! Thanks for the heads up!

 

Nah, you usually want to keep those fixed in place to avoid link-rot (or you could create a redirect, but that's not really necessary since the URL isn't all that blatant and front-facing to most readers, and I'm not sure how easy that is with Wordpress anyway), even if you later change something about the page itself. That's why you'll often see news articles with edited headlines but where the article URL still shows that it was generated from whatever the original was.

 

^I did see an option that would let me change the "slug," I think it was called, but I figured I should leave it be.

 

Breaking this from an edit into another post since I realize it might get missed otherwise:

One comment that I'll make on the annotations that...well, it's kind of late to pull the trigger on considering it's been so well established (one of the RW duologies also specifically named Denobula Triaxa's Earth name), but:

Mandel actually made a typo in the star chart when he showed Denobula. See, he named it as Iota Boötis, or ι Boötis, yes. But the position in space, the indicated number of stars, and the indicated stellar classes and luminosities of said stars shown on the map show that Mandel didn't actually mean to indicate it as ι Boötis, but rather the trinary system i Boötis, or 44 Boötis. The name "Denobula Triaxa" indicating to Mandel a trinary system, likely. This is a mistake that people make all the time in astronomy, because of the similarity between the abbreviation for iota and the letter i; he likely read the identifier "i Boötis" for the star and either misread it or mistakenly assumed it must have been abbreviating Iota Boötis.

 

Had a chance to read the annotations. Some pretty neat stuff.

One thing I had been hoping would be addressed in them was Reed's altered stance on relationships on his ship.

In A Choice of Futures, when Reed and Mayweather inform the then-dating Val Williams and Rey Sangupta (man, that reads like a girls name now, after Star Wars ) that they need to break up, Reed explains his seemingly-harsh position:

At the end of the book, we get this:

Then in, Live by the Code, this's Reed's opinion on Kirk and Williams adating:

Now, the two years between the stories would allow time for Reed to revise his opinions and policy, but it's such a one eighty from his intentions in the first book (esp. since he didn't approve of the idea of those two becoming involved then) that I've wondered what changed his mind and if it was something I'd missed in the middle books or something.

 

Well, as Reed said, it's largely because they aren't in a direct chain of command. And because he's had more time to get to know Val and trust her judgment, and probably because it was such a slow-burn relationship and clearly isn't an impulsive thing like Val/Rey was. He does say "it bears watching," so he's not entirely free of reservations.

 

What about Worf's comment at 1:51 in this video? (I don't know what the name of the TNG episode is.)

 

Worf's held a variety of posts in his Starfleet career, but I don't recall them including "ship's historian."

Besides, phase pistols weren't introduced until 2151, so Worf is half right.

 

But is a phase pistol the same thing as a phaser? Or an EM-33 for that matter? Much less a laser (as used in the first couple TOS shows)?

Obviously for the purposes of storytelling, EM-33s, phase weapons, lasers, and phasers, are all ray guns, but the Star Trek Encyclopedia confirms that phasers and lasers are different types of weapons. Evidence from the TV shows indicates that the creators wanted EM-33s and phase weapons to be different technologies. Are we just insisting that phase weapons and phasers are the same thing because of the similar names? There are distinct differences, like the number of settings, for example. If I recall correctly, the technobabble behind their operations and functions is also different.

Also, along the same lines, wouldn't Worf's line prove that the any 22nd-century weaponry was not a phaser? (Worf may not be a historian, but he is a weapons expert, per his job and hobbies and the definitive nature of the statement doesn't really leave any wiggle room).

Also, for what it's worth, the novel Academy: Collision Course describes phasers as being a fusion of phase weapon and laser technology (ch. 19, p 134 - 135, paperback ed.). (The Shatnerverse novels aren't quite in continuity with the rest of the novels -- although Cast No Shadow implies that they are -- but that version could be correct.)

 

I see no reason it couldn't be. That's exactly how terminology tends to evolve over time.

While the "laser" props from "The Cage" were reused in the second pilot, they were referred to there as phasers. Roddenberry decided that it had been a mistake to call them lasers in the first place, because real lasers didn't behave anything like that and he feared people would complain about the inaccuracy (meaning that he either underestimated the audience's suspension of disbelief or overestimated their education). If he'd done a new story set in the time of "The Cage" or earlier, I have no doubt that he would've called the weapons phasers instead of lasers.

It doesn't "confirm" anything, because it's not a canonical source, just an interpretation like any other tie-in. It contains errors (like referring to Nella Daren as "Neela") and assertions that were overwritten by later canon.

You're the one talking about what the creators wanted. Why would they have even called them "phase weapons" if they hadn't intended them to be at least a direct ancestor of phasers?

Yes, and TNG phasers had 16 settings while TOS phasers had 4-5. And modern cars have a lot more gears than early cars. And modern TVs can get hundreds of times as many channels as early TVs. What, did you expect the technology to remain absolutely unchanging for all time?

A single unsupported anecdotal statement can never be taken to "prove" anything. I'll never understand the tendency to assume that every single line of dialogue in a story must be accepted as absolute, unquestionable fact. People are fallible. They misstate things, they misremember things, they misunderstand things. That's why anecdotal testimony is never acceptable as scientific evidence, why anecdotal historical accounts must always be verified by alternative sources, why hearsay is not admissible in court, etc. Why should fictional characters be any less fallible than real people? The only thing that Worf's statement "proves" is that he believes there were no phasers in the 22nd century.

Besides, it's fiction. Retcons happen, inconsistencies crop up. As the video showed, there are plenty of contradictions in Trek. There is no "proof," because it's all made up and later writers can disregard what earlier writers assumed if the story demands it.

Again, it's fiction, not history. We're not obligated to acknowledge the conjectures and interpretations of earlier novels; we can do so if we choose, but it's not mandatory.

Besides, it's possible to read too much into terminology. Even if phase weapons and phasers are different, maybe phasers were called that because the term was already coined as a nickname for phase weapons. The digital watch on my wrist is powered by a completely different technology than the watch my grandfather would've carried in his pocket, but they're both called watches.

 

I don't think there ever was any technobabble on the technical details of what phase pistols do, either in on-screen sources or secondary material. At least, I don't remember any offhand, and neither MA nor MB give anything in that vein. "What", yes, but nothing about "how".