Frustrations with Trek lit...

[Unimatrix Q]

That's just it, though -- it wasn't blind, it was strategic. Before, the Federation had been just one more resource to eventually acquire, its resistance a mere nuisance. But once Voyager destroyed the Borg's transwarp hub and Unicomplex, striking a devastating blow against the Collective, the Federation was upgraded to a serious threat, which required upgrading the Borg's response to that threat. It was no longer worth the risk to try to assimilate their technology; the danger had to be eradicated, period. The Borg adapted their methods to the situation, as they always do. That's the opposite of a blind response.

Although, as I hinted at the end of Greater than the Sum, there may have been an element of vindictiveness to it as well. The Federation had hurt the Borg enough to make them angry, insofar as they were capable of such a thing. The Borg considered themselves to be doing other species a favor by assimilating them into the perfection of the Collective. But now they'd decided that the Federation didn't deserve that perfection. The Borg had given them multiple chances and they'd rejected the offer time and time again, more obnoxiously each time, and ultimately in a way that caused enormous, even crippling damage to the Collective. So the Borg had finally had enough. No more chances at perfection, just get rid of the problem once and for all and move on to assimilating the next advanced technological civilization.

Thank you for your reply. I just don't understand why they wouldn't take the tech. They could exterminate their enemies and also take new things, instead of only destroy.

By the way, why were they also attacking other alpha quadrant civilizations the same way if their only beef is with the ufp?

 

[Starfury]

Beyer did that with the Voyager re-launch. Characters that Golden had established went right out the window as soon as she took the helm, including Campbell, a character IIRC was introduced back during the Voyager numbered series.

I know. She got her head bitten off, right? I'm sure it wasn't intended that way, but it came across as mean. The worst part? If Kirsten Beyer has to leave the Voyager-Relaunch now, the next Author might just come in, killing off Beyers Cast the same way. "Hey, Cambridges scrotum just exploded. Well, that's that. Here's MY new fancy Doctor..." (Again, kudos to Christopher. He rarely does that and even if he decides to let someone go, he allows them to leave with dignity - like he did with T'Lana.)

 

[Thrawn]

I think the moment I've been most irritated with Christopher's writing was Leybenzon's death, so I'm not completely sure I agree with that. It's a valid criticism against most of the writers, whom I generally think are awesome, including Beyer (as was just mentioned) and Mack, too, since which characters stayed on the Enterprise after Before Dishonor was decided by Mack for Destiny before Christopher wrote Greater Than The Sum.

 

[stardream]

I know. She got her head bitten off, right? I'm sure it wasn't intended that way, but it came across as mean. The worst part? If Kirsten Beyer has to leave the Voyager-Relaunch now, the next Author might just come in, killing off Beyers Cast the same way. "Hey, Cambridges scrotum just exploded. Well, that's that. Here's MY new fancy Doctor..." (Again, kudos to Christopher. He rarely does that and even if he decides to let someone go, he allows them to leave with dignity - like he did with T'Lana.)

That's not funny, but it is. Cambridge reminds me so much of Gregory House it's not funny and it was intentional. Hugh Cambridge, Hugh Laurie. All that's missing is the substance abuse. I've gotten used to him but if he were to disappear I don't think I'm miss him all that much.

 

[Starfury]

Christopher wrote Leybenzons death? Okay, I stand corrected then. o_O

 

[Hugh Cambridge]

The worst part? If Kirsten Beyer has to leave the Voyager-Relaunch now, the next Author might just come in, killing off Beyers Cast the same way. "Hey, Cambridges scrotum just exploded.

Please NO !
Besides he is one of the good things she added to the relaunch.

 

[Nyotarules]

That's just it, though -- it wasn't blind, it was strategic. Before, the Federation had been just one more resource to eventually acquire, its resistance a mere nuisance. But once Voyager destroyed the Borg's transwarp hub and Unicomplex, striking a devastating blow against the Collective, the Federation was upgraded to a serious threat, which required upgrading the Borg's response to that threat. It was no longer worth the risk to try to assimilate their technology; the danger had to be eradicated, period. The Borg adapted their methods to the situation, as they always do. That's the opposite of a blind response.

Although, as I hinted at the end of Greater than the Sum, there may have been an element of vindictiveness to it as well. The Federation had hurt the Borg enough to make them angry, insofar as they were capable of such a thing. The Borg considered themselves to be doing other species a favor by assimilating them into the perfection of the Collective. But now they'd decided that the Federation didn't deserve that perfection. The Borg had given them multiple chances and they'd rejected the offer time and time again, more obnoxiously each time, and ultimately in a way that caused enormous, even crippling damage to the Collective. So the Borg had finally had enough. No more chances at perfection, just get rid of the problem once and for all and move on to assimilating the next advanced technological civilization.

Good expo even though I found the Borg origins too predictable and cliched.

 

[VDCNI]

You can't mandate in advance how a story will evolve. You set up elements that you hope will have potential, but it's up to the writers of later installments to decide what aspects are more interesting to follow up on. For instance, in Titan: Orion's Hounds, I tried to set up the Gum Nebula as a rich, vast environment with many different species and civilizations that might be worth developing, but the next couple of TTN writers just left the whole thing behind, and I'm still the only one who's ever followed up on any of the races I established there. On the other hand, later writers picked up on my character of Torvig and developed him as a more central player than I'd expected.




I dunno, I think T'Ryssa Chen has been pretty well-developed as a character, as I'd hoped she would be. I feel Bill Leisner and Dayton Ward in particular have understood and used her well.

I get your point about Torvig but it just seems a waste to have a member of the Enterprise senior staff like Elfiki just hang around with very little development apart from contributing the odd line or technical solution.

Also I didn't say development I said integration. I would agree of the new 4 Chen has had the most care and attention but, as I mentioned, until Armageddon's Arrow she'd only really been seen interacting with Picard of the big 4 and although she is in a stronger position than the others I still would say she's not as integrated as someone like Shar was in DS9 or Conlon is in Voyager.

 

[starri]

I was neutral on Kadohata when I read the books 5-6 years ago. I'm a parent now, so maybe she'll connect with me better. I've restarted reading from the A Time To series (all of which I still love) and just finished Q&A (which I loved the first time, now it seems a little short, albeit still fun). Maybe I'll miss her more when she's gone. I like Dygan, but if he ever leaves, I wouldn't mind Miranda coming back.

Well, I'm not a parent, but I really liked her both as a member of the crew and as a character type we hadn't really seen before. I think there are so much potential (and relevance in contemporary life) in a mother who's away from her family on deployment and how she (and they) cope. Truthfully, I've never really liked the idea of having families on starships, because as much as they may be explorers, the occasional insistence that Starfleet isn't a military organization is absurd. They've fought in how many wars?

I don't have as big a problem with kids on starbases, because that's just analogous to being on a military base. And that's one of my bigger regrets about the DS9-R 1.0 is that they never really explored Matthias, because I think a working mom in a mixed marriage had a lot of possibilities as well.

 

[flandry84]

Maybe this is why Marvel have annual editorial conferences.

 

[Idran]

Truthfully, I've never really liked the idea of having families on starships, because as much as they may be explorers, the occasional insistence that Starfleet isn't a military organization is absurd. They've fought in how many wars?

I like the reframing of this in the Litverse (that might not entirely really be a reframing?): it wasn't "Starfleet isn't military", it was specifically just Galaxy-class ships because their original intention was to spend literally decades away from home without a stop back, and keeping people away from their families for decades was considered an undue psychological stress. The idea that "families on starships" was never meant to be a fleet-wide thing, it was specifically that one class because of its original, extremely-long-term mission role.

Granted, it doesn't explain Jennifer and Jake being on the Saratoga, but besides that I can't think of any other cases onscreen where we saw families on starships as something normalized in Starfleet in a general sense outside the Galaxy-class.

 

[Jinn]

I like the reframing of this in the Litverse (that might not entirely really be a reframing?): it wasn't "Starfleet isn't military", it was specifically just Galaxy-class ships because their original intention was to spend literally decades away from home without a stop back, and keeping people away from their families for decades was considered an undue psychological stress. The idea that "families on starships" was never meant to be a fleet-wide thing, it was specifically that one class because of its original, extremely-long-term mission role.

This seems to be suported by Star Trek Beyond, right? (I haven't seen it yet, but from what I've heard Sulu has a picture of his daughter on his console so he probably misses his family.

Also wasn't the time between TOS and TNG supposed to be very peaceful and without wars with Federation participation (except the later introduced Cardassian war and the final battle of the Enterprise-C and probably the plots of all the TLE books)?

 

[starri]

The idea that "families on starships" was never meant to be a fleet-wide thing, it was specifically that one class because of its original, extremely-long-term mission role.

Except we've seen kids on a lot of other ships. There are multiple kids on Titan (Tuvok's wife T'Pel was even the ship's official babysitter for a while), there are kids on the E-E, and there are kids on the Project Full Circle ships. The only place I don't think we've established families is on Aventine.

I can rationalize Titan, since it was supposed to be a long-range explorer that probably wouldn't have been returning to Federation space all that often. But PFC is harder, because I can't see wanting to take a bunch of civilians (children or not) halfway across the galaxy in potentially hostile territory, more or less cut off from the Federation being able to send help if there's trouble. Didn't Bacco say at one point that Starfleet only had twenty ships with slipstream drives?

This seems to be suported by Star Trek Beyond, right? (I haven't seen it yet, but from what I've heard Sulu has a picture of his daughter on his console so he probably misses his family.

In the second issue of the new Boldy Go comic, he has a line that, if I'm parsing it correctly, says that his husband and daughter were with him at his current posting, which was on a ship.

Also wasn't the time between TOS and TNG supposed to be very peaceful and without wars with Federation participation (except the later introduced Cardassian war and the final battle of the Enterprise-C and probably the plots of all the TLE books)?

Plus the Tzenkethi and the fact that the peace with the Klingons wasn't really set, so I would imagine that there were border skirmishes with them and with the Romulans and Tholians.

 

[Jinn]

Except we've seen kids on a lot of other ships. There are kids on the Project Full Circle ships.

Were there any other children than Miral and Michael Owen?

 

[starri]

Were there any other children than Miral and Michael Owen?

I've not read any of the VOY novels after The Eternal Tide because I didn't like the direction the arc was suddenly heading in, but from what I remember there was at least Miral, and B'elanna mentioned one or two other kids on the other ships that she wanted to arrange playdates with.

 

[Idran]

@starri: Oh, I was just trying to think of other on screen examples, I hadn't thought of Titan and PFC. Yeah, fair points for those then.

 

[Christopher]

Thank you for your reply. I just don't understand why they wouldn't take the tech. They could exterminate their enemies and also take new things, instead of only destroy.

They'd already assimilated enough Federation ships to have all the technological knowledge they could get from that civilization.

By the way, why were they also attacking other alpha quadrant civilizations the same way if their only beef is with the ufp?

Dave Mack could answer better than I could, but the Borg tend to think in collective rather than individual terms. A number of the UFP's neighbors, especially the Klingons, had been its allies at various times, and thus could be considered part of the overall threat. Or maybe they were just collateral damage. Excising the infection of the Federation required carving out a large chunk of the galaxy, and some healthy tissues got destroyed along with the infection, so to speak.

Truthfully, I've never really liked the idea of having families on starships, because as much as they may be explorers, the occasional insistence that Starfleet isn't a military organization is absurd. They've fought in how many wars?

Let's face it, though, adventure series set in any location will be just as dangerous for the children. For instance, Eureka was set in a small town that almost got blown up or sucked into a science hole every few weeks, but they still had a high school. And let's not get into adventure shows actually set at schools, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the new Doctor Who spinoff Class.

I like the reframing of this in the Litverse (that might not entirely really be a reframing?): it wasn't "Starfleet isn't military", it was specifically just Galaxy-class ships because their original intention was to spend literally decades away from home without a stop back, and keeping people away from their families for decades was considered an undue psychological stress. The idea that "families on starships" was never meant to be a fleet-wide thing, it was specifically that one class because of its original, extremely-long-term mission role.

Also, the Galaxy class was designed to separate hulls and leave the habitat section behind when the stardrive section went into battle. But that idea was quickly abandoned because of the difficulty of working with the large, separable miniature.

I've suggested before that what they should've done instead was to have two or more ships -- a large research vessel commanded by Picard with a military escort commanded by Riker.

Granted, it doesn't explain Jennifer and Jake being on the Saratoga, but besides that I can't think of any other cases onscreen where we saw families on starships as something normalized in Starfleet in a general sense outside the Galaxy-class.

Yeah, the later producers didn't stay very true to the original TNG developers' intentions. The family thing was supposed to be specific to the Galaxy class, not fleetwide.

 

[starri]

Let's face it, though, adventure series set in any location will be just as dangerous for the children. For instance, Eureka was set in a small town that almost got blown up or sucked into a science hole every few weeks, but they still had a high school. And let's not get into adventure shows actually set at schools, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the new Doctor Who spinoff Class.

I know, and that's a fair point, but there's a difference between a place that's naturally going to have kids, like a high school or a small town, whether or not it's atop a Hellmouth or whatever tech they teched at Coal Hill Academy, and deep space. There weren't kids on Serenity and they were almost absent on Babylon 5 as well.

Also, the Galaxy class was designed to separate hulls and leave the habitat section behind when the stardrive section went into battle. But that idea was quickly abandoned because of the difficulty of working with the large, separable miniature.

I know that was the intention, but I think it's kind of a weak rationalization. If there's a battle, why would you want to lose some of your armaments and half your power supply? Also, the saucer can't warp away from danger and it was relatively lightly armed if it did have to defend itself.

Also, if there was trouble, you couldn't even strap the kids down, you had to sit them on bunk beds and hope for the best.

 

[stardream]

I've not read any of the VOY novels after The Eternal Tide because I didn't like the direction the arc was suddenly heading in, but from what I remember there was at least Miral, and B'elanna mentioned one or two other kids on the other ships that she wanted to arrange playdates with.

Weren't those other kids temporary passengers? The refugees from Doctor Riley's planet?

For those who haven't read the books, Miral was a special case. She and B'Elanna were in hiding, on board Voyager using aliases.
Interesting how both the Paris kids were born on board Voyager....

 

[Jinn]

Also, if there was trouble, you couldn't even strap the kids down, you had to sit them on bunk beds and hope for the best.

That Wesley gets hit by a piece of debris?