I think she's an android with an unstable positronic matrix. Would explain all the crying, her getting her cybernetics master's degree in just a few months, and her pushing of Bruce Maddox to continue his research.
Spoilers PIC: The Last Best Hope by Una McCormack Review Thread
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I doubt it based off the trailers. Though they can be misleading.
Reading the book, it seems there is something up with her.
Just finished it. Excellent.
I will now have a backstory when I start watching the series.
I will now have a backstory when I start watching the series.
l am interested in seeing Tajuth.
Oof. That book was a little too much like fanfiction for my tastes. And while swearing doesn't bother me in principle, the author was using the f-bomb like a seven year old who just learned it was a naughty word.
Not one of the author's better works.
Not one of the author's better works.
The word is used 18 times in 336 pages, it's really not that bad.
It's not the frequency; Goodfellas this book was not. It's the way it was used, particularly
in Maddox's breakdown scene
Was it just the swearing that bothered you? What else though?
I blasted through the book in a couple hours, so I'd have to reread it to really pick up on specific things. I didn't think the author really captured the Picard character all that well. The Jurati/Maddox scenes were almost unreadable. I don't know; in a way, I feel like the story had certain beats it had to hit and so the author hit them, one after the other. Not the most organic narrative.
I have to agree with your two points. The earlier about the f-word. It just doesn't feel very Star Trekky to me. And like I noted in an earlier post, I'm no prude. I watch slasher films, hell, I love Dirty Harry movies. But I don't know, it just feels out of place in a Star Trek work. Granted it has appeared hear and there in prior Star Trek books, but very sparingly. Here it's come up quite a bit and it's pulled me out of the story a bit.
And Picard feels a bit off. One thing that made him such a great diplomat in TNG was his ability to understand and debate opposing viewpoints. He's very dismissive of those who have concerns about the Romulan refugee project. Granted some of those concerns are race based and it's hard to debate with bigots. But there are some legitimate concerns brought up too. Captain Picard of TNG would have taken those concerns to heart, explained why he thought the way he did, and maybe sometimes even find ways to have his cake and eat it too--that is use his viewpoint to explain how it might even help those who might disagree with him. A perfect point was when Bordson was thinking about Quest visiting Mars and explaining how they can use that to their advantage by explaining the ship building they are doing is helping move Romulans--that it also is helping Federation advance in shipbuilding technology---Picard is dismissive. All he cares about is saving lives. Picard from TNG would have seen that as an advantage to use to convince his opponents. There's nothing wrong with Picard prioritizing saving Romulan lives--that part in fact is in keeping with his character. The flaw I find is the singular focus and his lack of understanding of what else is involved, and worse, his outright dismissiveness of those who actually have legitimate concerns. The closest he comes is a little earlier where he acknowledges some of those concerns, but then he quickly dismisses them. The Federation and Starfleet are completely turned upside down and so far he's shown almost no concern about that. There's nothing wrong with what Picard is doing--what's off is what I see as his dismissiveness. All that's important is saving lives. And the worse part is that if he did what Captain Picard in TNG would have done he might have strengthened support for his mission. If he didn't take the attitude that anyone who has a problem with it was just wrong, if he answered those concerns and debated why they actually help Starfleet and the Federation, he might have changed some minds. Those people in the Federation who had legit concerns but at the same time weren't fundamentally opposed to helping the Romulans reach safe harbor.
That's what I'm having a hard time with. Plus I'm finding it hard to believe he wouldn't have called more on his most trusted aides, his former Enterprise crewmates. All he has is Geordi. Now, I don't expect him to call on everyone. Worf is a trusted aide, but he'd want to leave the Enterprise in good, trusted hands. Riker and Troi are likely busy on the Titan in this universe and Picard wouldn't pull Riker away from his dream (though I find it hard to believe he wouldn't have called on the Titan for some help--or even contact Riker for advice--though there are a few mentions of him receiving communiques from Troi. But what about Crusher? She was a trusted friend. There was a ham-handed conversation at the start of the book but it felt off. Picard would have no problem asking for Crusher's help as a trusted friend. And Geordi even had to basically force himself on Picard to get on the mission because Picard was too unsure to ask?
I personally think it would have helped the story to have a bit more interaction with some of his former shipmates. I realize the new show wants to avoid being TNG-lite--and I guess the book is following that path as well. But it almost seems like it's going too far. I'd have to think Picard would have at least one of his former Enterprise shipmates with him on the Verity (Dr Crusher seems the most logical) and to have him periodically call on Riker, not to undermine Raffi, but just for another viewpoint esp. on more philosophical areas of the mission. Raffi and Riker are very different number 1s, and Picard is someone who always liked having different viewpoints.
It seems to me that many of the objections being raised in this thread are not to the creative choices of the book per se but to the creative choices of Picard and to the ways it’s a distinct thing from TNG or from the litverse. Which doesn’t stop them being credible objections, of course, but they do become difficult to avoid given that consistency with the immediate source material is the remit of a tie-in.
IIRC, Patrick Stewart wouldn’t have got on board if Picard had just been more of the same. He wanted the show to be markedly different from TNG.
I've begun reading the book now (thanks, library), and I don't find the use of profanity excessive or distracting. It's a pretty typical level of profanity for a story that reflects how people actually talk rather than censoring it -- rather mild, if anything -- and I don't see lack of censorship as a negative. I mean, it's not like they're swearing every fifth word; it's in moments of strong emotion or emphatic expression, where it's logical and appropriate to use it.
And all this "It's too adult for Star Trek" talk is incongruous to me. Star Trek was the raciest, most daring, most adult SFTV show in the '60s. It fought to have Kirk say "Let's get the hell out of here" at a time when you weren't allowed to use "hell" or "damn" as a curse word on TV (though they were allowed in non-expletive contexts like "a devil straight out of Hell," "hell-for-leather," or "The evidence is damning"). That was the equivalent of a show today getting away with using the F-word on commercial TV, because of how the standards have shifted.
I don't agree. I see it as Picard does -- the sheer magnitude of the coming disaster is so vast that it demands nothing less in response, and most of the objections are from people too shortsighted to look beyond business as usual and everyday politics and recognize how much more is at stake than what they're seeing. I mean, it's not just the lives at stake, though that should be enough. It's the potential chaos that could befall the quadrant if Romulan civilization collapsed and the survivors blamed the Federation for not doing enough, leading to war and terrorism and who knows what. Picard isn't the one whose focus is too narrow. He's the one looking at the big picture and recognizing that this crisis vastly outweighs the narrow concerns of the critics.
And I have seen him being diplomatic and suggesting ways to win people over. Far from being dismissive, it was Picard's own idea to sell Quest on the project by taking her to Utopia Planitia to see the tech advances being made -- see the log entry opening Ch 7.
If anything, what I find implausible is the idea that an interstellar civilization as enormous as the Federation would be so inconvenienced by moving just 900 million people. I mean, there's no canonical population figure, but Memory Beta gives the Federation's population as nearly 10 trillion, which is plausible for a government stated to have over 150 member worlds (it comes out to an average of about 6.5 billion people per world). So we're talking not quite one ten-thousandth the total size of the UFP. Proportionally, that's like asking the US government to relocate about 30,000 people. A substantial task, but hardly an insurmountable one. I can only surmise that the UFP's resources have been diminished since it's less than a decade after the Dominion War and they've stretched themselves thin with rebuilding their own worlds as well as Cardassia.
Keep in mind that Picard was advised that the Enterprise was seen as too symbolic of past hostility with the Romulans, so bringing a lot of his crew along on a different ship would've seemed like a token gesture. As for Crusher, the book does imply that they never got together, but if they did get involved and then broke up, maybe it would explain why he's uncomfortable asking her to join him. Or maybe she actually has career goals of her own and isn't just an extension of his life.
I got the opposite impression, that Picard was inclined all along to ask Geordi to join the operation but Geordi offered before he got around to asking.
Whereas I'm glad to see a Trek story that acknowledges that, realistically, military officers usually don't stick together on the same ship like family for decades on end. They move from assignment to assignment, crew to crew, and that's the normal way for it to work.
And of course, as Brendan said, this book is written to tie into Picard, not to be a sop to TNG nostalgia. And that means its priority should be on exploring the characters and situations specific to Picard, giving us more insight on people like Raffi and Jurati and Elnor and concepts like the evacuation fleet and the synths and the Federation backlash to Picard's work. This book doesn't need to tell us about the TNG characters, because we already know those characters intimately. This book is about the people and things we don't already know about.
And all this "It's too adult for Star Trek" talk is incongruous to me. Star Trek was the raciest, most daring, most adult SFTV show in the '60s. It fought to have Kirk say "Let's get the hell out of here" at a time when you weren't allowed to use "hell" or "damn" as a curse word on TV (though they were allowed in non-expletive contexts like "a devil straight out of Hell," "hell-for-leather," or "The evidence is damning"). That was the equivalent of a show today getting away with using the F-word on commercial TV, because of how the standards have shifted.
I don't agree. I see it as Picard does -- the sheer magnitude of the coming disaster is so vast that it demands nothing less in response, and most of the objections are from people too shortsighted to look beyond business as usual and everyday politics and recognize how much more is at stake than what they're seeing. I mean, it's not just the lives at stake, though that should be enough. It's the potential chaos that could befall the quadrant if Romulan civilization collapsed and the survivors blamed the Federation for not doing enough, leading to war and terrorism and who knows what. Picard isn't the one whose focus is too narrow. He's the one looking at the big picture and recognizing that this crisis vastly outweighs the narrow concerns of the critics.
And I have seen him being diplomatic and suggesting ways to win people over. Far from being dismissive, it was Picard's own idea to sell Quest on the project by taking her to Utopia Planitia to see the tech advances being made -- see the log entry opening Ch 7.
If anything, what I find implausible is the idea that an interstellar civilization as enormous as the Federation would be so inconvenienced by moving just 900 million people. I mean, there's no canonical population figure, but Memory Beta gives the Federation's population as nearly 10 trillion, which is plausible for a government stated to have over 150 member worlds (it comes out to an average of about 6.5 billion people per world). So we're talking not quite one ten-thousandth the total size of the UFP. Proportionally, that's like asking the US government to relocate about 30,000 people. A substantial task, but hardly an insurmountable one. I can only surmise that the UFP's resources have been diminished since it's less than a decade after the Dominion War and they've stretched themselves thin with rebuilding their own worlds as well as Cardassia.
Keep in mind that Picard was advised that the Enterprise was seen as too symbolic of past hostility with the Romulans, so bringing a lot of his crew along on a different ship would've seemed like a token gesture. As for Crusher, the book does imply that they never got together, but if they did get involved and then broke up, maybe it would explain why he's uncomfortable asking her to join him. Or maybe she actually has career goals of her own and isn't just an extension of his life.
I got the opposite impression, that Picard was inclined all along to ask Geordi to join the operation but Geordi offered before he got around to asking.
Whereas I'm glad to see a Trek story that acknowledges that, realistically, military officers usually don't stick together on the same ship like family for decades on end. They move from assignment to assignment, crew to crew, and that's the normal way for it to work.
And of course, as Brendan said, this book is written to tie into Picard, not to be a sop to TNG nostalgia. And that means its priority should be on exploring the characters and situations specific to Picard, giving us more insight on people like Raffi and Jurati and Elnor and concepts like the evacuation fleet and the synths and the Federation backlash to Picard's work. This book doesn't need to tell us about the TNG characters, because we already know those characters intimately. This book is about the people and things we don't already know about.
Well said, Damian.
Picard's monomania about the evacuation just seemed strange to me. Out of character. For example, I just can't believe he would have abandoned the Enterprise without at least going to say goodbye, at the very least. The way he was struck with this kind of weird epiphany about his true life's purpose at the initial meeting with Bordson and Clancy was downright bizarre. And honestly, his obsession did blind him to reality and I can't really blame Starfleet for not backing him in the end. When I watched Clancy dress JL down on the show I was on on his side; after reading the book (despite the author's efforts to assassinate the character), I agreed with Clancy. I would have kicked his sanctimonious ass out of my office too.
Picard's monomania about the evacuation just seemed strange to me. Out of character. For example, I just can't believe he would have abandoned the Enterprise without at least going to say goodbye, at the very least. The way he was struck with this kind of weird epiphany about his true life's purpose at the initial meeting with Bordson and Clancy was downright bizarre. And honestly, his obsession did blind him to reality and I can't really blame Starfleet for not backing him in the end. When I watched Clancy dress JL down on the show I was on on his side; after reading the book (despite the author's efforts to assassinate the character), I agreed with Clancy. I would have kicked his sanctimonious ass out of my office too.
Character assassination? How?
I thought Clancy was written very negatively.
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