Spoilers DSC: Drastic Measures by Dayton Ward Review Thread

[Christopher]

It's not quite as Shatnerverse-compatible, but Dayton's DSC novel is highly compatible with Greg's "Though Hell Should Bar the Way" short story from the Enterprise Logs anthology -- over in our Facebook Trek timeliner-group, we posted up an extensive, day-by-day (and even hour-by-hour, I think) breakdown of how the two stories successfully overlap and intertwine from a continuity-standpoint.

Really? I just read them both, and they don't depict the events the same way.

Spoiler

In "Though Hell...," the Enterprise takes a bit over 2 days to make it to Tarsus IV and is the first starship on the scene; it doesn't learn about the executions until it reaches orbit, suggesting they didn't happen that long before, and an Enterprise security team finds that Kodos has apparently committed suicide on hearing of the ship's arrival. In Drastic Measures, the Narbonne is the first ship to arrive, and the subsequent events seem to cover several days before the Enterprise arrives after Kodos is apparently killed in a firefight.

Also, DSC episode 2 said that there'd been no UFP-Klingon clashes since Donatu V in 2245, and this is a year later, so having April encounter Kor doesn't quite fit DSC continuity. Not to mention the other details in Greg's story that have since been overridden by later productions, like the assumption that they were still using atomic torpedoes and that stardates hadn't been invented yet.

 

[Dayton Ward]

Though my general marching orders were to disregard previous versions/accounts of Tarsus IV from other non-canon sources, I opted to keep the "broad strokes" bit about April and the Enterprise getting to Tarsus IV - including portraying April as has been done in the books since Diane Carey created her version of the character - while turning a blind eye toward the bits that cause continuity fits (such as what Christopher mentions in his post above mine).

 

[Christopher]

Though my general marching orders were to disregard previous versions/accounts of Tarsus IV from other non-canon sources, I opted to keep the "broad strokes" bit about April and the Enterprise getting to Tarsus IV - including portraying April as has been done in the books since Diane Carey created her version of the character - while turning a blind eye toward the bits that cause continuity fits (such as what Christopher mentions in his post above mine).

You seem to have implicitly used the dates from Greg's story too. He started the story on October 10, 2246, and you had the bulk of the story in '46 and the epilogue 3 months later in 2247.

Of course, neither version quite meshes with Carey's version of April, since she was basically using the Spaceflight Chronology timeline scheme which put everything about 6 decades earlier than the now-official scheme (for instance, Final Frontier put Jim Kirk's 10th birthday in 2183, which would've put Tarsus IV around 2187). So these are works that just borrow elements from each other rather than literally being in continuity.

 

[Dayton Ward]

I borrowed the general idea of April and the Enterprise arriving at Tarsus IV both from Greg's story and the Kirk autobiography. As for "portraying April," I meant as in the character himself, rather than any specific data points from the timeline. You know, the cardigan, etc.

And while the Spaceflight Chronology is pretty much useless as a practical reference, anymore, it's still one of my favorite Trek-related books and does have a lot of bits and pieces that make for fun oblique references and even the occasional inspiration for other stories.

 

[Kertrats47]

I just posted my video review of Drastic Measures. Great stuff in this novel, I really liked tying Discovery characters to the Tarsus IV incident. Lorca comes across really well here, and it's cool (and somewhat odd) that this book is the only bit of the "Prime" Lorca we have seen to date! Also loved the "post-credits" scene, and Georgiou's role in the story.

 

[Charles Phipps]

My review:

4/5

I just finished DRASTIC MEASURES about an hour ago and decided to do my review immediately rather than wait for it to digest in my brain like I do with most of my books. As anyone who checks my Amazon or Goodreads account knows, I'm a huge Star Trek book fan and have reviewed over fifty books on the subject. This is a drop in the bucket of the number actually produced and also the number I've read. It's just now that I've started making a habit of writing down my thoughts on every one of the books I read.

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY has been a somewhat controversial entry into the series but that's nothing new for longtime Trekkies. Every series has its critics and every one of its changes got torn to shreds by the original fandom nerds (of which Trekkies used to have a copyright on). While I have complaints, I've overall enjoyed it and especially liked the characters of Captain Lorca and Captain Phillipa Georgiou that represent binary differences on how two Federation heroes might act. I also was a fan of the previous novel, DESPERATE HOURS, which seems to have already been decanonized given it's hard to reconcile with Michael Burnham/Spock's relationship in Season Two.

The premise for this novel is it chronicles the events of the Tarsus IV massacre. In the original Star Trek series, "The Conscience of the King", Governor Kodos massacred 5,000 of his citizens in order to stave off a famine that would have killed the entirety of the colony. Unfortunately, this was an enormous mistake not just on moral grounds but on practical ones. It turned out Starfleet relief ships were able to get there much faster than expected and if he'd waited just a day longer, no one would have had to die.

This episode is, in my opinion, probably the best Star Trek episode of the original series other than "City on the Edge of Forever." It was a dramatic Shakespearian revenge plot with guilt, lies, betrayal, and intrigue. Captain James T. Kirk was a child on Tarsus IV when this massacre happened and it weighed upon him his entire life. It probably didn't happen in the Kelvin timeline of Star Trek (you'll get that reference if you're a nerd like me) and episodic television means it was never brought up again but it always stuck with my vision of who James Tiberius Kirk was.

Drastic Measures postulates that Captain Phillipa Georgiou (then Commander) is there to be the first responder for the famine relief, only to find a massacre's aftermath instead. Also, Lieutenant Commander Gabriel Lorca is planetside, chilling with his girlfriend and buddies when events turn nightmarish. Putting both of them in such a pivotal Star Trek event pushes credibility but not too much. It also fits Gabriel Lorca, at least as how Discovery treats him, that he'd be witness to such a terrible event.

Overall, I enjoyed the novel and had fun reading it but it does feel like it had a few missed opportunities. The majority of the book deals with the manhunt for Governor Kodos who, we know, will survive for decades until Captain James T. Kirk discovers him. The problem is that the most interesting part of the story, the decision to incinerate the colonists and build-up to it, is more or less skipped over.

I also feel like Kodos' personality is a bit off. While it's certainly possible that a man could change drastically in twenty years, the sheer dark dramatic irony of his situation barely seems to affect him. He has a bunch of followers and is primarily concerned with their escape like they're terrorists. Given the massacre was completely and utterly unnecessary, I feel like the horror and regret of events would be weighing on Kodos much more.

Even so, it's entertaining and has an epic twist at the end I didn't see coming. The best parts of the book are probably the interview sections that create the fictional premise that this is a documentary being done on the massacre a good decade in the future. I felt that added a gravitas to the whole thing that would be otherwise absent.

 

[Christopher]

I also feel like Kodos' personality is a bit off. While it's certainly possible that a man could change drastically in twenty years, the sheer dark dramatic irony of his situation barely seems to affect him. He has a bunch of followers and is primarily concerned with their escape like they're terrorists. Given the massacre was completely and utterly unnecessary, I feel like the horror and regret of events would be weighing on Kodos much more.

It makes sense to me that he'd be in denial of his guilt at first, but then be worn down by 20 years of his conscience gnawing at him.

 

[JWolf]

Why do people insist on talking about these things as if a show on a given service will never exist anywhere else? There's this whole thing called home video. I couldn't see Powers when it premiered because I didn't have the PlayStation network, but it was out on DVD within a couple of months after its season ended, and I eventually managed to see the whole series for free by borrowing the disks from my library. I just had to wait a while longer, that's all. I'm sure Discovery will be out on DVD in time, just like every other Trek series. In the long term, which kind of service it premiered on won't matter at all. Once it's out on home video, you won't need CBS All Access to see it, any more than you need a time machine and a TV antenna to see TOS.

For that matter, the exact same principle applied to all the Trek movies. You couldn't see them for free on TV when they first came out; you had to go to a theater and buy a ticket. They were only available to a limited, paying audience -- at first. If you didn't want to pay to see them in a theater, you just had to wait until they showed up on commercial TV or on home video.

In the UK, seasons 1 & 2 of Discovery are available on Netflix. Season 1 recently starting airing on a channel you can get for free in SD (yes, crappy low resolution) or in HD if you subscribe to a TV provider. So to watch season 1, you do not need to subscribe to Netflix. But if you have a 4k TV, then Netflix will give you a much better picture as it's in HD with HDR.

But the thing is, why would we want to waste the limited slots on novelizations instead of original stories? I would not buy the novelizations. I've seen both seasons of Discovery and it would be boring in print compared to the episodes. Sorry, but anyone that won't subscribe to CBS or Netflix (depending where you live) then too bad. Can anyone here say they cannot afford to subscribe to either service?

 

[JD]

That seems a bit rude, not everyone has unlimited amounts of money for this kind of thing.

 

[Christopher]

Who was talking about novelizations? I was talking about shows eventually coming out on home video.

 

[DEWLine]

I borrowed the general idea of April and the Enterprise arriving at Tarsus IV both from Greg's story and the Kirk autobiography. As for "portraying April," I meant as in the character himself, rather than any specific data points from the timeline. You know, the cardigan, etc.

And while the Spaceflight Chronology is pretty much useless as a practical reference, anymore, it's still one of my favorite Trek-related books and does have a lot of bits and pieces that make for fun oblique references and even the occasional inspiration for other stories.

All of these choices strike me as perfectly reasonable. I'm good with them.

One other thing I find easy to imply from your remarks and consider agreeable: the idea that designs from the Spaceflight Chronology should continue to show up here and there as it suits the writers and designers.

 

[tomswift2002]

In the UK, seasons 1 & 2 of Discovery are available on Netflix. Season 1 recently starting airing on a channel you can get for free in SD (yes, crappy low resolution) or in HD if you subscribe to a TV provider. So to watch season 1, you do not need to subscribe to Netflix. But if you have a 4k TV, then Netflix will give you a much better picture as it's in HD with HDR.

But the thing is, why would we want to waste the limited slots on novelizations instead of original stories? I would not buy the novelizations. I've seen both seasons of Discovery and it would be boring in print compared to the episodes. Sorry, but anyone that won't subscribe to CBS or Netflix (depending where you live) then too bad. Can anyone here say they cannot afford to subscribe to either service?

Well, for one, while I’ve only seen Season 1 on Blu, novelizations might’ve tightened up the stories, since besides being generic sci-fi, with both parts I was finding that they were getting to be a lot of filler, while the main story points were far between. Like that episode with the away team led by Saru on that Forrest planet. That was pretty much filler, and it should’ve been the episode’s B or C plot, not the A plot. Or it could’ve been spread across multiple episodes as a C plot. And in a novel, it would’ve maybe only been in 1/2 a chapter.

 

[youngtrek]

(Copy of review posted on my Facebook page on May 27, 2020.) Yesterday (in the wee morning hours, Monday morning), I finished reading Drastic Measures by Dayton Ward (2018), the second book in the series of “Star Trek: Discovery” tie-in novels.

I have to say that Dayton Ward is probably my favorite of the authors currently writing Star Trek novels (although, I have to admit that I’m only just now getting back into reading the Trek novels and am probably not familiar with many of the current writers’ work). In 2018, I read Ward’s In History’s Shadow (2013), a Star Trek original series (meaning Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc.) novel and I thought that was really good.

I think he surpassed it in Drastic Measures, though. Ward has a gift for both engaging plots while at the same time knowing the familiar characters from the Star Trek tv shows and movies so well that they always are perfectly in character.

The plot of Drastic Measures, like the previous novel in the series that I also just recently read, David Mack’s Desperate Hours, takes place mostly in a time period prior to the start of the “Star Trek: Discovery” CBS All Access tv series (which itself is a prequel to the classic 1960s “Star Trek” series). The choice to set many of the novels before the tv series was because they were being written prior to any of the tv episodes coming out (and the first novel before the tv series had even started filming). Also, media tie-in authors generally don’t know what directions an in production tv series are going to take over the course of a season, so it’s usually safer to set one’s novels sometime prior to the then currently airing tv season.

Drastic Measures takes place ten years prior to the start of “Star Trek: Discovery”, and features two “Discovery” characters who don’t actually ever meet each on the tv series, Philippa Georgiou (later captain of the U.S.S. Shenzhou) and Gabriel Lorca (later captain of the U.S.S. Discovery; well, sorta).

Here, they are Lt. Lorca and Commander Georgiou. Lorca is stationed at a remote Starfleet outpost on a Federation colony planet, Tarsus IV. A disease suddenly and rapidly spreads throughout all of the crops and other food on Tarsus IV, putting the thousands of colonists there in danger of starving. Georgiou is reassigned to a ship being sent there to bring much needed supplies, medicine, and other aid to the colonists.

However, before Georgiou and the ship she has been temporarily assigned to can arrive, the desperation of the colonists (who do not knew that aid is only days away rather than the weeks or months they were first told) leads to the removal of the governor overseeing them and her replacement with a man named General Kodos.

Now, fans of the original 1960s “Star Trek” series are as already familiar with Tarsus IV and Kodos from the episode “The Conscience of the King”, in which we first learn of Captain Kirk’s own history as a teenager on Tarsus IV and of this same food crisis that happened when he and his family lived their. And we learn of the “Tarsus IV Massacre”, and the role that “Kodos the Executioner”, as he came to be called, played in causing it.

So, this novel, Drastic Measures, takes that original series Captain Kirk back story event and ties into it younger versions of Georgiou and Lorca from “Discovery”. Lorca is driven by intense personal grief to hunt down Kodos and his followers, who have fled the major city center to hide out in a nearby mountain range that interferes with sensors and other detection devices. Georgiou, who outranks him and is leading the recovery efforts, can tell that Lorca is too emotionally involved but still allows him to lead the search to bring Kodos to justice.

That’s all I think I’ll say, other than this was one of those books that I never really wanted to put down and would read long into the night. That alone gets it the rating I’m giving it on GoodReads, four stars out of five. I highly recommend this one for fans of “Star Trek: Discovery”, and also fans of the original “Star Trek”. As it takes place prior to “Discovery”, I don’t think it’s necessary to have seen “Discovery” to enjoy Drastic Measures (although it will probably make it a more satisfying read to already be familiar with the characters of Philippa Georgiou and Gabriel Lorca).

 

[youngtrek]

Still figuring the BBS out. Is there not a way to edit one’s own post after he or she posts it? I’m not seeing an “edit” button anywhere.

 

[Jinn]

Still figuring the BBS out. Is there not a way to edit one’s own post after he or she posts it? I’m not seeing an “edit” button anywhere.

Yes, but only after you made a certain number of posts (14 I think?) and have been registered for a certain amount of time (I wanna say 14 again). Once the feature is available to you, there should be a little "edit" button between the date of the post and the "delete" and "report" buttons.

 

[Damian]

This and "The Enterprise War" are probably my two favorite Discovery books thus far. Both I considered excellent. I love getting to see prime-Lorca here and it makes me live in hope that maybe we will see prime-Lorca somewhere down the road (though after season 2 that seems like it may be unlikely, but where there's a will there's a way).

The book about Tilly was surprisingly good as well (I'm drawing a blank but you guys know which one it is). I always say Tilly was one of those characters I didn't think I was going to like. The first time I saw her I was like, you're kidding, right . But she grows on you and her book gives a great back-story on her character.

And I loved her in the mirror universe. Best line ever "If I were your captain I'd cut your tongue out and use it to lick my boot". I love that line

 

[JD]

Drastic Measures takes place ten years prior to the start of “Star Trek: Discovery”, and features two “Discovery” characters who don’t actually ever meet each on the tv series, Philippa Georgiou (later captain of the U.S.S. Shenzhou) and Gabriel Lorca (later captain of the U.S.S. Discovery; well, sorta).

Georgiou is in the first two episodes of the first season and one of the Short Treks. I don't want to say any more in case you haven't seen the show yet.

 

[trampledamage]

Still figuring the BBS out. Is there not a way to edit one’s own post after he or she posts it? I’m not seeing an “edit” button anywhere.

As @Jinn says, you need to have been here for a certain amount of time before the edit feature becomes available. Until then feel free to message me if you want a post of yours editing, I'm happy to change it for you.

Or perhaps the message feature isn't available yet either - click on the person's avatar to see if "start a conversation is an option If you can't message, you can notify on your own post - the report link at the bottom of each post - that'll create an official report, but don't worry - people often say things like "sorry, but please could you correct my mistake?"

 

[JD]

I've reported several times on my own posts to get titles fixed and stuff like that.

 

[DEWLine]

After some months of thinking it over, I've reached the conclusion that if there's a story from the DSC novels to be adapted to TV? I would put this one at the top of such a list at this point in time. I understand the odds of that happening, but this is what I'd like to be done.