What I didn't like was Picard watching TOS episodes on the holodeck. They slowed things down to a crawl and did not fit the Picard character well. Although I do like the idea of it (this came long before "These Are the Voyages" stunk up the house with Riker watching ENT) I cannot imagine Picard watching Kirk on the holodeck and deciding to become more "Kirk like", although I suspect the idea was to explain his turning into a vest wearing action hero in First Contact.
As well as the Bozeman continuity issue, Carey also somehow mixed up the order of "Best of Both Worlds" and "Chains of Command" but for the purposes of the book I'm happy to pretend they happened the other way around, until the last page at least.
Another thing that bothered me was the abrupt shift from Picard leaving the holodeck, now confident (and telling the merchant ship captain to arm his men, etc.) to Picard standing in front of Gul Madred. There was *nothing* about how Picard got into that room.
And also the complete disappearance of Dr. Crusher after that one scene with most of the
Enterprise-D bridge crew where Picard tells them what all is about to happen, and also Worf (who wasn’t at that meeting but Picard says that he has contacted Captain Sisko at Deep Space Nine to borrow Worf for this mission) who gets absolutely zero speaking lines in this book (except for maybe his one line in the scene from
Star Trek: First Contact over the comms, “Acknowledged”, or something like that).
Worf joins Picard and Gul Madred in Madred’s office/interrogation room. Then Picard, Crusher, and Worf all take the Cardassian transport down to where the Starfleet and other prisoners of war are defending themselves. But all we get are other people’s descriptions of them.
Which is really odd to me that Carey would write them as going with Picard as part of his plans (he even explains at one point why he’s taking Worf with him instead of Data) but then not use those two characters *at all* for the remainder of the book other than as set dressing basically.
I also have to admit that I did not like how Carey portrayed Picard in that meeting with his former bridge crew. Troi: “We’ve always been a family as well as an assignment . . .” The captain riveted Troi to her seat with a long stare. Picard: “We’re not a family, Counselor. Starfleet isn’t a social club. Our command staff is a close-knit unit of service who have been lucky enough to remain in each other’s sphere for many years. […]
Yes, he was right (the rest of what he says about them having to fulfill their duty and accept the assignments given to them). However, I couldn’t help but think about the discrepancy with how he answers Troi here with the last scene of them all together at the poker table at the end of “All Good Things…”
—David Young
Brandon, Florida
