Spoilers PIC: Second Self by Una McCormack Review Thread
- Thread starter Avro Arrow
- Start date
Then why don't kill off all of them and end Star Trek?
Then we can have a new series more adapted to the dystopian 2020's where everything is daaaaaark and gloomy and when the characters are just boring carbon copies of characters from other dystopian series made in this glorious decade.
Or...........?
Are you serious?
You can't possibly mean that living the rest of his life pretending to be Bajoran and then being killed off is a "happy ending"?
It's character destruction and nothing else.
You're absolutely right.
I should have given up on the novels 15 years ago instead of stumble into something I thought would be good and entertaining stories about one of my absolute favorites but in the long run turned out to be something completly different.
As for Picard, all of it takes place in an alternate universe called Dystopian Hell Universe of 2000
I guess that I'll stick to the Lynxverse and the rules for enjoying Star Trek.
Rule 1: Never ever trust or like an autor ,a book or any book series.
Sooner or later something will show up which makes you very dissapointed and will change your opinion.
Rule 2: Never ever have a favorite character! That character will be killed off or ruined sooner or later.
Rule 3: Always be cautious with everything written after 1999.
Always remember that dystopia now rules in the "Gray Universe" (the universe we live in right now).
Rule 4: If you want to read a really good story which you really like, write it yourself!
Rule 5: When stuck in some contradiction, always stick to the Lynxverse!
It's the one and only option if you will stay happy with Star Trek.
As for the Lynxverse:
These are the most important differencs between "Star Trek canon" and the Lynxverse.
1. The disgusting and patheitic creature which showed up in a horrible season 6 episode of Voyager wasn't the real Kes but Suspiriia in disguise or maybe a being from an alternate or mirror universe.
The real Kes was restored back to normal from becoming an energy being ( VOY episode The Gift) by Q. She got a human lifespan but had some of her Ocampa mental abilities which she showed up in some episodes intact. While searching for Voyager, she encountered a Maquis ship which had been taken to the Delta Quadrant by The Caretaker. After a brief encounter with Voyager which included some adventures, she followed the Maquis ship to the Alpha Quadrant and now lives happily on a planet together with some former Maquis and other colonists. The planet is located somewhere between Bajor and the Tzenkheti Alliance. Her will to explore and discover sometimes leads to exciting and even dangerous adventures.
2. The "Gowron" who was killed by Worf in the DS9 episode Dogs Of War wasn't the real Gowron but a genetically altered Cardassian agent who during Cardassia's collaboration with The Dominion had been sent to Quo'nos in order to destroy the alliance between the Klingons and the Federation. The real Gowron had been kidnapped by Cardassian agents and taken to Cardassia.
When The Dominion did surrender, the real Gowron was set free from a prison camp on one of the worlds in the Cardassian Union and sent home to Quo'nos where he got his place as Klingon Chancellor back. Martok remained the Supreme Commander of the Klingon Forces.
3. In the novel Second Self, The character Garak is destroyed as a character and killed off.
We have also had movies and series where the planets Vulcan and Romulus had been destroyed.
And the Klingons have been turned into something which looks like Mutant Ninja Turtles
But all of that happened in an alternate universe called Dystopian Hell Universe of 2000 where all episodes and books containing events in NuTrek movies, Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Picard takes place.
In the real Star Trek Universe (the Lynxverse), Vulcan and Romulus still exists, Garak is alive and well and there are no Mutant Ninja Turtles "Klingons" to be seen.
The events in the Voyager episode Threshold never happened. It was just a nightmare Tom Paris had after eating too much of Neelix's food.
Captain Kirk never died in the Nexus (The movie Star Trek Generations). Those events happened in an alternate universe.
There is a real Commander Keiran MacDuff in Starfleet which the Satarran operative we saw in the TNG episode Conundrum had altered his appearance to look like.
MacDuff was an interesting character with attitude. He should be in some future 24th century series.
The real Kes was restored back to normal from becoming an energy being ( VOY episode The Gift) by Q. She got a human lifespan but had some of her Ocampa mental abilities which she showed up in some episodes intact. While searching for Voyager, she encountered a Maquis ship which had been taken to the Delta Quadrant by The Caretaker. After a brief encounter with Voyager which included some adventures, she followed the Maquis ship to the Alpha Quadrant and now lives happily on a planet together with some former Maquis and other colonists. The planet is located somewhere between Bajor and the Tzenkheti Alliance. Her will to explore and discover sometimes leads to exciting and even dangerous adventures.
2. The "Gowron" who was killed by Worf in the DS9 episode Dogs Of War wasn't the real Gowron but a genetically altered Cardassian agent who during Cardassia's collaboration with The Dominion had been sent to Quo'nos in order to destroy the alliance between the Klingons and the Federation. The real Gowron had been kidnapped by Cardassian agents and taken to Cardassia.
When The Dominion did surrender, the real Gowron was set free from a prison camp on one of the worlds in the Cardassian Union and sent home to Quo'nos where he got his place as Klingon Chancellor back. Martok remained the Supreme Commander of the Klingon Forces.
3. In the novel Second Self, The character Garak is destroyed as a character and killed off.
We have also had movies and series where the planets Vulcan and Romulus had been destroyed.
And the Klingons have been turned into something which looks like Mutant Ninja Turtles
But all of that happened in an alternate universe called Dystopian Hell Universe of 2000 where all episodes and books containing events in NuTrek movies, Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Picard takes place.
In the real Star Trek Universe (the Lynxverse), Vulcan and Romulus still exists, Garak is alive and well and there are no Mutant Ninja Turtles "Klingons" to be seen.
The events in the Voyager episode Threshold never happened. It was just a nightmare Tom Paris had after eating too much of Neelix's food.
Captain Kirk never died in the Nexus (The movie Star Trek Generations). Those events happened in an alternate universe.
There is a real Commander Keiran MacDuff in Starfleet which the Satarran operative we saw in the TNG episode Conundrum had altered his appearance to look like.
MacDuff was an interesting character with attitude. He should be in some future 24th century series.
Those are the most important differences between "Official Star Trek canon" and the Lynxverse.
There are more which can be discussed later and more will occur as the Lynxverse expands.
Last edited by a moderator:
Well, have I got a trilogy suggestion for you!
I know you said that you haven't read the book, but I think it's a gross misrepresentation to classify Garak's death as being "killed off". Usual caveats about my less than stellar memory apply, but my recollection is that (and I'm going to spoiler code this on the off chance you do yourself a favour and actually read the book)
Garak died of old age, surrounded by a close-knit community who loved him.
Really, what more could anyone ask for? That's probably a better ending than I'm going to get.
No, it really, really isn't.
I'm sorry, but if you expect to go through life thinking you'll never be disappointed, you're probably going to be disappointed.
Perhaps, but not here. Fan fiction is not allowed in the TrekLit forum. I have spoiler coded all your Lynxverse plot elements, but please do not post something like that in here again. You are of course welcome to post more about it in the Fan Fiction forum. Thank you.
It could be called Welcome To Dystopian hell of 2000Well, have I got a trilogy suggestion for you!
Probably the same for me.
But I didn't want to see Garak killed off. I was hoping for more books in the style of The Crimson Shadow and The Never Ending Sacrifice.
Well, I think it is.
I can agree about that.
But there is a difference between disappointments and too many disappointments.
If my favorite ice hockey team lose one or two games, then I get a 10-minute outburst of anger. After that I just shrug and says "Oh, s**t happens!"
But if my favorite ice hockey team loses 15 games in a row then I get really angry and starts to write letters and posts about the immediate dismissal of the coach and those who control the club.
I wasn't aware of that rule. And it wasn't my intention to break any rules either.
But in this case, at least I got a chance to present a better alternative then what we have in ongoing series or books, even if it was in the wrong forum.
Please stop misusing that word.
Picard is not dystopian.
Picard season 1 starts out a bit grim, or at least less optimistically than the Federation is usually portrayed. But then it ends with everything being restored to rosy happiness with implausible ease, with the synth ban just being swept away offscreen in a single line, and the UFP's back to normal in seasons 2-3. So I wouldn't call it grim overall.
I've said before, the perception that the newer shows are grim comes from them being serialized. Many individual stories start out fairly grim, but then have optimistic endings. Look at "The Changeling," which opened with the extermination of 4 billion people, an incredibly grim and horrific event, but ended with the crew laughing and joking. What makes a story upbeat or downbeat is how it ends, not how it begins. But since a serial-arc season is a single stretched-out story, it's going to seem consistently pretty dark until you get to the end. Seasons of Discovery and Picard, no matter how dark their storylines get, tend to wrap things up very optimistically, having the heroes win by reaffirming Trek's positive values.
So the problem isn't that the new shows lack hope or optimism; the problem is that they're too attached to the serial-arc format. For all the modern tendency to assume serialization is superior to episodic storytelling (the opposite of the bias in the 1950s-70s, when serialization was seen as the province of cheesy soap operas and children's shows), it's a format that comes with its own limitations and drawbacks, like any format. And one of its weaknesses is that it tends to result in stories where the heroes have to lose over and over again until they finally win in the end. Which doesn't work as well for concepts that tend to be in an optimistic or heroic vein, like Star Trek or superhero shows. (This is one of my issues with Superman and Lois. I want to see Superman succeed more often, save more people, rather than butt his head ineffectually against a single threat for most of the season. An episodic format would suit him better.)
Yeah, it's the starting point I have in mind for S1 Picard. And I think you're onto something with the strengths and weaknesses of season-long arc stories. An hour story played out to 10 times the length feels rather different to watch.
There were bits of Picard s3 eps 1-9 I liked, along with bits I really didn't, 3.10 was, by contrast, great. But that 90-10 split of descent then resolution is lacking for me. 70-30 perhaps? Might work better.
On a related note, it's accepted that a continuing story needs a new threat, villain etc, therefore something has gone wrong somewhere. The question is where is the line drawn? Too little, too far? For me Picard, at the start, drew it a bit too harsh, much like the Star Wars sequels, but there is no perfect answer on this.
There were bits of Picard s3 eps 1-9 I liked, along with bits I really didn't, 3.10 was, by contrast, great. But that 90-10 split of descent then resolution is lacking for me. 70-30 perhaps? Might work better.
On a related note, it's accepted that a continuing story needs a new threat, villain etc, therefore something has gone wrong somewhere. The question is where is the line drawn? Too little, too far? For me Picard, at the start, drew it a bit too harsh, much like the Star Wars sequels, but there is no perfect answer on this.
Isn't that true of all of Star Wars, though? I mean, the series opens with the galaxy in the grip of a dictator who dissolves the Senate and blows up an entire planet purely to inspire terror, and both the male and female leads are orphaned in the first half of the story. Oh, and the female lead is also tortured by the guy who eventually turns out to be her dad.
Serialization works very well in Babylon 5. Mainly because JMS conceived B5 as, for all intents and purposes, a 5-year miniseries.
It's not so well-suited for Star Trek.
It's not so well-suited for Star Trek.
With the SW sequels there was a weird approach of doing the prequels but with the first films cast, thus turn their lives to crap and expect the audience to go with it. Tgst didn't exactly work out. In terms of the wider set-up, yeah, frequently it is screwed.
Where B5 is concerned, JMS told his story across 110 episodes. Which gives it a very different rhythm to the 10-episode single stories of Discovery and Picard. He also knew you had to allow the heroes sufficient agency against the villains, even on a stacked deck, see s2 of B5, it's all going downhill, they can't stop it but it doesn't feel depressingly helpless.
And DS9 did similar as it learnt and responded to B5. Trek can do it, but it's probably a more demanding and difficult road than doing one story over 10 hours.
Where B5 is concerned, JMS told his story across 110 episodes. Which gives it a very different rhythm to the 10-episode single stories of Discovery and Picard. He also knew you had to allow the heroes sufficient agency against the villains, even on a stacked deck, see s2 of B5, it's all going downhill, they can't stop it but it doesn't feel depressingly helpless.
And DS9 did similar as it learnt and responded to B5. Trek can do it, but it's probably a more demanding and difficult road than doing one story over 10 hours.
That's the thing, though. Babylon 5 wasn't a pure serial. People abuse the word "serialization" by using it to refer to all continuity, which is wrong. Serialization is when a single plot is spread out over multiple installments, so that each episode is only a chapter. In a typical fully serialized TV show, any single episode would have a part of ongoing plotline A, a part of ongoing plotline B, and so on running simultaneously. But Babylon 5 developed its serial arcs within an episodic format. One episode would tell plotline A from beginning to end, then the next would tell plotline B from beginning to end, the next would tell plotline C, the next would be D, then maybe the next one would revisit plotline A and advance it further, then another would revisit plotline C and show how it was connected to plotline B, and so on. The plots were advanced sequentially, taking turns, rather than simultaneously, so that an individual episode told an entire story in itself rather than just fragments of several different stories. Instead of just one big story spread out over a long time, it was multiple complete smaller stories that added up to a larger whole.
Basically, B5 was closer to how something like Lower Decks or The Mandalorian approaches continuity -- or like the first half of most Discovery seasons -- than it is to something like Picard or Superman and Lois. It found a good balance between making each individual episode stand on its own and having them add up into something larger. And that's why it worked -- not because it was a serial, but because it paid attention to the value of both the parts and the whole, rather than sacrificing one for the sake of the other.
If "dystopian" isn't the right word for the 2020's and the atmosphere in all crap series and movies that are poured over us in these days, then please tell me what the right word is for it.
Picard is a doom-and-gloom series, a hellish dark version of TNG, obvioouslytaking place in som hellish paralell universe.
What else can we say about a series where the main character, a beloved and popular character is killed off and replaced by an android.
Not to mention the rest of the dark atmosphere in the series.
Unfortunately, it seems to be setting the standard for the books too.
Seven of Nine is gay, gets to dress like a normal person and is captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise. For all of Picard's issues, being a hell dystopia isn't one of them.
Watch The Day After on YouTube. That's the kind of thing you're thinking of.
I can agree that The Day After is very dystopian, although I haven't watched all of it. I did quit watching after half an hour.
But what can I call series like Picard? Doom-and-Gloom?, Dark?
it's definitely not a series like TNG. Much, much more gloomy and that's not what I want.
Is it that much more gloomy than DS9 was? That had some very grim story arcs. Ditto Voyager's Year of Hell.
I find Picard much more gloomy than DS9.
DS9 do have some "dark" episodes but there are always lighter episodes between them to ease up the series.
Picard is dark and gloomy all over and lacks the great characters DS9 has. Not even the good, old TNG characters shine like they did in TNG.
Not to mention that DS9 is so much better than Picard as a series.
Year Of Hell may have been dark but everything turned out dood in the end.
Similar threads
- Poll
