Spoilers Destiny: Mere Mortals by David Mack Review Thread
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Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
I know this isn't quite what you meant, but what about "Unimatrix Zero?" The captain dons a disguise to pass as the enemy and infiltrate their ship in order to undermine their military effectiveness. There's your intrigue. And the Queen is pretty seductive in her way, both with Tuvok and with the alien boy.
I know this isn't quite what you meant, but what about "Unimatrix Zero?" The captain dons a disguise to pass as the enemy and infiltrate their ship in order to undermine their military effectiveness. There's your intrigue. And the Queen is pretty seductive in her way, both with Tuvok and with the alien boy.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
Bravo,Mr Mack!
I was afraid that book 3 would suffer conclusion syndrome and wind up overloaded with closing too many plots.
If I were forced to pick a favorite scene,of all the events it would be bringing the Columbia home.
Its an excellent conclusion as it all started with that ship trying to get home...and accidently starting the monstrosity that was the Borg.
It also pays tribute to the Columbia's crew that died trying to escape the supernova in the first novel.
Again ,bravo on an excellent novel!
Bravo,Mr Mack!
I was afraid that book 3 would suffer conclusion syndrome and wind up overloaded with closing too many plots.
If I were forced to pick a favorite scene,of all the events it would be bringing the Columbia home.
Its an excellent conclusion as it all started with that ship trying to get home...and accidently starting the monstrosity that was the Borg.
It also pays tribute to the Columbia's crew that died trying to escape the supernova in the first novel.
Again ,bravo on an excellent novel!
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
^ Gracias, much appreciated.
^ Gracias, much appreciated.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
Meh, semantics. You get the point.
No. You just don't like the borg. I, on the other hand, love the borg. With episodes like Scorpion, Unity, I,Borg, Descent and books like Homecoming, The Return, The Nanotech War and Federation, there are plenty of unique borg stories to go around and that's just 9 examples I've listed. Now we've got a full-scale borg attack, something we've never seen before, which is great.
Bottom line is that the borg exist and the Federation is the target. The writer's can't just ignore that. There are plenty of Klingon books out there, you know. I'm just sayin'.
Meh, semantics. You get the point.
No. You just don't like the borg. I, on the other hand, love the borg. With episodes like Scorpion, Unity, I,Borg, Descent and books like Homecoming, The Return, The Nanotech War and Federation, there are plenty of unique borg stories to go around and that's just 9 examples I've listed. Now we've got a full-scale borg attack, something we've never seen before, which is great.
Bottom line is that the borg exist and the Federation is the target. The writer's can't just ignore that. There are plenty of Klingon books out there, you know. I'm just sayin'.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
I think you might have posted this in the wrong thread, this is the one for Mere Mortals, the second book in the trilogy.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
No, he's making plenty of sense, and I like the Borg fine. The list of good Borg stories you offer is revealing: the Borg play a tangential role in some of them, or some weird new angle on the Borg is introduced. They aren't an inherently workable long-term alien antagonist in the way of most other Trek baddies.
Sure they could. More or less since the Borg were introduced the writers of TV, film, and tie-ins had been ignoring the obvious fact that even a small fraction of the Borg strength could wipe out the Alpha Quadrant. It's nice that the fiction has now chosen to address that, but it's not like Star Trek from 1990 to 2008 somehow falls apart because the Borg were used selectively.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
Thanks. I thought the Borg were great early on. But it became obvious that the writers ran out of ways to use the Borg as Borg, and had to make drastic changes to keep using them -- take a single Borg out of the collective, take a few Borg out of the collective, take another Borg out of the collective, etc.
It rarely felt like we were learning more about the Borg, it felt like the Borg were being changed so the writers could do something new with them.
Thanks. I thought the Borg were great early on. But it became obvious that the writers ran out of ways to use the Borg as Borg, and had to make drastic changes to keep using them -- take a single Borg out of the collective, take a few Borg out of the collective, take another Borg out of the collective, etc.
It rarely felt like we were learning more about the Borg, it felt like the Borg were being changed so the writers could do something new with them.
- The Borg are a species who have their own children in "Q Who," even if the babies aren't the result of basic sexual reproduction. Later they seem mainly to be assimilated from other species.
- Jean-Luc Picard survives assimilation and is almost always shown living a pretty good post-Borg life -- but he has to kill Borg-assimiliated members of his own crew in First Contact because (unlike him) they're better off dead.
- The Borg are a collective with no individuality who need Locutus to speak for them. Except that they have a queen who can speak for them.
- Humans first encounter the Borg in "Q Who." But that's retconned on Voyager to several years earlier, and then retconned on Enterprise to centuries earlier.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
I see this very differently. What happened is that we, the readers and audience learned more about the Borg in time. Of course it also has something to do with it that if the Borg had stayed the way they were in “Q Who” without adding more dimension to them, they would have become very uninteresting very quickly.
I don`t think the Borg really changed. What happened over time is that new aspects, new elements were added and new discoveries were made.
By the way, I disagree with it that Picard “had” to kill Borg assimilated members of his own crew because they are better off dead. This is what he believed. Picard never gained the full knowledge of the Borg when he was assimilated.
I don`t think they really needed Picard as a spokesperson. They just used him as a tool, maybe also as a weapon of terror. The queen certainly understands that concept.
Voyager is full of contradictions but I don`t see what happened in Enterprise as retconning history. It wouldn`t surprise me if there are other earlier appearances of the Borg that never made it into any history books.
I see this very differently. What happened is that we, the readers and audience learned more about the Borg in time. Of course it also has something to do with it that if the Borg had stayed the way they were in “Q Who” without adding more dimension to them, they would have become very uninteresting very quickly.
I don`t think the Borg really changed. What happened over time is that new aspects, new elements were added and new discoveries were made.
By the way, I disagree with it that Picard “had” to kill Borg assimilated members of his own crew because they are better off dead. This is what he believed. Picard never gained the full knowledge of the Borg when he was assimilated.
I don`t think they really needed Picard as a spokesperson. They just used him as a tool, maybe also as a weapon of terror. The queen certainly understands that concept.
Voyager is full of contradictions but I don`t see what happened in Enterprise as retconning history. It wouldn`t surprise me if there are other earlier appearances of the Borg that never made it into any history books.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
I don't think it has anything to do with knowledge, but rather this own emotional trauma, aggressively projected onto other assimilated crew--as Lily Sloane quite rightly called him out on.
Yep. The whole thing with the Raven and the Hansen parents made no sense to me, but ENT was actually pretty careful not to contradict continuity in their Borg episode, whose premise did logically stem from First Contact. (Unlike, say, the Ferengi episode)
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
I don't think it has anything to do with knowledge, but rather this own emotional trauma, aggressively projected onto other assimilated crew--as Lily Sloane quite rightly called him out on.
Yep. The whole thing with the Raven and the Hansen parents made no sense to me, but ENT was actually pretty careful not to contradict continuity in their Borg episode, whose premise did logically stem from First Contact. (Unlike, say, the Ferengi episode)
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
^^Well, let's keep in mind that Picard was in a situation where he didn't exactly have the luxury of trying to save his assimilated crew. They had become an immediate threat to him, to the ship, and to the Federation, and it was necessary for him to use force to stop them -- just as Riker was willing to kill Picard at the end of BOBW Pt. 1.
^^Well, let's keep in mind that Picard was in a situation where he didn't exactly have the luxury of trying to save his assimilated crew. They had become an immediate threat to him, to the ship, and to the Federation, and it was necessary for him to use force to stop them -- just as Riker was willing to kill Picard at the end of BOBW Pt. 1.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
^ I wouldn't argue with that at all. It's the 'better off dead' part of his reasoning, that he was doing them a favour by killing them, which I would take issue with as being an emotive rather than rational response.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
^ I wouldn't argue with that at all. It's the 'better off dead' part of his reasoning, that he was doing them a favour by killing them, which I would take issue with as being an emotive rather than rational response.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
It is in the nature of Borg storytelling for them to be weird. That's the point. The Borg have never been used as a long-term alien antagonist, so your point is flawed. The complaints that I've been reading for YEARS on end are made as though we see the Borg in every episode and in every book. Every Borg episode was spread ridiculously far apart, until we get to Season 6 & 7 of Voyager where their presence was necessitated due to Voyager being in their homequadrant.
Trek in general has always shown Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Cardassians and Ferengi endlessly with all relatively behaving exactly the same as though all members of these alien species share the same minds.
I think your complaints stem from the Borg being too powerful. The same issue resides with the Q.
Who says it would fall apart? It just wouldn't be satisfying. Just like it's not satisfying to ignore the events of TNG's "Conspiracy," or to not have the Hirogen simulate Wolfe 359 instead of some rudimentary 17th Century war then mention simulating Wolfe 359 in said episode.
I don't think you're being fair at all. You say you're bored with the Borg, but when the writers give you a unique Borg story, you cry foul. You can't have it both ways. It's no wonder the writers are pulling their hair out trying to satisfy us.
Your entire bulleted list is a testament of the entire history of Trek storytelling. You can't just pick and choose inconsistencies in order to highlight your accusations against a single race of characters, because your point applies to the whole entire Trek universe. I'm not even going to create my own bulleted list, because as a fan, you know I'm right.
I'm curious and so now I pose a question to the naysayers. You are the writer. Now summarize an acceptable Borg history for Star Trek, starting with "The Neutral Zone" and ending with Voyager. This... I've got to see.
FYI: In "The Neutral Zone," the Borg assimilated both Federation and Romulan outposts and then inexplicably reversed course to the Delta Quadrant.
It is in the nature of Borg storytelling for them to be weird. That's the point. The Borg have never been used as a long-term alien antagonist, so your point is flawed. The complaints that I've been reading for YEARS on end are made as though we see the Borg in every episode and in every book. Every Borg episode was spread ridiculously far apart, until we get to Season 6 & 7 of Voyager where their presence was necessitated due to Voyager being in their homequadrant.
Trek in general has always shown Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Cardassians and Ferengi endlessly with all relatively behaving exactly the same as though all members of these alien species share the same minds.
I think your complaints stem from the Borg being too powerful. The same issue resides with the Q.
Who says it would fall apart? It just wouldn't be satisfying. Just like it's not satisfying to ignore the events of TNG's "Conspiracy," or to not have the Hirogen simulate Wolfe 359 instead of some rudimentary 17th Century war then mention simulating Wolfe 359 in said episode.
I don't think you're being fair at all. You say you're bored with the Borg, but when the writers give you a unique Borg story, you cry foul. You can't have it both ways. It's no wonder the writers are pulling their hair out trying to satisfy us.
Your entire bulleted list is a testament of the entire history of Trek storytelling. You can't just pick and choose inconsistencies in order to highlight your accusations against a single race of characters, because your point applies to the whole entire Trek universe. I'm not even going to create my own bulleted list, because as a fan, you know I'm right.
I'm curious and so now I pose a question to the naysayers. You are the writer. Now summarize an acceptable Borg history for Star Trek, starting with "The Neutral Zone" and ending with Voyager. This... I've got to see.
FYI: In "The Neutral Zone," the Borg assimilated both Federation and Romulan outposts and then inexplicably reversed course to the Delta Quadrant.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
Either you're completely missing the points I'm trying to make or I'm incapable of expressing myself clearly. Either way, I'm done.
Either you're completely missing the points I'm trying to make or I'm incapable of expressing myself clearly. Either way, I'm done.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
Indeed.
Luminus, it's a rule exclusive to the Trek Lit area of the board due to the number of Trek authors we have posting here. And there are legal concerns etc, that make it best to not have people posting story ideas here.
Indeed.
Luminus, it's a rule exclusive to the Trek Lit area of the board due to the number of Trek authors we have posting here. And there are legal concerns etc, that make it best to not have people posting story ideas here.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals - SPOILER Thread
And you will, next year, in the Star Trek Magazine. A piece that will be far more than acceptable, I sincerely hope and expect (and won't pay exorbitant sums of money for unless it is!!)
The writer, whose identity I'll keep quiet for now, is briefed to cover all Borg appearances - including their alternate origins in comics and the Shatnerverse - so I'll be very interested in everyone's (but particularly Luminus') opinion
Paul
And you will, next year, in the Star Trek Magazine. A piece that will be far more than acceptable, I sincerely hope and expect (and won't pay exorbitant sums of money for unless it is!!)
The writer, whose identity I'll keep quiet for now, is briefed to cover all Borg appearances - including their alternate origins in comics and the Shatnerverse - so I'll be very interested in everyone's (but particularly Luminus') opinion
Paul
