Re: Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls - Discuss/Grade
I know I am late on this, but I want to congratulate David Mack for a marvelous series of books and a great, great story.
The problem with fiction in general is that there has to be some parts of it that stretch reality so that some problems in the narrative cannot be solved. The idea of people blaming humanity for the Borg is one of them. Our POV as readers helps us to understand everything about the origins of the Borg. When Piccard and his staff write their after-action report, and probably all three captains would write one detailed report together along with their staffs, the reports would not say that humans/Caeliar are the termius a quo of the Borg. The evidence they would know, even given all the live recrods they would have access to, would not be enough to say that this is reality. So I think the revenge on human problem probably would never happen.
I have two questions which I may expand into a few more questions:
1. Picard is percived by many as out of character, since he is so negative against the plans of Dax/Hernandez? May I submit that more every major war decision has opposition to it, even the most successful ones? Piccard was too depressed, for lack of a better word, for whatever reason to come up with the great wining idea/plan. Okay, but if nobody ever challenged Dax/Hernadez in their thinking, or send a large part of their crews to help them, the plans would not have worked. Piccard was not such a wet blanket as some suggest IMO. Should have been tougher, yes. But read Eisenhower writing about before D-Day, or Grant and Lee's writings about their role in the American Civil War. They never had such crises of the soul as Picard?
2. I personally think our esteemed author made a mistake about the Thaerlon Raidiation order of Piccard and the refusal of LaForge to do it. Piccard was right, and LaForge was wrong, and any sane commander would have sacked LaForge and built the weapon. First off, if the Borg continued on their spree in the Alpha Quadrant, they would get the tech for ther weapon, and they would use it. Second, if 60+ billion beings are dying, and there is little hope to save the sitaution, Picard had no choice but to build and use it. What is the more important ethic, watch your culture turn to ashes, or take the chance you can stop the destruction by a new weapon? I know what Bacco thought, and any other commander would use the same thing, Why is the Doomsday Device such a great episode in the original series? Same issue is brought up.
Third, you better believe the Romulans at this point would be arming ships with it, so would the Klingons if they had the tech. The cat would be out of the bag at this point by somebody who had the tech. This is a war of extermination right? And the Borg is the proverbial cat, and the Allies are the proverbial mice, correct?
It is great to see the author show the superiority of the Starfleet ethic here, but he takes too far, and beyond reality in Picard changing his mind to build it. In fact, this weakness is in all three books when everyone at Starfleet Command refused Seven's suggestion to build it. And what about the ubiqitous Section 31? They would just sit idly by while a former Borg says this is your best weapon? They inflicted the Founders with a virus, what's the difference?
But, these are somewhat minor quibbles about a great series, and overall it was a great, great read.
(Not because I think anyone would go *after* them, but they might not be able to deal with the guilt.)
) of mourning in store... and given all the wars, people must be at a point know where they will *have* to grieve... I'd imagine that will surpass the need for revenge, and by the time its done, survival/rebuilding will kinda take over... maybe...
