Ezri and Aventine <POTENTIAL SPOILERS>

[Deranged Nasat]

If the assignments last half a season to a full season and then move on to the next one, I think the viewers would understand that a ship was necessary. Besides, a ship on the scale of a Galaxy-class vessel is essentially a space station unto itself. It's supposed to be this vast research platform with hundreds of scientists and labs. How does it make sense to have this huge university in space just spend a few paltry days at any given planet, especially if only the same half-dozen command officers and the occasional security guard are the only people who ever leave the ship? What's the point of even having all those scientists and labs aboard if you never stay in one place long enough to make any use of them? How does that ring true from a storytelling standpoint?

QFT.

I know we never got anything like that during TNG's run because serialised arcs like that weren't generally the norm, but I think such a show would work today. Failing that, a few books would not go amiss - especially if it has a few familiar faces.

In my opinion, a novel series focusing on the civilian scientists and families aboard a Galaxy-class or comparable vessel, stationed at an interesting world for a lengthy survey, would be very interesting. Move the focus away from the Starfleet for once. It wouldn't feel like a rehash of DS9, because there would be no interstellar-level politics, no massive consequences for the galaxy, just an exploration of relatively "normal" people's lives and the relationships they'd build with this surveyed world and its people. It could be a more "quiet", intimate counterpart to all the (brilliant) high-level interstellar politics the Typhon Pact is bringing us...

 

[LutherSloan]

^Actually I've long thought that would be a more realistic format for a starship-adventure series -- rather than spending a couple of days at each planet before moving on, the ship would stay for months while a thorough survey was conducted, and an entire season (or at least half-season) would be devoted to an in-depth examination of this one planet and its various cultures, and then the ship would move on to a different planet and do the same. You can't do a meaningful survey of an entire world in less than months.

Hard to write an interesting book about that though, I'm sure.

Basically Titan is the closest thing you're likely to get, although Vanguard has elements of what you want.

 

[flandry84]

Strangely enough I have a very definite image of the Aventine crew in my mind despite their very few appearances so far,much clearer than many of the newer reboot characters across the Trek universe.
I especially like the uptight businesslike attitude of Sam Bowers.Unfortunately I was among those who missed any hint to his ethnicity so I have a clear mental image of him as a white guy(looking something like Thomas Gibson from "Criminal minds").
Maybe that is the message of Trek,skin colour matters not,one way or the other.

 

[BrotherBenny]

^Actually I've long thought that would be a more realistic format for a starship-adventure series -- rather than spending a couple of days at each planet before moving on, the ship would stay for months while a thorough survey was conducted, and an entire season (or at least half-season) would be devoted to an in-depth examination of this one planet and its various cultures, and then the ship would move on to a different planet and do the same. You can't do a meaningful survey of an entire world in less than months.

Hard to write an interesting book about that though, I'm sure.

Pure BS, Luthor. A good writer, one even half as talented as Christopher, can make almost anything interesting. And with the idea itself you're more than halfway there.

 

[flandry84]

The art of the planetary survey seems to be lost in modern Trek,apart from Titan.
I can't recall a single scene during all of TNG's television run of the crew ambling around a deserted planetary surface a-la TOS.

 

[Christopher]

^Actually I've long thought that would be a more realistic format for a starship-adventure series -- rather than spending a couple of days at each planet before moving on, the ship would stay for months while a thorough survey was conducted, and an entire season (or at least half-season) would be devoted to an in-depth examination of this one planet and its various cultures, and then the ship would move on to a different planet and do the same. You can't do a meaningful survey of an entire world in less than months.

Hard to write an interesting book about that though, I'm sure.

Well, the point is that it's not a single story. How can something as huge and diverse as a planet have only one story worth telling? I'm saying that's something I'd like to see in a TV series. Not only would it be a more realistic approach to exploration, but it would give you season-long arcs dealing with the political, social, environmental or other problems of a given world, and it would save money by letting a show use the same sets and costumes for a year at a time (though not every week, since the point is to explore multiple nations, cultures, and ecosystems -- an antidote to the tendency to show an entire planet as a single environment or neighborhood). It might also be a good way to do a comic-book series.

The closest thing we have in Trek Lit is Mere Anarchy, a miniseries of stories devoted to a single planet and its various cultures and political factions.

 

[BrotherBenny]

The closest thing we have in Trek Lit is Mere Anarchy, a miniseries of stories devoted to a single planet and its various cultures and political factions.

Yes, more stories like Mere Anarchy please. But it could be exploring strange ancient ruins which have all sorts of stories associated with them...cliched stuff like being thrown back in time and experiencing something...or finding the cultural/linguistic rosetta stone...or new technology, anything is possible.

 

[flemm]

Hard to write an interesting book about that though, I'm sure.

Well maybe, but I think the reason we have not seen much of the kind of thing BrotherBenny is suggesting is Trek convention more than anything. We are used to the one-episode aliens whose culture must be monolithic because next week it will be on to the next planet and the next alien society or whatever.

Of course Trek alien societies tend to get fleshed out over time if they are among those that recur or eventually become part of a command crew, but really this tendency to move to a new planet or anomaly for each installment is due to the original television series format. With novels especially I could see there being a lot more flexibility to delve deeply into a richly imagined culture (or two or three) in a given sector, rather than serial encounters as is most common in Trek.

One obstacle, though, is the Trek tradition of imagining alien cultures as basically a caricature of some human characteristic: Romulans are scheming, Vulcans are logical, Klingons are warlike, Bajorans are religious, etc. To spend a great deal of time exploring a single world you would have to create an alien society that was much more, well... alien. Or a planet that was fascinating enough in other ways.

 

[Thrawn]

^ Well, if Terok Nor, Worlds of DS9, the Gorkon series, the Rihannsu series, etc etc have taught us anything, it's that creating fully fleshed-out alien species worthy of their own stories is eminently possible.

 

[flemm]

^ Well, if Terok Nor, Worlds of DS9, the Gorkon series, the Rihannsu series, etc etc have taught us anything, it's that creating fully fleshed-out alien species worthy of their own stories is eminently possible.

I haven't read all of those you mentioned, but I agree as far as Terok Nor and Worlds of DS9 are concerned. Really all BrotherBenny is suggesting is a series with that type of detail, but linked to a Starfleet vessel on a First Contact mission or mission of exploration, at least that is my impression.

 

[JD]

^Actually I've long thought that would be a more realistic format for a starship-adventure series -- rather than spending a couple of days at each planet before moving on, the ship would stay for months while a thorough survey was conducted, and an entire season (or at least half-season) would be devoted to an in-depth examination of this one planet and its various cultures, and then the ship would move on to a different planet and do the same. You can't do a meaningful survey of an entire world in less than months.

Hard to write an interesting book about that though, I'm sure.

Well, the point is that it's not a single story. How can something as huge and diverse as a planet have only one story worth telling? I'm saying that's something I'd like to see in a TV series. Not only would it be a more realistic approach to exploration, but it would give you season-long arcs dealing with the political, social, environmental or other problems of a given world, and it would save money by letting a show use the same sets and costumes for a year at a time (though not every week, since the point is to explore multiple nations, cultures, and ecosystems -- an antidote to the tendency to show an entire planet as a single environment or neighborhood). It might also be a good way to do a comic-book series.

The closest thing we have in Trek Lit is Mere Anarchy, a miniseries of stories devoted to a single planet and its various cultures and political factions.

The closest thing we have in Trek Lit is Mere Anarchy, a miniseries of stories devoted to a single planet and its various cultures and political factions.

Yes, more stories like Mere Anarchy please. But it could be exploring strange ancient ruins which have all sorts of stories associated with them...cliched stuff like being thrown back in time and experiencing something...or finding the cultural/linguistic rosetta stone...or new technology, anything is possible.

At first I wasn't sure about this concept, but the more you guys talk about, the better it sounds. It actually could be really cool to spend a fair amount of time on one planet, and to really develop it.

 

[Christopher]

One obstacle, though, is the Trek tradition of imagining alien cultures as basically a caricature of some human characteristic: Romulans are scheming, Vulcans are logical, Klingons are warlike, Bajorans are religious, etc. To spend a great deal of time exploring a single world you would have to create an alien society that was much more, well... alien.

Actually, I'd say just the opposite -- what you want is to create a society that's more like humanity. Look at the humans who live on Earth. They don't have a single monolithic culture and government and belief system and language and fashion sense and hairstyle. This one planet is home to hundreds of nation-states and thousands of distinct cultures, many of them quite alien to one another in their values and customs. If anything, the uniformity of fictional aliens is the most inhuman thing about them.

What we did in Mere Anarchy was to try to create a species that was more like humanity, in that it had numerous different cultures and languages and ideologies and political and social factions. That made it possible to explore a different aspect of Mestiko in each story. After all, there have been millions of stories told about life on Earth. It should be possible to find plenty of stories to tell about any planet that's even a fraction as diverse.

 

[Myasishchev]

Strangely enough I have a very definite image of the Aventine crew in my mind despite their very few appearances so far,much clearer than many of the newer reboot characters across the Trek universe.
I especially like the uptight businesslike attitude of Sam Bowers.Unfortunately I was among those who missed any hint to his ethnicity so I have a clear mental image of him as a white guy(looking something like Thomas Gibson from "Criminal minds").
Maybe that is the message of Trek,skin colour matters not,one way or the other.

Believe it or not, I saw Scott Bakula. Sam "Beckett" Bower. : /

 

[Rush Limborg]

Currently reading Mission Gamma #2: This Gray Spirit, Ezri comes off as being really bad at command: She keeps shouting at Shar, when a reasonable conversation will do. She feels the need to have complete control over all of "her" officers' actions, and she laid into Shar for thinking for himself and exploring other avenues of a problem (which I'm certain she has done before, to the benefit of DS9).

As I recall...Shar disobeyed direct orders and took matters into his own hands. But I see your point, in a sense. But Ezri's overcome these problems, by the time she takes command of the Aventine....

As for Ezri blowing her stack, remember that her reasons for trying to be in complete control was, as Bashir pointed out, that she had become so obsessed lately with exploring her past hosts that it led to arrogance on her part--she began to thing that Dax could do anything, and thus Ezri was, at this point, surrendering to the past experiences.

I think, then, that her lashing out at Shar (and her paranoid you're-holding-me-back attitude towards Julian at the beginning) may have been due to the influence of Joran....

Just a thought.

If you read on though--

Spoiler: Ezri's arc in This Grey Spirit

--she gets a lot of sense knocked into her by the end of the tale, and confesses to Julian her grave error, also acknowledging her unfair treatment of Shar--who she quickly made amends with, BTW.

Still...she still seems to struggle with her lack of "equilibrium" for a while after--I strongly suspect that this is what caused...what had happened in Unjoined.

 

[tenmei]

I too would love a solo novel series for the Aventine.

 

[mattburgess]

Originally posted by Rush Limborg:
her reasons for trying to be in complete control was, as Bashir pointed out, that she had become so obsessed lately with exploring her past hosts that it led to arrogance on her part--she began to think that Dax could do anything, and thus Ezri was, at this point, surrendering to the past experiences.

An exceedingly good point. It doesn't feel so out-of-character now. Thanks!!

 

[Rush Limborg]

^No problem!

 

[Rush Limborg]

While we're at it...I wonder what a theme song for Star Trek: Aventine (or whatever) would sound like?

For some reason, "Enterprising Young Men" from the new JJ-film is stuck in my mind as a possibility....

 

[DEWLine]

That was a damn good piece of music, wasn't it?

 

[Rush Limborg]

^Yuppers.

And, considering the all-around awesomeness of the Aventine, I can just imagine Ezri in a shuttlecraft with her old friends from DS9, showing her ship off to them, ST:TMP-style, with that track enhancing the scene....