The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing - Discuss (SPOILERS)

Can one just jump into this without having read any ENT novels?

 

I'd really, really recommend reading TGTMD and KM first. They're cliffhangered right into each other.

 

Yes, but your reading experience will be improved if you read The Good That Men Do and Kobayashi Maru first.

 

Just finished the book. A satisfying read overall. I would've liked a bit less Vulcan debate (that goes nowhere, again and again) and a bit more Enterprise in the thick of things (I think Ulysses made it home faster than Archer and his crew -- where were they? The Delta Quadrant?) I enjoyed all of the scenes with the Commodore and his fleet taking the battle back to the Romulans and the easter eggs/continuity "fixes" that littered the story.

The weakest part of the book -- in my opinion -- are the Trip segments. The character keeps getting shoe-horned into wilder and wilder scenarios with each passing book. In the Good That Men Do, his situation stretched credibility but the reader can go along with it because the writers were trying to fix the awful ENT finale in the best way that they could. His decision toward the end of Raptor's Wing, though -- completely absurd. Even his explanation to T'Pol doesn't hold any water. Enough is enough with these endless, nonsensical delays. Just reunite Trip with the Enterprise crew already.

 

^ IIRC The Good That Men Do establishes that it was thought Trip died until it was uncovered by Jake & Nog. I guess it is possible Trip could come back but tell Archer & co. to keep it off the record.

 

They could always just do what they are (apparently) doing in Voyager, and just change his name on all the records.

 

I think anything would be preferrable to this "From Romulus, With Love" spy stuff. ONE book would have been fine -- but we're now into a third book of Trip getting put into situations where he is completely out of his depth, doing things completely out of character, and having no resolution to this plot thread in sight. By now, the tips of his faux ears have to itch like crazy, right?

 

...Does it seem like the word 'dour' is repeated an awful lot in this book? As in, too many times? Or am I just over-reacting?

 

It's set in the 22nd Century, 110 years before TOS, in areas of space that even in TOS were considered far away. It's much more realistic to have the NX-01 be months away from Earth than to have it be the five-second trip it so often was in ENT.

 

Question: The back cover blurb mentions a war that broke out on Earth at the start of the 22nd century. What war is this? It can't be World War III, which ended in 2053. And I highly doubt there could ever have been a fourth...

 

Where was this reference? I misssed it.

 

The reproductions of the back cover seem to have been erroneous. My back cover says that a war broke out on Earth in the 21st Century -- obviously a reference to World War III.

Page 26, start of Chapter Four.

 

There were other sublte references to real-life events...or maybe it's just me.

I recall the Praetor was continuing involvement in an intractable conflict his father had originally started, for one.

 

I'm about halfway through the book now. I like it a lot.

I mean, any Trek novel that manages to quote Yogi Berra is all right in my book!

(One thing, though: When is Columbia due to 'disappear', a la the Destiny trilogy? Shouldn't that be about ready to happen?)

 

I'm halfway through this book and it's one of the best Startrek Enterprise books I've read in the relaunch series.It's going to be alongtime wait for the next book to come out in 2011.

 

I think it was mentioned in chapter 53 or something. I read it but can't remember off hand but do remember Archer was wondering what happened to it.

 

By my estimate, Columbia's disappearance happens sometime between Ch. 75 & 76. When Archer wonders about the ship's absence in Ch. 77, it's mentioned that the last time he heard from Hernandez was about a month before, i.e. around May 20. So the Destiny scenes with the Columbia probably begin in late May or so.

 

I caught a typo: In the bit where the battle above Andoria is happening (can't remember the exact page #, I think it's the late 280's), one of the crew of the Romulan bird of prey is given the name of one of the *Andorian* crew of Shran's ship.

 

There are a fair number of typos in this one for some reason.
One that I caught was in the scene in the Prime Minister's office, Miniser Lydia Littlejohn is sometimes addressed as "Madame Minister" and other times addressed as "Madam Minister."

(Incidentally, I'm always slightly irritated when I see people call someone "Mister Prime Minister" or "Mister Minister" or "Madam Minister." It's purely a stylistic choice, and there's nothing wrong with that style of address, but I greatly prefer the British system, where you address them as, "Prime Minister" or "Minister," no honorific in front of it. But that's completely subjective.)

I think the typos might be because of the editorial upheaval these last few months.

 

Am I the only one here who thinks that the attempt to bridge ENT era with TOS era by making ugly starships with primitive technology and trashy interior design was a really bad (borderline absurd) idea?

Why is it so hard for some people to accept the fact that TOS was made back in the sixties when people could barely even imagine stuff like liquid crystal displays, camera phones, palm-size computers with touch screens, let alone think that forty years from then it will all be taken for granted?

Okay, Starfleet made those primitive ships so that the Romulans couldn't use their telecapture system on them, but why make them ugly (as Tobin Dax described them)?
And what about the sudden Romulan use of nukes? Why would anyone revert to old school fusion warheads next to much more powerful anti-matter warheads?

Take nuBSG for example. Galactica was made purposely unsophisticated, so that the Cylons couldn't turn technology against the Humans. They even used old style phones with cords, but they didn't make the ship's interior look like some cheap sixties TV studio set.

TOS just doesn't pass for a believable vision of the future nowadays... Hell, it hasn't been believable for decades now.

So why this need to even bridge ENT to TOS, since TOS era has been successfully re-imagined anyway?

Is following the canon to the letter at the expense of reason and common sense really necessary?