Destiny

[JD]

First - The caeliar needed no help from the federation or anyone else to know what's happening in the galaxy. Indeed, 'destiny' established they knew all along (via their godly technology).

Second - Hernandez convinced her own people - the caeliar - to help.
The federation had little to do with it.
Unless you call wining the lottery - finding the caeliar just when the borg started their invasion (a HIGHLY improbablle/pure chance type development) - a meaningful contribution.
I don't - buying the winning lottery ticket tells nothing about the competency of the buyer. And all the other deeds of humanity during 'destiny' paint them as utterly incompetent/pathetic on this level.


JD, 'destiny' is a deliverance story - a fairly typical one, at that. The caeliar are the gods, the humans are the lowly mortals and Hernandez is the Jesus figure that ascends towards the heavens at the end.
Plus, it is disaster/dying with dignity porn.

As such, 'destiny' is thematically unfit for the star trek universe.
Why?
Davin Brin explains in his blog:
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-to-define-science-fiction.html


Regarding my personal taste, I don't enjoy disaster/dying with dignity porn type books/movies/etc.
And I find 'destiny' had a toxic effect on the trek lit line.

Uh, no, the entire point of Destiny was that the "gods" are not gods, and in fact needed to adopt "mortal" (aka Federation) values in order to survive. Destiny made it very clear that the Caeliar, though powerful, were stagnant and doomed because of their homogeneity. Only when they adopted the Federation value of heterogeneity, when they became a diverse, polyglot society, did they save themselves.

In other words: The idea that having more power than another culture means you're somehow fundamentally different from them is nonsense. The Caeliar are not gods of night; all are but mere mortals.

Sci, 'destiny' depicted the caeliar as on another level than humans

ProtoAvatar, is that you? What's with the new username?

Destiny did not such thing. It made it clear that the Caeliar are just folk. They have a mix of enlightened, admirable traits, and unenlightened, unadmirable traits -- a refusal to take life and a willingness to sacrifice themselves to save others, but also an extreme xenophobia and a tendency towards cultural stagnation. In the end, it took the Federation, in the person of Erika Hernandez, to teach the Caeliar to overcome their xenophobia, to bridge the gap between Federate and Caeliar and thereby save them both.

The Caeliar are not gods of night. They just have bigger guns and better hammers, that's all. And having bigger guns and better hammers doesn't mean that Humans cannot morally evaluate their behavior. Power does not elevate one above morality; might does not make right.

Once again ProtoAvatar, I'm sorry to see that the thought of not having power bothers you so much that it makes you think that someone with smaller guns and inferior hammers is therefore somehow unworthy and unimportant. Needing help from other people is not a sign of inferiority or unworthiness to most people.

Once again, you confuse power with morality. Might does not make right. A peasant living in 13th Century Europe may have no power to act against a tyrannical King, but this does not mean that his moral judgment of that King is wrong, or that the peasant is irrelevant. It just means that the King has more guns and hammers, that's all.

And in no way does having bigger guns and better hammers mean that the Federation cannot judge the morality of an entity's behavior. Kevin Uxbridge may be unbelievably powerful, but he also did a deeply immoral thing, and it would be completely fair and accurate for a Federation citizen to say so.

ETA:



She would never have tried to convince the Caeliar of anything had she not been raised with the values of pluralism, personal liberty, and egalitarianism on Earth that later formed the philosophical core of the Federation, or if she had not witnessed firsthand the Federation and its accomplishments when she came aboard the Titan. She convinced the Caeliar to adopt the Human/Federation moral value of pluralism and to overcome their own xenophobia, thereby saving the Caeliar from inevitable extinction. If Destiny is a deliverance story, it's a deliverance story for the Caeliar, too -- one in which Caeliar technology saves the Federation, and Federation values save the Caeliar.



So life is only meaningful if you gain power by achieving an exterior objective? The Federation is only valuable if it has bigger guns and better hammers?

That's not a very enlightened or humanistic view of life. That's worshiping power above all else.

Plus, it is disaster/dying with dignity porn.

As such, 'destiny' is thematically unfit for the star trek universe.

So you're saying that Star Trek, which has never depicted humanity as achieving immortality, should not depict its heroes as having to confront their own mortality and the mortality of their society? That it should not depict its protagonists as having a problem they cannot solve and needing help from their neighbors? That a story about people who confront their own mortality yet refuse to abandon their moral principles even in the fact of certain death is unworthy of the Star Trek Universe?

Your idea of the Star Trek Universe must involve a lot more neo-colonialist power worship than mine.

BTW: If the Caeliar are gods, why didn't the Federation cower before them in supplication and submission? Part of the point of a divine deliverance story is that the person being delivered realizes he must submit to the god's/gods' will.

Why?
Davin Brin explains in his blog:
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-to-define-science-fiction.html

Nothing in Destiny goes against Brin's contention that science fiction should depict a future where humanity can learn from its mistakes and improve on itself. If anything, Destiny's depiction of a humanity that refuses to abandon the moral principles that let them overcome war, poverty, xenophobia, and discrimination, a refusal to say that survival is more important than moral decency, affirms Brin's notion of science fiction as a revolutionary genre that challenges traditional power structures.

STAR TREK has never depicted a humanity that was beyond mortality. All DESTINY did was depict humanity looking mortality square in the eye and refusing to submit to fear by abandoning the morality that had defined its life -- and thereby inspire a neighbor with bigger guns and better hammers to help them out.[/QUOTE]

ProtoAvatar, is that you? What's with the new username?

No - but I know to whom you are referring. I have been lurking on this forum for some time. I agree with some of ProtoAvatar's views; with others, not so much.


As for the rest of your post - as said, you're grasping at straws with your forced interpretation of 'destiny' - to put it simply, you play the three 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' monkeys with regard to most of 'destiny' simply because you don't like what it establishes.

As for 'destiny' fitting David Brin's definition of forward looking sf as opposed to the backward looking, demigod variety - see what I said about forced interpretations and three monkeys.

Now, having said all that -- Edit_XYZ, if you want to continue this discussion on STAR TREK: DESTINY (yet again), could you please start a new thread on it? You basically hijacked a thread about the Husnock into a thread about DESTINY, and I just realized I played into that. I won't comment further on DESTINY in this thread unless it relates back to the Husnock and Kevin Uxbridge.

Here. I really wanted to respond to the stuff said here, but I don't have time to a response worthy of what's been said here.

 

[BillJ]

I like Destiny, but like any story, when you go back and review it there are some things that I disliked.

The Borg really come off as out-of-character, going from assimilating consumers to homicidal maniacs. I really didn't think it added anything to the Borg's 'fear factor' and it didn't make much sense for them to destroy so much in the way of usable assets.

And I think the ending had a little to much of a "God coming down to save us" feel to it. I would've rather seen something more along the lines of the Federation and Caeliar working together to combat the Borg.

But hindsight in 20/20 and, as in all things, YMMV.

 

[flandry84]

One of the things that struck me most about the Destiny books was the lack of a direct one on one threat from the Borg.What I mean is,that while the Borg had been augmented(unintentional pun)and were reportedly more savage and feral than ever,they remained ,for the most part,an offscreen threat.There didn't seem any palpaple,visceral terror to the Borg....a strange thing to say about a book where billions perished.Perhaps a scene where one of the regulars has a narrow escape would have lent the books a bit more immediacy or danger.

 

[F. King Daniel]

You mean like Captain Chakotay?

 

[flandry84]

IIRC the trouncing of Voyager took place "offscreen".And in a space battle.My point was that now that we had "faster,stronger"Borg,we never got to see them up close,beaming in,causing mayhem etc.

 

[Christopher]

IIRC the trouncing of Voyager took place "offscreen".And in a space battle.My point was that now that we had "faster,stronger"Borg,we never got to see them up close,beaming in,causing mayhem etc.

Actually the "augmented" Borg you're referring to were from Before Dishonor and Greater Than the Sum, and they were dealt with in the latter book. There was some close-quarters combat with them in those books. The Borg in Destiny were the regular Borg, but they had adopted a more aggressive policy toward the Federation in response to the Federation's destruction of their transwarp hub.

 

[captcalhoun]

destiny.... you... can not .... destroy..my....destinyyyyyyyyy....

 

[TerraUnam]

The true weakness of the Caeliar wasn't revealed until Lost Souls, that they had given up their ability to reproduce by going "synthetic" and thus had a finite and diminishing population. Which fits in with their consistent inability to see the forest for the trees, witness Inyx's comments on exiling Titan's crew, oblivious to the arrogance and intolerance of his beliefs.

That was stagnation on an epic scale.

The lethal preyings of Arithron in Gods of Night was also a prelude to what happened with Sedin in Lost Souls. The Caeliar, like all beings, can given themselves over to primal greed when faced with death and backed into a corner and morality be damned. And like most stories of this nature, you're damned if you do that.

The really Deus Ex point of Destiny that grinds is the late revelation of the Caeliar's power source, which is both Infinite Energy and Borg Bait. As an example of Chekhov's Rifle* it was poorly done. The feature should have been introduced earlier if it was going to be used that way.

*The writer and physicist, not the helmsman.

 

[captcalhoun]

but then the Titan's computer would've been screaming out Omega Directive warnings.

 

[Sci]

The Borg really come off as out-of-character, going from assimilating consumers to homicidal maniacs. I really didn't think it added anything to the Borg's 'fear factor' and it didn't make much sense for them to destroy so much in the way of usable assets.

Well, yeah, but DESTINY was pretty clear in depicting it as a deviation from their normal behavior. And it was explained fairly well: The Borg decided that the Federation (and, by extension, its neighbors) represented too great a threat to the Collective to be allowed to continue in any form. Better to play it safe and exterminate them all, to the Collective's mind.

And I think the ending had a little to much of a "God coming down to save us" feel to it. I would've rather seen something more along the lines of the Federation and Caeliar working together to combat the Borg.

David Mack gave an interview to KRAD on The Chronic Rift back in 2008, and one of the things he noted was that one of DESTINY's themes is the necessity of accepting when you have no power over something -- that sometimes in life, you have to accept that you are powerless, that only something outside yourself can save you. This is a very common theme in literature, and it's also a theme we find in many cultures that imbue the concept with a religious significance. (Alcoholics Anonymous, for instance, teaches that an alcoholic must accept that he is powerless over himself and his addiction, and that only a power greater than himself can restore him to sanity.)

What makes DESTINY's take on that concept unique, though, is that the "power greater than themselves" that saves the Federation is a power that has been inspired by the Federation's teachings, that has recognized that it, itself, needs saving by adopting those teachings. If one insists on equating the Caeliar to God or the gods, then it is a subversion of the traditional religious narrative: The gods come down from Olympus to save Athens, but they do so because only the Athenians' teachings can save the gods.

So is that truly disempowering? Is that truly a story of despair? It may not be as thematically satisfying as seeing the Federation take an active role in its own salvation, but that doesn't make it invalid. After all, in life, sometimes we are powerless, and it is important to accept that in order to be mature human beings. And that's part of what DESTINY is about: Gaining the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change what you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

One of the things that struck me most about the Destiny books was the lack of a direct one on one threat from the Borg.What I mean is,that while the Borg had been augmented(unintentional pun)and were reportedly more savage and feral than ever,they remained ,for the most part,an offscreen threat.There didn't seem any palpaple,visceral terror to the Borg....a strange thing to say about a book where billions perished.Perhaps a scene where one of the regulars has a narrow escape would have lent the books a bit more immediacy or danger.

Well, your mileage may vary, but I though that the numerous scenes of entire worlds being destroyed, of all of Federation society realizing its own imminent extinction, made for a more than effective sense of danger and threat.

My point was that now that we had "faster,stronger"Borg,we never got to see them up close,beaming in,causing mayhem etc.

Well, as Christopher noted, the "faster, stronger" Borg were the offshot encountered in Resistance, Before Dishonor, and Greater Than the Sum, not the Borg from Destiny.

But more to the point -- of course we weren't going to see them up close, beaming in, and causing mayhem. The Borg were never going to do that, because their goal was the extermination of all life in local space. They wouldn't beam in to do that; they would attack from orbit and destroy ships and stations. Expecting them to beam in is a bit like expecting a nuclear-power state with a similar goal to launch a conventional ground invasion when it could just launch nuclear ICBMs instead.

The true weakness of the Caeliar wasn't revealed until Lost Souls, that they had given up their ability to reproduce by going "synthetic" and thus had a finite and diminishing population. Which fits in with their consistent inability to see the forest for the trees, witness Inyx's comments on exiling Titan's crew, oblivious to the arrogance and intolerance of his beliefs.

That was stagnation on an epic scale.

The lethal preyings of Arithron in Gods of Night was also a prelude to what happened with Sedin in Lost Souls. The Caeliar, like all beings, can given themselves over to primal greed when faced with death and backed into a corner and morality be damned. And like most stories of this nature, you're damned if you do that.

Exactly! I couldn't have said it better. The Federation saved the Caeliar by making them realize their own stagnation and take responsibility for the actions of Sedin.

The really Deus Ex point of Destiny that grinds is the late revelation of the Caeliar's power source, which is both Infinite Energy and Borg Bait. As an example of Chekhov's Rifle* it was poorly done. The feature should have been introduced earlier if it was going to be used that way.

I could have sworn there was a scene from Book I, in the Columbia sequences, that alluded to the Omega Particle being their source of power. Am I utterly mis-remembering that?

*The writer and physicist, not the helmsman.

Well, technically, Anton Chekhov was a physician, not a physicist, but I'm just being anal.

 

[Therin of Andor]

the numerous scenes of entire worlds being destroyed, of all of Federation society realizing its own imminent extinction, made for a more than effective sense of danger and threat.

Sound of yours truly shouting at Shar's zhavey and her electorate's candlelit vigil in Therin Park.

In the immortal works of Kruge: "Get out! Get out of there!"

 

[TerraUnam]

but then the Titan's computer would've been screaming out Omega Directive warnings.

I'm just the critic; it's the author's job to make it make sense. I think David Mack should have fitted the Omega thing in earlier than he did.

Sci:

In God's of Night the Caeliar gave the Columbia's crew a tour of the Great Work and said that their machinery used more power than humanity had ever harnessed. Not mentioning Omega as such, but still talking about an Infinite Source of Energy.

 

[sonak]

wrapping up the Borg storyline with such finality(within main continuity) was a disappointment for me. Borg stories are some of the best Trek books.

 

[WarsTrek1993]

^ True.

But the Borg were, to many fans, getting incredibly overused in Trek lit and episodes, for that matter. (Especially after they were shoehorned into Enterprise).

Personally, I enjoy Borg-centric stories, but the companies must've felt the same way as Picard in First Contact.

"The line must be drawn HERE!"

 

[Sci]

wrapping up the Borg storyline with such finality(within main continuity) was a disappointment for me. Borg stories are some of the best Trek books.

I think that reaction is completely subjective. You either like the Borg or you don't; you either want them to be used, or you don't.

Ultimately, that stems from the fact that the Borg are unlike any other STAR TREK antagonists. They aren't a culture, with different factions who have different perspectives; they aren't really characters, with full personalities and motivations; they can't be reasoned with or relied upon or trusted; there's no possibility of peaceful coexistence; and they are far, far too much more powerful than the Federation for our heroes to ever realistically be able to beat them.

The Borg aren't characters, in other words; they're monsters. And the thing about monsters is, at the end of the day, you either escape them, or you kill them. There's no in-between.

I would argue that the Federation had escaped the monster too many times for it to be believable that it would just keep escaping it -- and too many times for the monster to be scary or interesting anymore. The monster had to die. For you, stories about the monster still had a thrill to them. It's completely subjective.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, there is the third option, which is the one Destiny actually took: the monster is redeemed/healed and isn't a monster anymore.

 

[flandry84]

I had completely missed the fact that there were two types of drone involved,both updated and not.That fact itself begs a few questions but...whatever.
As for the point of the Borg attacking from a distance and never beaming in to cause their particular brand of mayhem..well I was thinking in purely dramatic terms.After all if it's realistic depictions of warfare and strategic thinking you want then Treklit is not where you will find it.

 

[Sci]

^Well, there is the third option, which is the one Destiny actually took: the monster is redeemed/healed and isn't a monster anymore.

Well, that depends on who you're defining as the "monster." I wasn't defining the drones as the monster, I was defining the artificial intelligence that was controlling the drones. That one was killed by the Caeliar.

I had completely missed the fact that there were two types of drone involved,both updated and not.That fact itself begs a few questions but...whatever.

Not really. It's fairly simple: There was a cube in the Alpha Quadrant that was cut off from the rest of the Collective when Voyager collapsed their transwarp network, leaving that cubes' drones as the only ones they were connected to (with that cube's Queen controlling the drones in the absence of the rest of the Collective). The cubes' drones did what the Borg are supposed to do to new situations: They adapted. When the Enterprise defeated them, seemingly leaving the cube empty, the cube's artificial intelligence continued adapting, eventually evolving a nanoprobe technology rendering the cube capable of absorbing and rearranging matter at a molecular level, allowing it to replace its Queen and drones by assimilating new people, whereupon it launched an attack on Earth before, once again, being defeated. When the last surviving drones were destroyed by the Enterprise before they could connect back to the main Collective, there was nothing left of that branch of the Borg or their adaptations.

As for the point of the Borg attacking from a distance and never beaming in to cause their particular brand of mayhem..well I was thinking in purely dramatic terms.After all if it's realistic depictions of warfare and strategic thinking you want then Treklit is not where you will find it.

Well, that's fair, but it's not consistent with the Collective's stated goal throughout Destiny. They made it pretty clear that their goal was extermination, pure and simple. So beaming drones in wouldn't even fit within the creative conceits of the trilogy.

 

[Angstromdweller]

but then the Titan's computer would've been screaming out Omega Directive warnings.

I'm just the critic; it's the author's job to make it make sense. I think David Mack should have fitted the Omega thing in earlier than he did.

Sci:

In God's of Night the Caeliar gave the Columbia's crew a tour of the Great Work and said that their machinery used more power than humanity had ever harnessed. Not mentioning Omega as such, but still talking about an Infinite Source of Energy.

There is the part in Mere Mortals where Keru and Torvig are exploring the guts of Axion and detect the power source. I can't remember how much they found out, though.

 

[sonak]

wrapping up the Borg storyline with such finality(within main continuity) was a disappointment for me. Borg stories are some of the best Trek books.

I think that reaction is completely subjective. You either like the Borg or you don't; you either want them to be used, or you don't.

Ultimately, that stems from the fact that the Borg are unlike any other STAR TREK antagonists. They aren't a culture, with different factions who have different perspectives; they aren't really characters, with full personalities and motivations; they can't be reasoned with or relied upon or trusted; there's no possibility of peaceful coexistence; and they are far, far too much more powerful than the Federation for our heroes to ever realistically be able to beat them.

The Borg aren't characters, in other words; they're monsters. And the thing about monsters is, at the end of the day, you either escape them, or you kill them. There's no in-between.

I would argue that the Federation had escaped the monster too many times for it to be believable that it would just keep escaping it -- and too many times for the monster to be scary or interesting anymore. The monster had to die. For you, stories about the monster still had a thrill to them. It's completely subjective.

er, I said that it was a disappointment "for me." Why did you have to belabor the point that it was my subjective opinion when I never indicated it was otherwise?


Oh, and I also thought the "Borg origin"(what was this the fourth or fifth Borg origin we'd gotten in Trek literature?) was pretty cheesy.