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Space battles in Trek novels

It doesn't really matter to me, because I don't gain any particular pleasure from reading battle scenes. What I care about is 1) who wins and 2) who dies/is injured/incapacitated during a battle. I tend to find myself skimming through the fight scenes to get to the aftermath, which I find far more compelling. So, my ideal battle scenes are short, with lots of after-action stuff.
 
It doesn't really matter to me, because I don't gain any particular pleasure from reading battle scenes. What I care about is 1) who wins and 2) who dies/is injured/incapacitated during a battle. I tend to find myself skimming through the fight scenes to get to the aftermath, which I find far more compelling. So, my ideal battle scenes are short, with lots of after-action stuff.

That's a good point. I find myself doing the same thing at times.
 
I know it shouldn't matter, but if an author gets the color of phasers wrong, it takes me out of moment (even on TNG when they fired phasers out of the photon torpedo launcher, they got the color right). I feel the same way about any post Star Trek III book that says Scotty's rank is Commander. Getting somebody's rank correct shouldn't be that hard...
 
It depends on the battle, but generally needs the right balance of both, especially since, if the inertial dampeners are working right, a purely bridge-viewpoint would just depict people sitting working at their workstations. You need some element of the exterior view to show (rather than have unnecessary dialogue to tell) is what brilliant maneuvering work said desk-jockey has actually pulled off...
 
I know it shouldn't matter, but if an author gets the color of phasers wrong, it takes me out of moment (even on TNG when they fired phasers out of the photon torpedo launcher, they got the color right). I feel the same way about any post Star Trek III book that says Scotty's rank is Commander. Getting somebody's rank correct shouldn't be that hard...

Why shouldn't Scotty have that rank? He was only promoted to Captain when he was on the Excelsior.
 
Why shouldn't Scotty have that rank? He was only promoted to Captain when he was on the Excelsior.
And kept the captain's rank throughout the rest of the movies, according to his insignia. He wasn't demoted.


This is why he shouldn't be refered to as Commander Scott:
tuchd0477a.jpg


He's wearing a captain's rank pin...
 
It depends on the battle, but generally needs the right balance of both, especially since, if the inertial dampeners are working right, a purely bridge-viewpoint would just depict people sitting working at their workstations. You need some element of the exterior view to show (rather than have unnecessary dialogue to tell) is what brilliant maneuvering work said desk-jockey has actually pulled off...

When I did amateur audio drama in my college days, Star Trek space battle scenes were the worst. "Shields at 47%," says one character. "Come around from behind," says another. Then there's a photon torpedo sound effect. Ooh, exciting. I had to work hard to make them kind of exciting (lots of music from "The Way of the Warrior" basically) and I don't know that I ever fully succeeded.
 
I feel the same way about any post Star Trek III book that says Scotty's rank is Commander. Getting somebody's rank correct shouldn't be that hard...

Even Scotty gets in wrong, canonically, in the ST III auto-destruct sequence. A promotion to captain rank on the Excelsior should have been acknowledged by a Starfleet computer on Enterprise.
 
^But that was a computer on a ship slated for decommissioning, so I doubt they bothered to update its self-destruct system to be aware of Scotty's promotion.
 
^ And Scotty's rank is unimportant for purposes of the sequence. The important thing is that it actually is Scotty - confirmed by voiceprint analysis and his destruct code. The computer doesn't care what rank he says he is.
 
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