Star Trek Voyager: The Eternal Tide by Kirsten Beyer

[Sci]

Oh, I dunno... I think that makes it sound a lot more personal than it really is.

Of course it does. That's Edit's schtick -- he turns everything into the most highly-charged personal fight he possibly can.

Something you've never done, is it.

Dimesdan, all I can say is that this is the second thread in as many days in which you've interjected yourself solely to insult me.

I think Edit frames impersonal disagreements as personal fights, and I think he deserves to be called on it. I think I have strong opinions but try not to make them personal -- you'll notice, for instance, that I didn't say people who want to "Bring Back Janeway" were "wrong," but that I disagree with them because of my concerns over verisimilitude, but also made it a point to concede several valid concerns they have and that I don't think bringing back Janeway won't still be a good story.

 

[DimesDan]

Of course it does. That's Edit's schtick -- he turns everything into the most highly-charged personal fight he possibly can.

Something you've never done, is it.

Dimesdan, all I can say is that this is the second thread in as many days in which you've interjected yourself solely to insult me.

I think Edit frames impersonal disagreements as personal fights, and I think he deserves to be called on it. I think I have strong opinions but try not to make them personal -- you'll notice, for instance, that I didn't say people who want to "Bring Back Janeway" were "wrong," but that I disagree with them because of my concerns over verisimilitude, but also made it a point to concede several valid concerns they have and that I don't think bringing back Janeway won't still be a good story.

Semantics. You readily get on your soap box and make arguments personal, you use often long winded posts to make your point and try and come across as superior to others who object completely or just, you know, disagree with your world view a tiny bit. I often do agree with what you're saying, but the times you've (and others) have dragged sometimes fun threads down by your overzealous, earnest uber-liberalism which from a purely non-American POV isn't really liberalism and it explains why some liberals are painted so badly in the American media.

And sometimes, I think you need to be called out on it.

As for the other thread you mentioned, that was in a thread created by myself, was meant to be a bit of a fun thread and is in a section of the board which if memory serves shouldn't be discussed in the wider forum. If you wish to discuss this more, either discuss it there or PM me and not drag this thread down even further than it already has been.

 

[Steve Roby]

Sci. Dimesdan. I'll keep reading the guy who doesn't make driveby smears.

Back on topic. I'll put this in spoiler tags and request that no one involved in Trek books reads it.

Spoiler: What I'd like to see...

Here's something I'd be perfectly happy to see: Janeway returns, says hi to everyone, grabs Chakotay, zips back to the Alpha Quadrant for a life of leisure and retirement after wishing Afsarah Eden the best of luck with her mission, and disappears from the Voyager storyline.

 

[LightningStorm]

Sci and Dimesdan, the two of you should take that to PM. It's a bit of thread derailment, and utterly irrelevant to this thread and what everyone else is talking about.

 

[Violet.Phoenix]

Spoiler: What I'd like to see...

Here's something I'd be perfectly happy to see: Janeway returns, says hi to everyone, grabs Chakotay, zips back to the Alpha Quadrant for a life of leisure and retirement after wishing Afsarah Eden the best of luck with her mission, and disappears from the Voyager storyline.

I'd like to see at least some of that. Although,

Spoiler: What I'd like to see

I think it would be really neat to have Janeway and whatever existence that she is in the new novel (if she does return) tied into the current mission of the Voyager fleet.

But if she does return, she and Chakotay will need to have a serious talk, especially considering how her death nearly tore him apart.

 

[JD]

Now you see what I meant in my previous post - beyond semantic hair-splitting -, Sci?

What's hair-splitting? Saying that someone shouldn't do something is rather different from saying someone couldn't do something: justification for an action is different from capacity for an action.

wouldn't, shouldn't - I didn't use these verbs.

"Nobody likes to be proven wrong - and, apparently, the 'don't bring back Janeway' crowd WILL BE proven wrong."

The 'don't bring back Janeway' posters think Janeway shouldn't be brought back.
Pocket books and Kristen Beyer - the creators of the current trek continuity everybody argues about in this subforum AKA the authority on the matter (if there is one) - obviously think Janeway should be brought back (since they are bringing her back). Implicitly, they think the 'don't bring back Janeway' fans are wrong.


Why are the 'don't bring back Janeway' posters so highly annoyed - as is obvious from this thread? Because they are aware (even if only in the backs of their minds) of this implicit refusal of their position by the 'authority' of current trek lit.
Which was my essential point in that post - a point Sci chose to overlook in favor of said irrelevant semantic hair-splitting.

Except we still don't know for a fact that Janeway is coming back. Yes, it's being hinted at that she might return, but until the book actually comes our or someone makes an official statement, it's just a theory. They seemed to hint that Beverly Crusher might die in Death in Winter, and we all know how that turned out...

 

[Christopher]

I don't think there's any such thing as a "don't bring back Janeway" crowd per se. The issue is not specifically or uniquely about Kathryn Janeway, but about resurrection stories as a class. The argument is that resurrection stories in general tend to cheapen the concept of death and to be copouts and exercises in wish-fulfillment. Now, of course there are exceptions to that rule; any kind of story can potentially be done well. And if Janeway did return and it turned out to be a worthwhile story, that single instance wouldn't prove the argument about resurrection stories in general to be "wrong." Particularly since one of the main complaints about resurrection stories is simply that there are too many of them.

 

[Fer]

I don't think there's any such thing as a "don't bring back Janeway" crowd per se. The issue is not specifically or uniquely about Kathryn Janeway, but about resurrection stories as a class. The argument is that resurrection stories in general tend to cheapen the concept of death and to be copouts and exercises in wish-fulfillment. Now, of course there are exceptions to that rule; any kind of story can potentially be done well. And if Janeway did return and it turned out to be a worthwhile story, that single instance wouldn't prove the argument about resurrection stories in general to be "wrong." Particularly since one of the main complaints about resurrection stories is simply that there are too many of them.

As someone who has spoken up against the possibility of Janeway being brought back, I totally agree with this. I have no problems with Janeway as a character, and if she is brought back I'll be happy to see the Janeway/Chakotay relationship explored in future books.

I can't speak for everyone, but those of us who feel resurrections are overused generally feel this way about any character. Heck, I remember this exact same debate going on in the Best of Trek books that came out between TWOK and TSFS.

(Well, maybe not the exact same debate. I'm pretty sure nobody said anything about doing anything rude to Spock's skull. But I guess that's the benefits of having editors.)

 

[Therin of Andor]

(Well, maybe not the exact same debate. I'm pretty sure nobody said anything about doing anything rude to Spock's skull. But I guess that's the benefits of having editors.)

Ah, but Leonard Nimoy supposedly did get a death threat for agreeing to film Spock's death scene in ST II.

 

[rfmcdpei]

I don't think there's any such thing as a "don't bring back Janeway" crowd per se. The issue is not specifically or uniquely about Kathryn Janeway, but about resurrection stories as a class. The argument is that resurrection stories in general tend to cheapen the concept of death and to be copouts and exercises in wish-fulfillment. Now, of course there are exceptions to that rule; any kind of story can potentially be done well. And if Janeway did return and it turned out to be a worthwhile story, that single instance wouldn't prove the argument about resurrection stories in general to be "wrong." Particularly since one of the main complaints about resurrection stories is simply that there are too many of them.

^ This.

It all depends on the skill of the writer. Before Beyer's books came out, I was skeptical about the idea of sending Voyager back into the Delta Quadrant. Simply rehashing the television series did not appeal to me. Beyer, though, took the idea and did something different with it, embedding Voyager in a fleet with a specific mission from the Federation, giving the ship and the fleet a mixture of characters old and new, and did something fresh with it.

I've every confidence that, if Beyer did decide to bring Janeway back, she could do so in a dramatically satisfying way, one that wouldn't cheapen the character development of the past novels. What way this would be, I leave to the author. I look forward to finding out.

 

[RPJOB]

While I love what Kristen's done with VOY I'd much rather that Janeway stay dead. She's much more interesting as a tragic, lost figure from the crews past that the character as she was portrayed on the show. At this point I'm going to wait and check out some spoilers to see if she's back. If she is, I'll reluctantly give it a pass.

How many characters have already died and come back? Scotty & McCoy in TOS. Spock in TWOK. Kirk in Generations. And that's just from the shortest series. It's too much like the comic books but it works in comics. Trek should feel more grounded.

I'd hate to get to the point where even the characters don't believe death is final. When they killed the Martian Manhunter, Superman said "Let's hope for a resurrection soon." Is that how we want Trek characters to react to the death of a friend?

 

[ToddCam]

How many characters have already died and come back? Scotty & McCoy in TOS.

When? I don't think you can say that their appearances in the TNG era count as resurrections, as no one ever said a word about whether they were dead prior to this.

 

[Christopher]

^No, he's referring to McCoy's revival from death by the amusement-park planet's machinery in "Shore Leave" and Scotty's revival from death by Nomad in "The Changeling."

 

[ToddCam]

Huh. That's a pretty crazy way to think in terms of "bringing back" a character, if you are counting when it happens in the same episode they die in.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think it's crazy, since it's a variation on the same habit of genre-fiction authors to use temporary death as a plot device. I recall reading essays decades ago complaining about episodes like that which killed off characters and brought them back by the end of the episode as a cheap and superficial way of generating a sense of danger or emotional impact. I'm pretty sure it was one of the tropes David Gerrold complained about in The World of Star Trek way back in 1973. So there's nothing new or recent about this issue. The main difference is that storytelling now tends to be more serialized so these arcs get spread out over multiple works, while in the '60s everything was more episodic and got resolved within a single hour.

 

[MatthiasRussell]

In "By Any Other Name" the entire crew was reduced to rice cakes containing all the data needed to reconstruct them. That was pretty dead.

 

[Therin of Andor]

In "By Any Other Name" the entire crew was reduced to rice cakes containing all the data needed to reconstruct them. That was pretty dead.

This Andorian bath bomb at "Lush" always gives me a chuckle:

http://therinofandor.blogspot.com.au/2008/12/now-showing-at-lush.html


Andorian bath bomb by Therin of Andor, on Flickr

 

[RPJOB]

Huh. That's a pretty crazy way to think in terms of "bringing back" a character, if you are counting when it happens in the same episode they die in.

There's a difference between doing a story where a character is only assumed to be dead and one in which they are claimed to be and we have no reason to doubt it. I would argue that the death of Worf in Ethics is a valid way for a character to "die" and be resurrected because it is due to a natural effect of alien physiology. McCoy getting run through by a lance isn't. Do that to a human and they're dead. Same with Scotty being killed by Nomad. McCoy pronounced him dead and didn't seem surprised by it. The idea that Nomad could repair a dead human with a beam of light is just silly. Aliens can survice situations that could kill a human. The reverse may also be true but you would have to remember that in future appearances of that species.

In "By Any Other Name" the process was done by alien technology and was show to be reversible as long as the "rice cake" is undamaged. Again, valid.

 

[Christopher]

The idea that Nomad could repair a dead human with a beam of light is just silly.

But how do you define "dead?" Even today, it's possible to revive a clinically dead patient without permanent brain damage if they're treated promptly, within a matter of 3-5 minutes at normal body temperature, up to twice that if the body temperature is reduced by several degrees. Both McCoy in "Shore Leave" and Scott in "The Changeling" were clinically dead for only minutes before their revival, so it's not that implausible even by today's standards. The main obstacle to recovery from clinical death is the rapid accumulation of ischemic injury in the brain; otherwise, most parts of the body can survive hours without blood circulation. If advanced medical science had a way to minimize or reverse that damage to the brain, it could certainly be possible to revive people who had been clinically dead for a longer period of time.

As for using a beam of light to perform a medical procedure, we do that today with lasers, and there is research underway into other potential techniques employing light to activate or regulate chemical processes inside neurons or other cells. Or it could be that the "light beams" used by Trekverse medical devices (like those seen in the 24th-century shows) are some kind of array of micro-tractor beams doing fine manipulation of cells.

In "By Any Other Name" the process was done by alien technology and was show to be reversible as long as the "rice cake" is undamaged. Again, valid.

And that was more a form of stasis than a form of death, as with Scotty's transporter trick in "Relics." Both of those were intrinsically reversible in a way that literal, biological death is not. That is, the data defining the living, intact person was stored or transformed by a mechanism that retained that full information and was able to restore the person exactly as they were beforehand. Whereas in death, the body undergoes irreversible changes due to cellular decay, cumulative ischemic damage to the brain, etc. -- not to mention whatever gross traumas may be sustained if death is due to violence, toxins, radiation, etc.

 

[MatthiasRussell]

At least in Scotty's transporter scenario he was in an operating electro-mechanical system. In the case of the "rice cakes" (what were they called, BTW), there was no mechanical process going on, everything about that person was simply recorded in an inert data package.

In the case of the transporter, I can understand where the "spark of life" is being kept "alive" in the operating computer. In the "rice cakes" all activity had ceased. I could be wrong this understanding of Kelvin technology; evertime I watch that episode I do get side-tracked oggling Kelinda.