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Any Enterprise E novels set before First Contact?

One thing I liked about the pre-First Contact novellas was:

1. More screentime for Lt. Paul Porter, Lt. Eiger, Ensign Lynch, Lt. Daniels and Lt. Hawk.
2. Explaining the change for Geordi between the visor and implants.
3. How Picard reacted to the pre-Dominion War stuff occurring between 2371 and 2373, as well as Admiral Leyton's attempted coup.
4. Vice Admiral Hayes getting a backstory.
5. We get Miranda Kadohata before she was a lieutenant commander and nearly f**kin' her career in 2380-2381.
 
I remember a few episodes where Data would mention that a certain planet was only listed in the charts from automated probe, like the planet and system where Tasha Yar died. So it would make sense to send a ship out.

Well, sure, my whole point is that it stands to reason that anyplace a starship physically visits would have already been initially charted -- you don't even need to send a probe, you can do it with telescopes, like we're doing now with all the thousands of exoplanets we're discovering. What I'm saying is that the idea of sending a ship like the Enterprise to do the initial charting, as in "Cause and Effect" or "The Corbomite Maneuver," is an antiquated idea. It's presuming that space works like the Earth's surface, where anything far away is hidden from view so you have to sail there directly in order to see it. But that's not how space works, since it's mostly, well, empty space. Virtually everything in the universe is in direct line of sight, just really far away. If you have a powerful enough telescope, you can look directly at things that are thousands or millions or even billions of parsecs away.

So there's just no excuse for the idea of a starship entering a region of space that nothing is known about -- except in a case like Voyager, where it's flung to the other side of the galaxy, since the bulk of the galactic disk and central bulge in the way would limit what we can detect from the other side. On the whole, any region of space that's physically visited for the first time should have already been mapped telescopically long before. There should already be a pretty good understanding of what systems and planets are there, which ones are inhabited, which ones have civilization or advanced technology, and the like, just from telescopic and spectroscopic observation. The starship should be there to do more intensive surveys of systems or phenomena that have already been identified as worthy of interest.

A related problem is ST's frequent assumption that a starship in orbit can't see what's happening on the ground below, that "sensors" don't include simple telescopes and can be "jammed" even with a clear line of sight to the surface. For instance, in "The Mark of Gideon," how could the Enterprise not have known about the Gideonites' extreme overpopulation? The sheer crush of people should've been evident just by looking down at the planet, taking photos at high enough magnification. If present-day spy satellites can read license plates from orbit, then the idea that 23rd-century starships don't have anything as basic as a telescope pointed down at a planet is inane. And even if they all lived indoors or underground or something, the planet's infrared signature and the atmospheric and environmental effects of all that biomass and the technologies sustaining it should've been detectable. There were episodes of later series that had the same problem, although there were a very few that got it right -- I seem to recall an early TNG episode (I forget which one) that showed a sensor graphic tracking individuals inside the rooms of a building, and ENT: "Civilization" had the crew using direct visual imaging of the planet's natives from orbit in order to learn what they looked like and impersonate them.
 
One thing I liked about the pre-First Contact novellas was:

1. More screentime for Lt. Paul Porter, Lt. Eiger, Ensign Lynch, Lt. Daniels and Lt. Hawk.
2. Explaining the change for Geordi between the visor and implants.
3. How Picard reacted to the pre-Dominion War stuff occurring between 2371 and 2373, as well as Admiral Leyton's attempted coup.
4. Vice Admiral Hayes getting a backstory.
5. We get Miranda Kadohata before she was a lieutenant commander and nearly f**kin' her career in 2380-2381.

That is 5 things.
 
One thing I liked about the pre-First Contact novellas was:

1. More screentime for Lt. Paul Porter, Lt. Eiger, Ensign Lynch, Lt. Daniels and Lt. Hawk.
2. Explaining the change for Geordi between the visor and implants.
3. How Picard reacted to the pre-Dominion War stuff occurring between 2371 and 2373, as well as Admiral Leyton's attempted coup.
4. Vice Admiral Hayes getting a backstory.
5. We get Miranda Kadohata before she was a lieutenant commander and nearly f**kin' her career in 2380-2381.
Which pre-First Contact book was Kadohata in? I thought she wasn't introduced until long after Slings and Arrows.
 
Which pre-First Contact book was Kadohata in? I thought she wasn't introduced until long after Slings and Arrows.

Kadohata first appeared in the post-Nemesis novel Q&A in October 2007. Slings and Arrows was set pre-FC, but it came out right after Q&A, from October '07 to March '08. So it was able to retroactively establish Kadohata in the pre-FC timeframe.
 
^ Yeah, from what I remember, Q&A puts Kadohata aboard the various Enterprises going all the way back to "Encounter at Farpoint" (where she was in a relationship with the conn officer frozen by Q in the episode, I think it was?).
 
Memory Beta has a photo of a background actress who fits Kadohata’s description.
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Miranda_Kadohata

That's not a photo of an actual Trek performer, but a mockup:

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/File:M_Kadohata.jpeg
This image was created by Columbia clipper (the author), based on authors Keith R. A. DeCandido and Christopher L. Bennett having suggested of actress Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen as an appropriate actor for the character, in the TrekBBS message board thread Cast the Characters of Trek Literature. The image was created from screencaptures of Chaves-Jacobsen in Battlestar Galatica: Razor, Ezri Dax on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Data in Star Trek: Nemesis.
 
That is 5 things.

I'm aware. Lol.

I think having Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen as Miranda Kadohata is fitting. She spoke with her Australian accent in Razor and is part-Aussie herself (proud Aussies!).

Pity that she's no longer around in the books. Wonder what she's up to in 2385-2386.
 
Kadohata's accent was English, though.

Wasn't it described as Port-Shangrila and exotic sounding?

Regardless, every time I read Greater Than The Sum, Destiny and Losing the Peace, I read it with Chaves-Jacobsen's accent from Razor (of course, I read Choudhury with an Indian accent, Faur as British and T'Ryssa as teenage like).
 

Fair enough. Doesn't really change my headcanon much, my grandmother's accent was barely detectable in my head (and she was from South Shields in England) and some people think I speak with an English accent :).

Speaking of, why was Miranda written out and no one really replaced her as chief operations officer?

Ensign Jill Rosado seemed to be going in that direction who, despite her age, was very much a junior officer before the intro of Glinn Ravel Dygan (who I don't much like, not because he's Cardassian, but because he isn't a Starfleet officer on the Federation flagship and less than ten years prior the Cardassians hated the Federation).
 
Ensign Jill Rosado seemed to be going in that direction who, despite her age, was very much a junior officer before the intro of Glinn Ravel Dygan (who I don't much like, not because he's Cardassian, but because he isn't a Starfleet officer on the Federation flagship and less than ten years prior the Cardassians hated the Federation).

I can see where you are coming from with Dygan. Though personally, that's actually one of the reasons why I like him. I like the idea that the children of all the Cardassians that hated the Federation are now old enough to represent the Union, having come out of the huge conflict of the Dominion with an entire new outlook on their place within the local galaxy and rebelling against the old ways of thought that nearly led them to annihilation. Aside from being a bit bland on the personality side, I like what he represents, especially given the political tumult going on in America right now. Characters like him give me some optimism about the young people growing up and seeing hatred and injustice all over the news 24/7. He is a new take on Cardassians who may have a different set of priorities, but still have the same fierce devotion and loyalty to the Union. Also, the little details like giving him a short haircut to be an obvious physical contrast to the previous generation is a sweet touch; some hero worship to mirror the look of the humans that helped rescue and rebuild their society.
 
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Plus, it wasn't all Cardassians who hated the Federation; the majority sure, and there was plenty of government propaganda to push that on them, but no people are a bloc.
 
Kadohata first appeared in the post-Nemesis novel Q&A in October 2007. Slings and Arrows was set pre-FC, but it came out right after Q&A, from October '07 to March '08. So it was able to retroactively establish Kadohata in the pre-FC timeframe.
I knew she was introduced in Q&A as an old Enterprise D and E crew member, I just did not think we'd gotten any pre-First Contact books since then.
Ensign Jill Rosado seemed to be going in that direction who, despite her age, was very much a junior officer before the intro of Glinn Ravel Dygan (who I don't much like, not because he's Cardassian, but because he isn't a Starfleet officer on the Federation flagship and less than ten years prior the Cardassians hated the Federation).
I completely disagree, I love that he's Cardassian and that he's on the flagship, it shows just how far they and the other Khitomer Accords powers have come in the last few years. The fact that the Cardassians hated the Federation so recently is all the more reason to bring them into the alliance the way they have, just to show that the Federation has forgiven them for their past.
 
It's important to remember that hatred between governments doesn't automatically translate to hatred between peoples. I gather that during the Cold War, even when the Soviet government was openly hostile to the US and vice-versa, the ordinary people of Russia and the other Soviet states generally though positively of Americans and American culture. And it went the other way too; while there were certainly some Americans who had kneejerk hostility to all "Rooskies," there were others who were perfectly fine with Russian people regardless of the policies of their government. A number of American works of fiction were able to portray Russian individuals as heroes without garnering a backlash -- Illya Kuryakin on The Man from UNCLE, Chekov on Star Trek, Colossus and Magik in X-Men and New Mutants, etc.
 
Well, sure, my whole point is that it stands to reason that anyplace a starship physically visits would have already been initially charted -- you don't even need to send a probe, you can do it with telescopes, like we're doing now with all the thousands of exoplanets we're discovering. What I'm saying is that the idea of sending a ship like the Enterprise to do the initial charting, as in "Cause and Effect" or "The Corbomite Maneuver," is an antiquated idea. It's presuming that space works like the Earth's surface, where anything far away is hidden from view so you have to sail there directly in order to see it. But that's not how space works, since it's mostly, well, empty space. Virtually everything in the universe is in direct line of sight, just really far away. If you have a powerful enough telescope, you can look directly at things that are thousands or millions or even billions of parsecs away.

So there's just no excuse for the idea of a starship entering a region of space that nothing is known about -- except in a case like Voyager, where it's flung to the other side of the galaxy, since the bulk of the galactic disk and central bulge in the way would limit what we can detect from the other side. On the whole, any region of space that's physically visited for the first time should have already been mapped telescopically long before. There should already be a pretty good understanding of what systems and planets are there, which ones are inhabited, which ones have civilization or advanced technology, and the like, just from telescopic and spectroscopic observation. The starship should be there to do more intensive surveys of systems or phenomena that have already been identified as worthy of interest.

A related problem is ST's frequent assumption that a starship in orbit can't see what's happening on the ground below, that "sensors" don't include simple telescopes and can be "jammed" even with a clear line of sight to the surface. For instance, in "The Mark of Gideon," how could the Enterprise not have known about the Gideonites' extreme overpopulation? The sheer crush of people should've been evident just by looking down at the planet, taking photos at high enough magnification. If present-day spy satellites can read license plates from orbit, then the idea that 23rd-century starships don't have anything as basic as a telescope pointed down at a planet is inane. And even if they all lived indoors or underground or something, the planet's infrared signature and the atmospheric and environmental effects of all that biomass and the technologies sustaining it should've been detectable. There were episodes of later series that had the same problem, although there were a very few that got it right -- I seem to recall an early TNG episode (I forget which one) that showed a sensor graphic tracking individuals inside the rooms of a building, and ENT: "Civilization" had the crew using direct visual imaging of the planet's natives from orbit in order to learn what they looked like and impersonate them.
From orbit yeah a telescope would work. But even today with what the Hubble can see, it’s still like looking through a pair of binoculars backwards at something. So, sure they may be able to make out something’s, but we’re talking about looking stuff that’s at a far distance, and eventually, your furthest looking telescope won’t see past that, so sending a ship would make sense.

As an old teacher once said, ‘even though something is on a map, doesn’t mean it’s explored.’
 
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