Before Dishonour....seriously?!

[LightningStorm]

But she did that intentionally.

Yes, I know. In "Before Dishonor" she also walks in "intentionally".

He means that she died intentionally, not that she merely decided to go there intentionally. Endgame Janeway went to the cube fully intending to be assimilated and to die there. Before Dishonor Janeway went to the cube with the intention of seeing for herself what was up and walking away from it alive and well. The first was a sacrifice the second was an accident.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I'm just waiting for Christie Golden to get the green light to bring Janeway back...

 

[DonIago]

I think you'd have better luck with Kirsten Beyer.

 

[elaithin]

Given that Christie Golden seems to no longer have any intention of writing Star Trek, I'd say so.

 

[Shane Houston]

Not to be mean but thankGod for that.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I'll ask Christie the next chance I get if she's tired of writing Star Trek or if Pocket just isn't coming through with the goodies.

 

[Thrawn]

I'll ask Christie the next chance I get if she's tired of writing Star Trek or if Pocket just isn't coming through with the goodies.

I mean, ok, but if Pocket isn't coming through with the goodies, I hope that's because everyone at Pocket realized she was a shitty Star Trek writer that brought nothing to the table and stopped hiring her on purpose.

 

[Defcon]

Well, they still work together on Blizzard related novels (I think her latest one is only a few month old (April?), so I doubt there's a fundamental problem between Golden and S&S/PB/GB.

 

[flemm]

This novel might have been fun if it had been fan fiction. But I put it down wondering why I had paid money for it.

Tie-in fiction at its worst as far as I'm concerned. Eye-roll inducing fanwank, dumb jokes, obvious distaste for certain established characters, inconsistent characterization across the board, lots of sensationalist "developments" that amount to nothing in the end. Bleh.

 

[DonIago]

...It almost sounds like a book written by Peter David...

 

[Therin of Andor]

I hope that's because everyone at Pocket realized she was a shitty Star Trek writer that brought nothing to the table and stopped hiring her on purpose.

Well, she got the gig as VOY Relaunch author because her regular VOY novels had consistently outsold everyone else's. So Golden's ST writing did work for many fans.

 

[Thrawn]

She was fine for standalones within the series. She just wasn't good at breaking new ground. Everything was too easy, resolved too happily.

 

[Captain Robert April]

In other words, she picked up where the series left off and kept it going.

Sounds like she was doing her job.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I feel like Golden starts off strong and then it starts to go down hill.. first couple VOY relaunches were punchy with good characterizations. Next couple, very hard to wade through, story ideas and writing quite disjointed. Same thing with her Warcraft books, wrote one that made me cry but by the time she got to the Lich King it seemed a very hollow read, quite weak. All opinion of course, and I'll still be buying her next Warcraft book which is coming out soon.

 

[F. King Daniel]

She was fine for standalones within the series. She just wasn't good at breaking new ground. Everything was too easy, resolved too happily.

I would not call a poor girl, abused her entire life and then killed, "resolved happily"

That's probably the darkest chapter in all of Star Trek.

 

[Thrawn]

^ No, I just mean... like, Janeway is promoted to admiral in 3 seconds, not even a trial. And Chakotay magically gets command, despite many reasons he shouldn't. And Tuvok's disease is instantly cured. And Chakotay and Seven split after a 2-page conversation. And Kim gets back together with Libby and everything is perfect. And Janeway meets her ex husband's new wife and they get along famously and everything is great.

Like, she took all of the possibilities for actual character *arcs* and ignored them completely and systematically. I still contend that Homecoming is the single most egregious missed opportunity in the entirety of TrekLit.

 

[DonIago]

Given some of her other works (she wrote a couple of Ravenloft books that I consider amongst the best) I find that rather surprising. She never struck me as the "wrap it with a pretty little bow" type.

Then again, no idea what constraints she may have been operating under.

I actually interviewed her by email for a college project a few years back, though I was rather in awe of her as a writer at that point and probably didn't handle it as well as I should have.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I still contend that Homecoming is the single most egregious missed opportunity in the entirety of TrekLit.

The best version of "Homecoming" is the bonus teaser section in the back of the novelization of "Endgame".

 

[James Cole]

I still contend that Homecoming is the single most egregious missed opportunity in the entirety of TrekLit.

The best version of "Homecoming" is the bonus teaser section in the back of the novelization of "Endgame".

Thank you! I remember wondering when I was reading Homecoming why that book was so bad, but the teaser epilogue in the novelization was so good.

I wonder what role John Ordover had in developing the VGR relaunch plot. It has a lot of similarities to the beginning of the A Time to series... Starfleet bureaucracy verses an innocent crew, the Dominion War aftermath constantly being on everyones' minds long after it was over (unlike the DS9 relaunch that moved on with that rather quickly).

I've only read Homecoming/Furthest Shore and Before Dishonor (have all the rest of the VGR-R to read when I get there) so can't comment on the rest, but BD was better than Homecoming/Furthest Shore, but that isn't saying much. I am a PAD fan more or less (along as he doesn't make easily avoidable continuity errors that all the other authors manage to pull off), but he could have handled Janeway's demise in a far better way. I had no issue with killing her off, provided it was done the right way. Instead it came across as a big F-you to VGR fans, who are already used to taking s**t as it is. Let's say in Before Dishonor instead of having Janeway be assimilated, it was Admiral Uhura of Starfleet Intelligence checking out the vacant cube. How would the TOS fans have reacted?

 

[DonIago]

...Why would Uhura be checking out a Borg cube?

If it had been 7-of-9 it might have had a feeling of grim inevitability.

If it had been Picard I would have been shocked...but not necessarily more shocked than that they did it with Janeway.