Destiny trilogy - speculations

[fleetcaptain]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

I have to wonder who starts writing all of that info over on Amazon. I think whoever does it, wants all of this attention made about the book. I had no idea this was what the storyline was going to be in Destiny but we do have to wait and see for awhile longer.

I just don't understand about the Columbia part through. From the SOTL calendar, wasn't the Columbia discovered before the Dominion War started? I would think that whoever discovered her, would have taken everything back into the Alpha Quadrant. Who knows yet through.

 

[JoeZhang]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

I have to wonder who starts writing all of that info over on Amazon. I think whoever does it, wants all of this attention made about the book.

Well isn't that generally the purpose of marketing material??

 

[LightningStorm]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

Stories are all about depth and meaning, not just "OMG! Borg! Run for your lives!" It bothers me that so many people write off the Borg because they're not "scary." Any bad-guy in any series needs to be well fleshed out and have something more than single-minded-destroy-everything with no depth or purpose mentality. I really wonder if sometimes the "they're not scary anymore" comment so many give is truly the reason, or if it's really that the direction they were taken in wasn't to their liking. Or do people really want an enemy that is never ever given back story, reason, or ever covered, just this one dimensional entity that swoops through and destroys everything every once in a while. The latter, to me, is absolutely HORRIBLE and I'd never want that.

It also bugs me that people think that just because a couple of people wrote the Borg poorly that the Borg simply can't be written well ever.

So, to me, even if Destiny is "all Borg all the time" the fact that I've yet to see how David Mack handles them leaves me without opinion on the subject until I actually see it. I only go in with the thought that so far he hasn't written a book I've disliked (not even a little bit) so this one almost can't be bad because of that.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

- More Borg? VOY ruined them. The TNG Relaunch thusfar hasn't reversed the damage. I think the Borg just need to lay dormant for a long, long time. Until there's a good enough reason to bring them back and make them truly scary. "Resistance" and "Before Dishonor" just didn't do it.

What, you think that if Dave tackled the Borg, they wouldn't be truly scary?

As for them needing to lay dormant, I have the same response to that as to the argument that filmed/televised Star Trek needs to remain dormant for a long time and the new movie is a bad idea. I think that, no matter how long or short the interval between stories, all it takes is one story done right to undo the perceived "damage."

At least, I hope so, since my next novel involves the Borg. I'd hope that people will approach my take on them with an open mind and judge it based on the work itself, instead of on their reactions to what came before it. And I hope they won't write off the aspects of my book that don't involve the Borg just because the Borg are one factor in the story. And Destiny, regardless of what it's about, deserves the same.

- Long-dead legendary Captain? Please don't let it be Kirk or Janeway.

I'm sorry, Dave, but I have to spoil it to halt these rumors... it's Captain America. Turns out Steve Rogers fell into the ice again and spent 373 years frozen this time around.

 

[nickyboy]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

looks like the DS9-R is going to get an "after the fall" treatment like new frontier, where the story line will jump forward a few years and the the fill in the backstory to events as the story in the new time progresses

 

[Turbo]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

[...]I think that, no matter how long or short the interval between stories, all it takes is one story done right to undo the perceived "damage."

At least, I hope so, since my next novel involves the Borg. I'd hope that people will approach my take on them with an open mind and judge it based on the work itself, instead of on their reactions to what came before it. And I hope they won't write off the aspects of my book that don't involve the Borg just because the Borg are one factor in the story. And Destiny, regardless of what it's about, deserves the same.

More Borg? My initial reaction is "Agh." But considering how much I liked Ex Machina and The Buried Age, I'm going to give it a more-than-fair shot.

Personally, my main beef with the Borg in "Unimatrix Zero", "Endgame", Resistance, and Before Dishonor have to do with the story concepts and the execution rather than the Borg themselves. UZ made the Borg look foolish, and the books were just poor concepts (especially Resistance). I think a lot of people are simply burned out on the Borg right now. But as you said, all it takes is one good story to reverse the "damage".

Long-dead legendary Captain? Please don't let it be Kirk or Janeway.

I'm sorry, Dave, but I have to spoil it to halt these rumors... it's Captain America. Turns out Steve Rogers fell into the ice again and spent 373 years frozen this time around.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

looks like the DS9-R is going to get an "after the fall" treatment like new frontier, where the story line will jump forward a few years and the the fill in the backstory to events as the story in the new time progresses

No, it won't. Any more than Admiral Akaar's appearance in Taking Wing and The Red King required pushing the DS9R forward, or Tuvok's appearance in same required pushing the VGR Relaunch forward. Just because we get a glimpse ahead in one character's future, that doesn't mean the whole series is forced to skip over what happens to the other characters in the interim.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

For the sake of argument I'll take the Amazon blurb at face value - though not without a grain of salt.

I really don't think the Borg returning once again is necessarily a good or bad thing. It's not what a story is about, it's how it is about it. Destiny is in good hands (and so is Greater Than the Sum), nuff said.

What fascinates me more is that finding the NX-02 makes this a continuation of the Enterprise relaunch as much as it is TNG, DS9, Titan and maybe/probably Voyager. Wow.

If the long-dead captain turns out to be Kirk, wouldn't Destiny be the end of all relaunch climaxes? Again, wow.

And if it is indeed Kirk, I truly hope that the story will jibe with the brilliant Crucible trilogy (even though it stands apart from the "Main TrekLit-verse"):
a) because I really, really love DRG's three 40th anniversary novels,
b) because I loathe the Shatnerverse (I've got nothing against the Reeves-Stevenses, but those stories are what I like to call Shat-wank),
c) because we do not need a third Kirk resurrection scenario.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

Wh can't it be Archer?

 

[Art Vandelay]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

^ Because we don't even know when and how he died in the first place?

 

[Christopher]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

You know, it's worth mentioning that "long thought dead" isn't necessarily the same thing as actually having died. I'm just saying.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

Granted, of course it could be Archer. He's just not the first who comes to mind I guess.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

It's Captain Duncan McLeod of the starship Highlander.

 

[ATimson]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

What, you think that if Dave tackled the Borg, they wouldn't be truly scary?

Not if he were to remain consistent with... well, anything Borg since "Best of Both Worlds".

 

[JoeZhang]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

- More Borg? VOY ruined them. The TNG Relaunch thusfar hasn't reversed the damage. I think the Borg just need to lay dormant for a long, long time. Until there's a good enough reason to bring them back and make them truly scary. "Resistance" and "Before Dishonor" just didn't do it.

What, you think that if Dave tackled the Borg, they wouldn't be truly scary?

As for them needing to lay dormant, I have the same response to that as to the argument that filmed/televised Star Trek needs to remain dormant for a long time and the new movie is a bad idea. I think that, no matter how long or short the interval between stories, all it takes is one story done right to undo the perceived "damage."

Is it really so awful for the readers to say - "hey it's a big universe and I'd like some of the books featured the characters I enjoy reading about facing something else, a different foe".

Yes it could be a great but the simple truth is - I just don't want to read about the borg anymore - not for a while. If it was just your book (after the previous two being borg stories as well) then maybe but then onto another book? and maybe another two after that?

The borg will be in the last five TNG books in a row, I like cheesecake but I don't want to eat it every day.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

Is it really so awful for the readers to say - "hey it's a big universe and I'd like some of the books featured the characters I enjoy reading about facing something else, a different foe".

No, certainly not. But my point is, if they're going to go ahead and do it anyway, that doesn't mean it won't be good.

Yes it could be a great but the simple truth is - I just don't want to read about the borg anymore - not for a while. If it was just your book (after the previous two being borg stories as well) then maybe but then onto another book? and maybe another two after that?

I'll put it this way: there are Borg stories and there are Borg stories. A Borg story doesn't have to be a story about fighting off an attacking Borg cube the way Resistance and Before Dishonor were. Greater Than the Sum definitely isn't a story like that. It's mostly a story about the crew of the Enterprise and their experiences and discoveries while searching for a Borg ship. And insofar as it involves the Borg, it explores different aspects of them than previous books in the series have done.

And even so, it doesn't exhaust the different possible ways that the concept of the Borg could be developed, the range of distinct narratives that could be built around the idea of them. As Dave said, if Destiny were "just another Borg story," he wouldn't have done it -- and I don't think the editors would've wanted to see something that merely repeated what had been done before.

The borg will be in the last five TNG books in a row, I like cheesecake but I don't want to eat it every day.

Well, you're free to wait a while until you get around to reading these books, if that's what you want. But I think you'd be missing out if you skipped over them altogether.

 

[Sci]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

I think the reaction against the Borg stems from a rather long-standing creative process with regards to the Borg that people don't like.

When the Borg first appeared, they were scary. They were scary because they were not characters, they were not people, they were things. They were a force of nature, they were monsters that wanted to eat you and that was all they wanted. Not literally eat you, obviously, but the psychological concept is the same -- a threat with whom one cannot empathize and which seeks solely to do something that will harm you. And a monster who just wants to eat you is scary because it's not something that we can truly understand. As Stephen King once said, it's that which we do not know or do not understand that is truly frightening. The shadow in your closet is far scarier when you think it might be a 15-foot tall lizard monster than a 15-foot tall lizard monster actually is.

Then they assimilated Picard into Locutus. In a way, that was okay, although they were no longer just out for our technology, because they were still monsters who wanted to eat us. Only now, their method of eating us was almost literal -- they wanted to take us, harm us, rob us of ourselves, make us their slaves.

Then came Hugh, and we learned that a Borg separated from the Collective could become an individual. Then came the Borg Queen, and suddenly the Borg were no longer monsters who wanted to eat you -- now they had a personality in the form of the Queen. Now they were characters, not just monsters, and so they now had a psychology. That meant we could now categorize them, analyze them. Understand them. On top of that, VOY was giving us technobabble explaining how the Collective and its assimilation technology functioned, and showing us Borg ships that were incapacitated or that could be harmed -- showing situations where the Borg were no longer decidedly more powerful than Our Heroes in all situations. Suddenly, they were the 15-foot tall lizard monster instead of the shadow in the closet.

And I think that when it comes to the Borg, people don't want the 15-foot tall lizard monster; they want the shadow in the closet, the creak in the night. They want the mindless force of nature, the monster that wants to eat you -- not the sociopathic megalomaniac with bad skin that the Borg became in the form of the Queen.

 

[LightningStorm]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

And I think that's the problem. People are watching the wrong type of show for that. Star Trek is character-based sci-fi, not mindless-scare-you-silly horror. I'll buy that people may not like the way the Borg have been characterized. I don't understand people that don't like the very fact that the Borg were characterized at all. Because as I said characterization is exactly what Star Trek has always been about with everything only with a sci-fi twist.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

And I think that when it comes to the Borg, people don't want the 15-foot tall lizard monster; they want the shadow in the closet, the creak in the night. They want the mindless force of nature, the monster that wants to eat you -- not the sociopathic megalomaniac with bad skin that the Borg became in the form of the Queen.

Personally, I think a mindless force of nature can be a great adversary for one story, maybe even two, but not on a continuing basis. What the Borg originally were, they can never quite become again, because as you say, it's the unknown that's truly frightening, and you can't unlearn knowledge.

So the key is not to go backward and try to recapture the essence of "Q Who" or "The Best of Both Worlds." The key is to find something new to say about them, or about the consequences of their existence.

 

[Warp Coil]

Re: Destiny trilogy - pretty heavy spoilers

I think the reaction against the Borg stems from a rather long-standing creative process with regards to the Borg that people don't like.

When the Borg first appeared, they were scary. They were scary because they were not characters, they were not people, they were things. They were a force of nature, they were monsters that wanted to eat you and that was all they wanted. Not literally eat you, obviously, but the psychological concept is the same -- a threat with whom one cannot empathize and which seeks solely to do something that will harm you. And a monster who just wants to eat you is scary because it's not something that we can truly understand. As Stephen King once said, it's that which we do not know or do not understand that is truly frightening. The shadow in your closet is far scarier when you think it might be a 15-foot tall lizard monster than a 15-foot tall lizard monster actually is.

Then they assimilated Picard into Locutus. In a way, that was okay, although they were no longer just out for our technology, because they were still monsters who wanted to eat us. Only now, their method of eating us was almost literal -- they wanted to take us, harm us, rob us of ourselves, make us their slaves.

Then came Hugh, and we learned that a Borg separated from the Collective could become an individual. Then came the Borg Queen, and suddenly the Borg were no longer monsters who wanted to eat you -- now they had a personality in the form of the Queen. Now they were characters, not just monsters, and so they now had a psychology. That meant we could now categorize them, analyze them. Understand them. On top of that, VOY was giving us technobabble explaining how the Collective and its assimilation technology functioned, and showing us Borg ships that were incapacitated or that could be harmed -- showing situations where the Borg were no longer decidedly more powerful than Our Heroes in all situations. Suddenly, they were the 15-foot tall lizard monster instead of the shadow in the closet.

And I think that when it comes to the Borg, people don't want the 15-foot tall lizard monster; they want the shadow in the closet, the creak in the night. They want the mindless force of nature, the monster that wants to eat you -- not the sociopathic megalomaniac with bad skin that the Borg became in the form of the Queen.

Wow - that was a very amusing post, and also a fairly accurate one IMO

My feeling is that the Borg have also become a gimmick within the franchise, or a "ratings stunt" type of thing - and one that has been overused. The Borg started off as a rarely-utilized "scary" villain on TNG. But the Borg became popular so TPTB started to use them more frequently (see VOY). The Borg became weak, sloppy and much less scary. Then TNG jump-started its literary relaunch with some really weak Borg stories ("Resistance" and "Before Dishonor"). All you have to do is take a peek in the "Before Dishonor" threads to see all the negative reaction.

Could "Greater Than the Sum" and "Destiny" utilize the Borg in a way that's creative and interesting again? Sure. And I'm keeping an open mind. I'm definitely curious to see where these novels go. But you can't blame some of us for feeling a little bummed about the Borg right now.