DS9 Novels?

[SuperXPS]

While I enjoyed "Zero Sum Game", I though that "Rough Beasts of Empire" was one of the worst trek books I'd read in a while.

RBE left me quite depressed.
I had been upset at the mirror universe/prophets-on steroids turn of the series, these were two plot elements I really disliked in the main DS9 (My favorite show).

I really like the GENERAL direction of the books lately.

1. I like that they finally explored what would happen if the Borg tried a full invasion, not just one cube at a time, something I always wodnered, and the Destiny series was fantastic.

2. The voyager books are going very well, especially when you consider books set during the shows run were quite thin in number and dull (with some exceptions).

3. The Trek universe was becoming depressing and too dark (I liked DS9 showing the more grey aspects on the edge of the federation but I didn't like the dystopia it was nearly becoming for a while thats not what trek was meant to be, its optimistic vision of the future was at the core of why I liked it, and I liked how we saw those optimistic characters coped with the Borg and Dominion wars)....BUT....they managed to have the Typhon-Pact and Kitohmar Accords cold war while at the same time getting the Titan back to exploration, so we have both sides of the coin, win win.

4. I don't get STO, I don't know where it came from or what the story it with it...I've read its "future" on memory beta and I was screaming no no no no no...ANOTHER fight with the Klingons really? after we've seen how good they are as allies and had several fights with them before...please dont' go down that road in books.


So I was put off my the random meandering into prophets/mirror universe and I actually could not get through Soul Key it just became too confusing and off the edge.
So I liked the other Typhon books, I was lookin forward to seeing Sisko again and knowing he'd be dealing with this new cold war, that this prophets / mirror universe craps finally over....then as I read I sank....

A. Depressing as hell story line concerning his penance from the prophets (the prophets...AGAIN...I'm so sick of them...so so so sick of them)

B. He's dead as a character, his souls gone, its a mix of the season 1 Sisko (even in looks) and the guy who was really depressed at the start of the Benny Russel episode.

C. He does not take charge of DS9.
I thought, since he could have any assignment he wanted, he would do that and we'd get to see the cold war from DS9s viewpoint, I felt a bit cheated in the Destiny books not seeing the borg war from ds9s perspective, but I can forgive that because they already had to show it from Enterprise, Titan, Aventine, Voyager, various starbases, Martok, President Baccos perspective and that was already a tall order (well executed...and I LOVE President Bacco one of the best Novel characters ever created).
So since we never saw the borg war from their perspective I thought we'd get the cold war from their perspective...instead we get Sisko moping on a galaxy class ship feeling sorry for himself to the point where his XO has to come tell him he's single handidly destroying crew morale...this is not the badass character I fell in love with during the show.

We saw the Dominion war from the Enterprise-E perspective, so is it unfair to ask for the Borg war/Cold war from the DS9 perspective? Seems an obvious place for a story.

Could have put him back in DS9, even promote him make him a commodore or even rear admiral if they feel the need to advance him.
Bring O'Brian back, maybe have Vaughn recover and be his Xo, or have Ro his XO as they toyed with on the TV show, it annoyed me that they got rid of Nog...one of the things that bugged me about the Enterprise E books for a while was the constant revolving door of characters espechally security cheifs, now they've done this to DS9 to the point where it may not recover.

Nog Vaughn Ro they had finally undone the damage the writers did in S7 splitting the crew up, now were back to square one.



I'd love to see it as a small book, ebook, full novel or even as part of an anthology: DS9s perspective on the Borg War and/or Typhon Pact cold war.

The newest books haven't been kind to many established characters:

We have Picard's embarassing performance in 'Destiny';
.

I was ok with that, human race and federation was on the verge of extinction after all.

Ezri's captain of the Aventine. They've got that going for them...though they don't seem to use her that much, character-wise--she's mostly just there.

I like the Aventine ship, and Dax and Bowers and they could have new characters developed there or bring in other characters like making Nog cheif engineer or something, and get a New Frontier style series out of that.
Start with a few small books as PD did, test the waters, I think it would take off.

I'd been (very) slowly working my way through the early relaunch books, but hearing about the recent developments on the station doesn't really make me want to carry on, especially if all the characters are gone. Any series that can casually skip over five years of plot and throw out all its characters the way DS9 has apparently done doesn't really seem worth bothering with...

Everything up to Unity at least is excellent.



I would also like to know more about how Odo and the few others left handle the Dominion now that they are in charge, thats something that can be explored in a sub plot of another book, a tie in, or part of an anthology.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I suppose I belong to the group that believes Sisko's actions aren't out of character, and actually quite understandable for people who have delt with depressions themselves. And I'm not talking about 'I feel down and should take some pills' depression, I'm talking about the real deal. In his life, Sisko has a history of running away from things. He ran when Jennifer died, he ran when Jadzia died, he was about to run away again when the prophets warned him about marrieng Kassidy. Now that things in life where going downhill again, he (like people who suffer from depression often do) started to blame himself and started running again.

Am I saying he's doing the right thing? No. But is it in character for a man with a history of depression. Oh yeah, very much so.

This.

 

[JD]

^Yeah. I think that does of a better job of saying what I was trying to say in my post.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

The newest books haven't been kind to many established characters:

We have Picard's embarassing performance in 'Destiny';
Bashir killing in cold blood in 'Zero Sum Game';
Sisko being a spineless, absentee husband and father;
Spock allowing himself to be used as a pawn by a praetor and by the tzencheti, all in order to progress a movement which he admits is likely to result in vulcan seceeding from the federation.

I don't know, I thought all of that stuff made perfect sense in context. I'll admit, I was a little unsure about the Bashir one, but after reading some of the stuff in the threads about it after it came out, I realized that the whole point of that scene was that Bashir was not acting the way we usually see him act. The whole point to the book was to show this change.
As for the Sisko one, I really feel that once again in context it made perfect sense. Sure it might have seemed odd if you don't take into account all of the things that had happened since we saw him, but once you look at all of the crap that he went through between The Soul Key and RBoE, and his state of mind at the beginning of RBoE it makes perfect sense. By the time he leaves, he is completely convinced that his being near his family will put them in danger. And I thought it was made very clear in the story, that he did not actually want to leave his family, but felt that it was the only way to protect them.

Whether the characters' depiction was jutified or not is highly debatable - and, apparently, extensively debated on this forum.

What is not debatable is that the characters were, for lack of a better word, trolled. The emphasis on beating them down exceeded what should be acceptable.

For example, Bashir becoming a cold-blooded killer (by his own choice) - this is a true 'crossing the moral event horison* moment', not some minor mistake: a non-main character expressly shown doing this would be a villain forever after.
Or Picard, being so easily broken by the borg, while most other characters, while knowing the seriousness of the situation, kept their wits about them; if a minor character would succumb like this, he would be forever relegated to the 'worst captains' list;
Etc.

Of course, much like in long-running comics, such moments will be, in the future, ignored ~'Nothing to see here, folks; it never happened. Move on.'

*http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralEventHorizon

 

[F. King Daniel]

ANOTHER fight with the Klingons

STO took it's cue from the futures glimpsed in "All Good Things" and "Endgame" there.

 

[Christopher]

For example, Bashir becoming a cold-blooded killer (by his own choice) - this is a true 'crossing the moral event horison* moment', not some minor mistake: a non-main character expressly shown doing this would be a villain forever after.

Except it wasn't in cold blood. It was in a combat situation where, as Sarina explained earlier in the novel, leaving anyone alive to reveal his presence would've compromised the mission and not only led to their own deaths but endangered millions of Federation lives. How many hundreds of TV shows and movies have we seen where heroic soldiers or commandoes kill hapless enemy guards who are just doing their duty? Does that make them villains? Most viewers would say it just makes them soldiers using a necessary, if regrettable, amount of force.

So yes, Bashir crossed a moral line, from being a healer to being a soldier. But "a villain forever after?" I don't see that. There are lots of cinematic heroes who kill minor functionaries on the enemy side with a lot more abandon than Bashir did.

Or Picard, being so easily broken by the borg, while most other characters, while knowing the seriousness of the situation, kept their wits about them; if a minor character would succumb like this, he would be forever relegated to the 'worst captains' list;

But Picard isn't a minor character. We've spent years witnessing his repeated ordeals with the Borg, and thus we should know what an absurd falsehood it is to say he was "easily" broken. It took the events of six nearly consecutive books to break him down, and that was after years of living with the aftermath of his horrific ordeal at the Borg's hands. We've followed his journey every step of the way and thus, if we've been paying attention at all, we should understand exactly why he was broken and why that doesn't make him a bad captain.

And come on, it's not like we haven't seen before that Picard has his breaking point. We've known since "Family" that the Borg broke him despite all his resistance. And as he told Deanna at the end of "Chain of Command," Madred broke him, and he was just on the verge of saying there were five lights when rescue came. But that doesn't make him a bad captain. It makes him a great captain who is human and has believable limits.

 

[DS9Continuing]

C. He does not take charge of DS9.
I thought, since he could have any assignment he wanted, he would do that and we'd get to see the cold war from DS9s viewpoint,

...

Could have put him back in DS9, even promote him make him a commodore or even rear admiral if they feel the need to advance him.

Except that that doesn't make any sense. He was specifically trying to get away from Bajor. Even if he did get offered the command of DS9, he'd never take it in a million years because it's right bang on top of the place he's trying to get away from. He's hardly saving Kasidy and Rebecca from his dangerous company if they're basically a quick trip down the road, is he? He took the Robinson to get as far away from Bajor as possible, and was specifically unhappy with that one ensign who tried to act like he was the Emissary.

What I see in both the Kira and Sisko storylines is that Starfleet service and service to the Prophets are completely and forever mutually exclusive. In order to fully embrace the Prophets, Sisko had to abandon Starfleet. And once the Prophets are gone from his life, he returns to Starfleet. Likewise, Kira got her commission as a Starfleet captain, and barely two years later she quit it and went to join the church, and it seems that part of her decision to do so was because of whatever went down with the Ascendants, in a very Prophets-heavy situation.

People have tried to make the two work together, and it just won't work. (Perhaps the exception to that would be Jaza, although he too let a prophet vision lead him to leave the Titan.)

.

 

[JD]

Yeah, but even Jaza didn't stay in Starfleet. He ended up staying in the past at the end of Sword of Damocles.

 

[Mage]

^Yeah. I think that does of a better job of saying what I was trying to say in my post.

Thanks.

I've dealt (still am really) with depression. You never really get over it. You learn to deal with it, learn to give it a part in your daily life and try to work out what brougt this depression on you in the first place. And then, even then, it can sometimes be to much. This is where Benjamin is in his life. I don't think everyone really got that from the beginning of DS9, all the way through the series. But this is man dealing with depression. He is NOT the perfect human we believe to excist in the 24th century when we meet him, he's broken. And although he started a process (yes, a process. He wasn't instant-fixed by the Prophets) towards healing, he was never fully 'healed'. People suffering from depression have setbacks all the time. Sometimes for a day or two, sometimes for a lot longer, usually triggered by something related to their past.

For Sisko, the warnings from the Prophets that he would know no peace on Bajor with Kassidy were brought back in to his life when things started going downhill after The Soul Key (events we haven't witnessed yet as readers). That, together with a liability towards depression, let to his decission that his loved ones would be better of without him.

And yes, please believe me when I say that in such a state of mind, you truly and honoustly believe that. Even after almost 4 years of being together, living together in our apartment for 2 years now and speaking of marriage and children one day, I still believe that my girlfriend is better of without me, because that's what I believed about everyone around me when I was suffering from my depression. I completely understand where Sisko was coming from. Do I agree with it? No. But understanding.... very much so.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Picard, being so easily broken by the borg

Or a decade or so of "not easy at all".

 

[Rush Limborg]

^Yeah. I think that does of a better job of saying what I was trying to say in my post.

Thanks.

I've dealt (still am really) with depression. You never really get over it. You learn to deal with it, learn to give it a part in your daily life and try to work out what brougt this depression on you in the first place. And then, even then, it can sometimes be to much. This is where Benjamin is in his life. I don't think everyone really got that from the beginning of DS9, all the way through the series. But this is man dealing with depression. He is NOT the perfect human we believe to excist in the 24th century when we meet him, he's broken. And although he started a process (yes, a process. He wasn't instant-fixed by the Prophets) towards healing, he was never fully 'healed'. People suffering from depression have setbacks all the time. Sometimes for a day or two, sometimes for a lot longer, usually triggered by something related to their past.

For Sisko, the warnings from the Prophets that he would know no peace on Bajor with Kassidy were brought back in to his life when things started going downhill after The Soul Key (events we haven't witnessed yet as readers). That, together with a liability towards depression, let to his decission that his loved ones would be better of without him.

And yes, please believe me when I say that in such a state of mind, you truly and honoustly believe that. Even after almost 4 years of being together, living together in our apartment for 2 years now and speaking of marriage and children one day, I still believe that my girlfriend is better of without me, because that's what I believed about everyone around me when I was suffering from my depression. I completely understand where Sisko was coming from. Do I agree with it? No. But understanding.... very much so.

I wish someone would put in an upcoming book a scene between Sisko and Ezri, after all that.

After all, they've been friends since Curzon--Curzon took Ben under his wing, way back when.

And considering how, in "Afterimage", Ben jolted Ezri out of a "depression" of her own...I'd say it's time she return the favor. Help him out.

 

[DrBashir]

For example, Bashir becoming a cold-blooded killer (by his own choice) - this is a true 'crossing the moral event horison* moment', not some minor mistake: a non-main character expressly shown doing this would be a villain forever after.

Except it wasn't in cold blood. It was in a combat situation where, as Sarina explained earlier in the novel, leaving anyone alive to reveal his presence would've compromised the mission and not only led to their own deaths but endangered millions of Federation lives. How many hundreds of TV shows and movies have we seen where heroic soldiers or commandoes kill hapless enemy guards who are just doing their duty? Does that make them villains? Most viewers would say it just makes them soldiers using a necessary, if regrettable, amount of force.

So yes, Bashir crossed a moral line, from being a healer to being a soldier. But "a villain forever after?" I don't see that. There are lots of cinematic heroes who kill minor functionaries on the enemy side with a lot more abandon than Bashir did.

I could understand when Bashir was fighting the solders. I was very concerned when he killed a roomful of unarmed civilian technicians. I knew that the character was irredeemable when he shot an unconcious guard in the head "just to be sure". In this day and age, we call that a war crime. The civilians it could be argued were working on a military project. When you kill someone who is unconcoius you've crossed a line.

Spoiler: Bashir's future

I think, from this point on, Bashir will feel right at home in Section 31.

 

[JD]

^Which was the whole point of the story. The whole point was supposed to be that Sarina was working on corrupting for S31.

 

[DrBashir]

Which he didn't know at any point in the story. Everything he did, he did of his own free will. Nobody held a gun on him or held his loved ones hostage. Sarina was incidental to his downfall. He's in love with her but she didn't force him into doing anything he wasn't ready to do already.

Perhaps his genetic enhancements are taking hold, making him more like Khan. Sure of his own physical and moral superiority.

 

[JD]

No, but as we saw in the end of the story she was subtly manipulating him for 31 so that he would be more susceptible to looking at and doing things there way.

 

[Cybersnark]

I can't help but wonder how Garak would feel about Julian's current direction in life. I think the two of them need to sit down and compare notes (and perhaps have a good, cathartic shouting match) as much as Ezri and Benjamin do. . .

 

[JD]

Now that would be interesting.
I'm not saying Julian isn't headed down a darker path than we've seen him go before, I just don't think he's an irredeemable villain. Sure he did something bad, but he wasn't in the greatest situation, and he was being played by 31, and those things need to be taken into account before he is written off.

 

[DrBashir]

If all it takes to turn Bashir to S31 is to have sex with him then he's even weaker than he's been made out to be. This is the guy who was working to help the Jem'Hadar in Hippocratic Oath because he believed that his oath as a doctor was stronger than the one he took as a Starfleet officer. That situation is now reversed with Bashir racking up the biggest body count he can, just to cover his tracks. He doesn't seem like the same person. If Sarina can do this with just her feminine wiles then he's weaker than I thought.

 

[JD]

He was also in a dangerous situation, and people do tend to do extreme things when they are in a life or death situation. When you're undercover like him and Sarina were you're pretty much under the threat of death the entire time, and when you're in a situation like that you pretty much have to react to events very fast, and don't have time to sit and consider every action you take. Then on top of that, things becoming even more complicated when you're partnered with someone who has a secret agenda.

 

[DrBashir]

Sarina was nowhere near him when he was in the spacedock at the end. What he did, he did entirely of his own free will. We show our true nature when nobody is watching.