Spoilers DSC: The Way to the Stars by Una McCormack Review Thread

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

JUST finished. Eyes teared up by the end very easily. I like that even though it wrapped up cleanly with her in Starfleet, it wasn't an 'everything is great! Mom and I are besties now!' kind of thing. I grade shows and books on the scale of how much I just enjoy it, and this was outstanding. Outstanding. And I love that the characterization that Una gives is perfectly in sync with how Tilly acts on the show, especially in last night's episode of DSC! How Tilly just goes ahead and does things and people unable to stay mad at her because she's goddamn TILLY.

Una has yet to disappoint and continues to raise her own bar with characterization. And I have a sneaking suspicion she might love Tilly just as much as unapologetic Tilly-fans like myself.

 

[Reanok]

Literary treks is going to interview Una McCormack about her Discovery novel. I can't wait to listen to this interview when they post it sometime soon.

 

[Stevil2001]

What's Una's next book?

She's writing a Tor.com novella: https://www.themarysue.com/exclusive-cover-una-mccormack-the-undefeated/

She's been a roll recently. Tor.com novella, Discovery novel, Thirteenth Doctor novel, first Big Finish main range release by a woman in a decade, she's really killing it.

 

[Relayer1]

Not read much Treklit recently but Una's a favourite.

Just bought the Tillybook !

 

[BuckBokaiLondonKings]

Finished it today. Really enjoyed it! The interactions with Tilly and Siobhan were so well written. I really felt for Tilly :/

 

[GaryH]

What's Una's next book?

Here you go - https://www.themarysue.com/exclusive-cover-una-mccormack-the-undefeated/

 

[Reanok]

Trekcore has posted an inter with Una McCormack discussing her Discovery novel and other novels she's written. Anew DoctorWho novel and the one from Tor books.

 

[Tuskin38]

Trekcore has posted an inter with Una McCormack discussing her Discovery novel and other novels she's written. Anew DoctorWho novel and the one from Tor books.

Link

http://trekcore.com/blog/2019/01/interview-una-mccormack-star-trek-discovery-a-way-to-the-stars/

 

[Kertrats47]

Literary treks is going to interview Una McCormack about her Discovery novel. I can't wait to listen to this interview when they post it sometime soon.

We did the interview this past Saturday. It was a lot of fun, Una is always great! The episode is scheduled to come out next Sunday, February 3rd. I'll post a link here as soon as it's available!

 

[Reanok]

Ketrats thanks for the update for the Una McCormack interview. I look forward to listening to it. Literary treks is one of my favorite pocast shows on the Trek.fm network.

 

[Daddy Todd]

“Outstanding” for me. I mean, there were a couple things that irritated me, but I’m sure I wasn’t meant to like Siobhan. Well done!

 

[Kertrats47]

The new episode of Literary Treks is out! Literary Treks 257: Lots of Bits of Me, featuring the interview with Una McCormack all about Discovery: The Way to the Stars. It was a fun interview (Una is always great!) and I hope you enjoy it!

 

[Reanok]

I listened to your interview with Una McCormack I thought it was interesting that Una talked about Tilly being shy and awkward an her difficult relationship with her Mom Siobahn.And that she had the short treks script for Runaway and developing her families backstory. I liked how she talked about writing the whole novel. Thanks for posting the link for Literary treks.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Also, The Making of Star Trek from 1968 said that the Enterprise's unseen recreation center had a facility that would use "a sophisticated extension of holography" to project immersive 3D movies around the viewer, or to let crew members watch recorded messages from home as if their loved ones were standing in the room with them. So there were always meant to be holographic facilities on the Enterprise, as far back as the original series; for whatever reason, they just never got around to showing it. (It would've been easy enough to fake it with live actors and sets and jump cuts/dissolves, so I don't know why they never actually showed it. Maybe they thought it would confuse the viewers or require too much explanation.)

Never made it to air. But Harry Kim's line in "Flashback" did, as did Riker's amazement at walking into the holodeck in "Farpoint", which comes across incredibly stupid if it's 120 year old technology everyone grew up with.

Discovery is now lampshading it's overuse of holography, calling Pike the only one who still uses a viewscreen.

Yes, the DSC holograms are translucent and intangible. That's a far cry from simulations that are effectively solid and indistinguishable from reality.

Not when they're in mirror mode or in the Klingon ship simulation, indicating the rest is all a filter to indicate to everyone (as it is the viewer IRL) that this hologram isn't really there.

 

[Kertrats47]

It looks to me like the "transmission" holograms all look indistinct and "fuzzy," while the "simulation" holograms (battle sim, mirror) are crisp, while we still haven't seen any indication that either are solid/"touchable."

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Riker was also very impressed with the blinking lights that directed him to the holodeck when he was trying to locate Data, despite that being commonplace tech NOW, just unusual in 1987. And in that first conversation with Data, Data says that he graduated in the “class of 78,” when it was later established that he was only built and activated around the 2330s or so. And over on Voyager, multiple characters are said to have used the Flotter holoprogram back in their childhood.

Like pointed out repeatedly, some of these things just HAVE to be disregarded, because they were contradicted on screen. Like how Emperor’s New Cloak hinges a plot point on the Alliance not having cloaking tech when Through the Looking Glass had several ships actively dropping their cloaks.

Canon is mutable, based pretty much on the whims of the writing staff and what they need for any given story at a specific time.

 

[Greg Cox]

Canon is mutable, based pretty much on the whims of the writing staff and what they need for any given story at a specific time.

Yep, and that bit in "Farpoint" with Riker being gobsmacked by the holodeck can just be dismissed as early episode weirdness, like "James R. Kirk" or "Vulcanian" or "lithium crystals" or whatever. Trek was made up as they went along and sometimes the Powers That Be changed their minds. It happens.

 

[Christopher]

I see Riker's astonishment at the ship's systems in "Farpoint" as equivalent in a weird way to Pike's discomfort at women on the bridge (or Kirk's similar unease about Yeoman Rand in her first filmed episode). Both were meant to position the character as an audience surrogate long enough to call the audience's attention to something new and show them a character that shared their expected reaction (either "I'm uncomfortable with this" or "Wow, what a cool new trick"), so they could be given a moment to assimilate it alongside the character. And then once it was established, there was no longer any reason to call attention to it, so nobody else in the show ever has that same reaction.

There are other series-writing tropes that work in a similar way. One common annoyance of mine is the tendency to have everyone in a series' world treat something as a big dark secret until the episode where the audience finds out, and then everybody is completely open about it, even characters who have no reason to know anything's changed. One recent example: in Arrow, the mystery character who appeared as the "New Green Arrow" was wearing a full-face mask in the first part of the season, but as soon as it was revealed to the audience that she was female, she inexplicably switched to a domino mask, even though there was zero change in any in-show characters' knowledge of her identity at that point.

(Although I think Riker was supposed to be impressed by the intelligence and responsiveness of the D's computer, rather than just its display systems. The computer was meant to be more intelligent than it ended up being portrayed later on.)

 

[Damian]

Yep, and that bit in "Farpoint" with Riker being gobsmacked by the holodeck can just be dismissed as early episode weirdness, like "James R. Kirk" or "Vulcanian" or "lithium crystals" or whatever. Trek was made up as they went along and sometimes the Powers That Be changed their minds. It happens.

Yeah, those are all the little inconsistencies that don't bother me too much. I know on another Discovery thread I was harping about continuity issues, but it was more because of the sheer number of things I'm having a hard time reconciling right now. But things like those examples, not a big deal. I'll admit the 'holodeck' seen in the first season of Discovery bothered me a little bit. Thinking of the 'rec room' in the animated series helped a bit there, and it's not clear how interactive the holodeck is on Discovery (i.e. would they be able to set up an interactive hologram simulation like one of Data's Sherlock Holmes programs?).

And perhaps Riker's fascination with the holodeck had something to do with it's detail. It was noted it was advanced so maybe he was just surprised at how advanced it was. One of the little things that's easily explained away. I know one of the novels, I think "My Brothers Keeper" possibly, that gave an explanation for the "R" in James Kirk's grave stone.

(Although I think Riker was supposed to be impressed by the intelligence and responsiveness of the D's computer, rather than just its display systems. The computer was meant to be more intelligent than it ended up being portrayed later on.)

Yeah, that was my thought as well. The Enterprise-D has all the newest gadgets. It's probably like someone using a Smart-TV for the first time. You're aware of them probably, but you're still probably amazed when you start playing around with it a bit and realize just how advanced it really is.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, those are all the little inconsistencies that don't bother me too much. I know on another Discovery thread I was harping about continuity issues, but it was more because of the sheer number of things I'm having a hard time reconciling right now. But things like those examples, not a big deal. I'll admit the 'holodeck' seen in the first season of Discovery bothered me a little bit. Thinking of the 'rec room' in the animated series helped a bit there, and it's not clear how interactive the holodeck is on Discovery (i.e. would they be able to set up an interactive hologram simulation like one of Data's Sherlock Holmes programs?).

It's unreasonable to expect a 23rd-century simulation technology to be less capable of interactivity than the computer games we have today; that's mistaking the sophistication of 1960s television's ability to approximate 23rd-century technology for its actual in-universe sophistication. The key difference in advancement is that 24th-century holodecks/suites can actually simulate solid matter to a degree effectively indistinguishable from the real thing. Granted, so could the rec room in "The Practical Joker," at least so far as solidity and temperature go (though it's hard to gauge just how realistic its detail was from the characters' POV, since we only see it in cartoon form). But the ones we're seeing in DSC in the 2250s can only project intangible, translucent images.