Spoilers DTI: Forgotten History by C. L. Bennett Review Thread

[RPJOB]

I think you should read Forgotten History, the novel explains why time travel seemed to focus on the Enterprise and her command crew and not as common as one would expect with the experiences they learned.

Besides, since you are a fan of Christopher's other works, if you buy this novel, it will help grow his royalty check so he can continue to write novels that we love.

Mike

I read Watching the Clock. I'm not saying that it's bad by any means but I didn't enjoy it as much as Christopher's other works. Just personal taste.

The idea that there's something special about the TOS crew just doesn't sit right with me. In my mind, they're fairly typical of Starfleet crews with a few exceptions (V'Ger, whale probe). I imagine that most of the other capital ships of Starfleet (Constitution, Miranda, Excelsior, not Oberth) have had pretty similar situations with god-like races, energy beings, crazy computers, runaway killing machines, etc. We just don't see them, we're focused on the Enterprise. Just because we don't see it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Again, you are making assumptions that aren't valid. If you read Forgotten History, you would realize that Christopher isn't making the claim that there is anything particularly "special" about the TOS crew. However, there is a very specific reason why they were involved in so many time-travel incidents. It has nothing to do with any inherent "special-ness" of the crew. If that were merely the case, it wouldn't sit well with me either. Thankfully, the answer provided by Christopher is much more substantial and interesting than that.

When I'm talking about the crew I'm including the ship. It's not like they plucked them off the Enterprise and put them on another ship or put a different crew aboard the Big E. For whatever reason, having something special about a particular ship and crew just feels wrong to me. But then, I'm not a fan of the whole "absolute best crew in the fleet bar none. Everyone else pales in comparison." thing about Kirk & company doesn't work for me. Even in cases where other Constitution class ships have been destroyed (Defiant, Intrepid, Constellation) the Enterprise crew knew that something had happened to them. They had more information going in than the first ships did. That made the difference.

 

[Mike Winters]

When I'm talking about the crew I'm including the ship. It's not like they plucked them off the Enterprise and put them on another ship or put a different crew aboard the Big E. For whatever reason, having something special about a particular ship and crew just feels wrong to me. But then, I'm not a fan of the whole "absolute best crew in the fleet bar none. Everyone else pales in comparison." thing about Kirk & company doesn't work for me. Even in cases where other Constitution class ships have been destroyed (Defiant, Intrepid, Constellation) the Enterprise crew knew that something had happened to them. They had more information going in than the first ships did. That made the difference.

If you read the novel, you will learn that a particular event in the ships history (that occurred on TV) fundamentally changed the components of the ship and how they interacted with Space & Time. The conditions of the event were such that they they could not be easily duplicated despite many such attempts.

The novel also explains how Kirk, Spock & Scotty later (long after the TV TOS time frame) obtained the knowledge which allowed them to duplicate the conditions in other cases, and why they chose to conceal this knowledge for as long as possible. They understood better than anyone, the danger of tampering with the timeline, so they concealed this knowledge.

As time wore on, each of the major powers had their own version of the DTI as WTC showed. By the time the ability to have other ships perform these maneuvers was learned, there were organizations in place to oversee/control/regulate/prevent them in order to safeguard the timeline.

Mike

Mike

 

[ToddCam]

Christopher: Very good points!

 

[Christopher]

RPJOB, again, you really have no business judging a book you haven't read, so I don't know why you're even participating in this conversation. But I will say that I'm no more fond than you are of treating one crew as "above" all the others. That certainly wasn't my intention here. On the contrary, my intention was to provide a more palatable, reasonable explanation for why Kirk and the Enterprise seemed to have an exceptional degree of experience with time travel, why they were responsible for so many temporal firsts within such a short amount of time, and why they employed time travel so often even though it made sense that its use would be uncommon. As you say, what made the difference was that their experiences gave them extra information. Read the book and you'll see what I mean.

 

[Therin of Andor]

having something special about a particular ship and crew just feels wrong to me.

You mean like giving them their own live-action TV series, an animated continuation, a string of movies, hundreds of tie-in novels, plus short stories, comics and action figures?

 

[Stoek]

It was a passing reference so I didn't research the issue in depth.

Didn't... Research... But... But...

Now I don't believe in nothin'. Nothin'! NOTHIN'!

 

[JWD75]

I enjoyed the book quite a bit. It does a great job of fitting the TOS time travel stories into a coherent framework. I'm seriously considering doing a kitbash of either Timeship 1 or 2.

 

[Christopher]

I'm seriously considering doing a kitbash of either Timeship 1 or 2.

That would be cool. I was hoping someone would take a stab at one or both.

 

[JamesHunter]

Hi so this is my first post... Glad to be here and looking forwards to making a contribution...

Just wanted to say thank you to Mr Bennett for yet another great book, outstanding as usual.

I have to say I agree that bringing TAS in was alot of fun (at least the bits that make sense, the animated series being a little...inconsistant...at times after all).

Also enjoyed the stuff relating to Miri, which I always figured was so bad no one would touch it with a ten foot barge pole, but turned out very well.

Any chance of a Myriad universe story set in that universe, from what we saw a Trek without humanity sounds very interesting?

Keep up the good work and looking forward to Only Superhuman.

(Hey theres smiles! ...)

 

[Kertrats47]

If you read the novel, you will learn that a particular event in the ships history (that occurred on TV) fundamentally changed the components of the ship and how they interacted with Space & Time. The conditions of the event were such that they they could not be easily duplicated despite many such attempts.

The novel also explains how Kirk, Spock & Scotty later (long after the TV TOS time frame) obtained the knowledge which allowed them to duplicate the conditions in other cases, and why they chose to conceal this knowledge for as long as possible. They understood better than anyone, the danger of tampering with the timeline, so they concealed this knowledge.

As time wore on, each of the major powers had their own version of the DTI as WTC showed. By the time the ability to have other ships perform these maneuvers was learned, there were organizations in place to oversee/control/regulate/prevent them in order to safeguard the timeline.

Mike

Mike

Yes, exactly. It's nothing inherently "special" about how awesome and brave and wonderful or whatever the crew or the ship is. If the USS Yorktown or the USS Rutherford or the USS Surak had gone through the same thing, it would have been that ship and crew that were the focus of the experiments.

 

[Mage]

Oh man, I'm getting behind in my reading!! I only just ordered this one, should arrive in about a week and a half. Good thing I re-read Watching The Clock last week though, should make getting back into the DTI easier.

 

[MatthiasRussell]

I'm seriously considering doing a kitbash of either Timeship 1 or 2.

That would be cool. I was hoping someone would take a stab at one or both.

This would be fairly easy to do. Round 2 puts out a set that has the original Connie, the A, and the B (1/2500 scale) in a single box for around $20. It would be easy to kitbash a small model.

I'm making all the Enterprises in 1/2500 right now. I might just try this with some spare parts if I get the time.

 

[Christopher]

These days, I gather that "kitbash" can be used for digital models as well as physical, so I wasn't making assumptions about what medium would be used.

 

[Reanok]

I really enjoyed reading this novel and the story included ties to the

Spoiler: Forgotten history

I really liked the Vulcan arc episodes were an alternate universe.And we got to see that the Vulcans were more dangerous and ruthless like the romulans. I liked T'Pring and Spock working together in your book and the differences with the Vulcan culture were explored more in depth for this book.

Enterprise episodes from season 4 in your book.I like this DTI novel better than the first novel. Because it was about Captain Kirk and his crew and the mysteries that were unraveled in this book were interesting.

 

[RonG]

Finished the novel yesterday - a great companion piece to both Ex Machina and Watching the Clock

now on to The Rings of Time...

 

[Gotham Central]

I liked the book, but admittedly not as much as Watching the Clock.

What I liked about the first book was seeing the DTI's reaction to all of the temporal craziness that we usually saw in the 24th century.

What I also missed was the fun interactions between the DTI and their uptime compatriots plus the Aegis and their counterparts in alien governments. It just showed how mind boggling and complicated their lives must really be.

Speaking of which...one wonders why the TIC or the other uptime agencies thought of what was happening at the various confluence points? Do they have relations with the Vedala?

The other question that I had for Christopher is

Spoiler: Klingons

What happened to the Klingons in the alternate timeline that the Vulcans could not share with Spock? Have you planned something that might turn up in another book?

 

[Christopher]

Speaking of which...one wonders why the TIC or the other uptime agencies thought of what was happening at the various confluence points? Do they have relations with the Vedala?

I think the uptime agencies only get involved if the "local talent" on the scene is unable to cope with a situation themselves -- which is why we don't see them more often in time-travel stories.

The other question that I had for Christopher is

Spoiler: Klingons

What happened to the Klingons in the alternate timeline that the Vulcans could not share with Spock? Have you planned something that might turn up in another book?

No, that was a reference to the Praxis explosion from The Undiscovered Country.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Just had another thought: Did the DTI ever have a talk with Worf after that to-do with K'mtar? I'm sure the DTI would like to know who it was who enabled future-Alexander to travel back in time and become K'mtar (we don't know that either, do we?) and may even have tried to talk to young Alexander himself to get some information on this.

(Side note: The novels aren't moving in the direction of the future that K'mtar spoke of, are they? Is Worf destined to be killed on the floor of the High Council?)

 

[Christopher]

Just had another thought: Did the DTI ever have a talk with Worf after that to-do with K'mtar? I'm sure the DTI would like to know who it was who enabled future-Alexander to travel back in time and become K'mtar (we don't know that either, do we?) and may even have tried to talk to young Alexander himself to get some information on this.

Why would they ask young Alexander about something that wouldn't happen for 40 years? That doesn't make sense.

Future Alexander only says he got a time machine from a man in the Cambra system. Since he came from roughly the same time as the future seen in "Endgame," I mentioned in Watching the Clock that Korath, the Klingon from whom Adm. Janeway obtained the chrono-deflector, came from the Cambra system, implying that he was the man Alexander spoke of. But there's no way that Worf or anyone in the "present" could've known that, so there wasn't much information the DTI could gain.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Korath, eh? That makes sense.