Spoilers DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I suspect that they wanted to try to keep the status quo while SG-1 was on the air just for the verisimilitude.

But why did they need verisimilitude? I've never understood the desire of SFTV shows to pretend they're taking place in the real world behind the scenes. Of course they're not in the real world, so why the pretense? It's so much more interesting to actually show the ways in which the world is changed and affected. This was one thing The 4400 did well.

Part of the Stargate franchise's appeal came from its modern day, regular characters thrust into sci-fi scenarios and settings. Perhaps the producers (though, more likely, the network) felt that if the world was vastly altered by alien tech/culture, the characters would become unrelatable to viewers since SG-1 now lived in a world similar to that of the episode, "2010," and not the real world.

While I don't subscribe to the above notion, there is something key in Stargate's basic premise that would be lost were the SG program to go public. I like the idea of a magical door beneath a mountain in our world that leads to other worlds and that the rest of the world is completely unaware of it. Like a wardrobe that leads to Narnia in your uncle's stuffy old house.

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

^Yeah, but the show had pretty much evolved beyond that basic premise by the time they had countless government officials and corporate heads and foreign scientists and whatnot interacting with the SGC and alien technology. SG-1 in its later seasons was doing a bunch of stories about interactions with various people outside the program, and in most cases the secrecy was either irrelevant to the stories they were telling or an inconvenience to them. And SGA and SGU were taking place way off in other galaxies, rendering the secrecy even more irrelevant. Anytime we saw Destiny characters in SGU interacting with folks back home, most of the time those folks back home were brought in on the secret, because it would've gotten in the way of the stories if they hadn't known.

So by the latter few years of the franchise, the secrecy from the general public had been eroded so much that it no longer served a purpose. It just got in the way.

Not to mention the ethical issue. The government and the military were making decisions that affected the future of Earth and its place within galactic society -- it's utterly immoral to deprive the public of their right to know what's being done in their name and to have a voice in the process. Transparency is necessary for the ethical operation of the government and the military. SG-1 handled that issue brilliantly in the "Heroes" 2-parter with Saul Rubinek. Sometimes the producers did intelligently engage with the question and acknowledged the problems raised by the secrecy, but they never quite had the guts to get rid of it altogether. Or maybe they wanted to but MGM wouldn't let them, which is why so many of the later stories did end runs around the secrecy and brought all sorts of private citizens into the loop.

 

[TheAlmanac]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I suspect that they wanted to try to keep the status quo while SG-1 was on the air just for the verisimilitude.

But why did they need verisimilitude? I've never understood the desire of SFTV shows to pretend they're taking place in the real world behind the scenes. Of course they're not in the real world, so why the pretense? It's so much more interesting to actually show the ways in which the world is changed and affected. This was one thing The 4400 did well.

Part of the Stargate franchise's appeal came from its modern day, regular characters thrust into sci-fi scenarios and settings. Perhaps the producers (though, more likely, the network) felt that if the world was vastly altered by alien tech/culture, the characters would become unrelatable to viewers since SG-1 now lived in a world similar to that of the episode, "2010," and not the real world.

^Yeah, but the show had pretty much evolved beyond that basic premise by the time they had countless government officials and corporate heads and foreign scientists and whatnot interacting with the SGC and alien technology. SG-1 in its later seasons was doing a bunch of stories about interactions with various people outside the program, and in most cases the secrecy was either irrelevant to the stories they were telling or an inconvenience to them. And SGA and SGU were taking place way off in other galaxies, rendering the secrecy even more irrelevant. Anytime we saw Destiny characters in SGU interacting with folks back home, most of the time those folks back home were brought in on the secret, because it would've gotten in the way of the stories if they hadn't known.

It's also possible the US military (which cooperated in the production of SG-1) maintained their opinion that the Stargate program would remain secret, even with everyone involved over time, if it existed in the real world.

I know, I know--the idea that the American government would run a massive ongoing operation that affected the entire world without engaging in their ethical obligation to disclose it to the general public on its own is a crazy notion that would never happen in real life.

 

[Idran]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

^What problems does Dresden Codak have nowadays, besides infrequent updates?

This post here sums it up pretty well, but basically he continuously objectifies Kimiko and constantly not just denies any male-gaze-iness in his work, but claims that it's outright progressive and feminist of him. (Plus, though this is getting outside the work itself, he can be downright nasty to critics of it that call this behavior out; the stuff around Mary Cagle's fairly lighthearted satire of DC that's mentioned there was pretty awful.)

 

[Romulan_spy]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I really enjoyed this book a lot. I especially liked the theme of collecting things through time. Both the DTI and the Collectors collect items through time. In a way, the DTI could be called "Collectors" too just like the aliens from the far future. I also liked the theme of how to use time travel, is it better to play it safe and avoid it like the DTI or is it better to aggressively use time travel to protect yourself like the TIA?

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

^Yes, the title was meant to refer to both the DTI and the eponymous Collectors.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I'm about 3/4 of the way through this now. The errors in the Kindle version - the missing 'breaks' in chapters - that others spoke of, are showing up in the version I'm reading. How am I supposed to get the updated version, that I've heard exists?

Clearly it's not being updated automatically, even though I jotted over to my Amazon account and made sure my Kindle settings were configured to make it that way.

Oh, and Christopher, about our earlier arguments: Thank you for including (and this is not really a spoiler, BTW) a mention of "traditionalist colonies." Those sound like my kind of place.

 

[Jarvisimo]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I think perhaps the Leftovers showed a very good piece of how a bizarre fantastical or sci-fi (magic? spiritual?) event could affect those still on Earth. It was refreshing for showing how messed up the world could be - intensely hard edged and difficult to watch at times, but also great at exploring an idea well and deeply.

EDIT - this being in response to things on page 7 (forgot the quotes!). Excited to read this novella!

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Christopher, one other thing: What eventually happens to the...

Spoiler: novel

Borg dinosaur?

Obviously it can't be sent straight back to its own time, like the rest of the 'specimens' were. Did the Collectors somehow cleanse it of the Borg tech inhabiting its body? Or did they just kill it?

 

[SebastianDT]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Borg dinoasaurs... When I read that I turned to my girlfriend and told her about it. Her eyes went WIDE.

 

[Klaus]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Just finished it, and I'll echo all the good things said above... it was really a lot of fun and did a great job of tying things together, and the you-know-what was really funny.

 

[Markonian]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Christopher, one other thing: What eventually happens to the...

Spoiler: novel

Borg dinosaur?

Obviously it can't be sent straight back to its own time, like the rest of the 'specimens' were. Did the Collectors somehow cleanse it of the Borg tech inhabiting its body? Or did they just kill it?

Spoiler: novel

I believe the Tyrannosaurus they watch in the Maastrichian is the time-travelling on.

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Christopher, one other thing: What eventually happens to the...

Spoiler: novel

Borg dinosaur?

Obviously it can't be sent straight back to its own time, like the rest of the 'specimens' were. Did the Collectors somehow cleanse it of the Borg tech inhabiting its body? Or did they just kill it?

Spoiler: novel

I believe the Tyrannosaurus they watch in the Maastrichian is the time-travelling on.

Spoiler: answer

Presumably there was more than one tyrannosaur in the collection, since a population can't survive long without breeding pairs. While the collected population was returned to its own time at the end, I don't know what happened to the assimilated T. rex. Although I suppose it's reasonable to assume that the Collectors or the Time Guardians would've had the technology to cure it of its "infection." On the other hand, they might've deemed it best to keep it in the future anyway, just to make sure they didn't send any missed nanoprobes back in time.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

^ But in 3051, there's technology to cure almost any disease (even *death*) via transporter, so wouldn't the Collectors' time - which, and I'm paraphrasing here, looks to be many, many millenia after that - have an easy time with nanoprobes?

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

^Well, sure, in theory, but one doesn't want to be overconfident. After all, those buggers are little. It'd be easy to miss one or two.

 

[Technobuilder]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

This story makes me want two things.

1.) More DTI. Hopefully as novels, but I'll take the occasional novella.
2.) More Corps of Engineers Novellas... I miss the heck out of those guys!

I read MORE books as 'E-Media' than I do 'Dead Tree' now. (And I use to rally for Dead Tree)

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

And then there's the frustrating fact that TMP introduced such things as security armor and radiation suits for engineers, but then the later shows totally ignored these things. DS9 had people in ground combat during wartime wearing nothing but cloth uniforms, no helmets or body armor of any kind -- it was ridiculous. It's not like they were caught off guard; they knowingly went into battle totally unprotected. Why were the producers willing to do that? Why didn't they spend a little money creating body armor? Or even just some little blinky-light props that generated personal force fields?

The two DS9 episodes that featured dedicated Starfleet ground troops in combat (Nor the Battle to the Strong and The Siege of AR-558) did in fact show them wearing flak jacket-like body armor over their normal Starfleet uniforms that seemed to be made of an ablative material. Why that wasn't more commonly available to regular Starfleet personnel is a mystery, though.

Anyway, I enjoyed The Collectors a great deal, and was just perusing the thread when I saw this.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

This was a lot of fun. Really enjoyed it. Could have used a little less time in 3501, a little more in the far future. I liked the ethical implications of it. I also would have liked a little more Ranjea and Teresa.

 

[star trek]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

It was alright. The combined t-rex and butterfly moment felt too cliched, almost cringe worthy.

I'm curious to know what happened to the Federation 21 million years from now.

 

[ATimson]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I'm curious to know what happened to the Federation 21 million years from now.

I'd be surprised if the Federation was still around and recognizable "only" 10,000 years from the present of the books, much less 2100 times further in the future.