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Dumb and Bizarre Trek Novel Moments...

Trip was the chief engineer aboard the most advanced ship in the Earth Starfleet. He'd spent more time around the warp 5 engine than anyone else. Tapping him to check out the Romulan warp program is no less appropriate than tapping Julian Bashir to check out the medical condition of the head of the Tal Shiar.
 
It's not like Section 31 is particularly competent, either. Remember how they were so surprised when Admiral Krell betrayed them in "Divergence?"
 
But for sheer idiocy, I'll go for Spirit Walk, particularly the scene where Chakotay summons a black jaguar out of thin air to attack a changeling while his sister's fatal wounds are held together by the ghost of her dead boyfriend.

Holy shit. You have won the thread.

I 2nd this. I love Christie Golden and all but this was bizarre.

I also 2nd Before Dishonor and Ship of the Line for the entire Novels.
 
Very slight technological nitpick: Don't replicators still require raw materials, to be converted into whatever's being replicated? In which case, there's still an upper limit to society's available resources, albeit a much, much higher one than would be the case in a pre-replicator economy.

Ahh, but a replicator can also recycle used materials, so there's virtually no waste. (Our society would gain incredible material wealth if we had the ability to recycle everything that's ever been dumped in our mountainous landfills.)

Yes, conservation of energy still applies, but to a spacegoing power, energy is easy! The galaxy is made up of several hundred billion ginormous fusion reactors called "stars," pouring out gobs of energy totally for free. If you have the technology to travel between the stars, then you would have access to vastly more energy than any civilization would ever need. Not to mention the immense quantity of material resources just lying around in asteroid belts and cometary clouds and gas-giant atmospheres.

- (and this probably takes the cake) In the first TNG Slings and Arrows book, there is a Changeling infiltrator on the Enterprise. At some point, it makes it's way out into space and how does it escape? The Changeling goes to warp. That's right, apparently Changeling shape-shifting abilities include the ability to simulate dilithium crystals and self-propel themselves through space.

As stated, Laas's spaceflight suggests this is possible. Yes, as someone said, I believe he was at impulse when the runabout first encountered him, but how did he get there from another star system in a reasonable amount of time if not by warp?

Besides, Changelings can apparently alter their mass, something which should be impossible. Robert Hewitt Wolfe's behind-the-scenes explanation for that was that Changelings can fold part of their mass into subspace. So if they naturally have access to subspace, then it kinda sorta follows that they could potentially achieve warp flight.

The IDIC Epidemic, the ending where the Klingon lad is accepted to Starfleet... Yeah. Nice on paper but given the state of relations between the powers it really couldn't have happened.

Why not? An individual is not a government. Just because the "lad" is Klingon by species doesn't mean he's Klingon by nationality. Sure, he'd most likely be considered a traitor by his people, but if he emigrates and is no longer a subject of the Klingon Empire, then he can do whatever he wants regardless of what the Klingon government might say.


But for sheer idiocy, I'll go for Spirit Walk, particularly the scene where Chakotay summons a black jaguar out of thin air to attack a changeling while his sister's fatal wounds are held together by the ghost of her dead boyfriend.

How is that any more absurd than a godlike being who can make anything happen with a snap of his fingers and a flash of light, but who usually uses this infinite power simply to dress up in a Starfleet uniform and annoy Captain Picard? Nothing that happened in Spirit Walk was any more fanciful than Q's bag of tricks. It's a well-established reality in Trek, unfortunately, that sufficiently "evolved" life forms have enough control over the laws of physics that they can wield effectively magical or godlike abilities. There's no reason why the beings in Spirit Walk who temporarily endow Chakotay with their abilities can't be interpreted in exactly the same way. Chakotay chose to interpret them as divine beings, but that's his personal belief system -- just as Kira chooses to interpret the extratemporal aliens who inhabit the Bajoran wormhole as divine beings. I really don't see the difference.
 
CLB, once again proving that if you try hard enough, you can explain away ANYTHING. :lol:

Not that I find any of those explanations implausible...actually, it's sort of my point that I don't. Star Trek is diverse enough that there really is precedent for just about anything at this point, and the places where the universe doesn't cohere often give the writers' incredible creative possibilities anyway. It's fun playing this game.
 
Besides, Changelings can apparently alter their mass, something which should be impossible. Robert Hewitt Wolfe's behind-the-scenes explanation for that was that Changelings can fold part of their mass into subspace. So if they naturally have access to subspace, then it kinda sorta follows that they could potentially achieve warp flight.

That's weird, it's like there's an echo in here... ;)
 
Trip was the chief engineer aboard the most advanced ship in the Earth Starfleet. He'd spent more time around the warp 5 engine than anyone else. Tapping him to check out the Romulan warp program is no less appropriate than tapping Julian Bashir to check out the medical condition of the head of the Tal Shiar.
You're right, I had forgotten that one of the focuses was to be on analyzing their warp technology. That does give a bit more legitimacy to him being chosen.
 
CLB, once again proving that if you try hard enough, you can explain away ANYTHING. :lol:
Most definitely! While I will acknowledge the farfetched-ness of a certain aspect of Trek if I hear a casual watcher complain, I will point out how easy it is to find a semi-logical explanation. However, usually the fewer times this is necessary to do, the better!
 
Ship of the Line. Everything that is wrong with Diane Carey's novels summed up in one book.

Both Picard and Janeway in Resistance. Thank god for Worf.

While I don't think the entirety of Before Dishonor is bad, it was way too over the top, and most of the characterization (aside from Picard, Geordi, Spock, and Crusher) was horrid. The only truly good character moments were Kadohata dealing with command, Picard dealing with her, and anything with Lady Q.
 
ATT Sow/Harvest the EE meets a bunch of aliens who need radiation from their home to survive.
ATT Love/Hate the EE meets a bunch of aliens who need some pollen from their planet to stop from being violent nuts
AOTF the Io meets a bunch of aliens who need radiation from their home to survive.

what dumb person thought putting out 5 books with essentially the same plot device in so close together was a bright idea? sorry to Bob and Keith, but it worked a lot better the first time around...
 
^ It should be noted that no dumb person thought that, as the books were edited by three different people. John Ordover put together Sow/Harvest, but he was pretty much on his way out the door by the time Love/Hate rolled around, and that was handled by Ed Schlesinger. And Marco edited AotF. :)
 
ATT Sow/Harvest the EE meets a bunch of aliens who need radiation from their home to survive.
ATT Love/Hate the EE meets a bunch of aliens who need some pollen from their planet to stop from being violent nuts
AOTF the Io meets a bunch of aliens who need radiation from their home to survive.

what dumb person thought putting out 5 books with essentially the same plot device in so close together was a bright idea? sorry to Bob and Keith, but it worked a lot better the first time around...

Yeah, but everybody skips the first 6 ATT books, anyway, so we figured nobody would notice.
 
what dumb person thought putting out 5 books with essentially the same plot device in so close together was a bright idea? sorry to Bob and Keith, but it worked a lot better the first time around...

You know, it never occurred to me that these books were similar in plot. The authors did enough to make a "how do we save this planet from its disaster" plot different.

The ones I find harder to forgive are the consecutive plots in the "New Earth" mini-series, where the Enterprise crew have to be solving, and re-solving, the olivium problem over and over, constantly agonising about how to temporarily evacuate a planet they've just settled. But the inconsistencies (the olivium's many properties, the personalities of some of the ongoing main guest characters, and how many ships had already been disassembled to create habitats) were many; everything seemed to keep changing. And, of course, the post-TMP timeline, which seemed perfect to fit in with things like Chekov's promotion to the Reliant, etc, and most other post-TMP books, got messed up too.
 
While I don't think the entirety of Before Dishonor is bad, it was way too over the top, and most of the characterization (aside from Picard, Geordi, Spock, and Crusher) was horrid. The only truly good character moments were Kadohata dealing with command, Picard dealing with her, and anything with Lady Q.

While I didn't think it that far from his characterization, I was rather surprised by Leybenzon's willingness to torture Crusher. Doesn't Starfleet Security teach its enlistees about ethics, at all?
 
While I don't think the entirety of Before Dishonor is bad, it was way too over the top, and most of the characterization (aside from Picard, Geordi, Spock, and Crusher) was horrid. The only truly good character moments were Kadohata dealing with command, Picard dealing with her, and anything with Lady Q.

While I didn't think it that far from his characterization, I was rather surprised by Leybenzon's willingness to torture Crusher. Doesn't Starfleet Security teach its enlistees about ethics, at all?

It's quite in line with his characterization in BD, but I didn't see it at all from his characterization in Q&A. And yeah, one would think Starfleet Security would do a better job with this.
 
I guess I saw Trip being recruited in TGTMD kinda the same way I see Spock and Kirk being recruited in "The Enterprise Incident". Sure Kirk is awesome and all that, but surely Starfleet intelligence had people specifically trained for this sort of thing. It just didn't bother me that much, I was just too pleased at seeing TATV stuffed into a gunny sack and beaten with 2x4's to really care.


One that's bothered me for many years is the old TOS novel "Doctor's Orders". Now, the concept makes sense, put McCoy in charge of the Enterprise for a couple of hours to make him see what it's like. But the rules-lawyering the author went through to keep him in the center seat when the rightful first and second officers were available was just too silly. TNG's "Disaster" handled this a little better with Troi's bit, by making her the highest ranking officer available. If the author had also somehow stranded Spock and Scotty, and had McCoy rely more on Uhura, Sulu and Chekov (and any other of the second string characters), that also would have given those characters a little more time in the spotlight.
 
I guess I saw Trip being recruited in TGTMD kinda the same way I see Spock and Kirk being recruited in "The Enterprise Incident". Sure Kirk is awesome and all that, but surely Starfleet intelligence had people specifically trained for this sort of thing. It just didn't bother me that much, I was just too pleased at seeing TATV stuffed into a gunny sack and beaten with 2x4's to really care.


One that's bothered me for many years is the old TOS novel "Doctor's Orders". Now, the concept makes sense, put McCoy in charge of the Enterprise for a couple of hours to make him see what it's like. But the rules-lawyering the author went through to keep him in the center seat when the rightful first and second officers were available was just too silly. TNG's "Disaster" handled this a little better with Troi's bit, by making her the highest ranking officer available. If the author had also somehow stranded Spock and Scotty, and had McCoy rely more on Uhura, Sulu and Chekov (and any other of the second string characters), that also would have given those characters a little more time in the spotlight.


I liked that book though, mostly as a small cog in Diane Duane's larger fiction universe. Duane's McCoy, like all of the Senior Officers, is always portrayed as more capable than a standard portrayal of him. Which I like.
 
One that's bothered me for many years is the old TOS novel "Doctor's Orders". Now, the concept makes sense, put McCoy in charge of the Enterprise for a couple of hours to make him see what it's like. But the rules-lawyering the author went through to keep him in the center seat when the rightful first and second officers were available was just too silly. TNG's "Disaster" handled this a little better with Troi's bit, by making her the highest ranking officer available. If the author had also somehow stranded Spock and Scotty, and had McCoy rely more on Uhura, Sulu and Chekov (and any other of the second string characters), that also would have given those characters a little more time in the spotlight.

This always bothered me, too, especially as it's inconsistent with other (filmed) Trek (Commodore Decker would not have been able to relieve Spock of command of the Enterprise in The Doomsday Machine, for instance). However, as an exercise in character work, Doctor's Orders was great. I always liked the way Diane Duane wrote the Spock/McCoy friendship.
 
However, as an exercise in character work, Doctor's Orders was great. I always liked the way Diane Duane wrote the Spock/McCoy friendship.

I agree. I will also go further and say that, IMO, Diane Duane has probably the best handle on writing the TOS characters than any author I've read. She realy "gets" those folks, I think.
 
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