Spoilers ENT: Rise of the Federation: Patterns of Interference by C.L. Bennett Review Thread

[Nyotarules]

I'm on chapter 9
So far my favourite characters are Kivei Tizahr and the dryads.
Least favourite character, Admiral Archer coming across as well meaning but patronising. Using a hammer to crack a political nut.
If Starfleet are just explorers what are they doing making political policies, who votes for them?

 

[Christopher]

Least favourite character, Admiral Archer coming across as well meaning but patronising. Using a hammer to crack a political nut.
If Starfleet are just explorers what are they doing making political policies, who votes for them?

It would be a Starfleet policy, but he needs to convince the rest of the Starfleet brass and the Federation Council that they should institute it. I'm not quite sure how the authority structure works out there, but we do see in real life that the President and Congress can have a say in military policy, so I assume that, even as a chief of staff, Archer couldn't just unilaterally enact this policy without the approval of the Council, the President, and the other joint chiefs (and it'd be fairly useless if it applied only to the UESPA fleet and not the Andorian, Vulcan, Tellarite, etc. branches of the service).

 

[Jarvisimo]

Least favourite character, Admiral Archer coming across as well meaning but patronising. Using a hammer to crack a political nut.
If Starfleet are just explorers what are they doing making political policies, who votes for them?

Isn't that always the problem with Trek - it features explorers making these absolutely political decisions, yet who are simply members of what is sometimes the military, or sometimes something else - but without the involvement of any other civil service? Shouldn't there be a trained ambassador or foreign service on every ship? Instead, Trek captains and crews are basically the explorers, conquerors, merchants and the like through history - beyond borders, acting and deciding at will.

I like that Christopher is exploring these knotted issues far better than Trek ever did on screen. To think that the makers of First Contact just assumed that the established rules of 23rd/24th century Trek were those the Vulcans abided by, and never thought that through - that people might accept or oppose such an ideology - was bizarre. There was some development of this in Enterprise, but not really. Instead, I'm really glad this series exists and explores these issues.

 

[Christopher]

Isn't that always the problem with Trek - it features explorers making these absolutely political decisions, yet who are simply members of what is sometimes the military, or sometimes something else - but without the involvement of any other civil service? Shouldn't there be a trained ambassador or foreign service on every ship? Instead, Trek captains and crews are basically the explorers, conquerors, merchants and the like through history - beyond borders, acting and deciding at will.

It's based on the British Navy in the age of sail, when this was essentially the case. Ship captains were out of contact with the government and military leaders back home, so they had to have the authority to make policy decisions, act as ambassadors, and so forth as required. What you're describing is actually built into the premise. The captains are the people who get to make those calls on the frontier, because they're the only ones who can. They are the ambassadors, as part of their basic training.

I like that Christopher is exploring these knotted issues far better than Trek ever did on screen. To think that the makers of First Contact just assumed that the established rules of 23rd/24th century Trek were those the Vulcans abided by, and never thought that through - that people might accept or oppose such an ideology - was bizarre. There was some development of this in Enterprise, but not really. Instead, I'm really glad this series exists and explores these issues.

Thank you.

I always felt it was a missed opportunity on ENT that they just had Archer basically follow the tenets of the Prime Directive before it even existed. I thought that doing a series in that time period offered an opportunity to explore how Starfleet handled contacts pre-PD, and what sort of mistakes and harmful consequences led them to adopt the PD. I'm glad I've gotten the chance to tell those kinds of stories in ROTF.

 

[Christopher]

Annotations are up:

ROTF: Patterns of Interference Annotations (spoiler warning)

Note that I've also posted annotations for my new story "Abductive Reasoning" from the Sep/Oct 2017 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, on sale now.

 

[Paris]

Perfect. I love the annotations! Thanks Christopher

 

[Christopher]

By the way, I discovered that the new Analog contains a new story by Norman Spinrad! That's the first time I've ever shared a publication with someone who wrote for the original Star Trek, a career milestone I never expected to achieve. Though I have shared publications with two authors who wrote for the animated Trek -- Larry Niven in the Dec. 2000 Analog and Howard Weinstein in Constellations and Mere Anarchy.

 

[Scout101]

Random thought, but did anyone else think of an old numbered TOS book when the mobile plant planet came up? Was waiting to see if it was a nod to Mutiny on the Enterprise or not, but maybe just coincidence. Obvious differences (that was more of a hive mind/single organism situation), but for a moment thought it was a fun random callback.

 

[Christopher]

Random thought, but did anyone else think of an old numbered TOS book when the mobile plant planet came up? Was waiting to see if it was a nod to Mutiny on the Enterprise or not, but maybe just coincidence. Obvious differences (that was more of a hive mind/single organism situation), but for a moment thought it was a fun random callback.

Wow, not even close. As discussed in the annotations, that's a reworking of an original SF story I wrote back in 1993. Mutiny on the Enterprise is one of the last novels I'd have any interest in homaging; it was one of the weakest of the early Pocket novels, with the crew written badly out of character. And as you say, the planet there was a hive-mind world, a symbiotic biosphere something like how I described the Irriol homeworld back in Orion's Hounds and "Empathy." I don't know why Birnam would remind you of it.

 

[Scout101]

It reminded me of it at first because of it was a planet where all of the different organisms were all plant based, even the ones acting out animal functions. Been a while since I read it, but feel like there may have been a similar sort of approach where there was essentially a bare patch of ground around where the shuttle/crew landed.

Didn't say anything more than that, or imply that that was a good book, just said that it popped into my head for a moment when reading it. When the Dryads were shown to be more independent, and the rest of the planet not acting in that same hive-mind behavior, I dropped it, just saying I'd thought about it for a moment and wondering if anyone else had. I didn't imply anything more than that.

Just because an earlier book wasn't awesome doesn't mean there can't be tie-ins that play with some of the concepts or still imply it's one big universe even if you're not really directly using the older material. Sometimes it's a way to try and gently correct that older material as well; just because the characterizations weren't very good doesn't mean the world couldn't have existed, for example. I get you not wanting to tie yourself to that one, but as you're big on playing with continuity and callbacks, I just had that thought for a moment (until it because obvious later that it didn't work), that's all...

 

[Kemaiku]

That seems unlikely, since Reed would've been 133 when Kirk entered the Academy.

Archer was 147 when the 1701 launched and yet was present for it in the additional material that the books would draw from. Reed being 133 for a younger man in better shape than Archer isn't a stretch.

 

[Idran]

Archer was 147 when the 1701 launched and yet was present for it in the additional material that the books would draw from. Reed being 133 for a younger man in better shape than Archer isn't a stretch.

That the books could draw from. That was from a display that was never used on screen. Granted, so's the information about Hoshi's fate, but it's not binding on the books.

Plus just to be pedantic (not really relevant to your point, helps support it even), he'd be 133 himself, not 147. He was born in 2112 and the Enterprise was launched in 2245.

 

[Kemaiku]

That the books could draw from. That was from a display that was never used on screen. Granted, so's the information about Hoshi's fate, but it's not binding on the books.

Plus just to be pedantic (not really relevant to your point, helps support it even), he'd be 133 himself, not 147. He was born in 2112 and the Enterprise was launched in 2245.

The point is, no-one thought that them being alive at 130, 140 or even approaching 150 was all that much of a stretch. Even for those born way back in the 22nd centuries earlier years.

Malcolm is really damn stubborn, and keeps himself in shape, I could easily see him lecturing cadets about the good old days well into his 100's.

 

[Christopher]

As I've already said, while it may be theoretically possible for one or more of the main characters to live that long, it's still very unlikely, and the more characters you assert it about, the more exponentially improbable it becomes. Even if average life expectancy in the 22nd century were, say, 100, that means that for everyone who makes it to 130, there should be someone who only makes it to 70. There should be as many characters who die relatively young as there are characters who live to be really old. Sure, Starfleet officers would tend to have great fitness and medical care, but they're also more vulnerable to death by violence or catching weird alien diseases or something -- and besides, a lot of longevity is genetic, so the same health regimen that lets one person make it to 110 may only let another make it to 85. So we can't just take it for granted that all the main characters can make it to the maximum extreme of life expectancy. That's simply not how it works.

 

[E-DUB]

About a third of the way through. "Minority blue Orions"? Way to retcon there, CB.

 

[Kemaiku]

Unlikely.

Good thing nothing unlikely ever happens in Star Trek then.

 

[Christopher]

About a third of the way through. "Minority blue Orions"? Way to retcon there, CB.

Hey, they're onscreen in "The Pirates of Orion." They're as much a part of the Trek universe as Devna or the Nasat.

Good thing nothing unlikely ever happens in Star Trek then.

Of course unlikely things do occasionally happen, but they don't routinely happen, because that's what the word means. They happen in a minority of cases, and they should not be casually expected to happen.

Also, the fact that a fictional universe has some implausibilities in it is not a license to throw logic and sense out the window and do whatever you feel like. On the contrary -- the best way to sell those implausibilities is by making the universe around them as believable as you can, to keep the improbable parts to a minimum.

 

[Kemaiku]

Routinely happen.

Every. Single. Episode. And. Movie.

Nice to know people living longer is less plausible to some than hyperwarp reptiles.

 

[Christopher]

Every. Single. Episode. And. Movie.

Nice to know people living longer is less plausible to some than hyperwarp reptiles.

Those are different. Remember, we don't see every single day of the characters' lives. We skip over the majority of days where routine things happen, and focus on the moments when extraordinary events happen. So it's not a representative sample of the entire set of days or events. For every mission interesting enough to get an episode or book about it, there are probably a fair number of missions that are too ordinary or uneventful to be worth showing.

But if we're talking about the entire command crew of a single starship, then we're not just looking at the exceptions, we're looking at the whole thing. If you say that one, even two of the people in that command crew lived improbably long, yeah, that could happen. But if you're talking about the entire command crew, then it follows that not all of them would live improbably long. The more TOS main characters you want to live into the TNG era, the more ENT main characters you want to live into the TOS era, the more progressively ridiculous it gets.

It's also intellectually and emotionally dishonest and an insult to the intelligence of the reader. Death happens. We all have to face the loss of people we care about. So fiction shouldn't cop out of having characters face that loss. Good fiction is not about going easy on characters. Yes, improbable things happen, but they happen because they challenge the characters and raise the emotional stakes for the readers. If they don't do that, if they coddle the characters and the readers or make things too easy or comfortable, then that's generally a reason to avoid them.

 

[Scout101]

McCoy being there to usher in the first Star Trek spinoff was a fun touch, but I'm kinda ok with the characters not living forever. I don't need to know that every generation of heroes is still kicking 150 years later for the next story. The Vulcans get a little bit of a pass there, but let's not stretch it for everyone. It's ok that they had their time and did great things, then got old like everyone else. No 120 year old action figures, please.