Have any of the novels ever just made you mad? (

[ProtoAvatar]

Thrawn

One of the reasons 'Destiny' underwhelmed me was because our 'heroes' gave up. They not winning was acceptable; they giving up so completely turned 'Destiny' into a deliverance story, lacking the fundamental trek humanism.

Other reasons would be the ridiculously high body count, the excessive grit (the entire trilogy was, essentially, us seeing genocide after genocide commited by the borg - reminded me of BSG's pilot episode), the obtuze/inept decisions of several characters (Picard being the obvious example), the unconvincing way certain story elements were used (again, the thalaron weapon), the rushed ending, etc.

 

[Thrawn]

I don't think a realistic story about a Borg invasion too big for the Federation to defeat on its own - need I mention again, the entire point of the story - would've been possible without that much grit or body count, and I've argued at length why I feel those story elements were not used unconvincingly. I'm also not at all convinced anyone aside from Picard gave up, which I found powerful and believable.

But on that note, I find it funny that the one person actually pushing for your favorite Thalaron weapon, Picard, is also the person that you most accuse of giving up and being inept. Can't have it both ways. Either deciding to use that weapon was an inept failure of a decision, meaning the weapon wouldn't work, or Picard was right all along.

 

[Christopher]

I don't understand why we're debating whether a thalaron weapon would've made a difference in the battle of the Azure Nebula. That battle was over with by the end of Book 2. Picard doesn't even propose thalaron weapons until p. 305 of Book 3. So of course the weapon couldn't make a difference to a battle that was over before the weapon was even proposed! If the debate is over whether they should've gone with Picard's Plan B and built the thalaron weapon, then this whole lengthy argument about an earlier battle has absolutely no bearing on the question. Unless ProtoAvatar is proposing a scenario involving time travel as well.

Full impulse is one quarter light speed.

Okay, for the most part I agree with your position that the thalaron weapon would've been useless at the Azure Nebula (even aside from the fact that the battle was already over before it was proposed), but I have to quibble with this widely held misconception. A quarter lightspeed is not full impulse. Full impulse is a measure of power, of acceleration, not of velocity. A ship under impulse thrust at any level will continue to go faster as long as the thrust is applied. The "full impulse is .25c" canard is a misreading of a statement in the TNG Tech Manual that normal, routine impulse operations are preferentially kept below .25c to avoid time dilation effects and the hazards of relativistic flight. That's not the maximum attainable velocity, since the only true maximum velocity in space is c itself (or the speed close to c at which the friction of the interstellar medium becomes insurmountable); it's just the preferred speed limit for normal activities, like a 35 MPH sign on a main road. But it's certainly possible for a starship to go faster than that if it needs to.

 

[Thrawn]

^ Fair enough. Onscreen Trek, though, tends to frequently confuse velocity with acceleration, and either way, the Borg ships coming out of the wormhole should be moving really insanely fast. A quarter light speed isn't unreasonable.

Oh, and also, he's right about Thalaron weapons being proposed before that; they're mentioned in Mere Mortals for about 3 paragraphs, where Seven says they'll need to use them to destroy the Borg staging area on the other side of the wormhole and they refuse on grounds that genocidal weapons are Not What The Federation Does. The word "Thalaron" doesn't appear anywhere else in Mere Mortals, though.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Thrawn

As I already said: Our heroes "not winning was acceptable; they giving up so completely turned 'Destiny' into a deliverance story, lacking the fundamental trek humanism."
Also - Picard, after spending the entire trilogy showing us how completely the borg broke his spirit, wants to use the thalaron weapon, only to change his mind, based on a moral argument full of inconsistencies, coming from Geordi.

As for most of starfleet - they spend the trilogy wanting to commit seppuku - they use standard tactics/weapons, knowing they're useless, not bothering 'think outside the box', to innovate, convinced they're dead before their battle even begins.

About the gigantic body count - it could easily have been avoided by having the borg assimilate most of their victims (instead of introducing an massive change in borg behaviour just for this trilogy) - which, if need be could even depart with the caeliar at the end.
Of course, this, apparently, wasn't gritty enough.


Christopher
7 of 9 proposed using the thalaron weapon before the Azure nebula battle and was refuted, again, based on an argument that makes very little sense.

PS - I see Thrawn already mentioned it.

 

[Christopher]

^ Fair enough. Onscreen Trek, though, tends to frequently confuse velocity with acceleration, and either way, the Borg ships coming out of the wormhole should be moving really insanely fast. A quarter light speed isn't unreasonable.

Well, of course. I take it as elementary that there's no way a thalaron weapon, which is a slow-deploying weapon designed for use against a stationary target, would be useless against a fleet of Borg cubes barrelling out of the subspace conduit at top speed.

While we're at it, I want to say that I don't think it makes sense to conclude that Chakotay's "rammed us" description is meant literally; space is not that small that they'd be likely to directly, physically hit the starships on their way out. I took it more as a figure of speech -- they hit so hard and fast and relentlessly that it was like being run over by a train.

After all, if we were talking about direct physical collisions at a fair percentage of lightspeed, the ships wouldn't just have been crippled and wrecked, but most likely vaporized completely, given the kinetic energies involved. By the same token, the Borg cubes would've suffered rather badly from the impacts of starships at those velocities. Consider that even a small scout ship hitting at a relative speed of 0.25c or so would deliver an amount of kinetic energy equivalent to the asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater and is believed to have killed the dinosaurs. Even assuming Borg have magically powerful shields, such impacts would cause them substantial damage and they wouldn't endure them if they could avoid it. So there's no way "rammed" was meant literally.

Oh, and also, he's right about Thalaron weapons being proposed before that; they're mentioned in Mere Mortals for about 3 paragraphs, where Seven says they'll need to use them to destroy the Borg staging area on the other side of the wormhole and they refuse on grounds that genocidal weapons are Not What The Federation Does. The word "Thalaron" doesn't appear anywhere else in Mere Mortals, though.

But I thought the whole huge argument that's been rehashed on and off for months was whether it was right for Geordi to talk Picard out of using the weapons at the eleventh hour. Obviously the Federation wouldn't have embraced such an extreme, illegal tactic as anything less than a last resort, so there's zero realistic chance that they ever would've tried it at the Azure Nebula, even aside from the zero realistic chance that it would've actually worked. Not to mention that they would've needed precognition to know the Borg armada was coming at all; they were taken by surprise, after all. So again, I see no reason why so many dozens of posts are being expended on a scenario that simply could never have happened.

 

[Thrawn]

So there's no way "rammed" was meant literally.

Well, actually, Full Circle explicitly states that a Borg cube rams Voyager and knocks off a nacelle. So that was meant literally (or at least taken literally by Kirsten). Your argument makes sense, though; Trek rarely gets these kinds of things right. I always thought it was funny seeing all the ships clustered so close together in the Dominion War episodes of DS9; one thruster misaligned and there'd be collisions there!

 

[kkozoriz1]

If the Borg are trying to get through I can see them physically ramming a ship. What's a few drones and ships when you've got 7000 more?

 

[LaBarre]

While I loved the Destiny trilogy I do have some sympathy with ProtoAvatar's view that "our heroes gave up."

I was so relieved that Mr Mack didn't kill Picard off (as I had suspected might occur) that I allowed this to suspend my critical faculties at least as regards Picard's characterisation.

I find so much about the trilogy intriguing and awe-inspiring in both concept and delivery that I know this is all and all a minor and niggardly point. But it is one that totally distracts me each time I revisit the books.

Picard as written is so off base from all the backstory of the man we've received to date (with the exception of Dillard's Resistance which is just too silly on too many fronts to take seriously) that I find it impossible to believe in the reality of the character presented.

By contrast, the Picard we see in First Contact is wholly understandable. He's filled with supressed and pent-up horror and fear and hatred towards the Borg and the whole Ahab revenge thing works perfectly BUT he also retains enough of the compassionate man we have been shown him to be for over 10 years to know that he's still capable of listening to reason and to act on it (even though it would have made more sense to have had the lecture delivered by Dr Crusher, IMO).

In the Destiny trilogy, what we get is someone who presents as textbook clinically bipolar. He lurches from manic highs to the depth of total despair. I don't care whether this guy is your squeeze or not, if this is what you see as CMO you relieve him of duty and drug him up to the eyeballs while you're at it - even more so if you think he's being possessed or controlled or malignly influenced in some way by the Borg. I mean, the captain Mack gives us is crazy mad.

Yet, Crusher lets it all play out.

She's been so badly served as a character for so long in canon and treklit that you almost let that aspect slide right on by, but gee, it's a real weakness. And Mack kinda gets that it is because we have the scene with Crusher and Geordi where they bascially agree the Captain has taken leave of his faculties; to which their response is to do nothing. I'm not even going to mention Worf's failures as 2IC in this regard.

In a bizarre way, the trilogy would have made more sense if Mack had killed off Picard in the midst of madness (even though that would have sparked a Picard-isn't-dead-thread to challenge anything the Janeway's-resurrection crew could ever imagine).

For all his wonderful achievements with this trilogy (and it is fantastic), Mack leaves us with a Picard difficult (if not impossible) to reconcile with any characterisation of the man provided to date.

For me, that's a a major disappointment with what I otherwise consider to be a triumph in the whole treklit genre.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Well, of course. I take it as elementary that there's no way a thalaron weapon, which is a slow-deploying weapon designed for use against a stationary target, would be useless against a fleet of Borg cubes barrelling out of the subspace conduit at top speed.

I already adressed this multiple times in this thread, Christopher.
The main disadvantage of the thalaron weapon is its slow charging time (2-3 minutes). This can be easily compensated for:

"you could have a number of ships maintain their deflectors (thalaron emitteres) charged at all times.
These ships will go through their energy reserves at a vastly accelerated rate? Will their deflectors burn out in 2 weeks? These are mere minor impediments."

Or you could have some of your thalaron weapon equipped ships stay at 1 light minute distance from the tunnels, giving them ample time to charge their weapons.

But I thought the whole huge argument that's been rehashed on and off for months was whether it was right for Geordi to talk Picard out of using the weapons at the eleventh hour.

And you were wrong.

Also - the thalaron weapon is a weapon of mass destruction just as much - or as little - as the foton torpedo is a weapon of mass destruction.
Plus - by the time of Azure nebula BILLIONS of federation citizens were dead (FAR more victims than in all previous wars fought by the federation combined) - the situation WAS already desperate.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

It took that many losses to win the Dominion War; that many losses happened in the first 30 seconds of the Borg invasion. That's why it hit them so hard - they couldn't win.

'It took that many losses to win the Dominion war'? You severely underestimate the losses of the dominion war, Thrawn.
Starfleet lost considerably more than 340 ships (only ~50 of which were starfleet) during the dominion war.

Indeed, single battles of that war cost starfleet over 100 ships (example: the 7th fleet was almost obliterated - DS9; 'a time to stand'; etc); none of these battles/losses became federation/quadrant wide disasters.

As I said - Azure nebula level of losses were nothing special.
Compared the tens of billions the borg killed on the planets they exterminated (which do exceed dominion war losses by a wide margin), the Azure nebula was a minor incident.

All this runs counter to star trek's humanism

As does using thalaron on the Borg drones. Hence the dramatic tension.

If using thalaron weaponry is counter to trek humanism, then using foton torpedoes (matter-antimatter warheads) is equally counter to trek's humanism.
And starfleet/everyone else have no problem whatsoever in using foton torpedoes in any situation they can think of.

 

[Christopher]

Picard as written is so off base from all the backstory of the man we've received to date (with the exception of Dillard's Resistance which is just too silly on too many fronts to take seriously) that I find it impossible to believe in the reality of the character presented.

By contrast, the Picard we see in First Contact is wholly understandable. He's filled with supressed and pent-up horror and fear and hatred towards the Borg and the whole Ahab revenge thing works perfectly BUT he also retains enough of the compassionate man we have been shown him to be for over 10 years to know that he's still capable of listening to reason and to act on it (even though it would have made more sense to have had the lecture delivered by Dr Crusher, IMO).

In the Destiny trilogy, what we get is someone who presents as textbook clinically bipolar. He lurches from manic highs to the depth of total despair. I don't care whether this guy is your squeeze or not, if this is what you see as CMO you relieve him of duty and drug him up to the eyeballs while you're at it - even more so if you think he's being possessed or controlled or malignly influenced in some way by the Borg. I mean, the captain Mack gives us is crazy mad.

I don't think that's fair, because it ignores all that took place between those events, as well as the differences between the stories. In Destiny, he'd just gone through a ten-month span in which he faced three separate Borg incidents even before the big invasion; every time he thought he'd defeated them, they came back, over and over. He finally admitted his love for Beverly, and then the Borg came back. He defeated them twice more, and once he thought he was safe, he married Beverly and was about to propose starting a family, and then he learned a group of drones had survived and posed a renewed threat. And then when he defeated them and was finally emotionally ready to start a family, Beverly had been pregnant for only a few weeks when the Borg began an all-out invasion. By the time Destiny begins, the Borg had been attacking the Federation for six weeks, their biggest assault ever. And it just got worse from there.

So this is what's fundamentally different from the Picard of FC. He's a married man and an expectant father now. And it took him a long time to get to that point emotionally. So it's not just about the Borg side of the equation. Picard was at a point where his two greatest psychological vulnerabilities -- the Borg and the prospect of parenthood -- were in synergy. Every time he took a step closer to happiness, the Borg showed up to threaten it once again. And that's bound to wear on a person, to create the fear that maybe he's cursed, or even that he brought this down on himself by tempting fate. Not rational, of course, but Picard had to make himself vulnerable and embrace his emotional side more in order to admit his love for Beverly and take the steps of marrying her and conceiving a child with her. And he's been through the wringer for months already at the very start of the trilogy.

So yes, this is Picard at a less stable, more vulnerable state than we've ever seen him -- but it's hardly a mischaracterization, because it's justified by how he got to that point.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

All of these excuses changing nothing to the fact that in 'Destiny', Picard was "a textbook clinically bipolar", whose spirit was completely broken by the borg.

And, considering how large a departure this is from the character of Picard as he was known until 'Destiny', whether this is "justified" is arguable, at best.

 

[Rush Limborg]

Picard as written is so off base from all the backstory of the man we've received to date (with the exception of Dillard's Resistance which is just too silly on too many fronts to take seriously) that I find it impossible to believe in the reality of the character presented.

By contrast, the Picard we see in First Contact is wholly understandable. He's filled with supressed and pent-up horror and fear and hatred towards the Borg and the whole Ahab revenge thing works perfectly BUT he also retains enough of the compassionate man we have been shown him to be for over 10 years to know that he's still capable of listening to reason and to act on it (even though it would have made more sense to have had the lecture delivered by Dr Crusher, IMO).

In the Destiny trilogy, what we get is someone who presents as textbook clinically bipolar. He lurches from manic highs to the depth of total despair. I don't care whether this guy is your squeeze or not, if this is what you see as CMO you relieve him of duty and drug him up to the eyeballs while you're at it - even more so if you think he's being possessed or controlled or malignly influenced in some way by the Borg. I mean, the captain Mack gives us is crazy mad.

I don't think that's fair, because it ignores all that took place between those events, as well as the differences between the stories. In Destiny, he'd just gone through a ten-month span in which he faced three separate Borg incidents even before the big invasion; every time he thought he'd defeated them, they came back, over and over. He finally admitted his love for Beverly, and then the Borg came back. He defeated them twice more, and once he thought he was safe, he married Beverly and was about to propose starting a family, and then he learned a group of drones had survived and posed a renewed threat. And then when he defeated them and was finally emotionally ready to start a family, Beverly had been pregnant for only a few weeks when the Borg began an all-out invasion. By the time Destiny begins, the Borg had been attacking the Federation for six weeks, their biggest assault ever. And it just got worse from there.

So this is what's fundamentally different from the Picard of FC. He's a married man and an expectant father now. And it took him a long time to get to that point emotionally. So it's not just about the Borg side of the equation. Picard was at a point where his two greatest psychological vulnerabilities -- the Borg and the prospect of parenthood -- were in synergy. Every time he took a step closer to happiness, the Borg showed up to threaten it once again. And that's bound to wear on a person, to create the fear that maybe he's cursed, or even that he brought this down on himself by tempting fate. Not rational, of course, but Picard had to make himself vulnerable and embrace his emotional side more in order to admit his love for Beverly and take the steps of marrying her and conceiving a child with her. And he's been through the wringer for months already at the very start of the trilogy.

So yes, this is Picard at a less stable, more vulnerable state than we've ever seen him -- but it's hardly a mischaracterization, because it's justified by how he got to that point.

Somehow, I'd gotten the impression that Picard was characterized as he was as a balance to Ezri.

Picard was the more careful, reserved, "safe" captain. Ezri was more impatient, driven, and action-oriented.

Both of them were needed to defeat the Borg. When Ezri has her ship fly of to face the Borg, Picard had to talk her out of it.

Much later, Ezri and Hernandez have a risk-all plan, which Picard tries to discourage. In that case, Ezri was right, and Picard was wrong.

So, it was not a mistake, so much as it was a philisophical illustration of decisiveness vs. thoughtfullness, drive vs. patience, etc. There are pros and cons to each. Reality...is somewhere in between.

 

[BrotherBenny]

This thread is getting ridiculous.

We already saw what happened when the Caeliar hadn't stopped the Borg, it was in the episode "Parallels"

The truth of the matter is this. [] The finger is irrelevant. You will die in a pointless attempt to stop us [/]

But we don't die, we triumph by staying true to our ideals and showing another race the path of light.

The finger is not irrelevant. I'm sticking it up to the Borg and reading as the Federation and everyone else picks up the pieces and moves on.

 

[Rush Limborg]

You speak the truth, BrotherBenny!

In the end, by our leading by example, and holding true to our Liberty, we gain allies to our cause.

It was in this way the colonies gained the assistance of France.

It was in this way the North convinced Europe to not recognize the Confederacy as legit.

It was in this way...that America led NATO to victory in the Cold War.

As the old song goes:

Firm, United let us be!
Rallying 'round our Liberty!
As a band of brothers joined--
Peace and Safety we shall find!

 

[Therin of Andor]

If using thalaron weaponry is counter to trek humanism, then using foton torpedoes (matter-antimatter warheads) is equally counter to trek's humanism.
And starfleet/everyone else have no problem whatsoever in using foton torpedoes in any situation they can think of.

You mean photon torpedoes?

Memory Alpha tells us that "research on thalaron was banned by the Federation sometime prior to 2379 due to its biogenic properties. Thalaron radiation consumes organic material at the subatomic level. Whereas gamma radiationmutation of an organism's genome, thalaron radiation causes instant and complete necrosis in every cell it irradiates. Following exposure, the organism degenerates into an ash-like material, completely devoid of life. Even a minuscule amount of thalaron radiation could kill every living being aboard a starship in a matter of seconds. Due to its massive destructive potential, thalaron radiation is considered to be a biogenic weapon."

Death by thalaron radiation looked incredibly painful for the Romulan senators who were exposed to just a small amount of it. Do you really want the Borg assimilating that technology? Death by photon torpedo would be too quick to cause pain, one would think.

 

[LaBarre]

I don't think I'm being unfair Christopher, but I certainly don't mean to be offensive to the author, whose trilogy I really liked, except for this aspect.

I prefaced my contrast between FC Picard and Destiny Picard by saying that I found the latter characterisation "so off base from all the backstory of the man we've received to date (with the exception of Dillard's Resistance which is just too silly on too many fronts to take seriously) that I find it impossible to beleive in the reality of the character presented."

I was therefore taking into account and accepting everything that had occurred to the character and his development prior to FC and "all that took place" between FC and Destiny (except Resistance), and it is on that basis that I found Mr Mack's Picard almost impossible to believe.

I understand that you see the fundamental difference between the FC Picard and the Destiny Picard is that "[h]e's a married man and an expectant father now" and that parenthood and the Borg represent his greatest vulnerabilities and that in Destiny they are in synergy. I can go with that. I agree with your view that the Borg-centred events leading up to Destiny have worn him down and made him fearful, perhaps even to the extent of seeing himself as cursed. Before Dishonour, Greater than the Sum, etc have all contributed to forming just that impression of the character in the reader's mind.

What I question is whether all of that is sufficient to make him the psychological wreck Mack presents us with in Destiny. This is because Mack doesn't make the case. His characterisation of Picard doesn't help the reader make the leap from vulnerable instability to full-blown psychosis.

Vulnerability I get, a little less stable than normal, I get. But is Destiny Picard more vulnerable and more unstable than the BoBW Picard or post-Cardassian torture Picard or FC Picard? And if that was the intention, then what is there in Mack's writing of Picard that would lead me as a reader to reach that conclusion.

And that leads me to the second of the twofor I posited.

Even if the reasons for Mack's characterisation are not established (at least in this reader's opinion), the fact is that Destiny's Picard is burdened by a serious psychological illness (whether due to the synergy of vulnerabilities or his psychic connection to the Borg - or both). That's the character we are presented with. If even we can see it, why doesn't the CMO remove him from command?

 

[Christopher]

^"Full-blown psychosis?" Do you even know what that word means? Psychosis is a condition characterized by a loss of touch with reality, the suffering of hallucinations, delusions, disordered thinking and language use, etc. None of those was the case with Picard. He was clearly in serious emotional distress, but he was fully cognizant of the reality around him. Your earlier characterization of his condition as a bipolar disorder seems reasonably accurate, but a mood disorder is not a psychosis, and assuming that they're one and the same is not only ignorant but insulting to the many, many people, myself included, who have experienced mood disorders at various times in their lives. You've just tossed your credibility out the window.

 

[Nardpuncher]

This whole thread is out the window.