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I was on 2400 baud, myself - but I did have EGA graphics (Two hundred and fifty-six whole colors, in beautiful 320x240 resolution!), so I guess it all balanced out.
And ST fans without computers would get handed telephone book-sized wads of perforated, faded, dot-matrixed print-outs with things like the "Star Trek List of Lists", episode guides, arguments about whether it was Filmation's STA or TAS, and "Classic Trek vs TOS", and ST news that was already out of date.
And ST fans without computers would get handed telephone book-sized wads of perforated, faded, dot-matrixed print-outs with things like the "Star Trek List of Lists", episode guides, arguments about whether it was Filmation's STA or TAS, and "Classic Trek vs TOS", and ST news that was already out of date.
Nah. There was a lot less "noise" on the Internet back then. No pop-ups, very few trolls, and a lot of fun - and no Microsoft Windows, at least for me. Just a man and his DOS commands. 'Twas the Age of Enlightenment.
I've often wondered what became of some of the people I talked to on GEnie way back when. You know, the ones aside from KRAD here, J. Michael Straczynski, and Bermuda (Weird Al's drummer), who either were or went on to become all famous-y. And I really wish I could find a copy of the round robins we wrote in the Comics Roundtables.
A good buy all around, I might add - not only for KRAD's excellent article, though it's worth the price for that alone.
By the way, with regard to exploding myths about Captain Kirk, I seem to remember another article that was all about disproving the myth that Kirk was a profligate womanizer. I think it was run in the magazine about a year ago...does anybody know what issue it was in, and who wrote the article (I think it was DRGIII, but I may be mistaken)?
It boggles the imagination. Agatha Christie detested Hercule Poirot, but she had enough sense not to kill him off.
QFT. I always liked the older, sadder Hastings in Curtain, and really hope they get this right when (if) they do the David Suchet adaptation, one of these days.
I'd agree. By their logic--now that Picard's "arc" is done
now that the Borg are no longer interfering with his plans
, let's kill him off too and see how Worf and Beverly reacts.
Sure, that would make a great story--but wouldn't that feel a bit gimmicky?
That's what I felt after Janeway's death.
Christopher said:
See, this is why resurrecting dead characters is a bad thing. It's been done so many times that fans these days expect any character death to be merely a setup for their resurrection, so instead of really feeling the death as a loss, they approach it merely as a temporary setback. And the emotional impact of death as a story element in serial fiction is undermined as a result.
I agree that resurrecting characters has set an expectation that no characters truly ever die. For this reason, I hope Janeway stays dead. However, I think why people might be expecting her to return this time is just because the death itself just felt so anti-climactic. Within the first few chapters Janeway nonchalantly steps into a Borg vessel and it "eats" her. C'mon. The whole concept of the Borg "eating" things was silly and I think the hope that some people cling to that she'll return is just a hope that that bit of "creativity" could be forgotten. Instead, whenever we think of Janeway we have to think "the Borg ate her."
PAD has been my favorite author for over a decade. It's been no secret that VOY was never his cup of tea, so when I read what he'd be doing with Janeway I was apprehensive, but figured if anyone had to kill off one of my favorite characters I'd rather it be someone I trusted. Aside from that bit at the end with bottomless cups of coffee, as a reader I felt cheated and insulted. I felt like I was on the outside of some big inside joke.
I suppose the point I'm trying to make is this: Janeway's death was silly. The whole concept of the Borg "eating" things was silly. I accept it and go with it as part of TrekLit Cannon, but it was definately not one of TrekLit's finer points.
^ For that matter, how about Chakotay? On arriving home, he's A) no longer responsible for getting his crew home (since, of course, a lot of the Voyager crew were previously his); B) no longer carrying the XO's responsibility of looking after the captain, a task he took to heart (so to speak); and C) no longer responsible for defending border worlds in the DMZ from Cardassian predations, since the Maquis were wiped out, Cardassia subsequently crushed, and generally the whole conflict resolved itself without him. The man's become redundant several times over; does that mean a death sentence? Paris improved himself as a character throughout the series run, going from shifty, out-for-number-one rogue to dedicated family man with strength of conviction. Is he next to die? Kim finally figured out in "Endgame" that it was about the journey, not the destination--shall we carve it on his tombstone?
Saying that a person has somehow fulfilled the purpose of its existence after seven years is silly. Any character can be repurposed. In the case of Voyager, that needs be most of the crew since the primary means of driving the plot is a now-resolved extrinsic device. Only the EMH and Seven of Nine would really have continous story arcs, since their development was intrinsic derived from who and what they were, and wouldn't be affected by location.
The difference is that, in his last canon appearance, Picard was still captain of the Enterprise, on a mission to explore the galaxy. Nothing's changed there, except for the characters around him. For Janeway, her role in the Trek universe was as a captain trying to get her crew home, and once that role was fulfilled, canon turned her into an admiral. Where do you go from there? Demote her back to captain? Been done with Kirk. Strand her back in the Delta Quadrant? That's so Rescue from Gilligan's Island. Sure, one could argue that another viable solution to the problem could've been found, and maybe that's even true. But the point is, Picard's situation doesn't work as an analogy because the problem doesn't exist with him.
However, I think why people might be expecting her to return this time is just because the death itself just felt so anti-climactic. Within the first few chapters Janeway nonchalantly steps into a Borg vessel and it "eats" her. C'mon. The whole concept of the Borg "eating" things was silly and I think the hope that some people cling to that she'll return is just a hope that that bit of "creativity" could be forgotten.
I don't understand why people think that's silly. On the contrary, I find it one of the most plausible things about Before Dishonor. The problem with the Borg as shown onscreen is that they've been established to be based on nanotechnology but their demonstrated abilities barely scratch the surface of what nanotech is hypothesized, or at least portrayed in prose SF, to be potentially capable of. There's a wealth of science fiction out there depicting nanotechnology that can break down any matter into its raw elements and restructure those elements into any desired object (universal assemblers) or more nanobots (self-replicators/grey goo). Heck, Starfleet itself should already have this capability; with transporter and replicator tech, it should be able to dematerialize any matter it comes in contact with and convert it into new components for a ship. Given the established potentials of Trek technology and nanotechnology, there is no reason why a Borg ship shouldn't be able to absorb a person, ship, or asteroid and convert it into more Borg tech. Granted, BD took that to a rather exaggerated extreme, but whatever you think of the execution, the underlying premise is solid and actually very tech-savvy. If anything, the truly silly thing is that we haven't seen the Borg do anything like that before.
Instead, whenever we think of Janeway we have to think "the Borg ate her."
^ Good points... I guess what feels "silly" to me is the way that it was depicted. Instead of some horrifying new Borg ability, it came across as, well, (I need a thesaurus) silly.
As I said, I am a huge fan of PAD, but this is the one novel that didn't work for me. Perhaps it was just a mismatch--a potentially great story, if told the right way. I think PAD's style of mixing dry humor with danger maybe gave the story the wrong tone.
But at this point I'm just debating personal taste and there's no sense in that.
I agree with this. However, the "problem" didn't exist with Janeway either. What's so difficult with telling stories about an Admiral? How is her being an admiral a 'problem' such that it needs 'fixing' by either demoting her, or killing her, or (as I still maintain she's not dead) removing her from all human contact whatsoever, such that she appears dead to those left behind.
Hmmm... let's see. Admiral Janeway. How about we send her out in command of an expedition of a small fleet of ships, to more fully explore the Delta Quadrant. If we're not going to feed her to the Borg, that is. Which is still my preference.
Instead, whenever we think of Janeway we have to think "the Borg ate her."
I took his tone as a personal nod to me. "I'm killing off Janeway, and I'm doing it in a dumb way, on purpose. Consider this a Valentine to the fans."
Before that book, I simply thought Peter David was an excellent author. But since I read Before Dishonor, I increasingly want to have his transwarp salamander babies.
I agree with this. However, the "problem" didn't exist with Janeway either. What's so difficult with telling stories about an Admiral? How is her being an admiral a 'problem' such that it needs 'fixing' by either demoting her, or killing her, or (as I still maintain she's not dead) removing her from all human contact whatsoever, such that she appears dead to those left behind.
I appreciated the fact that we were finally getting glimpses into the workings of the Admiralty in the A Time To... series, largely using Janeway as the audience's perspective. There's got to be a reason why the people running a massive, starfaring fleet and associated starbases and other installations across two quadrants--no mean feat to be sure--always come across as blinkered dunces about as competant as FEMA during a hurricane when they interact with 'our heroes' for any extended period of time. This would have been a prime opportunity to explore the upper echelons of Starfleet through the eyes of a regular, get some insight into why Starfleet brass make the decisions they do.
The VOY-R (and this is one of the few good things I'll say about the VOY-R, so you might want to record it for posterity) seemed to be making Janeway into kind of a diplomat-at-large, which could certainly have been the springboard for more traditional adventures but could also, in the hands of an adept author, have been like a mini-Articles plotline running through each VOY-R book. Sigh, lost opportunities now.
Quite a bit, based on the evidence. But hey, I'm on your side. There's a reason why I specifically instructed Dave Galanter to write a story for the "lost years" portion of Mere Anarchy to do a tale in which Kirk actually acts like an admiral. Every tale of "Admiral" Kirk has him trying to be a captain again. I wanted a story that takes advantage of his flag rank. I'm pleased to say that Shadows of the Indignant, the third part of Mere Anarchy, is very much that story.
I was on 2400 baud, myself - but I did have EGA graphics (Two hundred and fifty-six whole colors, in beautiful 320x240 resolution!), so I guess it all balanced out.
Ah yeah, the good old days, I remember getting a list of what I thought were up to date numbers for local boards only to hear angry parents answering and getting my modem signal, at 2:00AM. Oops.
Yeah, I totally agree on that one, why not kill every canon character off anyway? You would have so much more fun...more violence in Trek, more grief for the fans (why, skip the few who hate to read about death and people in distress just for the story's sake). We don't want to read about a better future than our present!! (irony off)
Seriously though, I think I have often said that I hate this Janeway development....and I still hate it so passionately! So killing off Picard would sound like a fair trade off for killing Kathy, eh?
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