Spoilers PIC: The Last Best Hope by Una McCormack Review Thread

[Christopher]

True, I suppose I was largely focused on the fact that the isolated Romulan people would have been a more interesting follow up on the Typhon Pact's politics and the first true stress test for what was never supposed to be the Legion of Doom but a Warsaw Pact at worst.

The Pact was really meant to be more like the early Federation, a loose alliance of formerly divided cultures recognizing a common cause and struggling to work out their differences and find a path forward. They were meant to be an alternative to the Federation, not a black-hat enemy for it.

And yes, it could've been an interesting story in isolation if the novels had done the supernova. But I don't mind that things worked out the way they did, because PIC's reworking of the supernova premise makes so much more sense than the movie version, so I'd rather do fiction based on that continuity, given the chance. There are always missed opportunities in the past, but I'd rather focus on the opportunities that still exist.

 

[Tuskin38]

One of the Picard prequel comics did cover the evacuation of a Romulan colony that was too close to the supernova's danger zone.

 

[CaptChris42]

Given that Spock is not known for hyperbole, I certainly PREFER, when possible I guess, to take his (and Data's, natch) comments as at close to face value, overall, as practical. So when he says things like 'threatened to destroy the galaxy', it is tempting to see this as fairly close to, if not literal - then at least, not totally spurious. Of course, what's done is done.

I still fairly liked how ST Online handled it, and all the story possibilities that set off - but Picard's focus was so much narrower, hence, the streamlining (or as some might see it, denuding) of the wider context. Again, each to their own. Possibilities of course, still exist - but format now often dictates content (a-hmm) In the streaming/binging era, and beyond.

 

[Christopher]

Given that Spock is not known for hyperbole, I certainly PREFER, when possible I guess, to take his (and Data's, natch) comments as at close to face value, overall, as practical. So when he says things like 'threatened to destroy the galaxy', it is tempting to see this as fairly close to, if not literal - then at least, not totally spurious. Of course, what's done is done.

I take refuge in the fact that Spock didn't speak those words aloud. We saw and heard what Kirk perceived in the mind meld, which was very stream-of-consciousness and fragmented. So it's possible that it was filtered through Kirk's perceptions as a first-time meld recipient, and maybe he didn't interpret what he saw and heard quite correctly. Maybe "threatened to destroy the galaxy" was how Kirk's mind exaggerated whatever concept Spock Prime actually communicated.

And of course, there's always the Doylist interpretation that Roddenberry himself favored, that we're only seeing a dramatization of the "actual" events, and anything that doesn't make sense can be attributed to an error or poetic license in the dramatization.

 

[Charles Phipps]

The Pact was really meant to be more like the early Federation, a loose alliance of formerly divided cultures recognizing a common cause and struggling to work out their differences and find a path forward. They were meant to be an alternative to the Federation, not a black-hat enemy for it.

True, I suppose fan expectation was always working against the Typhon Pact. When Jon Ostrander created the STAR WARS: LEGACY series, he made the Galactic Empire (or Imperial Remnant) reformed with a benevolent Force using monarchy as the head and planned for them to be the primary opposition to the Sith Empire. Instead, much to his surprise, fans were much more interested in a return of the Jedi (rimshot) or Galactic Alliance/Republic. Because, well, those were the historic good guys.

The Breen, Tzenkethi, and Romulans (despite attempts to bring them) all working together seemed more like, "these are un-democratic dictatorships working on an alliance against the federation's spread." So you have to wonder what makes them morally rootable versus people joining the Federation or their Alliance.

 

[Christopher]

The Breen, Tzenkethi, and Romulans (despite attempts to bring them) all working together seemed more like, "these are un-democratic dictatorships working on an alliance against the federation's spread." So you have to wonder what makes them morally rootable versus people joining the Federation or their Alliance.

Because the whole deal of the Pact is that it wasn't monolithic. The main thread of the Pact narrative wasn't about a unified Pact vs. the Federation, it was about the different factions within the Pact jockeying for power against each other. On the one hand, you had the hardcore bad guys like the Breen, the Tzenkethi, and the Kinshaya theocracy pushing for their brands of imperialism and aggression, but on the other hand, you had more ambiguous powers like the Gorn and the Imperial Romulan State who just wanted what was best for their people and their alliance. That battle between the Pact's own members to define which members would dominate the others and what kind of state it would become was the entire point of the narrative: would it become the aggressive black-hat state that some of its members wanted, or would the moderate factions win out and turn the Pact into something dedicated to the good of all its members?

Bottom line, what the idea behind the Pact boiled down to, and what was hard for a lot of readers to get, was the principle that not everything revolves around the Federation. Superpowers have a tendency to warp geopolitics, or astropolitics, around their own agendas and drag everyone else along with them. But smaller powers want the freedom to pursue their own concerns and priorities, and would prefer it if the superpowers would just leave them to it. That was the idea behind the Pact -- not to oppose the Federation, merely to offer an alternative that was strong enough to stand on its own rather than being bossed around by the UFP or the Klingons. Yes, a couple of its members saw it as a way to support their aggression against the Federation or others, but the rest just wanted to focus on their own interests and couldn't care less about the Federation as long as it left them alone.