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Just finished reading this, thought it was an excellent story - raises the issue of how Voyager might have proceeded differently as a series if perhaps the crew had to stay instead of constantly making for home. I think it would have made a good two/three-part "what if" story, if not forming the basis for the later series of Voyager.
Great read, loving the Myriad Universe short stories!
I liked PoE very much, although I did get a sense that the author intended it as a way to tell the story of the show if everything had gone the way HE wanted it - i.e. "I hate the show, and this is a better way to do it". Which is not in itself an irrational thing to do, as that is what most authors do all the time anyway, but most of them don't get the chance to remake the entire show in their preferred image.
The ending, OTOH, would not be the thing *I* wanted:
As I recall, it involved a kind of galaxy-spanning holodeck/communicator, connecting the AQ and DQ in real time. The characters seemed to choose this as an acceptable alternative to actually getting home. I would not.
It seems like it...sort of was? But I love it for that, and honestly I have to say, Christopher's version of Voyager is definitely more interesting in a lot of ways than what Voyager itself had.
Also, I have to say, I'm really bad at noticing author's names a lot of the time. But recently I've been noticing that a lot of the Trek stories and books I've really enjoyed turn out to be Christopher Bennett's.
I liked PoE very much, although I did get a sense that the author intended it as a way to tell the story of the show if everything had gone the way HE wanted it - i.e. "I hate the show, and this is a better way to do it". Which is not in itself an irrational thing to do, as that is what most authors do all the time anyway, but most of them don't get the chance to remake the entire show in their preferred image.
The ending, OTOH, would not be the thing *I* wanted:
As I recall, it involved a kind of galaxy-spanning holodeck/communicator, connecting the AQ and DQ in real time. The characters seemed to choose this as an acceptable alternative to actually getting home. I would not.
You know that that could be reframed in precisely the opposite way for the series, right?
What about the crewmembers that didn't want to struggle for 70 years to reach home, that wanted to make a life for themselves in the Delta Quadrant where they actually could have a life? Wasn't the series pretty unfair for those crewmembers, with Janeway overruling their desires just to keep pushing forever on the journey?
^ On the show, for those crewmembers who DIDN'T want to stay on the ship, there were any number of friendly alien worlds they could have stopped at. It just so happens that no crewmember ever made that choice. They all wanted to go home. But in at least one episode (The 37's), Janeway makes it clear that any crewmember who wants to stay, can do so.
I personally thought this story was absolutely brilliant! I think in terms of 'reality', it was a much more realistic approach to me than some of the things that happened in the later seasons of "Voyager". I personally didn't expect the ship to get home at the end of the show, and felt kind of miffed when they did - You kind of already knew the beginning from the end at the start of the show....it would have been a lot more daring had the show went this way (the crew not getting home), and Christopher did a great job portraying such a possibility.
I liked PoE very much, although I did get a sense that the author intended it as a way to tell the story of the show if everything had gone the way HE wanted it - i.e. "I hate the show, and this is a better way to do it". Which is not in itself an irrational thing to do, as that is what most authors do all the time anyway, but most of them don't get the chance to remake the entire show in their preferred image.
I certainly didn't hate the show. If anything, what motivated this was just the opposite -- I loved the possibilities inherent in the show and its characters and regretted that the series didn't fulfill those possibilities.
And it wasn't just about doing the show the way I wanted it. When VGR was first announced, people expressed concerns that a show about a lost crew trying to get home was not true to the Star Trek spirit of exploration and sense of wonder, and the show's developers assured us that the crew would eventually grow beyond their yearning for home and begin to embrace the wonders and mysteries of the Delta Quadrant. It took them a while to begin to fulfill that promise, but when they began developing stories for the third season, they sent out a letter to prospective pitchers (including me) announcing that they wanted to stop doing "quest for home" stories and focus on the crew embracing the adventure, being content to be together as a family aboard Voyager. And that's what we got in the third season -- aside from "False Profits," there wasn't a single "quest for home" story in the entire season... until we got to "Scorpion." For whatever reason, they suddenly changed their minds about what the show was going to be. Once Janeway risked everything and made a deal with the devil just to get a few years closer to home, the show could never again be about anything but the quest for home.
That's why I chose that as my divergence point. Because it was the crucial decision point for what Voyager would ultimately be about. Would it be the show its creators had hoped it would be, one that merely used the ship's abduction as an opportunity to tell stories about intrepid explorers facing danger with no Starfleet assistance to call on, a return to the spirit of TOS? Or would it be Gilligan's Island in space, a constantly thwarted struggle to return to home and hearth? Throughout the third season, it succeeded in being the former. But then it suddenly switched gears and became the latter, decisively and irrevocably. I wanted to see what would happen if it had stayed true to the direction it was heading in season 3, the direction that fulfilled the creators' original promises about the show. (And if it had been written with more Deep Space Nine-like sensibilities, a focus on continuity and characters having to deal with the long-term consequences of their actions.)
The ending, OTOH, would not be the thing *I* wanted:
As I recall, it involved a kind of galaxy-spanning holodeck/communicator, connecting the AQ and DQ in real time. The characters seemed to choose this as an acceptable alternative to actually getting home. I would not.
But now they have the resources of the whole Delta Coalition, an advanced and prosperous civilization, to help them figure out how to do so. Heck, the evolved Kes could probably use her superpowers to send them back to the AQ if that was what they wanted. She sent herself there easily enough.
I know what you mean. In "Endgame," Harry gave this great speech about how focusing on the destination was missing the point and how all that mattered was that they were together as a family on their beloved ship, and that doing the right thing and upholding Starfleet values was more important than returning to their comfortable homes -- and then they totally ruined it by having Janeway figure out a way to get home anyway. It's like, "Oh, we've all learned this important lesson that gives our entire journey meaning and resolution -- so now let's all completely abandon and ignore it and act on our original selfish wishes anyway!"
IIRC, "Real Life" - the only episode where the Vostigye were actually mentioned onscreen - had one of their space stations being destroyed, when Voyager happened to be in the area. Never mind that it was a natural phenomenon which did this, wouldn't the Vostigye have suspected our crew of having done it? These must be very trusting people to so readily take in refugees from a ship that, for all the Vostigye knew, destroyed one of their own space stations.
