Praise for Star Trek: Stargazer

[bok2384]

Slightly out-of-date I know, but I've had a lot of reading time over the last couple of weeks, and so I thought I'd given Michael Jan Friedman's Stargazer series a go.

I'm about a third of the way through Three at the moment, and must say I absolutely love the series. An excellent cast of new characters which really flesh out Picard's first command. The brilliant Lieutenant Obal, the Asmund sisters, Simenon: all top class.

Are there anymore fans of the series out there, and more importantly, does anyone know if there is ever going to be anymore of these? I've bought all six, and I just wondered if there was a chance of seing further volumes.

 

[sulfur]

Nothing further really... but there are a couple of others that tie into it (all by the same author) including Reunion and Death in Winter.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Valiant is the first, pulished under the TNG banner. It and Reunion are the only ones I've read so far (I enjoyed both), but I plan on getting to the others at some point.

There's a brief cameo by MJF's Stargazers in a flashback scene during one of DC's TNG comics. I've been reading so many on that damn (awesome) DVD I'm afraid I have no idea which issue it was.

Christopher's The Buried Age is often cited as the definitive Picard/Stargazer story. I've yet to read that either, but I know it's set about twenty years after MJF's books.

 

[Christopher]

Christopher's The Buried Age is often cited as the definitive Picard/Stargazer story.

Really? That's a surprise to me, since the Stargazer characters only have a smallish supporting role in the first four chapters. Part I of The Buried Age is literally the final Stargazer story chronologically -- unless you count Mike Friedman's story "Darkness" from Tales of the Captain's Table, which is set shortly after those events but only has one SGZ character in it other than Picard -- but definitive? I would never presume to say that.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^I'm only repeating what I've heard others say, and I've probably garbled it. Maybe they were saying that it was the definitive Picard story, that just happend to be set (at least in part) on the Stargazer?

 

[bok2384]

Thanks for the replies guys, its a shame it doesn't look as if there's any more on the horizon. Reunion was the first Trek novel I ever read back in the day, so I'm hoping to return to it once I've finished this run. The same with The Valiant, I read it years ago and hoped to read it first, but I've lost my copy.

Thanks for the heads-up with that DC comic version KingDaniel. I've got the comic DVD too, and have only gotten as far as the DC TOS run so far, there's so much on there.

I must also add my applause and appreciation for Christopher's Buried Age. I read that novel when it first came out, and it was amazing what it did for Picard. The ending even wanted to make my watch TNG Season 1, and any person who can do that, has to be very gifted indeed.

 

[Julio Angel Ortiz]

I enjoyed the series a lot; a fun, curious look at Picard's early days in command. Kind of light fair, very character-focused. I kept hoping we'd see just what the Stargazer was known for (exploration), which was hinted at the end of Maker. Imagine a Titan-esque Stargazer adventure. That would be 10 kinds of awesome.

 

[JD]

There is also a Stargazer MU story called The Traitor in Shards and Shadows. It was probably one of my least favorite stories in the collection, but it could still be interesting for someone who likes SG as much as you seem to. Tales of the Dominion War, also has a SGish story, called What Dreams May Come.

 

[garoo1980]

Valiant is the first, pulished under the TNG banner. It and Reunion are the only ones I've read so far (I enjoyed both), but I plan on getting to the others at some point.

There's a brief cameo by MJF's Stargazers in a flashback scene during one of DC's TNG comics. I've been reading so many on that damn (awesome) DVD I'm afraid I have no idea which issue it was.

Christopher's The Buried Age is often cited as the definitive Picard/Stargazer story. I've yet to read that either, but I know it's set about twenty years after MJF's books.

I've read Valiant, Reunion and DIW and enjoyed them all. I read them completely out of sequence and didn't seem to hurt at all. If you like any of MJF's work I suspect you'll really like those.

 

[Julio Angel Ortiz]

Some other Stargazer adventures:

The TNG novel The First Virtue (part of the Double Helix series) is also (essentially) a Stargazer novel; it takes place when Jack Crusher is on the crew, probably about 12 to 15 years into Picard's command of the ship (I don't have an exact timeline).

The prologue of the old TNG novel Requiem takes place the Stargazer, and recalls an encounter with the Gorn, and also features Jack Crusher. It's about 20 pages, so it's almost like a Stargazer short story on it's own.

And as mentioned already, The Buried Age's first few chapters form the "conclusion" to the Stargazer adventures (though "Darkness", the short story in the Tales From the Captain's Table anthology, sheds light on the fate of one of my favorite Stargazer characters).

 

[DrCorby]

I saw this thread a few days ago, but didn't have time to respond then. Sorry I'm late.

Unfortunately, it looks like I'm completely out of step with everybody else here. I really disliked the Stargazer series by Friedman. I'd read the stand-alone novel Reunion and thought it was OK, so I was willing to give the series a chance when it came out. I bought the first couple and was very disappointed.

I thought the books were extremely "soap opera-y" -- lots of focus on who likes who and other shenanegans. I was also surprised that I disliked many of the major characters; a large number seemed (IMO) to be very poor examples of Starfleet officers in their behavior. One or two, maybe, in a ship's officer corps, but it seemed like most of the Stargazer crew had serious character flaws.

When the third novel came out, I skimmed it at the bookstore. 60 pages in, nothing had happened that connected to the supposed main plot described on the back cover, just lots of junior high-level antics and melodrama. So I left it on the rack. I did buy the novel where Picard met Guinan for the first time (#4?), but that still felt very "meh" to me. Certainly not the "beyond friendship, beyond family" experience that Guinan described in "The Best of Both Worlds". That was the last of the series I purchased or read.

I'm sorry I couldn't enjoy the series as others apparently did. I'm guessing it was a sylistic writing experiment that just wasn't my cup of tea. However, I did enjoy the brief appearance the Stargazer and her crew made in Christopher Bennett's The Buried Age -- an outstanding story that captured Picard's character well for me.

 

[diankra]

Unfortunately, it looks like I'm completely out of step with everybody else here.

You're not alone, Dr Corby - I thought Stargazer was easily the weakest Trek-lit series, unless you include the Genesis Wave/Force batch. They felt as if no work was put in after the outline had been accepted.
But if people enjoy them, then that's good for them -they're just not in the top 3000-odd of my 'must re-read sometime' list.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

...many of the major characters; a large number seemed (IMO) to be very poor examples of Starfleet officers in their behavior. One or two, maybe, in a ship's officer corps, but it seemed like most of the Stargazer crew had serious character flaws.

Well, Admiral McAteer was deliberately filling up any gaps on Stargazer with "problem cases".

Blame him .

 

[Steve Roby]

Some comments I wrote on my blog when I finally read the Stargazer books last year:

The books are resolutely old-fashioned, verging on simplistic. Each novel is a standalone, though there are a few ongoing arcs from book to book. The prose is solid and unpretentious, the types of stories being told the kind that could be adapted to any of the Trek book series. They've generally got good, basic SF stories -- space pirates, space anomalies, and so on -- and there's a lot of focus on the original characters in Picard's crew. The execution isn't always what it could be -- in Gauntlet, there are some brief scenes involving the space pirate that read like something out of a pulp circa 1940, complete with "they'll never take us alive, mwahahaha" dialogue, and the truth behind the pirate's activities and motivations doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. I'm also of the opinion that the crazy Starfleet Admiral is a story element that should have been retired a long, long time ago. But by and large this is straightforward Trek; I've read a lot of TOS and TNG novels that feel pretty similar to these books. It's just that they feel like the product of another era -- the Ordoverian era, perhaps. I probably would have enjoyed them just fine fifteen years or so ago. After the DS9 relaunch, Vanguard, Titan, Destiny, and so on, they don't excite me.

 

[bok2384]

Thanks for the replies everyone. It doesn't look as if there is going to be anymore on the horizon, so I'll just have to absorb everything there is.

Looking at some of the criticism of the series, I can see what some mean in saying that it is, almost simplistic. Maybe you're all right, even I must admit I haven't enjoyed Three or Oblivion as much as the first two, they just felt like they were going nowhere. I mean, Three had a plot which involved the Mirror Universe, but it barely got a cameo appearance, and I agree that Oblivion's dealing of the "first" meeting with Picard and Guinan has been less than stellar.

And yet, I think the simplicity is why I'm liking it in the first place, as its light watching episodes of The Next Generation, largely episodic in nature and quite character based. Watching TNG again recently, for the first time in years, I realize how slight some of the stories were in favor of character development. I mean look at "Elementary, Dear Data", we have a lot of set-up about how dangerous Moriarty is and then it ends with Picard showing up telling him that he can't come off of the holodeck and Moriarty says "OK" and lets everyone go.

I'm rambling slightly, but basically, I enjoy the rather TV-feel that has been given through these books, but after years of novels with major event, following major event and a cast of thousands that you give up trying to remember, a little simplicity is a welcome break.

 

[USS Intrepid]

I recently read the Stargazer series, having chased the novels up on Amazon. I absolutely loved 'em. Make of that what you will.