Guess that wouldn't be difficult if it was a novel set after "The Cage" with Pike appearing in it, mentioning having seen one of them on Talos IV or if a part of it was set on this planet.
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Question about "Dreams of the Raven"
- Thread starter Unimatrix Q
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Guess that wouldn't be difficult if it was a novel set after "The Cage" with Pike appearing in it, mentioning having seen one of them on Talos IV or if a part of it was set on this planet.
I find that unpleasantly coincidental. What are the odds that he'd just happen to run into another of the species the Talosians had taken captive?
Yeah, not so great. But on the other side still bigger than Voyager encountering the Kazon and the Vidians again and again, even after three years on their journey home
But considering Burnham having access to Picard's log entrees, showing details of Jean Luc's talk with Spock on Romulus, after over 800 years, i think it's not too unreasonable to assume that at least parts of what Pike experienced on Talos IV ended up in log entrees, archived by starfleet.
Maybe even videos or pictures of this bird creature...
Yeah, not so great. But on the other side still bigger than Voyager encountering the Kazon and the Vidians again and again, even after three years on their journey home
I don't get why people find that strange. The Kazon were explicitly established as a nomadic people, so of course you'd find them widely spread out. And the Vidiians were advanced and searching widely for new victims to harvest organs from, so it makes sense for them to be widespread too.
What deserves complaining about is the Malon being encountered again in "Juggernaut," after Voyager has made a 10,000-light year slipstream jump and a 20,000-ly transwarp journey since "Night." And, of course, encountering bloody Talaxians in "Homestead" after they've gone some 45,000 light years from the vicinity of Talax.
But there would be no possible reason to bring up such a reference in a story that wasn't about Pike or the Talosians. Throwing in continuity for no other reason than showing off your knowledge of continuity is bad writing. If something isn't needed in a story, it doesn't belong.
Yeah, the thing with the Malon was really stupid.
The Vidians were explainable, because they seemed to be a technologically advanced species.
But that wasn't true about the Kazon. If i remember it right, they hadn't the ships of the Trabe (and therefore warp capabillity) for long and didn't their ships only reach Warp 2 or 3?
And the cherry on top is that it were the same Kazon Janeway encountered before, that appeared again and again until Season 3...
Why is that a problem? Human nomads were able to get all over the planet on foot. Think of the Jewish people, the Bantu migrations, the Roma. You don't need speed to travel far, just time. Voyager spent a paltry three years in the area; the Kazon had been there for generations. So of course they'd spread far, because that's what nomads do.
It was clearly explained in the show that Maje Culluh and Seska were actively following them. It was explicitly not a coincidence. The only implausible thing was their ability to keep up, but Voyager did keep making stops along the way, so that could explain it.
As for Dreams of the Raven, anybody think the Frenni merchants were merely our favorite big-lobed folks spelled a bit funny? Canon stays mum on when the Ferengi were "found out", apart from ENT showing an incident that wasn't "it" yet. By TOS, they might have been known quantities among deep space traders, even if official contact was still lacking and the authorities might have taken a dimmer view on their antics than frontiersmen did...
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Yeah, that's one thing I liked about Voyager. They would encounter some empire or civilization a couple times for a while, then eventually they would move beyond them, the encounter new civilizations along the way. The Kazon and Vidians, then eventually the Malon and Hirogen, and then later on the Heirarchy.
Yeah, agree with you there. That was one that is tough to explain. I think that was a case of someone probably getting careless. Usually they were pretty careful during the Berman era with big details like that. There were some misses of course, but some were minor or could be smoothed over with a little creative storytelling. But encountering the Malon after such a large jump is a biggie that can't just be poo poo'd away.
I'm trying to recall, was that explained in the episode somehow? I seem to recall they might have explained that. Though I agree, it seemed a bit gratuitous, a convenient way to get Neelix off the ship I guess, though I'm not sure why that was so important. He had long before decided to stay with Voyager until they got home.
Regarding the novel Dreams of the Raven, is that the one where the Ravens cracked open the skulls of their victims and basically swallowed the brain of their victims? I'm a huge horror movie fan but even I found that part a bit chilling. And then I recall the screams of the 'victims' after the primary consciousness was eliminated and the secondary personality took over and realized what had happened. Really horrifying when you think about it, not quite dead, but not quite living either. That's what I kept thinking, how hellish that must be.
I also recall another book with a similar bone chilling scene, I think it was a Captain Pike story, where they encounter large reptiloid creatures who had numbed part of the landing party and then proceeded to eat the person whole like a snake. Then a description of the reptiloid appearing sated as it digested the crewmember.
That gave me some chills too.
No -- that's what's so damn frustrating about "Homestead." They run across Talaxians 45,000 light-years from Talax, and nobody on Voyager seems to think it's startling or worthy of comment. Which is tantamount to saying that all of Voyager's arduous journey and extraordinary leaps over the past 7 years have been irrelevant, because some random band of colonists was able to beat them to it as if it were a casual commute. It's infuriating. Why did they even need to be Talaxians? Just make them some other band of aliens that Neelix identifies with. Or, heck, let Neelix reach the Federation with the rest of the crew. He didn't need to be written out.
Yes, that's the one. It is effectively chilling.
I also recall another book with a similar bone chilling scene, I think it was a Captain Pike story, where they encounter large reptiloid creatures who had numbed part of the landing party and then proceeded to eat the person whole like a snake. Then a description of the reptiloid appearing sated as it digested the crewmember.
Probably Margaret Wander Bonanno's Burning Dreams, a Pike novel with snake-like aliens.
It's one of the reasons Voyager was my least favorite of the Berman spin-offs. Overall the series was mostly fine, but it seemed to have more clunkers than the other series. And I agree on both counts. I mean, maybe if Phillips was leaving the series in season 4 or something. But it was the 2nd or 3rd to the last episode. Seemed like a pointless write off.
I'm trying to recall do any of the Voyager relaunch novels address this afterwards? I know Neelix popped up now and again and I wonder of Christie Golden or Kirsten Beyer addressed that at all and tried to 'fix' it. Kind of a shame it'd be up to a novel to rectify such a glaring plot hole, but it wouldn't be the first time.
Most definitely. Sometimes, if done right, something in writing can be more chilling than actually seeing it (though I imagine seeing bird like aliens crack someone's skull open and basically pluck out and eat someone's brain would be pretty disgusting
). But then later, the blood curdling screaming of the creatures after their secondary, 'human' personality takes over and realizes what has been done was spine tingling as well.Yep, found it. The part I recalled is on p. 255 of the paper back version. They saw one of the men ingested and 3 other creatures swollen and sated, indicating what had happened to 3 missing crewmen. Ugh. I think I'd rather get hit by a bus than eaten. There are bad ways to go....then there are BAD ways to go.
Not sure what is worse, having my brain plucked out by a giant bird and being stuck in some none-life none-death limbo. Being eaten alive by a giant snake, or being turned into a mass of pulsating flesh was described in one of the Genesis Wave novels after a transporter accident (that was horrifyingly descriptive as well, I still remember the description that it was still pulsating basically). Or you can have your flesh melt off your body like what happened to one of Khan's band of merry superwomen in To Reign In Hell when she thought it would be a good idea to swim in acid (though in fairness she thought it was an ocean). Star Trek books are no stranger to horrifying visuals sometimes.
Personally the transporter accident would probably be the quickest way to go. Doesn't sound very pleasant but I imagine that's more so for the people seeing the remains then the actual person that's been turned inside out. But that's just me.
BTW, in To Reign in Hell I still love after that horrifying scene that one of Khan's band of merry supermen, Ericcson I believe, threw up, and Khan 'allowed' him his momentary weakness because it was, well, pretty disgusting to watch. Very magnanimous of Khan.
He's such a swell guy
He's such a swell guy
The thing about the Talaxians is that back in The Voyager Conspiracy, they mention a recent encounter with a freighter with supplies from a former Talaxian colony. So the colony in Homestead actually has an element of consistency with the rest of the series, even in being headbangingly infuriating in terms of how tiny it makes the Delta Quadrant.
I mean, I have a couple of justifications and explanations in mind myself, but yeah... Even A LITTLE acknowledgment about how the odds are against both a Talaxian colony being this far from home AND Voyager, the one ship in this part of space with a Talaxian on board, coming across them would have been nice.
I mean, I have a couple of justifications and explanations in mind myself, but yeah... Even A LITTLE acknowledgment about how the odds are against both a Talaxian colony being this far from home AND Voyager, the one ship in this part of space with a Talaxian on board, coming across them would have been nice.
These aren't really that big of a deal given we know that the Delta Quadrant is littered with Subspace corridors that were used by the Vaadwaur. We know that there were subspace corridors near Talax given the Vaadwar visted Talax and presumably other planets in the region in the past. Also given the Malon were continually looking for places to dump their waste it stands to reason that they may have come across the corridors as well.
We're not gonna talk about Voyager coming across seeming human worlds in the Delta Quadrant with no explanation?
What human worlds? The only one I recall is the one from The 37s, which was explicitly explained as being descendants of abducted humans.
Sure, there were a couple of aliens of the week who didn’t even have the Star Trek standby of a little facial putty or something to mark them as alien, so they all looked human, but that goes back to TOS, it’s happened several times. They might LOOK human, but they’re still aliens.
Yeah, aliens who look exactly like humans have been a staple of science fiction all along. And not just back in the days before fancy prosthetic makeup -- it still happens with things like Jupiter Ascending and the MCU. They were surprisingly common in the first season or two of VGR, compared to other Michael Westmore-era Trek.
"The 37's" is another one of these cases in Voyager that made no sense. What are the odds that aliens that abduct humans bring their captives to a planet, directly on Voyager's way back to the Alpha Quadrant??
Pretty high?
After all, it's pure math. And "odds" would be directly proportional to how many human abductions there were in the first place. If the answer is "many" then odds are "high".
If abducting the bunch that contains Amelia Earhart is plausible and doable, then why would these criminals stop doing the good thing? Why would there not be other groups doing the exact same thing to us poor helpless humans? And indeed we get two other cases, in ENT "North Star" and TOS "Paradise Syndrome". Might be millions were taken, in clusters of a hundred or so, by hundreds of different players.
That Janeway's heroes ran into Earhart just means that Ransom might have run into Ezekiel or perhaps Hoffa: "famous" missing people tend to be famous because of going missing, and if the reason for going missing is alien abduction...
It's just too bad the Talaxians weren't explicit abductees, too. Transporters make that sort of thing ridiculously easy and attractive for anybody interested in slave labor, and OTOH it probably makes sense to take the victims as far from the point of abduction as possible - that is, to abduct from points distant from the one where you practice illegal mining or whatever with slaves. Once this gets a bit too risky when the victims evolve, the criminals may move on to hijacking spacecraft, which famously go missing a lot in the late 20th and early 21st century. And then the victims invent warp, and the gig finally ends.
(Then again, Talaxians sure have an excuse. They're on an exodus: one of their planets recently was blown up, and the other occupied. Add a bit of innate wanderlust and you get Talaxians at the Beta Quadrant border just as easily as you get Jews at the ends of the world fairly soon after AD 70.)
Timo Saloniemi
After all, it's pure math. And "odds" would be directly proportional to how many human abductions there were in the first place. If the answer is "many" then odds are "high".
If abducting the bunch that contains Amelia Earhart is plausible and doable, then why would these criminals stop doing the good thing? Why would there not be other groups doing the exact same thing to us poor helpless humans? And indeed we get two other cases, in ENT "North Star" and TOS "Paradise Syndrome". Might be millions were taken, in clusters of a hundred or so, by hundreds of different players.
That Janeway's heroes ran into Earhart just means that Ransom might have run into Ezekiel or perhaps Hoffa: "famous" missing people tend to be famous because of going missing, and if the reason for going missing is alien abduction...
It's just too bad the Talaxians weren't explicit abductees, too. Transporters make that sort of thing ridiculously easy and attractive for anybody interested in slave labor, and OTOH it probably makes sense to take the victims as far from the point of abduction as possible - that is, to abduct from points distant from the one where you practice illegal mining or whatever with slaves. Once this gets a bit too risky when the victims evolve, the criminals may move on to hijacking spacecraft, which famously go missing a lot in the late 20th and early 21st century. And then the victims invent warp, and the gig finally ends.
(Then again, Talaxians sure have an excuse. They're on an exodus: one of their planets recently was blown up, and the other occupied. Add a bit of innate wanderlust and you get Talaxians at the Beta Quadrant border just as easily as you get Jews at the ends of the world fairly soon after AD 70.)
Timo Saloniemi
Really, most stories rely on some degree of coincidence. What are the odds that Pike's Enterprise would've been in the right place to pick up the distress signal from Talos IV? What are the odds that Kirk's best friend would happen to have the esper potential to turn him into a demigod, rather than just killing him or leaving him unaffected like most of the crew? What are the odds that a freak transporter accident would duplicate Kirk rather than just killing him? And so on. Fiction is about the cases that are extraordinary enough to be worth our attention. So it's biased toward the improbable.
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