Quite a lot of death and destruction.....

[Mage]

While in bed yesterday, trying to fall to sleep, it hit me that this year we've already seen quite a lot of death and destruction in TrekLit, from the events in the last Vanguard novel, PoN and RtD, The Eternal Tide...

Is it me, or has this been the 'bloodiest' year in TrekLit since Destiny?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Nowadays I bleep over the mass death scenes like I bleep over the having babies angst.

The books go by real fast this way.

 

[Paris]

While in bed yesterday, trying to fall to sleep, it hit me that this year we've already seen quite a lot of death and destruction in TrekLit, from the events in the last Vanguard novel, PoN and RtD, The Eternal Tide...

Is it me, or has this been the 'bloodiest' year in TrekLit since Destiny?

It's dangerous out there

 

[Jarvisimo]

Star Trek now tries to reflect a post-colonial, post-first world man's universe where death is a larger part of the landscape than the bourgeois life we all generally inhabit. It's central Africa Trek, Middle East Trek, central America Trek, Baltimore Trek!

But seriously, how much death was there in the Original Series, in Deep Space Nine, Enterprise? Well not perhaps the 6 billion of Trek 09, or the tens of billions in recent Treklit. But I think regarding the massive destructions and deaths in Treklit reflect our zeitgeistal desire to have a lot more death, even though it is seen through the first world lens of a post-HBO creative freedom and a post-9/11 engagement with mortality and violence? Rather than the day to day, nothing new, state of life in the territories mentioned above.

 

[Christopher]

^There were instances of planetary genocide in TOS, such as "Operation: Annihilate!," "The Changeling," and "The Immunity Syndrome." It's just that it was mostly offscreen, a disaster mentioned as already having occurred before the episode began, so the consequences weren't really felt. Or just after the episode, as in "The Empath" -- remember, there were multiple inhabited planets doomed by the supernova and the Vians could only save the population of one of them. So yes, there were billions of lives lost in TOS, just not Federation lives.

Not to mention the huge losses that Starfleet suffered in the second season -- the crews of Constellation, Intrepid, Excalibur, and Exeter all wiped out, plus numerous casualties on Lexington, Hood, and Potemkin. And then the loss of the Defiant just months after that. Starfleet was really hit hard in a short span of time there.

 

[zarkon]

Good thing they happened after errand of mercy really

 

[Sci]

Star Trek now tries to reflect a post-colonial, post-first world man's universe where death is a larger part of the landscape than the bourgeois life we all generally inhabit. It's central Africa Trek, Middle East Trek, central America Trek, Baltimore Trek!

<SNIP>

But I think regarding the massive destructions and deaths in Treklit reflect our zeitgeistal desire to have a lot more death, even though it is seen through the first world lens of a post-HBO creative freedom and a post-9/11 engagement with mortality and violence?

I think you're using a bit of hyperbole here, but for the most part, you're making a valid point. Modern Treklit seems very much influenced both by the increased creative freedom and sophistication displayed in modern media outlets like HBO, and by the increasingly interconnected post-9/11 world where the old boundaries of First, Second, and Third Worlds are all breaking down. I've thought for a while that the undercurrent of the events of Destiny and Typhon Pact -- of the Federation becoming less relatively powerful than it used to be due to losses of worlds, population, and ships, and of these smaller powers becoming relatively more powerful -- mirrors in part modern America's fixation on its own gradual fall from "only remaining superpower" status and on other nations' (especially China's) general rise to the status of Great Powers as the world reverts from a unipolar to multipolar paradigm.

 

[JD]

I think if any it's anything it's a side effect of the fact that they have started telling, bigger more impactful stories in Trek Lit.

 

[Mage]

Ofcourse there was death in Star Trek before, and on a large scale aswell. It just seemed to me that this year, sofar, we've had quite a lot of it.

 

[Use of Time]

Q said it best "If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross, but it's not for the timid."

 

[F. King Daniel]

I think Trek (especially 24th century Trek) is overdue something light and fun, to break up the near-constant stream of threats and chaos and destruction.

A spiritual successor to J.M. Ford's How Much For Just the Planet? would do nicely - although I fear (perhaps groundlessly?) Pocket may see publishing such a book nowadays as a risky proposition.

 

[Jarvisimo]

Star Trek now tries to reflect a post-colonial, post-first world man's universe where death is a larger part of the landscape than the bourgeois life we all generally inhabit. It's central Africa Trek, Middle East Trek, central America Trek, Baltimore Trek!

<SNIP>

But I think regarding the massive destructions and deaths in Treklit reflect our zeitgeistal desire to have a lot more death, even though it is seen through the first world lens of a post-HBO creative freedom and a post-9/11 engagement with mortality and violence?

I think you're using a bit of hyperbole here, but for the most part, you're making a valid point. Modern Treklit seems very much influenced both by the increased creative freedom and sophistication displayed in modern media outlets like HBO, and by the increasingly interconnected post-9/11 world where the old boundaries of First, Second, and Third Worlds are all breaking down. I've thought for a while that the undercurrent of the events of Destiny and Typhon Pact -- of the Federation becoming less relatively powerful than it used to be due to losses of worlds, population, and ships, and of these smaller powers becoming relatively more powerful -- mirrors in part modern America's fixation on its own gradual fall from "only remaining superpower" status and on other nations' (especially China's) general rise to the status of Great Powers as the world reverts from a unipolar to multipolar paradigm.

I wish one could like posts on BBS

 

[Jarvisimo]

^There were instances of planetary genocide in TOS, such as "Operation: Annihilate!," "The Changeling," and "The Immunity Syndrome." It's just that it was mostly offscreen, a disaster mentioned as already having occurred before the episode began, so the consequences weren't really felt. Or just after the episode, as in "The Empath" -- remember, there were multiple inhabited planets doomed by the supernova and the Vians could only save the population of one of them. So yes, there were billions of lives lost in TOS, just not Federation lives.

Not to mention the huge losses that Starfleet suffered in the second season -- the crews of Constellation, Intrepid, Excalibur, and Exeter all wiped out, plus numerous casualties on Lexington, Hood, and Potemkin. And then the loss of the Defiant just months after that. Starfleet was really hit hard in a short span of time there.

Indeed Christopher, I was being thoroughly ironic in asking about death in TOS, since there was such a high deathtoll in that series

I think Trek (especially 24th century Trek) is overdue something light and fun, to break up the near-constant stream of threats and chaos and destruction.

A spiritual successor to J.M. Ford's How Much For Just the Planet? would do nicely - although I fear (perhaps groundlessly?) Pocket may see publishing such a book nowadays as a risky proposition.

I think 24th century Trek rarely managed to do an entirely comic episode well. Ford was playing to rather more successful tonal diversity of TOS, which could manage farce much better. But the farcical and the overtly comedic in 24th Trek usually didn't work because the shows weren't so good at comedy, and the overly funny episodes seemed so tonally dissonant from the remainder of the series, as well as usually not being written, cast or directed so well. Sardonic and ironic humour was perhaps more suited to those shows, but they weren't very funny

 

[Christopher]

I think DS9 had some very funny episodes.

 

[Paris]

^I've always loved the DS9 ep with Quark and the other Ferengi trying to save Quark & Rom's mom. Iggy Pop was the Vorta adversary I believe. Funny stuff

 

[C.E. Evans]

I dunno. For me, yes, there was definitely an apocalypse during the time of Destiny and some reconstruction blues afterward--but I think for the most part, the past year has been something of a throwback to the TOS era in which the Federation is mired in political, economic, and technological struggles with a serious rival nation or two. But I do think the farther one goes from home, the less safe space becomes. In that sense, our heroes are in the business of trying to tame a wild and dangerous frontier.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Q said it best "If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross, but it's not for the timid."

"a little bloody nose" is no longer accurate.
These days, it's more like "beaten to a pulp" every other book.

The reason is equally simple: it sells books these days.

 

[Greg Cox]

Q said it best "If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross, but it's not for the timid."

A great bit. One of my all-time favorite STAR TREK quotes.

 

[JD]

^I've always loved the DS9 ep with Quark and the other Ferengi trying to save Quark & Rom's mom. Iggy Pop was the Vorta adversary I believe. Funny stuff

The Magnificent Ferengi. It's a favorite of mine too. And of course there was also Trials & Tribble-ations.
I also thought Bride of Chaotica, and A Fist Full of Datas were pretty good in VOY and TNG.

 

[Paris]

...and of course there was also Trials & Tribble-ations. I also thought Bride of Chaotica, and A Fist Full of Datas were pretty good in VOY and TNG.

Agreed on all fronts