Spoilers Star Trek - Picard: The Last Best Hope by Una McCormack Review Thread

Are the Qowat Milani new for this book or have they been in a novel/episode before? I love how contrasting they are to the other Romulans, really interested in reading more.

 

They're a creation of Picard (introduced onscreen in episode 4 this past week), so this is the first book to depict them.

 

Ah not got round to this weeks episode, shame they haven't got much behind them but hopefully we do see them continue to pop up

 

Because of network restrictions. The original show used frak to get around standards and practices and to reach a family-friendly audience. The new show was at a time when even cable networks were hesitant to push the language even though they always could say fuck. If BSG were on today they would no doubt use the real word. Being unable to use it does lead to creativity. But being able to use it can lead to an overload. But it's a just another word to be used when appropriate. There's a great scene in THE WIRE where the entire scene is just two characters repeating fuck over and over in different ways and it perfectly expresses their feelings. Swear words are not bad. They are not a sign of a poor vocabulary. They are nothing more than words. "Fuck the prime directive" has more power than "fudge the prime directive"

 

No; only premium/subscription cable channels could use that word freely. Galactica was on commercial-supported basic cable, the Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy), and at the time that meant no F-word, and maybe no S-word, though I don't recall when that became allowable on basic cable. It was only a couple of years ago that Syfy's The Magicians was able to convince the network to let them use the F-word unbleeped, and even then they were limited to 10 uses per episode.

 

Shit wasn't allowed on Sci-Fi Channel at that time, no. I remember shit is spoken in a third season episode of BSG, which was allowed in the Canadian broadcast of the episode, but the American broadcast had it bleeped out.

 

Does it really though? In the modern age, "fuck" is becoming one of the most overused words in pop culture. The only reason it gets on my radar where Trek is concerned, is because Trek tends to be conservative about those kinds of things.

 

That's how it was for Discovery, but for Picard, it's on Crave Thursday morning. I assume around the same time as it hits CBS All Access, I'm not sure. All I know it's there when I wake up in the morning.

 

It may be overused but when I hear someone replace it with fudge or frak or frick I just feel they're censoring themselves needlessly and it waters the line down. It loses power when that person uses the word constantly. The word needs to be punctuation. It needs to be as well used as any adverb or adjective out there.

 

I will say frak seemed to take on a life of its own and became a distinctive part of BSG's identity just as much as the frames with cut corners or Adama's glare.

 

Just finished. Pretty good book. My biggest quibble was the Jurati/Maddox relationship. It felt forced and out of place. Jurati lacked the zing she has in the series.

 

Good for Maddox though. he must be in his late 50's to get a 20 something. He's a real player.
Just don't use the actual age of the Alison Pill. It gets creepy then.

 

Lifespans are longer, right?

The relationship actually did work for me. How many people do we know who are in relationships with other people who do not deserve them? It is not that these latter are bad people, necessarily, but more a matter of the relationship being unbalanced. Jurati was into Maddox in an intense way that Maddox did not emulate with Jurati, and I think she deserved better.

 

One relationship, of a sort, that did upset me was the long-distance one between human astronomer Amal Safadi on Earth and the Romulan Nokim Vritet on Romulus. They were never able to meet, of course, only getting a sense of the other through their reputations as best as they were able to understand them across the Neutral Zone. They did care, though, and they did try to connect for good reasons, and those attempts saw Vritet destroyed by the Tal Shiar.

One reason this shook me as it did was the role that long-distance electronic communications played in my own life. After I realized my sexual orientation, it was only the help I got from online friends that helped me figure out what to do next. Those online friendships, and many others, continue to illuminate my life, leading even to real-world things. That Vritet tried to do what I did and was broken for it is upsetting to me.

 

(And let us not forget that Safadi and Vritet, working separately from the accurate numbers that they were able to get, each separately came to the conclusion that something was making the Romulan star to go disastrously supernova. Chekhov's gun? I surely cannot blame them for not wanting to seize upon this explanation as the accurate one.)

 

I agree. It was the only thing I liked about the book.

 

I understand your specific comparisons but of course you don't have to just replace a word, granted I have yet to get to the line you reference but from context I presume it is someone who you wouldn't expect to say something like that and for the same reason I see no issue with changing it to 'With hell to the Prime Directive if it doesn't help us save anyone' I belive that gets the same point across and sure it isn't shocking but neither is saying fuck something as its such a common phrase

 

I think FX might allow it too now, I'm can't remember for sure, but I think at American Horror Story: Cult had uncensored fucks.

The line is actually in one of the Vanguard books, not Last Best Hope, and it's pretty in character for the character who said it, Quinn to say something like that. He's technically not Starfleet, he was just working for Starfleet at that time.

 

Jurati came off as incredibly needy/clingy in the book. It kinda bothered me after a while.