Finally read the book...
All that's a good point. Certainly Andor was targeted for extermination by the Borg primarily because of their Federation Membership.
No; the Borg poured out of the Azure Nebula and started destroying everything in an expanding, roughly spherical front -- Federation, Klingon, Romulan, anyone who got in their way.
We've also seen that Federation Member States are sometimes forced by law to give up some resources to help other worlds. Ardana was required to give up some magic McGuffin to a world suffering a plague in "The Cloud Minders," for instance, and the Governor of Alpha Centauri was angry that the Federation government was threatening to federalize Alpha Centauri's mining industry to help rebuild devastated Federation worlds.
I'm not sure "forced" is the word. Rather, they
agree as a condition of membership to contribute resources as needed. If they subsequently refuse to do so, then they're in breach of their own agreement which they made voluntarily when they joined.
By the way, was it implied in this novel that Chen was born on Vulcan? I seem to remember that.
I don't recall seeing such an implication, but it's definitely not true. According to my original backstory for the character, T'Ryssa Chen was born on Starbase 11. She's never even been to Vulcan.
I have no problem with it, but I'm very much in the minority as far as P/Crs are concerned, where the objections are many but in the end centre about either the ickiness of naming a child after dead people or the perceived cliched laziness of authors using these particular names instead of providing the child with a name all his own, ie. without baggage.
My view (for what it's worth) is that for the vast bulk of the world's population - across cultures - naming a child after a beloved dead person/people is regarded by society as both honourable and appropriate. I don't think that will necessarily change over the centuries ahead.
Well, technically, everyone's named after a dead person, unless they're given a totally new made-up name. I'm named (at least indirectly) after a saint who reputedly died in the third century. My father Myron was named after an ancient Greek sculptor who died in the fifth century BCE. And so on.
On the cliche/laziness issue, was Dayton Ward requested to use the name already provided in Michael Martin's ST Online: The Needs of the Many, or just found it convenient to adopt it.
I'm pretty sure the name of Picard & Crusher's son was chosen before the STO novel was written. I recall hearing it mentioned in correspondence with authors/editors some time before that book came along.
The series also reminded me of the early Trek novels, where the Klingons and ROmulans were used as "the enemy". There was no need to brand the novels Star Trek: Romulan Empire etc.
Why use the brand of the TP if they are part of the new, ongoing, status quo?
Because there was a desire for a miniseries that could be promoted as the next Big Event like
Destiny was, even if it was actually more episodic in structure.
Finally got the book. Only a few 10's of pages into it. Not surprised by the T'Ryssa-Taurik relationship. Was it planned at the time the Destiny trilogy was being plotted?
T'Ryssa didn't
exist yet (at least not under that name) when
Destiny was plotted. After
Destiny was outlined and approved, Margaret Clark approached me to write a prologue novel (
Greater Than the Sum) which would tie up loose ends from the TNG novels and set up the trilogy. (Since the trilogy took so much longer to write, it had to get started first.) I introduced Trys in GTTS, and Dave worked her into the last couple of
Destiny installments in a minor role once he read my manuscript.
And I certainly would not have considered a Trys-Taurik romance. Her characterization at the time was that she was uneasy with her Vulcan heritage and tried to avoid it. I actually toyed with the idea of a T'Ryssa/Geordi romance, but I decided she was too young for him.
If that's true, how would this effect Pava on Titan? I highly doubt she would leave and go back to Andor. Plus she's too far away for an Andorian to try to come and take her back. I'm just interested in if this will be mentioned in the next Titan novel.
No reason why it should affect her, unless she's a Visionist or something. Any Andorian Starfleet personnel who choose to remain in Starfleet are free to do so; according to the end of PoD, half of the
Enterprise's 17 Andorian crewmembers chose to remain on the ship. (I'm wondering which half of that 17th one chose to stay....)
For that matter, why do we always assume that every member of a given species was born on that species' planet of origin? Do we even know if Pava is from Andor?
I would think given Andors location, deep in the core worlds of the Federation that it would present huge security concerns for the UFP were Andor to actually join the TP.
It's doubtful Starfleet would want to open a 'corridor' that would allow Typhon Pact vessels access into the very heart of UFP space.
Not going to happen.
On the other hand, according to
Star Charts, the nearest edge of Romulan territory is less than 30 light-years from Earth. And that's Typhon Pact territory now. So they're already right next to the heart of UFP space.
