I finally finished all three books, so I finally feel qualified to give my own thoughts. Apologies in advance - I'm going through the whole thread at once.
The portrayal of the Columbia's crews fate in Axiom, the looooong days and deadness of never going home was SO well done. I had tears in my eyes at each death out of the 4 left in the end. I really felt the time, the pain of adjustments, the evolution of their captivity.. really wonderful stuff. New ground for Trek lit IMHO.
To me, that stuff dragged. I almost wondered if so much time and attention was being paid to it because as "simpler folk," the 22nd Century humans experienced more wonder over simpler things than more "worldly" 24th Century people did.
3. The origin of the Borg was FANTASTIC. It explained that nagging annoyance of the Borg being so obsessed with humans, earth, Picard. Here I was thinking it was just lame human-centric writing which was the cause of that! I love the duality of the Borg/Caeliar.
To me, it was
more human-centric writing, not less. While I can't deny here's a certain dramatic symmetry to it, it feels like small world syndrome. Not every major event in the history of the galaxy has to involve the humans, and to have humans at least partially responsible for unleashing the worst horror the galaxy has ever known seemed like a little bit too much to lay at our door. I understand how doing so provides many opportunities for character conflict, which is what drama is based on, but it just seemed a little but too neat and tidy. I would have preferred the Borg to have as alien an origin as possible.
Although I suppose that's the Caeliar part of them. After all, it was the Caeliar that provided the consciousness aspect - humans basically only provided the bodies, the raw materials.
I figured out almost from the beginning that the Caeliar would turn out to be both the origin of the Borg, and the solution to them. It seemed obvious that their many abilities were too similar to what the Borg can do to be coincidence. From that point on it became like a Shakespearian tragedy - watching the humans struggle, knowing exactly where they'd end up but unable to stop their inevitable slide. Granted, I didn't expect it to turn out exactly how it did - I thought the Caeliar that were thrown into the past would somehow lose their magic abilities, and attempt to regain them by technological means, and the attempt would go wrong and give rise to the Borg. In a way, that's kinda what happened, but only kinda.
To be fair, the way it actually happened was set up right in plain sight by the Caeliar that was haunting the
Columbia - he tried to join with humans too, just got it wrong in a different way.
I also didn't expect it to be the "4000 years ago" group who became Borg - I expected it to be the "beginning of time" group. Did they have any other part in the story than pre-destinating the Cataclysm? And was it them who the
Enterprise encountered when they found an entire galaxy of stars and planets with shells around them like the Caeliar did to Axiom?
5. Only negative comment: the pregnancy stories bored me to death. Not a fan of either character though, maybe if it was Seven of Nine's pregnancy I would have cared. However I didn't like all that angst and conflict over the pregnancies between the spouses, too emo for me.
It seems we have very different tastes, because they were some of my favourite parts. In fact, the
Titan parts were my favourite parts overall. More proof that having a Tellarite counsellor is simply the most genius idea ever!
On that note, I would like to say how the authors of the
Titan series have been very successful in making the ship's counsellors a vital part of the stories (probably a necessity considering the nature of the ship's crew). Not only that, but on giving all three counsellors very distinct and recognizable ways of working.
Troi uses the Socratic, "how does that makes you feel?" approach, getting the patient to question themselves. Haaj argues you into admitting something, nitpicking you until he breaks away all the pretense. And Huilan just has a pleasant little chat, bobbling along about nothing in particular until he whaps you upside the head with your own contradictions. It's fun!
I thought the dual pregnancies was kind of over the top.
Not at all - that the Picard-Crusher pregnancy had been so easy while the Riker-Troi pregnancy had just been one trauma after another was a great and deliberate contrast.
In fact, one of my real big fave things about the trilogy was the character arcs coming to fruition, mostly on
Titan. Riker and Troi finally put to bed the pregnancy issue, which some might say is the logical extension of their marriage, tying off that arc from
Nemesis. Vale has been dealing with how to navigate the choppy waters between Riker the Rock and Troi the Hard Place, which was forced to a head by the pregnancy issue and seemed to end on her and Troi finally having some detente. Keru had been dealing with Borg issues since the beginning, so he came full circle by having to fight them again (although a real, non-holodeck confrontation was a missed opportunity, I say), and his friendship with Torvig was lovely. And Ra-Havreii and Pazlar had their odd little courtship dance, after Ra-Havreii's chronic womanizing and Pazlar's self-imposed isolation. All good stuff.
It also struck me when Riker was introducing Ra-Havreii as his chief engineer and Pazlar as his chief science officer, that they are both replacements for people who've been killed on duty. And
Titan hasn't even been out of dock for a year yet!
Another thing that I got a big kick out of was seeing Ezri in command of her own ship and interacting with Picard and Riker.
It's an interesting thing, isn't it, how Ezri Dax has become so focal to events in the ST universe? Especially when you consider that she only exists because Jadzia Dax got killed off because the actress felt she wasn't getting enough to do. I wonder if Terry Farrell would be pissed off about how important her successor has become in the Lit, if she knew.
Cpt. Dax wasn't as bad an idea as I thought, due to Mr. Mack's ministrations. I also liked the Aventine crew but I'm not sure yet if I'm ready to read about their solo adventures. I'm curious why Ezri was chosen to promote, among the available Trek characters out there?
To paraphrase, "because she's a Dax." I imagine there was a number of factors - they needed someone from the DS9 crew to complete the crossover aspect, but didn't want to reveal the fates of certain other characters (such as Kira, Sisko or Vaughn). And Dax had already been established in the DS9-R as wanting to expand her abilities and move into command - this was the logical extension.
Some things I didn't like....T'Lana's death. I liked T'Lana, I liked her relationship with Worf and was interested to see where what was going. I was hoping that she would return to the Enterprise one day. I thought her character added some nice internal conflict, along with being a potential love interest for Worf. Her death seems like a waste, or perhaps a sop to many fans who disliked that character.
I appreciated that some attempt was made to connect the destruction on those worlds to people we know - T'Lana on Vulcan, Charivretha on Andor, Tuvok's son on Deneva, Martok on Qo'noS. And I thought T'Lana's final thoughts were quite poignant and sad.
But I have a question - much was made of how the destruction of Deneva was an incredibly big deal. Have we heard of this before? What makes that such an important Federation colony over and above the presumably hundreds of others that were also decimated or destroyed?
A related point - how completely arbitrary was it that Earth just happened to be the furthest planet away from the Azure Nebula, so that no destruction need befall precious Earth before the inevitable solution could be found?
I have a question regarding the ambassador scenes in "Mere Mortals", which is one of my favorite moments in the trilogy (Mostly due to Garak of course). Do the ambassadors present represent the major powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants? I ask this because I have noticed that one of the powers invited to the Table is the Talarian Republic. In their previous appearances the Talarians have been established as a power with limited offensive capabilities that pose only a very minor threat to the UFP. How then could the Talarians possibly be any help to the Federation Alliance against the Borg?
I was disappointed that Bacco, in her final speech, thanked the sacrifices of the Klingons and the Romulans for their help in repelling the Borg, but neglected to do so for all the races she "persuaded" to help her for the expeditionary force in book 2 - Ferengi, Gorn, Breen, etc - the people who never got a chance to help because they were just steamrollered.
Not having read
A Singular Destiny, I have to wonder if that lack of thanks is part of the reason for their creation of the Typhon Pact.
I'm sure I will think of other comments, given time.
