things you'd love to see in a ST book

[JoeZhang]

Maybe some of those have been done:

1) A human who tries to emulate an Alien viewpoint (rather than the constant drip-drip of "you need to be more human" that we get in the books) - so he tries to be more like a horta

2) The Human emotional gutfeeling approach is entirely wrong and cold Vulcan logic saves the day.

3) Worf always offered first tactic of "blow them up!" is accepted by Picard (didn't someone do an analysis of TNG once and found that 80% of the time, Picard would not take any advice that Worf?)

 

[Baerbel Haddrell]

1) There have been a few attempts with that from the Klingon viewpoint. There are the Asmund twins who were raised by Klingons. Also, when Picard was dealing with the Klingon High Council and sometimes also Klingons in general we could see that he adapted his human viewpoints and values to the Klingon point of view.

2) I prefer the approach that a cooperation of both brings the desired result.

3) I think that mainly applied to early TNG but certainly not what is the present day book Worf and I am glad about that. I think nowadays Picard does take advice from Worf, something I certainly hope will be developed more in time in TNG Relaunch.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Needs more smurfs.

 

[Scott Pearson]

The Laughing Vulcan said:
Needs more smurfs.

You, sir, deserve to be punished. Harshly.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

JoeZhang said:
1) A human who tries to emulate an Alien viewpoint (rather than the constant drip-drip of "you need to be more human" that we get in the books) - so he tries to be more like a horta

I think it would be interesting to explore a group of human followers of, say, Kahless or the Prophets.

3) Worf always offered first tactic of "blow them up!" is accepted by Picard (didn't someone do an analysis of TNG once and found that 80% of the time, Picard would not take any advice that Worf?)

Check out Doomsday World. Worf has a great line, along the lines of, "If I had been allowed to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, we would have had fewer problems."

 

[JoeZhang]

I thought there was a great example of an Alien race not "trying to be human" in the TNG novel Debtor's Planet - Weasley get's friendly with a insect-like Ensign who is from a planet where they kill impolite people because it is a sign of mutations.

There is a nice (and quite subtle) bit in it, where Crusher sees that she is upset about killing someone with a phaser and suggests that she should talk to Troi about it. It turns out the only thing that the Ensign is upset about is that she didn't do it with a blade and at close-quarters.

I'd love to see more alien crew members who don't learn some important lesson about humanity and what it is to be human and have compassion etc etc.. I was hoping titan would do this but leaving aside the bizzare appearances of some of the aliens most are quite human in their actual behaviour (besides some minor quirks).

 

[OmahaStar]

I'd love to have a character named Arnold Dicks who gets tortured, brutally, before being skinned, beheaded, then dropped into an active volcano.

It's better than the real Mr. Dicks deserves.

 

[JoeZhang]

Who is Arnold Dicks??

 

[ClayinCA]

Yeah, I didn't understand that either...

 

[KRAD]

^ I'm pretty sure it's a variation on the name "Richard Arnold."

 

[OmahaStar]

KRAD said:
^ I'm pretty sure it's a variation on the name "Richard Arnold."

Yeah, I thought it was pretty obvious.

Richard = Dick
Arnold = Drummond (ok, kidding there)

Richard Arnold = Arnold Dicks

 

[Lonemagpie]

That's not the nickname he has at UK cons.

But I'm not even going to name that one... It's somewhat libellous to say the least! (but very funny to hear it paged at a hotel, and see his reaction)

 

[Geoff Thorne]

JoeZhang said:
I thought there was a great example of an Alien race not "trying to be human" in the TNG novel Debtor's Planet - Weasley get's friendly with a insect-like Ensign who is from a planet where they kill impolite people because it is a sign of mutations.

There is a nice (and quite subtle) bit in it, where Crusher sees that she is upset about killing someone with a phaser and suggests that she should talk to Troi about it. It turns out the only thing that the Ensign is upset about is that she didn't do it with a blade and at close-quarters.

I'd love to see more alien crew members who don't learn some important lesson about humanity and what it is to be human and have compassion etc etc.. I was hoping titan would do this but leaving aside the bizzare appearances of some of the aliens most are quite human in their actual behaviour (besides some minor quirks).

Hriss, Orilly and Huilan would differ with that assessment. Torvig also.

 

[OmahaStar]

Lonemagpie said:
That's not the nickname he has at UK cons.

But I'm not even going to name that one... It's somewhat libellous to say the least! (but very funny to hear it paged at a hotel, and see his reaction)

Oh, do tell. It's not like he'd ever be on this board anyway.

 

[JoeZhang]

OmahaStar said:

KRAD said:
^ I'm pretty sure it's a variation on the name "Richard Arnold."

Yeah, I thought it was pretty obvious.

Richard = Dick
Arnold = Drummond (ok, kidding there)

Richard Arnold = Arnold Dicks

em.. not obvious to me - I still have no idea who this person is.

 

[OmahaStar]

^ [George Takei] Oh, my. [/George Takei]

 

[Brian]

What's the beef with Richard Arnold? Just curious.

 

[JD]

Let me just say this much about him, when you get the story you will be very thankfull he is long gone.

 

[Brian]

All I ever knew of him was that he was kind of a resident geek at Paramount who they ran continuity checks with during TNG and maybe the later shows. (I have to say "lucky bastard" for that gig.) And that he spun that off into a column in the fan club magazine where people would ask him questions about things any real Trekker already knew the answers to. Aside from that, he's pretty much unknown to me, that anyone would hate him so much.

EDIT: Sorry for taking the thread OT. Perhaps someone could PM me "the story".

 

[Christopher]

As with so many things, the question of Richard Arnold's identity is answered in the FAQ thread pinned atop this forum:

http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/showflat.php?Number=8194261#Post8194261