Spoilers TNG: Pliable Truths by Dayton Ward - Review thread

[Christopher]

Something the continuity light TNG would not come back to

Amusing how standards change. TNG had pretty solid continuity by the standards of its day, and certainly much more than TOS had. A truly "continuity-light" show would not have done "Family." Although it is a disappointment that it didn't do something similar in the wake of "Chain of Command" or "The Inner Light," say.

 

[Faldor]

TNG had pretty solid continuity by the standards of its day

That is true to be fair. TNG was a show that I caught here and there when it was originally on and only when the DVDs came out did I get to watch it all the way through.

I was pretty surprised at how much of an ongoing plot they gave to Worf.

 

[Thrawn]

Amusing how standards change. TNG had pretty solid continuity by the standards of its day, and certainly much more than TOS had. A truly "continuity-light" show would not have done "Family." Although it is a disappointment that it didn't do something similar in the wake of "Chain of Command" or "The Inner Light," say.

Didn't they have to really fight to be able to do "Family" at all? Pushing at that limitation.

They also did a lot of making arcs out of like 1 episode per season, so within a season you could rearrange episodes but as long as Season 4 came after Season 5, then you could refer back to what happened the last time that character/situation came up. Like, Klingon politics, Q, Lwaxana Troi, etc.

 

[Faldor]

Didn't they have to really fight to be able to do "Family" at all? Pushing at that limitation.

They wanted to do the episode just as a character drama, but Berman initially pushed for them to include a sci-fi-driven plot.

 

[Christopher]

Didn't they have to really fight to be able to do "Family" at all? Pushing at that limitation.

Yes, but they still did it. That's the point. Berman was pushing for conformity to the norms of the era, and the producers insisted on going beyond them, at least that once.

They also did a lot of making arcs out of like 1 episode per season, so within a season you could rearrange episodes but as long as Season 4 came after Season 5, then you could refer back to what happened the last time that character/situation came up. Like, Klingon politics, Q, Lwaxana Troi, etc.

Yes, exactly. A middle ground between the minimal continuity of the '60s and the more arc-driven stuff that came later. It seems "continuity-light" to us today, but for viewers at the time -- particularly viewers of my age who grew up on '70s TV and reruns of '60s TV -- it would've seemed fairly continuity-heavy. It's all relative to what you're used to.

 

[E-DUB]

Neither of the two Barnes and Nobles near me have it.

 

[Csalem]

Am afraid I gave this one an "average". The three storylines (Picard's / Crusher's / Secret Mining Colony) felt very light. i was expecting more from Ro who was returning to Bajor at a pivotal moment in its history. Madred's arrival didn't seem as significant as was being made out, with Picard mostly taking it in his stride.

And I found the plot detail of bridge officers learning other stations very random. I can understand it being a thing but Data being at the conn added nothing to the story.

I just wish some or all of the storylines were fleshed out a bit more.

 

[Reanok]

I got my copy of Pliable Truths from amazon today .I'm glad to find A Copy of it. And that it didn't take up to 4 months to get the book like it took with trying to find a copy of Picard Firewall it kept back ordering.

 

[Kertrats47]

We spoke with Dayton Ward on the latest episode of Positively Trek about Pliable Truths. Check it out!

Positively Trek Book Club: The Story We Didn't Know We Wanted

 

[Reanok]

I liked your podcast interview with Dayton Ward I've read the first 12 chapters of this book. It's great to read about 1990s era TNG and Ds9 that takes place before Emmissary.I like the backstory about Miles O'Brien being a war vet of the Cardassian wars and it fills in the blanks of his joining Ds9 to help the Bajorans fix the destruction the Cardassian caused to the station before they left . I really liked this book alot.

 

[comradepitrovsky]

Just got it from the library! Excited to check it out.

 

[E-DUB]

Ordered a copy yesterday. Looking at the cover, I feel like I need 3-D glasses.

 

[20fridge]

This story feels like the Star Trek version of Babylon 5 movies made toward the end of the series. Particularly In the Beginning and Thridspace. It's a kind of prequel which tells a relatively big story that fills in the gaps between episodes. I enjoyed the crossover elements with DS9. Odo, Garak, and Kira are very much at the logical point just before where they start in the show. Quark... is there. And I think that's a solid choice. Especially since this book gives Crusher, Riker, Picard, the O'Briens, and Ro plenty to do. Overall, very much a TNG story which balances its DS9 prequel elements quite well.

 

[OverlordSpock]

Am afraid I gave this one an "average". The three storylines (Picard's / Crusher's / Secret Mining Colony) felt very light. i was expecting more from Ro who was returning to Bajor at a pivotal moment in its history. Madred's arrival didn't seem as significant as was being made out, with Picard mostly taking it in his stride.

And I found the plot detail of bridge officers learning other stations very random. I can understand it being a thing but Data being at the conn added nothing to the story.

I just wish some or all of the storylines were fleshed out a bit more.

I agree with this sentiment. As I continued to read through this book, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. Upon reflection having finished the book, I feel like the book either needed to be longer to further flesh out the three main plot threads or one of those threads needed to be dropped to give the other two more room to breathe.

For example, I felt like Picard was a minor character in this book. Logically, I know he wasn't, but I feel like he was. The stuff surrounding him, including some of his internal struggles, felt superficial. When his being part of the negotiations was first being set up, I really expected this to be hugely difficult for him. Sure, he's. Jean-Luc Picard, so of course I expected he would be able to overcome his struggles, but it actually didn't seem to be much of a struggle for him as I read it. Even more so, when Madred showed up I expected some sort of existential crisis on his part. I think some of the words of the book implied that, but I didn't experience that with him.

I just feel, as I said earlier, like something was missing in this book.

 

[E-DUB]

I finally read my copy. I didn't think it Ward's best, but it was still pretty solid. I felt Ro was underutilized. Given that it was a Bajorcentric novel, the Enterprises only Bajoran should have been more prominent than she was. I was surprised at the implied death of....a certain character but in light of real world events it seemed fitting and that's all I'm going to say bout that.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Q&A with Dayton Ward, author of Star Trek The Next Generation – Pliable Truths - The Clonestar Podcast

Dayton Ward’s latest novel, Star Trek The Next Generation – Pliable Truths, is a intricately woven web of familiar characters in new situations. Pliable

clonestarpod.com

 

[Elwro]

A 'lone Lurian' sitting at Quark's, hehe. A nice one!

 

[David cgc]

Just finished it. One point I want to comment on is the little bit of dramatic irony with the Cardassian labor camp's second-in-command, Trina, being disturbed by the illegal research going on in the secret base, and wondering if the whole thing was actually some illegal conspiracy that he should stand up to, and deciding he'd worry about it later. It kind of feels like he's being set up to side with the Bajorans or help them in some way. Except he ends up doing nothing of the kind, our next major encounter with him being halfway across the book where he gets stunned in a gunfight then shot execution-style. It's the kind of thing that makes you think, and reinforces one of the recurring themes on the Bajor-side of the novel with Kira, especially, where it doesn't matter how you feel or what you say if you don't do the right thing (Kira actually had a line to that effect in the show).

Especially with the thread having a big discussion on Dayton's tendency towards big solid potato-y chunks of exposition when building on prior stories, I wanted to call out that subtle, almost impressionistic little bit of storytelling that lets the reader do the work. He did something similar at the end of, IIRC, "Hearts & Minds," which was my favorite part of the book.

(Another comment I wanted to make was that before the Enterprise got the distress call and left to check it out, I was thinking it'd be a great time for a saucer separation so half the ship could keep doing relief efforts once that inevitably happened, but such was not to be the case.)

Overall, I really liked this "lost backdoor pilot of DS9" concept. And with the way it backfilled more modern continuity with the California-class ship and Dr. Crusher's first meeting with Dr. Tropp, it feels like it's of a part with the expansive litverse and just makes the whole Trek setting feel more cohesive.

 

[VDCNI]

I thought this was fine, nothing thrilling but an entertaining enough read.

I'm never really that invested in stories that seek to deal with the emotional aftermath of episodes that the TV series didn't bother with. It's 30 years on after all and trying to do that and introduce the DS9 setting and characters without conflicting with DS9 and also telling its own story is a lot for one novel and I don't think it did it that successfully.

There were lots of little bits that didn't feel like the DS9 we saw in the pilot and many of the stories in this book fizzled out a bit. Felt like it was trying to do much and as a result nothing was as engaging as it could have been.

I also thought Trina might have had more to do given his doubts on what they were doing. He did make me wonder about the position of homosexuality in the repressive, military societies we see in Trek. We've increasingly seen gay characters in Starfleet and the Federation over the years but how it's viewed by the Cardassians, Klingons and the like hasn't ever really been touched upon.

 

[Christopher]

We've increasingly seen gay characters in Starfleet and the Federation over the years but how it's viewed by the Cardassians, Klingons and the like hasn't ever really been touched upon.

The Enterprise post-finale novels established Admiral Krell from "Affliction"/"Divergence" as having a husband, Doctor Kon'Jef, and the relationship was accepted without question, IIRC. But I don't think canon has addressed the issue.