TOS: Serpents in the Garden by Jeff Mariotte Review Thread (Spoilers!)

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Quite. And that doesn't depend on whether you go by production sequence, or by Los Angeles Market airing sequence (which is the sequence in which I saw them, and the one Bjo used in the Ballantine edition of the Concordance).

Hell, for all I know, Blish could've had SMD in development before "Day of the Dove" made it across the pond.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I don't believe the Organians themselves did the enforcement, though, despite how some books and comics have portrayed it. "Errand of Mercy" made it very clear that the Organians loathed interacting with corporeal beings, specifically because it was an episodic series and Gene Coon had to explain up front why we wouldn't be seeing the Organians in the future.

Yeah, I took the Organians interfering as a one-time thing designed to help the Federation and Klingons establish a treaty through a show of overt power. A sign that they COULD make a peace treaty that mostly was accepted by both powers if they were forced into doing it. Once it was done, the Organians didn't need to intervene and certainly wouldn't want to.

Mind you, given how alien the moralities of the people involved are, I'm not sure the Organians would view arming the Hill People to be development against the spirit of their treaty.

 

[Christopher]

Mind you, given how alien the moralities of the people involved are, I'm not sure the Organians would view arming the Hill People to be development against the spirit of their treaty.

The Organians couldn't care less what the filthy corporeal beings do to each other, as long as they do it somewhere else so the Organians don't have to be pained by their presence. But by the same token, I expect that the specific terms of the treaty were worked out by the Federation and Klingon governments and diplomats, and includes mutual enforcement mechanisms built in, like inspections and so forth. The Organians would've wanted it designed in a way that didn't require their further involvement.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Started re-reading it last night, after listening to No Man's Land.

I have no recollections whatsoever of the current opus. Which is fine with me; I'm reading it for the first time for the second time. I re-read the really memorable stuff all the time.

 

[Charles Phipps]

The Organians couldn't care less what the filthy corporeal beings do to each other, as long as they do it somewhere else so the Organians don't have to be pained by their presence. But by the same token, I expect that the specific terms of the treaty were worked out by the Federation and Klingon governments and diplomats, and includes mutual enforcement mechanisms built in, like inspections and so forth. The Organians would've wanted it designed in a way that didn't require their further involvement.

I give the Organians a bit more credit in they clearly want to stop a massive senseless war from happening and have interacted in a way that reduced the loss of life to zero. They also mostly humored the Klingons attempts to intimidate them during their "conquest."

But I agree, they really wanted to just get the ball rolling between the two sides.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Back to the opus under discussion, about the first 200-odd pages could have been tightened up considerably.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Back to the opus under discussion, about the first 200-odd pages could have been tightened up considerably.

Ehhhh, I'm not sure. I feel kind of weird saying it but some of my favorite parts is seeing Kirk in a role we rarely see him in, as a teacher and mentor to people beyond his normal crew.

I could have done more seeing Kirk in his Chief of Operations phase.

Though I do think something was lost in the translation as Kirk is never treated as the HEAD of Starfleet. He's treated as someone who feels considerably more like a Vice Admiral assigned to a desk.

 

[Christopher]

Though I do think something was lost in the translation as Kirk is never treated as the HEAD of Starfleet. He's treated as someone who feels considerably more like a Vice Admiral assigned to a desk.

The Chief of Starfleet Operations is not the head of Starfleet. That's Admiral Nogura. If it's equivalent to the Chief of Naval Operations in the US Navy, then the CSO is the head of the Operations division, one of multiple divisions answering to Nogura (along with others like Chief of Starfleet Personnel, Chief of Starfleet Intelligence, Chief of Starfleet Logistics, etc.). The Operations division would be responsible for ship and crew deployments, repairs and refits, resource allocation, etc. It's basically like the operations manager on a starship (e.g. Data or Harry Kim), but on a fleetwide scale. Not the person making the decisions for what Starfleet does, but the person responsible for the logistics and mechanics of carrying out those decisions.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Ah, thank you very much.

I suspected that was the case but the name was throwing me.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

And note, Mr. Phipps, that I said the first 200 pages could have stood being tightened up considerably. Not removed; just tightened up. The book reads like a 349-page novel that wants to be a 289-page novel, or even a 249-page novel.

I'm no stranger to novels that start out slow, then everything hits the fan at once: I'm a #*&#$&*%&!! Alan Dean Foster fan, for pity's sake!