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| B0015YEQRI
| 3.67
| 94
| Feb 01, 2008
| unknown
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liked it
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Summer 2022 Reading Entry #11. "A Weary Life" ("Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows, Book 5: A Weary Life") by Robert Greenberger (2008)
Summer 2022 Reading Entry #11. "A Weary Life" ("Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows, Book 5: A Weary Life") by Robert Greenberger (2008). The fifth of a six-book series of ebooks (still not available in print form as of this time) released in 2007-2008 as part of Pocket Books' commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" television series. Each of the books in this series is written by a different author (or team of authors), and they all take place in the first year of service of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E (so, following the film "Star Trek Generations", in which the Enterprise from the tv series, NCC-1701-D, was destroyed, and prior to the following film, "Star Trek: First Contact", in which its replacement, the Enterprise NCC-1701-E, was introduced). "A Weary Life" focuses on a side mission given to U.S.S. Enterprise-E first officer Commander Will Riker, chief engineer Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge, and security/tactical operations chief Lt. Pádraig Daniels to intercept a delivery of some unknown contraband items between cells of the outlaw insurgent group, the Maquis. They are to take possession of the shipment and to capture the Maquis operatives. The Enterprise, already on a high priority mission to Deep Space Nine (the story of which is told in "Slings and Arrows, Book 6: Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment" by Keith R.A. DeCandido, which most takes place concurrently with "A Weary Life"), continues on its way, and Riker, La Forge, and Daniels take a shuttle to the system where the exchange is supposed to happen. Arriving there, they immediately find two Maquis ships being attacked by Cardassian fighters. Not willing to sit idly by while the Cardassians destroy the two much smaller Maquis vessels, he instead joins them in fighting off the Cardassians long enough to escape. Confronting the Maquis, he claims possession of the cargo and begins to uneasily work with the leaders of the Maquis to evade the Cardassian ships that are still in the system looking for them. While doing this, he, La Forge, and Daniels all get very angry treatment from most of the Maquis, who see the Federation and Starfleet as the ones who betrayed them instead of the other way around. (There is a whole back story to just who the Maquis are and why they broke off from the Federation, their hostilities towards the Cardassians and why, etc., that I don't want to go into here. Suffice it to say, all of this comes directly from episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation", "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine', and "Star Trek: Voyager".) In addition to opposing political ideologies, Riker spends most of the story pondering on why his transporter "twin", Thomas Riker (a duplicate of Will Riker that was created in a transporter accident on an episode of "Next Generation") was one of those Starfleet officers who quit and joined the Maquis. One of the Maquis Riker is forced to spend time with here also spent time with Thomas and is able to tell him a bit about why Thomas secretly joined the Maquis, hijacked the U.S.S. Defiant (in an episode of "Deep Space Nine") disguised as Will and used it as part of a Maquis terrorist attack (only to surrender back the ship and himself to the authorities). That's about as deep into the plot as I want to get here. My thoughts on "A Weary Life" are that there are parts that I liked about it and there were parts that I found a bit, well, wearingly. I liked the parts of the story where Riker, La Forge, and Daniels were doing what they do best, figuring out ways to survive in combat and hide-and-seek style pursuit from superior enemy attack craft (some of it in an asteroid field). Riker in those circumstances can be very effective, the experienced command officer issuing orders and formulating strategy. La Forge is, as always, the expert engineer (not really happy to be helping repair the damaged Maquis ships but doing his duty without complaint) and Daniels brings a different viewpoint to everything since he's the recent addition to the crew and also the only one of the three with a wife back home. What I found a bit wearing was Riker's constant worrying. When Picard at the start of the story orders Daniels to join him and La Forge on the mission, he tries to talk Picard out of it because he doesn't feel that he's had a chance to really get to know Daniels yet, how he will perform on a mission like this. He then discusses this with his closest friend on the ship, Counselor Deanna Troi, and she sees right through it, realizing that what's really bothering Riker is the Maquis and his "twin" Thomas. Then, on the mission, Riker keeps circling back to thoughts or discussion about Thomas. Quite frankly, I started to get tired of all of the attention that was getting. And I felt that the character of Will Riker didn't come across very well in this story (aside from the scenes I mentioned above, where he had to put the political issues and confusion over Thomas's motivations aside in evading the Cardassians). To me, the best Riker stories and scenes are the ones where he is confident and capable of leading. There are moments of that here but interspersed with others where he comes across as tentative, overly concerned about things that really shouldn't concern him. There is also the constant "glares" and "angry looks" from the Maquis that "say" various things (without actual words, except what the narrator is telling us and that Riker, La Forge, and Daniels get the message quite clearly). That also gets a bit repetitive. Then, again, I think I just don't care too much in general about the whole Maquis continuing sub plot from around this time period. In all, I have to say I thought this was a pretty average Star Trek story, not great or especially memorable but not bad either, and, again, it did have some interesting moments. I ended up giving it three out of five stars on GoodReads. Next up, the last in the "Slings and Arrows" series, the aforementioned "Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment" by Keith R.A. DeCandido (who was also the editor over the entire "Slings and Arrows" series). (Previous Summer 2022 Reading Entries: #1: "Star Trek: Avenger" by William Shatner (1997; novel); #2: "Batman vs. Ra's Al Ghul" by Neal Adams (2019-2021, six-issue comic book limited-series; 2021 collected hardcover edition); #3: “Superman: Birthright” by Mark Waid, Leinil Francis Wu, and Gerry Alanguilan (twelve-issue comic book limited series; 2003 to 2004; read on DC Universe Infinite, also available in hardcover and softcover editions); #4: "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows Book 1: A Sea of Troubles" by J. Steven York and Christina F. York (2007; novella); #5: "The Orville Season 1.5: New Beginnings" by David A. Goodman and David Cabeza (2019, four issue comic book limited series; 2020 collected trade paperback edition); #6: "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows, Book 2: The Oppressor's Wrong" by Phaedra Weldon); #7: "Superman: Secret Origin" by Geoff Johns, Gary Frank, and Jon Sibal (2009-2010, six-issue comic book limited series; 2019 "Deluxe Edition" collected hardcover edition); #8: "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows, Book 3: The Insolence of Office" by William Leisner (2007); #9: "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows, Book 4: That Sleep of Death" by Terri Osborne (2008); #10: "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Section 31: Rogue") by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin (2001). ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 2022
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Aug 08, 2022
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Aug 01, 2022
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Kindle Edition
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| B0013MYATQ
| 3.63
| 111
| Nov 01, 2007
| unknown
|
really liked it
|
Summer 2022 Reading Entry #6. "The Oppressor's Wrong" ("Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows, Book 2: The Oppressor's Wrong") by Phaedra
Summer 2022 Reading Entry #6. "The Oppressor's Wrong" ("Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows, Book 2: The Oppressor's Wrong") by Phaedra Weldon (2007). The second of a six-book series of ebooks (still not available in print form as of this time) released in 2007-2008 as part of Pocket Books' commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" television series. Each of the books in this series is written by a different author (or team of authors), and they all take place in the first year of service of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E (so, following the film "Star Trek Generations", in which the Enterprise from the tv series, NCC-1701-D, was destroyed, and prior to the following film, "Star Trek: First Contact", in which its replacement, the Enterprise NCC-1701-E, was introduced). This second book in the "Slings and Arrows" series deals with the crew of the Enterprise-E, fresh off the events of book one, "A Sea of Troubles", being assigned to transport a team of Starfleet demolitions experts to Starbase 375 after an explosion there resembles that of one that had just happened on Earth at Antwerp, Belgium, at a conference there. Starfleet suspects the Dominion to be behind both bombings. Lt. Pádraig Daniels, one of the members of that team, begins to suspect that that's not actually case. Meanwhile, the forces behind the attacks step up their plans once Captain Picard and the Enterprise-E arrive, and Picard also loses contact with Captain Benjamin Sisko (of Deep Space Nine), who has been temporarily reassigned to Earth to oversee security there (paralleling events seen on the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" tv series). While I found "A Sea of Troubles" enjoyable enough, I liked "The Oppressor's Wrong" more. It was probably mostly just a personal preference for Weldon's writing style, but I also found myself more interested in Daniels (this book's primary point of view character) over Lt. Hawk (who, aside from Captain Picard, was basically the feature character in "A Sea of Troubles"). Weldon does a good job of telling this story primarily from Daniels' point of view (although not entirely, as the story does require scenes also to be shown where Daniels is not present). And Daniels just has more personality than Hawk had in the previous book. I also like that this story is written more like a procedural investigation/mystery over the more straight "action" tone of the first book. Although, I have to admit, there were some passages where the technobabble was so deep, especially the ones where Daniels and his team are discussing with Picard and the others aboard the Enterprise (including Riker, La Forge, Data, and Barclay, the latter two most actively assisting Daniels and his team) exactly how they are going to modify the ship's sensors to interact with their own very complicated computer program and then feed that into one of the ship's holodecks to create an investigative simulated "amphitheater" inside that holodeck, that at times I basically had to just "push through" those passages without entirely understanding exactly what they were saying. However, it did add an additional feeling of authenticity, which was good. One can read "The Oppressor's Wrong" without having read "A Sea of Troubles". References are made to events that happened in the first book, enough to get the gist of what happened prior to this story. This is very much a separate story, not a continuation of the first, aside from the overarching threat of impending war with the Dominion and of Changeling spies perhaps being in their midst. One of my favorite lines in "The Oppressor's Wrong" is when Picard says, "We have a Changeling on board. Again. I want it caught and contained." Again, I liked this book, a bit more so than the first book in the series. I gave it a four out of five stars on GoodReads. Next up is book three, "The Insolence of Office" by William Leisner, when appears will focus primarily on Deanna Troi and Georgi La Forge (and apparently will detail exactly the circumstances of La Forge's switching from his VISOR, which he still has in these first two "Slings and Arrows" books) to the ocular implants he has starting in the "Star Trek: First Contact" film). "The Insolence of Office" is also the first of the books in the "Slings and Arrows" series to have a very small page count, eighty-five pages. The first two books both had close to one hundred fifty pages. All of the subsequent books in the series are under one hundred pages. The shortest in the series will be book four, "That Sleep of Death", which is only forty-four pages long. Page count alone is no judge of quality, of course. However, I know some would be quite irritated to pay the $6.99 cost per book without first realizing just how short some of them are. I'm reading these courtesy of my local public library's (Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library) "OverDrive" ebook checkout service. (Previous Summer 2022 Reading Entries: #1: "Star Trek: Avenger" by William Shatner (1997; novel); #2: "Batman vs. Ra's Al Ghul" by Neal Adams (2019-2021, six-issue comic book limited-series; 2021 collected hardcover edition); #3: “Superman: Birthright” by Mark Waid, Leinil Francis Wu, and Gerry Alanguilan (twelve-issue comic book limited series; 2003 to 2004; read on DC Universe Infinite, also available in hardcover and softcover editions); #4: "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows Book 1: A Sea of Troubles" by J. Steven York and Christina F. York (2007; novella), #5: "The Orville Season 1.5: New Beginnings" by David A. Goodman and David Cabeza (2019, four issue comic book limited series; 2020 collected trade paperback edition). ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 24, 2022
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Jul 02, 2022
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Jun 24, 2022
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Kindle Edition
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| 1506711340
| 9781506711348
| 1506711340
| 4.16
| 224
| Feb 18, 2020
| Feb 18, 2020
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really liked it
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Summer 2022 Reading Entry #5. "The Orville Season 1.5: New Beginnings", script by David A. Goodman, art by David Cabeza, colors by Michael Atiyeh (Dar
Summer 2022 Reading Entry #5. "The Orville Season 1.5: New Beginnings", script by David A. Goodman, art by David Cabeza, colors by Michael Atiyeh (Dark Horse Books, 2020). Originally released by Dark Horse Comics as "The Orville"* #1-4 (July 2019-October 2019). (* Some listings give the title as "The Orville: New Beginnings", as that sub-title was on the covers of the first two issues.) For those not familiar, "The Orville" is a science-fiction television series created (and starring) Seth MacFarlane that aired on Fox for its first two seasons (2017-2019), then moved to Hulu for its third (and what may be its final) season, currently airing now (June to August 2022). Its third season has been sub-titled "New Horizons". The long gap between the airings of season two and season three were due to COVID related shutdown delays. To keep this review short, "The Orville" has been said by some to be basically "Star Trek: The Next Generation" meets "The Office" (and while I am not a watcher of "The Office", I can definitely vouch for the parallels to ST:TNG). What I find mostly appealing about "The Orville" (beyond the occasionally visually exciting special effects heavy sequences) is the modern day quirky characters and dialogue present in a "Star Trek: Next Generation" like atmosphere. Indeed, many of the plots would work just as well as ST:TNG episodes, and with good reason as "Star Trek: The Next Generation", "Star Trek: Voyager", and "Star Trek: Enterprise" veteran Brannon Braga is one of the executive producers on "The Orville" (another being the author of this series of comics stories, David A. Goodman). But right when you think this is just a rehash of ST:TNG, one of the characters here will say something completely outrageous, something the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D would never say, but which is true to that of the U.S.S. Orville (and is often quite funny, although humor, of course, is very subjective). All of that said, this first four issue limited series published by Dark Horse Comics and collected in trade paperback format under the "Season 1.5: New Beginnings" title was actually two separate two-issue stories. The first (which ran over issues one and two) features Captain Ed Mercer and Lt. Gordon Malloy getting stranded on a planet after their shuttle gets mysteriously shot down. They discover that what shot them down was a hundred year old ship like theirs (a "Union" ship, this series analogue for Star Trek's "Starfleet" and “United Federation of Planets”) that crash-landed on the planet's surface a century ago and been set up by its crew to protect and provide food for the few native inhabitants left, this ship's crashing on the surface having inadvertently caused the planet to become a wasteland. Meanwhile, the Orville, under first office Commander Kelly Grayson, realizes that Mercer and Malloy have not reached their destination and begin searching for them. During these scenes back on the Orville, Grayson meets someone who will make his television debut at the start of season two: Cassius, a teacher on board the Orville (and who Grayson will become romantically involved with during season two). The second story, "The Word of Avis", from issues three and four, have the Orville intercept a Union transport before it can travel into enemy Krill space. (I'm not going to go into who the Krill are here other than that they were a source of conflict during season one of the television series. I haven't mentioned it yet but as the trade paperback title indicates, these two comic book stories take place between seasons one and two.) The crew of the transport say it was due to equipment malfunctioning but there is something Mercer and his crew can tell they aren't revealing as to their true intentions in wanting to reach Krill space. Orville chief engineer, Lt. Commander John LaMarr discovers that the engineer aboard the transport is an old friend from when they both attended "Union Point" (I assume their version of Starfleet Academy). There is nothing particularly exciting about either of these stories. Plot alone, I'd probably give this collection a three out of five stars on GoodReads. However, where Goodman excels is at capturing the voices of the "Orville" characters (and, as he should, since he's an executive producer on the television series, something I didn't realize as I was first reading these stories). And artist David Cabeza does an excellent job of capturing the likenesses of the various actors, which is always a big plus with comic books based on television or movie properties. Based on these two factors, I ended up giving it a four out of five stars, and I look forward to reading more in this run of "Orville" comic books. (Dark Horse has released three more mini-series following this one. First, another four-issue mini-series sub-titled "Launch Day" and "Heroes" released from September to December 2020 and reprinted in trade paperback format under the title "The Orville Season 2.5: Launch Day" in May 2021. Then (as best I can tell) two separate two-issue minis: "Digressions” (May-June 2021) and "Artifacts” (October-November 2021), the two collected in trade paperback as "The Orville Season 2.5: Digressions" in March 2022.) (Previous Summer 2022 Reading Entries: #1: "Star Trek: Avenger" by William Shatner (1997; novel); #2: "Batman vs. Ra's Al Ghul" by Neal Adams (2019-2021, six-issue comic book limited-series; 2021 collected hardcover edition); #3: “Superman: Birthright” by Mark Waid, Leinil Francis Wu, and Gerry Alanguilan (twelve-issue comic book limited series; 2003 to 2004; read on DC Universe Infinite, also available in hardcover and softcover editions); #4: "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows Book 1: A Sea of Troubles" by J. Steven York and Christina F. York (2007; novella). ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 24, 2022
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Jun 24, 2022
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Jun 24, 2022
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| B0013OE652
| 3.68
| 125
| Oct 01, 2007
| unknown
|
liked it
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**spoiler alert** Summer Reading Entry #4. "A Sea of Troubles" ("Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows, Book 1: A Sea of Troubles") by J.
**spoiler alert** Summer Reading Entry #4. "A Sea of Troubles" ("Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows, Book 1: A Sea of Troubles") by J. Steven York and Christina F. York (2007). The first of a six-book series of ebooks (still not available in print form as of this time) released in 2007 as part of Pocket Books' commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" television series. Each of the books in this series is written by a different author (or team of authors), and they all take place in the first year of service of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E (so, following the film "Star Trek Generations", in which the Enterprise from the tv series, NCC-1701-D, was destroyed, and prior to the following film, "Star Trek: First Contact", in which its replacement, the Enterprise NCC-1701-E, was introduced). This first, well, short novel or novella--all of the books in this series are very short; "A Sea of Troubles" is listed at 149 pages long; four of the others in the series vary from as few as 44 pages to just under 100 pages long; Book II: "The Oppressor's Wrong" is the only other book in the series that has a page count over over 100 pages, that being 141 pages long--presents the setting for the overall series, taking place soon after the Enterprise-E's shake down cruise. Picard and company are in the midst of a ship-versus-ship exercise with another Starfleet vessel near a dangerous stellar nebula. The chase takes them into the nebula, causing problems for both ships. Without going into too much detail, a Changeling spy (one of the Dominion "Founders" as seen on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine") ends up on board the Enterprise-E, it's apparent mission to steal vital technical information about this new class of Starfleet ship, the Sovereign-Class. Picard at first thinks he sees something different in this Changeling, in how it acts, and tries to negotiate with it, but at the same time realizes that it must be stopped from achieving its goal. In addition to Picard, the primary focus in this book is on Lt. Hawk, the Enterprise-E helmsman, who was introduced in "Star Trek: First Contact". Here, we learn that Hawk has been assigned to the new Enterprise-E longer than anyone else, seeing it from it's construction all the way through its shakedown cruise to serving on it under Captain Picard. We find out a bit about Hawk in this book, but his primary connection here is that he had been close friends with, well, I don't know how to say it, so (SPOILERS!!!) the officer the Changeling takes the shape of to get aboard the Enterprise-E. There really isn't much mystery to it, though. Hawk immediately suspects that there is something off about her (his friend) the moment she steps aboard. The short length of this book prevents the authors from giving much time to the process of solving the mystery. The crew figures out pretty quickly that they must have a Changeling spy on board and Hawk's suspicions that his friend is the spy turn out to be correct. I won't go into any more specifics about the plot. Overall, it was a pretty average "Star Trek: The Next Generation" story. (Note: I don't mean bad when I say "average", just not one of the especially good or exciting ones.) As I said, it sets the setting for the rest of the series. Besides being the first year aboard the Enterprise-E for the "Next Generation" crew, it also parallels the build up on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" to the full fledged "Dominion War" story arc of that tv series' final two seasons. "Slings and Arrows" appears that it will be a version of what Picard and his crew were doing during this period and their involvement in preparing for the seemingly inevitable war to come. (There was another series of four novels released in 1998 under the title "The Dominion War", in which two of the four novels focus on war time activities of the USS Enterprise-E. These books take place about a year after the events of the "Slings and Arrows", during the actual war itself. I read these two novels back when they first came out and will be rereading them as part of my current "Star Trek: The Next Generation" post-"Generations" novels reading.) Again, "A Sea of Troubles" was a decent start of this six-part series. I have a feeling that each subsequent book will focus on a different character or two (the covers seem to bear that theory out) in some story where they are the focus while at the same time furthering an overall threat "A plot" regarding the Dominion. I gave this first book in the series three out of five stars on GoodReads. I have to reiterate that these are all very short books in this series and therefore I cannot give too strong a recommendation for anyone to go out and buy these ebooks at the full $6.99 price each as, especially with the later books in the series that get as low as forty-four to eighty and ninety something pages long, it may not seem worth the price to some. Again, I'm talking purely on a page count basis, not in regards to the quality of writing. I (thankfully) just got the opportunity to read these books at this time because my local public library system added then to their OverDrive ebooks collection at my request. I would recommend trying this, seeing if your public library already has then or if you can request that they add them, before buying them, at least to try the first couple books out. (Hopefully Simon and Schuster will also offer them as part of their monthly $0.99 Star Trek ebooks promotion that they've been doing for awhile now, where they offer around nine or so ebooks marked down to only $0.99 each for a month. They've only offered "Slings and Arrows" marked down once before, I believe, and that was several years ago.) (Previous 2022 Summer Reading Entries: #1: "Star Trek: Avenger" by William Shatner (1997; novel); #2: "Batman vs. Ra's Al Ghul" by Neal Adams (2019-2021, six-issue comic book limited-series; 2021 collected hardcover edition); #3: “Superman: Birthright” by Mark Waid, Leinil Francis Wu, and Gerry Alanguilan (twelve-issue comic book limited series; 2003 to 2004; read on DC Universe Infinite, also available in hardcover and softcover editions). ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 14, 2022
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Jun 21, 2022
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Jun 14, 2022
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Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||||
| 3836563401
| 9783836563406
| 3836563401
| 4.59
| 398
| Dec 15, 2018
| Dec 15, 2018
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it was amazing
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 28, 2022
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Apr 06, 2022
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Feb 28, 2022
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0671009249
| 9780671009243
| 0671009249
| 3.49
| 967
| Oct 1997
| Oct 1997
|
it was ok
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**spoiler alert** I finished reading last night the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, “Ship of the Line” (1997), by Diane Carey. This is one of li
**spoiler alert** I finished reading last night the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, “Ship of the Line” (1997), by Diane Carey. This is one of literally hundreds of Star Trek novels that I bought when they first came out. (I basically was collecting all of the Star Trek novels from the mid or late 1980s until 2010 or so, carefully making sure I never missed buying one to have them all, with the intention of reading them eventually. Well, eventually finally came for “Ship of the Line”.) Why, of all of the hundreds of Star Trek novels would I pick “Ship of the Line” to read at this time? Well, the most recent Star Trek novels that I’ve read have for the most part been tied into the current Paramount+ television series “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Star Trek: Picard”. I also recently read a more recent Star Trek (The Original Series) novel, “Agents of Influence”, by Dayton Ward. After several nonfiction books, I was ready to jump back into some Star Trek fiction again and this time I was feeling like a bit of “The Next Generation”. However, I still had to narrow that down so I decided to start with novels immediately following the film “Star Trek Generations” so that I’d be reading the stories that take place after the television series and after the launch of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E. Which brings me finally to talking about “Ship of the Line”. It’s touted right on the cover as “The First Voyage of the Starship Enterprise 1701-E!” And it is, I suppose. But it’s more other things than that. An aside. Diane Carey wrote over thirty Star Trek novels (both original novels and tv episode novelizations) from 1986 to 2001. She was a very popular Star Trek author during this period, especially for her Original Series novels “Final Frontier” (1986; not to be confused with the film, “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier”) and “Best Destiny” (1992), both of which I recall enjoying very much. Carey’s non Original Series Star Trek novels, however, could be a bit more hit or miss, and, unfortunately, “Ship of the Line” is more miss than it is hit. While a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, it spends the first part of the book back in the era of Captain Kirk, Spock, and the U.S.S. Enterprise (as depicted in the 1980s films), detailing what Captain Morgan Bateson and his crew of the U.S.S. Bozeman were doing (fighting it out with some Klingons, it turns out) just prior to travelling through a temporal anomaly, transporting them eighty years into the future and catching them in an endlessly repeating temporal causality loop, colliding again and again into the U.S.S. Enterprise-D, destroying the latter vessel (as seen in the Next Generation episode, “Cause and Effect”). It is a bit interesting to learn more about Bateson and his crew (although Carey writes Bateson as basically a Star Trek version of actor Kelsey Grammar’s Frasier Crane character; Grammar played Bateson in his brief scene in “Cause and Effect”), but the conflict with the Klingons was a bit old hat even back in 1997 when “Ship of the Line” first came out. Then, at a climactic moment in the battle with the Klingons, they get transported into the era of Captain Picard and the U.S.S. Enterprise-D. We see a few scenes detailing this (including a recreation of the moment they both see each other for the first time over their viewscreens, just after breaking the repeating “loop”. Next comes another time just to the *main* time period of this book, which is about a year after “Star Trek Generations”. Picard, Riker, and the rest of the crew are on duty but not assigned to a ship in the aftermath of the loss of the Enterprise-D. There is some question as to who the about to be sent on her shake down cruise, U.S.S. Enterprise-E’s, captain will be, whether Captain Picard, Riker, or... Well, it turns out to be neither of those two. Picard is sent instead on a mission into Cardassian space to recover captured Starfleet officers (prisoners of war). Riker is assigned to serve as first officer aboard the Enterprise-E for its shakedown cruise. And the captain assigned to the Enterprise-E is none other than Captain Morgan Bateson, having been working behind the scenes on the development and construction of this new ship. Riker, resentful that the new ship has been given to Bateson, the same man who had come through to their century just a few years prior, over Captain Picard and himself, begrudgingly accepts his orders. The rest of the former Enterprise-D bridge crew get split up. Data, La Forge, and Troi to the Enterprise-E (although Bateson, a man from an era without official ship counselors, insists on Troi serving as a member of the ship’s medical staff and not as a counselor). Dr. Crusher and Worf go with Picard on his mission to Cardassia. However, we don’t really see much at all of Crusher or Worf for most of the book. (Worf is at this time serving on Deep Space Nine and Picard says they will be “borrowing” him from Captain Sisko. Once they get into Cardassian space, though, we only see Worf and Crusher briefly during one key scene and neither speaks.) Instead, once Picard boards a private (non Starfleet) ship on their mission into Cardassian space, the novel starts jumping from them, back to the Enterprise-E, and, third, to the Klingons seeking revenge on Bateson. The Picard portions take place mostly on a holodeck aboard the merchant vessel where, undergoing doubts as to his continuing to serve as a captain in Starfleet due to the loss of a second ship under his command (first the U.S.S. Stargazer, then the Enterprise-D), Picard takes Riker’s advice and spends time watching two incidents that occurred aboard the original U.S.S. Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk in command. The holo Kirk, based on later interviews with the real James Kirk, is programmed to not only recreate what happened in those incidents for Picard but also to answer any questions Picard might have into what Kirk was thinking and feeling at the time. A training hologram for future Starfleet Academy cadets and officers. Picard observes Kirk first during an encounter with a hostile cloaked Romulan ship in the Neutral Zone (original television series episode “Balance of Terror”), and then, second, after Kirk had been accidentally split into two separate versions of himself due to a transporter accident (“The Enemy Within”). Over the course of the chapters covering Picard’s time on the holodeck observing and interacting with holo Captain Kirk, he comes to whatever necessary realization necessary to get out of his funk and lead the mission to retrieve the prisoners of war from the Cardassian, Gul Madred (the same Cardassian interrogator who tortured Picard in the episode, “Chain of Command Part II”). I’m not going to go into specifics here about Picard’s scenes with Madred and his rescue of the Starfleet officers Madred had been putting through war exercises (other than to say that these scenes are strangely short and not very interesting. Picard’s confrontation with Madred is made into a very tiny part of everything else going on in this novel when it should have been a novel of its own (and written by someone better attuned to the Next Generation characters than Carey was). And, again, Crusher and Worf are pretty much non existent other than as set dressings. (“Two humans, one male and one female, and a tall Klingon beamed in.” That sort of thing.) I’m also not going to go into great detail here about Riker’s bickering with Bateson aboard the Enterprise-E, the Klingons hijacking the ship, and Bateson, Riker, and Montgomery Scott’s (yes, “Scotty” is aboard, too, at Bateson’s request) retaking the ship with unarmed and nonlethal “guerilla” tactics (other than to say that is gets rather silly the ways they are able to outwit dozens of Klingon warriors). There are some interesting scenes in this novel, however, I must admit that it is not an older Star Trek novel that ages well, largely due to the writing style of Diane Carey. First off, her strength is clearly the characters of the original Star Trek series (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc.), not Picard, Riker, Data, La Forge, and company. Her depictions of Picard and Riker therefore seem way off base at times, even for how the characters were being portrayed in 1997. The thing that seems the most out of character are the scenes where Picard is observing Kirk on the holodeck. I’ve seen many readers call into question these scenes of Picard having to learn from the mighty James T. Kirk how to be a Starfleet captain (despite Picard having been shown to be an excellent captain over the course of the seven seasons of Next Generation), and I have to agree with them. Riker fares a bit better than Picard but still has moments when he seems way out of character. (For one thing, he acts like he does not understand how Klingons think and fight, conceding to Bateson’s greater experience with Klingons of his time. Riker, though, spent an entire episode of Next Generation, “A Matter of Honor”, serving as first officer aboard a Klingon ship, something not mentioned once, I don’t think.) And the rest of the Next Generation regulars get very little “screen time”, especially once the Klingons hijack the ship. (Kudos for the way they incapacitate Data, though.) Of course, things end just as one would predict. Riker and Bateson retake control of the Enterprise-E. Then, Bateson cedes command of it to Picard. Then another time jump to the opening scenes of the film “Star Trek: First Contact”, when the Enterprise-E is put on the sidelines while the rest of a fleet of Starfleet ships attempt to stop of Borg ship from reaching Earth. One of those ships confronting the Borg is the U.S.S. Defiant (commanded by Worf). And another, according to dialogue heard in the film, is the Bozeman. The novel gives the impression that this is the U.S.S. Bozeman II, commanded by Bateson. As in the film, Picard listens to the battle over the coms for a few minutes and then takes them, against orders, back to Earth to assist in the fight. End of “Ship of the Line”. To be honest, the scenes where Carey recreates actual scenes from the tv episodes and movies, although not that many, are probably the best ones in this book. And the first part of the book aboard the Bozeman prior to their going through the temporal anomaly are interesting, aside from Carey’s predilection to insert old time naval terminology and history in from time to time, even when it seems forced to do so. And I also did enjoy some of the debating of old ways versus new ones between Bateson and Riker. However, the already stated mischaracterizations of Picard and Riker, the stereotypical “must destroy them to claim a glorious reputation” Klingons, and the built up to but then quickly resolved Cardassian prisoner of war camp sub plot all make this at best an bit less than average Star Trek: The Next Generation novel. I would have given it two and a half stars out of five on GoodReads but they don’t allow half stars, so I had to give it a two star rating. (P.S.: Another thing I found a bit “off” was the use of the term “destroyer” as a type of vessel Starfleet would commission. Picard himself announces that Bateson’s newly assigned ship, a destroyer, would be rechristened the U.S.S. Boseman II. These days, I would find it very surprising to hear the writers have Picard or anyone else in Starfleet refer to one of their ships as a “destroyer” class vessel, preferring to use much less military sounding terms because Starfleet, while pseudo military in regards to its command structure, is almost always depicted in newer Trek television shows, movies, and tie-in fiction, as an organization with exploration, support, and defense as its core reasons for being. I can’t really fault Diane Carey specifically for this, though, as much of the Star Trek tie-in fiction of the 1980s and 1990s described Starfleet in more military like terms (destroyers, frigates, etc.), thanks largely to the popularity of Nicholas Meyer’s “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”, in which Meyer intentionally emphasized naval military elements in how Starfleet vessels like the Enterprise operated. Carey, though, as I already stated, loved to insert naval terminology and anecdotes more so than most other Star Trek novelists, though, due to her own personal background as a historic sailing ships hobbyist.) ...more |
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Feb 26, 2022
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Mar 19, 2022
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Feb 26, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 3836581175
| 9783836581172
| 3836581175
| 4.59
| 398
| Dec 15, 2018
| Nov 30, 2020
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it was amazing
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Finished reading “The Star Wars Archives: 1977-1983 (Episodes IV-VI) (40th Anniversary Edition)” (2020), edited by Paul Duncan and published by TASCHE
Finished reading “The Star Wars Archives: 1977-1983 (Episodes IV-VI) (40th Anniversary Edition)” (2020), edited by Paul Duncan and published by TASCHEN tonight. The ��40th Anniversary Edition” releases in 2020 were smaller sized (and much less expensive) rereleases of some of TASCHEN’s more popular high-end coffee table books released by them over the course of their first forty years as a publisher. The “Star Wars Archives: 1977-1983 (Episodes IV-VI) book (the expensive oversized limited edition release) was published in 2018 and had a release price of $200. The 40th Anniversary Edition that I read (borrowed from the public library) reformats the material from a large wider-than-it-is-tall art style book into a more standard taller-than-it-is-wide format, necessitating reformatting the positions of the text and illustrations/photographs on each page from the original version. (It is also a much more affordable edition, with a release price of only $25.) However, I believe that some of the photos and illustrations were saved for only the original edition (not included in the newer edition). This 40th Anniversary Edition is a nice thick book (512 pages) covering the production of all three of the original Star Wars movies (“Star Wars”, a.k.a. “Star Wars: A New Hope” (1977), “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” (1980), and “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” (1983). The majority of the text is from interviews between author/editor Paul Duncan and George Lucas. The rest is interview quotes with the actors (Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, etc.) as well as others behind the scenes (directors, producers, writers, etc. There are also production notes interspersed between the interview sections, including details such as which scenes were shot on which days and involved which actors. The photos on each and every page are amazing. Behind the scenes production shots (including ones of the actors between takes) as well as preproduction sketches and illustrations. The only thing that is a bit confusing at first is that the text and the pictures don’t go together, the two progressing along at different paces through the production of each movie. I developed a habit of looking at the pictures first and their captions, then back to whatever things Lucas and Duncan were talking about in the text. The other thing about this smaller 40th Anniversary Edition release is that the gold ink on the front cover rubs off very easily, leaving partial lettering after your fingers have rubbed the gold ink off just from holding the book. I ended up buying a copy of my own, I enjoyed this book so much, but I just might have to wear gloves when handling it. I highly recommend this book, though, for any fans of the original Star Wars movies. (There is also a second book covering the prequel trilogy, “The Star Wars Archives: 1999-2005 (Episodes I-III), but it’s only available in the original 2020 $200 limited edition version still, no lower priced version as of yet.) ...more |
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Jan 28, 2022
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Feb 26, 2022
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Jan 28, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 1789091993
| 9781789091991
| 1789091993
| 4.39
| 64
| unknown
| Sep 01, 2020
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it was amazing
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I just finished reading “Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Inside the Art & Visual Effects” (2020, Titan Books) by Jeff Bond and Gene Kozicki. I highly r
I just finished reading “Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Inside the Art & Visual Effects” (2020, Titan Books) by Jeff Bond and Gene Kozicki. I highly recommend this book for both fans of Star Trek (the 1979 film specifically) and also for aficionados of how motion picture visual special effects are made (or, at least, were made on now classic films like this). This is a very nice “coffee table” type book with the requisite ample supply of nice big photos (conceptual art, photos of technicians creating the Enterprise, V’ger, Klingon battlecruiser, and other shooting models, pictures of the actors on set, etc.). This is a nice history of the entire project, the art and visual effects needed to bring the first Star Trek movie to theaters (reviving the franchise and setting the visual tone for all Star Trek film and television projects to follow even to today). Included in this history is the well known events (well known to Star Trek fans, that is) of how one visual effects studio was hired at the start of production (Jack Abel & Associates) only to be fired after not being able to produce any useable visual effects sequences on film after a year of work and after spending millions of dollars of the film’s budget. “Star Wars” visual effects veterans Douglas Trumbull and John Dykstra then had to be brought in the create nearly all of the movie’s visual effects in only six months or so (the studio having an ironclad contract with the major movie theater chains as to when the movie would come out, a date that could not be changed without losing millions of dollars in fees). Trumbull’s and Dykstra’s companies had to work around the clock shifts to get all of the work completed in time and the finished film was “still wet” as they say when delivered for the big premiere in Washington, D.C. on December 6, 1979. The book begins, however, with how the project initially began life as an earlier film script in 1976 titled “Star Trek: Planet of the Titans” and then a planned hour long weekly television series titled “Star Trek: Phase II”. A lot of conceptual art had been created for both of these projects and actual physical studio models and interior Enterprise sets had been constructed for the television series when that idea was then scrapped in favor of a film again (thanks largely to the success of both “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”). The level of technical detail is high enough to explain how various scenes were shot and the technical challenges that had to be overcome, but not so much as to be overwhelming to most of us readers who are laymen to the film and television visual effects trade. Also very interesting is learning about scenes that were originally envisaged differently from what was shot and, even more so, entire sequences that were shot but weren’t used in the film (like an entire chapter about the shooting of the “Memory Wall” sequence that would have seen both Spock *and* Kirk enter into the inner chambers of the V’ger spaceship in their EVA suits and Kirk get attacked by V’ger’s defenses. Shot practically on a stage over the course of several days, the practical effects (Shatner and Nimoy hanging from wires, the “antibodies” that would swarm and cover Shatner, etc, just wasn’t working as originally envisaged. (This was while Abel was still doing the visual effects.) They decided to scrap this and when Trumbull and Dykstra took over they (I can’t remember which) decided to go in an entirely different direction, the one we see in the finished movie of only Spock entering into V’ger and witnessing its psychedelic light show. The last chapter in the book looks at how director Robert Wise became involved in revisiting “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” for the Director’s Cut DVD release in 2001. Doing so enabled them to go back and redo some of the visual effects sequences for the DVD as they had originally been envisaged (but which they were unable to achieve in 1979 for various reasons, mostly a lack of time due to the film’s preset release date and the rush to get everything done in time). Again, highly recommended. The authors conducted new interviews with as many of the relevant individuals as possible and quoted (with permission) from Preston Neal Jones’ book, “Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (2014) (another book that I’m still in the process of reading) for interview quotes with those important to the subject who are no longer living. I checked this book out from the public library (after asking them to buy a copy) but this is one book that I will eventually have to get a copy of my own. ...more |
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Dec 2021
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Dec 16, 2021
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Dec 01, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 1785861913
| 9781785861918
| 1785861913
| 4.07
| 15
| unknown
| Sep 04, 2018
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liked it
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I finished another “quick read” book that had to get back to the public library today: “Star Trek: Discovery: The Official Companion” by Titan Magazin
I finished another “quick read” book that had to get back to the public library today: “Star Trek: Discovery: The Official Companion” by Titan Magazines (2018). (That’s the title as written in the inside small print. The front cover adds “The Making of Season 1” to the end of the title. And, just to make things more confusing, GoodReads brings this up as “Star Trek Discovery Collector’s Edition 2”. I read elsewhere online that this was released in both standard magazine and hardcover book formats, which might be why this hardcover I checked out would be considered “Edition 2”.) Like the “Voyager 25th Anniversary Special” (2020), this is largely (if not entirely) comprised of material previously released in Titan Magazines’ “Star Trek Magazine”. Brief interviews (two to four or five pages long) with Mary Wiseman (“Ensign Tilly”), Prosthetic and Special Make-Up FX Department Head James MacKinnon, and Alan Van Sprang (Section 31 operative, “Leland”)); an opening overview article on the making of season one (in actuality a bunch of brief interview segments, one right after the other, from the series producers, costume designer, property (props) manager, prosthetics and make-up artists, visual effects supervisor, and musical score composer); a short section of pictures of the U.S.S. Discovery and the U.S.S. Shinzhou and other tech items like hand phasers, tricorders, and communicators; and an episode guide of all season one episodes (each with a plot summary with pictures and a few more relevant quotes from producers, actors, costume designers, make-up artists, visual effects artists, etc.). Repeating what I said about the Voyager 25th Anniversary Special, this is by no means a must read, but it is an okay “quick read”. I didn’t bother reading the episode plot summaries, which made it an even quicker read. Some interesting insights here and there from the participants (of the original interviews either reprinted or quoted in this “Companion”) but most of them very brief due to the format here. ...more |
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1
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Sep 24, 2021
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Sep 27, 2021
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Sep 24, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 1787734226
| 9781787734227
| 1787734226
| 3.42
| 24
| unknown
| Feb 18, 2020
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liked it
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Trying to put a dent in my towering “to read” stack of public library books (and in order of first ones due back), I finished this short one earlier i
Trying to put a dent in my towering “to read” stack of public library books (and in order of first ones due back), I finished this short one earlier in the week: “Star Trek: Voyager 25th Anniversary Special” by Titan Books (2020) (not to be confused with “Star Trek: Voyager: A Celebration”, another book released in 2020 in honor of Voyager’s 25th anniversary, “A Celebration” by Hero Collector Books). Not a lot to say about the “Voyager 25th Anniversary Special” other than that it’s basically a hardcover magazine length book consisting almost entirely of interviews and articles that ran in Titan Magazines’ “Star Trek Magazine” back while “Voyager” was originally on the air (1995-2001). Short interviews (one to three pages long with the actors and also the season ending recap interviews with producers Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga). The book does open with a short new interview with Kate Mulgrew (Captain Kathryn Janeway) conducted especially for those special. (One can tell that it was pre COVID as they mention the upcoming Star Trek Cruise that the Voyager cast was set to attend in honor of the anniversary. That cruise was held in March 2020, right before COVID closed everything down.) This is by no means a must read, but it is a nice “quick read”. And it is interesting to go back and read what the actors and producers were saying about the show and their characters at the time it was being made. ...more |
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1
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Sep 19, 2021
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Sep 21, 2021
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Sep 19, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 1858756146
| 9781858756141
| 1858756146
| 4.41
| 83
| Nov 24, 2020
| Nov 24, 2020
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really liked it
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Just finished reading “Star Trek: Voyager: A Celebration” (2020, from Eaglemoss/Hero Collector Books; writers credited as by Ben Robinson and Mark Wri
Just finished reading “Star Trek: Voyager: A Celebration” (2020, from Eaglemoss/Hero Collector Books; writers credited as by Ben Robinson and Mark Wright, with additional material by William Potter and Matt McAllister). Released in conjunction with (and “celebrating”) the twenty-fifth anniversary of the premiere of the television series on January 16, 1995. One the best book ever released specifically about “Star Trek: Voyager”. (There have been at least two previously released books—from while the tv series was still in production and had just completed its run—that are also quite good: “Star Trek: Voyager: A Vision of the Future” by Stephen Edward Poe (1998), and the “Star Trek: Voyager Companion” by Paul Ruditis (2003)). “Star Trek: Voyager: A Celebration” includes newly conducted interviews with all of the primary cast of actors (with the exception of Jennifer Lien who played Kes the first three seasons; Lien no longer does interviews, although the book does include archival interview quotes from Lien and comments from her co-stars on their experiences working with her on the series.) The book also gives two-page spotlights on key episodes, and articles on the development of the series, its opening titles sequence, important behind the scenes personnel like series co-creators and producers Michael Pillar and Jeri Taylor, the various aliens featured on the series (the Kazon, the Vidiians, the Hirogen, the Borg, and Species 8472), the various departments—art department, VFX (visual effects), the writers and directors, make up department (including details on Neelix’s elaborate alien prosthetics that had to be applied and removed every day), costumes, and musical score composers)—designing the USS Voyager and Delta Flyer shuttle and a gallery of the various alien and other Starfleet vessels seen, and several familiar elements of the series like landing the ship (a first for a Starfleet starship on a Star Trek series) and Seven of Nine’s famous silver “catsuit”, and “Captain Proton” holodeck program. When I first say the announcement that this book was coming, I knew that I would want to read it but at the same time thought to myself, “How interesting could another book on Star Trek: Voyager really be?” It turns out, pretty interesting (if done well). The next “Celebration” book due out from Eaglemoss is “Star Trek: A Celebration”, about the original 1966-1969 “Star Trek” television series. Again, I’m a bit skeptical as there have been oodles of books written on the original series. Still, perhaps Eaglemoss might be able to surprise me again and give us a different take on an already very well covered subject. We’ll see. As for “Star Trek: Voyager: A Celebration”, I highly recommend it. ...more |
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Sep 17, 2021
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Nov 21, 2021
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Sep 17, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 1858756111
| 9781858756110
| 1858756111
| 3.92
| 25
| unknown
| Aug 04, 2020
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really liked it
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A few days ago I finished reading “Battlestar Galactica Shipyards: The Encyclopedia of Battlestar Galactica Ships”(Eaglemoss/HeroCollector, 2020). (Al
A few days ago I finished reading “Battlestar Galactica Shipyards: The Encyclopedia of Battlestar Galactica Ships”(Eaglemoss/HeroCollector, 2020). (Also listed a lot of places like Amazon as “The Ships of Battlestar Galactica”.) “Featuring Ships From the Original and the Reimagined Series”, as it says on the cover (although, I should point out up front that only twenty-nine out of this “reference” style book’s one hundred and seventy-four pages feature original 1978-1979 tv series Battlestar Galactica ships (16.7%). The rest covers ships from the 2003-2009 SCI-FI series. Which is fine if, like me, you like both. However, there are some original series purists (ones who don’t care for the newer series) who should probably see if they might be able to check a copy of this book out from their local public library (as I did) rather than investing the money in buying a copy. That said, this, like Eaglemoss/HeroCollector’s Star Trek Shipyards books, is a great resource for anyone who likes the overall Battlestar Galactica franchise and, in particular, looking over and admiring page after page of pictures and multiple-angle illustrations of the spaceships created for both series. As with the Star Trek Shipyards series—of which there currently six volumes covering the ships from the various Star Trek television series and movies with at least two more coming out soon)—the Battlestar Galactica Shipyards book is a collection of articles originally released in magazine form, each magazine bundled with a die-cast metal and plastic display model of the same ship covered in the magazine. (The reason there aren’t more of the original series ships in the book is because the models series is likewise mostly “reimagined” Battlestar Galactica, with only five out of the so far twenty-three ships in the models series are original series ones.) Each ship covered in the book gets a text article covering the in-universe history of that ship (or model of ships) including summaries of significant moments from the television series, followed by detailed front, side, top, and bottom view CGI illustrations. (The original magazines also usually have articles on the designing of the ships but those HeroCollector decided to put those articles in a separate series of books, their “Designing Starships” series. A “Battlestar Galactica: Designing Spaceships” volume is due out in October 2021.) If you are big into and into Battlestar Galactica or into science fiction spaceships in general, I highly recommend “Battlestar Galactica Shipyards” (and also the Star Trek Shipyards books, too). ...more |
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May 08, 2021
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Aug 19, 2021
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May 08, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 1982154063
| 9781982154066
| 1982154063
| 4.11
| 1,434
| Jan 05, 2021
| Jan 05, 2021
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really liked it
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I just finished reading the second “Star Trek: Picard” novel, “The Dark Veil”, by James Swallow (2021). Another prequel story to the opening events of I just finished reading the second “Star Trek: Picard” novel, “The Dark Veil”, by James Swallow (2021). Another prequel story to the opening events of the first season of “Star Trek: Picard”, the CBS All Access (now Paramount+) streaming access television series, just as the previous Picard novel, “The Last Best Hope”, had been, “The Dark Veil” focuses on Captain William T. Riker in command of the USS Titan, along with his wife, Commander Deanna Troi, their son, Thaddeus, and the rest of their crew. Set soon after the attack on the shipbuilding facilities on Mars detailed on “Star Trek: Picard”, Riker and his ship and crew come to the aid of a secretive ally race of the Federation which is seeking to leave the area of space they have been living in behind and travel in a great colony ship across the galaxy to where their race first originated from. Riker is forced to broker an uneasy partnership with the commander of a Romulan Warbird who has also taken an interest in seeing them on their way as it requires them to journey close by Romulan territory. And aboard the Romulan Warbird is a member of the Tal Shiar, the Romulan secret police/intelligence agency, who is also a member of the Zhat Vash, an even more secret Romulan organization/cadre who have witnessed a dire vision of future events called the Admonition in which the destruction of all organic living beings are wiped out by artificial/synthetic beings. The Zhat Vash’s mission is to route out and destroy synthetic beings before this may take place, all the while facing the destruction of the Romulan home world and much of the surrounding Empire but the soon to go supernova Romulan central star. That all sets the stage for the events of “The Dark Veil”. I have to say that I really enjoyed this one. I like reading about Riker as captain of the Titan. From 2005 through 2017, there was a series of novels titled the “Star Trek: Titan” series, which followed Riker, Troi, and the USS Titan (James Swallow wrote two of the novels in that series), and these characters also appeared together in other Star Trek crossover novels throughout this same period. However, “Star Trek: Picard” established a new backstory which places it and its tie-in material (which includes “The Dark Veil”) outside of anything established in the Pocket Books novels that preceded it, so it is unnecessary to have read any of the prior “Star Trek: Titan” novels to be able to understand and enjoy “The Dark Veil”. (I know because I have not yet read any of the “Titan” novels, yet I now look forward to going back and doing so.) I don’t want to give too much more away regarding the plot, other than to say that it fits in well with the back story established in “Star Trek: Picard”, and also includes a lot of the tried and true Star Trek elements of success, such as exciting starship emergency rescues and ship battles, Romulan intrigue, and the Starfleet characters attempting to better understand this mostly unknown secretive race that has been living amongst them for a very long time but has always kept their ways hidden to outsiders. I would love to see more stories aboard the USS Titan, although the time table of events established by “Star Trek: Picard” only allows a limited number of years following “The Dark Veil” that William Riker, Deanna Troi, and their family remain on the Titan. Plus, the next “Star Trek: Picard” novel has already been announced and like the first two will focus on an entirety different character, that of Captain Cristóbal Rios, and his story leading up to the start of the “Picard” series. This book, “Rogue Elements”, is due out in August 2021. As for “The Dark Veil”, I highly recommend it. ...more |
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1
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Apr 13, 2021
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May 15, 2021
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Apr 13, 2021
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1785653873
| 9781785653872
| 1785653873
| 4.55
| 33
| unknown
| Sep 05, 2017
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it was amazing
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I love this book. Funny, though, I oftentimes found myself liking the “posters” created by Ortiz more on the “so-so” episodes than the better/more pop
I love this book. Funny, though, I oftentimes found myself liking the “posters” created by Ortiz more on the “so-so” episodes than the better/more popular ones. (I requested that my local library system, the Tampa/Hillsborough Public Library, get both this and the pervious “Star Trek: The Art of Juan Ortiz” (2013) and they got this one in first. So, at the time I read this TNG book and am writing this little review, I have not seen Ortiz’s original series book yet.)
...more
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Mar 17, 2021
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Mar 27, 2021
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Mar 17, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 1733605371
| 9781733605373
| 1733605371
| 4.20
| 10
| unknown
| Jan 01, 2020
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really liked it
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Late last night I finished reading "These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s: Volume 3 (1978-1980)" by Marc Cushman, the las
Late last night I finished reading "These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s: Volume 3 (1978-1980)" by Marc Cushman, the last in Cushman's three-volume series looking at the decade of the 1970s in Star Trek and, in this third volume, focusing entirely on the development, production, reaction, and after effects of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (1979). After a so-so volume two in my opinion (due largely to the material in the second book covering a period when nearly everything Roddenberry was working on didn't actually end up getting produced, so it was mostly about various scripts in development which didn't interest me as much), Cushman's standard format of chronologically working through a Star Trek project (in this case "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"), day by day, from speculation in the fan press regarding a new Star Trek project to the deals being struck to the script being written and directors and producers being hired, and on through actors being resigned or cast, production design, sets being built, cameras rolling, post production (special visual effects, sound design, editting, musical score being composed and recorded), and post release box office returns and newspaper reviews from across the country, again makes for a very interesting read, for the most part. For fans of Star Trek, a lot of this material has already been covered in other books (including the wonderful "Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture: An Oral History of the Legendary Production Documented As It Happened" by Preston Neal Jones, which I'm also reading at the moment.) However, Cushman's writing style and rapid day-by-day pacing kept me from ever getting bored even it is was information that I was already familiar with. My biggest interest is nearly always in the actual shooting of a television series or movie, so these are the most interesting chapters to me. I do like how Cushman also includes chapters on the peripheral tie-in merchandise that was being released alongside the movie, such as the Pocket Books tie-in novel written by Gene Roddenberry, the Marvel Comics comic book adaptation, and the various magazines and tie-in books such as "The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture", "Chekov's Enterprise: A Memoir of the Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture" by Walter Koenig, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture Official Blueprints" set, etc. Cushman spends a huge amount of pages recording snippets from newspaper and magazine reviews that saw print immediately after the release of the movie. He even acknowledges how lengthy that chapter is but states he wanted to give as wide a sampling of all of the positive and negative critical reactions to the movie as he could. I did start to find a lot of the reviews to be basically the same thing over and over again, but those not interested can easily skip to the next chapter. The other thing that kind of was off putting to me was Cushman's tendancy to, like the the previous two volumes of this 1970s trilogy, feel that he needs to keep defending Roddenberry against perceived slights caused him by the powers all around him, including the various studio heads pulling the strings and making the important decisions. If Cushman feels that Roddenberry was slighted he switches to his editorial type voice, rushing to Roddenberry's defense and at times being critical and derisive of others who didn't recognize Roddenberry's creative talents. A big element of this particular period in Star Trek history, when the motion pictures were beginning after a decade of no new Star Trek material except for the animated series, is the slipping of Roddenberry's authority and ability to control his creation as the copyrights now belonged to Paramount Pictures, who would end up marginalizing Roddenberry from executive producer on the original 1960s television series to just "producer" on the first movie and then to merely a "consultant" starting with "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan". From that point on, the powers creating the movies didn't have to do anything Roddenberry wanted them to anymore, which was something he became quite bitter about (and probably justifiably so). Eventually he would take a more active role again in the development and production of the first season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation", but then his failing health would again sideline Roddenberry. All of this is important and legitimate material to cover during this period in Trek history. However, in this one area Cushman is not the least bit objective. If there is more than one "take" on a conflict, he nearly always supports and sympathizes with Roddenberry's position, which can be a bit off putting. That said, I still found this third volume to be a very enjoyable read, right up there with his first three "These Are the Voyages: TOS" series where he chronicled the production of all three seasons of the original "Star Trek" television series. I'm sure there will be more of these books to come. Next up is the 1980s, which would cover the release of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan", "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock", "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home", "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier", and "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (the television series). Cushman already goes into the early development of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" in the final chapter in this book, framing it as the "after effect" of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (how Roddenberry ended up being pushed aside for producer Harve Bennett and director Nicholas Meyer and also the big controversy of the leaking of Spock's death in the second movie well before they began shooting the movie). I highly recommend this (although, again, there are numerous other books on the making of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" that would probably be just as good). ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 28, 2020
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Feb 10, 2021
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Dec 28, 2020
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Hardcover
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| 0692643850
| 9780692643853
| 0692643850
| 4.34
| 29
| unknown
| Mar 10, 2016
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really liked it
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A nice book of (mostly) rare photos taken from various sources (such as "film trims" of shot but unused footage that was later sold to fans by Gene Ro
A nice book of (mostly) rare photos taken from various sources (such as "film trims" of shot but unused footage that was later sold to fans by Gene Roddenberry's merchandising outfit, Lincoln Enterprises). A lot of official publicity photos (which have been seen elsewhere), as well. I particularly liked some of the behind the scenes pictures of the special effects guys filming the Enterprise and other spaceship models, as well as shots of the bridge where you can see the rafters above or the wooden slats below (the latter in an image demonstrating the "pie like" structure of the main bridge set which allowed sections to be removed to allow better access for cameras and lighting equipment). I liked that the photos were arranged in chapters taking us chronologically through the first season in the order that the episodes were shot, and the inclusion of the shooting dates, budget (how much it cost to shoot that episode), and director and writer credits at the start of each chapter. (These books can be seen as a companion piece to Marc Cushman's "These Are the Voyages: TOS" three volume series, so a decent number of the pics here can also be seen in the first of first books, although those were all in black-and-white.) The to thing that I found a bit bothersome was the quality of a lot of the colorized photos. Gurian usually does note these as having been "colorized from black and white" (but doesn't specify if that's the way he found them or if they were colorized specially for this book. Either way, the colorizing effect gives a lot of the pictures a very fake looking quality, and messes up the depth of focus (one character sticking out from the rest of the picture because of the overly bright color given to his or her clothing. I think I would have preferred less of these colorized pics in favor of the original black-and-white versions, if possible. Still, it's an enjoyable book to page through. As its primarily a collection of pictures, there is very little actual reading necessary aside from a very long introduction by Gurian and then short captions accompanying each picture. ...more |
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1
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Dec 22, 2020
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Dec 28, 2020
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Dec 22, 2020
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Paperback
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![These are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s, vol. 2 [1975-1978] (These Are the Voyages, #5)](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1595545665l/54652681._SX50_.jpg)
| 1733605328
| 4.00
| 7
| unknown
| Jul 14, 2020
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liked it
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I finished reading Marc Cushman’s “These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s Volume 2 (1975-1977)” (which was just released t
I finished reading Marc Cushman’s “These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s Volume 2 (1975-1977)” (which was just released this past summer), checked out from the public library. As the title says, this is volume two of a three-volume series covering the works of Roddenberry (and the history of Star Trek) over the course of the 1970s, the ten year period between the cancellation of the original “Star Trek” television series (1966-1969) and the release of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (1979). Cushman previously released three volumes simply titled “These Are the Voyages”, covering the original television series, season one being covered in volume one, season two in volume two, and season three in volume three. I really liked the first volume in Cushman’s 1970s trilogy (his original intent had been to cover the 1970s in just two books but then found enough material to make it three) as it covered a lot of Roddenberry’s lesser covered projects such as the making of the film “Pretty Maids All in a Row” and his pilot films for “Genesis II”, “The Questor Tapes”, “Planet Earth”, and “Strange New World”, as well as the development and production of the 1973-1974 “Star Trek: The Animated Series”, plus the sudden surge of Star Trek’s popularity when it went into nationwide syndicated reruns and the start of the Star Trek conventions. That was all in volume one (1970-1974). This second volume covering 1975-1977 is more Star Trek heavy as it follows Paramount’s waffling back and forth over whether to bring Star Trek back as a movie, a made-for-tv movie, or as another tv series. Roddenberry and the others hired to produce these projects went through multiple story outline approvals and script rewrites, only to keep having that particular project shelved in favor of a different one. There was Roddenberry’s “The God Thing” movie script that was being developed from spring to summer of 1975, followed by scripts submitted by various other writers at Paramount’s request from August to December 1975. Roddenberry tried again (along with co-writer Jon Povill) in 1976 with a time travel/altered history storyline. Various other movie script false starts followed in rapid succession (including the Allan Scott and Chris Bryant “Planet of the Titans” script). Interspersed with all of this are chapters on what all was happening with “Trekmania” at the time: the Star Trek conventions, the various Star Trek books and comic books released during this time, the opening of an all Star Trek retail store in New York City called the Galactic Trading Post, parodies of Star Trek like the one on “Saturday Night Live”, and also information about the various stars of the original Star Trek during this period, what film and television work they were getting as well as comments made in interviews at the time regarding if Star Trek would be returning and if they would be part of it if it did. There are a few non Star Trek projects discussed in this volume, another pilot film of Roddenberry’s titled “Spectre” (this one a horror themed film timed to take advantage of a brief upsurge in interest in horror and the paranormal, ala “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”; the “Spectre” was actually shot starring Robert Culp and Gig Young and aired as a TV movie of the week but did not go to series because Culp turned in down) and the truly odd situation of Roddenberry being hired to write a feature length screenplay (titled “The Nine”) for a “secret organization” named “Lab-9” which claimed to have made contact with extraterrestrials via channelers and astral meditation. Roddenberry also developed another series proposal, “Battleground: Earth”, for 20th Century Fox, which didn’t get made but which much later on (after Roddenberry’s death) was turned into the “Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict” series. The entire second half of this second volume is centered around “Star Trek: Phase II”, Paramount’s planned revival of Star Trek as a television series which would be the centerpiece of a brand new “Paramount TV Service” (a three-hour block of programming that Paramount would sell to independent television stations, the first hour being the new Star Trek series and the other two hours being original made-for-tv movies). Now, there have been other books covering “Star Trek: Phase II” (including the excellent “Star Trek: Phase II: The Making of the Lost Series” by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (1997)). So, I’m not going to go into much about “Phase II” here. Those already knowledgeable about Star Trek in the 1970s already know that after a year of development, including the purchasing of stories and scripts for up to sixteen episodes, Paramount then changed their minds yet once again, cancelling their plans for the Paramount TV Service and for “Star Trek: Phase II” as a television series in favor of doing “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” instead. Cushman covers “Phase II” in his typical in depth manner, just as he did in his previous “These Are the Voyages” books. However, I must admit that for the first time I found myself pushing myself through parts of the book. Part of it may be simply because I was already pretty familiar with a lot of the “Phase II” stuff. However, I was not as familiar with the “God Thing”, “Planet of the Titans”, and other scripts, yet I still found that sections a bit hard to get through. I think it’s because there wasn’t much actual film or tv production going on on these chapters (or during this period of Roddenberry’s career), instead mostly pre-production work. I found reading about the various executives at Paramount and the producers and story editors working with Roddenberry (and especially the “Trekmania” chapters) to be of more interest frankly than reading long summaries of various story outlines and screenplay drafts for the aborted Star Trek films and “Phase II” episodes”. What was so interesting to me in the first three “These Are the Voyages” volumes about the original television series, the detailed accounts of all three phases, preproduction, production, and postproduction/reception of each and every episode, are by necessity missing here because very little of Roddenberry’s projects got past the scripts phase (until “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”, which will be covered in volume three). The other thing that I found a bit disconcerting (and even at times outright annoying) was Cushman’s increasing tendency to step in to defend Roddenberry when others had negative comments about him or their experiences working with him, and also at times editorializing regarding *his* opinion of certain screenplay drafts and story outlines. At one point, Cushman says, “Comedy is subjective and this story [a story outline written by Theodore Sturgeon for “Phase II” titled “Cassandra” that Sturgeon apparently never submitted a finished script draft of] was intended to be humorous, so we’ll let you decide whether it works or not”. I may simply be forgetting but I don’t remember Cushman editorializing like this or using “we” like this in the first three “These Are the Voyages” books, or even very much in the 1970s volume one. This seems to me to be a shift in tone with this volume, one I don’t particularly care for as it takes me out of the more objective “this is everything that was happening at the time” mindset to “this is how Marc Cushman feels about it”. That said, I did still enjoy much of this massive 600 plus page long book and I imagine that anyone who has already read the previous “These Are the Voyages” books will feel likewise. I give this a three out of five stars on GoodReads. Cushman’s third volume covering 1978-1980 and the making of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” came out either at the same time or immediately after volume two, so it’s already out, too. I’ve requested that my local public library try to order it as well, just as I did for volume two. (The Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library Cooperative is awesome at trying to get books that they don’t already have upon request. That’s how they added most of the “These Are the Voyages” books to their collection, upon my requesting them to, although I did already also have the first three TOS books as ebooks purchased from Amazon.) I look forward to reading it should they be able to get it in, even though the making of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” is a subject I have already read quite a bit about in other books (including another that I’m in the middle of reading right now, “Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture” by Preston Neal Jones). ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 05, 2020
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Dec 15, 2020
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Nov 05, 2020
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Hardcover
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| 9780983917540
| 4.09
| 56
| Dec 01, 2014
| Dec 2014
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it was amazing
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Just finished reading a few days ago “Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture” by Preston Neal Jones (2014). This mammoth boo Just finished reading a few days ago “Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture” by Preston Neal Jones (2014). This mammoth book (672 pages in the print edition; I read the eBook version) has to be by far the most in-depth accounting of the making of the first Star Trek film (although there are others that I have also recently read, such as “Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Art and Visual Effects” by Gene Kozicki (2020) and “These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s Volume 3, 1978-1980” by Marc Cushman (2020), plus quite a bit is also covered in “The Fifty Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First Twenty-five Years” by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman (2016)). This is definitely the source for information on the subject recorded most closely to the time of the filming of the movie and its release in December 1979 as Jones did his research and conducted his interviews at that time, intending it to be released as a special double-sized issue of “Cinefantastique” magazine to come out along with (or soon after) the film’s release. It took too long for Jones to complete the project and so it missed coming out then, and also subsequent efforts to still release it as a Star Trek themed special issue of that magazine or as a book of its own didn’t bear fruit (until now). It is difficult to really rate a book like this as it very well much depends on the audience you are speaking to. For the casual Star Trek fan (or non fan), this is way too much information. It would completely overwhelm them and they would likely not make it very far into the book (especially due to the way it is organized, which I’ll get to in a moment). However, for the die-hard Star Trek fan, even though much of this information they are probably already at least somewhat familiar with—and, as I already said, has already been written of extensively in other books and also covered in various television documentaries like last year’s “The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek” series on The History Channel)—this is a proverbial gold mine of in-that-moment personal reflections on the creation of the film that in essence restarted the entire Star Trek franchise (leading not only to subsequent Star Trek films but also the spin-off television series, “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, and all the ones that followed). Not just the obvious “big names”, like Star Trek creator and film producer Gene Roddenberry, director Robert Wise, script writer Harold Livingston, and cast members William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, etc, but also Paramount executives like Jeffrey Katzenberg, musical score composer Jerry Goldsmith, and loads of behind the scenes crew and visual effects and sound effects artists (way more than I can list here, but ones who worked both in conjunction with the film’s initial visual effects company, Robert Abel & Associate; Magicam, Gregory Jein, and Brick Price Movie Miniatures (responsible for the creation of the studio models of all of the starships like the brand new “refit” USS Enterprise, the Klingon ship, the spacedock, orbiting space stations, and elements of V’ger’s appearance), and the ones ultimately hired to take over the huge job of getting the film’s visual effects completed on time after the firing of Abel, Douglas Trumbull and John Dykstra (and their respective effects companies). This is also a great source for those interested in how films were created in the late 1970s, from the earliest stages like getting the film green lit and the script written and approved, through all parts of preproduction, to the actual filming with the director and the actors (including coordinating with on set special effects personnel to get what would later be needed to merge with visual effects elements later on), through the long and oftentimes back breaking post production process (when most of the visual effects are created, the sound effects, the musical score, the sound mixing, and the editing), and, ultimately the rush to get everything done jn time to strike film prints for the premiere date and hundreds more to be shipped to theaters nationwide and worldwide. And *this* is the continual refrain throughout the book, about how the film’s release date of December 7, 1979, a date contractually agreed upon between Paramount Studios and hundreds of film exhibitors, was ironclad and could *not* be changed/extended to give them more time, regardless of all of the unexpected happenstances (such as the failure of Robert Abel’s company to produce any useable visual effects work after nearly a year of the film’s production schedule and the subsequent hiring of Trumbull and Dykstra with only a few months left). Much of the effects work done in a very short amount of time ended up turning out amazingly well considering the shortness of time given them and also the level of film visual effects technology at the time. However, there were many elements that the artists wished they could have just a bit more time to perfect or redo but could not due to the deadline. More importantly, the necessity to get hundreds of visual effects elements all completed right at the end of the film’s production schedule effected other elements such as Jerry Goldsmiths writing the score (because so much of the visual effects were still not completed), and, ultimately, the editing of the film. The chief complaint about “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” over the years, pretty much from when it first came out all the way to today, has been primarily about its slow pace and overly long visual effects sequences (in particular Kirk’s journey in a shuttlepod out to the new Enterprise near the start of the film and, later, the long journey into and through parts of the massive V’ger). Even the film’s director, cast, and other creators mostly agree with these criticisms, along with not enough actual clear looks at what V’ger really was supposed to look like, and also the lack of the personal interactions between the characters that made the original television series so enjoyable (aside from a few good Dr. McCoy moments in the film). However, according to all (including Robert Wise), the incredible time crunch they were under had a lot to do with these problems in the final cut if the film because they had no time to do any test audience screenings or to do a second pass on the cutting (editing) of the film. The first cut was finished literally with no time to spare, just in time to make the film prints for the premiere in Washington, D.C, and to ship out to the theaters across the country. All things considered, it’s amazing that “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” made its scheduled release date at all (many working on it felt it would be impossible at times) and that it came out as well as it did. Again, this is a must have book for many Star Trek fans. I give it five out of five stars on GoodReads. I must, however, say a bit about the book’s overall organization. While it takes you through the course of the film’s production pretty much chronologically (from the decision to make the film instead of a television series and what had already been done for the tv series prior to that through everything I’ve already talked about above), the actual interview remarks from each speaker are broken up and interspersed with each other through out the book. It can be a bit confusing, going from a remark by the director, then several paragraphs from a visual effects artist talking about moire patterns and matte paintings, to another visual effects artist, back to the director, then *another* visual effects artist, then an actor like DeForest Kelley, and so on. Not only is it difficult to maintain a consistent train of thought but at times one also loses track of just where they are in the overall film production timeline of events. And the second half of the book (where it gets into the bulk of the film’s post production visual effects work) gets at times *very* technical. I’m as big a geek about this sort of thing as just about anybody and even I had a hard time getting through some parts detailing difficulties they were having with those moire patterns, matte paintings, compositing of different effects like practical effects shot on the actual V’ger stage with the actors with power surge lightning effects needed in the backgrounds, etc. The difficulties caused by the tight deadlines, but also the limitations of the hardware they were using, which at times produced work not compatible with other elements needing to be merged all together in the same shot. And that whole sequence where Leonard Nimoy/Spock flies on his extravehicular jet pack through the inner workings of V’ger’s “brain”, all of the amazing lights and color patterns and digitized information given various forms, etc. Much of it I had to read through more than once to try to grasp just what they were saying. It all made for a very *long* read (after awhile I was only reading a few pages each night, which is why it took me six months to read it all. But, while at times a challenge to get through, I loved the overall experience and highly recommend this book. To certain people. Ones who are into Star Trek as heavily as I am. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 25, 2020
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Apr 21, 2022
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Oct 25, 2020
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Paperback
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| 1982133686
| 9781982133689
| 1982133686
| 3.98
| 413
| Jun 09, 2020
| Jun 09, 2020
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liked it
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**spoiler alert** Just finished reading “Agents of Influence”, a Star Trek novel by Dayton Ward that just came out earlier this year (2020). For those **spoiler alert** Just finished reading “Agents of Influence”, a Star Trek novel by Dayton Ward that just came out earlier this year (2020). For those only vaguely familiar with Star Trek (the original 1960s television series), Captain Kirk, first officer/science officer Spock, Doctor McCoy, and the other Starfleet officers aboard the USS Enterprise were serving out a “five year mission to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”. The tv series was cancelled after only three seasons (although they did come back a few years later to do a couple additional seasons of stories in “Star Trek: The Animated Series” which can be considered to represent some of “years four and five” of the mission. There have also been loads of Star Trek tie-in novels (as well as comic books) set explicitly during that original five year mission time frame. “Agents of Influence” is another of those. However, of some small interest, “Agents of Influence” has been counted by at least one longtime fan to be the one hundredth original Star Trek tie-in novel published to take place during the five year mission time frame of the original tv series. (I will take his word for that. And there have been lots of novels released over the past few decades starring Kirk, Spock, and company that take place after the original five year mission, all the way up to and beyond the movies, as well as some that take place prior to the five year mission.) All of that said, what did I think of “Agents of Influence”? It was all right. A bit slow at times. Dayton Ward begins the story on three undercover Federation agents that have been living in secret as spies on the Klingon home world surgically as altered to appear as Klingons. They are extricated and picked up by the USS Endeavor (a ship and crew featured in another couple sub-series of Star Trek tie-in novels, the Star Trek: Vanguard and Star Trek: Seekers series, both of which Ward contributed to). The Endeavour becomes heavily damaged in an encounter in an asteroid field with the Klingons and the Enterprise is routed to assist them. Over the course of the novel, the focus constantly shifts not only between the Enterprise and Endeavour captains and other notable crew members like Spock (left in command of the Enterprise while Kirk is away from the ship) but also 1) the reactions back on the Klingon home world to the discovery of the escaped spies and what vital secrets they may have taken with them, 2) another group of Klingons operating in secret within the asteroid field developing an new energy draining weapon to be used against enemy vessels, and 3) a group of Orions “space pirates” that are in league with the Klingons in the asteroid field. The jumping around keeps the story from building up as a lot of the non Enterprise and non Endeavour scenes seem expository and not as interesting (and they also were a bit repetitive at times, reflecting someone else’s reactions to events that had just transpired in the previous scene). I felt at times like this should have been a book entirely focused on Captain Katami and the Endeavour working to hold off the Klingons until assistance from the Enterprise can reach them rather than having it jump so much from one set of characters to another. I liked the inclusion of Admiral Nogura, a character mentioned briefly in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) as the one who gave command of the then completely refit Enterprise back to Kirk to confront the threat of V’ger and used in many of the Star Trek tie-in novels. As in the Vanguard and Seekers novels, here again Nogura is head over covert and highly sensitive Starfleet Intelligence actions. In this case, he accompanies the Enterprise in its mission to find and assist the Endeavour and to recover the three Federation spies (although once the bulk of the novel’s setting shifts to the crippled Endeavour, Nogura’s role and “screen time” is greatly diminished from that point forward as he remains with Spock aboard the Enterprise). One thing that bugged me a bit as someone who has not yet read the Star Trek: Vanguard or Star Trek: Seekers novels is the “spoiler” (mentioned not once but at least three times, I think) of the fate of an important member of the USS Endeavour’s crew in those previous novels who did in one of them, leading to one of the other characters serving in their present position in “Agents of Influence”. From a standpoint of character background information, it makes sense that this character might reflect back on how he or she got to this point. However, again, as someone who plans to eventually read the Vanguard and Seekers novels I can’t help but think to myself that when I eventually do that I will then remember, “Oh, here’s that character who is going to die at some point”. That’s only a minor quibble, though. Again, I found the pacing of this one to be a more uneven and that a lot of time went to peripheral characters that turned out not to be very important, story time that could have been focused on further developing the lead characters aboard the Endeavour (or on Kirk and the Enterprise regulars, although much of the time they seem only there to reflect upon the events transpiring around them, Kirk and his team assisting the Endeavour and Spock, McCoy, and Nogura back aboard the Enterprise). I enjoyed “Agents of Influence” well enough, though not as much as I have some of Ward’s others (“From History’s Shadow”, “Drastic Measures”). I found it to be a pretty average quality Star Trek novel. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 03, 2020
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Oct 25, 2020
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Oct 03, 2020
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Paperback
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| 1858755786
| 9781858755786
| 1858755786
| 4.09
| 58
| Oct 15, 2019
| Oct 15, 2019
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really liked it
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Earlier today I finished reading the massive “Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 & 1701-A Illustrated Handbook (2019) published by Hero Collector B
Earlier today I finished reading the massive “Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 & 1701-A Illustrated Handbook (2019) published by Hero Collector Books, a division of Eaglemoss, Ltd.*, Ben Robinson (General Editor). (* The same company that puts out the Star Trek: The Official Starship models collection that I’ve been a subscriber to since it started back in 2012.) This is the second in the “Illustrated Handbook” series. The first was the U.S.S. Enterprise-D (from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”). A third just came out this past month focusing on the U.S.S. Voyager, and fourth, Deep Space Nine and the U.S.S. Defiant, is scheduled to come out in early 2021. The illustrations, diagrams, floor plans, schematics, etc. that the "Illustrated Handbooks" are full of were originally released in "The Official Star Trek Fact Files", a "partwork" magazine series that ran in the U.K. from 1997 to 2002 and that was published by GE Fabbri (of which the current Eaglemoss company is the successor to). A large amount of the same material was also reprinted in the U.S. based "Star Trek: The Magazine" that ran from 1999 to 2003 (published by Fabbri Publishing (U.S.)). The copious and highly detailed illustrations, floor plans, etc. are extensive in this collected volume, one that took me quite awhile to get through (my copy being one I checked out from the public library; I've been sure to recommend for purchase by the library all of the Eaglemoss books). Partially this is because the book is clearly designed to be more of a reference book to be picked up from time to time, the reader jumping from one section to another more so than as a book to be read cover to cover. This "Illustrated Handbook" (which has the tagline, "Captain Kirk's original Starship Enterprise") after an introductory chapter, "History of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 & 1701-A: Operational History", breaks the material down into five subsequent chapters: "U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 [year] 2254" (covering the ship's exterior and interiors as seen in the 1964 first Star Trek pilot episode, "The Cage"), "U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 [year] 2257" (covering the version of the ship just recently seen in the second season of "Star Trek: Discovery"; this material obviously had to be newly created specifically for this handbook), "U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 [years] 2265-2268" (the version seen on the original "Star Trek" television series (1966-1969)), "U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 Refit [years] 2271-2285 (the heavily redesigned Enterprise from the first three Star Trek films (1979-1984)), and "U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-A [years] 2286-2293" (the second Enterprise seen in Star Trek movies four, five, and six (1986-1991)). For those who like me who are drawn to Star Trek largely due to the various cool looking starships, this is a must have book. For those who aren't as "into" the ships as they are the characters, stories, etc., they probably would find this book rather pretty to look at but hardly an essential purchase. One slightly negative aspect of collecting all of this previously separately released Star Trek Fact Files material together in one book is that it does get pretty repetitive. Details that are described in the text on a page will then get repeated word-for-word in the captions accompanying the illustrations on the very same two page spread, and text on a particular subject from one chapter will be much like the text on the same subject in a previous chapter (example, the pages describing the handheld "phaser" weapons, communicators, or "tricorders" used aboard the ship during 2254/"The Cage" are very similar to those later in the book of the 2265-2268 tv series version, etc.). At times the accompanying text is a bit of a chore to get through but the diagrammed illustrations of the pieces of technology do an excellent job of distinguishing between the various props used on Star Trek over its various iterations. Besides the floor plans of the various interiors aboard the ship like the bridge, sickbay, engineering, crew quarters, transporter rooms, shuttle bay, etc, another real treat is the pages dedicated to the various uniform designed worn by the characters at different times, everything from the standard duty uniforms to the optional green "tunic" style top Captain Kirk occasionally wore, to the various medical outfits Dr. McCoy wore, on down to the no name security, engineering, and other medical staff uniforms, and the uniforms worn in the later movies. It does strain the required format here of a seemingly chronological "in universe" handbook their having to place the newer "Star Trek: Discovery" version of the Enterprise in between that of "The Cage" and the rest of the original 1960s series because it's very difficult imagining why they (Starfleet) would redesign the interiors so drastically between the events of "The Cage" and those seen on "Discovery" (including the addition of a corridor behind the curved wall of rear duty stations on the main bridge and a second turbolift/elevator) only to decide to change it all back again a few years later. It's a minor quibble but another thing worth mentioning. (In another book they probably would have added the "Discovery" material at the end.) Again, highly recommended for Star Trek fans that are big into the starships aspect of Trek. And, if you can find it at your own local public library, probably a fun book just to browse through for fans who have followed Star Trek from the beginning. ...more |
Notes are private!
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May 07, 2020
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Aug 2020
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May 07, 2020
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| 3.67
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liked it
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Aug 08, 2022
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Aug 01, 2022
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| 3.63
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really liked it
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Jul 02, 2022
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Jun 24, 2022
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| 4.16
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really liked it
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Jun 24, 2022
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Jun 24, 2022
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| 3.68
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liked it
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Jun 21, 2022
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Jun 14, 2022
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| 4.59
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it was amazing
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Apr 06, 2022
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Feb 28, 2022
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| 3.49
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it was ok
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Mar 19, 2022
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Feb 26, 2022
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| 4.59
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it was amazing
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Feb 26, 2022
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Jan 28, 2022
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| 4.39
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it was amazing
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Dec 16, 2021
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Dec 01, 2021
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| 4.07
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liked it
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Sep 27, 2021
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Sep 24, 2021
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| 3.42
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liked it
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Sep 21, 2021
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Sep 19, 2021
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| 4.41
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really liked it
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Nov 21, 2021
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Sep 17, 2021
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| 3.92
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really liked it
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Aug 19, 2021
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May 08, 2021
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| 4.11
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really liked it
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May 15, 2021
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Apr 13, 2021
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| 4.55
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it was amazing
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Mar 27, 2021
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Mar 17, 2021
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| 4.20
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really liked it
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Feb 10, 2021
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Dec 28, 2020
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| 4.34
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really liked it
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Dec 28, 2020
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Dec 22, 2020
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| 4.00
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liked it
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Dec 15, 2020
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Nov 05, 2020
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| 4.09
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it was amazing
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Apr 21, 2022
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Oct 25, 2020
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| 3.98
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liked it
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Oct 25, 2020
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Oct 03, 2020
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| 4.09
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really liked it
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Aug 2020
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May 07, 2020
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