by
vanhunks
October 2003
I read the two novels 'in tandem' as I told my
good friend, and it yielded two very good results. One, I had a keen sense of
continuity and two, I could quite easily grasp the context in which well, too
many things were placed, expressed or described. If one read "The Farther
Shore" even weeks later, one could forget about certain things or even
overlook them.
Did I like the two novels? I can't say. I
haven't read any Trek novel for more than four years. So what to do when a kind
and generous friend thrusts the books in your hand and says, "There, see of
you can squeeze these in your luggage." To take up the books and make a
concerted effort at reading them provided me with pleasant hours of reading,
something I tend to neglect when I get into writing. My last impression of a
really good Trek novel was indeed, "Echoes" and so, with this little
prejudice, I subconsciously weighed
"Homecoming" and "The Farther Shore" against other [better]
novels I had read. It may not be right, it may be wrong, but it's human to want
to compare. However, this is the only area in which I did make a comparison of
any kind.
What were my expectations of the books? I
didn't, like a good many readers/writers expect J/C, or searched for J/C moments
with a finecomb. Perhaps I didn't have any other than that I was going to read
them with an open mind, or so I thought. I welcomed the idea that the homecoming
for the Voyager crew was not the homecoming/reception they expected, however
conservative they were in their expectations. It was a good lead-in for the
development of the plot to have Starfleet in fact view the presence of the ship,
its technology and the crew with the Captain and seniors officers with grave
suspicion. They had just been shunted in the Alpha Quadrant using Borg
technology and outwitting its queen to get home, who knows what diseases they
carried? I liked this, as it provided the grist needed for later confrontations
between the Voyager crew and Starfleet, with Montgomery being the proverbial
pain-in-the-rear upstanding officer in charge of Project Full Circle. This was a
pleasant "surprise" for me, considering I've read so much fanfiction
where Janeway walked on the proverbial red carpet at hteir homecoming with her
loyal and faithful crew not far behind, therefore, with great fanfare.
The predictability shouldn't have surprised me,
but it did. Realistically speaking, how completely different a scenario could
Golden have created from what fanfiction writers had already written, and four
years ago at that? Some of the
first fics I had read, dealt with
Janeway being promoted to Admiral, or Chakotay
to Captain, or Tom Paris being Lieutenant-Commander and Harry Kim at last
getting the promotion he deserved. Admittedly, the novels had already been
pre-empted by the two-parter in which the future Janeway is an admiral, and so
forth, but I couldn't help thinking that the show itself had been pre-empted by
fanfiction writers who used their excessively active imaginations and created
scenarios even more inventive and exciting than Golden or the creators at
Paramount. I remember years ago when one of the questions Cheile had in her
guestbook was whether Tom and B'Elanna should be married by the end of the
series. Most responded with a "yes". That was in 1998. Could this
question be answered: they do read fanfic, don't they?
I almost keeled over when reading that the
mobile over Miral's crib comprised of little starships, something I had read
many times in fanfic, some of them my own. In a good many fics, Chakotay
actually does captain Voyager as is the prediction of the second book!
Admittedly, if one had to write a little coda at the end of
"The farther shore", one could always write a story where
Chaklotay refused the commission, which must have been written about in some
fics.
I heard from my good friend that someone said
Christie Golden's books read like fanfic. As far as the many predictions fanfic
writers had already written about since about 1998, I would agree. Also, there
were not not too many original phrases I could get excited about and a phrase
like "in any way, shape or form" ["Homecoming"] I expect a
less experienced writer to use. It is so hackneyed by now. There were streches
of rather simplistic passages that made
me wonder whether I was reading a Trek novel, or a Christie Golden novel. But I
agree with certain reservations. Many writers can learn, I'm sure. If you read
these books as a budding fanfic writer yourself, pay attention more closely then
to things like how dialogue is written, how to create intrigue, how to weave the
plot, flashbacks, internal dialogue, pace - was it too fast, too slow? etc.
A number of paralells were explored, whether
intentional or not. I was struck by the idea of "freedom isn't free".
America's woes in the last three years - terrorism, destruction, high level
security breaches - has not gone unnoticed by this reader, seen in the context
of the stories and it has pursued with dogged and insensitive determination to
watch, follow, breach, lock up, label
and destroy anyone who is suspected of supping with the enemy, even in the
remotest of circumstances. The new Patriot Act gives government unbelievable
rights into violating the very essence of its constitution. So, in a free,
democratic and fair society in which we are supposed to be protected by our
constitution, are we really free? Thus, "Homecoming" and "The
Farther Shore". Voyager returns, and some of her crew are
incarcerated in what South Africans experienced in the seventies and
sixties, Section 29 - Detention without trial; interrogation and torture until
the detainees jumped from a window and killed themselves. It is a gross
violation of human rights, and whether the doctor is a hologram or not, he is
sentient, completely self-aware with smugness and arrogance and all. The rest of
the senior crew is monitored in a way that breaches their privacy and one
wonders: doesn't this sound all too familiar in the modern [21st century]
context? Whether Christie Golden answers that question or not, it did ram home
something to this reader.
While many things may change for the better, and
mostly, we see those changes in the technological advances, health and welfare,
etc, - human nature
changes not. The old paranoia that exists now, exists then, four hundred
years from now. It's eerie; it scares the devil out of me. It is indeed a 'brave
new world" Covington mentions later in the second book, the "rise of
the machines". It is Janeway herself who places some of the events in
context when she confronts Baines about 'slavery', that only when those who are
not slaves realise the 'human rights violation', an attempt to do something
about it, can any effective [passive]solution be sought. But is that the way it
always happens? What is the "end that justifies the means" or the
"desperate times seeking desperate measures"? It boils down to one
thing: violence and the subjugation of the human spirit. The tragic hero
qualities may very well be attributed to Oliver Baines. His motives were
honourable, the execution thereof, highly quesitonable.
Symbolism: Several things struck, and while one
doesn't expect this always to happen in an action-adventure, ensemble crew
story, I did pick up a few things. It may be a gross underestimation of the
author's craft and abilities to say one doesn't normally expect it in a Trek
novel. I knew that the opening, terrifying scene, written in italics and
therefore signifying a thought process/internal monologue would be one of the
key symbols/motifs in the story. I sensed the culprit rather early on and was
only curious to see how soon or effectively she would be dealt with. The idea of
stripping to the bare and then constructing or growing is seen in two instances
and very symbolic.
One, the 'manufactured' new Borg Queen who could
only, in contrast to a real queen where the formation of the queen is a question
of seconds or minutes, strips down and over a period of four years transforms to
queen. It's a slow rebirth, the nanoprobes and machineray added on whenever
they've made a breakthrough. I noticed that the internal dialogue at the start
of "Homecoming" [it forms the prologue] starts the reflection from age
3, and as we proceed through the novels, we notice how this "spirit"
[eventually we know her to be Covington, Intelligence Chief] also
"grows" up, but that growth is from [naked, into the world] innocence
[a tragic circumstance for any child to be helpless ] to the warped
"machine" we see in the adult Covington. It is logical and
understandable to assume that over a prolonged period of abuse of the kind
Covington suffered, could only generate an invidual who is clever, repressed,
bent on control and subjugating all humankind. So, in a physical sense which
only really is the outward manifestation of the new 'spiritual' growth of the
Queen, do we realise what we have to deal with.
Two, the Challenge of the Spirit, in which
B'Elanna, thrust into the 'desert' landscape of Boreth, is stripped naked. It is
more than just a shedding of raiment; it is casting off her prejudices, etc. Her
survival depends on her strength and her wits, but at the same time we see a
gradual assimilation into the landscape, becoming one with her surroundings. By
the time she meets her mother, the last of the vestiges of her anger is taken
away. Hers was not a road to discovering the Klingon in her, or the human,
seeing each part as separate and individual, but a fusing into B'Elanna. Her
confusion makes way for understanding. That her mother dies and her own part in
performing the ritual in Miral's last moments is still an indelible part of this
painful growth and understanding. Here again, we see the "naked' B'Elanna
stripped at the beginning of her quest, to one who finally recognises "the
self'. My friend said "I liked what they did with B'Elanna", and I
agree, again, with some reservations. It was the only character in the two
novels Christie Golden actually explored fully, to make the B'Elanna who emerges
from her Challenge a "reborn" B'Elanna, someone
who knows who she is, someone who has become much richer for the
experiences she had. Unfortunately, with the Trek novels, we don't see this kind
of exploration much and it was refreshing to see it done here, at least in part.
I missed somewhat, the Klingon language here,
since this forms so much part of their culture, and indeed the culture of any
race. The word for daughter/girl is "be'Hom", and IMO it would have
sounded more effective had Miral addressed B'Elanna as "be'Hom" or
simply "B'Elanna". I cringed at " 'Lanna "! Is this a
Klingon woman who takes pride and honour in her Klingonness?
I sort of got stuck on Seven's words at the end
when she says, after she had 'heard' the queen's thoughts, "Covington
wasn't a monster. She was a very wronged, very damaged woman". It is
significant I think that Seven of Nine utters these words. It is the extenuation
of the Covington's deeds on the one hand, and as former Borg about a new Borg
[queen]. The reader has been witness to the horror Covington suffered most of
her life into young adulthood, so Seven's words may sound enigmatic to those
around her, but not so to the reader. She uses the word "damaged", and
it has completely eerie, dooming overtones to them. A broken Borg is damaged,
just like a piece of machinery, as is the little three year old girl, damaged
from that period of her life on and into adulthood. It is in Covington's own
words [or her thoughts] that she refers to her scars being on the inside and
therefore invisible, and as the new birthing Queen, her body begins an outward
scarring process. In the Borg syntax, I think the use of >damaged< to have
been very effective.
There are about four different plots developed
in the stories. If we take the main plot to be the formation of the Borg Queen
and the eventual overthrow of Earth and the Federation, then the B, C and D
plots are the "rise of the holograms" with Oliver Baines spearheading
the movement, the settling in of the Voyager crew into their new little humdrum
lives, and B'Elanna's Challenge of the Spirit. Of these story lines running
parallel with the main plot, the only section that could be left out of the
novel(s) is B'Elanna's Challenge of the spirit. While I applaud the writer for
having done so much with the character, the entire journey doesn't really serve
the main plot. One likes to see that there are tie-ins, that one thing leads to
another, or that one thing cannot have been effected without the other. It was
important that there be a hologram uprising and it was beautifully worked into
the central plot. So too, the fact that Seven, Icheb and Holodoc found
themselves in prison almost from the start, which just added to the intrigue,
the action/adventure aspect.
True, we have a crew working together at
problem-solving like they did most times on Voyager, which was good to see. I
just didn't see how the Challenge of the Spirit could have been any more
significant other than that it was just that. It would have made a very, very
good story all on its own. Any kind of plausible reason could have been
fabricated to "get B'Elanna" out of the way if the entire operation of
saving Voyager and the world had to be conducted by Kathryn & Co. without
her. Some readers have said they
liked "The Farther Shore" better than "Homecoming". Could it
be the congestion of too many differents events, mini-plots, the resulting [too]
fast pacing so that no clear resolution could be obtained for some of them?
Libby played a pivotal role, yet at the end, is relegated to only being
mentioned that she and Harry can now get on with their lives. I make a
concession if I have to consider the nature of Libby's work so it's best to keep
her in that sort of background. But all had been despatched too quickly after
feeding my eager reader's brain with an overload of events. One could have pared
down the early [family bonding] scenes of "Homecoming" to accommodate
some of the plot development there and have Homecoming end a little differently,
with no less of a cliffhanger than it had.
I was pointed to the Simon Says.com web site by
someone who thought I could make a go of writing a Trek novel. I've bookmarked
the submission guidelines at the time. Here's an example:
"Avoid trying to definitively map out a character's
history beyond what has already been done in the movies or television episodes.
When we do biographical books, we work very closely with Paramount and the
writer. As a general rule, the best chance for a Star Trek submission by a
first-time Star Trek writer is to submit a "traditional" Star Trek
mission story that follows the Problem on Planet/Problem on Ship (or Station)
formula. If you've been reading the novels, you know that we do take some
chances and publish books that push the boundaries somewhat, but be advised that
we approach these stories very carefully, working closely with experienced Star
Trek writers and Paramount Pictures."
These are only some of the parameters within
which Trek novelists have to work and all prospective Trek novelists as well.
Christie Golden must have been given a few guidelines and/or some dispensation
to do a few more things with the stories, but more than what we've read, becomes
a challenge. It is already a challenge to work within these parameters and I
suppose, the soonest the C/7 thing could be despatched with, the infinitely
better it was. But, to my mind, the breakdown of that relationship was foisted
on us a suddenly as the build-up of it in the show had been. It would have been
useful though, to have seen more of this and the gradual disintegration of it
worked into the central plot. It remains though, that Trek novelists are pretty
much kept on a short rein, given these guidelines.
To give full vent to all one's creative urges in
one novel length story is for the fanfic writer so much more pleasing. There are
almost no rules and carte blanche becomes an overworked word. Still, the fanfic
writer with absolutely all methods, all devices, all manner of scenarios
including AU's at his disposal is much more
satisfied with her/his own end-result for a story. There would have been
solid characterisation, solid plot and plot development, introspective writing,
inner dialogue, etc. as well as an exciting story that crosses all boundaries
Simon Says we shouldn't cross. One understands that the projected readership
requires certain limitations. Not so in fanfic, unless it is NC-17. The very
creed on which Star Trek is based "to [boldly] go where no man has gone
before" becomes the underlying creed for the fanfic writer. Infinite
diversity in infinite combinations? Trek is not giving us that anymore. .
It goes without saying then that I would sooner
read a fanfic novel than I would a Trek novel.
***
vanhunks
October 2003
