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dgcatanisiri · 3 years ago

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I remember when I was reading the DS9 novel The 34th Rule, I complained about how David R George III, the writer of that book alongside Armin Shimmerman, has a habit of writing VERY decompressed time - there, it was having a chapter open with Kira entering Quark’s and then going on for a good two, three pages, without even mentioning her again, focusing on things like Quark interacting with a couple of characters who only appear in that scene, doing no set up or development by focusing on this bit, just... having it happen.

Which can be a service to certain stories, but with him, it seems like a consistent thing that he will STRETCH everything out, so that a book that could run maybe 280, 300 pages ends up hitting 400 easily. And because of that, all of his scene-setting and such goes on for much too long, overstaying its welcome and making the reader (me) just want it to get a damn move on already.

I think, having just reread the first of the Worlds of DS9 segment of the Star Trek Litverse, I see another issue I had, even before getting to his entry - he REALLY did not seem to care for the novel original characters of the post-finale DS9 world. Like... Honestly, the more I roll this over in my head, I’m not even sure if he cares about ANY of the DS9 cast.

Lot of details from the Star Trek Litverse, the novels set in the 24th century following the conclusion of DS9, so I’m gonna just throw up a cut so that those who don’t care about my ramblings are spared.

This is being spawned from having read the Andor entry of Worlds of DS9, which is centered entirely around characters who only exist in the novels, characters created to fill gaps in the officer roster after the end of the show. And I realized... NONE of these characters actually really feature in the course of the novels following David R George getting the primary pen that advances the DS9 setting.

Like I’m thinking ahead to the post-Destiny era, and... Of the DS9 cast who were introduced in Avatar and explored in those books... I don’t think ANY of them really fared much under his pen. Like... The Mission Gamma novels had the core cast put across the four of them, so let’s use that to show the Who’s Who.

So, left to right, Treir, Commander Elias Vaughn, Quark, Ezri Dax, Ensign Thirishar “Shar” ch’Thane, Kira, Gul Macet, Vedek Yevir, Nog, Bashir, Morn, Kasidy, Lieutenant Ro Laren, Ensign Prynn Tenmei, and Taran’atar. Not pictured are Jake (who returns to DS9 after this mini-series, getting a novel about his journey during this time of his own), former-Kai Opaka, now returned to Bajor, Ben Sisko, who returned for the birth of his daughter, and among the additional new cast developed, we have Counselor Phillipa Matthias and the new Bajoran liaison officer once Bajor joins the Federation and Kira takes on a Starfleet commission, Major Cenn Desca.

After Worlds of DS9 and the loose trilogy of Warpath/Fearful Symmetry/The Soul Key, the DS9 novels jump forward several years, and what happens?

Well, Shar and Taran’atar have left the cast, Shar in Worlds of DS9, Taran’atar at the conclusion of The Soul Key. During the Destiny novels, Ezri, now on the command track, has transferred to a new ship, the Aventine, and gotten a battlefield promotion to captain after the original captain and first officer are killed during the Borg invasion (she also took with her a few other minor original recurring characters I didn’t mention above). Kira has resigned her commission and is now becoming a Vedek (more words to follow). Vaughn became the station commander, but accepted a promotion to Captain and a ship for the Borg invasion, during which he ends up in a coma and eventually dies. Yevir has seemingly gone off into the ether. Macet likewise is not much of a figure at this point. No one even talks about Opaka’s return, despite how significant a figure she is among the Bajoran faithful - the Kai who led the Bajoran people through the end of the Occupation, lost among the Prophets only to be returned to them in a time of spiritual need. Likewise, Matthias has no real use in his stories, even though she’d been a major recurring figure in the books prior. Ro has become the station commander, complete with a Starfleet captaincy. Sisko, like Vaughn, took a ship posting for the sake of the invasion... and then actually ended up separating with Kasidy.

Actually, reading further into the Worlds series, there seems to be a reference to the naming of a certain Vedek, a man named Solis, who was mentioned on the show and who became a minor player during the late Mission Gamma period as standing against the Vedek Assembly and their response to a newly discovered book of prophecies, being encouraged by Opaka to run for Kai. But the Kai of Bajor does not appear in the post-Destiny DS9 books until the last book he wrote for the series, and it’s some woman we’d never met before. So he ignored the existing plot threads to do... something else entirely.

And then, as the Federation deals with the newly formed Typhon Pact, the station itself gets blown up.

I mean, yeah, sure, okay, take the iconic location of the series and destroy it, no problems there...

The Federation and Bajor approve the construction of a new station, but it takes a year for that to happen. When it does, Treir remains on Bajor, managing Quark’s franchise there. Prynn has been spending her time at Vaughn’s, as he’s her father, not getting ANYTHING to do other than be the mournful daughter.

Then, in a novel not penned by DRG, Bashir ends up stealing classified Starfleet data to aid in the ongoing reproduction crisis facing the Andorians (bringing in elements of Shar’s storyline), and he resigns his Starfleet commission, subsequently setting out to bring down Section 31.

Meanwhile, back with DRG’s developments, Kira has vanished among the Prophets. And, speaking of the Prophets, also in this time, we learn that one of Bajor’s moons is hollow, a “falsehood,” which casts a lot of doubt on the Prophets among the Bajorans. This, in turn, leads to Major Cenn resigning his commission and walking away, his faith shattered. And Ro, a character often defined by her lack of connection to the Bajoran faith, begins to wonder.

So... He functionally fazes out most of the DS9 crew brought in that he had no part in, and rejiggers Ro, the one preestablished character among them, to be a character honestly more in line with who Kira was while getting rid of Kira herself.

Why was he given sole creative control over these novels when it REALLY just seems to come across that he doesn’t like any of the characters developed for this setting?

Like I always come back to the “Vedek Kira” business as seeming like a fundamental misunderstanding of the character. It NEVER made sense to me. Or to Nana Visitor - as I understand it, while Star Trek Online borrowed some ideas from the Litverse, including this one, she made it a point to say that she would only return and voice Kira in their DS9 centered expansion if Kira got back into uniform at the conclusion of it. Like, yes, there was a major focus on her issues with faith in the initial run, due to her being effectively excommunicated from the faith by Vedek Yevir and the Assembly, but... That doesn’t mean she’d turn around and join the Vedeks.

Even in the book Ascendance, where we do jump back in the timeline briefly to a point after The Soul Key... Kira doesn’t FEEL like Kira in that segment, and the novel basically tries to convince us that she’s been feeling this discomfort with the uniform for a while, but... It just doesn’t ring true to the character. It never feels RIGHT. It just feels like after the fact attempts at justifying this radical shift through retcon, rather than a natural development of the character.

This isn’t even going in on the stuff done with Sisko. Like... Somewhere, I believe there’s an interview or statement or something from him that says that this was part of the beginning of Sisko’s journey under his pen, and that this is paying off the “you will know nothing but sorrow” thing said by the Prophet in the form of his mother, but... We are still talking about a white author writing a black man abandoning his family, something that Avery Brooks himself stepped in to prevent happen in the finale proper. This is not good optics, “beginning” of the story or not - even if it’s in keeping with a prophecy from the show... My dude, are you REALLY the guy who should be writing this PARTICULAR story?

(Though, admittedly, they DO reconcile and Kasidy and their daughter join him on board his new starship, but... Honestly, a part of me can’t help but feel that this was more due to the audience NOT accepting this at all, rather than being his intentional story direction...)

I mean... Maybe, MAYBE, this all was in service of some building story that never got published, because of the announcement of Star Trek Picard effectively putting an end to the ongoing Litverse, since there are a handful of lingering plot threads that I figure that the Coda miniseries just won’t be able to get to and wrap up, but... Given everything that came before, I don’t feel like that was going to happen.

I don’t understand why HE got to pen the continuing adventures, when it really just seems like he didn’t want to work with or build off of what had come before.

Like I remember in 2016, there were a handful of DS9 novels, among them the above mentioned Ascendance, which was the conclusion of a storyline started in the further above mentioned Jake novel (Rising Son), so a plotline that had run since 2003. And yet that year, in DS9 novels? I was far, FAR more excited for Jeffery Lang’s Force and Motion, which was a side story featuring Nog and Chief O’Brien on a mission away from DS9 proper. While part of that is surely just about how much the Ascendant storyline in question had dragged on for the better part of fifteen years there, it still says a lot about how much excitement this conclusion mattered to me by this point, under his pen.

It doesn’t help that my other big problem with his writing the DS9 novels is how much NOTHING seems to happen - he writes novels in the realm of 400, 450, 500 pages, and about 300, 350 of those pages constantly feel like spinning the wheels, going “hey, THING may be important, this THING we’re talking about. Hope that THING happens soon, and that THING will do THING. Yup. that’s a THING that’s happening.” It’s like the story can span weeks or months in the course of a single book, but by the end, NOTHING really felt like it’s moved forward. No character advancement, no plot advancement, just a bunch of people, standing around, talking about the THING and how the THING may be important, but we’ll have to wait around and see it anything happens about this THING.

If I’m happy about anything with the big Litverse wrap up, it’s that hopefully, he’s DONE playing in a progressing DS9 playground. Because honestly, I would probably be happy never seeing his name attached to a Star Trek novel again, because his writing style just does not work for me, on top of my above issues with his portrayal of characters.

#dg rambles #star trek novels #star trek books

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