Caitriona
Something Wicked
Star Trek:
The Brave and the Bold, Book 1
By Keith R. A. DeCandido
A Review by Shatna
Since I committed myself to DeCandido's "The Brave and the Bold, Book One" as more than just a bathroom read, I found myself wondering what writing a professional franchise-based work must be like. I imagine there are authors who write Trek books strictly for the money, but suppose you are looking to inject something you consider truly meaningful into the story? How much freedom are you permitted as far as your personal voice as a writer versus the requirements of a corporate franchise? I'm not placing one above the other, y'understand: I know one can't write a book where Spock gets a sex change just because he or she finds that "meaningful". It's just that I have no idea how much of a Trek novel is a writer's vision (assuming he or she has one), so while reading KRAD's book I judged it based not on whether I think he’s a good writer (which I do) but on whether or not he got the job done as a Trek writer. Overall, I’d say he did, in spades.
"The Brave and the Bold" has a storyline spanning generations and Trek franchises, and DeCandido does well in making this more than a marketing gimmick. In an ancient past, an insane dictator named Malkus had fashioned for himself four cubes that gave him immense and destructive power, and after his defeat these cubes were scattered and hidden across the galaxy. Ninety thousand years later, the existence of these cubes is discovered by Captain Jonathan Archer and his crew, and a Starfleet directive is promptly established to warn future starships to be on the lookout for the artifacts.
It's a pretty good premise, and it works. The first artifact is discovered one hundred years later by a young Captain James T. Kirk and a grizzled Commodore Matt Decker, while a second is found another century later by the DS9 gang. In "The Brave and the Bold, Book Two" (which I haven't yet read), the artifact-finding will be shared by Captains Picard and Janeway.
This isn't great science fiction, but it is good Star Trek, which to my mind is the only relevant question at hand. DeCandido obviously knows his stuff. He's definitely a fan, and he has a good grasp on how the Trek universe works, so I felt very much at home during most of his saga. His handling of the characters varies, however. While his Jadzia is a delight, insolently outsmarting a stuffed-shirt Starfleet Captain with great aplomb, his Captains Kirk and Sisko are rendered nearly lifeless. We see Kirk mostly through the eyes of the Matt Decker character, who at first resents the young Captain but of course learns to respect and admire him in the end. Though I’m not sure exactly why – Kirk comes off as a gifted and persuasive diplomat, but we see none of his passion or stubbornness or humor, and I had hoped to see the two men clash a little more. Sisko gets even more shortchanged, reduced to observing and explaining and smiling slyly at Jadzia’s antics, but with little else to do. Seeing as these two are my favorite Trek captains, I was a little disappointed.
Captain Archer and company are seen only briefly, but DeCandido does a pretty decent job of portraying those characters, considering the fact that Enterprise was barely a year old when this book was published (and that the show rarely served the characters well in the first place).
The flip side of being a writer who’s also a fan is the temptation to paw through the toy box a little too thoroughly. We have nearly 40 years of Star Trek embedded in our memories, after all, and after hundreds of hours of reruns there are a million little details that were originally casual throwaways but have become hallowed moments in our shared Trek culture. There are inventive ways to integrate these moments into plausible story elements, such as when Peter David postulated in one of his novels that the Doomsday Machine was constructed as a weapon against the Borg, but too often they’re brought in for no other reason than to have a “nudge-nudge wink-wink†moment. I don’t mind them so much as long as they don’t get in the way of the story, but all too often in these books they do. At worst, they’re simply nerdy and cringe-inducing; there’s a time to play and a time to leave well enough alone.
DeCandido is far from the worst offender in this regard, but he has his moments. For example: when we meet Commodore Decker in the original series episode “The Doomsday Machineâ€, he’s disheveled and unshaven because he’s suffering guilt and grief over the death of his crew, and it’s a visual foreshadowing of the Ahab-like behavior we see him engage in later on. In DeCandido’s novel, Decker’s stubble is a character trait. He just doesn’t like to shave. More annoying is a preposterous two-page exchange between Spock and an original character who serves as a stand-in for the fans by making great noise about Spock’s tendency to raise his eyebrow. C’mon. If we had never seen or read a Trek story before, this entire scene would make little or no sense. A character who obsessively picks over a slight personal habit on the part of his colleague would be seen as kind of a rude jerk, but other than that his actions don’t serve any narrative purpose.
I’m bitching way too much about this, I know. But it was exactly the excessiveness of such scenes that partly caused my boycott of Trek books in the first place, so I thought it was appropriate to rant about it. Aside from my own obsessions, I found DeCandido’s novel to be fun and absorbing, not a slam-bang epic but certainly enjoyable enough for me to want to read what happens next. And it served the purpose of his original challenge, which was to get me to give Trek books another try, so I’ll be far less reticent about doing so in the future. I understand there’s a nifty series about Starfleet engineers and one about the adventures of a Klingon crew, so perhaps I’ll give those a go next time around.
The Brave and the Bold, Book 1
By Keith R. A. DeCandido
A Review by Shatna
Since I committed myself to DeCandido's "The Brave and the Bold, Book One" as more than just a bathroom read, I found myself wondering what writing a professional franchise-based work must be like. I imagine there are authors who write Trek books strictly for the money, but suppose you are looking to inject something you consider truly meaningful into the story? How much freedom are you permitted as far as your personal voice as a writer versus the requirements of a corporate franchise? I'm not placing one above the other, y'understand: I know one can't write a book where Spock gets a sex change just because he or she finds that "meaningful". It's just that I have no idea how much of a Trek novel is a writer's vision (assuming he or she has one), so while reading KRAD's book I judged it based not on whether I think he’s a good writer (which I do) but on whether or not he got the job done as a Trek writer. Overall, I’d say he did, in spades.
"The Brave and the Bold" has a storyline spanning generations and Trek franchises, and DeCandido does well in making this more than a marketing gimmick. In an ancient past, an insane dictator named Malkus had fashioned for himself four cubes that gave him immense and destructive power, and after his defeat these cubes were scattered and hidden across the galaxy. Ninety thousand years later, the existence of these cubes is discovered by Captain Jonathan Archer and his crew, and a Starfleet directive is promptly established to warn future starships to be on the lookout for the artifacts.
It's a pretty good premise, and it works. The first artifact is discovered one hundred years later by a young Captain James T. Kirk and a grizzled Commodore Matt Decker, while a second is found another century later by the DS9 gang. In "The Brave and the Bold, Book Two" (which I haven't yet read), the artifact-finding will be shared by Captains Picard and Janeway.
This isn't great science fiction, but it is good Star Trek, which to my mind is the only relevant question at hand. DeCandido obviously knows his stuff. He's definitely a fan, and he has a good grasp on how the Trek universe works, so I felt very much at home during most of his saga. His handling of the characters varies, however. While his Jadzia is a delight, insolently outsmarting a stuffed-shirt Starfleet Captain with great aplomb, his Captains Kirk and Sisko are rendered nearly lifeless. We see Kirk mostly through the eyes of the Matt Decker character, who at first resents the young Captain but of course learns to respect and admire him in the end. Though I’m not sure exactly why – Kirk comes off as a gifted and persuasive diplomat, but we see none of his passion or stubbornness or humor, and I had hoped to see the two men clash a little more. Sisko gets even more shortchanged, reduced to observing and explaining and smiling slyly at Jadzia’s antics, but with little else to do. Seeing as these two are my favorite Trek captains, I was a little disappointed.
Captain Archer and company are seen only briefly, but DeCandido does a pretty decent job of portraying those characters, considering the fact that Enterprise was barely a year old when this book was published (and that the show rarely served the characters well in the first place).
The flip side of being a writer who’s also a fan is the temptation to paw through the toy box a little too thoroughly. We have nearly 40 years of Star Trek embedded in our memories, after all, and after hundreds of hours of reruns there are a million little details that were originally casual throwaways but have become hallowed moments in our shared Trek culture. There are inventive ways to integrate these moments into plausible story elements, such as when Peter David postulated in one of his novels that the Doomsday Machine was constructed as a weapon against the Borg, but too often they’re brought in for no other reason than to have a “nudge-nudge wink-wink†moment. I don’t mind them so much as long as they don’t get in the way of the story, but all too often in these books they do. At worst, they’re simply nerdy and cringe-inducing; there’s a time to play and a time to leave well enough alone.
DeCandido is far from the worst offender in this regard, but he has his moments. For example: when we meet Commodore Decker in the original series episode “The Doomsday Machineâ€, he’s disheveled and unshaven because he’s suffering guilt and grief over the death of his crew, and it’s a visual foreshadowing of the Ahab-like behavior we see him engage in later on. In DeCandido’s novel, Decker’s stubble is a character trait. He just doesn’t like to shave. More annoying is a preposterous two-page exchange between Spock and an original character who serves as a stand-in for the fans by making great noise about Spock’s tendency to raise his eyebrow. C’mon. If we had never seen or read a Trek story before, this entire scene would make little or no sense. A character who obsessively picks over a slight personal habit on the part of his colleague would be seen as kind of a rude jerk, but other than that his actions don’t serve any narrative purpose.
I’m bitching way too much about this, I know. But it was exactly the excessiveness of such scenes that partly caused my boycott of Trek books in the first place, so I thought it was appropriate to rant about it. Aside from my own obsessions, I found DeCandido’s novel to be fun and absorbing, not a slam-bang epic but certainly enjoyable enough for me to want to read what happens next. And it served the purpose of his original challenge, which was to get me to give Trek books another try, so I’ll be far less reticent about doing so in the future. I understand there’s a nifty series about Starfleet engineers and one about the adventures of a Klingon crew, so perhaps I’ll give those a go next time around.