Star Trek Ruminations

Reviews of stories from Strange New Worlds 9 may contain minor spoilers. "Staying the Course" is an excellent story about Worf and Alexander by Paul C. Tseng . The episode "Firstborn" ( TNG ) gave us a glimpse into a possible future where Alexander became a Klingon diplomat (a seeming contradiction of terms), but came back in time to make himself more of a warrior, believing this could prevent his father's death. In that episode Worf said he now realized that Alexander had his own destiny, and that it would be a great one. We get to see that great destiny in this story. It's a touching portrayal of Klingon honor and the loyalty between father and son. Tseng succesfully draws on what we already know of Worf and Alexanders past and portrays a plausible, and very moving future. "Solace in Bloom" by Jeff D. Jaques reintroduces Picard's friend Louis and the Atlantis project from the episode "Family" ( TNG ). It takes place during the w...

Reviews of stories from Strange New Worlds 9 may contain minor spoilers. At least three stories deal with Earth's formative years that paved the way for Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets. The Enterprise episode "Carbon Creek" introduced the character Mestral, a Vulcan science officer who elected to stay on Earth in 1957. "Mestral" by Ben Guilfoy takes place a century later. The long-lived Vulcan has a significant impact on the events that paved the way for Star Trek:First Contact . It's a great use of the character and won third place in the collection. "The Rules of War" by Kevin Lauderdale opens with the line "A spray of bullets sent chips of cement flying from the building's wall across Archer's face." That very gritty opening leads into a story about the start of the Eugenics War and Jonathan Archer's grandfather. Archer described this incident briefly in the episode "Hatchery." Now we get to s...

"All these ships were called Enterprise ," Decker said to Ilia. The mysterious ship with the hoop-shaped warp drive has hovered around in non-canon Trek lore ever since. It even made a brief appearance on Enterprise in the episode "Home." (Look for it toward the end of the episode Archer has his last conversation with Soval . On the wall of Forrest's office, behind Archer's head, there is a picture of a ship with the distinctive ring structure.) When we finally saw ships from the Vulcan fleet on Enterprise , they also had hoop-shaped warp drive. The suggestion seemed to be that this was a Vulcan design that human tried to emulate, then gave up on, returning to Zefram Chocrane's twin nacelle design. I recently came across this article which confirms that idea, albeit not from Star Trek cannon, but from Doug Drexler who designed the Vulcan ship in the first place. That was his basic idea behind the distinctive design. You can check out the articl...

Reviews of stories from Strange New Worlds 9 may contain minor spoilers. Two stories in this collection are worth reading not only because of the stories themselves, but becuase of the unique ways that they are told. "Book of Fulfillment" by Steven Costa is written in an excellent approximation of King James vintage Old Testament prose. It begins with a nice tip of that hat to The Next Generation with a reference to professor Galen, seen in "The Chase," and mentioned in "Gambit I,II." The story is a translation of a fragment of an ancient manuscript. This race describes their encounter with "the Liberator" who "came from beyond the sky," and his attendants: the Healer at his left hand, the Sage at his right, the Wayfinder, the Armsman, the Proclaimer, and the Machinist. According to the scroll, "the Sage spoke quiet words of counsel in the ear of the Liberator, speaking of the oath. And the Healer spoke fiery words of counsel ...

Each year brings another Strange New Worlds anthology. And for eight years I have looked at them on the shelf, thumbed through them, but never picked one up for myself. This year I finally bought one and was delighted by theses stories written by fans who have little if any work professionally published before. While I am not planning on reviewing every story in the book, I do want to progressively share some of the highlights. Reviews may contain minor spoilers. Tribbles, Tribbles and More Tribbles Tribbles are perhaps the most beloved non-humanoid aliens in the Star Trek universe. The very word has worked its way into mainstream vocabulary right along side so many other trek-isms. Three stories in this volume deal with the prolific furballs. I will comment on two of them. I will leave the third one for you to discover rather than give away the ending of that story. The first tale of Tribbles is "A Bad Day for Koloth," by David DeLee . This story picks up where ...

100 Years Young: Part I: Musings About the Drayan Life-Cycle Part II: Is Aging an Inevitable Biological Fact? Part III: Can an Organism 'Grow' Smaller and Younger? Part IV: The Drayan Civilization Coming to terms with reverse aging is one thing. Accounting for the Drayan's death customs is another. While the episode reveals very few specifics regarding their aging process or their history, what little information we are given strongly suggests an outline of their history as a civilization. A Powerful Instinct—An Ancient Belief The Drayan moon is a holy place for them. They hold it to be the place where the first spark of life came from, and the Drayan leader explains that a powerful instinct draws them back to this place as death approaches. This instinct is evidently woven into the their DNA as strongly as a salmon's instinct to return to its spawning ground or a Vulcan's to return home for the Pon Farr. And as a civilization, the Drayan have ancient beliefs and c...

As I mentioned before, I've been re-watching a lot of Enterprise episodes on the Sci-Fi channel. Recently I saw the episode "Judgment" again. I was pleasantly surprised to realize it was more enjoyable than I remembered, but I was again struck with some of its unrealized potential. Speaking as the Advocate For me, seeing the Klingon court again was great. That may have something to do with my memories of Star Trek VI . That was the first Star Trek movie I saw in a theater (the others coming out before I was old enough to have a clue what was going on). The tri-angular pit, the judge's claw and ball "gavel," prosecution-in-the-round, the chilling verdict: those images were etched into my mind, and I loved seeing them again. I also think using Rura Penthe was a nice way to reverse engineer some continuity. In Star Trek VI Chekov comments that Rura Penthe is "known throughout the galaxy as the alien's graveyard," letting us know what a bad place...