PUBLICATION: Star Trek: S.C.E. #39, Pocket Books, May 2004CREATORS: Dayton Ward & Kevin DilmoreSTARDATE: Unknown, after the previous bookPLOT: Under the command of Ambassador Gabriel Marshall, the S.C.E. team is conducting inspections on Rhaax V, a planet applying for Federation membership, though what the UFP really wants is to be found on a Rhaaxian colony in the same system, which has designs on independence. Tensions caused by this potential new alliance bring things to a head and after the planet threatens its colony with bioweapons it does not have, the colonists decide to use one of the homeworld's spacedocks to deliver actual bioweapons into the atmosphere. Some of the engineers manage to stop the terrorist attack, but not before the Rhaaxian government fires bioweapon missiles at the other planet, which mercifully don't work thanks to a secret misinformation scheme hatched by Marshall and executed by Gomez. Gold decides none of these people are ready for Federation membership and pulls out, questioning the leadership structure of the Corps of Engineers that put his people in danger that day.CONTINUITY: Ambassador Marshall appeared in two prior SCE books - Interphase Part One and Foundations Book 3. Captain Gold compares the flawed Federation policies at work to those that led to tragedy in Insurrection, A Private Little War, Too Short a Season, and the novel Prime Directive.DIVERGENCES: None.SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK - My casting for the underhanded blowhard ambassador is Henry Czerny.REVIEW: I have been BEGGING for this and finally got it - a Captain Gold-focused story! And it very much is. This is the kind of political story usually afforded the television series, exactly because the captains are the leads. In S.C.E., the engineers are normally the leads and we therefore get a lot of technical problems and solutions. While there's some of that here - Soloman's computer skills and Gomez's knowledge of chemistry are integral - it's not the focus. Instead, we have Gold being very grumpy to be saddled with the (recurring) a-hole ambassador, to find his crew almost take part in a bar brawl, and at being kept out of the loop for so long. These writers know Harry Morgan was essentially "cast" as Captain Gold, and he's never felt more like the old M*A*S*H colonel. Like starring captains, he gets to make speeches and decisions. I like! In the same vein, Tav has a couple of strong social scenes, including one where it would seem Tellarite argumentation is a plus and not a minus. I will note that we haven't had a story THIS short in a while, leaving enough space for some scenes that happen behind the scenes to play out, at least in flashback.

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: S.C.E. #38, Pocket Books, April 2004CREATORS: Kevin KillianySTARDATE: Unknown, after the previous bookPLOT: The da Vinci is on a joint mission with the Klingons to repair a failing alien colony ship before it enters Klingon space. The feudal society within doesn't know it's on a ship and its pilots have failed to wake up. Infant mortality is way up due to pollution and radioactivity, all because no one knows how to repair anything. It's up to the S.C.E. to go down into the massive ship and find out what's happened and fix it.CONTINUITY: At the end of the book, the da Vinci is heading for Deep Space K-7, naturally near the Klingon border (The Trouble with Tribbles).DIVERGENCES: None.SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK - The shipREVIEW: When someone writes fantasy into SF, they're already keeping me at a distance, and every time a chapter turned to the point of view of the feudal aliens - with all the cod-fantasy place, animal and character names - my eyes tended to glaze over. It didn't help that these were out of step with the S.C.E. narrative, apparently happening LATE in the story regardless of placement, and Killiany sometimes giving us time stamps in the local vernacular did NOT help with the time jumps. He just seems more interested in his guest characters than he is most of the regular crew. There are moments: Patti eventually gets lots to do, the da Vinci's chief engineer gets some play (it's weird how she's such a non-entity usually), and there's a good scene where the crew figures out why the birth rate has gone down. But they all lose a lot of ground to the otter-like locals and the Klingon engineer who, I would say, is the real hero of the novel. I respect the attempt at doing something different, but even the Starfleet perspectives are odd and partial - from blinded characters or ones slipping in and out of consciousness - and you get the feeling this was meant to be a longer book and that the writer took out entire chapters. Even the resolution is "told" rather than shown. Very messy.

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: S.C.E. #37, Pocket Books, March 2004CREATORS: Allyn GibsonSTARDATE: Unknown, soon after the previous bookPLOT: USS da Vinci engineer Mor glasch Tev lived on the Tellarite colony of Karzuh'ulla when he was young, but those weren't happy times. Karzuh'ulla's distinction is that an ancient race had built a massive ring, held up by giant space elevators, around it. But it was damaged in the Dominion War, and one shaft could collapse, bring the whole ring down on the planet, extinguishing all life. The da Vinci crew soon figure out that the locals' efforts at repair will fail, and indeed, have made things worse. They must, furthermore, navigate the problem of Tellarite pride, which would create resistance to their plan to detach the shaft and tractor it out of orbit, especially since the man in charge is an old rival of Tev's (no love lost there). So they give him the solution and allow him to pass it off as his own, part of his ambitious pattern, though it's touch and go for a while when the shaft starts falling toward the planet. The da Vinci manages to cut into pieces with torpedoes and tow the main section away in time. And though Gomez figures out that Tev's rival has built a life on the thesis he stole from him, he doesn't want to expose the crime now any more than he did 20 years ago. After all, it led to the life he has now and with which he's happy.CONTINUITY: Tev compares the Ring to the Dyson Sphere discovered by the Enterprise-D in "Relics", which took place 8 years before the events of this book. Also 8 years prior, the Enterprise tangled with stated creators of the Ring, the Furies - as described in the Pocket Books crossover Invasion!, specifically the TNG chapter, "The Soldiers of Fear"; Tev served aboard one of the participating ships (the USS Madison).DIVERGENCES: None.SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK - Kharzh'ulla as depicted on the Grand Designs omnibus.REVIEW: Tev is our new cast member, so a Tev-centric episode was awaited and is appreciated. We learn a lot about him, his youth, his parents, and Tellarites in general, even if the people of Karzuh'ulla aren't strictly part of the Federation and look down on non-colonists like Tev. It makes for interesting character dynamics, and at its best, the book dives into the Tellarite psyche, equating their pride to Klingon honor or Vulcan logic. And for me, S.C.E. is always better when it has some anthropological puzzle to solve, as the engineering stuff can be a little too techy. The descriptions of the Ring are, indeed, quite heady, and its problems fall into the category of hard SF much more than your traditional Star Trek story. I'm sure the math is quite correct, but it goes over my head. But as the solution involves a bit of action, it's not too bad. Despite the focus on Tev, Gibson finds scenes for most of the lead crew (Soloman is perhaps the only one missing), which is actually pretty rare for this series of novellas.

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: S.C.E #36, Pocket Books, February 2004CREATORS: Loren L. Coleman & Randall N. BillsSTARDATE: Unknown, follows from the previous bookPLOT: As each of Tev's plans falls apart, the da Vinci must make peace with the Resaurians - a small revolution has to happen on their ship, but Gold thankfully convinces the alien captain to go against the civilian leadership - to make a mad dash towards the space station/prison on the edge of a black hole's event horizon before it, and the Starfleet away team, slip into the "Demon". Meanwhile, Sonya Gomez finds out that the captive Resaurians are actually descendants of the original prisoners no longer deserving of their fate, and works to keep the damaged station in one piece until help arrives. The allied ships eventually do and evacuate everyone. By the end, Tev has integrated into the crew successfully, despite his Tellarite culture/attitude still causing misunderstandings.CONTINUITY: The crew uses a "La Forge-Brahms" technique to harmonize [techno-babble], probably relating to the events of "Booby Trap". So it was nice of Geordi to credit Leah Brahms even though it was a fantasy version of her from the holodeck who helped the Enterprise escape the minefield.DIVERGENCES: None.SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK - Slipping into the Demon!REVIEW: I find that Book 2 of this story is much too concerned with the mechanics of black holes, which are hard to explain, and with the technobabble required to get the away team home, safe and sound. It FEELS like the authors did their research and that this babble has some grounding in real science, but it doesn't make it any easier a read for laypersons. And because everything is falling apart, on the ship and on the Resaurian station, the book seems caught in a never-ending "climax" that shows the whole "Book One/Book Two" format for S.C.E. novellas as lacking. It lacks balance and had this been one bigger (bust still short) story, say by tacking 20 pages of climax to the previous chapter, it would have worked better. Here, we have the same kind of plan being enacted with different details several times and it's rather exhausting. What worked in Book 1 is what works best here - the interesting points of view, especially for the non-human characters, but also Captain Gold who needed the love; Tev making a turn from Tellarite pride and belligerence to trust and respect; and the anthropological mysteries that must be solved. The Demon has a nice ending, but there's an awful lot of chaff to get through before we get there.

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: S.C.E #35, Pocket Books, December 2003CREATORS: Loren L. Coleman & Randall N. BillsSTARDATE: Unknown, soon after the previous bookPLOT: The da Vinci receives a time-dilated distress call from within the photosphere of a black hole locally called "The Demon". With no way to approach safely, an away team beams over to find a Resaurian station falling apart around its exiled inhabitants. This snake-like race's progressive movement have been imprisoned here for decades, if not centuries (depending on one what lies are being told and sensed), and the S.C.E. crew agree to help them escape. Meanwhile, Captain Gold is negotiating with Resaurian "traditionalists" who have a vested interest in preventing this, and as the da Vinci attempts to tractor the station out of there, the Resaurians interfere, sending the station (and Gomez's away team!) deeper into the maw of the Demon.CONTINUITY: The crew still poke fun at Gomez for the "hot chocolate incident" (Q Who), which made her adopt Earl Grey as penance - she found out she liked it. Tev uses a technique developed by Telek R'Mor (Eye of the Needle) to clean up the transmission. The crew is naturally delving into reports obtained from the Voyager Project and is here inspired by Voyager escaping a singularity either in Parallax or Hunters. The Demon is in a sector close to the Thallonian Empire (New Frontier series, the USS Excalibur rates a mention). Captain Archer made first contact with the Resaurians. One of Corsi's new security people is Iotian (A Piece of the Action) and sounds like it; they still play fizzbin.DIVERGENCES: I take exception to the fact that Abramowitz talks about Jonathan Archer as if he were some obscure historical figure when other sources plainly make him one of the fathers of the Federation.SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK - ResauriansREVIEW: I quite liked this one! On the one hand, the writers are having fun integrating Trek continuity into the action, especially what's going on concurrently (like Voyager finally sending messages home). On the other, they have a real affinity for describing alien perceptions, which makes the chapters/sections told from the point of view of Resaurians, Betazoids and Tellarites (this is doing wonders for Tev's character) a real joy to read. The perspectives of Gomez and Gold are well used too, and I'm especially keen to have more of the captain's since he's been rather sidelined since the ship was repaired and refit. The introduction of an Iotian security guard is a hoot, though we haven't been in his head yet. As for the plot, well, interesting new alien race that was once subjugated by the Klingons, throwing their culture into disarray, which gives Abramowitz something to do - to me, S.C.E. is always better if there's an anthropological puzzle to solve in addition to the engineering puzzle - and the science around black holes is equally well used. The danger is grave and the fact that every faction seems to be withholding information makes the story more intriguing. Fun stuff!