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The only cool thing about Dreadnought! aside from the ! and the bitchin rendering of the ship on the cover are the cool diagrams of the ship and the special shuttlecraft they randomly included in the book
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Nov 3, 2018 23:30
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Mister Kingdom posted:The only Star Trek fiction I ever read was "Star Trek: The New Voyages". And the only story I can recall was the one where Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were in a transporter accident and ended up on the set of Star Trek.
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Nov 3, 2018 23:34
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Imagine being a kid in 1984 who is mainlining Star Trek episodes as fast as possible and seeing this  in your local used bookstore. What amazing new stories and crazy worlds is this taking me to?!  It was a different time.
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Nov 3, 2018 23:41
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Including the story where Shatner, Nimoy and Kelly end up on board the Enterprise, with Kirk and Co. on the Star Trek set. I loved that one as a kid.
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Nov 3, 2018 23:46
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Astroman posted:Imagine being a kid in 1984 who is mainlining Star Trek episodes as fast as possible and seeing this I may have had this one, did it have the Kirk in a mental hospital one?
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Nov 3, 2018 23:50
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TheCenturion posted:Generally, anything written by Diane Duane, Peter Morwood, Jean Lorrah, J.M. Dillard, and a few others was worth reading. Alan Dean Foster's genre novelizations can be highly variable in quality (based on whether he genuinely likes the property or is just turning in a project for rent money, I suspect) but his Log Book novelizations of TAS episodes are at the upper end of the curve. I remember his adaptations of "Yesteryear", "One Of Our Planets Is Missing" and "The Magicks of Megas-Tu" are pretty solid in particular.
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Nov 4, 2018 00:11
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If you want Star Trek to fail, congratulations, you're one of the poo poo fans. It's you. You're the cancer.
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Nov 4, 2018 00:35
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Pick posted:If you want Star Trek to fail, congratulations, you're one of the poo poo fans. It's you. You're the cancer. what do you mean
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Nov 4, 2018 00:44
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Brawnfire posted:I may have had this one, did it have the Kirk in a mental hospital one? Yep. It was also made into a fan film by the New Voyages (appropriately!) guys. This is in the period when James Cawley stopped playing Kirk, but he does appear as a guy in the mental hospital who thinks he's Elvis, which is pretty meta.
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Nov 4, 2018 01:03
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I should clarify that by "not terrible" I'm putting Dreadnought! against things like the Shatnerverse novels which even as a teen I thought were excessive. But yeah there's a lot of sue-ish stuff going on with the cast in that. -Piper (the main character) "beats" the Kobayashi Maru test by hacking her own communicator to override the shipboard computer which overloads the simulator. Initially she was to be assigned to a ship that was going to explore the Magellanic Clouds (because TOS novel writers had less of a sense of scale than TOS TV writers), but got Kirk's attention with her stunt on the test so she's assigned to the Enterprise. Her roommates include a Gorn, a tech nicknamed "Scanner" and Dr. Merete AndrusTarsus, a not quite human but human-looking alien from Altair IV. -Sarda (a Vulcan that Piper was friends with) is an outcast from his own society because he has an aptitude for weapon development. In fact Piper recommended him for that track, which is why he kinda hates her right now. This comes into play later. Anyway it turns out that at the same time some terrorists have stolen the Federation's newest ship, a three-nacelled Dreadnought(!) named the Star Empire because subtlety is dead in the 23rd century. The Enterprise is sent out to intercept because Piper's biocode was used in a transmission by the Star Empire telling the Federation where it was. They'll also be meeting the destroyer Pompeii commanded by Vice Admiral Rittenhouse (and I would like to point out one of the nice things of this book is that not every ship is a Constitution class, the Pompeii is repeatedly pointed out as being smaller and different than the Enterprise, allegedly a Saladin class but I don't think that's ever spelled out in the book). Anyway some character development between Piper, Sarda, and Muerte (one of Piper's roommates) via a Piper escapes her quarters by tricking the door into thinking there's a fire. Unable to transport to the Star Empire because it's out of range, they instead go via a two-man  (vis) At this point Piper figures out that Sarda created the Star Empire's holoprojector, but that Adm. Rittenhouse took credit for it. En route to the Star Empire they are captured by the Pompeii and politely questioned by Admiral Rittenhouse and his civilian liason Dr. Samuel Boma.  Yes, that guy from "The Galileo Seven". Apparently after that incident he got cashiered from Starfleet and then became a scientist who developed a new alloy that was used on the Star Empire. Anyway Rittenhouse explains the lead conspirator, Paul Burch, was his assistant but then became unstable. Then for vague reasons he and Boma leave Piper and Sarda free to poke around and whoops they stumbled upon the 23rd century equivalent of mycrimes.txt, and find out that the Star Empire was actually developed for the purposes of being used in a coup by Rittenhouse to take over the Federation because reasons. Boma and Rittenhouse catch the two red-handed and they are stunned and thrown in the brig. Then they escape thanks to a momentary power outage, spy on a meeting between Rittenhouse, Kirk, and the captiains of the Potemkin and Lincoln who are also there. Kirk protests Rittenhouse's plan of action and is thrown in Rittenhouse's quarters (along with his bridge officers) for insubordination, so of course it's up to Piper and Sarda to break him out. They do this by doing the Bunny Hop. No I'm not joking. Anyway Kirk and the others beam back to the Enterprise but Sarda and Piper have to escape in fighters, which they do with Merte and Scanner's help. There's also a bit where Merte in a scuffle accidentally vaporizes one of Rittenhouse's security team because she didn't realize his phaser was on kill and has the somewhat schmaltzy breakdown line "I didn't even give them a body to bury". Anyway they get over to the Star Empire, find out what's going on, and now Rittenhouse has decided he needs to kill everyone to keep up his conspiracy. With the Enterprise outnumbered (as the Potemkin and Lincoln are also in on it) and the Star Empire hilariously undercrewed, he has a chance of doing so, especially since Merte turns out to have been on Rittenhouse's side as she was the sole survivor of an Orion attack on a ship that killed her parents (and just about everyone else). Piper manages to talk her down (not that it matters since a console full of exploding rocks knocks Merte out of action). Much exchanges of phaser fire later and Paul Burch is knocked out, and so Piper is thrust into command (why? guess she's the most senior command track person left? It's dumb) and manages to turn the tide of the battle. Rittenhouse is killed trying to ram the Dreadnought(!), as his attempt is stopped by the Enterprise. Medals all around, Merte is forgiven, and everything works out great. Also featured: Scotty telling Piper "us pipers have to work together" which she doesn't get because she's not from Earth and Scotty still has nationalist feelings in the future of a United Earth (which incidentally I always thought was odd given the setting, same with Picard). Now yes, that's all pretty silly, but it's not as bad as Shatnerverse stuff and certainly not as bad as the followup Battlestations where the same gang reuinites to stop another conspiracy and involves Piper doing a striptease in a bar in front of randy Klingons, and I'm pretty sure that leads to her and Scotty hooking up. And that's literally all I can recall about that book because it's bad. Still, the Dreadnought(!) is a pretty neat design. 
Angry_Ed fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Nov 4, 2018 |
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Nov 4, 2018 01:43
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Whenever I see a starship with three nacelles I immediately think of them as Space Reliant Robins and there's no way that ends well for anyone.
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Nov 4, 2018 01:52
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Lt. Josef Genndy Worf. Lieutenant Jorf Gorf Worf.
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Nov 4, 2018 02:14
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Angry_Ed posted:Dreadnought! Wow, I had totally forgotten most of those plot points.  One thing I do remember is that the author got the general dreadnought design, and even picked the name Star Empire, from the old Franz Joseph Starfleet Technical Manual. 
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Nov 4, 2018 03:03
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Angry_Ed posted:Still, the Dreadnought(!) is a pretty neat design. Yeah, I mean  That is one sexy ship. Between that and the Saladin Pompeii they were very much cribbing from Franz Joseph, but hey it's 80s Star Trek and that was what we had. Angry_Ed posted:Piper escapes her quarters by tricking the door into thinking there's a fire. With a hair curler, because women amirite?! The evil admiral with a huge fuckoff Dreadnought Class starship is very much Admiral Marcus and the Vengeance, but I think that's just a coincidence.
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Nov 4, 2018 03:11
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Pick posted:If you want Star Trek to fail, congratulations, you're one of the poo poo fans. It's you. You're the cancer. I want Star Trek to succeed... but not as in "my Star Trek, right or wrong."
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Nov 4, 2018 03:26
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Jewel Repetition posted:Yeah this was refreshing. And it's not particular to modern TV either, it's a lazy writing thing that's been around forever. I think it happens every now and again in TAS too. People actually being reasonable and careful and all. I mean, in a spaceship where a single thing going wrong could be catastrophic, having a twitchy paranoid hypochondriac has its uses because he's going to be the first to notice.
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Nov 4, 2018 03:39
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Baronjutter posted:Teal'c is like the best source of comedy in Stargate, he is a treat and delight. The super serious logical guy or super serious warrior guy doesn't have to be humourless. Whalley posted:Y'all making me wanna watch Stargate with this Teal'c dude One of my favorite low-key examples, from an episode where the team gets stuck in a Groundhog Day loop (and even specifically reference the movie!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U1jSGib-NA Koalas Massacre posted:I loving love that episode!! Your gif leaves out his little smile afterwards.
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Nov 4, 2018 04:18
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I think it happens every now and again in TAS too. People actually being reasonable and careful and all. Also, starships have documented evidence of space gods and psycho diseases and time vortexes and poo poo, someone disappearing so hard only one person remembers them is probably pretty common.
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Nov 4, 2018 04:31
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Oddly enough reminds me of Ghostbusters, while their motto is 'We're ready to believe you' they also put Dana through a battery of tests to make sure she isn't seeing things. (presumably the Ghostbusters get a LOT of cranks and mentally ill prospective customers and, having an experienced con artist on staff, understand the value of making sure they're actually needed)
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Nov 4, 2018 04:35
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corn in the bible posted:Also, starships have documented evidence of space gods and psycho diseases and time vortexes and poo poo, someone disappearing so hard only one person remembers them is probably pretty common. “Captain, I’m receiving reports of three Commander Rikers roaming the ship” “Ah poo poo not again”
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Nov 4, 2018 04:35
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I actually just finished reading Dreadnought! for the first time. There's a weird libertarian rant in the middle of it where Piper blames the third world war on collectivism. A used book store that was going out of business talked me into buying their whole stock of Pocket Books Star Trek novels and I have been working my way through them. I didn't read many of these when I was younger, so they are mostly new to me. The Final Reflection is one I liked, it's told from the point of view of a Klingon living a generation before Kirk. Klingon culture is fleshed out a lot in it, but in a way that's totally contradicted by later canon because it's pre-TNG. The plot is very Undiscovered Country like with a yet another evil admiral trying to provoke a Klingon Federation war. The early Federation is at risk of breaking up and the admiral believes an external threat is needed so that the member worlds decide to stay under Starfleet's protection. In this story it's a Klingon crew that exposes the plot and prevents the war.
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Nov 4, 2018 04:47
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Delsaber posted:Whenever I see a starship with three nacelles I immediately think of them as Space Reliant Robins and there's no way that ends well for anyone.
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Nov 4, 2018 05:07
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Powered Descent posted:Wow, I had totally forgotten most of those plot points. Ah see I wasn't 100% certain it was cribbed from any tech manuals but that definetely makes sense given the Pompeii and such.
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Nov 4, 2018 05:47
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The Tech Manual was my damned Bible growing up. Even built the (woefully inaccurate) phaser according to its plans.
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Nov 4, 2018 07:09
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Yeah I remember reading that the art guys on TNG were really excited to do the Stargazer because in 1987 it was only like the seventh official Starfleet ship class yet seen. Speaking of that pre-TNG anything goes mentality, My Enemy, My Ally has Starfleet fielding a Defender-class "destroyer" whose engineering hull alone is a mile long and has a quarter-mile diameter. And not as some wodnership Macguffin, no, it's just part of the fleet that happens to be crazy huge (albeit in part to accommodate the huge aliens that make up much of its crew).
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Nov 4, 2018 07:19
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This is only tangentially related to Star Trek but I loving hate how Memory Alpha redirects me to spam sites 90% of the time on mobile. I know it's a Wikia issue and not a Memory Alpha issue but goddamn that service is garbage and I feel like I don't see nearly enough complaints on the internet about it.
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Nov 4, 2018 07:20
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Speaking of that pre-TNG anything goes mentality, My Enemy, My Ally has Starfleet fielding a Defender-class "destroyer" whose engineering hull alone is a mile long and has a quarter-mile diameter. 
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Nov 4, 2018 07:52
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Star Trek generally lacks any sense of scale but it's especially notable in the ships. Given the resources available to the Federation, they should field much larger vessels and/or far more of them.
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Nov 4, 2018 08:03
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Wee Bairns posted:The Bantam Phoenix books are also hot garbage. In the early '80s I read the Phoenix novels ("Price" and "Fate", I think) and I can't remember details but they just seemed all hosed up and the characterizations were weird. It felt like Star Trek rewritten by someone who had watched a different show, while on drugs. Edit: I just found this excerpt from a review: "it isn’t long before Kirk and Spock begin to notice a series of "flames" in the galaxy, and while they believe some of these may be nothing more than chance happenings, some appear to have been engineered by Omne himself. Soon Kirk is appointed Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Federation to preside over the naming of the new Regent of the Voran Dynasty, a world near the Romulan sphere of influence. It is on this isolated planet that all forces come together and the crew of the Enterprise must once again face Omne, the man who triumphed over death. Also on hand are the Romulan commander, who is suspected of treason for joining forces with the Federation on Omne’s world, and a disguised James. While Omne once again holds Kirk prisoner, a deadly ray is released on those gathered there, and many members of the assembly are injured. Spock seems to be severely affected and shows no sign of life; however, Kirk’s pleas cause Omne to resuscitate him. It is at this time that we also find that Omne has created a duplicate of himself—a duplicate that seeks to kill Omne and Spock as well. It is only by joining forces that there is a chance to destroy the duplicate and guarantee the safety of all." Number_6 fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Nov 4, 2018 |
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Nov 4, 2018 08:04
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Anyone have 30 grand to throw at a klingon disruptor prop? Or some of the very 60's costumes?
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Nov 4, 2018 13:24
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Distances were wonky in the early novels too. The novellization of The Search For Spock had a ship exploring the Magellanic Cloud and one well on the way to Andromeda.
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Nov 4, 2018 13:26
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Zurui posted:Star Trek generally lacks any sense of scale but it's especially notable in the ships. Given the resources available to the Federation, they should field much larger vessels and/or far more of them. I dunno, kinda seems to be an idea that Starfleet designs can be super efficient, given the Defiant was built as a next-generation Borg-buster and turned out way smaller than every other starship while with firepower to rival the Enterprise.
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Nov 4, 2018 13:49
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I like how it's clearly an attempt to be halfway in between TOS and TMP in terms of details and look. Zurui posted:Star Trek generally lacks any sense of scale but it's especially notable in the ships. Given the resources available to the Federation, they should field much larger vessels and/or far more of them. I always thought that Star Trek's sense of restraint when it came to ridiculous ship sizes (see: Star Wars) was one of its strengths. They don't have stupid over-huge ships just because it's cool to have ships three kilometres long. Who'd need that except for cargo ships and transports? Hell, when they were designing the D, the designers noted that for the size they did made it at, they would've expected 5,000 crew and 50,000 maximum capacity, but they just made it less because that was simply over-the-top for the kind of ship and mission the show wanted. Starfleet did always had too few ships, though, at least until DS9. And maybe it would've been neat if the D passed the civilian Earth-Vulcan twice-daily express (capacity a hundred thousand) on her way into the Solar System. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Nov 4, 2018 |
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Nov 4, 2018 13:50
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MikeJF posted:Starfleet did always had too few ships, though, at least until DS9. And maybe it would've been neat if the D passed the civilian Earth-Vulcan twice-daily express (capacity a hundred thousand) on her way into the Solar System. I would have loved to see more civilian space travel in Trek. We see tons of examples of individuals and small groups with spacecraft yet it seems the only federation citizens doing much of anything are in Starfleet.
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Nov 4, 2018 14:26
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8one6 posted:Anyone have 30 grand to throw at a klingon disruptor prop? Or some of the very 60's costumes? I guess Alec Peters is trying to recoup some of Axanar's costs. MikeJF posted:I like how it's clearly an attempt to be halfway in between TOS and TMP in terms of details and look. Honestly, drop that top nacelle and that would be a far better Excelsior design than what ILM put together.
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Nov 4, 2018 14:38
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Especially when they go to the sol system, it should be thick with traffic. Like, managed lanes within the system, traffic controllers on patrol, interdictors to stop unauthorized travel on the fringes. Yeah, space is big, but common destinations will be packed pretty tight.
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Nov 4, 2018 14:48
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Fornax Disaster posted:I actually just finished reading Dreadnought! for the first time. There's a weird libertarian rant in the middle of it where Piper blames the third world war on collectivism. I'm pretty sure the post scarcity society that doesn't use money of Picard's time wasn't mentioned onscreen til TNG, or maybe Voyage Home. TOS had lots of Orion Traders/Pirates, Space Merchants like Mudd and Cyrano Jones, etc. You could pin pretty much any political system on the blank slate of the Federation in those days. The writers of the Phoenix novels/editors of the New Voyages books, Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreth, were huge in fandom in the 70s. They were also hardcore libertarians, like Ayn Rand devotees. Interestingly, they stopped all involvement with ST or any new books in the 80s when TNG came out. MikeJF posted:I like how it's clearly an attempt to be halfway in between TOS and TMP in terms of details and look.. I'd say it's more a riff on the Excelsior. Keep in mind that cover was painted probably two full years before TNG premiered. And that fact about Stargazer being the 7th Starfleet ship design ever shown (my math says 6th) is important to why Star Empire was so cool at the time to us. And the novel was, I believe, set at the end of Kirk's 5 year mission, so the idea of an Excelsior style ship showing up in TOS gave it an extra sense of coolness and power. I'm surprised more people haven't done articles or in depth analysis of early Star Trek fiction and fan speculation about the show compared to what we now know as "truth". There's probably a lot of interesting stuff to talk about. I'm a big canon nerd and want to see "correct" references and designs in Star Trek, but it's neat to think of a time when none of this was written and nothing you imagined was "wrong."
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Nov 4, 2018 14:59
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I find settings without everything pinned down to be very enticing.
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Nov 4, 2018 15:28
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Astroman posted:And that fact about Stargazer being the 7th Starfleet ship design ever shown (my math says 6th) I think you are correct. Connie, Connie-refit, Miranda, Oberth, Excelsior and Galaxy. Though if we include TAS, then we toss the Boneventure on that list and maybe the freighter. Also, the Saladin/Hermes, Ptolemy and Federation from the Tech Manual show up on displays in the early movies before Gene decided he hated everything Franz Joseph did.
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Nov 4, 2018 15:46
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MikeJF posted:Hell, when they were designing the D, the designers noted that for the size they did made it at, they would've expected 5,000 crew and 50,000 maximum capacity, but they just made it less because that was simply over-the-top for the kind of ship and mission the show wanted. For the show, yeah, but not so much for the mission. The idea of the D running around from planet to planet never made a whole lot of sense and ship seemed more suitable as a kind of mobile starbase that could set up shop somewhere and do real long term exploration/science/diplomacy.
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Nov 4, 2018 17:08
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