El Kabong

As I just stated in another thread, I just finished Homecoming and The Farther Shore, and even though I'm not a Voyager fan, I really enjoyed these books. I'm wondering who else has read them and what they think of these books.

I just finished Homecoming and The Farther Shore, the two new Voyager relaunch novels by Christie Golden. I was surprisingly entertained by the books, since I am not much of a Voyager fan. I picked up the first book in Borders, sat down and started reading, and before I knew it, I was five chapters into it and liking it a lot, so I decided to buy the pair. I think people who really liked Voyager will love these books.

People join Starfleet for all sorts of reasons. Some join just for the scientific research opportunities--junior science officers probably aren't thrilled when the Romulans or the Borg or whoever attack, but being able to observe stellar phenomena up close? That's gotta be exciting for a scientist.

The problem with meeting godlike figures frequently is that, 'realistically', that would end the show by killing the crew easily. The only way around this is to have entities like Q, all-powerful but not about destroying the crew so much as about challenging people's perceptions and ideas. ("Encounter at Farpoint" notwithstanding.)

I like the idea of Sulu in command of the Excelsior, I just don't think it works on screen. A running Excelsior series of books would work better, in my opinion.

The planet from "The Alternate" was never seen or mentioned again, to my knowledge. Whether or not it was the Founders' true homeworld is unknown. (Although, reasonably, if the Founders were willing to pick up everything and leave their homeworld in the Omarion Nebula for their new homeworld in a classified location, who's to say that's the first time they did that?) However, I've heard that apparently in scenes in "The Search", one can see something resembling the obelisk found in "The Alternate" on the Founders' homeworld. I never verified this for myself, though.

I think season three is when the show kicked into high gear, but I very much liked season two as well, if only for its intrigue regarding the Dominion. Up until "The Jem'Hadar", the Dominion had only been mentioned in whispers in previous episodes. They were said to be powerful but mysterious in "Rules of Acquisition", "Sanctuary", and "Shadowplay", and then when we finally meet them in "The Jem'Hadar", they prove their mettle by taking out a Galaxy-class starship, then thought to be the pinnacle of Starfleet might. I mean, hot damn. That was great. Anyway, yeah, I liked season two as well.

I love DS9. I love it more than any of the other series. I think DS9 is where Star Trek had its peak, Trek at its best. And for that reason, I don't think there should be a DS9 movie. DS9 as a single seven-season entity was probably as close to perfection on Trek as we're going to get, and it was very well contained beginning to end. A movie would just ruin that. I could always be proven wrong, but I'll remain a skeptic of the success of a DS9 movie until it hits the screen (or the fan).

I hate this way that Enterprise is putting in whatever it wants "as long as they aren't named". It seems to be giving them carte blanche to do what they want.

Agreed. I must say, I was slightly more pleased with the way the Borg were handled in the recent episode "Regeneration", but the idea that the Enterprise writers and producers feel the need to repeatedly use species traditionally considered 24th century species (like the Ferengi and the Borg) on Enterprise irks me. But I suppose this is an opinion for a different forum.

Undoubtedly, this episode is one of the finest DS9 comedic episodes. The only one that I like better is season six's "The Magnificent Ferengi".

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Mission Gamma, Book Two of Four: This Gray Spirit by Heather Jarman.

The DS9 Relaunch series has many tangents and offshoots, but they're also a lot of fun to read.

The 'main' storyline (that is, the story of the main crew of DS9) is told in the following books, in order:

• Avatar, Book One of Two by S.D. Perry
   
  
• Avatar, Book Two of Two by S.D. Perry
   
  
• (S.C.E. #6: Cold Fusion by Keith R.A. DeCandido, published online in eBook form or found in print form in S.C.E. Book Two: Miracle Workers - this story isn't integral to the overall relaunch storyline but tells how the S.C.E. crew fix something that happens to DS9 at the end of Avatar Two)
   
  
• Section 31: Abyss by David Weddle and Jeffrey Lang (part of the four-part Section 31 'crossover' of self-contained books)
   
  
• Gateways, Book Four of Seven: Demons of Air and Darkness by Keith R.A. DeCandido (part of the Gateways crossover starring the TOS, Challenger, TNG, DS9, VGR, and NF crews - this book is relatively self-contained, so long as you don't care about the larger question of the Iconians)
   
  
• Gateways, 'Horn and Ivory' by Keith R.A. DeCandido, found in Gateways, Book Seven of Seven: What Lay Beyond
   
  
• Mission Gamma, Book One of Four: Twilight by David R. George III
   
  
• Mission Gamma, Book Two of Four: This Gray Spirit by Heather Jarman (I'm in the middle of this book now)
   
  
• Mission Gamma, Book Three of Four: Cathedral by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels
   
  
• Mission Gamma, Book Four of Four: Lesser Evil by Robert Simpson (supposedly the end of this book spoils the end of Rising Son)
   
  
• Rising Son by S.D. Perry (actually continues from the end of Avatar Two and takes place simultaneously as all the prior books)
   
  
• The Left Hand of Destiny, Book One of Two by J.G. Hertzler and Jeffrey Lang
   
  
• The Left Hand of Destiny, Book One of Two by J.G. Hertzler and Jeffrey Lang (I think this duology takes place from the end of DS9 season seven to right before Unity, but since I haven't gotten to these books yet, I really don't know, I'm just drawing this from online reviews)
   
  
• Unity by S.D. Perry (coming in November 2003)
  

There are other books related to the DS9 Relaunch, but these are the important ones.

Hi everybody! I'm new here and don't really know who's who and what's what, but I hope to become an active member of this community (even if my opinions may seem, um, charged and with potential to piss people off). So, um, hey hey hey!