Customer Reviews

Star Trek: Myriad Universes #2: Echoes and Refractions

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I'd actually like to give this collection 2.5 stars. The boys involved clearly made the effort; it just didn't turn out as well as it could have.

The first story (I suppose it could be called a novella) by Geoff Trowbridge, "The Chimes at Midnight", tells of a world where Spock died as a boy in a Vulcan ritual, and Captain Kirk's right-hand man on Enterprise was a rather emotional Andorian named Thelin. Things are told to go relatively the same as they did in the Original Series, up until the end of "The Wrath of Khan." Spock obviously isn't around to sacrifice himself and save the ship, so Thelin thinks up a different solution, which leads to a drastically different Alpha Quadrant ten years later.

It sounds good on paper, but there's more than a few problems. First of which: Almost the entire narrative is set during the Star Trek movies instead of the series, and since I've only seen Star Trek II, I haven't got much to compare between what originally happened and what is now happening in the alternate timeline, besides the really BIG stuff.

Also, a fair bit of the story is centred on Kirk's son, David, and his budding father-son relationship with his old man. This is a problem for two reasons: One being that David is a character best taken in small doses, as he gets rather annoying over time, and the second being that the father-son moments end up sounding forced and too good to be true.

The last big problem with this novella was one of the most common in alternate history stories in that it ends up being either too miserable or too perfect. This one of the former; things wind up getting worse and worse as Trowbridge goes through the movies, and even when all is set more or less right, it's hard to see how things are going to look up anytime soon.

The second novella was the one I had the most hope for, and up to a certain point it delivered. "A Gutted World" by Keith DeCandido tells of a universe where Bajor was never liberated from the occupation of the Cardassians and the men and women of "The Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine" find themselves in the middle of a very unusual war.

Given how much time I spent on "Chimes" I'll be brief here. It started off good. Characters like Quark, Garak and even lovable Mr. Montgomery Scott are displayed just as they were on screen, laughable and workable at the same time, and we get a good look at Picard's mindset after "First Contact" as he heads right into another war. The story flowed pretty nicely, going from DS9 (still called Terok Nor) to Bajor to Voyager (which is still in the Alpha Quadrant since there are no Maquis in this universe) quite smoothly, but despite all that it wound up like the story above. No check that, it wound up even worse. While "Chimes" has at least a hint of possible hope in the future, "Gutted" concludes with none. A rather sad message from a TV universe famous for the "I don't believe in a no-win scenario." speech.

Now if "Chimes" and "Gutted" were the depressing, can't-get-any-worse side of the common alternate history flaw, "Brave New World" by Chris Roberson is the overly happy ending, perfect universe side. In a world where Dr. Noonien Soong managed to lay the groundwork for millions of androids creation after Data, our favourite green-eyed android is now fighting for their rights as individuals.

Although I was hopeful about this story, I was skeptical, too; I knew it would take just the right guy to pull this story off, and though Roberson managed to get the plane going, it didn't go very far. I can't go into specifics without giving away too much of the plot, but I will go into a few things...well, two things, anyway. The presence of two characters who shouldn't have been there: Ro Laren and Wesley Crusher. In "Gutted" Ro's continuing service to the Federation makes sense because the Maquis were never formed and therefore she would never have turned on the Enterprise, but here, it is never explained why the population of androids should have cancelled out the Maquis, and makes it seem like the author wanted to write her in just because he liked the character. And now Wesley. I'm sure many of you are sighing at the knowledge that Dr. Crusher's annoying, know-it-all boy genius is in this story. Well, buckle up, because he's not only in the story, but he's the Enterprise's chief engineer! Geordi La Forge is apparently Picard's new Number One in this timeline, so that leaves Little Mister Eye Makeup at the Warp Drive!

I love dissing Wesley.

So sufficed to say, I didn't really care for this book at all, or any of the three novellas within it. Do yourself a favour: If you're interested in alternate Trek, check out the OTHER Myriad Universes collection: Infinity's Prism. That one was worth it and did both Star Trek and alternate history justice. But hey, who knows? Maybe in another universe, "Echoes and Refractions" was the better book...

While I'm at it, why don't I wish that "Batman and Robin" was a better movie?