John Jackson Miller

Captain Pike, Una, Spock and Uhura are testing an experimental shuttle which crash lands on a planet where electrical forces do not work. The transporter causes them to be widely separated- Pike on a horse ranch, Una in a jungle, Spock in the ocean and Uhura in a volcanic active region inhabited by ethereal aliens.
Honestly, for a TV linked novel this one isn't too bad but I had a feeling throughout that the author really wanted to write a western and devised this story specifically to have Pike on a horse and leading a wagon train.… (mais)

The premise of this book sounds fun, and potentially interesting: Admiral Riker has gone rogue, and Captain Picard has to stop him. Picard has spent a career bringing in evil admirals... but what if that evil admiral is the man he trusts most in the universe? Immediate Hunt for Red October vibes. It's a cracker of a premise.

Unfortunately, if you're a writer, you have to work back from and figure out what circumstances would bring this about. And, alas, there's not really any. Riker is not going to become an evil admiral. So it's got to be mind control. And if you're John Jackson Miller, you fish through old Star Trek episodes to find one that's ripe for a sequel. (I feel like every Star Trek book of his I've read has done this, bar The Enterprise War.) "The Nth Degree" is a perfectly logical choice for a follow-up; well, I guess so, anyway, as it's one of those TNG episodes I've never gotten around to! But it seems to have some intriguing loose ends, and the powers of the Cytherians make good sense for giving Riker both a motivation and an advantage.

But once you construct it like that, I feel like the premise is fulfilled only in a purely mechanical way. All this is to say, I thought the first half of the book, where the characters and the reader are trying to figure out what's going on, worked well. It's fast, it's sharp, it's tense.

...but the Picard vs. Riker thing never really materializes. Riker is so smart, no one can really compete with him at all. So what we get instead is more Riker vs. Riker, Riker's conscience vs. Riker's programming. But this is all external, because Riker isn't a viewpoint character once he's possessed. And Riker comes up with plan after plan; we don't see Picard having to do clever things to outwit his old friend. Indeed, the cleverest ploy comes from Dax on the Aventine when she fiddles with the lights.

The second half of the novel, I thought, really fizzled away the potential of the first. Once you find out what's going on, it doesn't even really feel like anything's at stake. In the first half, you're like, who's trying to short out communications across the galaxy? what's this all in aid of? In the second half, the answer is it's not really in aid of anything, it's just an end in itself. There's not actually really any kind of danger coming. The book swerves into making the Cytherian-controlled people other than Riker into a new threat, but this never really convinces; one is a comedy Ferengi whose plan is to sell the Federation mortgages. On top of this, I found the action around the climax fairly confusing.

One of the things tie-in books live or die on is characterization: do the writers capture the characters from the shows? But in reading Takedown I came to realize this actually has two parts. One is, obviously, capturing voices, the feeling that you can imagine the actors delivering the lines. Miller is great at this. But there's another: the feeling that you learned something about the characters you didn't already know. Sometimes this is a change in character, but I think it can be a new situation, a new turn, something you didn't expect. Takedown doesn't really achieve this. (And I know Miller can do this, because I think he did it in both Pike books.) Riker, Picard, Dax... they're all just kind of there, reading their lines as they go through the plot. The non-tv characters feel pretty thin. I think there's potentially a great Riker-as-admiral book to be written, but I still don't feel like I really know that Riker yet. Riker went through this whole experience, but it didn't give me much insight into him; Picard had to potentially do a big thing, but I don't know him any better either.

Maybe I'm being unfair. It has a good zip to it, and the first half is solid. But I feel like a better book with this basic premise exists somewhere in the multiverse, and I wish I'd read it.

Continuity Notes:

• Somehow in the middle of this galactic terrorism crisis, no one mentions the other galactic terrorism crisis everyone is experiencing right now!
• The events of Absent Enemies are repeatedly referred to as "months" ago, but in fact took place in the same month.

Other Notes:

• Riker experiences a holoprogram of the Titan, and one of his clues it's a fake is that some of the ranks are wrong. "Always getting the ranks wrong," sighs the creator of the program. "I forget how closely people pay attention." Miller's Titan novella, Absent Enemies, received some flack for getting the ranks wrong, so it's a cute reference.
• I found the account of the political career of Senator Bretorius totally hilarious, especially the jokes about his biographers and his (lack of) participation in Shinzon's coup. His last line is also great.

… (mais)

I Wasn’t the One Living in a Nightmare

John Jackson Miller returns to the outer reaches of space in another original Star Trek: Strange New Worlds novel. Captain Christopher Pike is in command of one of the first exploratory vessels, the Starship Enterprise. His crew is called in to investigate the missing starship Braidwood, which was last located heading toward the planet Epheska. When Captain Pike, First Officer Una, Cadet Nyota Uhura, and Science Officer Spock approach the planet they are separated when all technology ceases to function. trapped on a planet without means to escape, Captain Pike must find his crew and solve this baffling mystery.

This is not a usual space adventure, as it is primarily set on the planet Epheska. Where technology is stuck in the age of old westerns by the mysterious Baffle. This is an interesting book about the purpose of the Prime Directive, and the difficulties between different planetary races. John Jackson Miller builds a world with a mixture of old-world planetary beings. Some are recognizable Star Trek groups, such as the Vulcans, and the unfamiliar Skagarans. All caught up in a complex philosophy that technology ultimately leads to destruction. A great read for those who enjoy the new Star Trek tv series, and of course, space traveling horses.… (mais)