Spoilers Destiny: Lost Souls by David Mack Review Thread
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Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
I haven't posted too much in this forum recently but having finished this epic trilogy a few days ago (which I flew through in comparisson to other books I've recently read), I had to leave some comments.
First of all, David, I love how you always include some of the musical inspirations at the end of your novels... many times they've been soundtracks I've already been a fan of, but Destiny was the first time that I actually went to the effort of getting the music tracks I didn't have and listening to them all while reading. It REALLY increased the epicness factor bigtime!
It was known from our initial introduction to "Destiny" that it was going to be on a scale of its own. While we did get to see some interesting developments such as the origins and new evolution of the Borg, I am left a little bit disappointed though that the biggest claim Destiny has to being "game-changing" as far as the Star Trek universe is concerned was in simply massacreing a bunch of worlds and starships. While we've never seen anything on this scale before, blowing up ships and scorching planets isn't anything we haven't seen before in numerous Star Trek series. Perhaps the hype just had my sights set a little too high, but I felt almost as if the "scale of epicness" of this novel was attempting to be made by the number of deaths they packed in. Sure, there will be consequences, but really, the Federation isn't left that different from what it was before (minus a few relatively minor worlds). But this just seems like the next standard step in a progression of destruction... in TNG when the Borg destroyed 39 ships, we were told that was big. Then in DS9 we had the Dominion War which destroyed more, but other than being told the Federation was "weakened", business proceeded as usual. Now, this is the next step up from there... In my mind, "game-changing" would have been doing something like removing the ability for warp drive, or causing all Vulcans to go insane after poisoning their ability to mindmeld, or forcing a complete reorganization of characters and defining new crew purposes resulting in totally reshaped novel series. Plain old death and destruction though... been there, done that. Although we do have a brand new race to deal with now, I don't get the impression that they are going to be much of an ongoing continued presence. I hope that we are really able to get a sense of how much things really have changed in the upcoming follow-up novels.
I think my favourite parts of the novels were those featuring Bacco and her administration. I've always been a fan of political drama (real and imagined) and Articles of the Federation was my first novel re-introducing me to Trek literature. I remember one of my few complaints then being that the characters the expected decorum of heads of state, but having since watched (and loved) The West Wing series, I can now understand what some of that was based on. Anyways, I love the Bacco sequences' ability to focus in on "the big picture" and how it manages to encompass all aspects of the Star Trek universe and its various series. KRAD, I know you based Bacco off your grandmother so it would be inappropriate for me to ask about a picture to have a face in mind when reading her story sequences, but I still am having a great deal of trouble NOT picturing the old-Janeway of "Endgame" who seemed to share Bacco's cynical sense of humour.
Other strengths of the novels were their ability to focus on MANY characters and still feel like there was character development happening in the meantime. I only wish that Voyager could have played a bigger role in the stories as I still consider the Borg to have been a slightly greater nemesis for that series than they were for TNG (just as I feel Romulans were more the baddies of TNG even though they were introduced in TOS). At least 7 of 9 played a role, but as in recent novels, she's proven to be more of a pig-headed pessimistic annoyance than the multi-faceted character I recall from the series and maybe the early VOY-R books I've read.
I think the most unfortunate disappointment in terms of characterization though was how bloody annoying Picard was most of the time. Yeah, I get that he has a special insight into the Borg's power, but the constant doom-and-gloom attitude he was portraying was becoming quite overbearing. Also, what's with all of Picard's French-cursing in the novels (not just Destiny)? I don't recall EVER seeing Picard speak French in the series so it always strikes me as a little odd when I've seen it in the novels... "merde!" I did, however, love Picard's extreme discomfort with the idea of his office and its contents being burned as it seemed to harken back to his brother and nephew's death in a fire. This actually makes me realize that the action sequence with Hirogen may actually be the most memorable one involving our heroes since most of the time with the Borg was spent attacking planets and killing nameless or more minor characters.
I decided to read these novels even though I'm 3 books behind on the Titan series. Probably the most unfortunate spoiler this resulted in was Deanna's current and past pregnancy. I think that this was an excellent storypoint through Destiny though and when she ended up down with the Caeliar, I became almost certain that they would heal her baby. Now, with Riker having a daughter and Picard having a son, I can't imagine that the creative team behind the novels hasn't toyed with the idea of these children being a future couple in the making. I for one think it's a really cool idea to literally be starting to see the shaping of 'the next generation'. I think that now that I have read Destiny, I'm going to try and keep up with the upcoming Titan novels while at the same time catching up on the 3 I'm behind on.
I found the inclusion of the real-science relativistic time travel to be intriguing as it's something that the series and movies have never really dealt with. I am, however, curious as to the reasons why the creatrors chose to go by this road... The Columbia had already been flung far off into a distant part of space with disabled warp engines. Was there any specific reasons why Hernandez couldn't have simply encountered the Caeliar in their "present" time around 2155? Why did they have to be displaced more than a decade into the future first? It obviously did enhance their sense of isolation but was this the only reason?
While the novel really was quite epic every step of the way, I did find many of the Caeliar/Columbia sequences very tedious to get through sometimes. While I understand the reason for its inclusion, watching the 4 female Columbia officers age and then later watching Hernandez and Inyx's complicated relationship seemed to really kill the buildup in pace at times... Seeing the differences in how the 4 women attempted to cope with their isolation was something that proved interesting to see, however (even though the end result seemed spelled out fairly early on).
I smiled at the inclusion of "Therin Park" on Andor which I can only assume was a nod to one of our fellow TrekBBS members. If any author ever wishes to feature a "Captain Elemental" in their story, rest assured you have my full permission!
I think Destiny's greatest strength was in its all-encompassing cross-over nature that really let us see elements of Star Trek tied together that we haven't seen before. In many ways, it really did feel like a culmunation of everything that had come before, and now we get to see how the series branch off again in their separate ways. Of the upcoming follow-up novels, I'm most curious about "A Singular Destiny". I read the blurb on the SimonSays website but am still uncertain as to the major focuses of this novel. Have there been any further details given about what the content of this novel will be or what crew/group it will be spending the most time focusing on?
Anyway, despite listing some minor criticisms above, Destiny definitely was an exhilarating read unlike anything that has come before. It definitely leaves me with a renewed interest to continue following what awaits the Star Trek universe from here.
I haven't posted too much in this forum recently but having finished this epic trilogy a few days ago (which I flew through in comparisson to other books I've recently read), I had to leave some comments.
First of all, David, I love how you always include some of the musical inspirations at the end of your novels... many times they've been soundtracks I've already been a fan of, but Destiny was the first time that I actually went to the effort of getting the music tracks I didn't have and listening to them all while reading. It REALLY increased the epicness factor bigtime!
It was known from our initial introduction to "Destiny" that it was going to be on a scale of its own. While we did get to see some interesting developments such as the origins and new evolution of the Borg, I am left a little bit disappointed though that the biggest claim Destiny has to being "game-changing" as far as the Star Trek universe is concerned was in simply massacreing a bunch of worlds and starships. While we've never seen anything on this scale before, blowing up ships and scorching planets isn't anything we haven't seen before in numerous Star Trek series. Perhaps the hype just had my sights set a little too high, but I felt almost as if the "scale of epicness" of this novel was attempting to be made by the number of deaths they packed in. Sure, there will be consequences, but really, the Federation isn't left that different from what it was before (minus a few relatively minor worlds). But this just seems like the next standard step in a progression of destruction... in TNG when the Borg destroyed 39 ships, we were told that was big. Then in DS9 we had the Dominion War which destroyed more, but other than being told the Federation was "weakened", business proceeded as usual. Now, this is the next step up from there... In my mind, "game-changing" would have been doing something like removing the ability for warp drive, or causing all Vulcans to go insane after poisoning their ability to mindmeld, or forcing a complete reorganization of characters and defining new crew purposes resulting in totally reshaped novel series. Plain old death and destruction though... been there, done that. Although we do have a brand new race to deal with now, I don't get the impression that they are going to be much of an ongoing continued presence. I hope that we are really able to get a sense of how much things really have changed in the upcoming follow-up novels.
I think my favourite parts of the novels were those featuring Bacco and her administration. I've always been a fan of political drama (real and imagined) and Articles of the Federation was my first novel re-introducing me to Trek literature. I remember one of my few complaints then being that the characters the expected decorum of heads of state, but having since watched (and loved) The West Wing series, I can now understand what some of that was based on. Anyways, I love the Bacco sequences' ability to focus in on "the big picture" and how it manages to encompass all aspects of the Star Trek universe and its various series. KRAD, I know you based Bacco off your grandmother so it would be inappropriate for me to ask about a picture to have a face in mind when reading her story sequences, but I still am having a great deal of trouble NOT picturing the old-Janeway of "Endgame" who seemed to share Bacco's cynical sense of humour.
Other strengths of the novels were their ability to focus on MANY characters and still feel like there was character development happening in the meantime. I only wish that Voyager could have played a bigger role in the stories as I still consider the Borg to have been a slightly greater nemesis for that series than they were for TNG (just as I feel Romulans were more the baddies of TNG even though they were introduced in TOS). At least 7 of 9 played a role, but as in recent novels, she's proven to be more of a pig-headed pessimistic annoyance than the multi-faceted character I recall from the series and maybe the early VOY-R books I've read.
I think the most unfortunate disappointment in terms of characterization though was how bloody annoying Picard was most of the time. Yeah, I get that he has a special insight into the Borg's power, but the constant doom-and-gloom attitude he was portraying was becoming quite overbearing. Also, what's with all of Picard's French-cursing in the novels (not just Destiny)? I don't recall EVER seeing Picard speak French in the series so it always strikes me as a little odd when I've seen it in the novels... "merde!" I did, however, love Picard's extreme discomfort with the idea of his office and its contents being burned as it seemed to harken back to his brother and nephew's death in a fire. This actually makes me realize that the action sequence with Hirogen may actually be the most memorable one involving our heroes since most of the time with the Borg was spent attacking planets and killing nameless or more minor characters.
I decided to read these novels even though I'm 3 books behind on the Titan series. Probably the most unfortunate spoiler this resulted in was Deanna's current and past pregnancy. I think that this was an excellent storypoint through Destiny though and when she ended up down with the Caeliar, I became almost certain that they would heal her baby. Now, with Riker having a daughter and Picard having a son, I can't imagine that the creative team behind the novels hasn't toyed with the idea of these children being a future couple in the making. I for one think it's a really cool idea to literally be starting to see the shaping of 'the next generation'. I think that now that I have read Destiny, I'm going to try and keep up with the upcoming Titan novels while at the same time catching up on the 3 I'm behind on.
I found the inclusion of the real-science relativistic time travel to be intriguing as it's something that the series and movies have never really dealt with. I am, however, curious as to the reasons why the creatrors chose to go by this road... The Columbia had already been flung far off into a distant part of space with disabled warp engines. Was there any specific reasons why Hernandez couldn't have simply encountered the Caeliar in their "present" time around 2155? Why did they have to be displaced more than a decade into the future first? It obviously did enhance their sense of isolation but was this the only reason?
While the novel really was quite epic every step of the way, I did find many of the Caeliar/Columbia sequences very tedious to get through sometimes. While I understand the reason for its inclusion, watching the 4 female Columbia officers age and then later watching Hernandez and Inyx's complicated relationship seemed to really kill the buildup in pace at times... Seeing the differences in how the 4 women attempted to cope with their isolation was something that proved interesting to see, however (even though the end result seemed spelled out fairly early on).
I smiled at the inclusion of "Therin Park" on Andor which I can only assume was a nod to one of our fellow TrekBBS members. If any author ever wishes to feature a "Captain Elemental" in their story, rest assured you have my full permission!
I think Destiny's greatest strength was in its all-encompassing cross-over nature that really let us see elements of Star Trek tied together that we haven't seen before. In many ways, it really did feel like a culmunation of everything that had come before, and now we get to see how the series branch off again in their separate ways. Of the upcoming follow-up novels, I'm most curious about "A Singular Destiny". I read the blurb on the SimonSays website but am still uncertain as to the major focuses of this novel. Have there been any further details given about what the content of this novel will be or what crew/group it will be spending the most time focusing on?
Anyway, despite listing some minor criticisms above, Destiny definitely was an exhilarating read unlike anything that has come before. It definitely leaves me with a renewed interest to continue following what awaits the Star Trek universe from here.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
Now, that's hardly fair. First of all, a lot of the expectations you have about Destiny are probably from exaggerated hype and speculation rather than anything that was officially promised. Second, there are definitely some major changes here. The Borg threat is gone forever. Picard is free of his bete noire and about to begin a new phase of his life with a new attitude. The Picards and the Rikers are both about to become parents. The Aventine has become a major player in Starfleet. Many characters went through major changes in their relationships. And there are other changes and consequences, both astropolitical and personal, that won't really be seen until you read A Singular Destiny, Over a Torrent Sea, Full Circle, and Losing the Peace.
I'd call those more "gimmicky" and "gratuitous" than "game-changing." Nobody ever said this was going to be random change just for the sake of change or for shock value. It's a massive event that rises organically out of the established history and that has long-term consequences that will be felt in all the literature to come. But as in real life, not all those consequences will be immediately obvious or glaring. (After the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only consequences people saw were the defeat of Japan and the immediate death and destruction. Nobody anticipated the far greater death toll from radiation sickness, a decades-long nuclear arms race between two wartime allies, the many regional wars fought by proxy between the stalemated nuclear powers, the rise of Islamic militancy in response to regional tensions exacerbated by that Cold War rivalry, the rebuilding of Japan into a major economic power, etc.)
Well, that's not really a Titan spoiler, because there's a gap of about eight months between Sword of Damocles and Destiny. In Orion's Hounds, Riker and Deanna decided to start a family, and in SoD, they were undergoing fertility treatments but hadn't yet conceived. So the miscarriage and second pregnancy were revealed for the first time in Gods of Night.
Never occurred to me. Heck, they aren't even born yet. A little early to be picking china patterns.
Well, it was cool. It's also reasonable. As you say, they were in deep space without warp engines -- it would be unrealistic for them to just happen to be within a few days' or weeks' impulse travel of an inhabited system (although that happened more than once onscreen). And the Caeliar certainly weren't going to go out and meet them.
It's mostly focusing around an original character created by KRAD, but the Bacco administration and the Aventine crew are also involved, along with some other familiar faces.
Now, that's hardly fair. First of all, a lot of the expectations you have about Destiny are probably from exaggerated hype and speculation rather than anything that was officially promised. Second, there are definitely some major changes here. The Borg threat is gone forever. Picard is free of his bete noire and about to begin a new phase of his life with a new attitude. The Picards and the Rikers are both about to become parents. The Aventine has become a major player in Starfleet. Many characters went through major changes in their relationships. And there are other changes and consequences, both astropolitical and personal, that won't really be seen until you read A Singular Destiny, Over a Torrent Sea, Full Circle, and Losing the Peace.
I'd call those more "gimmicky" and "gratuitous" than "game-changing." Nobody ever said this was going to be random change just for the sake of change or for shock value. It's a massive event that rises organically out of the established history and that has long-term consequences that will be felt in all the literature to come. But as in real life, not all those consequences will be immediately obvious or glaring. (After the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only consequences people saw were the defeat of Japan and the immediate death and destruction. Nobody anticipated the far greater death toll from radiation sickness, a decades-long nuclear arms race between two wartime allies, the many regional wars fought by proxy between the stalemated nuclear powers, the rise of Islamic militancy in response to regional tensions exacerbated by that Cold War rivalry, the rebuilding of Japan into a major economic power, etc.)
Well, that's not really a Titan spoiler, because there's a gap of about eight months between Sword of Damocles and Destiny. In Orion's Hounds, Riker and Deanna decided to start a family, and in SoD, they were undergoing fertility treatments but hadn't yet conceived. So the miscarriage and second pregnancy were revealed for the first time in Gods of Night.
Never occurred to me. Heck, they aren't even born yet. A little early to be picking china patterns.
Well, it was cool.
It's also reasonable. As you say, they were in deep space without warp engines -- it would be unrealistic for them to just happen to be within a few days' or weeks' impulse travel of an inhabited system (although that happened more than once onscreen). And the Caeliar certainly weren't going to go out and meet them.It's mostly focusing around an original character created by KRAD, but the Bacco administration and the Aventine crew are also involved, along with some other familiar faces.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
If you see Admiral Janeway, that's fine and dandy -- readers have their own interpretations, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that
-- though I don't recall much of a cynical sense of humor. What I do recall from "Endgame" was a selfish, bitter character who destroyed a perfectly good timeline for her own selfish, bitter desires, and screw the consequences. Since those consequences include the massive death toll in Destiny (the Borg's recent decision to put a hit on the Federation was a direct result of the destruction of the transwarp hub in "Endgame"), Admiral Janeway is, to me, one of the greatest villains of modern Star Trek.
So if it's all the same to you, I'd rather just stick with my Nana as the template.
And if you want game-changing -- wait'll you get to the end of ASD.
The damage was considerably more than that..............
It was my great-grandmother, actually, who died in 2003 at the age of 98.I think my favourite parts of the novels were those featuring Bacco and her administration. I've always been a fan of political drama (real and imagined) and Articles of the Federation was my first novel re-introducing me to Trek literature. I remember one of my few complaints then being that the characters the expected decorum of heads of state, but having since watched (and loved) The West Wing series, I can now understand what some of that was based on. Anyways, I love the Bacco sequences' ability to focus in on "the big picture" and how it manages to encompass all aspects of the Star Trek universe and its various series. KRAD, I know you based Bacco off your grandmother so it would be inappropriate for me to ask about a picture to have a face in mind when reading her story sequences, but I still am having a great deal of trouble NOT picturing the old-Janeway of "Endgame" who seemed to share Bacco's cynical sense of humour.
If you see Admiral Janeway, that's fine and dandy -- readers have their own interpretations, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that
-- though I don't recall much of a cynical sense of humor. What I do recall from "Endgame" was a selfish, bitter character who destroyed a perfectly good timeline for her own selfish, bitter desires, and screw the consequences. Since those consequences include the massive death toll in Destiny (the Borg's recent decision to put a hit on the Federation was a direct result of the destruction of the transwarp hub in "Endgame"), Admiral Janeway is, to me, one of the greatest villains of modern Star Trek.So if it's all the same to you, I'd rather just stick with my Nana as the template.
Picard actually used "merde" several times in the first season, but never after that. My guess is that Broadcast Standards & Practices took until the second season to realize what it meant.
It will focus on the brand-new character of Sonek Pran, a historian/diplomat who occasionally does work for the Federation government. However, there will be a butt-load of characters in this one, as the novel looks at the wider consequences of what happened in Destiny. We'll see the Aventine, a bunch of other starships, several leaders of nations (Bacco, Martok, Tal'Aura, Donatra), and tons more.
And if you want game-changing -- wait'll you get to the end of ASD.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
I'm not sure how the loss of sixty-three billion people, including extensive damage to Vulcan, Andor, and Qo'noS -- to say nothing of the apparent extermination of Coridan, Risa, Deneva, and numerous other, as-yet-unestablished worlds -- doesn't constitute a game-changer.
I'm not sure how the loss of sixty-three billion people, including extensive damage to Vulcan, Andor, and Qo'noS -- to say nothing of the apparent extermination of Coridan, Risa, Deneva, and numerous other, as-yet-unestablished worlds -- doesn't constitute a game-changer.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
It may to an extent... but surely a lot of those people, in light of an impending Borg attack which the Fed. was losing against, had the presence of mind to... I don't know... leave? I'm surprised the amount of people who stayed did... of their own free will no less... (in some cases). I don't have the ties to "home" as in the dirt of it as some people though... I'd rather leave the dirt with the people and with the living family make a new home... alive.
So despite the body count, I'd imagine some of the populations and their cultures live on and can rebuild or whatever... maybe.
It may to an extent... but surely a lot of those people, in light of an impending Borg attack which the Fed. was losing against, had the presence of mind to... I don't know... leave? I'm surprised the amount of people who stayed did... of their own free will no less... (in some cases). I don't have the ties to "home" as in the dirt of it as some people though... I'd rather leave the dirt with the people and with the living family make a new home... alive.
So despite the body count, I'd imagine some of the populations and their cultures live on and can rebuild or whatever... maybe.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
Sixty-three billion deaths is a game-changer to a HUGE extent. That'd be the equivalent of the United States losing millions of citizens.
I want you to pause and consider something:
You're talking about the mass evacuation of dozens of planets. In fact, let's pause and do some calculations here.
Let's assume that in the 24th Century, the average Federation planet, and those of its neighbors, has a population of about 3 billion. 63 billion deaths. 63 / 3 = 21.
So, you're talking about the mass evacuation of 21 planets. In fact, you're talking about the mass evacuation of more than 21 planets, since the Federation and its neighbors had no way of knowing which planets were going to be targetted in advance. You're talking about the mass evacuation of all of local space.
It's just not gonna happen.
Even if every single person out there wanted it, there simply would never be the resources to carry it out. There wouldn't be enough ships, there wouldn't be the organizational infrastructure, there wouldn't be enough time to put everything in place. The entire idea is absurd on its face.
The Destiny trilogy made it clear that everyone who could flee Federation space did. It also made it clear that there simply weren't enough resources to evacuate the majority of people. Yes, there were also people who stayed -- people who knew that they were needed on a given planet to preserve law and order during evacuations, people who stayed because they felt that they had nowhere else to go, people who didn't want to abandon their homes, people who believed that the extermination of the Federation was inevitable and did not want to leave their homes in a futile attempt to become refugees.
Maybe. Again, you're forgetting that in the weeks prior to the arrival of the final invasion fleet at the end of Book II, the Federation never knew which planet was going to get hit next. And of course, with that 7,000-cube fleet, they hit all of their targets within twenty-four hours of arriving in the Alpha Quadrant -- not enough time at all to fully evacuate most worlds, especially ones hit in the first wave.
Frankly, I wouldn't hold out any hope for the peoples of Ramatis, Risa, or Coridan, amongst others. Deneva was originally a colony world, but those others weren't -- I'm more inclined to think that the Ramatisians, Risians, and Coridanites are now all but extinct.
Sixty-three billion deaths is a game-changer to a HUGE extent. That'd be the equivalent of the United States losing millions of citizens.
I want you to pause and consider something:
You're talking about the mass evacuation of dozens of planets. In fact, let's pause and do some calculations here.
Let's assume that in the 24th Century, the average Federation planet, and those of its neighbors, has a population of about 3 billion. 63 billion deaths. 63 / 3 = 21.
So, you're talking about the mass evacuation of 21 planets. In fact, you're talking about the mass evacuation of more than 21 planets, since the Federation and its neighbors had no way of knowing which planets were going to be targetted in advance. You're talking about the mass evacuation of all of local space.
It's just not gonna happen.
Even if every single person out there wanted it, there simply would never be the resources to carry it out. There wouldn't be enough ships, there wouldn't be the organizational infrastructure, there wouldn't be enough time to put everything in place. The entire idea is absurd on its face.
The Destiny trilogy made it clear that everyone who could flee Federation space did. It also made it clear that there simply weren't enough resources to evacuate the majority of people. Yes, there were also people who stayed -- people who knew that they were needed on a given planet to preserve law and order during evacuations, people who stayed because they felt that they had nowhere else to go, people who didn't want to abandon their homes, people who believed that the extermination of the Federation was inevitable and did not want to leave their homes in a futile attempt to become refugees.
Maybe. Again, you're forgetting that in the weeks prior to the arrival of the final invasion fleet at the end of Book II, the Federation never knew which planet was going to get hit next. And of course, with that 7,000-cube fleet, they hit all of their targets within twenty-four hours of arriving in the Alpha Quadrant -- not enough time at all to fully evacuate most worlds, especially ones hit in the first wave.
Frankly, I wouldn't hold out any hope for the peoples of Ramatis, Risa, or Coridan, amongst others. Deneva was originally a colony world, but those others weren't -- I'm more inclined to think that the Ramatisians, Risians, and Coridanites are now all but extinct.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
ETA: Sci beat me to it, and said it better to boot.
What you're not taking into account is that not every person and/or family on every planet in the Federation owns a vessel capable of interstellar or even interplanetary travel. Many of them probably rely on public transportation and private commercial transports. And the number of such vessels is naturally finite. It would take a lot of ships a long time to completely evacuate a planet of two billion people.
ETA: Sci beat me to it, and said it better to boot.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
^ & ^^ True, but in the book, they started at the Nebula, and worked their way out from there. So it wasn't entirely random, especially once the conduits were found, which was before the Borg fleet got there by hours.
And I'm also assuming some people would want to stay anyway, given I just watched the DS9 episode about that guy that didn't want to leave the moon...
I know about planetary evac from DS9's gateways book. Just over 8 hours to move over 2 million people (they had enough ships of their own to get a million people off) spread out over a planet with just a few ships. (Albeit they could take them elsewhere and come back for more). But it just seemed like an awful lot of the populace of those planets stayed put. I mean, a lot of large freighters don't have enough guns to be of use in battle, but can take a lot of people. Little Defiant, a tiny warship, could take 150, so how much could something that can take 5 Kilotons of whatever at warp 9.8?
I never said everyone would get off, I'm just saying that the body count is high given how many planets were actually destroyed/affected. Andor for instance, I believe has less than a billion because I'm not sure there are much more than a billion Andorians period. You made the planet list:
It just seems like a lot of people chose to stay behind, of the key 19 planets at the top of your list, despite more than 8 hours to get people off- which according to the novels is possible.
Yes, things will change, no matter what proportion of a country or galaxy died. But I really do think that enough people of those whose planets were badly affected to continue the culture.
Risa may have a people, some of whom I'm sure survived, but its also a "pleasure planet" so people on vacation aren't going to stick around for a last sunset if they can help it.
"The planet Coridan had a population of three billion in 2151" (Mem. Alpha) so low-ish pop, and since they were attacked by the Dominion during the war, its not out of place to think they'd have a backup/evac plan given that experience.
Korvat was only a colony, in 2289, so I'm not sure how big the pop. would be.
The last three I'm not sure, but wasn't Barolia or the one below it on the list killed in GTTS in a sneak attack? So that would indeed have no chance of escape.
Maybe its just the way I read it, but it seemed like some just... stayed. And I don't think I would.
^ & ^^ True, but in the book, they started at the Nebula, and worked their way out from there. So it wasn't entirely random, especially once the conduits were found, which was before the Borg fleet got there by hours.
And I'm also assuming some people would want to stay anyway, given I just watched the DS9 episode about that guy that didn't want to leave the moon...
I know about planetary evac from DS9's gateways book. Just over 8 hours to move over 2 million people (they had enough ships of their own to get a million people off) spread out over a planet with just a few ships. (Albeit they could take them elsewhere and come back for more). But it just seemed like an awful lot of the populace of those planets stayed put. I mean, a lot of large freighters don't have enough guns to be of use in battle, but can take a lot of people. Little Defiant, a tiny warship, could take 150, so how much could something that can take 5 Kilotons of whatever at warp 9.8?
I never said everyone would get off, I'm just saying that the body count is high given how many planets were actually destroyed/affected. Andor for instance, I believe has less than a billion because I'm not sure there are much more than a billion Andorians period. You made the planet list:
It just seems like a lot of people chose to stay behind, of the key 19 planets at the top of your list, despite more than 8 hours to get people off- which according to the novels is possible.
Yes, things will change, no matter what proportion of a country or galaxy died. But I really do think that enough people of those whose planets were badly affected to continue the culture.
Risa may have a people, some of whom I'm sure survived, but its also a "pleasure planet" so people on vacation aren't going to stick around for a last sunset if they can help it.
"The planet Coridan had a population of three billion in 2151" (Mem. Alpha) so low-ish pop, and since they were attacked by the Dominion during the war, its not out of place to think they'd have a backup/evac plan given that experience.
Korvat was only a colony, in 2289, so I'm not sure how big the pop. would be.
The last three I'm not sure, but wasn't Barolia or the one below it on the list killed in GTTS in a sneak attack? So that would indeed have no chance of escape.
Maybe its just the way I read it, but it seemed like some just... stayed. And I don't think I would.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
No, it wasn't random, but the Federation never knew who the Borg were planning on hitting next during the early weeks of the war. And during the final invasion, they weren't able to predict things all the time, either, because the ships were constantly splitting up and going off and such.
Right. Even with plenty of ships, and even with an unusually orderly and compliant populace that was apparently able to be relocated with less than a day's notice, it took them eight hours to move only 2 million people. 3 billion divided by 2 million equals 1,500. 8 hours per 2 million people times 1,500 collections of 2 million people equals 12,000 hours to evacuate a planet under ideal circumstances. 12,000 hours divided by 24 hours equals 500 days. 500 days divided by 365 days equals 1.37 years.
Think about that. It would take 1.37 years, even under ideal circumstances -- which the Europa Nova evacuation virtually was -- to evacuate a single planet. Multiple that by 21!
Mass evacuation was simply never a feasible option for the vast majority of the populace. For all that the Federation is a space-faring culture, the majority of its citizens spend the majority of their lives in the natural habitat of the humanoid, a planetary surface. There's just too many people to move.
You might as well ask why there were any people left in New Orleans.
Personally, I think the body count sounds a bit low. And, in point of fact, Bacco made a point of noting that 63 billion deaths was a conservative estimate.
People are hard to move; that's just a fact.
I wouldn't count on it. I'd be really surprised if those species had enough members off-world to ever regain a viable population pool going. And even if they did, their planets have all been reduced to dust -- all art, history, architecture, culture from their homeworlds are gone. Even if the species manage to survive, their cultures are going to be irrevocably changed -- and that's assuming that they don't get absorbed into other Federation species' cultures and eventually disappear.
Oh, I dunno about that. If I'm convinced that I'm facing the imminent extermination of the entire Federation, I can think of worse places to die than Risa.
Hard to say. We know that Coridan's population was reduced almost in half when the Romulans attacked them in 2155, and we know that they were down to a population so low that they couldn't defend their dilithium mines in the 2260s. Who knows what their population was?
You would if you lacked the resources to leave. It's not like you can just fly away.
ETA:
Out of curiosity, I did some number crunching to give us an idea about how badly the Borg bloodied the Federation. To do that, we need to know how large the population of the Federation is and how many of the dead were Federates to determine what percentage of the Federation was killed.
To start off with, I began with a few basic assumptions. The first being that the capital planet of the average Federation Member State is going to be about 3 billion sentients. I also decided to assume that each Federation Member State has an average of 5 colony worlds each with an average population of 300 million (since the canon has consistently portrayed colony planets as tending to only have populations in the thousands). This yields an average population of 4.5 billion for each Federation Member State. We know from Articles of the Federation that there are 155 Federation Member States, yielding a total Federation population of 697.5 billion.
We know from Book III that the immediate conservative estimates are 63 billion deaths, from both the Federation and neighboring states. Since Book III didn't mention all that many Romulan planets getting hit by the Borg that I could recall, I decided to divide the death toll into thirds and assume that the Federation got roughly two-thirds of the deaths, with the Klingons getting most of the remaining third and the Romulans getting the leftovers. Two-thirds of 63 billion is 42 billion -- so I would assume that 42 billion Federates died at the hands of the Borg.
42 billion is 6% of 697.5 billion.
So... Think about that. Six percent of the Federation exterminated in a matter of weeks. In point of fact, when Bacco asked about the death toll just prior to the Borg invasion fleet hitting its first targets, Admiral Akaar said that they had estimated the death toll to be around 30 billion -- meaning that slightly more people died in the 12 or so hours that that invasion fleet was active than died in all the weeks leading up to that. 3% of the Federation died in the course of twelve hours, and 6% in the course of just a couple of weeks.
For comparison to the real world, the population of the United States is roughly 300 million. 6% of the population of the entire United States is 18 million. For the United States to experience something akin to the Federation's losses in Destiny, it would have to lose 9 million people in the course of two or three weeks and then suddenly lose another 9 million in the course of twelve hours, across a wide swath of the continent. It would be the equivalent of losing the entire populations of the State of Ohio and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or of losing the entire State of Florida.
Or, to measure it in yet another way, it would be akin to the cities of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix all being killed. Or, to put it yet another way, it would be the equivalent of every single Asian-American, every single Native American, and half of every single biracial American being killed.
By comparison, on 9/11, we lost 3,000 people, which is one-tenth of one percent of the entire United States population, and everyone freaked. All of society flip-flopped, the economy took a nosedive, and our entire foreign policy changed.
If 0.1% of a culture's population dying is a game changer, you can bet that 6% dying is a game-changer.
No, it wasn't random, but the Federation never knew who the Borg were planning on hitting next during the early weeks of the war. And during the final invasion, they weren't able to predict things all the time, either, because the ships were constantly splitting up and going off and such.
Right. Even with plenty of ships, and even with an unusually orderly and compliant populace that was apparently able to be relocated with less than a day's notice, it took them eight hours to move only 2 million people. 3 billion divided by 2 million equals 1,500. 8 hours per 2 million people times 1,500 collections of 2 million people equals 12,000 hours to evacuate a planet under ideal circumstances. 12,000 hours divided by 24 hours equals 500 days. 500 days divided by 365 days equals 1.37 years.
Think about that. It would take 1.37 years, even under ideal circumstances -- which the Europa Nova evacuation virtually was -- to evacuate a single planet. Multiple that by 21!
Mass evacuation was simply never a feasible option for the vast majority of the populace. For all that the Federation is a space-faring culture, the majority of its citizens spend the majority of their lives in the natural habitat of the humanoid, a planetary surface. There's just too many people to move.
You might as well ask why there were any people left in New Orleans.
Personally, I think the body count sounds a bit low. And, in point of fact, Bacco made a point of noting that 63 billion deaths was a conservative estimate.
People are hard to move; that's just a fact.
I wouldn't count on it. I'd be really surprised if those species had enough members off-world to ever regain a viable population pool going. And even if they did, their planets have all been reduced to dust -- all art, history, architecture, culture from their homeworlds are gone. Even if the species manage to survive, their cultures are going to be irrevocably changed -- and that's assuming that they don't get absorbed into other Federation species' cultures and eventually disappear.
Oh, I dunno about that. If I'm convinced that I'm facing the imminent extermination of the entire Federation, I can think of worse places to die than Risa.
Hard to say. We know that Coridan's population was reduced almost in half when the Romulans attacked them in 2155, and we know that they were down to a population so low that they couldn't defend their dilithium mines in the 2260s. Who knows what their population was?
You would if you lacked the resources to leave. It's not like you can just fly away.
ETA:
Out of curiosity, I did some number crunching to give us an idea about how badly the Borg bloodied the Federation. To do that, we need to know how large the population of the Federation is and how many of the dead were Federates to determine what percentage of the Federation was killed.
To start off with, I began with a few basic assumptions. The first being that the capital planet of the average Federation Member State is going to be about 3 billion sentients. I also decided to assume that each Federation Member State has an average of 5 colony worlds each with an average population of 300 million (since the canon has consistently portrayed colony planets as tending to only have populations in the thousands). This yields an average population of 4.5 billion for each Federation Member State. We know from Articles of the Federation that there are 155 Federation Member States, yielding a total Federation population of 697.5 billion.
We know from Book III that the immediate conservative estimates are 63 billion deaths, from both the Federation and neighboring states. Since Book III didn't mention all that many Romulan planets getting hit by the Borg that I could recall, I decided to divide the death toll into thirds and assume that the Federation got roughly two-thirds of the deaths, with the Klingons getting most of the remaining third and the Romulans getting the leftovers. Two-thirds of 63 billion is 42 billion -- so I would assume that 42 billion Federates died at the hands of the Borg.
42 billion is 6% of 697.5 billion.
So... Think about that. Six percent of the Federation exterminated in a matter of weeks. In point of fact, when Bacco asked about the death toll just prior to the Borg invasion fleet hitting its first targets, Admiral Akaar said that they had estimated the death toll to be around 30 billion -- meaning that slightly more people died in the 12 or so hours that that invasion fleet was active than died in all the weeks leading up to that. 3% of the Federation died in the course of twelve hours, and 6% in the course of just a couple of weeks.
For comparison to the real world, the population of the United States is roughly 300 million. 6% of the population of the entire United States is 18 million. For the United States to experience something akin to the Federation's losses in Destiny, it would have to lose 9 million people in the course of two or three weeks and then suddenly lose another 9 million in the course of twelve hours, across a wide swath of the continent. It would be the equivalent of losing the entire populations of the State of Ohio and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or of losing the entire State of Florida.
Or, to measure it in yet another way, it would be akin to the cities of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix all being killed. Or, to put it yet another way, it would be the equivalent of every single Asian-American, every single Native American, and half of every single biracial American being killed.
By comparison, on 9/11, we lost 3,000 people, which is one-tenth of one percent of the entire United States population, and everyone freaked. All of society flip-flopped, the economy took a nosedive, and our entire foreign policy changed.
If 0.1% of a culture's population dying is a game changer, you can bet that 6% dying is a game-changer.
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Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
Sci's right about the logisticaly impossibility of evacuating everyone. However, it's also true that many people were evacuated, and there are many millions of refugees that the Federation has to deal with now. That's one of the issues to be dealt with in next year's books.
Sci's right about the logisticaly impossibility of evacuating everyone. However, it's also true that many people were evacuated, and there are many millions of refugees that the Federation has to deal with now. That's one of the issues to be dealt with in next year's books.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
Makes "Tuvix" look minor by comparison, doesn't it?
Makes "Tuvix" look minor by comparison, doesn't it?
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
... did I mix up million and billion? *groan*
Plus for that matter, now that I think about it, even with tons of freighters that must exist and be able to evac thousands- didn't the freighters have to go to the front instead? Wasn't there an order?
I don't know much about US states, but that is indeed considerable- tho I'd also argue that it was not only *how many* people died during 9/11, the changes also result in the fact the threat still exists, it didn't disappear.
But all those little things aside, I see your point. My question started more with the mental idea- why would someone chose to stay. I'm hoping that those cultures won't disappear, especially given the scope of space travel- especially in cases like Andor because I find it facinating. Andor seems nice and underground- there may be faction (right word?) problems though. Part is the trouble I'm not familiar with a lot of the affected worlds and their cultures. Some were colonies - Klingon etc., so culture-wise they won't vanish.
Still, the actual physical turn this conversation took is neat...
... did I mix up million and billion? *groan*
Plus for that matter, now that I think about it, even with tons of freighters that must exist and be able to evac thousands- didn't the freighters have to go to the front instead? Wasn't there an order?
Thats just it- some people decided to stay when they didn't have to, which means that however they were going to get off, even right at the end in those last transports, there must've been room, but people stayed anyway- even Andor with its pop. problem.
I'm not sure I'd go with 3 billion as an average since many seemed to have less- Andor for instance... but I guess some probably had a lot more... so never mind, that works...
I don't know much about US states, but that is indeed considerable- tho I'd also argue that it was not only *how many* people died during 9/11, the changes also result in the fact the threat still exists, it didn't disappear.
But all those little things aside, I see your point. My question started more with the mental idea- why would someone chose to stay. I'm hoping that those cultures won't disappear, especially given the scope of space travel- especially in cases like Andor because I find it facinating. Andor seems nice and underground- there may be faction (right word?) problems though. Part is the trouble I'm not familiar with a lot of the affected worlds and their cultures. Some were colonies - Klingon etc., so culture-wise they won't vanish.
Still, the actual physical turn this conversation took is neat...
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
I doubt very much that any of those species (races, I can never remember which term to use when reffering to people from different planets in Trek) are completely gone. For the Federation members there are probably alot of them in Starfleet serving on other planets and starships, and even the non-Federation members probably had alot of ex-pats living on other planets, such as traders, Ambassadors, citizens who just decided to live on other planets, ect..
I doubt very much that any of those species (races, I can never remember which term to use when reffering to people from different planets in Trek) are completely gone. For the Federation members there are probably alot of them in Starfleet serving on other planets and starships, and even the non-Federation members probably had alot of ex-pats living on other planets, such as traders, Ambassadors, citizens who just decided to live on other planets, ect..
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
I assume you're not excluding Federation members from that last category. The way you phrased it could be taken to imply that Starfleet is the only reason why a UFP member would leave one's homeworld, but surely that's not what you meant?
I assume you're not excluding Federation members from that last category. The way you phrased it could be taken to imply that Starfleet is the only reason why a UFP member would leave one's homeworld, but surely that's not what you meant?
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
To be fair, the consequences also include the end of the Borg as we know them, which probably wouldn't have happened otherwise.If you see Admiral Janeway, that's fine and dandy -- readers have their own interpretations, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
And I'm sure Tuvok would disagree that the original timeline was 'perfectly good'.
To be fair, the consequences also include the end of the Borg as we know them, which probably wouldn't have happened otherwise.If you see Admiral Janeway, that's fine and dandy -- readers have their own interpretations, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that
And I'm sure Tuvok would disagree that the original timeline was 'perfectly good'.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
I wonder if the writers of "Endgame" meant for us to assume that the virus completely wiped out the Borg. We saw that Unicomplex blowing up and a queen dying, after all. That said, I like the Trek Lit interpretation of things better. Plus, after seven seasons of Star Trek:Voyager excusing Janeway's actions, it's nice to see the character getting a harsher treatment in the books.
To be fair, the consequences also include the end of the Borg as we know them, which probably wouldn't have happened otherwise.If you see Admiral Janeway, that's fine and dandy -- readers have their own interpretations, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that
I wonder if the writers of "Endgame" meant for us to assume that the virus completely wiped out the Borg. We saw that Unicomplex blowing up and a queen dying, after all. That said, I like the Trek Lit interpretation of things better. Plus, after seven seasons of Star Trek:Voyager excusing Janeway's actions, it's nice to see the character getting a harsher treatment in the books.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
^ Tuvok would also be the first to argue that destroying a timeline (one in which the Federation was at peace, one in which things were generally okay from what we could see) to save one person's sanity is not logical. Also...
^ Tuvok would also be the first to argue that destroying a timeline (one in which the Federation was at peace, one in which things were generally okay from what we could see) to save one person's sanity is not logical. Also...
I think Tuvok would rather be insane than his son be among the 60 billion-plus who died in the Borg attacks.
Re: Star Trek: Destiny Book 3: Lost Souls - (SPOILERS)
^^Just to play devil's advocate, it could be argued that in the original timeline, with the Borg never meeting their final defeat, they would've gone on to kill far more than 60 billion people in the long run. So maybe fewer people are killed by the Borg overall as a result of Adm. Janeway's actions.
Although personally I'm with you -- Adm. J.'s actions were totally selfish and unjustified, regardless of the unintended consequences either way.
^^Just to play devil's advocate, it could be argued that in the original timeline, with the Borg never meeting their final defeat, they would've gone on to kill far more than 60 billion people in the long run. So maybe fewer people are killed by the Borg overall as a result of Adm. Janeway's actions.
Although personally I'm with you -- Adm. J.'s actions were totally selfish and unjustified, regardless of the unintended consequences either way.