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Reading "The Needs of the Many" Now
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I'm reading the "Needs of the Many" STO novel now and I thought I'd keep a few running thoughts/questions as I go. I want to encourage people to track down a copy so I'll avoid spoiling everything but I'm just keeping a journal of my reactions here, which includes spoilers.
MACOs are still around in the 25th century, huh? Wonder if we'll see any in game.
Undine become perfect genetic copies of people they infiltrate as. That's interesting. I'd think that would have some interesting repercussions. Pose as a genius and you become a genius. Pose as someone mentally ill and it should have the same neurochemical imbalances. Beyond that... I'd think that would mean they'd have physiological and emotional responses to members of the species they're infiltrating. Love. Sickness. Fear of death. Instinct. Physical attraction. Lust. They could catch a cold. They could become head over heels lovesick and drooling over a member of the species they're infiltrating.
I dig Vic Fontaine describing himself as a "Lightbulb".
So the existential terror of Undine Infiltration is what's pushing the rights for artificial lifeforms. Inspired.
Oh. God. There's an Emergency Counseling Program modeled loosely on Vic Fontaine? I WANT ONE.
... You guys did your homework. Supernovae ARE far more common in Star Trek than they should be. It never would have occurred to me that the unnatural Hobus supernova is part of a larger pattern of unnatural supernovae, although it MAY be Q.
Hm. I am somewhat suspicious that the real Worf is dead or in hiding and that General Worf is an Undine. That blackout IS suspect. Oh. Wow. Worf even thinks he might be an Undine. He can't be sure he isn't a programmed sleeper.
The Gorn are in the KDF because they lost a baseball game! Due to a technicality! Ha! Please add a baseball mini-game. Doesn't have to be any more complicated than an old NES game or a cell phone game but it was a pretty big part of DS9. I gather it's probably a sport that the Gorn take very seriously now.
More later...
MACOs are still around in the 25th century, huh? Wonder if we'll see any in game.
Undine become perfect genetic copies of people they infiltrate as. That's interesting. I'd think that would have some interesting repercussions. Pose as a genius and you become a genius. Pose as someone mentally ill and it should have the same neurochemical imbalances. Beyond that... I'd think that would mean they'd have physiological and emotional responses to members of the species they're infiltrating. Love. Sickness. Fear of death. Instinct. Physical attraction. Lust. They could catch a cold. They could become head over heels lovesick and drooling over a member of the species they're infiltrating.
I dig Vic Fontaine describing himself as a "Lightbulb".
So the existential terror of Undine Infiltration is what's pushing the rights for artificial lifeforms. Inspired.
Oh. God. There's an Emergency Counseling Program modeled loosely on Vic Fontaine? I WANT ONE.
... You guys did your homework. Supernovae ARE far more common in Star Trek than they should be. It never would have occurred to me that the unnatural Hobus supernova is part of a larger pattern of unnatural supernovae, although it MAY be Q.
Hm. I am somewhat suspicious that the real Worf is dead or in hiding and that General Worf is an Undine. That blackout IS suspect. Oh. Wow. Worf even thinks he might be an Undine. He can't be sure he isn't a programmed sleeper.
The Gorn are in the KDF because they lost a baseball game! Due to a technicality! Ha! Please add a baseball mini-game. Doesn't have to be any more complicated than an old NES game or a cell phone game but it was a pretty big part of DS9. I gather it's probably a sport that the Gorn take very seriously now.
More later...
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Sounds or appears, like IMPOSTER..with Gary Sinise .
edit...
Oops, but they don't blowup.........or can they?
Crackle,crackle
(screaming is heard)----crackle- (The image appaears again and standing in place of me there is a Gorn officer, blood is gleaming on his claws.)
I am commander T'liss of the Gorn hegenomy. This, human has been spreading lies that the Gorn have been subjegated due to a pitiful human sport. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we were really playing is something called Dabo. We had already lost our jar of fresh fruit flies, our heat lamp, and several small rodents. All we had left was to gamble our allegience and fortunatly we beat the Klingon we had been playing against called Ja'rod. However us Gorn being merciful in nature, decided that the hegenomy would be better served fighting with the Klingons.
That is all, transmission over----cracklle,crackle---
Hm. A reference to the Vega Colony incident in the tutorial.
So the novels take place in a parallel timeline to STO that has some overlapping points, I gather. Implication being that the Undine overwrote the novels.
La Forge is commanding the Challenger after a return to Starfleet, echoing the Voyager timeline. I'm getting a definite vibe that possible futures we've seen in the shows or the books may be playing out in limited forms in STO.
DUDE! Marrying your Chief Engineer? Is that kosher?
Data morality pwned Geordi.
Famous last words: "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."
Maybe there is an afterlife for an android.
LIEUTENANT DAN!!!!!
Sounds interesting, may look into this.
Undine become EXACT duplicates of the people they infiltrate as?
So... why do they EVER work against the causes those people followed?
Heck, how do they turn back into Undine? If they're an exact copy, and the copy doesn't have that ability, then they wouldn't either :mad:
I love Jack.
I love Jack's plan even more. It was where I was going in the original post of this thread.
A hologram who believes she's an Undine sleeper. Now I've seen everything.
So...
We have some confirmation on the Enterprise crew beyond Data. Nog is Chief Engineer.
Starfleet now accepts applicants from all friendly worlds, without prior Federation citizenship.
The Lorians may be cousins of the Reptile Xindi and appear to be Federation friendly.
Starbase 236? I wonder what the Enterprise is up to...
They're perfect copies plus their own memories and DNA, which is triple helix. So they become a perfect copy with something extra that stays dormant and hidden. But apparently, when unprovoked and not reactivated by Undine intelligence, they tend to forget they're even Undine.
I haven't read much my copy yet, but I can lend some insight here:
The game takes place in 2409. The book does very much not. The book takes place after the entire Undine War is over, long after the events of Star Trek Online.
We are the Heroes of the Undine War that are being talked about over the course of the book.
At least that's the impression I got. I can see how it could be hard to pin down though, since the book is written as an oral history, I can imagine most of it is presented as occurring in the "present."
They always did. Even from non-friendly worlds. The deal is though (unless THIS has changed) that if you are not a member of a Federation race, you need the recommendation of a Command-Rank officer.
In fact, at one point, Garak tried to convince Worf to write him a letter of recommendation to Starfleet, right when the Dominion took Deep Space Nine - so the Cardassians were very much not a friendly race, but while Worf shot him down, it clearly was a valid option he could have pursued.
Ahh, so they're perfect copies except that they have a bunch of extra stuff. Sounds like there's an author out there who doesn't understand the concept of "perfect"
But their dna is super-dense, right? OMG, you can defeat them with a scale!
* Well, you seem to have put on... about 400 pounds... of super-dense alien dna... aww*
You're right, the best evidence of this is with Nog. An entire episode dealt with his getting that recommendation from Sisko, and it was explicitly stated that he needed it because he isn't a Federation citizen.
Memory Alpha rocks. "Heart of Stone" - DS9.
I remember the episode. The 'main' storyline with Kira and Odo is actually so boring you'd rather just see Nog shouting at people.
I suppose I interpreted the lack of resolution and relative youth/vitality of TNG era folks (the Temporal Investigations Agents, Jack, Janeway) to place the ending in the not-too-distant future. Actually, reviewing that, the DTI interview was January 2nd 2409 and referred to the events of the tutorial in the past tense. (In fact, given its placement, I might say that it's a typo and that it should be 2408.)
The interview with Doctor Jack was mid-2408.
The interview with Rene at the end was July 25th 2408 and aside from the Temporal Investigations interview (anachronistically set in 2409, a full year ahead of surrounding events) is the last date in the book.
However... The shortage of COs is also in 2408 according to the timeline, which should be corrected prior to the Vega Colony promotions.
Either the timeline is in error or the dates are off by a year (except the DTI interview) and the book's interviews run through mid 2409.
But it could be that a year passes between the Vega Colony incident and State of Q.
I am almost done and honestly had no idea what the book was about. Seemed all over the place.
We know that Worf was attacked by an Undine infiltrator trying to replace him in 2387, the day after Spock's disappearance.
Sometime after this, Data ends the war by closing the rifts but there are lingering doubts about the Undine, building into a state of hysteria that has transformed the Federation. He remains very mum about the Undine in his interview with Jake in 2490 but the tension builds over the next 19 years.
Ah, then they do a pretty good job of making it sound like real history.
Trust me, what you learn in a textbook is organized and nowhere NEAR what we get in the real world doing research.
I don't care about how it is resolved. In fact, I really don't want to know that.
I want to know what happened with the klingons and gorn and Nausicains and such.
I want to know something about the tru way.
What I got? Quark going on and on about something I didn't care about. Kassidy Yates going on about baseball. Hack characters from previous star trek incarnations.
The novel covers the events between Nemesis and the game pretty thoroughly, I thought. Just not in order and you have to dig through the interviews for piece it together.
I guess it depends on what your definition of "long after" is? Although I don't have the book in front of me, I know it was written in the early 2420's.
Jake Sisco signs the bottom of the Introduction and dates it witht eh 2420's date. So the book was completed not more than 15 years after the events of STO.
Although I'm enjoing the first chapters of the book so far, I really wish the book took place between the events of Star Trek Nemesis (the alternate time line of the new movie) and 2409 (STO). This way we could discover what brought about the war with the Klingon Empire.
However, you are correct - there are inconsistencies. For instance, according to the timeline, LaForge takes command of the Challenger in 2397 - but the interview with LaForge is set just before he takes command, and seems to treat (parts of?) the Undine War as something of the past.
I did my best to follow the chronology, but it seems that some (all?) of the interviews weren't conducted after the end of the Undine War, but were actually conducted before 2409. I mentioned the LaForge thing above, but there are others. The intro to Janeway's interview mentions that the U.S.S. Tucker was commissioned in 2391, and had subsequently been in service "for nearly twenty years." And the intro to Jack's interview mentions that Miral Paris is a recent Starfleet graduate, serving as a junior tactical officer on the U.S.S. Kirk - so, before when we meet her in the game, in 2409.
My impression is that most of the interviews took place prior to the game and that the news articles help date the interviews. Many of the characters would be too old to be the way they were described in the interviews much beyond 2409 and most or all of the events described are pre-2409 even when the interviews aren't. And some of the interviews (Quark still running his bar on DS9, Jack proposing a war strategy) have to take place prior to the game. Other portions (Dulmer still having dark hair, Rene's hair being bright orange) seem unlikely in 2420.
The only thing that struck me as NEEDING to occur after launch of the game is the reference to the Vega Colony made by the Section 31 Operative.
I think it was just that the book itself was compiled later from years of interviews much later in Jake's life. But the book itself seems mostly concerned with past and current events from our POV, it may simply be another 11 years before Jake is allowed to publish them..
My main problem with the whole book is the conceit that, by the time of these interviews, much of the fighting of the Undine War has taken place, i.e. has taken place before 2409 - which doesn't jive with the impression the timeline gives. On the book, there's also little to no mention of the fact that the Federation and Klingons are in an open state of war. And Jake was able to meet a retired Worf easily enough.
For its part, the timeline mentions no joint Klingon-Federation efforts to close a fluidic rift. The sense I get from the timeline is that the Undine threat is building in 2409, not that it has built up and been dealt with in the past, but continues to haunt the Federation.