“The Conscience of the King” has
long been a fan favourite episode, one that revealed a dark chapter
in Star Trek's future history. Back in the first season of
Star Trek, when the characters and setting were still being
developed, it wasn't so incongruous. A famine followed by a massacre,
on a colony planet, witnessed by a young James Kirk, stands out more
now as a bizarre and unimaginable event in Federation history.
After Desperate Hours, a second
Discovery novel exploring familiar elements of the Trek
universe is an unsurprising move. This book, though, explores a
major, known event in future history, rather than dropping the
Enterprise crew into a prequel adventure. Desperate Hours
takes place in 2246, before even the events on the Shenzou
seen in the flashback scenes in Discovery. Philippa
Georgiou is serving as first officer on the support vessel the USS
Narbonne, while Lt. Cmdr Gabriel Lorca is stationed on Tarsus
IV itself.
The setting of the series allows to us
explore this event through the eyes of now familiar characters.
Interestingly, Kodos's massacre occurs early in the book, in a
sequence that is chilling for just how matter-of-fact its telling is.
Georgiou only hears about events second-hand, the Narbonne already
en route to Tarsus, the very ship that makes the massacre
entirely unnecessary. Lorca, however, is in the thick of it. He is in
a relationship with a colonist, deeply involved with life on the
planet, and witnesses the broadcast of the terrible “solution.”
While Georgiou's horror is humanitarian, Lorca's is personal, and
this affects how they deal with the aftermath of the incident.
Nonetheless, focusing on Lorca is
potentially a mistake. After all, this is not the character we've
been following on Discovery, for that was the Lorca of the
Mirror Universe. This is the “Prime” Lorca, therefore a character
new to us, and the exploration into his character is less significant
because of that. For what it's worth, Lorca seems to be an aggressive
hothead in this universe too, so his Mirror counterpart can't have
had too much difficulty taking his place. (It's also very much a
Discovery novel in that there's a lot more swearing than we're
used to from Trek lit.)
The more interesting scenes are those
involving Kodos (who, to maintain continuity, keeps to the shadows
throughout and is not seen by any of the major characters. He also
has his records thoroughly wiped). Initially troubled by self doubt,
his resolve that he made the right decision only grows stronger as he
and his followers go into hiding. He's a fascinating character, and
his position, at least to begin with, is purely logical. This isn't
the first Trek novel to delve into the background of the
Tarsus IV Massacre, but it goes into a depth not really seen before.
It's easy to see Kodos here become the tired old man of the original
episode. Satisfyingly, there are clear causes for the famine,
something that should be unthinkable in the Federation; a chain of
events leading to catastrophe.
There are some interesting supporting
characters, including the governor of Tarsus, Gisella Ribeiro, who is
briefly usurped by the more charismatic Kodos, and Captain Korrapati,
a dignified older Indian gent (well, Martian-Indian), who commands
the Narbonne. Naturally, there are familiar characters as
well, including Thomas Leighton, and inevitably, a spunky young man
named James Tiberius Kirk. Less expected is an appearance towards the
end of the book of the first captain of the Enterprise, Robert
April. Appropriately, this is a very human-centred book, in a way
Star Trek has rarely been since the first season of TOS, with
very few alien characters.
Dayton Ward's prose is as easy to read
as ever, but the story sadly failed to carry me along this time. By
featuring the massacre early on and focusing on its aftermath, it
peaks to early, and what remains is an awful lot of running around,
fighting and sabotage, as Lorca and Starfleet attempt to track down
Kodos, a mission we know is domed to failure. The action sequences
are perfectly competent, but they're just not as interesting as the
psychological and historical elements of the book. Still, this is a
worthwhile exploration of a critical moment in Star Trek's
mythology.
This review is also available at Ex Astris Scientia
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