PUBLICATION: Star Trek: S.C.E. #22, Pocket Books, November 2002
CREATORS: Keith R.A. DeCandido
STARDATE: 53675.1 (frame tale); 51993.8 (da Vinci story, at the end of DS9's sixth season)
PLOT: Overseer Biron continues to read the da Vinci's ship's logs. We learn of how Fabien Stevens and P8 joined the crew of the da Vinci and their fist mission to repair a relay station during the Dominion War, while simultaneously figuring out a recovered Dominion weapon that looks like a giant golf ball. When the da Vinci is surprised by Cardassian and Jem'Hadar warships, they use the Golf Ball, and the computer virus it can transmit, to win the day.
CONTINUITY: Fabien left Starfleet for a while after the death of Muñiz in The Ship (DS9, Season 5) - Fabien was seen working with him in Starship Down, which is also the episode from where he recognizes the Dominion technology used to house the Golf Ball.
DIVERGENCES: None.
SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK - The Steamrunner-class ships accompanying the da Vinci on this mission.
The problem with the Biron frame tale is that nothing ever comes of it. Best case scenario would have been to have the next book have him attack or foil (or be foiled by) the da Vinci, but even though DeCandido does pen several S.C.E.s down the line, they're not about that. He does all this research and never acts on it. Or more importantly, he wastes all our time with his frame tale. At least in this case, there's only one "log tale", so it has more space to breathe. Ignore Biron and you've got a slightly shorter S.C.E., one that goes a bit deeper into Fabien Stevens' character, and doing away with the three characters who starred in Book 1 (Lense, Bart and Sonya), shows us what the da Vinci was like before they came aboard. The characters in their posts are for the most part intriguing, especially the Vulcan XO, and the Bolian doctor was pegged to show up in a sequel that never came. These two do make brief appearances later - nice to know. As for the story, it's a repair mission under fire and an engineering puzzle that uses continuity as a solution (taking a page from Apollo 13) and then becomes a solution to the main mission. Pleasant enough, but it's largely thanks to efficiently drawn characters who feel like a beloved television cast. So very much like other S.C.E. books.
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