Star Trek #1643: Home Fires

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: S.C.E. #25 , Pocket Books, February 2003

CREATORS: Kevin Dilmore & Dayton Ward

STARDATE: 53904.8 to 53909.2 (frame tale), 32318.5 (Aldo Corsi's story)

PLOT: In the wake of Duffy's death, Stevens convinces Corsi to bring him along as she visits her folks. It's a difficult trip for her because she's been estranged from her father since she joined Starfleet. Stevens somehow manages to wrangle a trip for them both aboard her dad's freighter and there the man finally breaks down and tells her why he hates Starfleet so much. When she was a kid, he lost his brother to Cardassian disruptor fire after Starlfeet's Lt. Commander William Ross convinced them to allow a small SF team aboard to take sensor scans of the on-route systems, and the mission went awry. Reflecting on those events, Corsi is appalled to find out Stevens wants to leave the service and convinces him to return with her to the da Vinci.

CONTINUITY: Lt. Commander Ross is the same officer as Admiral Ross from Deep Space Nine. His alias is given as Barry, no doubt a reference to his actor, Barry Jenner. The Cardassian War seen brewing in 2355 was first mentioned in TNG's The Wounded as part of Miles O'Brien's backstory. Corsi's family lives on Fahleena III, one of the planets the Valerians would use when shipping dolamide to the Cardassians (Dramatis Personae). The Saltok system where the Cardassians are hiding would one day be part of the DMZ (The Maquis). The Tolpin system mentioned would also be in the same area, as per Preemptive Strike.

DIVERGENCES: In the print compilation Breakdowns, the stardates were changed to53704.8 and 53709.2.

SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK - A young Lt. Commander William Ross

REVIEW: Wildfire was, in some ways, S.C.E.'s The Best of Both Worlds, and so it seems rather natural for the book series to give us its take on Family. Several of the next books will feature various crew members essentially waiting for the ship to be fixed, but in the case of Home Fires, it really IS Family. An officer feels estranged from their family, joining Starfleet was a contentious affair, and by the end, everyone has it out and there's a fair bit of blubbering. Neither Corsi is the type, so there's a big cathartic release there, but the final scene with her and Fabian had me going too. The reader has to grieve for Duffy too. Which is weird to say given all we got on television was his bullying Barclay. So it's kind of too bad we don't get MORE of Corsi and Stevens. Most of the book - and I do mean MOST - is given over to a story happening more than 20 years earlier, to people who either just met or don't know at all. Barring Ross, of course, a character I've never liked, and perhaps the authors share that opinion too. It's an interesting link forward, certainly, and helps ground the story in more than just Domenica Corsi's stakes, but we're still asked to care about things that are incredibly ancillary to the S.C.E. crew. Good Cardassian action, but I kept waiting for the narrative to cut back to the present day and it kept not happening. But those Corsi-Stevens scenes? Chef's kiss. When Fabian calls in a favor, and it's to sort YOUR shit out... let's just say I'm glad his departure was a fake out.