Star Trek #1698: Grand Designs

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: S.C.E. #39, Pocket Books, May 2004

CREATORS: Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

STARDATE: Unknown, after the previous book

PLOT: Under the command of Ambassador Gabriel Marshall, the S.C.E. team is conducting inspections on Rhaax V, a planet applying for Federation membership, though what the UFP really wants is to be found on a Rhaaxian colony in the same system, which has designs on independence. Tensions caused by this potential new alliance bring things to a head and after the planet threatens its colony with bioweapons it does not have, the colonists decide to use one of the homeworld's spacedocks to deliver actual bioweapons into the atmosphere. Some of the engineers manage to stop the terrorist attack, but not before the Rhaaxian government fires bioweapon missiles at the other planet, which mercifully don't work thanks to a secret misinformation scheme hatched by Marshall and executed by Gomez. Gold decides none of these people are ready for Federation membership and pulls out, questioning the leadership structure of the Corps of Engineers that put his people in danger that day.

CONTINUITY: Ambassador Marshall appeared in two prior SCE books - Interphase Part One and Foundations Book 3. Captain Gold compares the flawed Federation policies at work to those that led to tragedy in Insurrection, A Private Little War, Too Short a Season, and the novel Prime Directive.

DIVERGENCES: None.

SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK - My casting for the underhanded blowhard ambassador is Henry Czerny.

REVIEW: I have been BEGGING for this and finally got it - a Captain Gold-focused story! And it very much is. This is the kind of political story usually afforded the television series, exactly because the captains are the leads. In S.C.E., the engineers are normally the leads and we therefore get a lot of technical problems and solutions. While there's some of that here - Soloman's computer skills and Gomez's knowledge of chemistry are integral - it's not the focus. Instead, we have Gold being very grumpy to be saddled with the (recurring) a-hole ambassador, to find his crew almost take part in a bar brawl, and at being kept out of the loop for so long. These writers know Harry Morgan was essentially "cast" as Captain Gold, and he's never felt more like the old M*A*S*H colonel. Like starring captains, he gets to make speeches and decisions. I like! In the same vein, Tav has a couple of strong social scenes, including one where it would seem Tellarite argumentation is a plus and not a minus. I will note that we haven't had a story THIS short in a while, leaving enough space for some scenes that happen behind the scenes to play out, at least in flashback.