I just finished "Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations - Watching The Clock" by author Christopher L. Bennett. It was my choice of escapist entertainment, since I've been living with my reality television loving family (all that changes on Friday when I finally get my own place again after almost six months).
I recall early interviews with the creators of "Star Trek: Enterprise" that the initial concept was a full-blown look at what they called the Temporal Cold War, but that didn't really materialize and served only as the oddly interspersed sub-plot of a few episodes here and there. This novel served to dig deeper into the forces behind all of the time travel that takes place in the Trek universe. It used DTI Agents Lucsly and Dulmur (seen only in the Tribbles episode of ST:DS9) as the jumping off characters. As detectives looking into time-related incidents, they uncover bits and pieces of a much larger conspiracy from the past, present, and future (all relative, of course). It was fun to see how neatly the threads could all be woven together, connecting everyone from Gary Seven to Captain Janeway. There are a lot of cameos of other popular and obscure Star Trek characters, as well as references to events from past and recent Trek novels (I confess I haven't read a recent Trek novel in a while, and would recommend reading the recent Borg trilogy and having a rough idea of the events of Riker's USS Titan before diving into this book, though it isn't fully necessary). As a geek, I liked the "science" employed in the novel, as the characters had to explain the physics involved in time traveling, dimension shifting, and other related elements. There was an attempt made to not simply introduce a futuristic term to explain away the unknown; instead elements of quantum physics were merged with the science-fiction, much like what was done in the Stargate franchise over the years. To me, the best science fiction finds its roots in science fact, and the author worked hard to get the facts as accurate as possible. At its core, the novel is a whodunnit mystery that happens to span millions of years. Those who wanted resolution to Enterprise's Crewman Daniels/31st Century storyline will be pleased to know it can be found here (though I wasn't particularly satisfied -- without spoiling things, the ending was a bit like that of the first season of Stephen Bochco's "Murder One"). Whether DTI novels will become yet another series in the pantheon of Trek novels remains to be seen, but Bennett did a decent job developing both new and established characters. All-in-all, better than watching reality TV. http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Department-Temporal-Investigations/dp/1451606257 -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
