Customer Reviews

Crisis on Centaurus

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Reading this was like watching ST V for the first time: so much potential wasted by a gung-ho author who doesn't treat serious subjects seriously. As a veteran disaster worker, I was hoping he would treat it realistically, but it fell short. I liked M'Benga's distress at the scope of the damage, and the informal leadership that springs up among the citizens. I disliked Kirk's silly singleminded focus on the dithering government, when he should have stepped up to lead the response effort. I disliked the lack of reaction by ANY character to the wanton destruction of medical relief ships.

The author takes a stab at the first meeting of Kirk and McCoy, but compared to the characters from the episodes, these men were too--manly? Not friendly or warm, not personable. Paper cutouts, like another reviewer said. They felt "off", like caricatures rather than people. And the author can't resist giving Kirk a private retreat cabin nobody's ever heard of. I didn't want to read your fanon, thanks.

Worst of all, Ferguson contrives that bit of personal history and completely misses his chance to develop the canon, but unexplored, role of Joanna McCoy. After a lot of buildup about her whereabouts after the disaster, we never see into McCoy's head or hers at all. She's been hinted at in a lot of novels, almost portrayed in the series a couple of times, but never explored, and I'm still waiting. Instead, I followed Kirk on the trail of a laughable villain, causing me to skim the last thirty pages.

End of rant. Really wanted this one to be good.

This is neither an especially bad Star Trek novel, nor an especially good one. The characters were handled, for the most part, with a deft touch, and the main plot was interesting enough, if not spectacular. But unfortunately, the author set up a situation that would have been too easily solved if the Enterprise were working properly, so he felt the need to fall back on the trite old standby "the Enterprise is malfunctioning, but needs to complete a difficult and dangerous mission anyway" routine, a badly overused plot device. Further, his eventual explanation of what caused the malfunction was so comletely implausible as to challenge the abilities of even the most forgiving fans of the unlikely to suspend disbelief. Further, he flubs rather badly in one of his attempts to reference original television episodes as history for the story; at one point, Kirk is reminiscing about the events in the episode "The Galileo Seven", and "remembers" that only some of Scotty's best transporter work saved the crew of the shuttle. Only problem is, Scotty was one of those on the shuttle being beamed to safety. A trivial point, I know, but if you're going to refer back to the show in the first place, you should be careful to do it ACCURATELY.

The premise of the book is that the colony Centaurus is bombed by a terrorist group and approximately 1 million victims die. The planetary government is in a shambles and the Enterprise is dispatched to aid in whatever way possible. However, Enterprise is having a series of computer failures and is not up to full capacity so things get tricky for Kirk and the crew.

Ferguson has written an adequate Star Trek novel - his main characters are written very solidly, but his supporting characters are rather like cardboard cutouts. The women weep and the men clench their teeth and pound their fists in anger at the news of the terrorist attack.

Having the benefit of hindsight in regards to the 9/11 attacks, I found the behavior of many of the characters to have been inplausible at best, including doctors taking time away from the thousands of refugee patients to tour the Enterprise and especially the Mardi Gras-type partying that was going on in the new capitol city just a few days after a million people were killed in the planet's old capitol city. Remembering the somber mood of the country after 9/11 that went on for weeks with only a few thousand deaths, I found it to have been a jarring, hard to believe part of the story.

The first half of the story was really much, much better than the contrived second half. It is the first half that pulls it up to the third star and makes this a book that I recommend, albeit weakly.

Clearly one of the better Star Trek™ novels. It starts out with an explosion on Centaurus and goes quickly into the history of the meeting between Kirk and McCoy. After that it's a race to see who will get the terrorists who exploded the bomb. I especially like the part when Kirk goes to his cabin and is surrounded by hostile forces. The only bad part was Ferguson had the Enterprise™ going into the atmosphere. Every good fan know the starship cannot go into the atmosphere. Other than that a great story with a great ending. A must read!

One of the early "Kirk must save the planet" novels, with Mccaoy's daughter thrown in for good measure.

Medium quality Star Trek novel.
"A Science Fiction Book Club Alternate Selection"