Customer Reviews

Debtors' Planet (Star Trek The Next Generation, No 30)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ferengi, Cardassians, Danger, Intrigue, and a 20th century crooked businessman. What more could you want?

"Debtor's Planet" is definitely a well written book, which focuses not just on the main characters, but has decent plot development on the side of the bad guys, the not so bad guys, and some of the lower echelon crewman...oh, and Wesley Crusher.

There is a nice interplay of humor (some of Ralph Offenhouse's lines are hilarious) and action, along with the very interesting proposal of what would happen to a society if the Prime Directive were completely ignored.

My only criticisms would be the overdoing of Worf ...his actions and thoughts weren't how I see his character...however that problem is nicely undone at the end of the book (having to do with his relationship with his son).

Overall, a good read for Star Trek fans. Pick it up, and enjoy!

Good plot, good handling of characterization, including the odd (but interesting and plausible) use of the character Ralph Offenhouse, introduced in the episode "The Neutral Zone", a very successful businessman from the 20th century who was frozen when he died until a cure could be found, awakening in the 24th century and very much an anachronism, as a Federation Ambassador dealing with the Ferengi. The man is still an anachronism, but having had some time to assimilate into his new time period, we find that the skills which made him successful in his own time are not completely without merit in his new time.

Another item worthy of note: the syntax of the language of the aliens in this book is complex enough that the Universal translator, while making the words and even the meaning understandable, doesn't completely eliminate the sense of the exotic. A nice touch.

Well above average as Star Trek stories go.

Another pretty good Trek novel. We have a planet being overrun by Ferengi, who have enslaved the Megarans, in order to industrialize a once primative society into building starships. Ambassador Offenhouse is sent by the Federation, aboard the Enterprise, to resolve this situation. We find out that Offenhouse was a businessman from the 20th century, who was frozen after death, then apparently thawed out after finding a cure. Thompson never got into explaining this. Some of the Eugenics War was brought up where Offenhouse lost his son.

Meanwhile, Offenhouse uses his financier wit to tick off the Ferengi. An away team beams down to find out what is going on, then are attacked by the Megarans, or so they thought. Enter the Cardassians, who are the real string pullers on this planet.

Of course, Worf gets involved as does most of the main crew of the Enterprise to figure out what is going on. The Cardassians are discovered by an Ensign, who is an insectoid, resembling a bee! The Cardassians use the Ferengi and try to ambush the Enterprise in orbit.

All in all, this book had action and humor mixed in. All of the main crew gets involved at some point. The only gripe I had was the way the book ended. It seemed to just stop all of a sudden, and leaves you wondering what else was going to happen.

Debtors Planet is a good story involving a certain Mr Offenhouse(remember the episode in which the Enterprise found a space capsule with several frozen people from the 20th century on it?) who has now found he has a knack for dealing with the Ferengi.

A planet has progressed exceddingly fast in it's technology, raising concerns with the federation and so the Enterprise is dispatched with Ambassador Offenhouse as Ferengi presence has been detected. The author did a good job of fleshing out this charachter who was only a one timer in the series.

The plot thickens into a prety good story as the investigation moves on. A few cavets; Worf, Dianna Troi, and Riker aren't portraied well in many places in the story. Secondly, the author takes a bit too much travel into explaining past episodes, many of which don't have much to do with the story at all(i.e. Wesley Crushers incident at Starfleet Academy). Thirdly, some sections of the book read like a conversation which may have been taken from a physics or Astronomy textbook, but then there are glaring errors in some aspects of Astronomy and scientific areas. Because of these reasons I can't really give this book four stars, but don't let that stop you from reading this enjoyable TNG novel.

A Vulcan probe on a routine survey of planets reported an unexpected change in Megara, an obscure planet on the outskirts of Federation territory. Ten years earlier the planet had been at a pre-Industrial stage of development but now the probe was an electromagnetic grid, fission reactors and orbiting space craft. Fascinating! Before the report was completed though it was abruptly cut off. Further investigation was definitely required and the Enterprise was dispatched.

Capt Picard was chagrined to discover that the Federation diplomat selected to head the mission, Ambassador Offenhouse was the same Offenhouse who had been rescued by the Enterprise a few years earlier, one of the group of people who had been placed in cryonic suspension in the 20th century and then lost. The crew had felt sorry for the survivors who had been traumatized to discover that they were now in the vastly changed 24th century. That is the crew had felt sorry for all but one, an angry, obnoxious man who made the crew more concerned about how the 24th century would cope with him rather than the other way around. Apparently Offenhouse had coped very well if he was now an Ambassador and in charge of the mission.

It quickly became apparent why Offenhouse, the 20th century business man was chosen for the mission, he had a unique understanding of the race responsible for Megara's current state - the Ferengi, a race driven by profit and known for their ruthless greed. These were traits that Offenhouse understood far better than those who were more in tune with the current century. As the Enterprise crew, including the disgraced Wesley Crusher attempt to sort out the planet's disarray many were forced to look at the problem from other points of view.

This is a well written and well thought out entry into this long series of tie-in novels. The problem presented is interesting and plausible, The solution is not just a matter of the Enterprise shooting it out with another starship. Several of the regulars and a few of the not so regulars (like Alexander) are featured in this story. The solution is a group effort and is more realistic treatment of a problem than other books in this series.

I found "Debtor's Planet" to be one of those truly rare Star Trek novels where the author tackled something different that other authors haven't tried too often. Given the time in which this novel was written and published, the Ferengi hadn't been explored too greatly on Star Trek The Next Generation just yet. From what we had seen, we saw they're "merchant" militaristic types, which are completely in contradiction to the civilian types we grew to love on Deep Space Nine.

"Debtor's Planet" is the first of only two Star Trek novels by this author and I found their writing style to be fairly fluidic and the pacing to be, for the better part, fairly engaging. I couldn't quite rate this one as highly as I'd like to though, given the characterization errors that seemed to jump out at a fan. The overall plot development and pacing does overcome these blaring errors for me though. It would be nice to see this author make another foray into the Star Trek genre after such a long absence.

The cover art is, not much better than the standard fare for the time though, but it does lend a bit to the story, letting the reader know that there will be a memorable character from the first season in this novel.

The premise:

A Vulcan space probe reports that the Ferengi are advancing the people of the planet Megara, from a pre-warp, primitive agricultural state to a sophisticated, technological society. The Enterprise is ordered to transport a rather odd "Ambassador" to the planet to deal with this problem. The Ambassador, Ralph Offenhouse, who was introduced in the first season's closing episode "The Neutral Zone," is a ruthless, twentieth century business man whose character gets some decent fleshing out in this story.

Besides greatly advancing the Megaran people technologically, the Ferengi, who turn out to only be the puppets here, are turning the hard working and honorable people into vicious, xenophobic killers. Captain Picard must now find a way to extricate the Ferengi and their puppet masters from this planet and in doing so, save the entire Federation.

What follows from there, is a fairly decent first novel for this author and one that I would definitely recommend to any and all fans of the genre. {ssintrepid}

Compared to most of the new wave Star Trek books at least these books had style. They read as if they could have been additional episodes of the TV pretty much everything published since about 2000 took its cue from the Star Wars expanded universe, filling in the missing pieces.

A planet overrun by Ferengi is begging for help who does the federation send? Probably the last human capitalist in existence Mr. Openhouse from season 1 trying to see this man explain the basics of economics to people who just don't get it is truly hilarious and not to be missed by any serious Star Trek fan.


Overall-The old books were better even if there are parts of this particular installment that read like bad fanfic namely Riker and Wolf having a movie night.

I've only started to read this book, and so far, so good. The premise is interesting enough. Bringing back and old one-time character to deal with the Ferengi sounds like it might provide for a good story. HOWEVER, JUST IN THE FIRST 2 CHAPTERS ALONE...the author makes MAJOR errors in Star Trek terms. A) There IS NO SUCH WORD AS "Klingonese"! (W. R. Thompson and his editor John J. Ordover should get that in their head!) The Klingon language and anything Klingon is simply referred to as "Klingon" NOT "Klingonese"!!!!!!!!!!, B) The homeworld of the Ferengi IS CALLED "Ferenginar"! (NOT "Ferengal"!!!!!!!). Now this might be nitpicking, but Trekkies are a nitpicky bunch. If you mess up on something as simple as the proper name for the homeworld of a major Trek species, that's pretty bad! What if someone called Earth, "Oarth", or "Earathal"?? You won't like it would you? So don't call Ferenginar as "Ferengal"!!!!!!!