Customer Reviews

Ghost Ship (Star Trek The Next Generation, No 1)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I liked this book, even though it tended to be a little over dramatic, and many of the crew's actions did not seem to fit their characters, although to be fair to the author, this book was written at the very start of TNG's run, and the characters have developed a lot since then.

The passage at the very start of the book was well written, and there was some good scenes between the characters, but I found the book just a little too slow. I have read some of Diane Carey's other ST books, and while she's not my favourite Trek author, I do enjoy most of her books, especially 'Ship of the Line'.

I think the book would be better if more time was spent on developing a more complicated storyline, and less time on the characters feelings on the 'Ghost Ship'. Maybe it's just me, but the plot seemed too basic, and centred completely on what to do about the life draining entity. As it was, the book was more a question of ethics than a Star Trek novel.

A good, thought-provoking Star Trek novel, but not one of the best.

To be fair to the author, it is hard to write a completely objective review of this book. The novel was written when the concept was new, the series just beginning and the characters not yet fully fleshed out. I read it, on the other hand, after the series had concluded and the transition to motion pictures successfully completed. Still, the weakness of the book lies not with the inconsistent interaction among the main characters but with the plot itself. We start by meeting the captain and crew of the Sergei G. Gorshkov. In fact, the entire first chapter is dedicated to this introduction. The author makes us curious about these characters, and then does nothing with them. They exist in spirit form throughout the rest of the novel, but do nothing and are never revisited as anything more than a collective group of beings that want to die. The officers of the Enterprise undergo a great amount of soul-searching as they try to decide whether to grant this request or not, but the crew of the Gorshkov are neglected by the alien that absorbed them and by the author as well throughout the bulk of the novel. Ultimately, the reader does not care what decision Captain Picard comes to, because the author never makes us care about the "ghosts" whose fates lie in the balance.

While the plot is disappointing, the interaction among the main characters is worthwhile if for no other reason than to contrast the original concept with their eventual, more developed, incarnations. The highlights are the budding relationship between Giordi and Data and the contradictory early relationship between Deanna and Riker. But at the same time, Giordi is painted as an arrogant and insubordinant brat and Riker an incompetent buffoon when the two are on the bridge.

Bottom line: This isn't a horrible novel, but there are many superior Star Trek books out there (some of them written by Diane Carey herself). If you are going to invest the time it takes to read a book, invest it in one you'll get more out of.

The Next Generation was such an excellent series that it's hard to believe that one book could focus almost entirely on the goofy parts of the series.

The book turns all of the crew into naval gazers, but my "favorite" part was the fake prime directive debate that consumed an entire chapter. What if we hurt the enemy's feelings?

I still can't believe I read the whole book. This book was like a movie that I wish I'd walked out of.

Thankfully, the series quickly abandoned the "Romulan warbird de-cloaking off the port bow; shields down to 5% -- OK, everyone to the conference room to figure out what to do" problem. But this book is the epitome of everything that could have gone wrong with the series. Thankfully, there's never been a book this bad again!

I can't say that I'm the biggest Star Trek fan by any means. By that, I only really enjoyed "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Maybe it's because I was born in the early 80's, but for some reason I really can't get into Classic Trek, and I had a hard time really getting into "Deep Space Nine." Therefore, for me it's all about "The Next Generation." Seriously, I have all the episodes on DVD, I own all the comic books and now I've delved into the novels! I guess I'm a pretty big "The Next Generation" fan at the very least. I'm also big on details, as anyone can tell who have read my reviews.

As many other reviews have pointed out about "Ghost Ship" is that the story concept is pretty good, but the characters are all wrong. A few characters here and there seem to have been developed correctly, but it seems like that's all by chance. I did see someone mention somewhere that the author may not have even been able to see an episode of this new series before writing the book. I don't understand this, but when you analyze the release dates that kind of makes sense. The episode "Encounter at Farpoint" which was the first episode for "The Next Generation" came out in September, 1987 and the last episode aired on May, 1988. "Ghost Ship" was promptly released in June, 1988. This is way too soon to have been written after the season had finished being aired and would explain why nobody really acts like anybody on the show.

Here's my theory, you can take it or leave it. I think that Diane Carey only had character profiles available to her, pictures of the characters, a layout of the ship, and maybe the script for "Encounter at Farpoint". Either that or written into the character profiles were hints at what their future would be in terms of development. When she was commissioned to write the book she was given these things wrote the book and then the publishing house held it to be released promptly after the last episode aired. That's my theory; it's the only reason I can think why a writer could so drastically screw up the main characters of the show! In another review I saw that someone mentioned not to judge this author by this book, furthering my belief in my theory. Because this story is quite good and pretty original and if it wasn't a Star Trek book it wouldn't be so hard to read.

That being said, I struggled through this book. The characters were so inaccurate. The book was slow to get into, recounting some prequel that happened to a Russian ship in 1995. This was about twenty pages long before we ever got to hear from the crew of the Enterprise. This wasn't the greatest idea for the first novel to kick off this series. Mainly because I was starting to wonder if I was reading something in the Star Trek universe at all. Anyway, I'll go over the general plot and then critique the character flaws. Basically this alien ship/entity attacked a Russian ship in 1995 and somehow kept the souls/essences of those on board. The starship Enterprise encounters the same entity years later and now they are in danger of suffering the same fate. The entity is much more powerful than the starship and it almost seems like the Enterprise is doomed to share the same fate. The essences of the Russian crew begin to appear on the Enterprise, which is why we get the title "Ghost Ship". The Russian crew can talk to Troi, sort of, and the greater entity that is flying around the universe seems to be able to communicate with Data to a degree. This leaves the Captain and his crew in a sort of a quandary as to whether or not they should try to destroy the entity with all the "souls" on board. It's kind of an interesting premise and I will say, it's the only reason I finished reading the book. In terms of a time frame when this book takes place, I've narrowed down based on some given information. Since Wesley is an acting ensign and Tasha is still alive, then that means it takes place between episodes "Where No One has Gone Before" and "Skin of Evil," which is a good chunk of the season. Therefore we can all already figure out that the Enterprise survives in this book given that time constraint because this book was after the first season.

Okay, now that everyone knows what the book is about, those who would like to know what's wrong in detail can read further. I'll start off with Commander Riker. His character is probably the most flawed of the whole bunch. As I mentioned above the book is taking place after Wesley had become an acting ensign so we're about four to five episodes into the show at this point. Anyone who has seen Season One knows that the characters had already been pretty well developed at this point. Riker in "Ghost Ship" is like a bumbling fool. He constantly questions if he's good enough and seems unsure of his decisions. He constantly juggles with the purpose of a first officer on the ship; this is clearly not the Riker we know. He's overly prejudiced against Data and at one point blows up and starts yelling at Data about how he's not human. This sends Data into all these questions about himself ever desiring to try and emulate humans (more on this thought later). It's as if Carey latched on to one conversation Riker had with Data on the holodeck about being nervous on Data being a machine in the pilot episode. She really grasped at a straw that went nowhere, because by the time we got to the episodes where Wesley was an acting ensign Data and Riker were fast friends. There's literally no malice between the two. Riker also spends a lot of his time in this book angering the rest of the crew and making Geordi feel sad (more on that later). The only time I felt like I was reading about the real Will Riker was when he had a personal conversation with Troi near the beginning of the book, when he tells a story about his first assignment as first officer. It was a funny story and told in the very same manner Riker would tell it.

Picard was probably the second worst portrayed character in this book. Seriously if you get the first and second officers on the ship wrong, and they're pretty much the main characters then the book is already doomed. Here we see a Picard, like Riker, that really isn't sure of himself and questions his command decisions and questions his motives. This became painfully clear during Picard's introspective look at his decision to promote Wesley to an acting ensign. If Carey had known the circumstances of Wesley's promotion this question would have never come about! Picard goes on and on about how Wesley is inexperienced and the ability to do calculations aren't enough for such a fast promotion. When, if you had seen Wesley's self sacrifice and ability to make decisions, it would've been very obvious that Wesley's knowledge of the ship more than qualified him, which was the whole point! In another scene we see Riker pull Picard out of the way of harm and then Picard berates him for it. We see an overbearing captain pushing his crew around and a crew nervous to say anything to him with fear of disappointing their captain. This is not the Captain Picard we know! He's a great captain that cares deeply for his crew and he engenders such trust and confidence in his crew that they wouldn't hesitate to tell him anything! It was so frustrating watching the crew bumble around hesitating to tell Picard any of the information he needed for a command decision. To put the final icing on the cake at the end Picard makes the most hare-brained decision I could possibly think of. During the crisis he removes himself for fourteen hours to go into a sensory deprivation tank to help him make a better decision. Seriously, even if the end results were a more informed decision he would not remove himself from command of the enterprise when it was in danger. There's no way Captain Picard would cease commanding the ship for some sort of "experiment". He'd order someone else to do it and then listen to their report if it was really that necessary. I know the book was trying to set up a situation where it was only the captain's decision, but this was way too far reaching for me to get behind the logic.

On the note of Wesley, I may as well discuss that now. Here we don't see the child genius we got to know in the show. We see the genius that doesn't actually know how to work the ship nearly as well as he proves he can in the actual show. He clearly displays knowledge on how to configure the warp engines in "Where No One has Gone Before" and even during his first experience touring the bridge he displayed knowledge of the command seat and its functions. Therefore, in this book when Wesley asks commander Riker what the difference between a passive and active scan are, I can't help but slap my forehead. We're talking about a boy who managed to turn the ships tractor beam into a repulsor beam. How can he not know the difference between something that seems so elementary? Later in the book he is found working on an experiment with the antimatter, and seriously he displays knowledge on par with Data. So why even have him ask stupid questions? Further on that experiment it's presented to the reader that Wesley's experiment could have killed the entire crew the way that he was doing it. Wesley doesn't break rules in this fashion, he's smarter than that and we all know it.

Next I'll go over the other big blunder we'll call LaForge. He's incredibly over emotional and subject to frequent outbursts, especially when Riker is being prejudiced against Data. While LaForge probably shows the most emotion in most of the episodes, he doesn't have the same kind of outbursts. He is frequently out of order on the bridge and I can't conceive of a Captain Picard that would allow this kind of conduct, especially one that is portrayed apparently being harsher. Also, Geordi complains how people are abusing him constantly, like when Riker and Picard ask him to tell them what he sees in an instance. I found this incredibly out of sorts for Geordi's character since it never comes up in the show and he seems quite happy to help in such times. In the episode with the Edo "Justice" he is happy to look at the ship that is orbiting that planet and we never see him complain. I think Carey was latching onto a scene in sick bay where Geordi was talking to crusher about getting headaches, and his visor was the cause. For some reason Carey conceived that this would cause him great stress and malice towards his commanding officers, thinking they were taking advantage of him. This is just plain unrealistic for the LaForge we know. Furthermore in one particular case Geordi yells out "Christ!" in a situation of stress, but if I'm quoting my Star Trek correctly, not once is there any mention or suggestion that any members of the crew follow an Earth based religion. And later something is referenced as being Biblical. I know it sounds like a minute error; it really stood out to me because it's something so common in our language use today that it seems out of place to never hear it. The most we see of a religion on a regular basis is Worf observing specific Klingon rituals.

Troi's character was actually decently presented. Though she seems her emotions were out of control, but the author goes at lengths to explain her stress at getting herself under control. This doesn't pan out in conjunction with how she appears on the show. Also, what felt like another oddity was that she kept referring to Commander Riker as "Bill" when everyone else called him "Will". Strangely this actually appeared to be accurate. I revisited the first season because I really wanted proof that she called him Bill and in episode "The Naked Now" she does actually call him "Bill". I think the show eventually gave up on this and it only shows up in the first season. Interestingly the book does explain the origin of this pet name, but the show never tells the answer. Also they discuss her clothing as being skirted and that was only in the very first episode. They changed that idea after the pilot episode, but in the book she still clearly wears that. This furthered my theory that the author didn't have much to go on.

Let's not forget Tasha Yar. Her character was decently accurate in her personality, but her history was an absolute mess. When they were trying to figure out what the Russian ship was, Yar piped in that she was Lithuanian and recognized the names. This makes absolutely no sense because she grew up on some other planet and was abandoned by her parents. Her knowledge of those languages wouldn't have been known to her! I submit as further proof that in an episode, Data references the French language as being obscure. If French is obscure by this time frame then surely Lithuanian would've never made it in to common language on a remote and chaotic colony. Nor would Tasha know the relation of her language to Russian in that case! Curiously later in the novel Carey curiously references the fact that Yar grew up on that other planet, but makes no further mention of her national heritage. It's as if she was submitting the chapters as they were finished and couldn't go back and correct the mistakes reasonably.

Data's comments and personality were pretty accurate at first. Unfortunately I was less and less convinced of Data actually being Data as the novel went on. As the novel went on Data was having stronger and stronger illogical/emotional reactions to things. After Riker yelled at him and told him he wasn't human, Data had, what seems to be, extreme depression where he doesn't see the point in his emulating humans anymore. They also use language that is far too human to describe Data. In one particular instance Riker is standing over Data and it says "the muscles on the back of his neck" referring to Data. This makes absolutely no sense. Data doesn't have muscles on the back of his neck. Furthermore there was a constant reference to Data's beating heart and his pulse, this happens at one instance in sick bay! You have got to be kidding me. This is just absurd. Another instance that was wrong to me is that they bring up the fact that Data had been deemed a living creature by Starfleet. This doesn't make sense to me because then an episode in Season 2 aired where Data's "life" was questioned and put on trial for a final decision on the matter. This wouldn't have been possible if Starfleet had already decided Data was alive. The absurdities careen off and culminate in the final move where Data tries to get the entities attention in the book by flying out there in a shuttle craft to shoot it. In this fiasco Data's hand start shaking when he tries to disobey orders because his programming won't let him. Data wasn't made by Starfleet, and in other episodes he disobeys orders with quite a bit of ease when he feels it is a logical conclusion. Also his "heart" starts racing when faced with these decisions that conflict with orders. We all know Data isn't really designed this way where he gets nervous about breaking rules. For the final impossibility the creature does take Data's life essence. This is seriously impossible; it left behind a functioning machine husk with no personality. I really just don't think this is even remotely possible, I know the message is to walk away thinking Data is alive, but it doesn't hold up.

Dr. Crusher and Worf seemed to be the most accurate characters in here. Granted my feeling of this towards Worf's character is probably due to the fact that he doesn't have a major presence in this book. Crusher's character had the usual amount of emotional outbursts I typically expect from her in the show. Given how incredibly wrong she was in describing the other characters it feels more like these were slightly accurate by mere circumstance.

As you can see the story wasn't bad, but it was the development of the main characters that was incredibly false. Thus the book was nearly impossible for me to get into. This will be the case for any Star Trek fan I believe. We simply can't get into a crew that is bumbling and stumbling over each other at every turn. The bridge crew was so out of sorts that I wouldn't have trusted them to be in Starfleet let alone command the Federations flagship. This may have been the first book that launched nearly a hundred others in this ongoing novel series, but this is seriously the one fans and readers should skip. It's sad to say this and I wish I didn't have to, but I seriously must. The book is far too inaccurate to get behind and endorse.

Given that this was the very first of the original Star Trek The Next Generation novels and that the author didn't even have the benefit of a full season of the show to work with, she did a worthwhile job in her characterizations based on her limited knowledge of them. Despite the television episodes having later disproved her suppositions about the characters, except for the strong bond between Data and Geordi LaForge, the author came up with a fairly decent concept for the plot. Given the outstanding newer Star Trek stories she has published since this one, I'm certain had she had more time to watch the episodes and learn these outstanding characters, her plot and the characterizations within the pages of this story would've been much better.

The premise:

Conceptually, the premise for this story is a sound one, well based in science fiction as we're introduced to a Russian aircraft carrier in the year 1995. We soon learn that there is an entity that will destroy the crew of this ship. We're then brought to the twenty fourth century and the Captain and crew of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D must deal with this same threat or be left a "Ghost Ship" as well.

Would I recommend this first STNG novel, yes! Why you say, from a fans and a collector's point of view, it was the first TNG novel that will lead the reader along the line of all of the STNG novels published to date and it is quite interesting to read through them, seeing how they've improved, along with the series. If you've never read a Star Trek novel written by this fine Star Trek author before, whatever you do, do not dismiss her as a bad Trek author, for this was but the first of her STNG efforts and she has so many others that are well worth the time to read them! {ssintrepid}

This book started poorly, and had a number of problems, but overall was a good enough story to make it all the way up to "fair".

It was 15 pages into the book before we met any of the main characters, and there was some very odd writing as has been commented on by one of the other reviewers ("Her faint Greek accent tapped the words out with the click of a sparrow's talons hopping across marble.") and, also as one of the other reviewers has pointed out, several of the characters do not seem to behave in ways that, to my admittedly limited understanding, are according to their established characterizations from the television show. Riker, particularly, seems completely out of character, very self-conscious and uncertain, very unhappy to be a first officer, thinking of Data (at least at the start of the book) as simply an ambulatory tool with no personhood, and being even more pacifistic and unwilling to cause harm to another entity, even in self-defense, than Picard.

This book would probably rate four stars if it stood alone, as a science fiction story with characters that were entirely its own; but the poor handling of established characters brings it down to three.

This is the first of the next generation books and also the worst. The author puts too much attention on the crews' feelings for each other. The author should have focused more time on developing a good story, which this author obviously did not do. I felt it was a waste of my time and i am surprised i actually finished this book. This book is a waste of time and the paper it was written on

Ghost Ship suffers from a problem that too many of the Pocket Trek books share - too much effort devoted to character interaction and too little effort to plot. Authors of media tie-ins - like Star Trek and Buffy - run great risks when they focus too much on the characters. Because the readers are already intimately familiar with the "real" characters, the interactions may seem fake or untrue. Conflicts or backgrounds created by the writers may be superceded by later television or movie episodes. And, ultimately, all the effort spent by the writer to make us care about the characters is wasted. We *already* care about the characters, or else we wouldn't be reading the book!

So very much of Ghost Ship is wasted space. Riker insults Data. Geordi throws a tantrum about it. Riker and Deanna wonder if they can maintain a friendship. Geordi whines about his VISOR. Riker wonders if Tasha likes to wear comfortable shoes (yes, that's right). None of it is particularly moving or interesting. True, Carey was tasked with writing a Next Generation novel very early on in the series - perhaps before she was able to see any of the episodes? But that should have been all the more reason to *avoid* character introspection, and focus instead on what could have been an interesting plotline. The occasionally grossly overdone prose ("[Deanna's] eyes, extra large with their touch of alienness, obisidan as eyes that looked out of a Greco-Roman fresco . . . .") further keeps Ghost Ship from reaching the three-star plateau that most Trek books earn.

This book is maybe only good for a laugh i.e. "Picard eyed him foxily" Hmmmm? "Worf puckered his lips in a Klingon kind of shrug" What the heck is that supposed to mean! "Her faint Greek accent tapped the words out with the clip of a sparrow's talons hopping across marble." Whatever happened to "she said.." Don't get me wrong I do enjoy reading Star Trek TNG but I could not even finish this joke of all books. Thank you for your time.

Although I understand that this book was written when TNG was first on TV, I still believe that the author should have either waited for characterizations to develop on the series or possibly done better research before publishing this book. Especially for someone of Carey's caliber, I am constantly annoyed by the characterizations in this story. It is almost as if someone got only the physical descriptions of the characters and maybe a few catch phrases and then decided to write something they deemed worthy of Star Trek canon. Instead of her deciding how the characters felt (and in such depth), maybe she could have treated them more superficially until official canon had developed them. Otherwise, the storyline itself is very interesting, and in fact, the only reason I am struggling to finish the story, even though it means skipping PAGES of characterizations with which I feel she should have never taken such license.