Customer Reviews

Grounded (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

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

 

 

I've never read a Star Trek book this bad. I don't think the author had ever seen the show, or had a clue who the characters were. I kept trying to give it a chance, but a few chapters in I finally gave up and threw it away. Awful, awful, awful.

Star Trek - The Next Generation: Grounded written by David Bichoff is a mildly adventurous book that could have been written better. There are errors throughout the book and others on this review page have pointed them out. But as for the general overall story, it could have been better.

The alien in this novel is a clay-based life form that takes over the Enterprise and transforms inorganic materials to it's own form as it spreads thoughout the Enterprise endangering the crew. All of this happens in a remote part of the galaxy as the clay entity makes it's way piggy-back on the Enterprise.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard has a feeling that something isn't quite right with his ship and does a level one diagnostic as the crew is involved they begin to find the extent of the problem. This book has a subplot that mixes with the primary plot as Data is the dance partner to an autistic child, and that part of the story drags on as the real problem seems to get worse by the minute for the Enterprise and her crew.

The ending to this story is the confrontation with this malevolent alien force and there is a clever way of making this alien compliable. The book, as mentioned before, could have been written better. The story was clever but it fell flat.

This book is a 3 star book and that was generous... the editing had a lot to do with it. Whomever was the editor, needed to be more familuar with TREK cannon and the book would have flowed better and would have been a more pleasant read.

After forcing myself to read 30 pages I couldn't get into the story. I wasn't made to care about the characters or their dire situation. I was familiar with the characters, but I didn't see the characters I knew from the TV show. I felt the crew frequently calling Captain Picard 'Jean-Luc' was inappropriate and out of character. The dialog was written as if only one person was speaking for everyone. During a wardroom discussion, Data refers to Commander Riker as 'Captain', which indicated to me that I could expect other distracting inacurracies were I to continue reading. I plan to donate my copy of this book to the local library's fifty-cent sale bin.

I have read quite a few Star Trek books (almost all of them Next Gen) and I can quite honestly say that if this isn't the worst of them, it's pretty bloody close and the worst must have been so traumatically bad that I've blocked it out. I think the most frustrating part is that, as another couple of reviewers have pointed out, the general idea was really pretty interesting, both in terms of how the crew would deal with being split up and the concept of the mud entity, but neither aspect was carried through with any imagination or flair whatsoever.

I think a great deal of what bothered me in this one were little things which, like a housemate leaving dirty dishes in the sink once too often, just destroyed the entire experience. For instance, every time an as-yet unclassified or otherwise mysterious substance is encountered, it is referred to as "stuff", even in formal settings. I somehow doubt that this is the appropriate Starfleet terminology for unidentified materials, particularly by senior officers with scientific training, and even more particularly by characters like Data. On the topic of Data, the author has him using contractions, which may seem like a silly thing, but it has played a sufficiently significant role in Data's characterization during the course of the series (his inability to use contractions is one of the features that distinguishes him from his evil twin brother Lore) that it is something that should have been caught during the editing process. Speaking of the editing process, around the middle of the book, an ensign is referred to by his proper rank, then called "Lieutenant" in the next paragraph and then suddenly demoted back to Ensign in the immediately following paragraph. That's just plain sloppy and stupid.

In the middle of all this, there is an annoying subplot in which a formerly quasi-autistic patient of Troi's named Penelope is handed off to Data for therapeutic purposes (the idea being that he is an unthreatening male-ish presence and she has trouble communicating with men). During the course of the novel, the captain requests a Level One Diagnostic, requiring the participation of a large portion of the crew, and yet Data is granted a dispensation from working on the diagnostic by the captain so that he can escort the girl to a party. I'm sorry, but it is well established that Captain Picard doesn't even approve of having families on his ship, and given his suspicions that something is dreadfully wrong with the Enterprise, it doesn't sit well that he would let his Science Officer (to say nothing of his best analytically-minded crewmember) wander off to a dance just so the girl doesn't feel bad about not having a date. On top of this, during the course of the party, Troi approaches the two and makes what seems to be quite vocal comments pertaining to Penelope's psychosocial progress, which seems like a pretty big breach of patient confidentiality. While Troi has never been presented in the show as overly intellectual, she has always been portrayed as at least having a pretty strong commitment to her professional standards. Of course the girl ends up being central to wrapping up the story, but this is so clumsily handled as to be cringe-worthy.

I kept hoping this would get better, but it didn't, so the day after I finished reading it I took it several miles away from my house and left it sitting on a bench, and I just want to take this opportunity to apologize to whoever picked it up.

Grounded (Star Trek Next Generation) by author David Bischoff is a brilliant story fraught with suspense, action and intensity. If you are a Star Trek fan, this is a must read.

The Enterprise rushes to rescue a scientific team under distress on a planet with intense geological activity. The team is headed by Dr. Adrienne Tillstrom, an old friend of Captain Picard's. When they arrive, only Dr. Tillstrom and her son Mikal are still alive, Dr. Tillstrom is in a deep coma and Mikal suffers from memory loss.
Initially unknown to the crew of the Enterprise, the ship has become infected by an organism that is made of crystalline clay. The organism becomes intelligent when it reaches a certain size and it begins altering the fundamental structure of the Enterprise. Since no antidote to the infection has been found and it poses a great danger to the Federation, the decision has been made to tow the Enterprise out to deep space and destroy it with photon torpedoes.
This sends the Enterprise crew into a frenzy of activity as they desperately search for a solution to the problem. Their battles against the creature are compounded by the stubborn attitude of the Admiral that has made the decision to have the Enterprise destroyed. He is a man that harbors a personal grudge against Captain Picard and the Admiral refuses to even consider delaying the destruction. The creature is also able to fight back by turning portions of its being into animate objects that can physically attack.
This story did not generate a great desire in me to move quickly to the next page and keep actively reading to the exclusion of other tasks. It is a weak story; even the climactic action scenes were less than riveting and little tension was generated.

Apparently the warp drive and navigational systems were offline, because this book took forever to go nowhere! The enterprise takes a mud bath that goes awry, so Picard and co. must save the day while dealing with totally uninteresting minor characters.

With "Grounded" the author, David Bischoff came up with an exceptional premise but when it came to the execution of this premise the author's efforts seemingly fall flat. When choosing a Star Trek novel from any of the particular series to read one generally believes that the author "knows" that series and the canon involved in it and if not, the editor will keep them on track. This seemingly did not happen with "Grounded" which, did not entirely detract from the story itself but distracts the average fan of the episode. I do not normally like picking apart a Star Trek novel for the minor inconsistencies with known canon that an author and editor have either forgotten or chosen to ignore; therefore I will only mention these aspects but not go into detail on each and every one of them in this review.

The cover art for grounded is actually one of the best covers to date, with the standard pictures of the primary characters for the story and some very good background art.

The premise:

The Enterprise answers a distress call from a remote science station. The Enterprise herself soon becomes infected with a mysterious alien life form which starts feeding on her and transforming inorganic materials. The great starship begins to disintegrate and Captain Picard is ordered to abandon her in the hopes of not infecting other ships. Captain Picard and crew now find themselves in a race against time as they must find a way of saving the Enterprise before she is lost and the crew is scattered about the fleet to fill other positions.

While I wouldn't highly recommend this novel as one of the best stories in Star Trek fiction it is certainly not the worst of them and I would recommend it to complete ones library of Star Trek novels and as a mildly interesting early STNG novel. {ssintrepid}

The pace of this book was slow at te begining. The writer has concentrated on small and unecessary details too much. After one gets through the begining, the pace gets very high and exciting. It is not the ideal Star Trek book ever; however, it is not the worst. I aggree with the other reader that this would've been a good plot for TV. There weren't many serious errors.

The mud monster is pretty cool,but the book moves a little slowly at times, the romance is ridiculously long.