Customer Reviews

Valiant, The

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Valiant tells the story of Picard taking command of the Stargazer. The story begins with the crew of the Valiant from the original series Star Trek episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and fills in information on what happened to that crew. Jump 300 years ahead to the Trek era just preceeding The Next Generation. Decendants of survivors of the Valiant appear to warn the Federation of a potential enemy on the other side of the galatic barrier. The Stargazer and crew are dispatched to see if the threat is real. The ship is attacked and the captain is killed and first officer incapacitated and Picard has to take over. Picard has to deal with a mutiny, a damaged ship, gain trust of the crew he now commands, deal with a Kelvin, and the new threat to the Federation. If you like space battles and action there is plenty in this book. We see characters that first appeared in Friedmans Star Trek book Reunion and their character development in this book helps explain their actions in the previous book. For fans of Star Trek this book is a must.

Good book all round, the story of how Picard took command of the Stargazer when the Captain was killed, and the first officer was incapacitated. This is not the standard TNG book, the only character we know is Picard, everyone else is fiction. The crew of the Stargazer were protrayed well, as were the crew on the Valiant. The plot is good, but, like another reviewer, the enemy troubled me slightly. They were not gone into in any detail, they were simply the Nuyyad, we never even saw a member of the species, only a slight physical description from one of the characters. Another thing is the planet Magnia. It is located outside the Galactic Barrier, I thought that was impossible? Wasn't there a great void between galaxies containing absolutely nothing, how can there be a planet? But, there's very little else to complain about. The story was solid, as were the characters. A good read.

...

This tale has its moments, and maybe a certain Horatio Hornblower quality of which Roddenberry would approve -- the story of a young officer thrust into a command situation and having to prove his mettle. But the execution is poor. The writing is flat and totally passionless. The scene where Picard's captain and mentor is killed before his eyes contains no trace of emotion.

The story also lacks imagination -- particularly the early part, recounting the Valiant's doomed mission. This ship was supposedly launched just four years after Cochrane's warp prototype. But Friedman depicts it exactly like a 23rd- or 24th-century Starfleet vessel, with a crew of eighty, at least seven decks, lifts, deflectors, ops officers, an electroplasma system, the works. The only concessions to the earlier era are the weapons. There's no way such an early ship could be that big, elaborate and modern. Friedman didn't even try to imagine a credible early-warp expedition or a more primitive level of technology; he just parroted the familiar tropes without considering whether they made sense in this context. As for the plot of this section, it's virtually a beat-by-beat replay of "Where No Man," except less interesting because none of the characters has any emotional connection to the Mitchell stand-in.

The Stargazer portion isn't very creative either. The characters and their interactions are quite crudely drawn. Picard is almost indistinguishable from the TNG-era Picard. In an earlier Stargazer story for DC Comics, Friedman portrayed the young Picard as more brash and daring, somewhere between "Tapestry"'s cadet Picard and the captain we know. But here, Friedman forgets his own past characterization and gives us a routine, uninteresting Picard.

The other characters are mere caricatures, their conflicts as simplistic and exaggerated as any soap opera. The antagonists among the crew are fanatical, incompetent and insubordinate. Friedman has them mutiny at their first disagreement with the new captain, a ludicrously overplayed plot point that makes a mockery of Starfleet training. Anyone with such knee-jerk mutinous tendencies would've washed out of the Academy in the first week. Had this been credibly written at all, these officers would've resisted Picard's authority in subtler ways, respecting their oaths and discipline but still clashing with an unwelcome commander. We've seen such conflicts before, in "Chain of Command," for instance, and they can be quite tense and engaging. But here Friedman takes the most melodramatic and broad approach possible, creating more farce than tension.

Bringing back the Kelvans was a nice idea, but it was handled poorly. No effort was made to develop them, beyond a half-hearted effort to describe their real appearance. The telepath culture wasn't developed either -- just a few random elements that don't fit coherently together. At first they say they value privacy; then, later, they say they all prefer to live close together. Friedman acknowledges the paradox in passing, but never bothers to resolve it. I also agree that the Nuyyad were a total waste, nothing but shooting-gallery targets, another complete creative failure.

More laziness is demonstrated by Friedman's claim that the Andromeda Galaxy is "a hundred thousand light-years away." That's like saying Los Angeles is a hundred-mile drive from Manhattan. It's a minor point, but come on, Mr. Friedman, would it have hurt you to do just a little basic research? Open an encyclopedia? Type "Andromeda Galaxy" into a search engine? Five minutes of your time? (By the way, there's nothing wrong with having planets on the other side of the Barrier. The galaxy has no sharp edge; the stars just get sparser the further out you go. This is just about the only sensible idea in the book.)

The sad thing is, Friedman isn't usually this bad. He's never been brilliant; he has very little SF imagination, and his dialogue tends to be stilted and awkward. But in the past he's turned out a number of engaging character-driven stories, including REUNION, CROSSOVER and MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. THE VALIANT, though, is the worst thing he's ever written. It's evident from start to finish that he just wasn't trying. I can't imagine why Friedman is being given an ongoing Stargazer novel series after such a dissatisfying "pilot."

I enjoyed the parts regarding the S.S. Valiant, but the later part of the book simply didn't work for me. Except for Picard, who we of course know quite well from the series, the other characters were flat and uninteresting. We never find out what is motivating the alien attackers and they are the cardboard cutout enemy-of-the-week, boring. The whole "adversarial" situation with the 1st Officer also just struck me as odd and wrong, and was just not developed correctly or fleshed out beyond being another cardboard enemy for Picard.

What an interesting book. I truly enjoyed reading this one and let me tell you why.

We start out reading as to what happened to the U.S.S.Valiant and her crew... of course we all know what hapened when Kirk and his crew found that bouy with the warning. Well this gets into more detail as to what happened and the crew's struggle to survive. Captain Carlos Tarasco's decision to destroy the Valiant. Now, some might say this is a little like the Gary Mitchell episode but we have the same author and he is giving us a little more background. Now that ends Book 1 and we now proceed to Book 2.

Now, this is where the meat of the story is. We have a good look into the making of Jean-Luc Picard Number Two on the U.S.S. Stargazer. We have Starfleet sending the Stargazer to the galactic barrier to investigate a new threat to the Federation, aliens called the Nuyyad.

Starfleet gets this information via a couple of descendants from the ill-fated Valiant crew. The Stargazer picks up one of the survivors at Starbase 209 and her name is Santana. Now comes the interesting play... can the crew trust this newly found person? Capt. Ruhalter puts Picard in the position to find out... much to the dismay of the XO Leach. We find the making of Picard's character here... the Capt. grooming a younger officer... and the insecurity of the junior officer in his convictions. But, alas, as the Stargazer passes through the barrier the Capt dies and the XO is in a deep coma. Now we see true character of Picard begin to blossom. Jean-Luc finds that he is the highest ranking officer after crossing the galactic barrier. The Stargazer picked up a Kelvan prior to crossing the barrier to help fight the newly found Nuyyad as they have had prior knowledge of the Nuyyad's ship design and fighting capabilities.

We find out that the Magnians (Valiant descendants) distrust the Kelvans. Not only that but most of the Stargazer crew distrusts the Magnians. So Picard is now trying to get the crew behind him as well as he can... but we have saboteur aboard.

So we have the rather unorthodox but clever Picard trying to hold all of this together. He tells Capt. Ruhalter that Santana can be trusted over the objection of the XO. Next Picard takes the Stargazer to the Magnians' homeworld instead of back through the barrier and home jeopardizing the crew and the ability to warn Starfleet.

Knowing that a trap was set after getting to Magnia, Picard still trusted the Magnians and beamed aboard several more from the planet and gave them access to strategic systems and allowed their mental powers to be enhanced. Picard also removed the safeguards from the phaser technology... taking out a single enemy installation.

All of this interplays with the making of the character of what we know to be Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

Mutiny, sabotage, all around distrust and a common enemy dig deep into well of Jean-Luc Picard's character.

A good fast read and background information. Read it and enjoy.

Friedman and Harrison did a wonderful job of blending what is essentially 300 year old story. It was great to find out what happened to the original crew of the Valiant and then the story moves on to explain the circumstances surrounding Picard's promotion to Captian. I read the entire book in two settings and enjoyed every minute of it.

There are some plot issues such as how the survivors of the original Valiant all developed mental powers and how they managed to progress as a society in just 300 hundred years? Also we learn next to nothing about the aliens who are allegedly bent on invading our Galaxy other than they are violent and bent on conquest. Also how can class M planets or any solar systems exist in the void between galaxies?

Nitpicking aside it is an entertaining story that should appeal to fans of the STNG series in general and Picard in particular.

I enjoyed this book very much. I liked finding out how the character of Picard became the person, and the captain, we see today.

It was very enlightening to see the way that he looked for a balance between the command style of his captain and the first officer of the Stargazer in terms of developing his own style. He wasn't as reckless as his captain, but neither was he as "by the book" as the first officer. He saw what and what not to do, which is something many of us, including myself, have learned in our own lives.

One reason I give this four stars is because of something that is true of all "Star Trek" books. The authors of these books count upon the fact that you've watched the show (in this case "Star Trek: The Next Generation") and thus eliminates the need for setting up the characters, since there is already a "history" behind them. We already know who they are and what they've done.

A similar "biography" that I would recommend is "Mosaic," which looks at the history of the character of Janeway. While I was not a huge fan of "Voyager" (the stories were a bit weak), this book was also very enjoyable, giving insight as to how the character developed and why they act and think they way they do.

Normally I try to avoid multi-authored series of Science Fiction. Having read dozens of cheap stories in the Star Trek universe growing up,I came to realize that they are more about quantity than quality, and I had become disenchanted with mass-produced fiction before I graduated high-school. My experiences with Star Wars mass fiction were not much better. However, I had the oppotunity to acquire the hardcover edition of this book for a pittance, so I relented of my disdain and bought this book.
What I found was a very good piece. This book bridges the gap between the original StarTrek, and the second series. It is set early in the career of Picard, before he went bald, and is in fact before he was a Captain. (The cover shows him with a full head of hair; it makes Patrick Stewart look like Scott Bakula.)
There are also flashbacks to the Valiant, a ship lost through the barrier at the edge of the galaxy before the original Starship(original FEDERATION starship) Enterprise series. That series in fact covered it in the early episodes,where the transition through the barrier caused one of Kirk's friends to become a sociopathic madman with mind powers. The episode refered to the Valiant, which had been destroyed about eighty years before or so due to a similar empowering/loss of sanity of one of its crew. They presumed the Valiant had been lost with all hands. This book is based on the idea that only a handful of the crew actually died, and that the rest managed to find an M-class planet, and that they had developed mental abilities similar to those who went mad, though not to the same degree and without the insanity that plagued Kirk's friend. These survivors had descendants, and now these descendants have come back, warning of a threat to the Federation. The Stargazer is sent to investigate and Picard has to take command.....
The arrangement of the story, plus the reluctance of the crew to trust Picard all added to the stories merit, along with the accurate references to two episodes in the original series, both of which I have seen several times. A mutiny was mentioned, which I thought was a little over the top, but it was still well written. The only other inconsistency I found was that the Valiant was supposedly lost in the year 2069, which was the year after the setting of the movie First Contact. Given the sheer number of writers invited to fill out Gene Roddenberry's universe, such inconsistencies are inevitable. It is a good read.

Ever wonder what Jean Luc Picard was like as a junior officer? Now you can find out in "Star Trek: Valiant," where Picard is the second officer on the USS Stargazer. And the plot? Can Picard and crew save the Federation from an evil race that wants to invade from across the galactic barrier?

The novel has some intriguing aspects for Star Trek fans. Picard as a second officer. We revisit the Kelvans from the classic series. Those were the guys that pushed a button on their belts to turn the crew into little white cubes. We also get to reexamine the entire super being plot from the original series. That's where the energies in the galactic barrier turned Kirk's friend Gary Mitchell into an eye-glowing superman who had to be terminated.

Then it falls apart. Truth be told, Picard is not the second officer for long and takes over early in the book. The entire plot line of Picard competing with the first officer is dumped in no time at all. Bad form, and weak plotting. The Enemy is faceless for the entire book, and we never do figure out why they are threatening the Federation or even if a constructive conversation might help. Nope, Picard just blows them up. Very un-Picard like.

The technobabble is bordering on silly and the final resolution of the mystery plot is unsatisfying. Good thought, bad execution.

The Valiant was a fun and enjoyable read. It's storyline answered many questions left behind by Star Trek The Next Generation. Especially how Commander Picard became Captain of the Stargazer. Although the characters are well thought-out some aspects of both the characters and the story are pretty predictable. Not an epic tale but a fun one nontheless.