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My thoughts on Vendetta, a Star Trek:TNG novel I read this summer:
Fist and Faith had recommended this book a while back. I finally picked it up over the summer holidays. Written by Peter David back in 1991, Vendetta isn't deep literature, but it does competently depict the drama and thrills of the Trek universe and promote the "franchise." That's a reasonable expectation for a Trek novel. As a bonus, Vendetta is also emotionally affecting at times. It certainly gripped me more than any of the ST:TNG feature films, and it compares well with the series' best episodes.
In this story, Picard and crew once again face the Borg. This time, however, the Borg's usual role as cosmic badass is usurped by none other than the world devourer as first encountered by Commodore Matt Decker in the classic Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine." But now it's Doomsday Machine version 2.0 that confronts Picard's crew: bigger, faster, hungrier and controlled by someone with a huge grudge against the Borg. (Who in the galaxy doesn't?)
That someone is Delcara, lone survivor of an ancient race (the Shgin) that had been wiped out by the Borg. Delcara's all-consuming hatred of the Borg led to her assuming control of the doomsday vessel, itself the product of another race that also had been destroyed by the Borg. This other race, given the working name "the Preservers" by Picard, had built the doomsday machine in secret as a weapon of last resort against the Borg - or so Picard surmises. But the one Matt Decker crossed paths with had been a "mere" prototype: the Preservers had rushed it into service for a "dry run" while they continued work on the much more fearsome and final version. But their entire race came to an end before DM v.2.0 could be launched, and so knowledge of it was lost. Incredibly, Delcara herself only found out about it via some sort of psychic attunement to Picard. (It's a bit contrived.)
This connection between them means that Delcara has somewhat of a soft spot for Picard. He in turn tries to dissuade Delcara from her mission of vengeance, because her doomsday vessel would consume worlds for fuel while on its voyage into Borg space, making it as bad, if not as worse, as the Borg. Meanwhile, the Borg have "woken up" to the threat of the doomsday machine and are intent upon eliminating it, after the DM had single-handedly obliterated a Borg ship early on.
The book's climax is a showdown between the DM and three Borg cubes, with Enterprise and another Federation starship, the Chekhov, somewhere in the middle. It's an exciting battle, featuring enough firepower to please a Star Wars fan. However, Peter David's prose lets me down here. It doesn't capture the epic scale of the things being witnessed, such as the size of the DM, and the enormous energies being tossed around by the Borg and the DM. I don't get a real sense of how huge this battle is, so it loses some impact. I was wishing for someone like Arthur C. Clarke to describe it. Maybe it would have been a less manic action scene in his hands, but Clarke knew how to present massive alien constructs in a way that instilled total awe.
Mr. David does make up for those shortcomings in other areas. Particularly in a weird but interesting side plot involving a Borg soldier whom the Enterprise had recovered from a world attacked by the Borg. The soldier was once Reannon Bonaventure, a free-spirited cargo smuggler. Geordi La Forge's attempt to rehabilitate Reannon, to re-awaken her identity, is the most human part of the book. The most poignant scene happens in the holodeck: Geordi has constructed a hologram of Reannon in the hope that it could spark something in the flesh-and-blood Reannon. Hologram-Reannon tries to provoke a response from Borg-Reannon, but to no avail. Hologram-Reannon then goes into a fit, raging against an "idiot" girl who has allowed herself to fall to such a cruel fate. Before the simulation is ended, she pleads to Geordi to not leave her the way she is. Sure, it might sound corny, but I was moved by this whole scene, and I'm not ashamed to say it.
Spoiler concerning the book's ending:
All in all, this was the best ST: TNG movie I never saw.
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