Date: 24 Jun 2009 22:13 Title: Washing the Muck
Interesting, that! One question about how the FCC operates...obviously they can't erase all the damage, and all the knowledge, that would come from this sort of "first contact." Are they mainly there to help restore those societies, or are they going to be doing some kind of massive-scale Men-in-Black neuralyzer type routine as well?
And I noticed the mention of the Yamato...I take it this takes place during TNG's early seasons, if not before the series?
Author's Response: Yamato is, I'm assuming, a rebuild. There should be one in the Fleet most times and Star Fleet is in its rebuilding phase post-Dominion, so a new Yamato made sense. And I like the name.
Date: 24 Jun 2009 22:08 Title: Hoist By Their Petard
Wow...I'm amazed that little friendly-fire incident was handled as...ahem..."pleasantly" as that! Something like that could have seriously led to a LOT of bad feelings...
Date: 24 Jun 2009 22:04 Title: Finding the Needle
Interesting to see all the non-regulation weapons your team carried in...I could never imagine that on the sanitized TNG-era Enterprise! I wonder, though, is there some kind of regulation about the manner of death these weapons can inflict, to determine whether they're allowed or not?
And from a chapter earlier--good twist, to explain how these two planets got to be at odds with each other!
What I can't wait to find out is, how is it the Cardassians didn't know anything about these people? (And the Federation, too--but the Cardassians in particular are damn thorough, so to pull one over on them, it's gonna have to be pretty major!)
Author's Response: The Security people are trained to scale up the level of violence on an "only as needed" basis. No soldier(and Security is more military in its approach) goes into a potential fight without calling upon all available assets. Also, given the weakness of the Kirk-era Enterprise Security Dept(it was the one blight on an otherwise great ship) many captains have taken to finding a competent Dept Head and giving them a bit of free rein to run things as they see fit. Since Damian is ex-Marine, Sanjay places a lot of trust in him and doesn't ask to many questions-only the results count. The Cardassians(its implied) don't know about these races because the same org that caused the trouble worked at keeping a low profile-IMO.
Date: 24 Jun 2009 21:48 Title: The Delta Has Ears/Who's Kidding Who?
LOL, the debut of Torres and Shand, I suppose? I really got a kick out of that! After having seen them interact in the Round Robin, and in "Interrogation," it's really fun to see the first reaction of the more...shall we say..."normal" crew aboard your ship to them. ;-)
You have an interesting scenario building, and I'll be very interested to see where this goes.
The only thing that hit a slightly sour note for me was...it always jars me out of the story when someone brings race (of the human variety) into it. To be fair, the same thing happened both times on DS9 where the writers did that. I like to think that human society is both beyond discrimination AND dragging up the grudges that come of it.
I apologize if I sound bitter about it; I truly don't mean to.
And I definitely intend to keep reading!
Author's Response: Torres and Shand came out of no where-a moment of whimsy that took on a (frightening) life of its own. Then a challenge came for a funny story so I wrote the Interrogation-they were the only "funny" characters I had. From there they've slowly evolved into characters I really want to continue writing about-or they're making me, I'm not sure which. The inspiration for the conversation was the bridging scenes of Winona Rider and her parents conversations from the movie Heathers, believe it or not.