Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation 2

Guest post by Chris Nuttall.

The concept of a crossover between radically different universes is a tricky one to make work, although countless fan-fiction writers have tried.  As I see it, the problem is that the two universes may be very different technologically – say, Babylon 5 and Star Trek – or that there are political differences between them that make relationships between them difficult to handle.  Would the Culture be able to cope with encountering the Galactic Patrol?  How would BSG ‘s society handle an introduction to the Earth Alliance?

Star Trek: The Next Generation is my favourite Star Trek.  Certainly, it has its fair share of crappy episodes, but I feel that it showcases the promise of humanity.  Captain Picard is a deeply humane man, maybe the only Star Trek Captain who can say that.  (No wonder Q is so fascinated with him.)  And Doctor Who is my favourite television show, full stop.  An encounter between the two universes would be either great or disastrous.

Captain Picard believes strongly in the Prime Directive – thou shall not interfere in developing cultures; the Doctor has no regard for any such law (which was at least partly why his own people considered him a criminal, before they died in the Time War).  Now, I have little regard for the concept myself – one of the reasons I like the Doctor is that he plunges into the fray without worrying about the legal aspects – and I think that this is the flaw in Picard’s armour.  If the two of them met, sparks would fly.

The writer, however, decided to focus on an alliance between the Borg and the Cybermen.  That is actually a little piece of fridge brilliance; the Cybermen effectively inspired the Borg, although the process for converting humans into Cybermen is rather more cumbersome than the Borg nanites.  As the story opens, the alliance is descending on Federation planets, suggesting a formidable new enemy.  The two sets of television heroes are forced to combine to fight the bad guys.

One problem starts almost at once.  The first two issues focus more on the separate teams, rather than on the actual alliance.  There are some nice moments here, including a handful of references that might slip past the casual readers.  The STING backstory, in particular, deals with an ethically-questionable deal with an alien race, a deal that is quite like many of the other deals made by humanity in the Doctor’s universe.  But there are also some nice moments of humour as the two teams meet.

Watching these characters interact is fun, although I think that the writer missed some interesting possibilities.  (For example, wouldn't anyone think of Q when they thought of the Doctor? (Doctor Q?))  In many ways, the STING crew come off as bland when compared to the Doctor, Amy and Rory.  On the other hand, the encounter between Guinin and the Doctor is hilarious; they’re both time-sensitive entities and they know when someone has been messing with time.  There’s also a brief cameo of the Fourth Doctor as he meets Captain Kirk and solves another Cybermen-related problem for them.

The plot rapidly moves on after that, with the Cybermen turning on the Borg and our heroes forced into a semi-alliance with the Borg to defeat the Cybermen before they can destroy the universe.  The shared abilities of both teams are used to defeat the threat ...

Overall, this idea worked better than I had expected.  Most of the characters are very true to themselves, including Picard’s refusal to even consider helping the Borg (at least at first) and the Doctor’s sheer grinning zest for life.  The artwork verges backwards and forwards, but on the whole it is quite good.  And someone has been considering the implications of having a TARDIS.  Faced with the need to recover elements of the Borg command network, the Doctor travels back in time to the Battle of Wolf 359, where Captain Picard, having been converted into a Borg, led the Borg in an invasion of the Federation.  The Doctor’s inability to do anything about the battle, calling it a fixed point in time, is better expressed by the artwork.  The regret on his face is very clear.

Mind you, there are also some glitches.  As I mentioned above, Captain Picard’s fixation on the Prime Directive should have made for some drama.  We did get his reluctance to help the Borg, but it isn't quite the same.  I also have some difficulty believing that the Cybermen would be able to overcome the Borg.  They are better at dying <evil grin>.  There’s also the fact that the story spends too much time on exposition – no one reading this comic needs to know about the Battle of Wolf 359.

A more personal issue is that the universes are apparently combining, rather than having the STING future be that of Doctor Who.  It would be nice to think that the idyllic future of STING was at least partly due to the Doctor’s meddling in human affairs.

Overall, I enjoyed the crossover.  Roll on the next one.

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Chris Nuttall blogs at The Chrishanger and has a website by the same name. His books can be found on Amazon Kindle. Check out his new book The Royal Sorceress.

Review: Dark Mirror by Diane Duane

Guest post by Chris Nuttall.

“It is easier for the civilised man to play the barbarian than vice versa.”

Star Trek has often been a hit-or-miss show for me.  Some episodes had great ideas, some were corny and often puerile.  But one of the most interesting shows was "Mirror, Mirror", when Captain Kirk and three of his crew were tossed into an alternate universe where the Federation had been replaced by an Empire (and Spock had a goatee).  Sadly, Captain Picard’s crew never visited the original alternate universe and when Deep Space Nine came around, the evil counterpart to the Federation had been destroyed.  Tedious and boring, said I.

Dark Mirror is one of the few TNG novels I have bothered to reread; it is also one of the best.  While on very deep space patrol, the USS Enterprise is kidnapped into an alternate universe as the final step before the Empire jumps across the universal barriers and invades the Federation.  The crew of the Enterprise find themselves unable, at first, to understand what is going on, until they discover that they have been covertly boarded by a counterpart from the ISS Enterprise.  They have to board the Imperial Starship to learn how to build their own ‘inversion device’ that will allow them to return home, all the while avoiding the evil machinations of Mirror Troi.

The Next Generation was known for its rather...pollyanish view of the universe, where Captain Picard can give a speech and convince old hatreds to magically fade away into the ether.  Where Dark Mirror shines is in its portrayal of an alternate crew, one that rose to high-ranking positions in an empire of stunning brutality and ruthlessness.  Mirror Riker is a backstabbing cunning loon looking out for his chance to off his Captain and take command of the Enterprise for himself.  Mirror Troi is a mind-raping security officer who prowls through unwary thoughts for any hint of betrayal (makes you wonder how the people she talked to in OTL felt about the empathy).  Mirror Worf, his homeworld crushed beneath the Empire’s boot, is a broken shadow of the honorable warrior we know.  Mirror Beverly Crusher is Mirror Picard’s ‘Captain’s Woman.’

Sometimes, this can be quite striking.  Captain Picard and Mirror Picard seem to be opposite personalities, but there are moments when it is clear that they are the same person.  They share an abiding love for the Enterprise that overpowers all other loves, as Mirror Beverly points out to Captain Picard (while convinced that he is her Captain).  Mirror Picard is also responsible, it seems, for murdering Beverly’s husband to get his hands on her, and her son.  (Who seems to want to kill him.)  Other characters are more pronounced inversions; Barclay, a semi-coherent engineering officer in Captain Picard’s crew, is the head of Mirror Picard’s security detail.

Service to the Empire is no bed of roses.  Senior officers know that they could be assassinated at any moment, or replaced by security for no reason.  Junior officers and crewmen are at the mercy of their superiors.  All of them carry agonise devices for immediate punishment if they screw up, longer punishments involve sessions in the Agony Booth.  It is not a safe place to live or work.

Dark Mirror also takes a look at the history of the Mirror Universe, one that differs from the Deep Space Nine version and is considerably better.  There was no Khan – and therefore no Eugenics Wars.  Instead, there was a bitter Third World War which ended with the Empire determined never to run close to the brink of extinction again.  The human race roared out into the galaxy, making common cause with the Vulcans (themselves different from their original universe versions) and exterminating or enslaving everyone else.  Mirror Picard’s early career is a dark inversion of the first season of TNG, with mass slaughter and outright genocide instead of noble speeches and high ideals.

Captain Picard claims, towards the end of the book, that the Empire is simply expanding too far, too fast, and that it will eventually collapse like a house of cards.  His counterpart seems aware of it too, hence the plan to invade the Federation and escape the coming chaos.

On the downside, there are odd moments in this book.  The most jarring is Riker and Worf going to the holodeck to enjoy some opera in the midst of crisis.  This isn't exactly badly written, with some amusing comments on the long-term effects of opera fighting in the Klingon Empire, but it is odd.

Overall, however, this is one of the best characters-meet-evil counterparts stories out there, something that rarely happens in TV.  It is certainly a better version of the trope than the Deep Space Nine series and those written by Captain Kirk.

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Chris Nuttall blogs at The Chrishanger and has a website by the same name. His books can be found on Amazon Kindle. Check out his upcoming book The Royal Sorceress.