Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Missing by Una McCormack

An original novel set in the universe of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—a direct sequel to the New York Times bestselling story arc, The Fall!

Deep Space 9 is once again becoming an important way station in the Alpha Quadrant for many different people with many different agendas. Uniquely crewed by representatives of different species from both the Khitomer Powers and the Typhon Pact, the Federation science and exploration vessel Athene Donald stops at the station as its final port of call before heading into uncharted territories. The whole project is the brainchild of Dr. Katherine Pulaski, who hopes that science will do what diplomacy alone cannot, and help various powers put aside the tensions of recent years, returning to scientific research and the exploration of space.

On DS9, base commander Ro Laren has her hands full with the sudden arrival of a ragtag flotilla of small ships crewed by a group calling themselves the People of the Open Sky. Ro is not keen on handling this first-contact duty, but becomes increasingly intrigued by the People, who are made up of several hitherto unknown species. Describing themselves as explorers, they are interested in everything about the station. Ro begins to enjoy her assignment, particularly as she takes counsel from the logs of Jean-Luc Picard. Blackmer, however, is more suspicious about these apparently friendly arrivals and monitors their movements around DS9…

Of all the writers currently working in the Star Trek litverse, two of the finest are women. While Kirsten Beyer has been doing amazing things with the Star Trek Voyager storylines, Una McCormack is a little bit more eclectic, with a penchant for Deep Space Nine and the Cardassians. Her work, especially the Cardassia-centric The Never-Ending Sacrifice, have been must reads for most Treklit fans for the past few years and in The Missing she does not disappoint.

Picking up on numerous threads left hanging in the recent Star Trek books, The Missing follows three main storylines: Beverly Crusher settling in aboard Deep Space Nine, Katherine Pulaski aboard a civilian starship encountering a strange alien ship and a murder mystery aboard the new station. Within those storylines, McCormack continues to develop the DS9 characters, especially current commanding officer Ro Laren and security officer Jefferson Blackmer, while spinning out some new directions for such fan favourites as Odo. Characters from Brinkmanship, including the Tzenkethi Corazame and Starfleet Intelligence officer Alex Gardner, also appear and McCormack does a great job of developing them from where she left them in Brinkmanship. She also is able to use these characters to have a discussion on where Starfleet and the Federation as a whole seem to be heading in this Typhon Pact era.

Where McCormack does the best job, though, is definitely in her handling of Crusher and Pulaski. While Crusher's seeming abandonment of Jean-Luc Picard and their son could have been mishandled (see the fan reaction to Sisko's storyline in the early post-Destiny novels), McCormack instead makes it easy to understand and empathise with her decision. She also rehabilitates Pulaski, a character many TNG fans learned to dislike if not despise during her tenure on the show. Here Pulaski maintains her "difficult" personality but McCormack does enough to round out the edges without gutting the character. It really proved to be a fantastic handling of the character, and I hope McCormack gets a chance to return to her in the future.

All in all, the various storylines and characters are handled with style by McCormack, bringing a number of characters seen in recent novels to conclusions and new beginnings. At the same time, she manages to write more of a classic Trek novel, returning to the sort of adventures found in the beginning of the DS9 relaunch and boding well for what would appear to be a more exploratory, scientific direction for the Treklit verse in the coming months. The Missing shows again why McCormack is one of the finest Trek writers working today.

I gave The Missing 4 stars.

Doctor Who: The Blood Cell by James Goss

"Release the Doctor — or the killing will start."

An asteroid in the furthest reaches of space - the most secure prison for the most dangerous of criminals. The Governor is responsible for the worst fraudsters and the cruellest murderers. So he's certainly not impressed by the arrival of the man they're calling the most dangerous criminal in the quadrant. Or, as he prefers to be known, the Doctor.

What does impress the Governor is the way the new prisoner immediately sets about trying to escape. And keeps trying. Finally, he sends for the Doctor and asks him why? But the answer surprises even the Governor. And then there's the threat — unless the Governor listens to the Doctor, a lot of people will die.

Who is the Doctor and what's he really doing here? Why does he want to help the Governor? And who is the young woman who comes every day to visit him, only to be turned away by the guards?

When the killing finally starts, the Governor begins to get his answers...

A very strange Doctor Who story, The Blood Cell is told entirely through the eyes of a secondary character – the Governor – who encounters the Doctor and Clara when a strange old man is incarcerated in the prison he runs. As strange things begin to happen and the prison turns against the inmates and the guards, the Governor is forced to turn to the Doctor for help…

As a Doctor Who story told through the eyes of a secondary character, The Blood Cell works. As a science fiction story disassociated from the Doctor Who franchise, The Blood Cell works even better.  The Governor is an interesting narrator, full of contradictions and secrets that beg to be revealed. The situation - an inescapable prison where prisoners are disappearing - dealt cleverly with some basic sci-fi tropes. As the story progresses and the stakes mount, I for one found the story gripping, wondering who was behind the prison's problems, who the Governor really was and how the whole thing was going to resolve itself. 

Unfortunately, as a Twelfth Doctor story, The Blood Cell fails at one vital hurdle – the Doctor himself. While I could definitely see the Eleventh or Tenth Doctors acting in the way this Doctor does, what we have seen of Capaldi so far just does not gel with this wise-cracking, pop-culture spouting character. This Doctor does not have the darkness that Capaldi has brought to the role and while his relationship with Clara does share some of the antagonism of the on-screen partners, there was definitely something essential missing. If you can tell yourself that this is a lost Matt Smith story, great. If not, you may have the same problems with The Blood Cell that I did.
 
I gave The Blood Cell 3 stars. 

Doctor Who: Silhouette by Justin Richards

 

"Vastra and Strax and Jenny? Oh no, we don't need to bother them. Trust me."

Marlowe Hapworth is found dead in his locked study, killed by an unknown assailant. This is a case for the Great Detective, Madame Vastra.

Rick Bellamy, bare-knuckle boxer, has the life drawn out of him by a figure dressed as an undertaker. This angers Strax the Sontaran.

The Carnival of Curiosities, a collection of bizarre and fascinating sideshows and performers. This is where Jenny Flint looks for answers.

How are these things connected? And what does Orestes Milton, rich industrialist, have to do with it all? This is where the Doctor and Clara come in. The Doctor and his friends find themselves thrust into a world where nothing and no one are what they seem. Can they unravel the truth before the most dangerous weapon ever developed is unleashed on London?

When people start vanishing in the Carnival of Curiosities, a sideshow in London’s Winter Fair, Madame Vastra, her wife Jenny and the Sontaran Strax begin to investigate. As they look for connections between the disappearances, the Doctor and Clara arrive, drawn here by a strange energy reading. In the Carnival, though, no one is who or what they seem. And a mysterious industrialist is hiding in the background, threatening the entire world with a deadly weapon...

Silhouette is the second book in the New Adventures dealing with Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor. I read – and enjoyed – the first, The Crawling Terror, last month. In that review, I mentioned that Mike Tucker had done a fantastic job of capturing the Doctor and Clara’s voices – you could hear the actors speaking the lines throughout. In Silhouette, unfortunately, I did not feel that Justin Richards managed the same feat. What he did manage, though, was to perfectly capture the voices of the Paternoster Gang. Already fan favourites, the three members of Madame Vastra’s gang stand centre stage in Silhouette – all three of them have important roles to play here, each of them with their own storylines. Considering how much fun these characters are, that is all to the good. The story itself works well, with some nice nods back to prior cannon (the Shadow Proclamation makes an appearance), and the threat is pure Doctor Who. If Capaldi’s Doctor and Coleman’s Clara had been more true to their character’s voices, Silhouette would have been almost perfect. As it is, this could almost have been a spin-off novel, involving only the Paternoster Gang, and it would have worked just as well.

I gave Doctor Who: Silhouette 3 stars.