Star Trek 1080: Some Assembly Required

I'll be going on tour with my improv troupe this week, so I had to do a lot of work to get the week's regular blog posts ready. With too little time to read and review the scheduled TOS novel, I was down to once again do a quick riff on a non-fiction book. But I've played that dirty trick too many times lately. That's why I thought I might just skip to the next SCE ebook. These are short reads and at least keep the fiction rolling.

1080. Some Assembly Required

PUBLICATION: Starfleet Corps of Engineers #12, Pocket eBooks, February 2002 (collected into print with S.C.E. ebooks #9-12 as Some Assembly Required in April 2003)

CREATORS: Scott Ciencin and Dan Jolley

STARDATE: Unknown (follows the last novel)

PLOT: The planet Keorga just acquired a second-hand planetary computer with an indecipherable user's manual to help protect them from cataclysm-level tectonic shifts. Bart (the linguist), Carol (the cultural expert) and Soloman (the Bynar computer whiz) are sent to help. They find a planet on the brink of disaster and a culture of wonderful artists with an unusually literal mind. Their computer is more harmful than helpful, and turns out to be "testing" them. In phase 2, it starts creating energy constructs pulled from the Keorgans' subconscious. The team deduces the truth: The computer is interfacing with them and giving them tools to learn anything they put their minds to. Soloman interfaces with the machine and tricks it into giving him a planetary magnetic tool to shift the tectonic plates back, but the computer rebels and attracts the asteroids he actually said he wanted to study. Before they hit the city, Carol interfaces with it and is hypnotically regressed by Bart to relive her childhood. Detecting the tool user's immaturity, the computer engages failsafes and returns the asteroids to space. Carol "recovers" slowly, acting out a childhood she never really had, and the Federation pledges to helps the Keorgans by lending them the kind of metaphorical fiction that will give them an understanding of their new computer.

CONTINUITY: None.

DIVERGENCES: None.

SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK
REVIEW: Bart and Carol are quite the comedic double act in this, and that comedy is well balanced against real drama and epic-level story elements. The real focus is on Carol, a character that hasn't gotten a lot of development yet, and it does her a world of good. She's not that likable at first, but by the end, you're definitely on her side. She's all the more human for it. And while I do like the engineers, their dialogue does tend to spin into technobabble. The cultural experts speak my language for a change, and the Keorgans make for an interesting and fun ethnological puzzle. They're really the opposite of the Children of Tama from Darmok. And there are actually two cultural puzzles here, as the computer is an AI from another mindset entirely. It all leads to a huge climax. Great fun.

Next for the SBG Book Club: Trek to Madworld (TOS), A Call to Darkness (TNG), Warped (DS9), No Surrender (SCE).