What I did for a month in North Carolina
Okay, it's been almost a month now, but I've finally decided to get around to writing about what I did on my vacation during May.
Mostly, it's going to be a "These are what books I read and these are what movies I watched and these are what video games I played" post.
Putting these behind cuts for the sake of the apathetic.
Video Games:
Well, I got a Nintendo DS Lite (Onyx), on the first day I was back home in North Carolina. This was something that I'd been planning to do for a couple of years now. It only took the prospect of spending an entire month sans video games (oh the horror!) to finally prompt me to go through with it.
-- Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. The direct sequel to the GBA game Aria of Sorrow, it and Portrait of Ruin were two of the main reasons I wanted a DS to begin with.
-- Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. This one is the semi-direct sequel to the Sega Genesis game Bloodlines. The "control two characters at once" thing was pretty cool.
-- The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass. A direct sequel to the GameCube game Wind Waker. The graphics are almost identical to those of Wind Waker, but the gameplay is more reminiscent of the older 2D Zelda games of the past, such as A Link to the Past or Minish Cap, rather than the more recent 3D versions, such as Twilight Princess or, of course, Wind Waker. Different from all of these, though, is the fact that the game is played almost entirely with the stylus, which was a new and interesting way to play the game, and it worked rather well in my opinion. In any case, it was a cool game.
-- Contact. I got this game because I'd heard it described as "like Earthbound". Well, I didn't think it was all that much like Earthbound, aside from the graphics associated with the Professor and his lab (almost always visible in the top screen), and the general style of the humor in the game. It's a RPG, but instead of gaining levels, the character system is almost Elder Scrolls-like, in that to increase a skill you have to use that skill (e.g. fighting with a sword increases sword skill, fishing increases fishing skill, etc.) Like Phantom Hourglass, the game is played almost entirely with the stylus, though an alternate control pad+buttons scheme is available as well. I found the theme of the game, particularly the ending which I won't spoil, to be an interesting one and is one that I'd someday like to explore in games of my own if possible.
-- Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time. This game is pretty cool, and I would recommend it, but even so, it seemed to be missing a certain... something, compared to Superstar Saga. I don't know what, exactly, that something is, but the game just didn't seem to have as much heart or soul as the first game did, in my opinion.
In addition to these DS games, I also played through Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid Fusion again, both of which I'd gotten a few years ago.
I'd also brought three of my Wii games home with me because my sister has one. I brought Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Of those three, only Brawl was played a little bit, once at my sister's house, and once at my best friend's house during his Memorial Day cook-out. It was somewhat less than fully satisfying though, because Nintendo is dumb and doesn't let you copy your Brawl saved games to a SD-card and, thus, none of the stuff was unlocked (mainly Snake and Sonic). Oh well.
Movies:
I watched a lot of movies, both during the week that my sister came to visit at the end of April and during the month of May while I was in NC.
The ones we watched when my sister came to visit me in Redmond (in no particular order):
-- Iron Man. We went to see this one at the movie theater across the street from where I live, on the day before it was supposed to have been officially released. Dunno why, but they started showing it at 8:00pm on Thursday, May 1, which is the one we went to see. It was awesome. Go see it if you haven't already. That is all.
-- The Terminator. The special effects are somewhat dated by today's standards, but it was still pretty cool. The scene where the Terminator is cutting out his damaged eye still gave me the heebie-jeebies. Also, Linda Hamilton had incredibly large hair in this movie. I'd seen this one many years ago, but didn't remember much about it.
-- Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Better than the first one, and the effects still look cool even today. Linda Hamilton was much better as the badass commando type in this one than she was as the damsel-in-distress type from the first one. It was cool to be able to root for the T-101 in this one too. The kid playing John Connor was annoying, but not Phantom Menace Anakin Skywalker-annoying, at least. The T-1000 is probably the best version of the Terminator that Skynet ever produced (even over the T-X from the third movie). I'd also seen this one several years ago, at least a couple of times, and I remembered more about it than I did the first one.
-- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Unlike the first two, I'd never seen this one before. Eh... it was okay. It kind of destroyed the entire premise of the ending of the second one, but oh well. It was too much "car-chases/explosions" instead of "philosophizing on the nature and consequences of time-travel" for my tastes, but it was still decent. I did like the way it ended though, even if, again, it entirely negated the whole theme of the ending of T2.
-- I Am Legend. It was pretty cool. Don't have that much to say about it other than that.
-- Constantine. I don't follow the comics and was only Internet-familiar with them. Taking that into account, however, I thought it was pretty good.
-- House of Flying Daggers. I went into this one with only the vaguest idea of what to expect. It was pretty good. It was kind of interesting that the default on the DVD was Chinese with English subtitles. We opted to switch it to English dubbing instead, which, though almost stereotypically bad, didn't mar the experience too awfully much.
-- Across the Universe. I'll be blunt: I was not a fan of this movie. I am not a fan of musicals in general, which is part of it. I have nothing against Beatles music itself, mind you. However, my sister also did not like it that much either. She was the one who wanted to rent it, because she'd heard on Oprah or somewhere that it was supposedly good. After it was over, though, she just said that we'd probably have been better off just getting a CD of Beatles music and being done with it.
-- The Sixth Sense. This was a good movie, but unfortunately I had long since had the ending spoiled for me prior to watching it. As such, I spent most of the movie merely examining the interactions between Bruce Willis and the rest of the characters.
-- Signs. The second of three M. Night Shyamalan films we rented. It was pretty cool and suitably freaky, up until the end. The end was somewhat hokey, but oh well.
-- The Village. I liked this one. For once, I totally didn't see the big twist ("What a twist!") coming, and thankfully hadn't had it spoiled to me beforehand, ala The Sixth Sense.
And the ones I watched during my stay in NC (in no particular order):
-- 28 Days Later. Watched this one with my nephew at my brother's house. It was pretty good, but I couldn't help but note the marked similarities between this and I Am Legend. Obviously, this film didn't rip that one off because it came first, and that one didn't rip this one off because it was based on the novel, which came before either of them, but it kinda felt like somebody was ripping somebody off. *shrug*
-- National Treasure. We picked this up on the way home from seeing the fourth Indiana Jones movie (more on that later). It was pretty cool, in the same vein that the Indiana Jones movies are cool (well, most of them anyway, more on that later as well).
-- National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I actually saw this one before seeing the original. We rented it the first day it became available on DVD and watched it at my sister's house. It was pretty cool, and didn't require having had seen the first one to enjoy it, which was a good thing because I'd have been somewhat annoyed otherwise. I think I liked the first one a little better, though.
-- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I'd already seen this one before, but we watched it at my sister's house prior to going to see Prince Caspian. As before, I thought it was pretty good, on the whole.
-- The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. I liked this one better than the first one, to be honest. I saw several less than complimentary reviews of it prior to going to see it, but I'm of the opinion now that those reviews are pretty much full of crap.
-- Raiders of the Lost Ark. What can I say, it's the first Indiana Jones movie and it was pretty cool. It's probably the best of the lot, in my opinion, or perhaps tied with Last Crusade. I'd seen it years ago, and remembered the high spots, but it was nice to see it again.
-- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. This movie, on the other hand... hoo boy. Temple of Doom is one of the biggest steaming piles of horse dung that I've seen in a long while, both on its own merits and especially when compared to the other Indiana Jones movies. I mean, it's not Manos: The Hands of Fate or anything like that, but it's still pretty horrid. Both my sister and I hated it. I remember seeing it years ago, and don't remember thinking it was all that bad back then, for whatever reasons, but now... no, this movie sucked. Hard.
-- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This one probably ties with Raiders as the best of the bunch. Sean Connery may give it that little boost it needs to get to the top.
-- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's better than Temple of Doom, by far, but is below Raiders and Last Crusade. I enjoyed it well enough. The only problem, such as it is, that I had with it was Shia LeBeouf. He did a good enough job as Mutt Williams, I guess, but it's just the fact that he's been in, like, everything recently (hyperbolically speaking, of course). He was in Transformers, he was in Constantine, etc. It's not that I think he's bad or anything, it's just that I've seen him in too many things recently and I'm a bit Shia LeBeouf'd out for the time being, given that I've seen several movies with him in them over the past seemingly small while. I dunno. *shrug*
Books:
-- Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. Well, I've read some of it, anyway. What I've read so far was good, and somewhat useful. A lot of it seems to be just common sense stuff though. I intend to finish it at some point soon though, along with the several other similar books I've bought but haven't yet cracked open. This was the only "serious" book that I read during the vacation.
-- Op-Center: Games of State. This is the only Op-Center book that I've read so far (and, in fact, is the only Tom Clancy book I've read at all except for Rainbow Six). This book was all right and is one of those "I kinda wish I had time to get the rest of the books in this series some day, if only..." books. My mom gave it to me and thought I'd be interested in it because it had video games in it. *eyeroll* Well, yeah, it was pretty interesting, though kind of laughable. Some French guy is trying to, I dunno, take over the world or something, and he's using video games to do it. Basically, he's making all of these heavily racist video games and is packing them with some kind of crazy brainwashing game controller so that everyone becomes a racist prick just like him. Oh, and there's some other stuff about Neo Nazis and such as well. I may be making light of it here, but it was pretty good even so.
-- Disclosure. A Michael Crichton novel about sexual harassment in the work place. It was pretty good, and a little bit scary, given that it's apparently (loosely) based on a true story. I found the parts where they're talking about technology to be rather laughably dated by today's standards, but the book was written in 1994 so I guess that's to be expected. The virtual reality stuff was neat, though.
-- The Servants of Twilight. Yeah, I actually finished it this time, unlike before.
The rest of them are all old Star Trek novels I happened to find beside my bed in NC from years and years ago:
-- The Valiant. TNG novel. This is the story of how Picard came to be captain of the USS Stargazer. It involves crossing the Galactic Barrier. My mom bought this for me at, if I recall correctly, a yardsale somewhere. It was a pretty good book.
-- Chain of Attack. TOS novel. The Enterprise inadvertently goes through a wormhole or something, and ends up in some distant galaxy where there are bunch of stars together in relatively close proximity, but around which all of the worlds have been utterly destroyed by millennia of warfare. Then they meet some aliens who attack them on sight and then try to get these and the other aliens who also attack them, and each other, on sight to try to get along and make peace. It was okay.
-- The Peacekeepers. TNG novel. Geordi and Data are exploring a derelict space station when they get transported to another similar station light years away, which is floating around an Earth-like planet. Some guy on this planet has used the alien space station to force his world into peace (by getting rid of all of that world's nuclear weapons, among other things). He mistakes Geordi and Data as the Builders of the space station. They decide to play along, at least at first. Shenanigans ensue. It was decent. The thing that I thought was odd, however, was that, despite the fact that the book was mostly focused on Geordi and Data, it was Picard, Worf, and Troi who were featured on the cover.
-- Dreams of the Raven. TOS novel, with McCoy as the principle character. McCoy has an accident and becomes amnesic, losing about twenty years of his life. It was somewhat interesting seeing McCoy dealing with the crew, given that they were all strangers to him. His encounters with Spock, particularly, were neat, given that he was kind of afraid of Spock, and was aghast when the rest of the crew told him that he was pretty much the only one, aside from maybe Kirk, who wasn't afraid of Spock prior to the accident. I liked this one quite a bit.
-- Power Hungry. TNG novel. The Enterprise is delivering emergency supplies to some world. World is ruled by government who cares more for its own concerns than those of the people. Terroristic faction with legitimate grievances against the government attack and kidnap Riker. And it goes on from there. It was so so.
-- Ghost Ship. TNG novel. This one... kind of sucked, and I'm going to rant about it for a little while. The gist is that there is some energy being thing that goes around absorbing life from things while destroying the technological things this life might happen to be occupying at the time. Three hundred years before TNG, it absorbed the crew of some Russian aircraft carrier on Earth. Now it's after the Enterprise, and the dead ghosts of the people inside this thing are spooking up the place and stuff.
Now, the story isn't what I have a problem with. It's pretty innocuous as far as stories go. It is the way the crew of the Enterprise are depicted that I have a problem with. I do allow, however, that this book was likely written well before the first episode of TNG ever actually aired, so the author probably had little to go on. But even so. Here's the run-down, character by character:
Riker is an enormous, humongous dick to pretty much everyone on the ship, with the possible exception of Troi. He is an especially enormous, humongous dick to Data, whom he thinks isn't a real person and is pretty much just Starfleet property. He comes around by the end of the book and learns his lesson and all that, but still...
Picard is described as a hard-ass captain of whom the entire crew is afraid and around whom they all feel like they're walking on eggshells (including, and perhaps especially, characters like Worf and Yar). On at least three separate occasions in the novel, Picard is described as having "roared" when speaking to his crew.
Troi acts as though she doesn't want to be there at all to begin with, and tells Riker that she's thinking of transferring off the ship. Oh and she calls Riker "Bill" instead of "Will". Um... what? (Okay, after looking on the Internet, I've found explanation for the whole "Bill" thing being on the actual show, albeit rarely and only during the first season. Even so, it still seemed really strange and out of place in the book. *shrug*)
Geordi, aside from being rightfully pissed off at Riker for his treatment of Data, is also described as being touchy about his VISOR and is pissed off that everyone takes him for granted because he can see things using it that nobody else can. (I don't remember if there's precedent for this in the show or not, but if there is, I can't find anything. I remember him saying that it caused him physical pain, but I don't ever remember him saying that he was resentful of everyone taking advantage of him though.)
Dr. Crusher asks Wesley to "spy" on the bridge for her at one point, using his status as acting Ensign. Beyond that, she's not really given that much to do. She gets to listen to Geordi bitch about his Visor, and she's involved in the big "Euthanasia, should we or shouldn't we?" argument between her, Troi, Riker, and Picard, so she does get that much at least, but that's about it.
Worf is a token Klingon, who is apparently ever only a hair's breadth away from snapping and killing them all.
Tasha Yar is Lithuanian. LOL wut? I'm sure there's an explanation for this one somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it.
Data... well, Data is one of the few whose character isn't totally butchered, at least not as bad as the rest of them anyway. He's a bit of a wuss as far as Riker's attitude is concerned, but that's about it.
Again, I do realize that this was the first numbered TNG novel, and as such was likely written before the characters had ever been seen on the show, but again... still... it's just bad.
Mostly, it's going to be a "These are what books I read and these are what movies I watched and these are what video games I played" post.
Putting these behind cuts for the sake of the apathetic.
Video Games:
Well, I got a Nintendo DS Lite (Onyx), on the first day I was back home in North Carolina. This was something that I'd been planning to do for a couple of years now. It only took the prospect of spending an entire month sans video games (oh the horror!) to finally prompt me to go through with it.
-- Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. The direct sequel to the GBA game Aria of Sorrow, it and Portrait of Ruin were two of the main reasons I wanted a DS to begin with.
-- Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. This one is the semi-direct sequel to the Sega Genesis game Bloodlines. The "control two characters at once" thing was pretty cool.
-- The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass. A direct sequel to the GameCube game Wind Waker. The graphics are almost identical to those of Wind Waker, but the gameplay is more reminiscent of the older 2D Zelda games of the past, such as A Link to the Past or Minish Cap, rather than the more recent 3D versions, such as Twilight Princess or, of course, Wind Waker. Different from all of these, though, is the fact that the game is played almost entirely with the stylus, which was a new and interesting way to play the game, and it worked rather well in my opinion. In any case, it was a cool game.
-- Contact. I got this game because I'd heard it described as "like Earthbound". Well, I didn't think it was all that much like Earthbound, aside from the graphics associated with the Professor and his lab (almost always visible in the top screen), and the general style of the humor in the game. It's a RPG, but instead of gaining levels, the character system is almost Elder Scrolls-like, in that to increase a skill you have to use that skill (e.g. fighting with a sword increases sword skill, fishing increases fishing skill, etc.) Like Phantom Hourglass, the game is played almost entirely with the stylus, though an alternate control pad+buttons scheme is available as well. I found the theme of the game, particularly the ending which I won't spoil, to be an interesting one and is one that I'd someday like to explore in games of my own if possible.
-- Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time. This game is pretty cool, and I would recommend it, but even so, it seemed to be missing a certain... something, compared to Superstar Saga. I don't know what, exactly, that something is, but the game just didn't seem to have as much heart or soul as the first game did, in my opinion.
In addition to these DS games, I also played through Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid Fusion again, both of which I'd gotten a few years ago.
I'd also brought three of my Wii games home with me because my sister has one. I brought Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Of those three, only Brawl was played a little bit, once at my sister's house, and once at my best friend's house during his Memorial Day cook-out. It was somewhat less than fully satisfying though, because Nintendo is dumb and doesn't let you copy your Brawl saved games to a SD-card and, thus, none of the stuff was unlocked (mainly Snake and Sonic). Oh well.
Movies:
I watched a lot of movies, both during the week that my sister came to visit at the end of April and during the month of May while I was in NC.
The ones we watched when my sister came to visit me in Redmond (in no particular order):
-- Iron Man. We went to see this one at the movie theater across the street from where I live, on the day before it was supposed to have been officially released. Dunno why, but they started showing it at 8:00pm on Thursday, May 1, which is the one we went to see. It was awesome. Go see it if you haven't already. That is all.
-- The Terminator. The special effects are somewhat dated by today's standards, but it was still pretty cool. The scene where the Terminator is cutting out his damaged eye still gave me the heebie-jeebies. Also, Linda Hamilton had incredibly large hair in this movie. I'd seen this one many years ago, but didn't remember much about it.
-- Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Better than the first one, and the effects still look cool even today. Linda Hamilton was much better as the badass commando type in this one than she was as the damsel-in-distress type from the first one. It was cool to be able to root for the T-101 in this one too. The kid playing John Connor was annoying, but not Phantom Menace Anakin Skywalker-annoying, at least. The T-1000 is probably the best version of the Terminator that Skynet ever produced (even over the T-X from the third movie). I'd also seen this one several years ago, at least a couple of times, and I remembered more about it than I did the first one.
-- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Unlike the first two, I'd never seen this one before. Eh... it was okay. It kind of destroyed the entire premise of the ending of the second one, but oh well. It was too much "car-chases/explosions" instead of "philosophizing on the nature and consequences of time-travel" for my tastes, but it was still decent. I did like the way it ended though, even if, again, it entirely negated the whole theme of the ending of T2.
-- I Am Legend. It was pretty cool. Don't have that much to say about it other than that.
-- Constantine. I don't follow the comics and was only Internet-familiar with them. Taking that into account, however, I thought it was pretty good.
-- House of Flying Daggers. I went into this one with only the vaguest idea of what to expect. It was pretty good. It was kind of interesting that the default on the DVD was Chinese with English subtitles. We opted to switch it to English dubbing instead, which, though almost stereotypically bad, didn't mar the experience too awfully much.
-- Across the Universe. I'll be blunt: I was not a fan of this movie. I am not a fan of musicals in general, which is part of it. I have nothing against Beatles music itself, mind you. However, my sister also did not like it that much either. She was the one who wanted to rent it, because she'd heard on Oprah or somewhere that it was supposedly good. After it was over, though, she just said that we'd probably have been better off just getting a CD of Beatles music and being done with it.
-- The Sixth Sense. This was a good movie, but unfortunately I had long since had the ending spoiled for me prior to watching it. As such, I spent most of the movie merely examining the interactions between Bruce Willis and the rest of the characters.
-- Signs. The second of three M. Night Shyamalan films we rented. It was pretty cool and suitably freaky, up until the end. The end was somewhat hokey, but oh well.
-- The Village. I liked this one. For once, I totally didn't see the big twist ("What a twist!") coming, and thankfully hadn't had it spoiled to me beforehand, ala The Sixth Sense.
And the ones I watched during my stay in NC (in no particular order):
-- 28 Days Later. Watched this one with my nephew at my brother's house. It was pretty good, but I couldn't help but note the marked similarities between this and I Am Legend. Obviously, this film didn't rip that one off because it came first, and that one didn't rip this one off because it was based on the novel, which came before either of them, but it kinda felt like somebody was ripping somebody off. *shrug*
-- National Treasure. We picked this up on the way home from seeing the fourth Indiana Jones movie (more on that later). It was pretty cool, in the same vein that the Indiana Jones movies are cool (well, most of them anyway, more on that later as well).
-- National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I actually saw this one before seeing the original. We rented it the first day it became available on DVD and watched it at my sister's house. It was pretty cool, and didn't require having had seen the first one to enjoy it, which was a good thing because I'd have been somewhat annoyed otherwise. I think I liked the first one a little better, though.
-- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I'd already seen this one before, but we watched it at my sister's house prior to going to see Prince Caspian. As before, I thought it was pretty good, on the whole.
-- The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. I liked this one better than the first one, to be honest. I saw several less than complimentary reviews of it prior to going to see it, but I'm of the opinion now that those reviews are pretty much full of crap.
-- Raiders of the Lost Ark. What can I say, it's the first Indiana Jones movie and it was pretty cool. It's probably the best of the lot, in my opinion, or perhaps tied with Last Crusade. I'd seen it years ago, and remembered the high spots, but it was nice to see it again.
-- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. This movie, on the other hand... hoo boy. Temple of Doom is one of the biggest steaming piles of horse dung that I've seen in a long while, both on its own merits and especially when compared to the other Indiana Jones movies. I mean, it's not Manos: The Hands of Fate or anything like that, but it's still pretty horrid. Both my sister and I hated it. I remember seeing it years ago, and don't remember thinking it was all that bad back then, for whatever reasons, but now... no, this movie sucked. Hard.
-- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This one probably ties with Raiders as the best of the bunch. Sean Connery may give it that little boost it needs to get to the top.
-- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's better than Temple of Doom, by far, but is below Raiders and Last Crusade. I enjoyed it well enough. The only problem, such as it is, that I had with it was Shia LeBeouf. He did a good enough job as Mutt Williams, I guess, but it's just the fact that he's been in, like, everything recently (hyperbolically speaking, of course). He was in Transformers, he was in Constantine, etc. It's not that I think he's bad or anything, it's just that I've seen him in too many things recently and I'm a bit Shia LeBeouf'd out for the time being, given that I've seen several movies with him in them over the past seemingly small while. I dunno. *shrug*
Books:
-- Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. Well, I've read some of it, anyway. What I've read so far was good, and somewhat useful. A lot of it seems to be just common sense stuff though. I intend to finish it at some point soon though, along with the several other similar books I've bought but haven't yet cracked open. This was the only "serious" book that I read during the vacation.
-- Op-Center: Games of State. This is the only Op-Center book that I've read so far (and, in fact, is the only Tom Clancy book I've read at all except for Rainbow Six). This book was all right and is one of those "I kinda wish I had time to get the rest of the books in this series some day, if only..." books. My mom gave it to me and thought I'd be interested in it because it had video games in it. *eyeroll* Well, yeah, it was pretty interesting, though kind of laughable. Some French guy is trying to, I dunno, take over the world or something, and he's using video games to do it. Basically, he's making all of these heavily racist video games and is packing them with some kind of crazy brainwashing game controller so that everyone becomes a racist prick just like him. Oh, and there's some other stuff about Neo Nazis and such as well. I may be making light of it here, but it was pretty good even so.
-- Disclosure. A Michael Crichton novel about sexual harassment in the work place. It was pretty good, and a little bit scary, given that it's apparently (loosely) based on a true story. I found the parts where they're talking about technology to be rather laughably dated by today's standards, but the book was written in 1994 so I guess that's to be expected. The virtual reality stuff was neat, though.
-- The Servants of Twilight. Yeah, I actually finished it this time, unlike before.
The rest of them are all old Star Trek novels I happened to find beside my bed in NC from years and years ago:
-- The Valiant. TNG novel. This is the story of how Picard came to be captain of the USS Stargazer. It involves crossing the Galactic Barrier. My mom bought this for me at, if I recall correctly, a yardsale somewhere. It was a pretty good book.
-- Chain of Attack. TOS novel. The Enterprise inadvertently goes through a wormhole or something, and ends up in some distant galaxy where there are bunch of stars together in relatively close proximity, but around which all of the worlds have been utterly destroyed by millennia of warfare. Then they meet some aliens who attack them on sight and then try to get these and the other aliens who also attack them, and each other, on sight to try to get along and make peace. It was okay.
-- The Peacekeepers. TNG novel. Geordi and Data are exploring a derelict space station when they get transported to another similar station light years away, which is floating around an Earth-like planet. Some guy on this planet has used the alien space station to force his world into peace (by getting rid of all of that world's nuclear weapons, among other things). He mistakes Geordi and Data as the Builders of the space station. They decide to play along, at least at first. Shenanigans ensue. It was decent. The thing that I thought was odd, however, was that, despite the fact that the book was mostly focused on Geordi and Data, it was Picard, Worf, and Troi who were featured on the cover.
-- Dreams of the Raven. TOS novel, with McCoy as the principle character. McCoy has an accident and becomes amnesic, losing about twenty years of his life. It was somewhat interesting seeing McCoy dealing with the crew, given that they were all strangers to him. His encounters with Spock, particularly, were neat, given that he was kind of afraid of Spock, and was aghast when the rest of the crew told him that he was pretty much the only one, aside from maybe Kirk, who wasn't afraid of Spock prior to the accident. I liked this one quite a bit.
-- Power Hungry. TNG novel. The Enterprise is delivering emergency supplies to some world. World is ruled by government who cares more for its own concerns than those of the people. Terroristic faction with legitimate grievances against the government attack and kidnap Riker. And it goes on from there. It was so so.
-- Ghost Ship. TNG novel. This one... kind of sucked, and I'm going to rant about it for a little while. The gist is that there is some energy being thing that goes around absorbing life from things while destroying the technological things this life might happen to be occupying at the time. Three hundred years before TNG, it absorbed the crew of some Russian aircraft carrier on Earth. Now it's after the Enterprise, and the dead ghosts of the people inside this thing are spooking up the place and stuff.
Now, the story isn't what I have a problem with. It's pretty innocuous as far as stories go. It is the way the crew of the Enterprise are depicted that I have a problem with. I do allow, however, that this book was likely written well before the first episode of TNG ever actually aired, so the author probably had little to go on. But even so. Here's the run-down, character by character:
Riker is an enormous, humongous dick to pretty much everyone on the ship, with the possible exception of Troi. He is an especially enormous, humongous dick to Data, whom he thinks isn't a real person and is pretty much just Starfleet property. He comes around by the end of the book and learns his lesson and all that, but still...
Picard is described as a hard-ass captain of whom the entire crew is afraid and around whom they all feel like they're walking on eggshells (including, and perhaps especially, characters like Worf and Yar). On at least three separate occasions in the novel, Picard is described as having "roared" when speaking to his crew.
Troi acts as though she doesn't want to be there at all to begin with, and tells Riker that she's thinking of transferring off the ship. Oh and she calls Riker "Bill" instead of "Will". Um... what? (Okay, after looking on the Internet, I've found explanation for the whole "Bill" thing being on the actual show, albeit rarely and only during the first season. Even so, it still seemed really strange and out of place in the book. *shrug*)
Geordi, aside from being rightfully pissed off at Riker for his treatment of Data, is also described as being touchy about his VISOR and is pissed off that everyone takes him for granted because he can see things using it that nobody else can. (I don't remember if there's precedent for this in the show or not, but if there is, I can't find anything. I remember him saying that it caused him physical pain, but I don't ever remember him saying that he was resentful of everyone taking advantage of him though.)
Dr. Crusher asks Wesley to "spy" on the bridge for her at one point, using his status as acting Ensign. Beyond that, she's not really given that much to do. She gets to listen to Geordi bitch about his Visor, and she's involved in the big "Euthanasia, should we or shouldn't we?" argument between her, Troi, Riker, and Picard, so she does get that much at least, but that's about it.
Worf is a token Klingon, who is apparently ever only a hair's breadth away from snapping and killing them all.
Tasha Yar is Lithuanian. LOL wut? I'm sure there's an explanation for this one somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it.
Data... well, Data is one of the few whose character isn't totally butchered, at least not as bad as the rest of them anyway. He's a bit of a wuss as far as Riker's attitude is concerned, but that's about it.
Again, I do realize that this was the first numbered TNG novel, and as such was likely written before the characters had ever been seen on the show, but again... still... it's just bad.