Review: ST: The Good Men Do
I'm trying to read The Good Men Do. It's halfway a good story, but the narration relies heavily on telling rather than showing, often with several repetitions. The bits with Trip, Archer and Reed are decent - they have me convinced that Trip would be obsessed enough, in the midst of grief and fear, to join Section 31. I'm just not sure who that
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Ah, someone else who does not bow down before the utter and complete tripe that is TGTMD.
It was pretty shite. I went and finished it because I found myself writing a fix-it-fic and it just kept getting worse. I'm not sure what went down with Archer and the Andorians, because I didn't give a bloody damn. All I can recall about that was T'Pol sort of playing lassie. She had one cool moment when she did the classic macho fist-catch when confronted with an Andorian (Shran?) but otherwise spent most her time fawning on Archer, while other characters very pointedly told the reader how totally awesome he was. I had to pry a sledge-hammer out of my forehead a few times. Then there were the ebil ebil Romulans who were completely corrupt, amoral perverts... except for the kindly old man scientist. Which is weird, because I seem to recall that Romulans were almost exactly like Vulcans, but more openly aggressive and somewhat self-indulgent (when not on duty).
[Trip] STILL flippantly fakes his death? Why?
Because the authors have a hard-on for Section 31 and saw an opportunity to forcibly mash together their favorite sub-genre with their (presumably) favorite ENT character? Turning Trip into a hard-bitten James Bond type even though he was rather consistently presented as a compassionate, sensitive compromising sort? Because it allowed the character to fit the socially acceptable mold of stern macho man?
I don't know. It's kind of like asking why T'Pol cried all the time even though she pointedly straightened out in S4 so her behavior was a major throw-back to S3, with no amount of "oh, it was pa'nar syndrome/trellium poisoning" allowing for genuine plausibility. In fact, if I had to make an educated guess, I would say the book authors committed a classic fanfic crime: my gender role is pasted on. Men are manly and decisive about all things. Women cry a lot and wait for their mens to come home.
... you do realize I use leet speak on purpose as a form of sarcasm?
He doesn't know their language ... yet inexplicably, they completely fail to notice the fact that he's
speaking English.
I could buy that he wore language specific translators as hearing aids, but I had trouble figuring out how the Romulans around him wouldn't ever notice he resembled a bad chinese dub. Kind of like how I had trouble buying into the idea that a trained engineer would have the requisite skills and experience to pass himself off as a skilled covert agent in enemy territory. Even though the narration blatantly told us as one point that the skills of an engineer conveniently overlapped with those of a spy.
o.O ... O, rly? Because you say so? Y'know what? I happen to come from an entire family of civil engineers, structural engineers, architects and mechanics. If any of them were dropped into enemy territory with a universal translator and a pile of steaming emo, each and every one of them would die. Because there's no overlap in skills.
Based on the final chapter of the equally trite LFM, I don't get the impression that there is a happy ending in store for the
two of them.
I don't think they'll be in the next book either, despite the speculation over at the de-facto HOT board. I'm pretty sure it'll focus on Super!Archer and Hoshi, possibly with more Ebil Romulans. No, it's important that Trip become an angst-ridden manly man who lives alone for the rest of his life, playing James Bond. Or something. Because that's cool.
I'm reminded of what the OFFICIAL direction of the ENT franchise has taken and it disgusts me.
Mm, yes. I believe it's called a Dork Age when canon takes a turn for the stupid. I'm dealing with that myself over with my favorite character ever, where the writing has been so absolutely shit for almost two years now that I can't even look at it. Still my favorite character, but it's hard to come up with fic when I'm avoiding the source material. It's just my luck that extraodinarily stupid canon sets off my fanfic bug.
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