Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many

So this is the first of what I hope will be many book, movie, blu-ray, videogame, graphic novel, and other products I've purchased (or plan to when I'm no longer destitute aka when hell freezes over) that I'll be reviewing.



As someone who purchased Star Trek Online (and who has barely played it, and not at all since my free 30 days ran out as I'm poor) I was very interested in the timeline leading up to 2409 (the time setting of the game). The STO timeline is markedly different from the other novels/non-canon materials aside from a few in-jokes regarding temporal anomalies and such. Now the novel itself is styled quite liberally as a "living history" of the "Long War aka Undine (species 8472) War" much in the same vein as the far superior "World War Z" (a review for another time).

The fictional writer is of course, Federation News Network journalist extraordinaire Jake Sisko and "edited" by the real author Michael A. Martin who wrote some very interesting scenes that would have been great episodes or standalone novels of Star Trek by themselves (especially the morally fascinating and tragic issue of the "Data Matrix" that didn't take the easy way out in bringing back our beloved Soong Type Android.

Now, the timeline picks up after the "Shinzon Incident" and moves forward from there, including such monumental events as the Hobus Supernova that destroyed Romulus and Remus (going into some more detail on how it was drastically different from "normal" interstellar phenomenon and managed to reach Romulus in About a week) and goes on to discuss the fallout from that event, especially concerning the reformation of the shattered Romulan Star empire as well as a Klingon/Gorn conflict and the breaking down of the Khitomer accords between the UFP and the Klingon Empire due to Starfleet being positioned between the Klingon/Romulan Border.

Now those are the good parts of the book. They are very interesting and offer a plausible and not too saccharine look at a possible future of the 'OTL' continuity.

But here's the problem, and it's a big one: Where is the fucking "Undine War"? Aside from one engagement between MACO's from the 'USS Thunderchild' boarding an Undine ship after some sort of "inter-dimensional mishap", there is virtually no fighting with the Undine (again, Species 8472). There are mentions of there being "battles" but that's literally the extent of the conversations about the conflict aside from a bunch of cookie-cutter stories about Undine suddenly accidentally revealing themselves with chaos ensuing.

So unless you're a hardcore Star Trek Online player, or are just very interested in one possible branch the 'OTL' continuity could have taken (there is a nifty "year by year" accounting from the "Shinzon incident" all the way up until 2409 in the appendix) you should give it a pass.

I'd give it a 2/5