{"id":16257,"date":"2020-07-07T21:01:42","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T01:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=16257"},"modified":"2020-07-08T18:11:33","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T22:11:33","slug":"star-trek-tng-collateral-damage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/star-trek-tng-collateral-damage\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Trek: TNG &#8212; Collateral Damage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{4.5\/5} &#8220;You might think yourself guilty, only to discover exculpatory factors. Or you might think yourself <strong>not<\/strong> guilty, only to find out that you&#8217;ve committed crimes of which you were unaware. But most important of all: It&#8217;s irrelevant. Because all that matters when this mess is done is what the state can <strong>prove<\/strong> &#8212; and on what facts we can cast reasonable doubt. The rest&#8230; is just theater.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Star Trek: TNG &#8212; Collateral Damage<\/strong> by David Mack, published in 2019<\/p>\n<p>Captain Jean-Luc Picard has returned to Earth to answer for his part in the removal of Federation President Min Zife from office 7 years ago. He only learned recently that Zife was later killed by Section 31. Meanwhile, Commander Worf and the Enterprise are on core-systems patrol when they get called to Celes II. By the time they get there, Nausicaan raiders are gone but they find their old friend Thadiun Okona.<\/p>\n<p>The story features Admiral William T. Riker, Admiral Leonard James Akaar, Naomi Wildman, Chancellor Martok, and Attorney General Phillipa Louvois. It&#8217;s a terrific story for Worf, who deals with a very tricky situation.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s about difficult choices &#8212; when you&#8217;ve lost your home, and when someone in power has done something so heinous that they cannot stay in power.<\/p>\n<p>Both storylines are terrific &#8212; unsurprising for Mack. He takes the Nausicaans, once mustache-twirling villains in a couple of episodes, and makes them into people worth reading about &#8212; and caring about.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve read 12 books by Mack. I previously reviewed his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/star-trek-titan-fortune-of-war\/\"><strong>Star Trek: Titan \u2014 Fortune of War<\/strong><\/a>. He also co-wrote a couple of <strong>DS9<\/strong> episodes.<\/p>\n<p>The previous novel in the story of the 24th century is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/star-trek-tng-available-light\/\"><strong>Star Trek: TNG \u2014 Available Light<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{4.5\/5} &#8220;You might think yourself guilty, only to discover exculpatory factors. Or you might think yourself not guilty, only to find out that you&#8217;ve committed crimes of which you were unaware. But most important of all: It&#8217;s irrelevant. Because all that matters when this mess is done is what the state can prove &#8212; and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,28,5,8,59],"class_list":["post-16257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-novels","tag-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16257"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16287,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257\/revisions\/16287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}