Subject: [REVIEW] The Crazy Review #1 Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001 00:20:18 -0700 From: "Crayz9000" Newsgroups: alt.startrek.vs.starwars The Crazy Review: #1: Hero of the Republic OK, so I was bored, and couldn't think of anything else to write on my own fic. Having mirrored the Archive to my HDD (I'm trying to make the ASVS Auxiliary Archive right now, but editing HTML gets boring after a while.)... ----- So, first up: A fic that got my attention some time ago, Hero of the Republic. This was started in October of 2000, and so far only has thirteen chapters. I suspect that the Commander's gotten stuck a) in TGOD-land b) in the plot. So anyway, on to the review. This may not be as accurate or critical as Phong's or Bjorn's reviews, but I intend it to be at least somewhat accurate. Hero of the Republic is apparently set sometime after the Dominion War in Star Trek, and approximately at the same time as Mike Wong's Conquest in Star Wars. Of course, Mike didn't know of the New Jedi Order back when he wrote that fic, either. A quick synopsis: ====== Name: Hero of the Republic Author: Cmdrwilkens Location: http://www.daltonator.net/fanfics/stories/hotr.txt Overall Rating: 75 / 100 Plot Line: 90 / 100 Development: 60 / 100 Balance: 80 / 100 Comments: Could use a spellchecker. Also, punctuation is noticeably missing in critical places, giving certain sentences a disjointed effect. Portrayal of Federation policies is rather strange, to say the least. Conclusion: From my own experience, this fanfic could use a good rewrite. I would hash out some of the more critical scenes, and abridge other less-important scenes. And please use commas! ====== Long synopsis: It begins with a prologue in the Federation, in an unknown location, with an unknown captain... you get the point. The first few paragraphs give a nice insight into the characters. However, my initial criticism of the characters isn't much. Captain Winger is apparently modeled after the famous Captain Kirk, with a bit of Picard and Janeway mixed in. Engineer Quelin is a bit too much like Scotty for comfort, although it is a refreshing change from the technobabbling- idiot stereotype of recent ST. Chapter One is set in the New Republic, and includes the needed background for the strange, and relatively alien, ships that Cmdrwilkens' has introduced. In Chapter Two, it's back to the Federation, where the Vigilant's attacker is revealed. It also seems to be revealed that Quelin is, in actuality, Q in disguise. Or else he spent too much time reviewing the tapes from the big E while he was in the Academy. Chapter Three, we flip back to the Republic, where Wilkens (fanfic character) is making preparations. It is revealed just where they're heading. A few strange possibilities are introduced along the way, as well. For example, he has a chatterbox staff officer (Dunar) take up a paragraph explaining why a normal galaxy is (huh?) held together with subspace anomalies. Well, I seem to remember that theory circulating on the NG a while back, but I also seem to remember that it was nearly laughed out as a joke. Oh well... Chapter Four continues Ch.3. Hearing of a Jones makes me suspicious, although from the culture of ASVS he seems out-of-character (no offense there.) Chapter Five is built on Wilken's reminiscing on his deceased wife, Jenica. (Is she related to Jenica Sonsen, the Centerpoint Station admin?) He also reminisces on his past fighting the Yuuzhan Vong. This chapter is left in a strange place - the middle of his reminiscing. It has a slightly disjointed effect, although not enough to kill the storyline. Chapter Six is a continuation of Ch.5. It has the nameless Skywalker breaking Wilkens out of his reverie, and the beginning of the NR fleet's sojourn to the other galaxy. In Chapter Seven, we return to our hero Winger, who's currently heading back to Starbase 48. The Big E comes (too quickly for a Starfleet ship at warp, IMO). And one of Wilken's paragraphs has me confused. I will quote: "Commander Quelin had simply blanked them all when he reported to the group. Anything with the power to generate artificial black holes and travel at FTL speeds without warp was obviously more advaced and potentially far more deadly in the art of war than anything the Federation had avaliable including the Defiant and Sovreign designs." Where exactly in the timeline is this? Did Voyager not exist? There is slipstream, which is definately not warp - did Janeway think it unusual? No. And here's another paragraph: "Now there was a new storm coming, and he was its herald to the Federation and her allies. The Dominion War and the recent aftermath had drained the Federation yet it was now faced with perhaps the ultimate peril to its existence. Winger hoped and prayed to whatever gods might exist that his worst fears were untrue, for Von Hart and Taldon had shown exactly what would happen if his worst fears were true. One year, that's all they would give the Federation in the event of an all out invasion. Earth, Vulcan, Fargo, Mars, Centarui, and more would be occupied or leveled. Then the scavengers would move in, the Klingons would take hold of key dilithium processing centers as well as anti-matter storage depots. Meanwhile the Romulans would drive straight towards Vulcan in an attempt to eliminate their distant cousins. The Cardassians would take Bajor and move in, hell there was even a possibility the Breen would be grabbing the leftovers." Now my knowledge of the ST timeline is getting royally confused. Is this set in Q's anti-time future, as seen in 'All Good Things...'? From what I know, the Klingons should be allied with the Federation, unless things have radically changed since TNG, and Gene R's efforts ro reconcile the Feds and the Klingons. Another nitpick is that this does not run like a ST first contact situation. Yes, I have read ahead. No, it does not answer my question, which is: Why the heck have the Federation people suddenly gotten overcompetent? All that happened was that the unknown ship basically flashed the Valiant (wait - is this a continuity error? I read Vigilant earlier) a black hole. They'd probably treat it as Kirk treated V'ger a hundred years earlier - a potential hostile, to be hopefully averted from Federation space. Kirk had no intentions of what V'ger would do, but didn't go speculating on the destruction of the Federation - even though, at that time, they had hostilities with both Klingons and Romulans. Chapter Eight is nothing really abnormal, except for the question begging to be asked about how the Explorer outpost got there in the first place. Chapter Nine seems to have dissappeared totally, although it is probably the tail end of what looks like Eight. This brings to light another possibility that I'd read about before: that Admiral Piett survived the destruction of the Executor... Chapter Ten has more un-Federation like tactics used by the Federation. Wilkens also attempts to intersperse a bit of humor, which has the intended effect - lightening up the mostly dark story. Eleven has more on Piett, and his re-introduction to the Empire. I wish that Wilkens wrote this chapter with a bit more of the expression that he did Chapter 1 with, though. In Twelve we head to the Swift, which I have no idea about. This is a ship bound to become a major plot point, yet all I know is that is extremely fast and named the Swift. Is it a MonCal Star Cruiser, an Executor-class... what is it? Obviously it's something designed to combat the Vong, which means that it must have an incredible amount of weaponry. Plus a minor nitpick - the Old Republic had used hyperdrives since before it was founded - a thousand generations, not years - unless you are using the 1st or 2nd drafts of the ANH script. So that's over 25,000 years. -- Crayz9000 - [http://crayz9000.htmlplanet.com] - mhm28x12 Cybernetic Crow