Why Charles Stross hates Star Trek

[Darth Wong]

There's a Star Trek Engineering series? That sounds like it would be painful, if the engineers are treated the same way they're usually treated in Star Trek.

[Aaron]

There's a Star Trek Engineering series? That sounds like it would be painful, if the engineers are treated the same way they're usually treated in Star Trek.

Yup: Starfleet Corps of Engineers. I haven't read them but I do find the idea interesting, I believe their supposed to be from the same organization that tunnelled out Regula planetoid for Carol Marcus's team.

[Darth Wong]

Even if the idea is interesting, the execution will almost certainly be shit. Star Trek is full of horrible engineering brainbugs, and they've entered the fans' collective hive mind consciousness.

[JGregory32]

Even if the idea is interesting, the execution will almost certainly be shit. Star Trek is full of horrible engineering brainbugs, and they've entered the fans' collective hive mind consciousness.

Their avaible in omnibus format now so your not wasting so much money. The second novel is more interesting than the first, if only because they rip off "Heart of Darkness".
Otherwise, yeah its pretty much "here's a problem, here's some technobabble, and here's a unsatisfying conclusion."
In the first novel they investigate a unknown ship of great power, seems like a good story idea right? They findout the multi-thousand crew of the ship has been consumed by some kind of insect creature and they must activate the self destruct to save themselves. Not a bad idea and certainly a good idea for an episode of TNG. The problem comes when their is no sense of danger because they are always using the FREAKING transporter. If you have a situation where your characters need to be in mortal danger then don't have a device that can take them out of mortal danger at a moments notice.

The books can basically be summed up as TNG episodes written in novel format and starring a cast of characters we don't give a damn about. Even when they steal from better sources they have to introduce the TNG pacifist stance and neuter themselves.

Sorry for the rant but those books piss me off.
*EDIT: Sorry, just realized that of the possibly nine books (I have the first three omnibuses) only two stuck with me enough to remember vague details. Belly of the Beast is the first story in the first omnibus I was talking about. The other story is in the second omnibus collection.

[Steve]

Heh, poor writers. Their "Interphase" story got decanonized by Enterprise.

I have to admit, the "Ring in the Sky" story from the Grand Designs omnibus had some interesting things in it and some interesting principles (trying to hold together a damaged space elevator tethered to an orbital ring with an SIF field? Bad idea, it holds the structure too rigid and hastens structural failure, being turned off even causes a structural reaction that prematurely detonates explosives meant to remove the un-repairable elevator from the orbital Ring and gives us the short story's climax-crisis).

I have to agree with some of the criticisms, especially of the second omnibus. The "Androssi" villain race, from what I saw of them, are far too technowanky in what they can do. Though the Heart of Darkness-copy story centering on Sonya Gomez was, IMHO, not so bad, and put together in fairly interesting manner (with the use of logs, journals, and letters home and such).