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Department of Temporal Investigations: Forgotten History

por Christopher L. Bennett

Series: Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations, Star Trek Relaunch (Book 63) (Chronological Order), Star Trek (novels) (2012.04), Star Trek (2012.04)

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1355201,108 (3.6)1
In a universe where history as we know it could be wiped out at any moment, only the most disciplined, obsessive, and unimaginative government employees have what it takes to face the existential uncertainty of it all: Federation investigators Lucsly and Dulmur. The agents of the Department of Temporal Investigations are assigned to look into an anomaly that has appeared deep in Federation territory. It's difficult to get clear readings, but a mysterious inactive vessel lies at the heart of the anomaly, one outfitted with some sort of temporal drive disrupting space-time and subspace. To the agents' shock, the ship bears a striking resemblance to a Constitution-class starship, and its warp signature matches that of the original Federation starship Enterprise NCC-1701--the ship of James T. Kirk, that infamous bogeyman of temporal investigators, whose record of violations is held up by DTI agents as a cautionary tale for Starfleet recklessness toward history. But the vessel's hull markings identify it as Timeship Two, belonging to none other than the DTI itself. At first, Agents Lucsly and Dulmur assume the ship is from some other timeline . . . but its quantum signature confirms that it came from their own past, despite the fact that the DTI never possessed such a timeship. While the anomaly is closely monitored, Lucsly and Dulmur must search for answers in the history of Kirk's Enterprise and its many encounters with time travel--a series of events with direct ties to the origins of the DTI itself. . . .… (más)
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My complaint about the first Department of Temporal Investigations novel was that despite a strong beginning and a strong ending, the middle of the book became bogged down in the format of "DTI turns up the aftereffects of a Next Generation episode; exposition is delivered to massage the details into the novel's Unified Theory of Star Trek Time Travel," without a strong story of its own. At first blush, you might think Forgotten History was going to do the same thing, just with episodes of the original series, and though it does swerve into this on occasion (I'm not convinced the retcon of "Whom Gods Destroy" added much to the book), on the whole it's much more focused and much more of a story.

The reason for this is Commodore Antonio Delgado, first mentioned in this readthrough in From History's Shadow. An flag officer in Starfleet's Science Ops, Delgado sees the possibilities of time travel when presented to him after the events of "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," and so he keeps tabs on the Enterprise's various temporal shenanigans as he attempts to make time travel a viable avenue for Starfleet, sometimes working against the fledgling Department of Temporal Investigations, sometimes with it. Delgado is a surprisingly interesting "villain," and I wish we'd seen more of him. It would be easy to make him a hypocrite or out for personal gain, but he's genuinely principled, believing that perfecting time travel is for the greater good of the Federation, and not willing to use it for personal reasons. He's sometimes quite reckless, but often thoughtful, such as when he realizes sending his Federation timeships into the futures of parallel timelines is the safest option, as it means the Federation can gain technological and even political knowledge from the future, without endangering its own future with paradoxes. Delgado's ongoing attempts to use the Enterprise's adventures to develop time travel give the otherwise unconnected incidents of the original series a throughline that the first book largely lacked; with each episode, you the reader wonder how this will contribute to his machinations. (Incorporated episodes include "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," "The City on the Edge of Forever," "Assignment: Earth," and "Yesteryear.")

The only thing I didn't like was his attitude toward women, which just seems to be in the novel to make us boo and hiss at him, like when a bad guy in a movie kicks a puppy, just so you know he's the bad guy.

The other thing that makes this novel work is that is allows the 24th-century Department of Temporal Investigations to come face-to-face with their long-standing boogeyman, James T. Kirk. While the first three-quarters of the novel has Dulmur and Lucsly in a frame story reading about the original Enterprise's temporal shenanigans, in the last quarter, the Enterprise crew and the DTI characters all end up in the same time and place, a temporal confluence between past and future. The result of this is that Dulmur and Lucsly-- especially Lucsly-- actually have to interact with Captain Kirk, and this part of the book is just delightful, Lucsly's indignation at what is unfolding oozing off the page in hilarious fashion. Like in the first DTI book, the temporal shenanigans got a tad convoluted for me to follow, but I enjoyed it anyway, mostly thanks to the role Lucsly and Dulmur end up playing in Kirk's history of temporal interference.

On the other hand, I don't think Meijan Gray was sufficiently built up as a paragon of temporal noninterference to make the revelations about her at the climax really stick like they ought to have.

The one part of the novel that didn't really fit for me was the long section where the refit Enterprise travels to an alternate timeline, one where Earth vanished in the 20th century (this is where the book posits the duplicate Earth of "Miri" originated), and so the Vulcans remained more militaristic (because no NX-01 means no Kir'Shara rediscovery), in a galaxy where they're opposed by a Klingon/Andorian alliance. A little bit of this would have been fine, and it does set up some elements of the story that become significant at the climax, but it goes on longer than is interesting, and its relevance isn't altogether clear for most of it. Part of the issue, I think, is that the one-particular-species-is-missing-from-22nd-century-politics concept was also done in two Myriad Universe stories, and this permutation doesn't feel a whole lot different from those.

But on the whole, this is an engaging, interesting novel-- I zipped through it in about two days-- and shows the promise of the Department of Temporal Investigations premise better than does its predecessor. I look forward to seeing the series further developed in the transition to e-novellas.

Continuity Notes:
  • This novel actually slots between parts 1 and 2 of Indistinguishable from Magic (one of the DTI characters leaves partway through to go debrief the Challenger crew on the events involving the Split Infinite, which happens at the climax of part 1). I guess I could have read the book then... but no. (I reserve insanity like that for rereads only.)
  • I liked the touch that when novel depicts the slingshot maneuver that preceded "Assignment: Earth," Kirk hears snatches of dialogue from the episode in reverse chronological order, as was he also did during the slingshot in The Voyage Home.
  • I also liked the incorporation of a number of elements of the 1970s cartoon. "Yesteryear" is expanded and rearticulated, and one of its minor characters turns out to be a DTI founder, but also the mysterious Vedala from "The Jihad" play a significant role in the novel's proceedings, and some of the cartoon's Enterprise crew reappear as well.
  • There are some very slight references to The Rings of Time here, which is the whole reason I read Rings of Time at the beginning of this. Blink and you'd miss them, though.
  • I don't think the details surrounding Kirk's promotion to admiral here quite line up with what we saw in Allegiance in Exile.
Other Notes:
  • I liked the joke about how "chronal" wasn't even a real word. I don't think Star Trek has ever used this on screen, but it has appeared in a few of the tie-ins.
  • Bennett writes a pretty good "Kirk speech" when Kirk speaks in defense of his supposed violations of the Prime Directive at the end of the five-year mission. Actually, the whole mission to Pelos is a pretty good pastiche of an original series episode.
  • Bennett might know more about real temporal science and Star Trek time travel than anyone else alive, but he still doesn't know the correct usage of the word "table" in parliamentary procedure (see p. 69). Meijan should have made a motion to postpone indefinitely.
  Stevil2001 | May 10, 2019 |
There are way too many plotlines in this convoluted story of a time-travel experiment from Kirk’s era gone awry, with the Department of Temporal Investigations from the DS9 timeline involved in the investigation and resolution of the anomaly.

The first third if the book digresses into the machinations of a Starfleet admiral obsessed with the military applications of time travel who believes that the Enterprise (or more specifically, her engines and warp drive apparatus) have somehow, due to their time travel experiences during the 5-year mission, retained a unique capability to carry a new ship, built around those engines, on time voyages of its own. His attempts to obtain those engines ultimately leads to the development of what became DTI.

Bennett makes a valiant attempt to weave events and characters from the original series, the animated series, offscreen activities predating and immediately following the first movie, and pronovels from dozens of different writers spanning half a century of Trek-based fiction into a cohesive whole. There are some nice Easter eggs hidden in the background, but it often threatens to overwhelm what should be the main story.

And during all this set-up, unfortunately, Kirk and cpmpany pretty well disappear into the background. Spock comes forth to spout technobabble theory about the physics of time travel, as do several of author’s original characters and that whole quantum discussion rapidly causes MEGO in non-physicist readers.

Then at about the halfway point, we’re back with the TDI folks and their investigation of the timeship, but only briefly, because there is a flashback as to how and why it got there from Kirk’s time. And here, finally, the original Trek crew takes center stage. There’s a nice Spockian interlude which turns out to actually have some bearing on the resolution of one problem facing the crew later on.

As the story zigzags to its conclusion, Bennett piles on complication after complication with time jumps, parallel universes, new characters, new political alliances, new technology, and still more incomprehensible theorizing about the nature of the space-time continuum. The reader who has managed to hang on to this point is likely to do nothing more than to breath a huge sigh of relief when the marathon ends, as all Trek pronovels must, with everything neatly tucked back into the official framework. ( )
1 vota LyndaInOregon | Feb 1, 2019 |
This was the second in the original series that concerns the DTI (Department of Temporal Investigation). The Agents that we met in the first book are still going hard to protect their little section of time.

This book introduces (I think that I'd never read about them in a Star Trek book that I can remember) confluences. As well as more of the history of the DTI.

In that way it's also sort of a prequel to the first book in the series too (oy, time travel).

A lot of the history of the DTI involves not just Kirk and his crew, but also his first ship's engines. There is also some dimension sorta hopping, and Lucsley comes face to face with his nemesis.

I did think that there was so much stuff in the past with Kirk and his contemporaries that I was overwhelmed (and unfortunately my least favorite Star Trek series is the original one).

On the other hand, there was quite a bit of stuff with Sulu which I really really liked.

As usual, the book also meandered or seemed to meander until very close to the end. But, all the past, present, and future that Bennett interwove into the story was amazing. Loved it. ( )
  DanieXJ | Aug 4, 2018 |
Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations: Forgotten History
Author: Christopher L Bennet
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published In: New York City, NY
Date: 2012
Pgs: 352
_________________________________________________

REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
The Department of Temporal Investigations tell each other horror stories about Jim Kirk and the Enterprise NCC-1701. The files regarding the Enterprise and her Captain are the largest in the DTI. Shock joined those horror stories when a temporal anomaly with an inactive vessel at it’s heart appears deep in Federation territory, a ship that appears to be a Constitution class starship, registry NCC-1701. Inspection shows hull markings identifying the ship as Timeship Two, belonging to the DTI itself. Agents of the DTI must delve back into Kirk and the Enterprise’s many time travel encounters and immediately, because there’s not record of Timeship Two or this particular adventure of Kirk’s. Fears emerge that this could tie directly into the creation of the DTI itself.
_________________________________________________
Genre:
Science Fiction
Fantasy
TV, Movie, Video Game Adaptions
Star Trek
Literature
Fiction
Genre Fiction
Movie Tie-Ins
Time Travel

Why this book:
Star Trek, Captain Kirk, Time Travel, no whales.
_________________________________________________

Favorite Character:
Kirk’s reticence to ever travel in time again comes to the fore after the Edith Keeler events. Leading to when Dr Grey is doing her interviews on the subject of time travel when the Committee is trying to determine if time travel should go forward as more than a theoretical occurrence.
GREY: So in your best judgment, the experiments should stop?
KIRK: I know that once a thing is discovered, it can’t be undiscovered. Our descendants will travel in time--that’s a reality we can’t avoid. But as for us, here and now...we’re not ready. We’re children playing with fire. And we’ve seen how little it takes for that fire to burn out of control. Someday we will master this, but now is not the time. We need to stop before we burn ourselves away.
Put that in context with how every DTI appearance talks about Kirk. Also, take in the context of the Krenim and what they did to themselves and their local area of space with their timeships.
The juxtaposition of Kirk’s reputation about time travel and his actual feelings about it plays well to the reader.

I like the idea and execution of Sulu as First Officer in the period immediately after Star Trek: The Motion Picture while Spock was otherwise occupied, ie: Saavik.

Least Favorite Character:
Lucsly. He’s too stiff, too hidebound. And he let the Kirk myth stand. Not cool. Liked the book anyway.

Character I Most Identified With:
McCoy when his attitude toward time and values is revealed as more than Luddism and curmudgeonliness. He is much more pragmatic than shown, but it comes through.

The Feel:
This felt like Star Trek.

Favorite Scene / Quote:
In contrast to the Eugenics Wars books, the use of TOS episodes as framing elements/Easter eggs is well done here. There were more Easter eggs in this than I even noticed. The tapestry is thick with them. Very well done interweaving. Reading the afterword where the author walked us through where the Easter eggs were all from was fascinating. There were way more than I even realized. And in instances where there were Easter eggs they weren’t beaten over the readers head.

GREY: I’m surprised, Doctor. The impression I’ve gotten is that you consider yourself an old fashioned type, suspicious of progress.
MCCOY: Oh, I’m suspicious of all sorts of things, Doctor Grey. Too much focus on the past or the future can keep people from making the right choices in the present. I don’t appreciate old fashioned values because they’re old, but because they’ve stood the test of time and still have value today. You wouldn’t want to drink a fine wine before it matured. No, Doctor--the value of time is that it moves forward.

Pacing:
The pace when it catches is great. The pages and chapters flow well.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
Two people sitting at a table talking in the prologue. Then a third person, sitting between them, talks. The whole making the reader have the “oh I didn’t see you there” moment is a peeve of mine. Why not just say that there were three people at the table.

Another deus ex conversation happens in the lava tube cell on Pelos. In the previous scene, Kirk was sent to die with his compatriots. He fights to escape, but is recaptured. He is to be taken to the lava tube and executed with the rest of his party, already there. Switch to the lava tube cell, where Spock and Mccoy are talking about how Spock is trying to get them out. Two pages later, with no indication that he has arrived, Spock tells the Captain that he’s ready to try communicating with the ship. I’m liking this book, but it could have stood a little closer to the editor’s pen.

The idea of Vulcan memory suppression seems counterintuitive. A Vulcan employing logic would compartmentalize their knowledge of certain events inimical to the culture, time, place and not use certain events and/or data until such time as it was needed again. Not by suppressing the memory.

Hmm Moments:
Love the way that the agents of the DTI state that when starting from the beginning in investigating a temporal incident too often the starting point when reconstructing what is/has/will happen you start with Captain James T Kirk.

The Christopher Family have played a role in the last 2 ST books that I’ve read. Odd that bit players in a trivial role should reoccur coincidentally back to back like that. And Gary Seven appears offpage.

Commodore Delgado seems driven. Is he going to be the first head of the DTI or the first problem that the DTI need to fix.

Chronologically, this, in Delgado’s perspective, takes place after The Menagerie.

Delgado’s time bug vs the stiff disciplinarian that he was presented as in The Menagerie. Though, I guess we don’t know how much of the way he was presented in The Menagerie was actually Delgado’s personality and how much was the Talosian’s use of his persona as a foil.

With the time frames covered, didn’t we wonder what happened every 7 years with Spock? Amok Time was one ep in the 2nd season of TOS. The time would have come upon him many more times over the years between then and his jumping into the Kelvin Timeline.

WTF Moments:
I begin to wonder, as I move through this story, is Delgado the villain. His motivation to drive the exploration of time forward seems very like zealotry. He’s playing the politics game with all those involved trying to get his way. Makes me wonder if there is something very specific that he wants to do with time travel. Is it just hubris, an almost Khan-ian megalomania, that time travel will make his name writ large in the stars and across history?

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
This is way too thick and crunchy to work as a movie or television series.

Missed Opportunity:
Seems to me that the Verity’s failure to return to where it belonged in the timestream would be a major disruption in and of itself.
_________________________________________________

Last Page Sound:
This gave me that “I could read another two hundred pages of this” feeling.

Author Assessment:
I will read more by this author.

Editorial Assessment:
The two instances of deus ex conversation are the only real quibbles I have with this book.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
instant classic

Disposition of Book:
Irving Public Library
Irving, TX
South Campus

Dewey Decimal System:
PBK
F
BEN

Would recommend to:
friends, family, kids, colleagues, everyone, genre fans, no one
_________________________________________________ ( )
  texascheeseman | Mar 23, 2017 |
This is the second of Christopher L. Bennet's novels about the United Federation of Planets' timecops, the Department of Temporal Investigations. This one goes deeper into the missions of Kirk and his crew and their adventures in time. Again, Bennet takes a look at the concepts of time travel and the nature of time as presented by these moments in Trek history and not only tries to make sense of them in a technical sense, but also asks the philosophical questions, the metaphysical, why is Time like this? What does it mean? And what does it say in the philosophical sense about life, the universe and everything?

A little unintentional Douglas Adams, a little Piers Anthony, especially his Incarnations of Immortality novel about the Incarnation of Time, Chronos, also a meditation on the nature of time and why it is the way it is. ( )
  stonester1 | Jun 14, 2012 |
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Star Trek (2012.04)
Star Trek Relaunch (Book 63) (Chronological Order)
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Agent Teresa Garcia of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations stared at the Starfleet officer across the table.
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In a universe where history as we know it could be wiped out at any moment, only the most disciplined, obsessive, and unimaginative government employees have what it takes to face the existential uncertainty of it all: Federation investigators Lucsly and Dulmur. The agents of the Department of Temporal Investigations are assigned to look into an anomaly that has appeared deep in Federation territory. It's difficult to get clear readings, but a mysterious inactive vessel lies at the heart of the anomaly, one outfitted with some sort of temporal drive disrupting space-time and subspace. To the agents' shock, the ship bears a striking resemblance to a Constitution-class starship, and its warp signature matches that of the original Federation starship Enterprise NCC-1701--the ship of James T. Kirk, that infamous bogeyman of temporal investigators, whose record of violations is held up by DTI agents as a cautionary tale for Starfleet recklessness toward history. But the vessel's hull markings identify it as Timeship Two, belonging to none other than the DTI itself. At first, Agents Lucsly and Dulmur assume the ship is from some other timeline . . . but its quantum signature confirms that it came from their own past, despite the fact that the DTI never possessed such a timeship. While the anomaly is closely monitored, Lucsly and Dulmur must search for answers in the history of Kirk's Enterprise and its many encounters with time travel--a series of events with direct ties to the origins of the DTI itself. . . .

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