Date: 09 Nov 2012 01:23 Title: Chapter 1
I initially had that thought, too - that this didn't really answer the burden of command being thrust upon someone, but it seems to me this instance will impact how each of these people command others in the future. No where was it stated that it had to be an immediate effect.
Just as I'm sure the events on Tarsus IV affected how James Kirk commanded - part of why he found the war between Eminiar and Vendikar so horrifying, and why he refused to destroy the Denevan colony, but find another alternative to killing off the neural parasites - this will have a profound impact on how each of these three men - McBride, Tripp and Wesley - view the world around them, and how they interact with it, and their fellow servicemen.
I guess I'm trying to say you took the twisty footpath through the scary woods, but it ended up in the same place as the superhighway, at least IMHO. :D Excellent work, madam.
Author's Response:
Oh, I thank you again!
The Eminians really got to me. I found the voluntary surrender of people to be more chilling than almost anything in TOS. I had forgotten about Deneva - had to read up on it - yes, Kirk finds a way to save the people. It would have been easier, of course, to just pull the plug on all of them.
And Kodos - interestingly enough, Hoshi Sato's canon fate is similar; she and her husband are killed (or, perhaps, aren't treated - I can't recall the details and Memory Alpha is coming up short in that area) during a plague - it's a conscious act by their government as they are essentially triaged out of existence.
For the three of them - McBride the witness - he has a life refuting Holocaust deniers. A very different fate for Chuck the card. For Tucker - to, hopefully, face Elizabeth's death head-on and get some peace before his demise. Plus he founds the scholarship so he has a legacy. For Wesley - he can still do what he does. But, sometimes, he'll think about what's going on outside of his own little bubble. But it's like the Traveler said, without peaceful acts, people don't have a lot to do that isn't war. So what he does, even if it sometimes seems frivolous, it's still important in the overall scheme of things.
Date: 09 Nov 2012 01:10 Title: Chapter 5
Wow, jespah. Really a piece to get one thinking - about right and wrong, about justice and revenge, and about racial memory, for the entire human race, to be tasked with remembering all instances of hate and violence against others who are different that have been carried out since the dawn of time, and our responsibility as a species to prevent these things from happening in the future.
Sadly, we are nowhere near the world Roddenberry envisioned, and have a very long road to travel to get there. Hopefully we will one day, before we destroy ourselves unnecessarily. This is a perfect example of the adage: Those who don't learn from the mistakes of the past/history are doomed to repeat them.
Author's Response:
Yanno, I don't really think I answered the challenge about the burdens of command. I guess it's more about the burdens of racial memory.
Thank you so much for reading and reviewing. I wanted to tell this one, because as the witness generation dies off, the Holocaust is questioned and denied more and more. I like to think that, even as far as Wesley's time and farther, that we as a species know that it happened, all of the angles of it, and God I hope we never repeat it.
Date: 09 Nov 2012 00:56 Title: Chapter 4
Nice to see Wesley's lightbulb moment. And I think you're right - if more of us humans as a species -not as an individual race or class - recognized this, there might be less violence in the world.
But the question remains - what will Tripp and Shapiro and Kuzawa and the others do about what sarge did? After all, no matter how you add it up, to wrongs don't make a right.
Author's Response:
I wanted Wesley in particular to pick up on the fact that he's really had it easy. There's a war going on (it's canon!) yet he's wholly unaffected by it. And of course there have got to be peers of his who are going out and fighting it, and they can't all possibly get through it unscathed.
As for the fellows in Dachau, the key is in their witnessing of what's happening all around them, and being witnesses to what they can tell must have happened before.
Date: 09 Nov 2012 00:20 Title: Chapter 3
Wow jespah - that was truly sobering. I visited Dachau in 1982 and it left an indelible impression on me.
I'm ashamed to admit that my history concerning the liberation of the camp is rusty, too. I'm almost afraid to see what's off...
Author's Response:
There are ugly things that happened (for real) during its liberation. Let's just say the liberators don't come off as saints and leave it at that.
Date: 09 Nov 2012 00:02 Title: Chapter 2
And the plot thickens. Yanno, I woulda been disappointed if temporal mechanics didn't come into play at some point. ;-)
Author's Response:
It's all in the temporal interphases ....
Date: 09 Nov 2012 00:01 Title: Chapter 1
A nice start. Waiting to see where you go with this, and if it scares the bejeesus out of me - I'm kinda a wimp that way. ;-)
Author's Response:
Boo. ;)
Date: 05 Nov 2012 22:42 Title: Chapter 5
Finished it last night. I'm usually one for levity, especially when faced with very somber stories, but the most I'll allow myself is:
Ah. Star Trek and Nazis.
That's about as much as I can give for this one; Nazis in Star Trek have been aliens getting "led" down that path by meddlesome humans, or alternate universe. This was [i]real[/i] though, and definitely had a very sobering feel. The philosophical approach to the story felt VERY TOS-ish, which I found enjoyable given the ENT/TNG crossover setting it had. My only...confusion came from the Wesley's "lesson." I'd probably have to re-watch that episode, but I don't know that I remember Wesley feeling that way about any conflict. Still, very well written, very thought provoking, and very much applicable even today. Very well done job, jespah.
Author's Response:
Thank you - I kinda wanted Wes to have a sort of left-turn of a "lesson". TNG always felt, to me, like cruise ships in space. The Borg are horrible of course, but Wes really had an easy time of it. And there were, at the same time, clearly people of his age or so and they were out fighting and dying.
In the episode (which I'm kinda coming into the tail end of it), Bev almost loses her life due to his little experiment. But it doesn't sober him! He just goes onto the next whatever. It was a stand-alone story. And that's fine, but I dunno, I'd feel kind of strange if I had done something and almost lost my mother. What I want is for the Traveler to push him a bit, and show him that all of this is going on around him and he's a very real part of it.
Three parallel lessons - McBride becomes a witness and becomes serious. Tucker begins to allow himself to feel and experience reality (and some of that might give him a little peace about his daughter's death). And Wesley acknowledges that he's kinda got it easy, but what he does is almost as important (we still play ball games during war, so that the people returning home have something to fight for, and to come home to).