Not quite the grandiose and in-depth plot recap I originally had in mind, but at least I finally got it done. This obviously doesn't cover every nook and cranny of the plot up to this point, but it tells you enough of what's going on that you can follow the story from this point going forward if you haven't read the previous chapters (or if you've forgotten them). If you're interested in reading the earlier chapters, It's worth noting that the Birds of Prey two-parter is basically a self-contained mini story within the story, and can be basically skipped over because it's separate from the main narrative. I just saved you 118 pages of reading! (It is a good story, though. Worth reading if you have the time.)
I should be posting the first actual page of the new chapter either tomorrow or Friday to get the ball officially rolling, as they are known to say in ball-rolling circles. Until then, enjoy this obnoxious blurb. I said enjoy!
A while ago, I posted a rant about how Star Trek's money-free economy makes no sense. Of course they have money; even if they don't call it money, it's still money! Sorry, Federation, but you're NOT a post-scarcity civilization. You don't have infinite beachfront property to go around. Not everyone can own a vineyard (looking at you, Picard). Not everyone can captain their own starship. You have scarcity, so you have rationing, and you're codifying that in SOMETHING, even if you don't put a funny symbol in front of the numbers. This flies in the face of what I call Cid's Iron Dictum:
You can convince me to go along with you when you say you can create warp fields to travel faster than light. I'll even look the other way when you say you can do that without violating causality or experiencing time dilation effects. But if you're telling me these people are able to coordinate a sprawling spacefaring civilization but don't have any units for denominating and recording the value of goods and services… GTFO!
So anyway, I thought it was interesting that, in the latest episode of Star Trek: Picard (I think that's what it's called), Picard visits his friend Raffi who was booted out of Star Fleet and finds her living in the Star Trek equivalent of a trailer home, hooked on space crack. Maybe that description is a bit overblown, but she wasn't exactly living in the lap of luxury. Clearly, however their economy is managed, there are still socioeconomic strata. My understanding is that on Earth, people are “given what they need,” which is a nice way of saying it's a command economy. And if that command economy is actually enforcing socioeconomic strata, where some get more than others based on their station in life, that's rather dystopian.
And yes, I know the hardcore trekkies don't consider the new crop of Star Trek shows to be true to Gene Roddenberry's utopian vision of the future. I'd say they're right, however that's not necessarily a bad thing. Star Trek to me is the Peter Pan of sci fi franchises: they're the little boy who never grew up. Some of its ideas about society and human nature are just naive and untenable IMO, and so I like the fact that they're at least making an effort to update it and make it feel like a universe populated by actual flawed human beings and their equally flawed institutions. It may not work for Star Trek in the end and they go back to their old formula, but I'm at least glad they tried.
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