STAR TREK
Survivors
By: Jean Lorrah
?These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It?s continuing mission: to seek out strange new worlds, to search for new civilizations, to boldly go where no-one has gone before!?

The Title.
The title is STAR TREK Survivors (1989). Star trek is the title of a series. The book Survivors is number four in the series.
The writer.
The writer is Jean Lorrah. She is a well known science-fiction writer mainly because she?s a good friend of Gene Roddenberry the brain behind the STAR TREK phenomenon. She was very pleased when he asked if she would like to write some STAR TREK books, next to the television series and movies.
The place of action.
The place of action of this book is the planet of Treva. But with STAR TREK as title you?ll probably see that it generally plays in space.
Time
The time used in the book is in a other form as we know. A date is written like this : stardate 432678,3. It exists of six numbers and one number behind a comma. But when they refer to a year they say 2473 earthly years. The book is in the 25th century though.
Characters (In order of importance).
Natasha Yar. She is the main character. Because of her hard youth, she is a secretive and nervous girl, but after she got on the Academy she learned to be patient and calm. From the beginning she saw Daryl Adin, she felt a strange feeling for; him later she discovers it was love.
Daryl Adin. A very clever and good-looking man. He is a leader of a security team on the U.S.S. Cochrane. He also has many fighting, tactical, social and psygological skills.
Lieutenant commander Data. My favorite character, Data is an android (that means a robot with a humanoid posture) , a very special android though, he has a own mind and personality. Data has many skills e.g.: Strength (He is made of a special form of steel, hardly able to be damaged but also physically he is very strong, the fastest ?man? until then), Knowledge (He has a endless virtual memory in his internal computer which contains the whole database of the Federation (a federation between a lot of planets in the alpha quadrant of the galaxy), this is also why he is called data.), Emotions (while he has a endless virtual memory he can store everything he observes. The more he stores the more he sees that sometimes it conflicts with how he is programmed he shows this as feelings.)
Captain Jean-Luc Picard. He is captain of the star-ship U.S.S. Enterprise. He is a very wise man, highly respected in the Starfleet (the army of the Federation) that?s why he is captain on the biggest, and stongest ship of the Starfleet.
The story
In the begin is decribed the way Natasha lives on her home planet, New Paris. It?s is a dangerous world fallen into a anarchy after a devastating war. The crime rate is very high because of the lack of food and other things. When Tasha, as she calls herself, just got assaulted by a group of rapers, the away-team from the star-ship U.S.S. Cochrane showed up and took her with them. She started a new life together with Daryl Adin the man who saved her. He gave her the possibility to go to the Federation Academy where she learned for a security member of a star-ship, just like Daryl Adin was. When she got on the Academy Dare (Daryl Adin) moved on because he belonged on the U.S.S. cochrane. When Tasha is still buzzy with her study Dare unexpectedly shows up because he had to be ?up-dated? with his security skills. Their relationship made a turn to a real relationship after Dare kissed her. They were in the same class and the best of the whole Academy. They both got on a training mission on the U.S.S. Seeker. During the training they were attacked by Orioniers a kind of species which are in war with the Federation. Several years ago Dare made a big strike against the Orioniers. When they got back Dare was found guilty of high-treason and murder because the Orioniers were still after him, so they killed all the officers except him on the U.S.S. Seeker. He was sentenced for an re-education facility. Tasha had to come to his trial as a witness and told the court everything she saw which was negative to Dare so he got very angry about her. He was so angry he escaped thanks to his security skills.
There is now made a jump in the book of several years, Tasha is head of the security team of the Enterprise and Dare is still outlawed.
Tasha got a mission to do some research on the planet of Treva which asked for the help of the Federation. She was assigned together with Lieut. Com. Data, on of her best friends. When they got on Treva they noticed that president Nalavia was making a fool of them because she only wanted the power of the planet. But Tasha got kidnapped by a group of terrorists and Dare was their leader. Dare was first very cynical to Tasha but when he believed her that she never believed in his guilt they grew more and more back to each other. Data managed to break in to the computer of Nalavias palace and made a copy of everything, then he escaped to find Tasha. He found her in Rikans castle. Rikan was a Trevanian Lord who was used to rule the planet but Nalavia put a drug in the drinkwater of the capital and got the power of the government. Dare and his terrorists were hired by Rikan to help him fight against Nalavia. They attacked the drinkwater facilities and destroyed the drugs. Nalavia attacks them very short after this and surprised them well. Dare?s troops and the farmers from Rikans land know to hold them of for a time and when they nearly got outnumbered, Captain Picard shows up thanks to the SOS message Tasha send into space. Very short after they managed to force Nalavia back, the people in the capital had ?awaken? from their ?drug-sleep? and attacked Nalavia?s castle. The crew of the Enterprise helped Rikan to build an new government and to calm the upset people down.
Just before the Enterprise had left, Tasha had arrested Dare, because she was supposed to do that as an head of security. Data and Tasha both know Dare was innocent and tried to find a way to prove it. After some day?s, just before they reached the starbase where Dare would have been taken in custody Data managed to find some erased documents in the Starfleet database (which almost killed him). Dare went back to his terrorists after Starfleet offered his job back, which he declined.
Several months later Tasha got killed on a away-team mission, which surprised the crew of the Enterprise as well as Data and Dare.
Theme.
The main theme in this story is: Trust.
The trust of Tasha against Dare, Dare?s trust against Starfleet and everyone?s trust against Nalavia.
My opinion.
The book appealed to me because I?m an ?Trekkie? , an huge Star Trek fan. Because of the TV series I know and recognized almost al the characters.
The story is very good but hard to follow because the two parts I described in the summary were written in a heap, and that was very confusing.
The writing language was very simple to me (because I am familiar with the technical words thanks to the series.).
An other nice thing, is Data, he?s an story by himself. As he doesn?t understand most of the jokes and other emotion-relevant things he can make very funny remarks.
The only thing that I didn?t like was the end. The complete story is about Tasha getting back on track with her life and when she finally managed to accomplish that, she dies! That was very stupid. But as I watched the series, I know she comes back as her twin sister but that?s something for a next bookreport.