Title: Star Trek: Gateways - What Lay Beyond
Authors: Diane Carey, Peter David, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Christie Golden, Robert Greenberger and Susan Wright
Review by Jacqueline Bundy
As the conclusion to a mega series of crossover novels What Lay Beyond left me feeling extremely disgruntled. The only redeeming element to spending money on this book is the incredible timeline to Star Trek novels that is included at the end. Diehard fans of a particular series or Commander may enjoy the story that features their hero, but you might want to think twice before spending $24 for a hardback title that will most likely leaving you feeling bilked. I will warn you now that the remainder of this review contains spoilers.
What Lay Beyond contains six short stories. Each a conclusion to one of the previous novels in the series. Each penned by the same author that wrote the corresponding book. Each of the prior stories ended with the Commander stepping through a Gateway into the unknown. Those earlier accounts leave you with the impression that whatever the Commander encounters on the other side will be of major importance to the conclusion to the series. Otherwise, why leave the reader hanging like that through the use of a cliffhanger in each novel?
Unfortunately, with the exception of the final story, that is untrue. Hence my feelings of being bamboozled by this series. Granted the title What Lay Beyond is quite apt. In the case of each story we get to learn what lays beyond the Gateway. But what does lay beyond, and what happens there is almost uniformly unnecessary to the overall story. Each of the conclusions could just as easily have been part of the original story, there is no reason, other than selling a extra book, at a hardcover price, for this series to be wrapped up in the manner it has been.
The TOS offering One Small Step by Susan Wright saw Kirk and crew 'set up' the series. It establishes the Petraw, a race of scavengers that search out the technology of other races for their own use and advancement. The Petraw's preferred method of obtaining this technology is to through a con or scam of some kind. When the crew of the Enterprise discovers a Gateway on the abandoned Kalandan outpost, the Petraw show up claiming to be the descendants of the Kalandan's, hoping to dupe their way into getting their hands on the awesome power the Gateways represent. When Luz, one of the Petraw, steals the vital Gateway component and flees to her homeworld through the Gateway, Kirk follows.
One Giant Leap the TOS story is up first in What Lay Beyond. Kirk finds himself on the Petraw home world, seemingly stranded and a prisoner of the Petraw. Luz is unhappy when the credit for obtaining the Gateway technology is awarded to her Commander, Tasm, and not herself. Collaborating with Kirk, the two hide out until they finally have the chance to seemingly steal back the Gateway technology which the Petraw are laboring to unlock. In the ensuing struggle Kirk seemingly destroys the Gateway, but not before he a Luz use it to flee to Earth where Luz warns Kirk, "We haven't seen the last of my people yet."
One Small Step, in terms of the writing was the weakest of the Gateways novels. The feeble characterizations and poor dialogue in the writing carry through to One Giant Leap. On the bright side, One Giant Leap does give us a good look at the Petraw society. The TOS component of the series does establish who the Petraw are and how they obtained the Gateway technology in the first place. These elements are necessary to the overall story.
Chainmail by Diane Carey, featuring the Challenger crew was the second book. The entire story had nothing whatsoever to do with the Gateway series as a whole. Yes there was a Gateway in the Belle Terre sector. And yes Nick Keller does go through it. To another dimension. In Exodus, the second story, Keller succeeds in convincing the Living to travel through the Gateway back to where they originally came from and they all travel back to the Belle Terra sector. So the Challenger component establishes that the Gateways can be used to travel to other dimensions. Interesting but not necessary as that is also established elsewhere.
Demons of Air and Darkness, the DS9 book by Keith R.A. DeCandido, was one of the two standout novels of the series, the other being Cold Wars. Demons advances the DS9 relaunch characters and the previous story line already established for those characters in prior DS9 novels as does Cold Wars. On it's own Demons of Air and Darkness is a well written, edge of your seat book. It also adds to the overall series in many ways. And the Horn and Ivory short story is by far the best included in What Lay Beyond. After traveling through a Gateway in the Gamma Quadrant at the end of Demons, Kira finds herself on ancient Bajor. What she experiences while there will change her character forever.
The Voyager novel No Man's Land by Christie Golden, like the Challenger component, adds nothing to the overall series. While it was filled with Golden's usual deft touch with the characterizations of the Voyager crew, it's plot is too far removed from the rest of the story to really be interesting in terms of the crisis occurring elsewhere in the series. As the fourth story in What Lay Beyond, In the Queue despite the titles clever play on words is the stupidest excuse for an ending I've read in quite some time.
The most disappointing and bizarre story in What Lay Beyond was, for me, Death after Life. This was the New Frontier offering by Peter David. While Cold Wars as a novel was wonderful, it's ending left much to be desired. We left Calhoun and Shelby battered, bruised and near death in Cold Wars. In Death after Life Calhoun and Shelby find themselves on the other side of the Gateway where they are forced to continuously relive a past event on Calhoun's homeworld of Xenex, dying over and over again . They have traveled to Kaz'hera, the Xenexian version of the Valhalla, the afterlife. While it does present the character of Calhoun with an opportunity to confront his own past, and Calhoun and Shelby as newly married characters to explore what they feel for each other, as a much anticipated conclusion to what was an extremely enjoyable novel it was a complete dud.
That brings us to the final story, the TNG tale The Other Side. The third novel Doors Into Chaos by Robert Greenberger is the key to the entire series. Picard, having a background of sorts with the Iconians and their Gateways, is the logical leader of the cooperative effort to find a way to shut down the Gateways. In the series the book Doors Into Chaos is used to illustrate the magnitude of the crisis facing the Galaxy, and to establish that it is indeed the race of the Petraw that we met in the first novel who are behind the awakening of the Iconian Gateways. With the scam they are trying to pull off this time they realize that they have grossly miscalculated. When confronted, they admit that they did not know what all of the consequences of so many active Gateways would be and that they don't know how to turn them off.
Picard's journey through a Gateway is a desperate attempt to locate the ancient Iconians and find a way of shutting down the entire Gateway network. Picard does indeed find the descendants of the Iconians and while they themselves cannot help him, they do provide him with the information to try to accomplish the deed himself. He must locate the Master Resonator, a device that, when located, should shut down the network of Gateways. After being sent on his way Picard finds himself on an alien world, once populated by the Iconians. With the aid of a local inhabitant discovers that instead of just one device there are 14. Thankfully there is also a map of sorts that tells Picard which Gateways the resonators must be inserted into.
After returning to the Enterprise via a Gateway the race is on to get all the resonators into place before time runs out. This requires the cooperation of numerous ships and draws back into the story the Defiant, the Excalibur and the Trident. As well as several other familiar ships and characters. The joint effort is successful and the Petraw are sent on their way with the warning never to try to pull anything on the Federation again. Despite tying everything up The Other Side left much to be desired. The mysterious Iconians a major chagrin.
The entire series, as crossovers go, was a major disappointment to me. I was left feeling frustrated and regretful at the finish. The premise that the reactivation of the Iconian gateways has caused a galaxy spanning crisis was interesting enough. But unfortunately the idea behind the series goes unfulfilled in the overambitious form that the series took. The editors tried to take six separate series of novels, spanning two centuries and three quadrants of the galaxy, and create one overall story. In some ways it worked, but in most ways it was unfulfilling.
Seven novels to tell this story was not only unnecessary, but in trying to spread it out as they did, the editors overreached themselves. This ambitious story could just as easily told in so many other ways. And it would have been a lot less disjointed, and more satisfying to read. But what really gets under my skin was how taken I felt when reading What Lay Beyond. The was no reason at all that these six respective endings could not have been included in the prior novels other than that the TNG component is the key to it all and as the third book there would be no reason for the subsequent four books. No reason at all except for Pocket Books to attempt to pull off a con of their own.
