I wanted to come up with some semi-clever title about Redshirts to prove how clever I am, but I couldn't. And so blood loss makes dullards of us all. Oh well. I don't think that it's much of a spoiler to say that at it's heart, Redshirts is about Star Trek though, so let me get that out of the way right off. If you don't know what a redshirt is, follow the link and hang your head in shame, because even I know and I have seen ONE episode of Star Trek.
Star Trek isn't a big deal to me, so I might fall out of the target market of this book a little bit; I liked Wrath of Khan (and I love randomly opening this window to annoy my roommate whenever I'm slightly vexed - major sound warning. Seriously. It's really annoying.), and I liked the remake but thought it was too careful not to upset the diehard fans who care about the reboot continuity. It's not like Batman Begins tried to tell us that this happened in a different timeline as the first Batman movie, Adam West TV series, and original comic books because Superman traveled around the Earth quickly; it's just a different story, deal with it.
So with that out of the way, I can say that I thought Redshirts was enjoyable and entertaining. It was less enjoyable and entertaining than any of Scalzi's other books, and I'm not even a Scalzi fan. The premise starts off entertainingly enough, more or less 'ordinary' science fiction heroes stuck on a starship that has the same stupid shit that happened to the poor crew of the old Enterprise. Away missions are invariably fatal to the poor redshirt stuck accompanying the senior officer, the laws of drama have more power than the laws of physics, and technobabble explanations are the order of the day.
The first half of the book was definitely the more entertaining half though. Once the true explanation is revealed, however, the quality plummets. The book devolves into overly meta nonsense. I don't want to drop any major spoiler bombs that an intelligent reader couldn't figure out two pages in, so I'll avoid specifics, but by the end the characters are practically breaking the fourth wall, which has always seemed to me incredibly amateurish. But if you like meta stuff, maybe you'll like the second half, I don't know.
To me, though, it's always amounted to intellectual masturbation, ultimately pointless. It essentially involves lampshading the lack of any real story or characterization. Speaking of characterization, it's weaker than Scalzi's usual fare, which I think even he would agree is not his greatest strength. And that might be why the book just didn't click for me; the characters are weak. In terms of how they're characterized, regardless of whatever rank they might hold in Starfleet (or whatever the organization is called in the book), they're extras. To put it simply, they're not main character material. I don't end up caring more about them by the end than I do at the beginning.
And despite Howard Taylor's description of the book as a call to arms to creators, well, I've always been against what I could describe as dumb, stupid character deaths for the point of drama. In fact, that's where the title of my blog comes from, my critique of character's behavior not stemming from any real motivation, but because THE PLOT DEMANDS IT. And maybe the characters don't die pointlessly, but the narrative still has an iron grip upon the flow of the plot of Redshirts.
So, I realize I sound incredibly negative, but I'm always more negative than positive. I enjoyed Redshirts....but not that much. Maybe I'm just not a Star Trek fan. My next blog post will be about science fiction, space opera, and Star Trek.
No comments:
Post a Comment