This week, a species called the Hive sucks a Bajoran colony world dry, but it’s hardly a happy ending. But when the Hive does the splits, Sisko has to throw together a basic etiquette lesson plan as both Bajor and Cardassia Prime get ready to fight back. Is the Great Design all it’s cracked up to be? Will young Tork turn into a Young Turk? And is this yet another job for the Emissary? All this and more in Objective: Bajor, the book that’s awfully stingy with the uniforms.

Objective: Bajor
Author: John Peel
Pages: 278
Published: June 1996
Timeline: Between seasons 3 and 4
Prerequisites: Characters recur from the Bajoran coup arc (S2, episodes 1, 2, and 3) and from “Destiny” (S3E15); also, the political situation on Bajor is current as of “Shakaar” (S3E24)

With a journey spanning half a million years and thousands of generations drawing to a close, the species known as the Hive are about to carry out the operation they call the Great Design. As the big day approaches, a male Hiveling named Tork (not to be confused with Tosk) is on the cusp of becoming a Hivemaster, one of their highest leaders. Tork has the hots for Sahna, whose own Determination is likely to find her becoming an astronomer—an undesirable job, but one she is good at, since she is one of the few Hivers who does not scream and curl up in the fetal position at the sight of open space. Trouble begins to brew, however, when Tork and Sahna are assigned to separate teams for the Great Design’s rollout. Tork’s friend Harl, who harbors a low opinion of the Hivemasters, believes it was done on purpose, and fears that Tork will succumb to the temptation to abuse his new power to get his girlfriend on his crew.

The first phase of the Great Design unfolds at Darane IV, a Bajoran colony planet. The Hivians tell the inhabitants that they’re taking the planet’s resources for their own needs, which, naturally, is met with stubborn resistance. Well, “naturally” to us, anyway: the Hivelets view migration into space as the natural progression of any reasonably intelligent race, and feel that being so attached to a mere ball of water and rock and grass is literally a mental illness. Unable to see eye to eye, the Hiveadelics move forward with phase one. And a brutal phase one it is: they literally boil the entire planet and siphon off the metals and minerals, leaving only about a thousand survivors who are able to evacuate in time.

Those raw materials enable them to split their one ship into two, with one headed for Bajor and the other for Cardassia Prime. The Cardassians are content to handle things their own blustery, offense-heavy way, and the book regularly checks in on them even after leaving them to their own devices for the full duration, but of course, with Bajor threatened directly, Sisko is forced to be involved on that side. In an attempt to understand the Hive’s motives, he agrees to a guided tour of some non-sensitive areas of their ship. During the tour, some drones explode, for which Harl is framed, but Sisko and Dax’s swift and decisive action, along with Odo’s Columbo-esque dismantling of the framing attempt before the Hivemasters (a truly delectable scene), impresses Tork and Sahna enough to agree to a reciprocal tour of Bajor. Can Sisko reverse generations of ingrained agoraphobia and prejudices about living planetside fast enough to keep Bajor from suffering the same fate as Darane IV?

I found a lot to enjoy in this one, both conceptually and flavoristically. Most of all, I appreciated the behavior of the Hive, which was refreshingly alien to a degree that is sadly less common than it should be in Star Trek. Many of the supposedly alien qualities of other Trek races are, when you really unpack them, extreme variations on traits we hope to explore and better understand in ourselves—the Vulcans’ capacity for logic over emotion, the capitalistic greed of the Ferengi, the bloodlust of the Klingons, etc. Challenging basic assumptions we have about all sentient life produces more interesting work, I think, and the more basic an assumption an author can challenge, the more potentially interesting we’re talking. This can go sideways, of course,1cf. “What if a planet didn’t rotate on its axis?” from Twilight’s End, which for all I know may have some actual grounding in science, but which I remember calling “exquisitely stupid”, an assessment that as of this review I still stand by. but I think Peel gets a lot of great mileage and character interplay out of turning something as taken for granted as living on a planet on its head.

I was also surprised by how much Objective: Bajor seemed to have to say about our current cultural climate. There is much slinging of propaganda, misinformation, and historical revision, and Hosir, an older, more vestigial Hivemaster with no official job and a pleasantly Uncle Iroh-esque aspect, exhorts Tork to look past all that and continue pursuing his theory that some of the Hive’s ancient texts have been edited in minor yet significant ways. Tork himself is a very fascinating character that I best understood to be a sort of neoliberal, which is to say he has a superficial understanding of compassion but ultimately has faith in institutions to course-correct themselves and do the right thing on their own. Objective: Bajor illustrates well how such beliefs can cause real, tangible harm to innocent populations, and watching Tork try nothing and be all out of ideas felt acutely like far too many of the weaksauce Democrat capitulations I’ve witnessed even just in my lifetime.

Another aspect of Objective: Bajor I appreciated quite a bit is that it’s the first DS9 novel to really feel invested in the world of the series. All of a sudden we’re out of the series bible and midway through the series, and the difference is honestly a bit mindblowing. Shakaar, Kai Winn, and even the wormhole aliens are used to great effect, and there’s even one guest character throwback I won’t spoil but which I enjoyed. In fact, it’s almost more intriguing to consider the characters Peel doesn’t use; Bashir and Quark barely register in this one at all, and what little presence they do muster feels like it may have been included at an editor’s behest. This is the first DS9 story to feel as though it was written both by a fan and for them, in the best way possible.

Among the few real knocks I have against this one are a rather rushed, kinda-sorta deus ex machina ending and the sort of quick acceptance of revolution that present-day human behavior has wrecked a great deal of my faith in the plausibility of. Otherwise, it’s easily the best Deep Space Nine story to date. Although that show is by far the least ambulatory series of the franchise, the least prone to seeking out new life per the Starfleet credo, in this story it hits on one of the newest- and freshest-feeling lifeforms I’ve encountered in a minute. It’s good to be able to finally unreservedly recommend a DS9 novel.

MVP & LVP

• My choice for this week’s MVP is Sahna. Her fearlessness looks that much better next to Tork’s vacillating, and she’s got an admirably firm set of principles. Tork traded up landing her for sure.
• The LVP of the week is Harl. Not because he sucks or anything—just that in the beginning he’s set up to be the main foil to Tork’s philosophy, but after he’s cleared of sabotaging the drones, he disappears from the story entirely. I think he potentially could have been the most interesting appeal to conscience for Tork, but the story already has kind of a surplus of those, and I guess he just got short shrift. Too bad.

Stray Bits

• Cover Art Corner: Sisko is wearing his dress uniform for no discernible reason. Kira makes the cover despite not seeing much noteworthy action.
• Gul Gavron returns! Eagle-eyed readers might recall the name from John Peel’s similarly outstanding DS9 book for younger readers, Prisoners of Peace, where his daughter proved to be quite the conscientious objector. His role is actually pretty beefy here. Is this the first instance of a character in a YA novel recurring in the mainline books? I know it happens in New Frontier, but I wasn’t aware of any such occurrence before that.
• “Realizing she had been injured in the blast, Kira grimaced. ‘Another new uniform requisition,’ she sighed. ‘I hate filling out those forms.'” — Forms? You can’t just replicate a new one, like on the Enterprise? This isn’t Voyager; you don’t have rations. Do the Cardassian replicators botch the thread count? Use a material that feels like burlap? Is Garak booked solid? Even on creaky old Terok Nor, I don’t get why this is a problem. (p. 274)

Final Assessment

Excellent. This is the first DS9 novel to really live up to the series’s potential. A greater variety of characters is used to powerful effect, and the book has a lot to say about imperialism and not always believing what the textbooks tell you. The Hive feel truly alien with their prejudices about living on a planet, and it makes for some great interactions and dynamics. Well executed on all levels; an easy recommend.

NEXT TIME: Jake and Nog land a dream gig in Highest Score