In today’s episode, Janeway brought some baggage with her to the Academy, and I don’t just mean her duffel bag full of coffee. But unless she can pull her head out of her butt long enough to make a friend that isn’t a hologram, her Starfleet career might end before it even starts. Is Starfleet Academy a multiverse hub? Does the replicator know what’s good for you better than you do? And how many bonded-twin races can one galaxy hold? All this and more in Lifeline, the book that knows how to game the system but isn’t telling.

Lifeline
Authors: Bobbi JG Weiss, David Cody Weiss
Pages: 116
Published: August 1997
Timeline: 18 years before “Caretaker” (VOY 1×01/02)
Prerequisites: Events from Mosaic are superficially mentioned. Amelia Earhart is as she appears in “The 37’s” (2×01).

Kathryn Janeway’s first day at the Academy isn’t going so hot. She’s still reeling from her breakup with Cheb Packer and upset that her admiral dad had to go deal with Cardassian stuff instead of seeing her off. Then she discovers she has not the standard one roommate, but two: ThrumPol, as they are collectively called—psychically linked identical twins from Diaso II who have been allowed to room together because they’re not quite ready for their adult link-breaking phrase yet. And to top it off, their cadet group commander, Etienne Mallet,1The book says it’s pronounced “may-lay”, but I think of it more like /’mæ’le/. is one of the Academy’s toughest, with a reputation for holding surprise drills and inspections—including on the very first day of class, when he saves a little extra French contempt for Kathryn’s Tarkalian coffee bean stash.

“I’m your best friend? Please say sike.”

Besides the unpredictable intrusions, Kathryn has trouble figuring out how to fit some pleasure into her business and only feels comfortable confiding her woes in her ADA Sylvia Costas Amelia Earhart hologram, which even the hologram thinks is kind of weird. During one particularly disastrous drill, Thrum accidentally transmits some psychic panic to Pol, causing Pol to abandon her post out of concern for her sister, and for Kathryn to do the same in turn for Pol. Mallet explains that in real life, Kathryn’s actions could have had catastrophic consequences. He assigns Kathryn and Pol to holosuite training after and on top of their regular classes to solve a puzzle, which they’ll have to attempt every day until they pass the assignment to his satisfaction—i.e., until they learn the lesson he expects them to learn from it.

I don’t have a lot to say about this book. The most prominent quality of it is that Janeway is an absolute ogre to everyone around her until close to the end. It’s a wonder anyone is still willing to call her a friend by the final page, and it’s only because of these friends (and other supporting characters) that this book is not a completely infuriating abomination. The poor sap who gets the brunt of her ire is Dunkirk Frost, who has never been to space because his family believes humankind wasn’t made for the stars, and comes across as a scatterbrained, albeit polite bumpkin. He likes Kathryn and asks her out to concerts and the like, but he’s the furthest thing from some skeeze looking to get into her pants; he just wants to see her not be so stressed out. Yet he’d be treated better if he stood at the bottom of a Klingon laundry chute. Like, if you want him off your back so bad, Kathryn, just tell him you’re dating Hobbes. Yeesh!

It would be one thing if the only lesson Kathryn had to learn was how to not be a terrible person, but unfortunately, she also suffers from a severe lack of critical thinking faculty. It’s obvious what her problem is for nearly the entire book, so it’s a brutal slog riding the clock out until the light-bulb moment where she realizes, long after the reader and everyone around her, that accepting help from others is the key to solving all her problems. There are only two more Voyager YA novels after this one, and they’re each written by different authors, so here’s hoping one or both of them have a Janeway that’s a little more pleasant to be around.

MVP & LVP

• This book’s MVP is Hally Coogan, who earns the nickname “Sleepless” by showing up for Mallet’s surprise inspections in a crisp uniform with an impeccably made bed while everyone else gets caught with their pants down. When asked the secrets of his success, he shrugs it off and basically tells everyone, “Sucks to suck, I guess.” It could be argued that it’s more in keeping with Starfleet attitudes to share your knowledge with your community—a rising tide lifting all boats and all that—but honestly, pretending the solution is self-evident and being super-smug about it is really funny. Dunkirk eventually figures out that he pulls it off by sleeping in uniform on top of his sheets, and later on during a simulation where the gravity goes out, Coogan activates a lift while in zero-g (extremely stupid) and gets dressed down for it. And of course Janeway seizes on that mistake and is like, “Huh, guess he’s not so perfect after all!” Hold up, hold up, let me check the score real fast … yeah, just as I thought, that’s one for Hally Coogan, which, if my math checks out, narrows the gap between his screw-ups and Janeway’s from 500 to 499.
• Our LVP this week is Janeway. Hopefully the previous three paragraphs have made that crystal clear.

Stray Bits

• The artwork in this book is outstanding! I opened this one expecting the usual Todd Cameron Hamilton self-taught-and-it-shows parade, and instead got treated to some much lovelier work by Jason Palmer, who did a lot of work on Star Trek DC comics back then and is still going hard to this day. (Might have to get myself that Roy Kent print.) Palmer saved the best for first: the picture below appears just a few pages in, and contains a treasure trove of Easter eggs. One can spot a DeLorean flying among the shuttles, Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi hanging out by a trash can, Lobot casually strolling not too far from them, and Mulder & Scully tucked between Janeway’s hip and hand. If Doctor Who had been an active property around this time, you’d almost certainly have seen a TARDIS in this picture as well. And that’s not even getting to the Boothby appearance! It reminds me of the cameos in Ishmael, except in a way cooler form.

• Kathryn spends nearly three full pages trying to get the replicator to give her a salad with “raspberry flavored [sic] gelatin cubes with little marshmallows in them.” [imagine I am delivering this next sentence like Norm MacDonald] Maybe it won’t do that for you because that’s incredibly disgusting. (pp. 37–39)

Final Assessment

Bad. Any book that asks you to sympathize with a completely unsympathetic main character has its work cut out for it, and Lifeline doesn’t come anywhere close to passing muster. Some fun supporting characters and gorgeous artwork keep this one from being a total write-off, but they can only shoulder so much of the load, and when those things aren’t within reach and all you’ve got for company is this book’s version of Janeway, moving forward suddenly becomes a brutal task.

NEXT TIME: The Excalibur begins to overextend itself in The Two-Front War