In today’s episode, Mackenzie Calhoun’s new captain gets rave reviews from everyone who serves under him. But when a couple of the captain’s relatives get delivered back to the ship extra well-done, Calhoun learns it’s the nice ones you have to watch out for. Is a nice guy who facilitates the destruction of an entire civilization actually nice? Does Starfleet need a touch of Chigurh? And did Calhoun cheat at the Captain’s Table? All this and more in Once Burned, the book that needs Robin Williams to tell him “It’s not your fault.”

Once Burned
Author: Peter David
Pages: 262
Published: October 1998
Timeline: The Grissom story takes place in 2369, which is the year of TNG season 6 and DS9 season 1, so make sure you picture the characters in your head in one of those uniforms and not First Contact–era. (Man, they change uniforms a lot in Starfleet!)
Prerequisites: Mackenzie Calhoun is the main character of the New Frontier novels, and has mentioned the Grissom here and there a few times, but never been willing to talk about it (until now). Admiral Jellico previously appeared as a captain in “Chain of Command” (TNG 6×10+11).

The title of this novel comes from the phrase “once burned, twice shy”, used by Captain Mackenzie Calhoun in reference to his reticence to make command decisions after the experience he relates here. But it could be argued, given what transpires in these pages, that there’s a much darker possible second half to that phrase: once burned, never again.

Previous New Frontier novels have featured glancing references to the Grissom, a ship that Captain Calhoun served on prior to his captaincy aboard the Excalibur. It’s a time in Mackenzie’s life he’s not especially quick to open up about, and for good reason: it’s absolutely terrifying. The trauma that happened there is not the kind you want to go around opening back up willy-nilly. It takes a special place to bring it out, and the Captain’s Table is well-suited to the task.

The book starts out establishing Calhoun’s relationship with the Captain’s Table, which is less necessary than the setup of the Grissom and its inhabitants, but still a little more interesting than in previous books. He actually finds it twice, first after killing a Danteri guard as a young man, the act that will ultimately go on to foment Xenexian revolution. He doesn’t tell a story at that time, but Cap, the proprietor, tells him he’s on the hook for one the next time he drops in. The second time, he actually finds it while blowing off steam in the holodeck of the Excalibur. That’s definitely the wildest place anyone finds it in the series, I think.

On his second visit, David/Calhoun spends a lot of time establishing his introduction to the Grissom, the relationships he builds with the crew, and their loyalty to their captain, Norman Kenyon, as well as emphasizing his gentility, warmth, trustworthiness, and personal integrity. It’s all crucial, however, because the more you warm up to Kenyon and the more you see his subordinates sing his praises, the worse it’s going to feel when the other shoe drops. You can even guess what’s generally going to happen the moment certain characters are introduced—namely, Kenyon’s brother Byron and daughter Stephanie, who work for the diplomatic corps, and are on hand to help negotiate peace between the pacifistic Carvargna and the warmongering Dufaux. Byron and Stephanie insist on beaming down alone, and Kenyon eventually relents on the condition that they get subcutaneous trackers and check in every hour on the hour. Sure enough, after a few hours, they don’t check in on time, and Kradius, the leader of the Dufaux, sends them back to the Grissom extra-crispy and mutilated nearly beyond recognition.

Considering what just got dropped on his doorstep, Kenyon takes it well—way too well. Calhoun is wigged out by his eerie calm and the way he carries on as if his brother and daughter weren’t brutally murdered to send him a message, and he tries to warn everyone else on the senior staff that there’s something rotten in the system of Anzibar, but they’re all too blinded by his service record and what a gosh-darned nice guy he is. It’s gut-wrenching, because you know every moment Calhoun’s crewmates spend not taking him seriously is a moment where Kenyon gets closer to crossing the Rubicon. Even as he’s supplying the Carvargna with weapons equal to the Dufaux’s and falsifying Starfleet communiqués to excuse returning for the big battle, everyone insists he’s too nice to do anything truly awful. I’m not kidding when I say I spent a substantial chunk of this book trying to yell sense into various characters and literally shaking as I wondered what Kenyon would ultimately prove capable of.

Late in the book, Calhoun likens the situation to one of those TOS episodes where a superior officer absolutely loses it and breaks the hell out of every possible noninterference directive on the books, and that’s a pretty apt comparison. He quotes Kirk’s autobiography, in which Kirk speaks of looking into the wayward officer’s eyes and knowing he would be capable of similar atrocities if the circumstances were right. Norman Kenyon is a cautionary tale, warning us that even the kindest souls can be broken by the right (wrong?) trigger, and that a bright enough light of good will can blind even those with the most acute vision.

Once Burned raises a lot of hard questions. When do you trust your instincts? When do you go against them? When is the right moment to throw the rules and regulations entirely out the window? Is there one moment, or is it the culmination of several accumulating factors? Most of Kenyon’s crew are like the frog that dies in boiling water because it doesn’t sense the gradual temperature increase. Calhoun considers the whole thing a major personal failure, because there were times when he even went against his own instincts and allowed things to happen that he should have put a stop to. But is the fault with him or with the people who didn’t listen to him? He was right the whole time, but there’s no colder comfort than being right about something like that. It’s a grim tale with no winners, considerably darker than even the TOS adventures he compares it to.

Books like Once Burned are rapidly making Mackenzie Calhoun my favorite 90s Trek captain. Though at first glance he has some of the hallmarks of the typical 90s antihero, in truth he’s a complicated man with a strong moral code, a man who wants so badly to replace a youth full of barbarism and mere survival with a more civilized and aspirational system, but keeps bumping up against the limits of that system and having to solve his dilemmas with his old knowledge. What he wants more than anything is to be able to do the right thing without it taking such a toll on his spirit—but have you done the right thing if it doesn’t? Is such a thing possible? Like so many of the questions raised by this novel, it’s one for the ages.

MVP & LVP

• Calhoun is of course the MVP here. He identifies correctly what’s going on before anyone else, and he works harder than anyone else to put a stop to it. His actions here are also directly what leads to him earning a captaincy, even though that disgusts him.
• LVP is Dr. Villers, the chief medical officer of the Grissom. Everything that comes out of her mouth is rock-stupid, perhaps nothing more so than when she accuses Calhoun of slagging Kenyon to advance his own ascendance to the captaincy. What is this, a Klingon battle cruiser? She finally realizes Kenyon has crossed the point of no return at a “SpongeBob! Your house is gone!” level of slowness on the uptake, and even at that point, her compliment manages to be the dumbest thing she could have said. Villers might be the most gawping smooth-brain to ever wear a Starfleet uniform. Viscerally and vocally hated this character. You think Pulaski is a bad character? Spend a book with Villers.

Stray Bits

• The way Calhoun starts out telling his story, it makes it seem like he’s addressing you directly. It’s very flattering: “Oh, he decided to tell me his story! That means I’m a captain at the Captain’s Table!” It turns out later he is talking to a specific someone, and it’s actually a pretty deflating reveal, enough so that I’m half of a mind that Cap should have tossed him out in the street over it. Maybe the catharsis was good enough to get him off the hook. It’s not my bar, after all.
• Calhoun sees Kenyon in the Captain’s Table, and is warned sternly by Cap not to talk to him and reveal his fate to him, for the reason that “no man should know his own destiny. No man can know; otherwise he just becomes a pawn of fate and no longer a man.” Pike is the next visitor at the Table, but I suppose then it’s good that it’s not the Strange New Worlds version of the character that drops in. (45)
• Calhoun comes highly recommended to Kenyon by, of all people, one Admiral Edward Jellico, though that changes by the end. It’s fun learning what turned their relationship sour. (64–65, 247)

Final Assessment

Excellent. There’s nothing worse than knowing something bad is going to happen and having to wait to see what specific flavor of bad it’s going to be. But Peter David captures that sensation uncomfortably well in Once Burned, a novel that I had actual physical reactions to. While it’s frightening how there is always at least one confluence of events that can cause someone everyone considers nice to snap, it’s even more frightening that the people surrounding that person will allow themselves to be blinded by loyalty and accumulated good will until it’s way past too late. This is a harrowing book, with a lot of discomfiting yet valuable ideas we might well need to keep in our back pockets in the years to come.

NEXT TIME: Captain Pike finds the place Where Sea Meets Sky