Apparently, the Aventine is Starfleet’s most advanced, top of the line starship, equipped with a quantum slipstream drive and enough weaponry to hold off a Borg cube.

There are experienced Captains who have proven their worth over decades who could be transferred from smaller, older, less prestigious ship to the Aventine. Some of those, no doubt, have been on a command track for their entire lives, and may also be graduates of Starfleet’s Advanced Tactical Training Command School.

For example, if Captain Jones has commanded a Miranda class for ten years, and then an Ambassador class for the next ten years, it makes more sense to transfer him over to command the Aventine.

It rather stretches credulity that Ezri, who’s training wasn’t Command to begin with, would be given such a prestigious ship over those other officers.

As for Picard’s battlefield commission, it should be noted that the first Constellation class ship was commissioned in 2285. When Picard took command of the Stargazer, it was 2333, by which time that class of ship was a full forty-eight years old. Picard didn’t take command of the brand new, prestigious, Galaxy class until 2364, after a full thirty-one years of command service. That’s the kind of experience that’s required to command a top of the line ship. (And no, Trill’s don’t get a free pass to the top of the list. They have to earn it just like everyone else.)

Then again, the publishers do want to utilize the main characters from the series’, each of which is a recognizable “name brand” to capture a reader’s attention. So Ezri’s command has more to do with that, I suspect, than any sensible logic.

I’d also like to see some possible involvement with the Borg theme by the Klingon Empire series. I’ve really gotten into the stories about the IKS Gorkon and the other Chancellor-class warships. And besides, ever since the original introduction of the Borg in “Q-Who,” we’ve never really seen the Borg tangle with the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Dominion, or any other galactic superpower other than the Federation.

Looking forward to the Destiny series! One more question: do we have any idea what these new Vesta-class starships look like? Same for the Luna-class deep space explorers. Any sketches anywhere?

Looking it up, turns out to be one of the seven hills of Rome. Since there are seven ships in the class, I’d think they’d all have the name of one of the hills, but Vesta is not one of the names (instead the goddess of the hearth apparently).

#31 – As Destiny progresses, we’ll see that Ezri does feel a bit overwhelmed by her new billet as the C.O. of a large ship. It’s a role she has to grow into, and, as they say, mistakes will be made….

For the record, I agree that the Borg are overdone, and their mere presence at this point is a bit of a turnoff for me. My hope is that they’re merely used as a convenient (and believable) enemy that would start another war at this point – otherwise they’d have to invent some new race from outside the alpha-beta-gamma area that would have the strength to be a threat to the Federation, and that would take up more focus than the authors (or readers) would want – and that the Borg are more like a background enemy behind the main focus of these stories than a major part of the stories themselves, if you get what I mean.

Do you think I’ll still be able to follow these books even if I don’t know much about DS9 or the characters?