Thank you for allowing me to read your story. I found it immensely entertaining and difficult to put down. I don’t know how you made me care about characters in a story where character deaths were just fodder for bad storytelling, but I definitely did. In the prologue, I felt like this was a run-of-the-mill sci-fi story with bad creatures and poor character writing, which is exactly what you intended! The idea of Borkovian landworms immediately made me think of Dune and the reveal toward the end of the book that the sub-writer had just seen Dune made the inclusion so much better. I have to admit I didn’t watch much of the original Star Trek outside of the movies but I was familiar with the idea of Red Shirts and how they were pretty much guaranteed not to survive. This novel reminded me a lot of Galaxy Quest and Meeting John Malkovich (because of the meta-ness of it). I haven’t read a whole lot of meta-modernist fiction, but based on this read, I need to read more of it. Without further ado, onto the full beta review:

Characters:

Adrian Dahl – I thought it was interesting that both Adrian and his real-life counterpart were the ones who entertained Jenkin’s idea that they were being controlled by the narrative and that an alternate world existed. In fact, this was something that all the characters seemed to share with their real-world counterparts, as evidenced by Lt. Kolarsky’s rendezvous with his actor, but more on that later. The way that Adrian introduces himself to all the other notable Redshirts of the story is great. I didn’t even notice until later how cliché it was for all the characters to just spill their entire backstory upon first meeting each other.

Adrian was instantly a likable protagonist, but not for any reason I can really put my finger on outside of he was a likable guy, willing to please, and excited for his new assignment. He seemed like the perfect protagonist for this story, he was caring, and a little logical, but also willing to divorce his worldviews and accept the information, how unbelievable it was, that was given to him. I especially liked the part about The Box with him. It seemed like the crux of this story, that a mundane sci-fi prop could somehow solve any issue as long as there was a time constraint and the information was provided in a way that made it look like good television.

Finn – Finn reminded me a lot of the Han Solo character. Of course, Solo was never in Star Trek, but the similarities are too many to ignore. He’s a smuggler, and is resistant to accepting ‘The Narrative’. I thought that the main characters had circumvented The Narrative when they drug Maia to prevent her from going on the mission, but when it turns out that Finn’s former crewmate is the mastermind of the assassination attempt it left me with a sense of dread. Finn’s death is what cemented in my mind that ‘The Narrative’ was real and there was no escaping it outside of going into the past and convincing the show writers to stop.

Maia – I loved the fact that Maia didn’t become the love interest for Andrew. I enjoy that about a lot of your works, that the main character and a side character’s love isn’t the B-story. One of my favorite moments with Maia was the “I owe you a blowjob” moment. It was such a funny and appropriate moment. I can imagine a group of ensigns coming up with an inside joke like that.

Jimmy – I forgot about Jimmy a lot of the time. He definitely seemed like a side character, so at the end when you revealed he was the writer for an extra meta dose, it was perfect. I don’t think his lack of action took away from the story either. I never felt like I was missing what he was doing and it’s only after his epilogue that I noticed that he didn’t have an actor doppelganger.

Jasper – A seemingly unimportant character, after the debacle on the evil robot ship I did notice that he wasn’t being taken on any other missions. I didn’t know what to think of that until it was revealed that his actor doppelganger was none other than the showrunner’s son in a coma. Jasper’s inclusion made the story believable. I wondered if the show would be willing to sacrifice success just because they met some people who claimed to be from an alternate universe. The twist of having Jasper stay behind and taking the son to their world to be magically cured cinched the ending.

Anatoly Kerensky – As the only member of the bridge that the characters interact with outside of the narrative, it was really rewarding to hear Krensky’s retelling of how he was going on away missions for no reason. He had so many injuries from away missions, but yet anytime the captain asked him to head one, he felt like it was a good idea and agreed even though his background in no way made him an ideal candidate to run an away mission. I especially liked the drunken night where he talked about how much physical damage he’s had to endure over the years. There is also of course the great scene where he and his doppelganger spend the night together talking and how everyone assumes they’re having sex. I think if I went to an alternate universe and met my doppelganger it would be an extremely deep conversation that we would have as well. This added to my idea that the characters of the book had the same traits as the actors who portrayed them.

Plot – So many good things to say here. I’ve already mentioned how much I enjoyed the idea of the story within a story within a story, but I felt like your codas were the cherry on top. The fact that the show writer was struggling with his writing and was visited by the ghosts of his dead characters was great. I liked the idea that they weren’t opposed to dying but rather were opposed to dying for no reason. I think that is probably something that a lot of writers struggle with. You want stakes but you don’t exactly want to kill off your main characters so some writers might put in supporting characters just to have them die. How would that supporting character feel if their entire purpose was to die?