To his credit though, Bennett has turned these difficulties into windfalls. Over a Torrent Sea echoes the very first Titan novel in its harking back to the ideals of the original series, telling a colourful little morality tale in an exotic locale that champions character over spectacle - and doing so plausibly, too. Now, more than ever, Starfleet needs a ship to carry the flag forwards. It needs a hero like Captain William T Riker to inspire the Federation’s careworn citizens, even when he’d rather be helping to protect and rebuild the union of planets that he’s sworn allegiance to.
Bennett’s science fiction plot is slow to unfold, and, even when it does, seasoned Trekkers won’t find anything new in how the Titan’s crew’s desire to learn more about a beautiful ocean world and its inhabitants inadvertently puts those inhabitants at risk, raising a whole host of ‘Prime Directive’ questions into the bargain. Ultimately this story’s drama isn’t borne of what happens on Droplet, but what happens in the hearts and minds of the story’s showcased crew members.
Above all else, Over a Torrent Sea belongs to Titan’s Selkie navigator, Aili Lavena, whose naked form proudly adorns its front cover. Earlier Titan novels had referenced the aquatic ensign’s brazen promiscuity, and specifically her one-time liaison with her captain back in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season, and some had even hinted at the shame she felt in exploiting most beings’ misapprehensions about her species in order to lead a wantonly hedonistic lifestyle. However, Bennett is the first author to really sell the character; to really get inside her head and explore her motivation for enlisting in Starfleet, her feelings towards her Titan crewmates, and now, crucially, towards Droplet’s squales too. Despite the sympathy that he engenders for Lavena, Bennett imbues her with a real sense of danger; a reckless, flighty quality that keeps the reader guessing as to where her loyalties will lie, and how tightly she’ll cling to her newfound ethics when she finds herself imprisoned in the nude alongside her now-married captain – perhaps forever.
But despite the novel’s tight focus on Lavena, Bennett also delves into two of Titan’s most remarkable characters who, like Lavena, don’t quite conform to the lofty expectations of their races. The ship’s Vulcan tactician, Tuvok, is at his most fascinating here as the walls that hold his primal emotions in check are now paper-thin following the death of his son at the hands of the Borg. Vulcan philosophy allows for, and indeed even encourages, the grieving process, but despite the ministrations of both his resident wife and the ship’s Betazoid counsellor, there is now a fury within the USS Voyager alumnus that he can’t even recognise, let alone hope to suppress. Meanwhile, the ship’s Pahkwa-thanha chief medical officer is also forced to face up to his own shortcomings in the eyes of his race when Riker and Troi’s baby seems set on an early arrival, triggering terrifying, unrequited paternal instincts that might well see him court-martialled.
But despite the novel’s tight focus on Lavena, Bennett also delves into two of Titan’s most remarkable characters who, like Lavena, don’t quite conform to the lofty expectations of their races. The ship’s Vulcan tactician, Tuvok, is at his most fascinating here as the walls that hold his primal emotions in check are now paper-thin following the death of his son at the hands of the Borg. Vulcan philosophy allows for, and indeed even encourages, the grieving process, but despite the ministrations of both his resident wife and the ship’s Betazoid counsellor, there is now a fury within the USS Voyager alumnus that he can’t even recognise, let alone hope to suppress. Meanwhile, the ship’s Pahkwa-thanha chief medical officer is also forced to face up to his own shortcomings in the eyes of his race when Riker and Troi’s baby seems set on an early arrival, triggering terrifying, unrequited paternal instincts that might well see him court-martialled. Over a Torrent Tea is thus a welcome change of pace from the blockbuster novels that it follows. It sees the Titan series return to its mandate of exploring strange new worlds, be they out there in the cosmos or resting somewhere within its cosmopolitan crew’s tortured souls.
