USS Cerritos Crew Handbook

No secret, I love Lower Decks so after a recent acquisition of the Beckett Mariner Funko Pop, the Crew Handbook was always going to be on the list.

Taking a more light hearted look into the Star Trek universe, this is the ultimate guide to the USS Cerritos rather than as a series companion. With the overview of a guide for new Lower Deckers, readers are taken through every crucial area of the ship, introduced to the crew and given notes on potential foes and allies from across the Alpha, Beta and Delta Quadrants.

Realised in print by Chris Farnell, the book is a weighty 175pages in paperback and you want to keep on turning them.

The text itself isn't a trawl to read and instead the necessities of the Cerritos are broken down into more manageable chunks coupled with the stunning animation from the show itself. It's also incredibly current with the lieutenant ranks of Boimler, Mariner, Tendi and Rutherford in place. 

But what adds to this perhaps in a different way to the more "serious" technical manuals and other reference works is the asides (proof reader notes in-universe) from the crew. Adding a level of character to the handbook and keeping in line with the personalities of those characters at the same time!

Lower Decks has always been a little more sartorial when it comes to the Star Trek universe and the handbook is no exception. It doesn't take itself too seriously and the balance of information and humour means that this is accessible to fans of all knowledge levels and interest. A highlight for you ship connoisseurs is a potted history of the Cerritos' namesake which you may or may not take with a pinch of salt and in a way helps put a little substance into the series backstory.

In fact that's one of the big wins for me here. While there's a lot of suggestion and intimation it still leaves fans without 100% clarity and allows your imagination to fill in some of the blanks. Bits you might be able to join the dots thanks to episodes (certainly An Embarrassment of Dooplers) but in other instances it leaves a good amount of room for future developments. However, according to the author, the wonderfully UK-based Chris Farnell, the matter surrounding Admiral Jellico's circulatory system IS canon. Period. Fight him.

But that's not to say that the book ignores the canon of the show's episodes so far. Readers get nods to all types of stripy tricorder, the best holodeck programmes to run and even a Strange New Worlds homage with Cerritos bingo which might be a tad more extreme and expectedly curveball. 

Indeed, Farnell might have been given the reins to do as he wished with the handbook but he's absolutely kept it under control and well within Star Trek specifications especially since it still had to get the seal of approval from The Top Man Mike McMahan before printing (as Chris noted to me during a brief chat!).

If you're expecting a detailed technical piece of literary wizardry a la the TNG Technical Manual then this isn't the book however if you are looking for something that acts as a side guide and extremely entertaining companion to Lower Decks then this will definitely hit the spot.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Sisko

Producing an autobiography of a character who has transcended the physical plane has to be one of the most difficult assignments to come from this book series.

Edited (wink wink) by Derek Tyler Attico, the story of Benjamin Lafayette Sisko is the one that I’ve been personally waiting for since the books first appeared. 

So how does one circumvent the obvious flaw that Sisko ‘can’t’ write this book? Well I won’t ruin that little twist but suffice to say it makes this volume extremely unique when it comes to how these have been written to date.

And if you’re wanting this to be a detailed first person account of Deep Space Nine, be prepared for a wait and also for it not to take up that much of the book. This really does go right back to the start of Sisko’s life. This autobiography provides a deep dive into three generations  of the Sisko line packed into the hotel/restaurant/home that exists in New Orleans. There’s even time to offer glimpses at older history emphasising the importance of family bonds that exist not just in that structure but also down the years in Ben’s Starfleet journey. 

Covering everything from Sisko's childhood, coupled with it's distinct lack of technology, Attico's work follows a path from adventurous and highly inquisitive youth through to maturing teen and into Starfleet officer. The journey feels natural and the level of detail not only traces its roots back into episodes of Deep Space Nine but into a deeper cultural exploration that hasn't been as apparent in other works from this ongoing series.

Attico's research into Sisko is certainly extensive but it doesn't suffocate the story. Rather than relying on just the material we've been drip fed through 176 episodes of the show, the reader can explore Ben's first encounter with a transporter or a tricorder with the same sense of wonder that the character himself does. 

But that feeling of family and personal bonds is always present. There is loss, not only of his wife at the battle of Wolf 359 but earlier in respects to grandparents and his mother as well as more complex relationships with his sister and younger twin brothers. 

Indeed, a good three quarters of the autobiography is filled with events that viewers and fans of the show will not have seen or were just hat-tipped such as Cal Hudson meeting his future wife or the way in which Sisko became Captain (later Admiral) Layton's first officer on the USS Okinawa. 

The clarity of events pre-DS9 is just staggering; the construction of the Defiant for instance brings both Leah Brahms and Cmdr Shelby into play while Attico has brilliantly woven in the single episode character of Tryla Scott (TNG's Conspiracy) both logically and seamlessly.  This feels like the true defining of the Ben Sisko character that, for a good part of DS9 was actually avoided although perhaps not consciously. 

Yes, there were nods to his sister, visits to the Sisko restaurant and the occasional appearance of Brock Peters' Joseph Sisko but for the most part Atttico has had a clean slate/ sandbox to play in and explore. Opinion; he's done it with aplomb and style. There's still enough legroom in here for future canon events to sneak into the narrative but this does show the development of the person before he was the Emissary and commander of Deep Space Nine. In the cases of both Janeway and Picard we've been privy to key events from earlier in their lives whether by visions of parents or Q interventions but Sisko avoided all of that bar two moments in Emissary that added meat to his back story.

DS9ers will adore this book which not only explores Sisko's backstory but actually utilises soome (I'm reliably informed) of Derek Tyler Attico's own personal history and experiences to flesh out Starfleet's finest captain (fight me on it!).