Star Trek: The Original Series: 365

By Paula M. Block with Terry J. Erdmann

This is a landscape format coffee table book published by Abrams, who have done several entries in the "365" series.  Comprised of 365 two page spreads, featuring artwork on the right-hand page and text on the left, Star Trek: The Original Series: 365 is best enjoyed taken in small doses rather than devoured all at once.  In fact, I read it over the course of a year, reading one entry per day, which I think is kind of the intention with these books.  As is typical of Abrams, the book is beautifully designed.

The book takes a chronological approach to its examination of Star Trek, beginning with a short series of entries examining the pre-production and promotion of the show, as well as several pages devoted to the first, unaired pilot episode starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike.  Following this, each episode of each season is examined, usually with 2-3 pages devoted to each episode.  Episodes are featured in production order, rather than the order in which they were originally broadcast.  Finally, pages toward the end of the book are devoted to early Trek fandom and early Star Trek merchandise.  Of particular interest to readers of this blog is a page devoted to early Star Trek books!

The beautiful, full-color photographs include both stills from the television episodes as well as candid, behind-the-scenes shots of the cast and crew, and photos of rare Trek memorabilia.  The format of the book gives plenty of room to examine all aspects of the production of the television show.  There are lots of mini biographies of guest actors and close looks at set design and costuming.

I thought the book may have pointed out the cheap nature of the show's special effects a few too many times.  I also think it unlikely that die-hard Trekkies will find too much new information here.  Still, I found this a greatly enjoyable companion to the series that provided a new way of looking at the original Star Trek.  A second volume, devoted to Star Trek: The Next Generation, is forthcoming from the publisher.

Star Trek #93: New Earth, Book Five of Six: Thin Air

By Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch

In the previous New Earth novel, the Enterprise battled and destroyed a Kauld ship, which crashed to the surface of Belle Terre.  In this book, we learn that the incident was a ruse to infect the ecosystem of Belle Terre with an invisible substance called siliconic gel.  The gel is slowly replacing the air on the planet, making it uninhabitable to humans.  Because the colonists have cannibalized the ships that brought them to Belle Terre, evacuation is impossible, and Kirk and crew must track down the Kauld scientist responsible for the attack in hopes of reversing the process.

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch are not my favorite Star Trek writing team.  Their prose is often utilitarian to a fault, fraught with bland descriptions and thin characterization.  This is a shame, especially considering that they are writing an entry in a miniseries co-created by Diane Carey, who has one of the most lush and imaginative writing styles I've encountered in Star Trek fiction.  However, they have constructed a good plot here, which, while not as exciting or interesting as previous books in the series, nevertheless is a solid science fiction story with a good mix of action and intrigue.  The threat of the siliconic gel is unique, and lends a creepy atmosphere to the novel.  As characters encounter the substance, the feeling is compared to having spiderwebs covering your entire body. Given this description, when entire communities become blanketed in the gel, I was reminded of the final scene in Kingdom of the Spiders, a cult classic B-movie starring William Shatner.  I have no idea if this was intentional.

Thin Air is not one of the strongest entries in the New Earth series, but it's still not a bad novel by any means.  Next up is the final book in the series, written by series co-creator Diane Carey.  My expectations are appropriately high.

Star Trek #92: New Earth, Book Four of Six: The Flaming Arrow

By Kathy Oltion and Jerry Oltion

I really liked this book.  Similar to Belle Terre in that the plot primarily focused on a single threat to the colony world.  In that book, it was the imminent explosion of one of Belle Terre's moons.  In this book, a gigantic laser beam, built by the aggressive Kauld race, has been fired at the planet.  By the time Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise learn about the laser's existence, it has already been fired, and is set to strike the planet in under a week's time.  I thought the idea of the laser having already been fired but taking several days to travel at light speed across a large distance was a novel one, a good concept that I don't remember having been used on Star Trek but which is a very Star Trek-esque story, if that makes sense.  The authors have a lot of fun with the fact that the Enterprise can outpace the laser, traveling faster than light speed.  The ability to outrun the laser does not do them much good, however, as they have no way of stopping such a powerful weapon.  There was a lot of tension in this novel that built until the final pages.  The story was based on real science but was not overwhelmed by technobabble.  Kind of a perfect Star Trek adventure, really.

The authors also did a very good job with the characters.  Chekov is absent, having left after the events of the previous novel to join the crew of the Reliant, but all of the other characters have good moments in this book.  There is a nice storyline featuring Dr. McCoy and Scotty on an away mission together.  Kirk begins a romance with one of the colonists.  Even the aliens, particularly the Kauld defectors who inform Bones and Scotty about the laser weapon, are well developed and fun to read about.  High marks all around for this fourth chapter in the New Earth saga.

Star Trek #91: New Earth, Book Three of Six: Rough Trails

By L. A. Graf

While Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are off defending Belle Terre against Olivium pirates, secondary characters Chekov, Uhura, Scotty, and Sulu take center stage in this third novel in the New Earth series.  When the Enterprise was forced to crash two of Belle Terre's moons in the previous novel, the landscape and atmosphere of Belle Terre was drastically altered.  What had once been a near paradise has now become a harsh landscape with dangerous, unpredictable weather.  When a shuttlecraft carrying Chekov crashes during a dust storm, Uhura, Scotty, and Sulu must pool their resources to mount a rescue, despite hostility from local law enforcement.  Everything comes to a head in a massive natural disaster modelled after Pennsylvania's Johnstown Flood.

It was nice to see the secondary characters take a starring role in this book, but reading about them, one realizes how little character development they were given on the TV show.  We really don't know that much about them, and oftentimes the writers' solution is to make them really, really good at their jobs.  Scotty is the best engineer in Starfleet, Uhura is the best communications officer, etc.  The character who is handled the best here is Chekov, in his last adventure before taking the position of First Officer of the Reliant.  It is Chekov's book in many ways, and he even gets the girl at the end!

While this was a strong entry in the New Earth series, much of it was bogged down with excessive technobabble (particularly in regards to Uhura's and Janice Rand's attempts to construct a working communications network), and, while it was fun to see the secondary characters in primary roles, I was ultimately as relieved as they were when Kirk and Spock finally show up at the end to save the day.

This Month in Star Trek Books: August 2011

The following Star Trek book will be available later this month:

Star Trek: A Choice of Catastrophes
by Steve Mollmann and Michael Schuster
available: 8/30/2011

From the Publisher:

The U.S.S. Enterprise, under the command of Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, is returning from a mission to deliver medical supplies to Deep Space Station C-15, one of Starfleet’s most distant installations. All is routine until the Enterprise comes within a light-year of the planet Mu Arigulon, when the ship is suddenly thrown from warp and suffers a momentary power cut, having run aground on a spatial distortion not revealed in previous scans of the system. When the pride of Starfleet hits another, much worse distortion, Dr. Leonard McCoy has his hands full caring for officers who have suddenly fallen into comas for no apparent reason. The Enterprise medical team soon discovers that the dying officers are espers—humans with a rare and abnormal level of telepathic and psychic ability. With no choice but to link to the officers’ minds in order to come to their aid, McCoy is plunged into a nightmarish dream-world . . . with the end result being nothing short of the possible destruction of the Enterprise and all aboard her. . . .

Star Trek #90: New Earth, Book Two of Six: Belle Terre

By Dean Wesley Smith with Diane Carey

This novel is much more tightly focused than the first book in the New Earth series.  Whereas that intricately constructed novel saw Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise dealing with a multitude of problems while en route to the new colony world Belle Terre, this second book deals primarily with a single threat to the newly colonized planet.  It is discovered that one of Belle Terre's moons contains a powerful element called olivium, a strange substance that exists in a state of quantum flux and which has not previously been found outside of laboratory conditions.  Olivium is extraordinarily rare, and, in theory, could be incredibly beneficial to the advancement of all of the sciences.  However, what at first seems like the discovery of a lifetime soon becomes a harbinger of doom, when Spock discovers that the unstable olivium will explode in about a week's time, destroying both the moon and all of Belle Terre.

Most of the book is taken up by the Enterprise crew's attempts to stop the explosion.  Eventually, the surface of the planet is evacuated and all of the colonist and Federation ships must work together to tractor a smaller moon into a collision with the olivium moon, in the hopes of releasing the building pressure without destroying the moon or the planet.  This long sequence with the fleet of ships moving the moon is very well handled, building in tension until the final pages.  Of course, Belle Terre is saved in the end, but not without a sacrifice that will have lasting consequences for the fledgling colony world.

There are a couple of subplots in the story, as well.  One, involving a mother left behind on the endangered planet to search for some missing children, is not particularly interesting.  The woman and her son fail to come across as fully developed characters, and seem as though they've been inserted merely as representatives of the Belle Terre colonists with whom the reader is supposed to empathize.  More literary devices than real people.  The second subplot, involving a small, three-person crewed Starship scouting for a nearby world that the colonists could inhabit should Belle Terre be destroyed, was much more interesting.  That storyline ends in a cliffhanger, presumably to be resolved in a later New Earth novel.

In Jeff Ayers' Voyages of Imagination, Dean Wesley Smith says that he wrote the novel from an outline provided by Diane Carey, who wrote the first book in the series and co-created the New Earth concept.  Carey is a phenomenal author of Star Trek fiction, whose attention to detail and rich characterizations are absent here.  Still, Smith's more straightforward prose works nicely for a more focused story like the one being told here, and ultimately I enjoyed this novel and look forward to future books in the series.