Star Trek The Motion Picture 45th Anniversary Book Club

[Tallguy]

Hello fellow inmates! Today marks the 45th anniversary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. To celebrate I've decided to host a book club for Gene Roddenberry's novelization of the film. (I had thought of doing something similar for the 40th anniversary of John M. Ford's The Final Reflection. Maybe when this is over I might.) Please read along and chime in!

I'll be doing a chapter a day. It's been a while but I recall the chapter's being of reasonable size. Brisk, even.

For the first day I'll combine the two Prefaces. Roddenberry's and Admiral Kirk's!

Admiral Kirk's Preface
First off, this is just cool. I mean it's Gene Roddenberry writing as James T. Kirk. Over the years GR has gotten a reputation of being kind of a hack. If I had nothing else to go on I think this would refute that. (And if I didn't have this I'd have Have Gun, Will Travel.)

Something that has been kind of lost to "having Star Trek" for the last 45 years: This was the first Star Trek in five years (including TAS). This was us getting to find out "What happened next!" PIC kind of tread similar ground in that regard but it wasn't really the same. For one thing there has been LOTS of Star Trek since TNG. This was water in the desert!

Right off the bat Kirk explains his name. This is the infamous mention of Kirk's mother's FIRST "love instructor" (named James). Say what you will, it's a solid sci-fi idea. Yes it's very 70's and it's certainly VERY Roddenberry. But if it wasn't tied to sex and Roddenberry's reputation it would be a good "they don't do things like we do" notion. It's of a piece with "Although the male-surname custom has become rare among humans elsewhere, it remains a fairly common thing among those of us in Starfleet."

Interesting to note (and I NEVER caught this before now) that Sam (George Samuel) was named after Jim Kirk's grandfather. (And presumably George Kirk, Sr. but that was never on screen.) It's also a nice nod to Kirk's middle name which is kind of gracious considering that this would be a reference to The Animated Series and a name given by another writer, David Gerrold! GR explains that his grandfather Samuel was obsessed with the emperor Tiberius.

We're not even two pages in and GR is world building. He's telling us that the 1960's action heroes we saw on TV are kind of anachronisms in the 23rd century. Rough and tumble men and women in a more "evolved" world. That the early space explorers were failures because they were "too adaptable" types who would fall for every Apollo and Ancient Robot Civilization they ran across.

In some ways, we do resemble our forebears of a couple of centuries ago more than we do most people today.

I love that there is a nonsensical footnote to a Vulcan study of early Starfleet (one word): See STF 7997B. I'd love to read that. He makes mention of how "vessel disappearances, crew defections, and mutinies had brought deep space exploration to a near halt." So much for there never having been a mutiny on a Starfleet ship.

We also learn Kirk "became the first starship captain in history to bring back both his vessel and his crew relatively intact after such a mission." I will die on this hill, thank you.

This combined with Kirk's statement that his Academy class was "the first group selected by Starfleet on the basis of somewhat more limited intellectual agility" leads me to think that GR thought that Starfleet and human deep space exploration was still very NEW. This is something I always felt watching TOS as well. Although one wonders how Christopher Pike figures into that reckoning. Or Robert April for that matter.

We find out that Star Trek as we know it is a fictionalized re-telling of the historic missions of the Enterprise and that Kirk feels that he and his crew were overly idealized and exaggerated. We also learn that the death toll for the Five Year Mission was ninety-four. (I've never thought to try and square this with any on-screen numbers.)

Ha! It never occurred to me until just now that this introduction ALSO possibly lumps the FILM Star Trek: The Motion Picture into this same category. "...although there may be many other ways in which this story is told or depicted..." The man had nerve, you have to give him that!

Author's Preface
There is nowhere near the amount of info-dump that is in Kirk's preface. But the remarkable thing is that to me they do not read like the same voice. It reads like Roddenberry. It sounds more frivolous than Admiral James T. Kirk.

A couple of pages after Kirk describes he and his crew as being rather out of step with the times that he lives in, GR says "I suppose the real truth is that I have always looked upon the Enterprise and its crew as my own private view of Earth and humanity in microcosm. If this is not the way we really are, it seems to me most certainly a way we ought to be." Kirk reads like a steely eyed missile man. GR reads like a hippy-dippy screenwriter. Well played, sir.

"Much of my pleasure in Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty, Chekov, Chapel, and Rand" -- No Sulu?

Just real quick before I wear out my welcome for the day: This is already giving us something MORE than the movie. It has an authority and scope that your average "pour the script into a typewriter and add descriptions" novelization did not have.

See you tomorrow for Chapter One.

 

[Therin of Andor]

As a sideline to your great thread idea, did you know that the Futura UK and Australian editions of the 1979 paperback have a few extra lines than the US Pocket Books counterpart?

The link to the old thread is here:

New 40th anniversary edition of ST:TMP novelisation?

Coming in a trade paperback edition (for October)? PS. Looks like there will be an audiobook of it as well! https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Star-Trek-The-Motion-Picture/Gene-Roddenberry/Star-Trek/9781982139193?fbclid=IwAR10jNUFtiA7M7xt6fBUDpetDoeM6JSQV9JmReuhDKRbHj-h8OGv7Vut1Aw

www.trekbbs.com

 

[Christopher]

Admiral Kirk's Preface
First off, this is just cool. I mean it's Gene Roddenberry writing as James T. Kirk. Over the years GR has gotten a reputation of being kind of a hack. If I had nothing else to go on I think this would refute that. (And if I didn't have this I'd have Have Gun, Will Travel.)

He could be a good writer, and his dialogue was generally good, but most of his credited Trek scripts (except "The Cage") suffer from weak concepts, and from deeper racial prejudices ("The Omega Glory") and misogyny ("Turnabout Intruder") than Roddenberry was able to recognize in himself.

Something that has been kind of lost to "having Star Trek" for the last 45 years: This was the first Star Trek in five years (including TAS). This was us getting to find out "What happened next!" PIC kind of tread similar ground in that regard but it wasn't really the same. For one thing there has been LOTS of Star Trek since TNG. This was water in the desert!

Good point. It's hard for people today to understand just how much it meant to have new Trek at last, and in a big prestigious form like a feature film. For decades, people have complained that the Enterprise flyby was too long and slow, but we needed that, because it was the first time we'd ever gotten a really good, close, high-resolution look at the ship we loved.

Right off the bat Kirk explains his name. This is the infamous mention of Kirk's mother's FIRST "love instructor" (named James). Say what you will, it's a solid sci-fi idea. Yes it's very 70's and it's certainly VERY Roddenberry. But if it wasn't tied to sex and Roddenberry's reputation it would be a good "they don't do things like we do" notion.

Regardless of era, I have no problem with it. I think the '70s were a healthier time than today with regard to sexual attitudes. People were outgrowing the old notion that our natural sexual feelings and relationships were something to be ashamed of and hidden away, and were learning to express and cope with them in a more positive and healthy way.

I mean, why shouldn't there be love instructors, or something similar? Sex is an integral and vital part of our lives and relationships. It only makes sense to learn how to engage with it in a healthy and positive way, the same way we'd take classes to learn how to drive or to cook or balance a checkbook or do any other grown-up thing. I'm sure a lot of people assume it would only mean learning the physical act of sex, but I imagine it would be like the elective Human Sexuality course I took in college, teaching about sexuality as a psychological and social phenomenon that affects our lives, identities, relationships, and physical and mental health on many levels, beyond the sex act itself. I always felt that course should've been mandatory. There's so much that most people never learn about the subject, because of the Puritanical streak in American society.

Interesting to note (and I NEVER caught this before now) that Sam (George Samuel) was named after Jim Kirk's grandfather. (And presumably George Kirk, Sr. but that was never on screen.) It's also a nice nod to Kirk's middle name which is kind of gracious considering that this would be a reference to The Animated Series and a name given by another writer, David Gerrold! GR explains that his grandfather Samuel was obsessed with the emperor Tiberius.

No, while Gerrold was the first to establish that as Kirk's middle name in a screen production, he probably didn't coin it, given that Gary Lockwood's lead character in Roddenberry's 1963-4 series The Lieutenant was named Lt. William Tiberius Rice, and Roddenberry obviously liked recycling character names. The earliest known reference to Tiberius as Kirk's middle name was by D.C. Fontana in a 1972 convention appearance, and it seems plausible that she got it from Roddenberry.

We're not even two pages in and GR is world building. He's telling us that the 1960's action heroes we saw on TV are kind of anachronisms in the 23rd century. Rough and tumble men and women in a more "evolved" world. That the early space explorers were failures because they were "too adaptable" types who would fall for every Apollo and Ancient Robot Civilization they ran across.

I don't see this as worldbuilding so much as an evolution in Roddenberry's value systems. In the '60s, he'd been a TV writer trying to make an action drama and sneak in some philosophy on the side. But by the late '70s, he'd become far more attached to his reputation in fandom as a visionary philosopher, or perhaps had grown more invested in his utopian philosophies for his own reasons, so he wanted to reinterpret his vision of the future to represent his ideals better. Which required retconning the TOS characters as the exception in the future rather than the rule. You can see this as a forerunner of GR's approach to TNG, where he required the characters to be more perfected and idealized, without our petty conflicts and insecurities.

We also learn Kirk "became the first starship captain in history to bring back both his vessel and his crew relatively intact after such a mission." I will die on this hill, thank you.

I never cared for that. It makes the Enterprise seem too special, too exceptional. I liked the grounded approach of early TOS, the attitude that these weren't larger-than-life cosmic heroes, but just folks doing a day-to-day job that happened to be in space. In the TOS bible, Roddenberry stressed the characters' vulnerability and capacity for error. They were highly competent, yes, but not uniquely competent, not better than anyone else, since everyone in Starfleet must be equally hypercompetent.

I think Roddenberry wanted to concoct a handwave for why it was the Enterprise in particular that got a TV series and movie made about it, as opposed to other ships (to support his conceit in the novelization that he was a 23rd-century producer of an inaccurate dramatization of the 5-year mission and was now trying to do a more accurate version under Admiral Kirk's vetting). But I think "It was the only ship that survived its mission" is far too melodramatic a justification for that conceit, in contrast to his TOS-era insistence on plausibility and naturalism. Surely the fact (per The Making of Star Trek) that Kirk was the youngest-ever captain of a capital ship like the Enterprise should've been enough to call extra attention to him.

This combined with Kirk's statement that his Academy class was "the first group selected by Starfleet on the basis of somewhat more limited intellectual agility" leads me to think that GR thought that Starfleet and human deep space exploration was still very NEW. This is something I always felt watching TOS as well. Although one wonders how Christopher Pike figures into that reckoning. Or Robert April for that matter.

And yet the very second TOS episode referred to an Earth ship that had probed deep space 200 years before. They were never very consistent about these things.

Just real quick before I wear out my welcome for the day: This is already giving us something MORE than the movie. It has an authority and scope that your average "pour the script into a typewriter and add descriptions" novelization did not have.

Well, that's hardly fair. That description may apply to modern novelizations, since studios these days crack down on variations from the finished films for some reason. But back then, novelizations routinely added a great deal to flesh out the scripts, or even changed the scripts to make them work better as prose stories. I was a regular reader of novelizations as a kid in the '70s-'80s, and I can't really think of any that were just slavish adaptations of the scripts; they almost always added a lot of new insights and material, which was a large part of their appeal. (After all, an exact adaptation that added nothing would be a pretty short novel.)

 

[Tallguy]

As a sideline to your great thread idea, did you know that the Futura UK and Australian editions of the 1979 paperback have a few extra lines than the US Pocket Books counterpart?

The link to the old thread is here:

New 40th anniversary edition of ST:TMP novelisation?

Coming in a trade paperback edition (for October)? PS. Looks like there will be an audiobook of it as well! https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Star-Trek-The-Motion-Picture/Gene-Roddenberry/Star-Trek/9781982139193?fbclid=IwAR10jNUFtiA7M7xt6fBUDpetDoeM6JSQV9JmReuhDKRbHj-h8OGv7Vut1Aw

www.trekbbs.com

That's very interesting. THANK YOU.

"Their historic 5-year mission is over. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, all the crew have scattered to other jobs or other lives. Now, they are back together again on a fabulously refitted USS Enterprise as an incredibly destructive POWER threatens Earth and the human race."

I will say that this was the most exciting thing for me leading up to seeing the movie. Literally that sentence on the back of the book! Possibly more than the television commercials of the film themselves. (I don't believe I ever saw a trailer in the cinema.)

No, while Gerrold was the first to establish that as Kirk's middle name in a screen production, he probably didn't coin it, given that Gary Lockwood's lead character in Roddenberry's 1963-4 series The Lieutenant was named Lt. William Tiberius Rice, and Roddenberry obviously liked recycling character names. The earliest known reference to Tiberius as Kirk's middle name was by D.C. Fontana in a 1972 convention appearance, and it seems plausible that she got it from Roddenberry.

As I was typing that I was hoping for this kind of tidbit. The detail about The Lieutenant is particularly telling. So thank you.

I don't see this as worldbuilding so much as an evolution in Roddenberry's value systems. In the '60s, he'd been a TV writer trying to make an action drama and sneak in some philosophy on the side. But by the late '70s, he'd become far more attached to his reputation in fandom as a visionary philosopher, or perhaps had grown more invested in his utopian philosophies for his own reasons, so he wanted to reinterpret his vision of the future to represent his ideals better. Which required retconning the TOS characters as the exception in the future rather than the rule. You can see this as a forerunner of GR's approach to TNG, where he required the characters to be more perfected and idealized, without our petty conflicts and insecurities.

I certainly see it as both. It shows a degree of awareness that I think GR was losing and that would be all but gone by TNG. It's at the very least a rationalization for why his hoped for 23rd century utopia seemed to be populated with 1960's television action heroes. And the admission that this was probably still what the public was paying for.

They were highly competent, yes, but not uniquely competent, not better than anyone else, since everyone in Starfleet must be equally hypercompetent.

But they were also LUCKY. This leads me to my head canon that the Five Year Mission was something unique (only twelve ships and all that) and not necessarily survivable. I'm not going to quibble about if the Constellation was one of the twelve, but every almost every crew we came into contact with in TOS was lost or badly hurt. (The Ultimate Computer had the most survivors.) At least four total losses, right?

And yet the very second TOS episode referred to an Earth ship that had probed deep space 200 years before. They were never very consistent about these things.

Sure. But it can also be an indication of those early missions where "vessel disappearances, crew defections, and mutinies had brought deep space exploration to a near halt".

Both TOS and very early TNG (and by early I mean mostly in the Writer's Guide) posited a show that would be exploring where there had not been Federation ships. Here be monsters.

It's at least an indication that whatever Earth had been doing before Kirk, now they were getting SERIOUS.

Well, that's hardly fair. That description may apply to modern novelizations, since studios these days crack down on variations from the finished films for some reason. But back then, novelizations routinely added a great deal to flesh out the scripts, or even changed the scripts to make them work better as prose stories. I was a regular reader of novelizations as a kid in the '70s-'80s, and I can't really think of any that were just slavish adaptations of the scripts; they almost always added a lot of new insights and material, which was a large part of their appeal. (After all, an exact adaptation that added nothing would be a pretty short novel.)

You're right, of course. I'll compare the novels of Star Wars (a fair amount of extra detail and Alan Dean Foster was good at his job) and Return of the Jedi (a delightful tone of story telling and character with some fantastic extra scenes - it's a must read, IMHO) with The Empire Strikes Back (by the numbers, what you see is what you get for the most part IIRC).

But in any of these cases if there is a difference, an elaboration, or some kind of insight into the characters you have to chalk it up to "an early draft" or "well, that's not the REAL intent". This is Gene Roddenberry. Like it says on the tin: The Great Bird of the Galaxy writes a Star Trek novel!

 

[CaptainCalvinCat]

No, while Gerrold was the first to establish that as Kirk's middle name in a screen production, he probably didn't coin it, given that Gary Lockwood's lead character in Roddenberry's 1963-4 series The Lieutenant was named Lt. William Tiberius Rice, and Roddenberry obviously liked recycling character names.

Oh, obviously. William Tiberius Rice = WTR = William Thomas Riker.
I definietly like some tidbits like those.

 

[Stevil2001]

This is a neat idea for a thread, and I am enjoying your insights.

 

[Christopher]

But they were also LUCKY. This leads me to my head canon that the Five Year Mission was something unique (only twelve ships and all that) and not necessarily survivable. I'm not going to quibble about if the Constellation was one of the twelve, but every almost every crew we came into contact with in TOS was lost or badly hurt. (The Ultimate Computer had the most survivors.) At least four total losses, right?

That's another thing. Yes, TOS showed other Constitution-class ships getting destroyed or their entire crews killed rather frequently, but I'd call that an overused trope. Realistically, every one of these crews should've been as resourceful as Kirk's, and Starfleet wouldn't be able to continue functioning as an organization if it lost more than 90% of its biggest, most powerful capital ships. (As it was presumed at the time, decades before Discovery retconned the existence of numerous even larger classes.) Any program with such a high failure rate would be deemed a failure overall, and the people in charge would've probably been fired and changes would've been required long before it got to that point.

Both TOS and very early TNG (and by early I mean mostly in the Writer's Guide) posited a show that would be exploring where there had not been Federation ships. Here be monsters.

Yes, but the galaxy is immense. There are 400 billion stars in it, and it's now believed that nearly all of them have planetary systems. Even if you assume only 1 in 50, say 8 billion, have habitable planets, and even if Starfleet visited a new one every single day, it would still take 22 million years to explore the whole galaxy. So even if Starfleet's been actively exploring the galaxy for 200 years, it would still have only begun. TOS acknowledged this; I believe the series bible said that only about 4% of the galaxy had been charted. By TNG, the number was up to around 12%, but it specified that was only what had been mapped by telescopic observation or probes, and only a tiny fraction of that 12% had actually been visited by starships.

You're right, of course. I'll compare the novels of Star Wars (a fair amount of extra detail and Alan Dean Foster was good at his job) and Return of the Jedi (a delightful tone of story telling and character with some fantastic extra scenes - it's a must read, IMHO) with The Empire Strikes Back (by the numbers, what you see is what you get for the most part IIRC).

There have been novelizations that took far more liberties. The novelization of Forbidden Planet, for instance, is written in epistolary format, in several sections representing different characters' personal journals, so it omits a lot of scenes that the viewpoint characters weren't present for while filling in lots of new material in their place, making for a considerably different experience. Then there's Isaac Asimov's Fantastic Voyage novelization, where he tweaked and elaborated on a lot of the plot details to make the fanciful premise somewhat more scientifically grounded, and notably made a major alteration to the climax to fix a glaring plot hole the filmmakers had overlooked. (The novelization came out 6 months before the movie, something that was often done to help promote original movies, so many people have assumed the film was based on the book instead of the reverse.)

But in any of these cases if there is a difference, an elaboration, or some kind of insight into the characters you have to chalk it up to "an early draft" or "well, that's not the REAL intent". This is Gene Roddenberry. Like it says on the tin: The Great Bird of the Galaxy writes a Star Trek novel!

True, but on the other hand, it contained a lot of ideas that he didn't carry forward into TNG, like the communication implants in officers' brains and the dam across the Straits of Gibraltar, I think it was. Nobody's quicker to change a story than its creator, because it came about through a process of trial and error in the first place and creators are always trying to improve on their ideas.

Anyway, I'm just glad you didn't fall for the myth that Alan Dean Foster ghostwrote the novel, which is based partly on an overseas edition that credited him for the film story but omitted the other writers' names, and partly on confusion with the Star Wars novelization that Foster did ghostwrite under George Lucas's name. Anyone familiar with Foster's style can tell that the TMP novelization isn't his work; it's recognizably the work of a scriptwriter unused to writing in prose, as evidenced by things like the heavy use of italics to stress key descriptive points in the narration. It also clearly reflects Roddenberry's utopian and sexual preoccupations.

Oh, obviously. William Tiberius Rice = WTR = William Thomas Riker.
I definietly like some tidbits like those.

By coincidence, when I was developing my early concepts for my original science fiction future history in my teens in the early 1980s, I chose to identify the captain of the first FTL starship as Captain Bill Rice. I'd probably read about The Lieutenant's William T. Rice in The Star Trek Compendium or something by that point, but if it was an influence, it was strictly unconscious. (My Bill Rice was black, for one thing.) Of course, I changed my plans once TNG came along with William T. Riker (who was originally going to be nicknamed Bill, as you can hear in a couple of first-season episodes).

 

[CaptainCalvinCat]

By coincidence, when I was developing my early concepts for my original science fiction future history in my teens in the early 1980s, I chose to identify the captain of the first FTL starship as Captain Bill Rice. I'd probably read about The Lieutenant's William T. Rice in The Star Trek Compendium or something by that point, but if it was an influence, it was strictly unconscious. (My Bill Rice was black, for one thing.) Of course, I changed my plans once TNG came along with William T. Riker (who was originally going to be nicknamed Bill, as you can hear in a couple of first-season episodes).

Gotta say "Captain Bill Rice" does have a nice ring to it. And as coincidences go: Look no further than Germany. We had a seven-episode-long TV-Series that dealt with space-ships, aliens, FTL-technology (called "Hyperspace" before Babylon 5 was even a thing). The show had the name "Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion" or just "Raumschiff Orion" (Space Patrol in english). It premiered 17. September 1966 in Germany - just 5 days, after Star Trek premiered in the US.

And both shows, Star Trek and Space Patrol, were dealing with more or less the same stuff, it were amazing tales and AFAIK, no one of TPTB behind Trek said "hey, Germany, you're stealing our intellectual property". But, perhaps that's the reason, why Star Trek had it's absolutely amazing longevity, while Space Patrol got its seven-episode-run and was cancelled afterwards.

 

[Christopher]

Gotta say "Captain Bill Rice" does have a nice ring to it. And as coincidences go: Look no further than Germany. We had a seven-episode-long TV-Series that dealt with space-ships, aliens, FTL-technology (called "Hyperspace" before Babylon 5 was even a thing).

The term "hyperspace" has been in use in science fiction since at least 1928, and before that in mathematics since the 1860s. Its uses include John W. Campbell's Islands in Space, also perhaps the first work of science fiction to use the word "warp" for an FTL drive (though the concept is rooted in General Relativity). If anything, "hyperspace" and "hyperdrive" were the most frequent terms for FTL travel in the science fiction literature of the 1940s-60s, and Roddenberry himself used the term "hyperdrive" in his outline for "The Cage." I believe there are references to hyperspace in the TMP novelization as well.

And both shows, Star Trek and Space Patrol, were dealing with more or less the same stuff, it were amazing tales and AFAIK, no one of TPTB behind Trek said "hey, Germany, you're stealing our intellectual property". But, perhaps that's the reason, why Star Trek had it's absolutely amazing longevity, while Space Patrol got its seven-episode-run and was cancelled afterwards.

Of course not, because both shows were undoubtedly building on tropes that had been part of science fiction literature since the pulp era. The term "space patrol" had been commonplace since 1930, and there had been a very popular American children's series entitled Space Patrol in 1950-55, as well as an unrelated British children's series of that name in 1962 (using marionettes but not from Gerry Anderson).

Here's a tip: Never, ever assume that any science fiction concept originated in television or film. Mass-media SF tends to lag at least a decade or two behind the prose literature, and TV and film are only the tip of the iceberg of the science fiction genre, rarely more than entry-level stuff by the standards of prose SF. And prose SF in turn tends to draw many of its concepts from actual scientific theory and research.

 

[CaptainCalvinCat]

The term "hyperspace" has been in use in science fiction since at least 1928, and before that in mathematics since the 1860s. Its uses include John W. Campbell's Islands in Space, also perhaps the first work of science fiction to use the word "warp" for an FTL drive (though the concept is rooted in General Relativity). If anything, "hyperspace" and "hyperdrive" were the most frequent terms for FTL travel in the science fiction literature of the 1940s-60s, and Roddenberry himself used the term "hyperdrive" in his outline for "The Cage." I believe there are references to hyperspace in the TMP novelization as well.





Of course not, because both shows were undoubtedly building on tropes that had been part of science fiction literature since the pulp era. The term "space patrol" had been commonplace since 1930, and there had been a very popular American children's series entitled Space Patrol in 1950-55, as well as an unrelated British children's series of that name in 1962 (using marionettes but not from Gerry Anderson).

Here's a tip: Never, ever assume that any science fiction concept originated in television or film. Mass-media SF tends to lag at least a decade or two behind the prose literature, and TV and film are only the tip of the iceberg of the science fiction genre, rarely more than entry-level stuff by the standards of prose SF. And prose SF in turn tends to draw many of its concepts from actual scientific theory and research.

Ehhh, that all seems, as if "coming up with new concepts for Sci-Fi" is going to be hard, in especially, if you want to do something like Star Trek or Orion.

And thank you for that link - I didn't know anything about the sfdirectory. *bows his head*

 

[Tallguy]

and Roddenberry himself used the term "hyperdrive" in his outline for "The Cage."

It's actually IN The Cage. Spock says it when they are going to abandon Pike and run.

I believe there are references to hyperspace in the TMP novelization as well.

Lots, actually.

The novelization of Forbidden Planet, for instance, is written in epistolary format, in several sections representing different characters' personal journals, so it omits a lot of scenes that the viewpoint characters weren't present for while filling in lots of new material in their place, making for a considerably different experience.

That sounds really interesting. I'd love to read that!

True, but on the other hand, it contained a lot of ideas that he didn't carry forward into TNG, like the communication implants in officers' brains and the dam across the Straits of Gibraltar, I think it was. Nobody's quicker to change a story than its creator, because it came about through a process of trial and error in the first place and creators are always trying to improve on their ideas.

Well, sure. Certainly true of the implants, but then I don't see anything in TNG that contradicted the Gibralter power station. Heck, they were going to create a new continent at one point!

Anyway, I'm just glad you didn't fall for the myth that Alan Dean Foster ghostwrote the novel

Angels and ministers of grace defend us! No!

once TNG came along with William T. Riker (who was originally going to be nicknamed Bill, as you can hear in a couple of first-season episodes).

As a William who goes by Bill I took that quite personally when it was abandoned. They made it up to me by making his middle name Thomas. (Which had everything to do with the connections between Thomas meaning twin than my wishes. Frakes point blank shot me down when I suggested it to him. He wanted it to be Thelonius.)

 

[CaptainCalvinCat]

He wanted it to be Thelonius.

Admittedly: Theolonius is an awesome name.

 

[Christopher]

Riker's middle name was given as Thelonius in the TNG novels Peter David wrote before "Thomas" was established onscreen.

 

[CaptainCalvinCat]

The first time, I stumbled upon that name, was in Imzadi 1. Was that the first time, that name was mentioned by Mr. David?

 

[Tallguy]

Here we are, Day Two.

Chapter One
Right off the bat, the book opens a little differently from the film. We never get the Opening Scene in quite the same way.

We get more "23rd Century Earth is Different". For one thing, other than a brief scene in The Cage, this is the first time that we've been on 23rd century Earth. Same as the film, sure. But in this case Admiral Kirk is at a museum in Africa. Specifically Alexandria.

And Kirk (we don't know it's Kirk yet) has a CHIP IN HIS BRAIN. And a footnote to indicate that 1) Starfleet is keeping this chip in his brain secret 2) there were 21st century Mind Control Revolts and Starfleet is edgy about reminding people of them and 3) it's only secret "at this time" indicating that we are reading a history of events that happened long enough ago that Starfleet has changed policy. Wild.

GR may have a somewhat Utopian view of Star Trek's present (and in ten years from writing this, even more so) but he's got some ROUGH ideas on how we got there!

The Libyan scholar that is there reveals that this is Admiral Kirk.

An Egypt-Israeli Museum at Alexandria feels a little too up to the minute from 1979. (The most current of all current events. Wait, I'm off by a year. The Camp David accords were in 1978.) Wait. My geography is usually rubbish. I just realized that he says that Libyan Scholars usually operate the Egypt-Israeli Museum at Alexandria. Is this a museum ABOUT Egypt-Israel? Because they're not THERE anymore? This was a notion that just occurred to me. I think there is more detail in a later chapter so I'll get there when I get there.

I never really caught that this is the "most famous" of ALL Earth museums.

Kirk sees the opening scene of the film in a chip transmitted daydream.

K’t’inga-class heavy cruisers which some Admiralty tacticians feared might prove faster and more powerful than Starfleet’s First Line Constitution-Class starships.

What a sentence! K't'inga class! Constitution class! I don't wish to skip ahead, but calling the K't'ingas "heavy cruisers" is interesting. I'll elaborate later.

There are a lot of little details like Constitution class that were never in the show (yes, yes, the phaser diagram) but that had found their way into the fan consciousness and GR seems not only aware of them but he doesn't really contradict any of it. I'll see if I can stand by that statement as the book goes on.

Kirk was pleased to see that the Klingons were unaware that they were being shadowed and examined.

This theme of Starfleet as a very defense-oriented organization (or at least Kirk's perception as such) will repeat. There are a few examples that it is foremost on his mind.

This version is an interesting narrative change from the film. It brings Kirk into the story immediately. It mentions Epsilon Nine and of course the Klingons. It gives neither of them the characters as in the film. But it pretty much follows the same sequence of events and ends on the same cliff-hanger that the film does. Whatever it is it's headed for Earth!

 

[Tallguy]

Chapter Two Narratively this is short. It's pretty much the scene from the movie where we see Spock and he does not achieve Kolinahr.

But there is a LOT going on in Spock's head. We also get quite a few details catching us up to speed. It's been at least 2.8 years since the Five Year Mission.

“Spock, son of Sarek of Vulcan and of Amanda of Earth, are thee prepared to open thy mind to us?”

The Vulcans talk like they did in Amok Time. Nice touch. Even with the linguistic games that were played with this scene (filmed in English and later it was decided to try and make it into Vulcan with English subtitles) none of the dialogue ever sounded like GR writes it here.
Spock "hears" Kirk's thought from the previous chapter:

The Klingons weren’t destroyed. It feels like . . . like they’ve become “wall exhibits in Hell.”

This was Kirk's thought where Kirk himself questioned where the words came from. Did they come from Vejur? Who is experiencing Vejur? If you figure Vejur is literally in the thoughts of Kirk on Earth, Spock AND the Vulcan masters on Vulcan, it's got to be putting out quite the broadcast.

There is the indication that Vejur (from the edge of Federation space) has found in Spock someone who can uniquely understand "both logic and human irrationality, and thus a possible key by which a totally logical entity might understand Earth and humanity."

Then the Vulcans say:

“Spock, our minds also have felt that far-off ‘presence.’ Has it special meaning to you?”

Really? This is surprising to the Vulcan masters that Spock might be interested? Or react, emotionally or otherwise? Hey, there's this super powerful space presence that is intruding on our thoughts. It must be Tuesday?

Spock is preparing to complete his trials.

During the past nine Vulcan seasons,i he had not only survived the disciplines of Kolinahr, but also the harsh trials had taken him to those consciousness levels which are beyond the reach of confusion, fatigue, and pain.

There was a question of survival?!?

Jim! Good-bye my . . . my t’hy’la. This is the last time I will permit myself to think of you or even your name again.

Something more is going on here that "just" purging his emotions. He'll be cutting all ties with all of Earth. (And presumably the rest of the Federation.) There is also a quote about "exorcising" Earth and humans from his very consciousness!

There is a footnote about the meanings of t’hy’la. Friend, brother, lover. And then there is a note from Kirk himself over the rumor of he and Spock being lovers. Great that GR not only addresses K/S head on, but he even gets Kirk and Spock to do so as well. Kirk says essentially "not that there's anything wrong with that but I like women". Also once every seven years isn't enough. Spock just raised an eyebrow at the whole thing.

Spock's hesitation over the word choice would indicate he's not just contemplating friendship. But "brother" is certainly consistent with the series.

He doesn't think at all of losing his mother, but only of Kirk. I know, it's not what GR or the story is concentrating on.

And of course this is not meant to be seen as a logical solution. It's running away and hiding. GR is aware that Spock is a messed up dude.

More so than in the film (because there is a lot more detail here) I'm really starting to ask what is Kolinahr for?!?

It had seemed to Spock that he had no other choice. It was only through the Masters here on Gol that one could achieve Kolinahr.

Who goes through it? It's not obscure. McCoy has heard of it. Is this more Vulcan that other Vulcans? I mean, it sounds pretty exclusive. These are the only masters on Vulcan one can study it with.

And it was only through Kolinahr that he could once and for all time unburden himself of his human half, which he believed responsible for his pain.

OK, I get that Spock is conflicted as he always was in Star Trek. This is, well, logical. But...

He knew that he had pleased the Masters, even the ones who had at first hesitated over permitting a mere half-Vulcan to become an acolyte in Gol.

Ahhhh, Vulcans. Star Trek's greatest racists. But either they are just being jerks or there is something really different. But they let Spock do it, so not different enough.

This is a classic Star Trek conflict: Do Vulcans have emotions or not? Does Spock have emotions because he is half-human? Would he not if he was full Vulcan? I'm disregarding later Star Trek from this analysis because we're looking at 1979. And really, I'm just looking at these few pages.

Why would this be harder (impossible as it turns out) for Spock? But then why would a full Vulcan need it? And if (as it seems) not all Vulcans undergo Kolinahr then do other full Vulcans have emotions?

How was it possible that he felt this? Not only was fear indisputably an emotion, how could he feel that emotion for a planet and a people which he had already exorcised from his consciousness and from his life!

Spock is really expecting to not have any emotion.

I know, we have lots of threads about this. But it's interesting to look at as part of a snapshot in time. I don't think Roddenberry really totally landed anywhere himself.

I have never been aware until now that it was my boyhood on Vulcan which had ultimately driven me into Starfleet.

Is Spock really that unaware of himself?

 

[Christopher]

Really? This is surprising to the Vulcan masters that Spock might be interested? Or react, emotionally or otherwise?

They're not asking about generic interest, but "special meaning." Kolinahr is supposed to be about setting aside personal feeling for total logic and detachment.

More so than in the film (because there is a lot more detail here) I'm really starting to ask what is Kolinahr for?!?

I take it as the Vulcan equivalent of joining a monastery or convent. It's the extreme, ascetic form of Surakian logic, going off to the mountains to live a life of self-abnegation and contemplation. Basically, Spock was trying to become a monk.

This is a classic Star Trek conflict: Do Vulcans have emotions or not? Does Spock have emotions because he is half-human? Would he not if he was full Vulcan? I'm disregarding later Star Trek from this analysis because we're looking at 1979. And really, I'm just looking at these few pages.

Why would this be harder (impossible as it turns out) for Spock? But then why would a full Vulcan need it? And if (as it seems) not all Vulcans undergo Kolinahr then do other full Vulcans have emotions?

Not all religious people take monastic orders or join the priesthood. As with any philosophical or belief system, there are degrees of commitment to its practices. Normal Surakian teaching is about the management and discipline of one's emotions, keeping them internalized and not letting them affect one's behavior or judgment; only Kolinahr is about purging emotion entirely.

And there's no need to bring in post-1979 references; it was established as early as "Balance of Terror" that Vulcans embraced logic as a way of containing their innate emotional savagery, and reinforced in later episodes like "Amok Time" and "All Our Yesterdays." So the premise that a half-human would have a harder time with emotional control than a full Vulcan has always been contradictory.

Although there was a Voyager episode that mentioned a specific part of the Vulcan brain involved in emotional control. Maybe the method of control Surak developed relies on some facet of Vulcan neurology that humans don't have and Spock only partially has.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The earliest known reference to Tiberius as Kirk's middle name was by D.C. Fontana in a 1972 convention appearance, and it seems plausible that she got it from Roddenberry.

IIRC, it was a panel with David Gerrold and DC Fontana present. Also some fanfic authors. I had the impression that there was a general brainstorm and then the name was selected, so that it could appear in a TAS scene.

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

What a great idea for a thread! I just read the prefaces and first two chapters for the first time in at least 20 years (probably significantly longer than that).

So far, I don't have much to say about the book itself that others haven't said, but just thinking about the movie itself and reading the book takes me back to middle-school and going to see the movie the second day it was out with my Trekker buddies! There's been a lot of new on-screen Trek since then, and hundreds of novels, ebooks, short stories, but going to see that first movie after watching most of the episodes in syndication (long before streaming services) was an experience that really never got duplicated. And reading a novel by Gene Roddenberry himself was just icing on the cake.

I look forward to tomorrow's chapter!

 

[Tallguy]

@Christopher - I suspect my disconnect is simply that when I was a kid I took it as presented in the movie as being just "what Vulcans do". Clearly it's not.