Which Bantam novel do you think would have made a good movie?

[Procutus]

Back in the late 70s before the first movie came out, I was a big fan of the Bantam Trek novels, and often wondered when each one was released, would this story make a good Star Trek film? Over the years, my favorite choice for this has remained Planet of Judgement by Joe Haldeman, followed closely by David Gerrold's The Galactic Whirlpool.

For some reason, this came to mind again the other day and I found myself wondering which the thirteen original Bantam novels other people thought had the potential to be a decent ST movie. Let the nostalgia commence!

 

[Steve Roby]

I'm not convinced any of them would make a great movie, but those two were probably my favourites of the bunch. For a long time I had a recurring dream about finding new series of Star Trek novels I hadn't known about. Can't really get that kind of experience these days, though, when you know from Amazon listings or websites like this one what's coming out.

 

[Procutus]

That is so true. Back when the Bantam novels were being sporadically published, you had no idea when they were going to show up on a book-rack. There was nearly a year's gap between Spock, Messiah! and the two that came after that.

It was quite the thrill to just spot one, never knowing when there might be more.

 

[Airin]

The ones I liked the most were those by the Haldeman brothers: "Planet of Judgment", "World Without End" and "Perry's Planet". But I feel most were simply too short to make a movie. The only one of the full Bantam line I think could work as such is "World Without End".
As for the others, I didn't like them much (to this day, "Vulcan!" is at the very bottom of the ranking, followed closely by "Spock: Messiah!", and I doubt any Pocket Book entry will change that). But some of the short stories in "The New Voyages" compilation were pretty good.

 

[Christopher]

But I feel most were simply too short to make a movie.

Oh, on the contrary -- most novels need to be cut down considerably when adapted as movies, so a short novel might be just about right. Look at movie novelizations -- they're often fairly short as novels go, unless they add a significant amount of new material.

Although the one I think would work best as a movie is The Galactic Whirlpool, which is the second-longest one. Which is not surprising, since it's based on Gerrold's pitch for a 2-hour TOS episode, which was rejected because it was too expensive for TV and would've only been doable as a movie.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I, too, would say The Galactic Whirlpool. It's arguably the best of the Bantam Era, and better than a lot of the early Pocket novels.

Although Trek to Madworld would be fun as a surreal cornball comedy film.

 

[Denise]

Back in the late 70s before the first movie came out, I was a big fan of the Bantam Trek novels, and often wondered when each one was released, would this story make a good Star Trek film? Over the years, my favorite choice for this has remained Planet of Judgement by Joe Haldeman, followed closely by David Gerrold's The Galactic Whirlpool.

For some reason, this came to mind again the other day and I found myself wondering which the thirteen original Bantam novels other people thought had the potential to be a decent ST movie. Let the nostalgia commence!

I definitely would have liked to have seen a film of Planet of Judgment. It's such an eerie novel.

 

[Airin]

Oh, on the contrary -- most novels need to be cut down considerably when adapted as movies, so a short novel might be just about right.

In general I agree. But most of the stories in these novels were so short that they seemed like slightly padded episodes. I just don't think there were enough things going on in the plot for a movie. "World Without End" at least had an adventure inside the "planet", and a subplot aboard the Enterprise with Scotty and Klingons, which would help to fill the movie length. "Price of the Phoenix" was also longer than average and had lots of (confusing) action. But considering the amount of violence, it'd have to be directed by Tarantino
"Planet of Judgment" was very interesting, but rather cerebral and hallucinatory, so I think it works better as just a book.

 

[Christopher]

But most of the stories in these novels were so short that they seemed like slightly padded episodes. I just don't think there were enough things going on in the plot for a movie.

I actually think a lot of movies have less story than TV episodes, because episodic TV needs to tell stories efficiently and compactly while movies have room to sprawl more, devoting a larger percentage of their time to action or spectacle or atmosphere. For example, the movie Stargate had fewer ideas in two hours than your typical episode of Stargate SG-1 crammed into the first act of a single episode, which is why I liked the series enormously more than the movie.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

But most of the stories in these novels were so short that they seemed like slightly padded episodes.

Not so sure about the "padded" part, but yes, ST novels, especially from that era, were (and to some extent still are) intended to feel like episodes.

 

[Denise]

The ones I liked the most were those by the Haldeman brothers: "Planet of Judgment", "World Without End" and "Perry's Planet". But I feel most were simply too short to make a movie. The only one of the full Bantam line I think could work as such is "World Without End".
As for the others, I didn't like them much (to this day, "Vulcan!" is at the very bottom of the ranking, followed closely by "Spock: Messiah!", and I doubt any Pocket Book entry will change that). But some of the short stories in "The New Voyages" compilation were pretty good.

I like the Haldeman brothers' books, too. I agree with you about Kathleen Sky's books and Spock Messiah. I generally enjoy reading anything with a Spock-plot in it, and I read those, but wouldn't read them again. I don't even own them.

At least one of the stories in The New Voyages was filmed as a fan-produced episode. It was a favorite story of mine -- "The Mind Sifter."

 

[Christopher]

Not so sure about the "padded" part, but yes, ST novels, especially from that era, were (and to some extent still are) intended to feel like episodes.

I don't think that's true at all. Back then, reading was a far more popular pastime than it is today, and TV was still considered a less respectable entertainment medium than prose, so if anything, it would've been seen as preferable for a book based on a TV show to feel like a book, rather than limiting itself to what TV was capable of. There's a lot in the Bantam novels that felt different from TV episodes -- the stories were often more epic in scope (e.g. Spock Must Die! or The Starless World), there were sometimes long narrative passages focusing on ideas rather than depicting "onscreen" events (e.g. all of The Galactic Whirlpool's worldbuilding and historical asides), and so on. Part of what made Planet of Judgment so interesting was that Haldeman didn't merely imitate how TOS did things but used his experience as a military veteran to depict how landing parties should have done things instead, with body armor, more detailed emergency procedures and strategies, etc.

The reason Bantam Trek's editor Fredrik Pohl hired veteran SF authors like Joe Haldeman and Gordon Eklund, as well as fan authors like Marshak/Culbreath and Kathleen Sky, is because he wanted books that felt like SF novels, even if they weren't necessarily that faithful to TV Trek. The primary goal was to sell books, period -- not just to fans of the show, but to SF readers in general. Note that the original covers did not feature the Star Trek logo -- they just gave the title of the book, with small text identifying it as a Trek novel. While Trek was growing quite popular in syndication, it wasn't yet the institution it later became, so the goal was more to sell Trek books to a general SF readership than to pander exclusively to the Trek fanbase. The books weren't short because they were trying to feel like episodes, but because it was typical at the time for SF novels to be shorter than they are today.

As for the modern novels, I for one have rarely tried to make my books "feel like episodes," because the whole point of doing stories in a different medium is to take advantage of that medium's distinctive strengths, not merely to imitate what the original medium already does. I know that Marco Palmieri, the editor of the DS9 post-finale novels, resisted the tendency of fans to treat the books as "Season 8," because he strove to embrace the freedom of prose to tell stories in ways that TV episodes couldn't.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Am I the only one who actually liked Death's Angel?

Despite the fact that it has probably the most obvious Mary Sue in Trek history, of course.

I did find the concept of Starfleet having a "Special Security Division" to be rather chilling.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Am I the only one who actually liked Death's Angel?

No; I thought it was fun, at the time; now I think of it as a "guilty pleasure."

 

[Airin]

At least one of the stories in The New Voyages was filmed as a fan-produced episode. It was a favorite story of mine -- "The Mind Sifter."

That was one of the best, imo. I also liked "In The Cave" from the second volume. It's amazing that they got Roddenberry and all the actors to write intros for these short stories.

Am I the only one who actually liked Death's Angel?

Despite the fact that it has probably the most obvious Mary Sue in Trek history, of course.

I found that an improvement over the rampant mysoginy from "Vulcan!", and the Mary Sue wasn't as unlikable as the previous one. Also, there was a scientific explanation for her Mary-Sueness. The character is often brought up as the ultimate example of this trope, but at least she had a justified role in the story. There have been other characters, like Anitra Lantern (from Dillard's "Demons") that feel much more like gratuitous self-inserts than this one.

 

[Christopher]

It's amazing that they got Roddenberry and all the actors to write intros for these short stories.

In the '70s, not so amazing, since a lot of their careers were not at a high point then.

 

[Procutus]

Part of what made Planet of Judgment so interesting was that Haldeman didn't merely imitate how TOS did things but used his experience as a military veteran to depict how landing parties should have done things instead, with body armor, more detailed emergency procedures and strategies, etc.

I think that was part of what made that novel stand out to me, the realism that was depicted that went beyond what we had seen in the show. That, and the scope of the story definitely felt bigger than the confines of 1960s television.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I found that an improvement over the rampant mysoginy from "Vulcan!"

That particular problem with Vulcan! was particularly bizarre, given that the author was a woman.

 

[FredH]

I could certainly see movies of Planet of Judgment — for reasons already touched on in this thread — and Spock Must Die! The characterization might need to be reworked a little, but it’s got the scope of a film, I think.

 

[Airin]

That particular problem with Vulcan! was particularly bizarre, given that the author was a woman.

Women can be as mysoginistic as men. It's an error to think that they're somehow immune. Among other things, that novel had this supposedly brilliant female doctor, but the only credentials we ever see of her are her big boobs and sexy lingerie. And Spock and McCoy's behaviour (the most out-of-character I have ever seen, both in licensed books OR fanfiction) is borderline sexual harassment. That and she resorting to "hysterics" every five minutes... Yuck, wish I could erase this novel from my head. Marshak and Culbreath are nothing in comparison.