Following the Battle of Vanguard between Starfleet and the Tholians, Enterprise, Endeavor, and Sagittarius undergo repairs, while Nogura debriefs Kirk on his involvement in the events leading up to the final battle, and the battle itself.
It's brief, but seems largely unnecessary, as it reads a lot like deleted scenes from the previous novel, held together with a frame plot. We get a little bit more context around how much Kirk and his crew knew about Vanguard. But there's not much we the audience didn't already know.
There's some interpersonal exchange between Kirk and Nogura. Nogura will go on to be Starfleet CnC during the events of “The Motion Picture”, though he'll be mentioned in dialog only, with a few appearances in beta cannon that I suppose I'll get to later. In and of itself, that much is fine. But still doesn't really give any new information.
According to the acknowledgements, Pocketbooks requested this coda. I'm not sure what they felt was missing, except maybe some continuity housekeeping, which often feels tacky to me. And for a novel series centering around covert operations, I think those expectations had already been established. It's not like Discovery, with all the “oh, half the viewership are bitching about continuity, so let's burry the whole thing a thousand years into the future and make it all classified” bullshit. It was already classified. So why do we have to classify it again? Just to make it double super-duper classified? But the author said he had fun writing it, and it's a pretty good recap of the final events of the series.
Anyway, it was fine. I guess you could call it “if novels could have DVD Extras”
Finished Star Trek: Vanguard “Storming Heaven” by David Mack.
Freshly escaped from the T'Kon crystal, the Wanderer regains her strength and rallies the other Shedai to attack Vanguard.
Meanwhile, Nogura and T'Prynn, having traced the source of the artifacts back to the Eremar pulsar, need to send the Sagittarius out to investigate. But the Klingons and Romulans are waiting for them to do just that.
The novel opens with Enterprise in hot pursuit of infamous pirate Auk-Rex. Auk-Rex is kindof a Dread Pirate Roberts; more of a persona than a person, probably an alias, and mostly serves as a plot justification for the rest of the novel. Auk-Rex is bookin' it to an uncharted planet, which Spock hastily speculates might be a place called “Sanctuary”. A place Starfleet only knows about by rumor where fugitives and political dissidents often go to escape pursuit. So Auk-Rex will be home free if the ship is able to make it there.
The novel opens with Kirk presiding over the wedding of two crew members, Simon Nordell from Engineering, and Leslie Lebrun from Security. A couple apparently in love, despite their constant bickering.
Symbolism!
After the wedding, he receives orders from Starfleet to travel to the Nevis system. The Nevisians have been at war for over 12,000 years. That's not a typo. They've actually been at war that long. They'd begun pushing out into the galaxy doing all the usual spacefaring stuff, exploration, commerce, what have you, until suddenly they were all recalled to their home system, withdrew all their ambassadors, and reverted to isolationism while they persistently fought each other. And suddenly, these cultures who have been at war since humanity first figured out agriculture have declared peace. The Federation is certainly not complaining, but thinks it's unusual enough that they ought to send a starship over to check it out.
The story opens toward the end of the episode “That Which Survives”. Kirk, McCoy and Sulu are trapped on the Kalandan station surrounded by the 3 Losira replicants. Spock and a security guard beam down just in time to shoot the Kalandan defense computer and saves them. Kirk hails the ship for beamout, they have a little chat about beauty surviving.
The end.
After the credits, Enterprise tries to beam up the landing party, but the transporter is interrupted by the biofilter detecting the disease that killed off the Kalandans. The entire landing party is infected, and can't leave until they can find a cure. While they're working on a cure, they continue to explore the station, discovering the Kalandan living quarters, one of the control rooms, some other interesting things. They're able to get some computer access, but since the station is in lockdown, all the vital information is controlled by the defense computer, which the security officer, whose name is Reinhart, by the way, left in a smoldering mess.
Finished “The Hunting” by Doris Beetem. Part of the Star Trek: The New Voyages short story collection.
It was short. Even for a short story.
Spock goes on a ritual hunt called the Mok farr, where a Vulcan must pursue a dangerous animal for the purpose of subduing and mind melding with it to get an understanding of its bestial nature. To understand the animals base emotions reminiscent of a Vulcan's own violent emotions. And yes, I'm cribbing a little bit from Memory Beta, because it's really that brief.
Anyway, McCoy finds out about this, and decides to go with him, because he thinks Spock might need help.
Spock finds and melds with a predator called an owltiger. Apparently it got the name because it's a tiger, but its ears are reminiscent of an owl. Something goes wrong. The owltiger takes off, and so does Spock. Apparently the mind meld didn't completely finish, and now Spock thinks he's a tiger. A tiger that's wildly confused that its paws are now hands.
McCoy needs to track him down, and entice him to return to camp until the affect can wear off. It's not really hijinks. It's a fairly interesting exploration of the Vulcan psyche, and an exploration of the relationship between the two.
It has been a long time coming, I tell ya! Finally finished “First Frontier” by Diane Carey & Dr. James I. Kirkland.
It's been a rough checks notes uhg! 4½ months, with real life imposing over my reading schedule, which set me back quite a bit. But I finally got back to it.
The story opens with Enterprise about to test an experimental shield system with Exeter and Farragut standing by on monitoring. For reasons that seem completely unnecessary to the plot, Kirk was injured on a previous mission; his leg is swollen. It will be fine eventually, as McCoy is keeping him pumped full of drugs, and insists the healing will go faster if he gets some rest. But Kirk insists on overseeing the experiment despite the injury. This whole plot element seems to serve no purpose except to unnecessarily hobble Kirk without really slowing him down at all, and show him putting on a tough face for the crew, and wouldn't have been missed if it were cut.
That is to say I've finished the first half of a novel in which the second half is Next Gen. I intend to finish it, later, when I get to Next Gen. Which probably means that I'm going to have to re-read part 1 when I get there to remind myself what happened.
Kirk is ordered to a point outside of claimed space to intercept a smuggler who Starfleet believes is carrying information about the Romulan plasma weapon that they'd first encountered in “Balance of Terror” way back in early Season 1. They find the titular Badlands, which Starfleet is apparently largely unaware of. They capture who they believe to be the smuggler, and bring them aboard, and have an entanglement with a Romulan Bird of Prey. There's a radiation burst, which destroys the Romulan ship, and the Enterprise crew is hit with dangerous and mysterious form of gamma radiation. A bunch of the crew get sick with radiation poisoning.
The Klingons show up, and they play cat and mouse with them for a while, while Kirk tries to get information about the plasma weapon out of their captured smuggler.
I'm going to reserve comment on it, since it's only the first half of the first novel of a 2 novel series. When I get to Part 2, I might have more to say. But it's a pretty reasonable start so far.
The Enterprise is on its way to a science conference at Deep Space Station M-20 when it picks up an automated distress call from a runaway starship, the U.S.S. Sphinx, coming out of the Lantaru sector. They catch up to the Sphinx and manage to pull it out of warp, only to find that the entire crew are dead. There is also an unidentified individual aboard who is not on the crew roster. This stowaway was apparently killed on the bridge in a fight with the captain.
Finished “Windows on a Lost World” by V.E. Mitchell.
There's a bit of a meme going around the last year or 2 about how evolution keeps making crabs. Or trending toward crab-like body plans. It's known in biological circles as 'carcinization'. It's not quite as pervasive as the meme might lead one to believe, but it's a real thing. This novel asks the question “what if crabs at the evolutionary pinnacle were xenophobic dicks?”
