Enterprise is ordered to transport a somewhat belligerent Federation Council member Conrad Franklin Kent and his aide Hazel Payton to Starbase 12. Along the way, they encounter a Klingon ship that is investigating the disappearance of several Klingon ships in the general vicinity. Kent mentions that the Federation and other powers, including the Romulans have also had ships gone missing, and seems to imply that he knows more than he is letting on, but generally being unhelpful.
At Starbase 12, they're ordered to investigate the disappearances. Thankfully they leave Kent behind, but they bring along Payton, and an enigmatic Professor Omen, who happens to be a weapons expert, and designer of the Enterprise's current loadout.
The Merkaan raider Hamesaad Dreen seizes a Federation mining colony, holding them hostage, and forcing them to mine ore for him. Some 10 years prior, Dreen had attacked Federation transport ships, before he was thwarted by Captain Pike and Spock. This defeat was a humiliation that he's only recently built himself back from.
The colony administrator, Bradford Wayne, served with Spock under Pike all those years ago. He was a helmsman on a different shift, and not a main character, so he and Spock knew each other, but weren't particularly close. He and the other colonists are eventually able to get a distress call out.
Kirk is leading an away team exploring the ruins of a long extinct civilization. The party split up, with Sulu taking a group to explore another area. Kirk's party experiences localized tremors, which Sulu's group doesn't. Shortly after, they discover the cause of the tremors; a giant grub worm of some kind. It attacks Spock, and stings him with its tentacle causing him to convulse and lose consciousness.
McCoy beams up with Spock, while Kirk remains on the planet to regroup with the rest of the away team. But before they could reunite with Sulu's party and return to the ship, another tremor causes them to fall into a sinkhole.
Just then Admiral Kowalski contacts the Enterprise, and orders Scotty to abandon the search for Kirk's party, and respond to the colony's distress call.
Finished Star Trek: Vanguard “What Judgements Come” by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore.
Phew! I gotta tell ya, it's a novel alright.
Honestly, I don't know if I'm giving the Vanguard novels a fair shake. For those who don't know, most of the Vanguard novels occur in parallel with TOS, and span several months to a year in-universe. And since I'm watching and reading Star Trek in chronological order, I read the Vanguard novels in parallel, and try to pace them more or less in line with how Memory-Beta has them laid out. Which means a few TOS novels and episodes occur during a single Vanguard novel.
And I notice I've been slowing down a bit lately. I don't know if I've just been busy, or not taking as much time to read as I used to. But I was burning through a novel in 1-2 weeks, and now they seem to take a month or more. I'd actually thought about shuffling “Ghost-Walker” further down the timeline to fit Vanguard in better. But I'm glad I didn't because I ended up liking “Ghost-Walker”.
Set during the kindof meh Season 3, between “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” and “What Is Starfleet?”, Enterprise is ordered to assist a top secret research station in orbit around a black hole that has fallen victim to sabotage and murder, as they approach the culmination of their mission.
Pike has a history with this black hole. 16 years prior, when he was second officer of the Chatelet, he pursued an unidentified craft into the accretion disk. He attempted to pull them out with the tractor beam, but the rogue ship tried to escape, and was destroyed. He was cleared of any wrongdoing, but it still weighed heavily on his conscience, causing him to be apprehensive in going back there.
It's good on a number of levels. Not the least of which as a ghost story, which is appropriate for the time of year.
Enterprise is delivering a team of Federation scientists to study the culture of the Midgwis. A world between Federation and Klingon space, and previously contacted by the Klingons, who the Midgwis managed to repel.
Finished “How Much for Just the Planet?” by John M. Ford.
A large dilithium deposit is discovered nearly simultaneously by both the Federation and the Klingon Empire. Since the planet is in neutral space, under the terms of the Organian Peace Treaty, whichever side demonstrates they are best able to develop. Enterprise is sent along with Ambassador Charlotte Sanchez to make contact with the colonists, and the Klingons send Captain Kaden of the IKS Fire Blossom.
But the planet is colonized entirely by theater kids. Hijinks Ensue.
Finished “Dreams of the Raven” by Carmen Carter. It's a deep exploration of an existential nightmare.
Actually, I finished last week, while paper.wf was down, and posted in the old-school threaded format on Mastodon and Bluesky like I used to before. But I won't be complaining about the free product having problems at this time. Haven't decided what I'm going to do in the wake of this, just glad it's back. Sufficed to say I'm going to start backing up more often. Anyway back to the Social Media Book Report.
Finished “Double, Double” by Michael Jan Friedman.
Following the events of “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, Kirk decides not to sully the memory of the late Dr. Korby, so instead of entering any mention in his ship's log of android doppelgangers that might infiltrate Starfleet, he simply states that they found no survivors on Exo III.
Unbeknownst to him, Dr. Korby had sent out another android duplicate of Dr. Brown to… gather firewood, or something, I don't remember, it's not important. Brown gets back to find that he's alone. Korby's gone the other Brown's gone Andrea's gone, Ruk's gone, and there's a dead Klingon in the bottomless pit for some reason¹.²
But the Android Duplication Machine™ has been used recently, and the template is still in the buffer. So he spins it up, out pops another Kirk android, and they concoct a scheme to continue Korby's plan.
Somewhere around March 2022, I started rewatching Star Trek Enterprise for the first time in like 20 years. I'd just finished TNG, DS9, and Voyager, so it seemed a natural progression.
I'm kindof a stickler for chronological order. TOS was never meant to have any in-universe chronology set to it. TNG and later series did have something of a more coherent chronology that became more or less ridged depending on the needs of the series. When I (re)watched TNG, DS9, and Voyager, all those years ago, I tried to interleave the episodes and movies as they occurred in the in-universe chronological order. So to my mind, Enterprise being the first series in the in-universe chronological order, I was kindof starting over.
