Star Trek

Trek has been part of my life since I was an infant. I have bookcases full of Trek books. One of my tattoos is the Vulcan calligraphy for “kol-ut-shan” (IDIC). This is my home fandom.

Year 50 Day 244

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Me sitting at the top of a staircase, wearing a retro bowling shirt style shirt that's Star Trek gold and has the delta shield on the breast pocket. I'm giving the Vulcan salute. Arrayed across the stairs to either side and below me are a lot of Star Trek books.

Day 244: The books under the tree this Christmas got me to an exciting (for me, at least) milestone: I now have a complete* collection of Star Trek: The Original Series novels, as tracked by this spreadsheet based off of Wikipedia’s List of Star Trek novels page. From 1968’s Mission to Horatius to 2022’s Harm’s Way, and with 2024’s Lost to Eternity pre-ordered. (“Save the whales! Collect the whole set!”) I haven’t read them all yet, though it likely won’t be terribly long before I hit that milestone as well.

I didn’t originally have this as an actual goal. I’m just a Star Trek fan who reads a lot and tends to keep his books, and at first, the amount of books out there was so overwhelming that on the few occasions I considered trying to get them all, it didn’t seem realistic. But then the years went by, and I realized it was getting harder and harder to find books on the shelves that I didn’t already have, and turned to ordering more online…. Until this year, when I realized as we were doing our annual pre-Christmas book buying binge that I was surprisingly close to having them all. And so, here we are.

(I also have complete collections of Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Prodigy novels. However, those are new enough and there are few enough that that’s less notable of an accomplishment. The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, and the various spin-off series are in various states of completion, but all slowly working their way forward.)

* A few caveats for the hard-core collectors: I’m counting “complete” by the content, not by the various editions.

  • Mission to Horatius I have as an original 1968 edition, not the 1999 re-issue.
  • I have James Blish’s episode adaptations only in the 1991 “Classic Episode” three-volume collection, not in their original 12-volume versions.
  • I have Alan Dean Foster’s animated episode adaptations in the original Log One through Ten versions, not the 1993 three volume or the 1996 five volume editions.
  • I have the 2006 Mere Anarchy series as the single-volume omnibus, not the original six standalone volumes.

While I have no great drive to go out and get the “missing” editions listed above, I have to admit, if someone out there were to send them my way, I wouldn’t be terribly put out. But I’m not going to go chasing them down.

(Thanks to my wife for taking the photo, for the shirt, and for putting up with my hobbies and my monopolizing the staircase today.)

Here’s a closer look at the collection:

  • The earliest releases (1968-1978): Mission to Horatius is the first original novel, and was deemed “dull and poorly written, in addition to containing offensive descriptions of both Sulu and Uhura”. James Blish adapted the TOS episodes, here collected into three volumes, but did so (especially for the earlier episodes) without actually seeing the episodes and working from shooting scripts that often had not been finalized, resulting in some interesting deviations from the final broadcast versions.
    The three-volume Classic Episodes set of James Blish's episode adapations, and Mission to Horatius.
  • The Star Trek Adventures (1970-1981): Bantam’s sixteen original novels. These were long before the Star Trek Powers That Be were exercising much control over the content, and vary wildly in quality and characterization over what we’re used to today.
    The sixteen Bantam Star Trek novels.
  • The Star Trek Logs (1974-1978): Alan Dean Foster’s adaptations of the animated series episodes.
    The ten Star Trek Log books.
  • The Gibraltar Library Binding books and movie adaptations (1977-1992): Only two Gibraltar middle-grade books were published, exclusively for libraries. The movie adaptations shown here include the novelizations, the tie-ins for children, and a couple others that I’ve found (photo novelizations of TMP and TWOK and a Marvel Comics adaptation of TMP).
    Movie novelizations of the six TOS movies, related children's books, and the two Gibraltar library books for children.
  • The numbered novels (1979-2002) and original novels (1986-present): The main body of Trek literature. The first photo includes a “Which Way Books” (a “Choose Your Own Adventure” series competitor) Star Trek adventure.
    Fourteen TOS novels, plus one 'Which Way Books' Star Trek adventure.
    Eleven more Star Trek novels.
    Panoramic shot of about 40 Star Trek novels across a staircase step.
    Panoramic shot of about 40 Star Trek novels across a staircase step.
    Panoramic shot of about 40 Star Trek novels across a staircase step.
    Panoramic shot of about 30 Star Trek novels across a staircase step.
    The last seven books in my TOS collection.

📚 Foreign Foes by Greg Brodeur and Dave Galanter

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72/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It felt rather rushed and busy for a good portion of the book, as there were several different threads going on that the authors switched among rather quickly, and while the details took some time to come to light, the basic mystery as to what was going on wasn’t all that mysterious, being obvious to the reader (if not the characters) within the first couple chapters. Not a stinker, but not a standout, either.

Me holding Foreign Foes.

📚 Sins of Commission by Susan Wright

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67/2023 – ⭐️⭐️

Much of the plot revolves around an alien race that broadcasts emotions that affect everyone around them, which means nobody is acting the way they should, so it’s hard for me to tell whether people acting out of character and making decisions that don’t make sense was intentional or not. But by the end, I wasn’t really sure what the reasoning or motivations were for many of the actions taken. Plus, some of the key points (like a small breakthrough in understanding the new aliens) were far too obvious to not be thought about by the characters until halfway through the book. This one is quite forgettable.

Me holding Sins of Commission

📚 Here There Be Dragons by John Peel

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65/2023 – ⭐️⭐️

Possibly could have been an interesting take on the Preservers, or a fun TNG-crew-in-a-medieval-society romp, but was marred by bad character decisions (we must stay undercover in a medieval human society, so Geordi and Worf obviously can’t come, but sure, bring the Bajoran Ro and the android Data, that totally makes sense) and overly unfortunately stereotypical plotting decisions (Ro, of course, is nearly immediately stripped naked and placed in jeopardy of sexual assault, and Troi is later threatened with the same, because what other peril would women face?). Even the titular dragons barely make an appearance. Any interesting bits are far overshadowed by the rest.

Me holding Here There Be Dragons

📚 Escape Route by Cassandra Rose Clarke

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61/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The last of the three Prodigy middle-grade novels. Where the first two were set roughly during the break between the first and second half of the first season, this one is set during the gang’s shuttle trip to Earth. In need of a spare part for the shuttle, they find a mysterious moon that may have the part they need…if they’re all allowed to leave.

As with the rest, it’s another fun, quick adventure. To my (50-year-old) eyes, when reading all three back-to-back, it suffered a bit from having so many similarities to the first book, also by the same author: a search for a missing part leads the crew to a mysterious location where they get captured and have to figure out how to escape with the part they need. But for the age range these books are actually aimed at, the similarities might not be as noticeable.

Me holding Escape Route

Prodigy Saved, But Netflix Makes Me Grumpy

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First, the good news: Star Trek Prodigy, including its second season, will end up on Netflix. From Executive Producer Aaron J. Waltke on Mastodon:

At last we can share the news… Star Trek: Prodigy has landed!

Our show is beyond thrilled to be joining NETFLIX for the ongoing adventures of the Protostar crew.

[…]

The possibilities are endless now that the world can see all 40 episodes of Prodigy’s first and second seasons in one place…with the potential for more….

If you wish to see more…viewing the show on Netflix as soon as it drops…is unequivocally the way.

I must admit, I have mixed feelings about this.

The good side, obviously, is that Prodigy’s second season will actually be seen. And Aaron implies that there’s even a chance that, with enough viewership, they might get the option to continue on.

I just hate that this is going to end up (heck, it’s already there in Aaron’s post) being a “PLEASE WATCH IT ALL IMMEDIATELY YOU CAN’T WAIT YOU MUST BINGE IT ALL NOW BECAUSE THAT’S THE ONLY WAY NETFLIX THINKS PEOPLE WATCH ANYTHING AND THE ONLY CHANCE OF EVER GETTING ANY MORE” campaign.

I don’t like binging. I like watching an episode at a time, enjoying the story, letting it play out over time. Especially in shows I really enjoy (like the Star Trek universe), being able to think about an episode, enjoy the fanservice and callbacks, nitpick apart the retconning or mistakes, and generally geek out about it. But with full-season drops and the pressure to watch it all immediately (or, if they do decide to do weekly single-episode drops, to watch the newest episode within 24 hours of its appearance, preferably two or three times)…ugh.

And as someone who has a partner who isn’t as much of a Trek geek as I am, sometimes I don’t get a chance to watch a new episode for a few days — which by today’s standards, apparently means I’m not a real fan, and doesn’t count towards Netflix’s labyrinthine accounting of whether a show actually sticks around and gets more seasons, or suddenly disappears with the next budget cycle.

If it’s something I watch on my own, I watch when and as I can; if it’s something I want to watch with my partner, we watch it on our own schedule, and either way I resign myself to our numbers possibly not counting. Which is unfortunate, but I want to enjoy the things I enjoy, not feel like I have to rush through them faster than I like out of some weird sense of duty or obligation.

I also wonder how physical media factors into this. For instance, I’ve re-watched all of Lower Decks a couple times — but only the first watch was streamed, all re-watches were from the Blu-ray I purchased. Are home media purchases weighted higher because we’re likely to be re-watching things more, even if it’s not tallied in a database somewhere? Or, since there’s no way to tie an individual streaming account to a physical media purchase (well, in a perfect world; these days, who knows?), do they just look at my account as only having watched it once, so I must not be that interested?

Sigh. Streaming sure is convenient, but the backend business model is such trash.

So, yes, I’m happy that Prodigy will continue. I just wish Paramount had actually treated it like a full-fledged member of the Star Trek family and given it the support it should have had from the get-go.

Fingers crossed that this option goes well, though. And all grumbling aside, I really do wish Aaron and everyone else the best with this!

📚 The Romulan Prize by Simon Hawke

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52/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A better-than-average Romulan villain and a quest for a mysterious quarantined planet make this one quite enjoyable. Wraps up a bit quickly at the end, but even so, does so while bringing in some fun threads that could lead to more stories down the line (though I have no idea if the author wrote more Trek or followed up on any of those threads).

Me holding The Romulan Prize