Space, The Final Frontier.
These words have long been used as almost a rallying cry for Trek-dom for years.
But what happened as humanity took those initial monumental steps in to the place where no man had gone before?
What happened when the first impulse engine took its maiden voyage into that wild black yonder?
This book from Greg Cox intends to tell that tale, which has been a story of interest since Star Trek debuted back in the 60s.
But does finally learning the story behind that off-handed mention live up to the wonder that imaginations have conjured in all the ensuing years?
Is learning what that moment in history entailed satisfying enough?
Let’s strap in and find out, gang!
As always, this is your requisite ***SPOILER ALERT***
Act accordingly.
On June 28th 2020, Colonel Shaun Geoffrey Christopher, son of USAF Captain John Christopher, made his historic trip to Saturn in the U.S.S. Lewis & Clark.
In 2270, the U.S.S. Enterprise answered a distress call from a mining moon orbiting the ringed planet Klondike VI.
Both ships witness the hexagonal storm on the respective planets they’ve arrived at in turmoil.
While trying to understand that, both ships encounter a strange alien probe.
Through a series of exploratory events in both places in time, the Captains of both ships come in contact with the probe and in a flash of bright white light swap bodies and kick off our plot.
Season 1, Episode 19, production number 6149-21: Tomorrow Is Yesterday.
One of the most iconic and memorable episodes of Star Trek The Original Series.
In that episode, Kirk and crew accidentally end up in the 1960s and beam Captain John Christopher aboard, he learns too much about 23rd century technology and they fear they can’t send him back to his time because his experiences aboard Enterprise may cause him to, intentionally or not, change the future.
The only problem is that his son is a crucial part of the space program.
This is that long speculated story!
I’ve known Greg Cox’s name since I was around 14 years old, I had just made the big jump into comic books, after a childhood of loving comic book based cartoons.
Having recently discovered the wonderful world of media tie-in novels, Marvel had a new line of books through Pocket Books and I found and read Fantastic Four: War Zone.
From that book forward, Greg Cox was a sign of quality and easy reading, particularly when dealing with sci-fi.
This book does nothing to disabuse me of that notion.
His prose is crisp, economic, and some how encourages an unencumbered need to devour page after page.
If I were to have a complaint about this book, it would be the same I’ve had in many of these reviews.
And thinking about it, it’s actually probably what any good storyteller should be doing, he leaves you wanting more…and that is one hell of a feat in a novel that weighs in at 370 pages!
His focus, understandably, is mainly on the 2020 crew that we don’t really know.
Is it bad?
Not at all!
But I wanted to spend more time with the crew we know and love.
I wanted to see more interactions between Christopher, in Kirk’s body, with the iconic crew members.
If you love the adventures of the 1701 crew, episodes or movies, then this just may be the book for you.
It is a call back/forward jizz fest we nerds adore, and it never comes off feeling hokey like he’s just trying to make references for the sake of making them.
Continuity wasn’t the biggest deal in the 60s, but logically if you were in a 5 year mission, such as Kirk is leading, if you didn’t always reference or ponder what experiences you’ve had it would feel cheap and unimportant.
And that is how most of these references are fit in, reflections on the encounters they’ve had over the course of their extended stay in space.
Unsurprisingly, this had everything and more that I want out of a Star Trek novel.
The characterization is spot on, it has a solid Sci-Fi hook, there’s an unexpected conflict that I didn’t even touch on, and it has that sense of wonder and hope that stories of space travel should have.
Gang, if you always wondered what happened on that historic trip to Saturn, wonder no more.
I doubt there could be a better telling of it than this!
Let us what you think of this review in the comments below or share this post on Twitter with the Hashtag #TNBBookReview.
Special thanks to @ACFerrell1976 for her continued editorial assistance.
[…] as you may know, up to this point, the most recent Star Trek novel I’d read (The Rings Of Time by Greg Cox) came out nearly a decade ago. And, mind you, that’s not for lack of interest. […]