It's certainly better than the "Captain's Peril/Blood/Glory" trilogy, but it takes a few departures from fan expectations and got its share of criticism. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Shatner had a falling out with Pocket over this book and accused them of underpromoting it, and was angry that Simon & Schuster Audioworks didn't commission an audio version. So far, he doesn't have a contract to write the sequel, as far as I know. No one ever said this would be a trilogy, though.
Shatner may have a point, there. I get the impression sometimes that Pocket's sales and marketing departments couldn't sell water to a thirsty man. I don't think they know how to promote or sell. Yeah, I thought this would be a two book set.
Well, if there's anyone who out there who wanted a brash, young, troublemaking Kirk who gets the Enterprise way too early, but thought the new movie version of Kirk was too much of a shy, unassuming guy who couldn't prematurely run a starship if his life depended on it, this book might be what they're looking for.
I read Collision Course right after seeing the new Star Trek. I'm not too sure about the Back to the Future-style flying cars, or that every building at SFA is named after an Enterprise character, but I liked it. I also much prefer the millitary school-style academy to the Wesley factory it's usually depicted as. The book contradicts every other Young Kirk book, as well as the rest of the Shatnerverse. If that sort of thing ruins a book for you, avoid it. If you like lots of sillyness (including the worst laser/phaser excuse ever), you'll probably enjoy it.
The back of the book (softcover version) says "The adventure continues in" and it lists the title of the book which I forget what that is.
I really must disagree there. I hated this book's depiction of Starfleet Academy. Starfleet cadets are in training to be explorers, diplomats, and scientists first, soldiers when necessary (the uniform-rank-weapons stuff is because they need to be prepared to jump into the role of soldier if need be) not "the army". The training style at Shatner's version of the Academy was of a type I despise in real life, yet alone in the future of the Federation. If it isn't even appopriate for real soldiers- and I'm sure it's not- it certainly isn't appropriate to Starfleet. The "Wesley Factory" is what Starfleet and the Federation are supposed to be about.
You know how in 'The Cage' they use lasers? You know how in Enterprise, they use phasers? Without spoiling too much, Starfleet needs non-lethal weapons in 2250-something. The book says that during the Romulan War phase pistols were phased out (sorry) and replaced by lasers to better fight Romulan robot drones. They then imply that the technology for phaser weapons was lost, but say that starfleet is developing a new version of the phaser but it'll be a few years before it's in use yet. Why they couldn't just any of the non-lethal weapons available today is a mystery.
That is overthinking it. It's simpler just to assume they were saying "phasers" in "The Cage" all along, which is no doubt what Roddenberry would've preferred (just as he preferred to believe that Klingons always had ridged foreheads). He changed it because he decided calling the weapons "lasers" had been a mistake. After all, going by that Czech closed-captioning transcript site, the word "laser" is only used twice in the whole pilot. Easy enough to gloss over. Also, there's no way a laser could build up a "force chamber explosion" -- that's not how a laser works.
Exactly. So it might have been intended be a duology. Or an open-ended series, if the first one did well. But no one has ever mentioned it being a trilogy, and Shatner didn't have a multi book contract for this one. "Trial Run": http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Academy:_Trial_Run
It's a shame these books never got published. Is there a list of books based on the new movie universe that have been published?
IIRC, the only JJVerse novels that have been published are the YA Starfleet Academy ones: The Delta Anomaly The Edge The Gemini Agent The Assassination Game There were four non-YA novels contracted and written, but never published.
Thanks. I was reading the synopsis and noticed Spock isn't in them, or at least he is not mentioned. Wasn't he an instructor at the academy?
I haven't read them, but Spock was mentioned in the blurb in the first one, and according to Memory Beta he is listed as a character in all four.
The phaser technology was not lost. The thing was that they couldn't make lasers non-lethal. Too far away and it would just tickle, too close then bye bye, so Starfleet went back to phase technology and married it with lasers thus giving us the phaser. Ha! Take that 2009 King Daniel!
2009 King Daniel was saying what was presented in "Collision Course", so it's more a "take that" towards that book.
Now, now, there are many different kinds of lasers, dozens of distinct types, as opposed to the tiny handful that existed 50 years ago. There's the original ruby laser, there are gas discharge lasers (including krypton lasers that resonate at not less than four widely-spaced spectral lines, making them the industry standard for light shows), neodymium-glass and neodymium-YAG lasers, the common laser diodes found in all manner of optical media drives, and the really exotic stuff, like gas-dynamic lasers. And it's entirely possible that it's the power supply that would "build up a force chamber explosion."