TOS 80's Novel Continuity Read Through

[Christopher]

In season 2 the only strong new character that I liked was Hawk.

Hawk was potentially a great character, but he was wasted. There were too many episodes where he was just "off on patrol" so that Gil Gerard could hog the spotlight. He only infrequently got anything substantive to do. And it's a shame, since he was such an interesting character and so well-played by Thom Christopher.

I sometimes found the doctor of the ship (his name escapes me at the moment) was actually a bit annoying at times.

Wilfrid Hyde-White's character was Dr. Goodfellow, first name unknown. I found him quite charming. He was somewhat modeled on Isaac Asimov, in his passion for science and bad puns. Season 2 had a lot of Asimov nods, what with the admiral supposedly descended from him, and the mention of the Three Laws of Robotics and positronic brains in the episode "Shgoratchx!" The reason for this is that season 2's showrunner John Mantley had attempted some years earlier to make a feature film version of Asimov's I, Robot, the one that Harlan Ellison scripted. So he had a prior connection to The Good Doctor.

 

[Mysterion]

The reason for this is that season 2's showrunner John Mantley had attempted some years earlier to make a feature film version of Asimov's I, Robot, the one that Harlan Ellison scripted. So he had a prior connection to The Good Doctor.

I have always wished that move would have been made. It's a fascinating script - and the artwork (by Mark Zug) in the book that was published of the script was nothing short of beautiful. I can only hope there is an alternate timeline where that movie was made instead of that silliness with Will Smith.

 

[Damian]

Wilfrid Hyde-White's character was Dr. Goodfellow, first name unknown. I found him quite charming. He was somewhat modeled on Isaac Asimov, in his passion for science and bad puns.

Yeah, I remembered his name later after I had shut down my computer. It's an easy enough name but I guess it was late. I always liked the actor. I saw him in a number of roles where he played a sort of gentle grandfatherly figure. It just seemed like he was always getting into some sort of trouble and someone would have to come and save him, and it seemed distracting to the story. Maybe I'm overstating it a bit, but that's what I recall. So it's more the writing of his character than the acting part.

I just finished watching "Unchained Woman" from season 1 and am rewatching the show so when I get to season 2 I'll look out for some things. Season 2 wasn't terrible. It had potential. I feel they just left too much behind in season 1. Retaining Theopolis would have been nice (instead of bringing in Chrichton). Frankly I'd probably have kept Huer as well, maybe instead of Admiral Asimov (maybe having him 'retire' as head of the defense directorate and helping lead the Searcher in it's mission as a lifelong dream or something like that). I'd obviously would have still have added Hawk and maybe with better writing kept in Goodfellow. And keeping the other characters, including Lee Kelso (I forget his name in BR) would be fine. And I would have kept the personality of season 1: the occasional humor, a more laid back Rogers, and Wilma's characteristics from Season 1.

As an aside, I watched the Planet of the Apes TV series last year and I suddenly noticed the music to "Unchained Woman" was very similar to the music from a couple POTA episodes. One of those things where I was thinking 'hmm, that music sounds very familiar' then I remembered where I heard it before.

 

[Christopher]

Season 2 wasn't terrible. It had potential.

It had potential, but that potential was quashed almost immediately, presumably by network meddling, and thus it was mostly terrible. The fact that it had so much potential is what makes it so terrible, because it underlines the wasted opportunity.

And keeping the other characters, including Lee Kelso (I forget his name in BR) would be fine.

Paul Carr's character was named Lt. Devlin. Although it hardly mattered. Carr was one of three actors, along with Dennis Haysbert and Alex Hyde-White (Wilfrid's son), who appeared as background crew in four episodes each and played essentially interchangeable parts (although there were a couple of cases where they were both in the same episode). There's even a case where Hyde-White is given one name and rank in dialogue and a different one in the credits, suggesting that the script was written for a different character but they swapped in the actor's previous character name on the set (like with Kevin Riley in TOS: "The Conscience of the King"). So I figure they just wrote generic background crew and dropped in whichever of the three actors was available that week. Devlin did get a bit more characterization than the others in "Journey to Oasis" and "The Guardians," but his last two appearances were more generic.

As an aside, I watched the Planet of the Apes TV series last year and I suddenly noticed the music to "Unchained Woman" was very similar to the music from a couple POTA episodes. One of those things where I was thinking 'hmm, that music sounds very familiar' then I remembered where I heard it before.

The composer for "Unchained Woman" was Richard LaSalle, whose other credits include the Planet of the Apes episode "The Trap." That was the third episode of PotA, so it's possible his music was tracked into one or more later episodes.

Then again, a given decade of TV music will tend to have a certain general style and sound to it, which can make scores by different composers sound similar.

"Unchained Woman" is kind of an interesting episode, because it's Jamie Lee Curtis vs. the Terminator, 7 years before there was a Terminator.

 

[Damian]

The composer for "Unchained Woman" was Richard LaSalle, whose other credits include the Planet of the Apes episode "The Trap." That was the third episode of PotA, so it's possible his music was tracked into one or more later episodes.

Then again, a given decade of TV music will tend to have a certain general style and sound to it, which can make scores by different composers sound similar.

"Unchained Woman" is kind of an interesting episode, because it's Jamie Lee Curtis vs. the Terminator, 7 years before there was a Terminator.

Ha-ha, yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way with the Terminator.

That probably explains the music though. I know Lalo Schifrin did the main theme and some of the music for the series, but I couldn't remember the other episodic composers for POTA.

The music score was very similar, almost the same, with a slightly different sound to it. Knowing it's the same guy sort of explains it though. He probably just used the same music he wrote for "The Trap" but just redid it.

 

[Christopher]

He probably just used the same music he wrote for "The Trap" but just redid it.

I doubt it. There are only so many musical patterns that sound good, so it's not uncommon for different composers to use similar melodies by chance. For instance, I heard a melody on a show just the other day -- I think it was 12 Monkeys -- that was pretty much note-for-note a slowed-down version of Blake Neely's theme for The Flash. But I'm sure it was a coincidence, because coincidences happen in art and creativity all the time. The human senses and mind react better to some patterns than others, so there are always going to be patterns that recur without anything guiding their recurrence other than the human sense of aesthetics. Laypeople are far, far too quick to equate similarity with intentional imitation.

 

[Damian]

I doubt it. There are only so many musical patterns that sound good, so it's not uncommon for different composers to use similar melodies by chance. For instance, I heard a melody on a show just the other day -- I think it was 12 Monkeys -- that was pretty much note-for-note a slowed-down version of Blake Neely's theme for The Flash. But I'm sure it was a coincidence, because coincidences happen in art and creativity all the time. The human senses and mind react better to some patterns than others, so there are always going to be patterns that recur without anything guiding their recurrence other than the human sense of aesthetics. Laypeople are far, far too quick to equate similarity with intentional imitation.

I don't know. This was almost a note for note similarity. It literally sounded like the same music, just done at a later time (it's sort of hard to explain).

If it was the same composer it's certainly possible he decided to brush off his music from POTA and reuse it for some scenes (to be clear, it wasn't all POTA music, there was some new music within the episode, but there were scenes were it sounded like the exact same music). It's not that it didn't work. It fit with the scenes. It was one of those hmm, that sounds really familiar. I remembered this time because I had just watched POTA last year.

 

[Christopher]

I don't know. This was almost a note for note similarity. It literally sounded like the same music, just done at a later time (it's sort of hard to explain).

It's possible; sometimes composers do reuse their earlier work. James Horner is infamous for it, and Dennis McCarthy did it sometimes in his Star Trek scores. Even the great Bernard Herrmann recycled some of his melodies, for instance reworking a portion of his Seventh Voyage of Sinbad theme into the theme for Marnie. A motif that Gil Melle wrote for Gene Roddenberry's failed pilot The Questor Tapes was reworked into the Kolchak: The Night Stalker theme later that same year -- the exact same melody and ostinato, just with a different arrangement and a new lead-in and coda. There have even been cases where actual recordings of music from one show have been tracked as stock music into a different show. I was once surprised to hear a few familiar bars of a frequently-used stock cue from season 4 of The Incredible Hulk in a scene from an episode of Quincy, which didn't even have the same composer.

But as I said, sometimes different composers write note-for-note identical melodies by accident, so similarity alone is not enough to prove it. And different people hear music differently; I've seen people claim that two melodies were identical when actually it was just their chord structures that were identical, with the melodies being different. I'd have to hear the cues in question for myself.

 

[Damian]

It's possible; sometimes composers do reuse their earlier work. James Horner is infamous for it, and Dennis McCarthy did it sometimes in his Star Trek scores. Even the great Bernard Herrmann recycled some of his melodies, for instance reworking a portion of his Seventh Voyage of Sinbad theme into the theme for Marnie. A motif that Gil Melle wrote for Gene Roddenberry's failed pilot The Questor Tapes was reworked into the Kolchak: The Night Stalker theme later that same year -- the exact same melody and ostinato, just with a different arrangement and a new lead-in and coda. There have even been cases where actual recordings of music from one show have been tracked as stock music into a different show. I was once surprised to hear a few familiar bars of a frequently-used stock cue from season 4 of The Incredible Hulk in a scene from an episode of Quincy, which didn't even have the same composer.

But as I said, sometimes different composers write note-for-note identical melodies by accident, so similarity alone is not enough to prove it. And different people hear music differently; I've seen people claim that two melodies were identical when actually it was just their chord structures that were identical, with the melodies being different. I'd have to hear the cues in question for myself.

Yeah, and that makes sense. Composers usually have certain themes and ideas they favor, esp. the most memorable ones. Jerry Goldsmith was one of those guys. There were so many movies, varied movies in fact that he did, that you could tell it was Goldsmith without ever seeing the credits. Bernard Herrmann was one of my favorites. I love Hitchcock movies and Herrmann's music was so ahead of his time. And he's another one you could tell it was his music. I'm also a big 007 fan and always liked John Barry's music for the movies he worked on and noticed his influences on more recent Bond composers David Arnold and Thomas Newman.

Goldsmith and Herrman were two of the best though. Sometimes I feel like Goldsmith doesn't get enough recognition for his phenomenal scores. John Williams has many iconic scores and deserves all the accolades he gets. But sometimes it seems like Goldsmith isn't quite held in the same esteem and just felt he should be. He could almost make a bad movie good. I remember reading about TFF and all it's criticisms it gets, but I'd say almost universally people say picking Goldsmith for the score was one of the film's saving graces. Some I've read even rate the music for TFF being the best of the movies. Maybe I'm missing something, but it always seemed Goldsmith was held just to a bit lesser level of esteem in music circles.

 

[Desert Kris]

It's possible; sometimes composers do reuse their earlier work. James Horner is infamous for it, and Dennis McCarthy did it sometimes in his Star Trek scores. Even the great Bernard Herrmann recycled some of his melodies, for instance reworking a portion of his Seventh Voyage of Sinbad theme into the theme for Marnie. A motif that Gil Melle wrote for Gene Roddenberry's failed pilot The Questor Tapes was reworked into the Kolchak: The Night Stalker theme later that same year -- the exact same melody and ostinato, just with a different arrangement and a new lead-in and coda. There have even been cases where actual recordings of music from one show have been tracked as stock music into a different show. I was once surprised to hear a few familiar bars of a frequently-used stock cue from season 4 of The Incredible Hulk in a scene from an episode of Quincy, which didn't even have the same composer.

One strange thing is that I noticed James Horner's style or patterns that repeat from movie to movie, and was forgiving of that, yet I didn't feel as forgiving of Dennis McCarthy, who I felt was perfectly fine for the TV shows, but I wanted more from the ST Generations movie. The end credits music drives me nuts for getting to close to the DS9 theme.

There was a track from James Horner's Aliens soundtrack that was unused in the Aliens movie, and yet I was baffled to hear it used at the end of the first Die Hard movie, composed by someone else entirely. Never knew what to make of it.

Yeah, and that makes sense. Composers usually have certain themes and ideas they favor, esp. the most memorable ones. Jerry Goldsmith was one of those guys. There were so many movies, varied movies in fact that he did, that you could tell it was Goldsmith without ever seeing the credits. Bernard Herrmann was one of my favorites. I love Hitchcock movies and Herrmann's music was so ahead of his time. And he's another one you could tell it was his music. I'm also a big 007 fan and always liked John Barry's music for the movies he worked on and noticed his influences on more recent Bond composers David Arnold and Thomas Newman.

Goldsmith and Herrman were two of the best though. Sometimes I feel like Goldsmith doesn't get enough recognition for his phenomenal scores. John Williams has many iconic scores and deserves all the accolades he gets. But sometimes it seems like Goldsmith isn't quite held in the same esteem and just felt he should be. He could almost make a bad movie good. I remember reading about TFF and all it's criticisms it gets, but I'd say almost universally people say picking Goldsmith for the score was one of the film's saving graces. Some I've read even rate the music for TFF being the best of the movies. Maybe I'm missing something, but it always seemed Goldsmith was held just to a bit lesser level of esteem in music circles.

Great music, all that. I have a bunch of the John Barry 007 soundtracks, as well as the David Arnold ones, I really like how Arnold's work developed from movie to movie.

I used to like John Williams a lot more than Jerry Goldsmith, but the more soundtracks I heard of Goldsmiths the more impressed I was. Goldsmith seems to have really changed his style from earlier decades, making him seems more varied overall. I found that Goldsmith is always great at coming up with themes, but also makes situational music that is more enjoyable to listen to in isolation from the movies they are from. And it's amazing how many movies Goldsmith has done soundtracks for, where the movies are considered terrible...except for the music, which is phenomenal. Although I don't think of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier as terrible, just a flawed, average movie; with a fantastic score.

John Williams is outstanding for coming up with some of the most memorable themes in modern movie history. Yet I find the more situational musical accompaniment less enjoyable to listen to...except for when he relies on thematic musical cues. Unfortunately, later soundtracks he seemed to be trying to get away from relying on theme, which is a laudable goal, but the situational music still didn't work as well for listening in isolation. Not as well as Goldsmith's material, IMO.

 

[Damian]

One strange thing is that I noticed James Horner's style or patterns that repeat from movie to movie, and was forgiving of that, yet I didn't feel as forgiving of Dennis McCarthy, who I felt was perfectly fine for the TV shows, but I wanted more from the ST Generations movie. The end credits music drives me nuts for getting to close to the DS9 theme.

There was a track from James Horner's Aliens soundtrack that was unused in the Aliens movie, and yet I was baffled to hear it used at the end of the first Die Hard movie, composed by someone else entirely. Never knew what to make of it.



Great music, all that. I have a bunch of the John Barry 007 soundtracks, as well as the David Arnold ones, I really like how Arnold's work developed from movie to movie.

I used to like John Williams a lot more than Jerry Goldsmith, but the more soundtracks I heard of Goldsmiths the more impressed I was. Goldsmith seems to have really changed his style from earlier decades, making him seems more varied overall. I found that Goldsmith is always great at coming up with themes, but also makes situational music that is more enjoyable to listen to in isolation from the movies they are from. And it's amazing how many movies Goldsmith has done soundtracks for, where the movies are considered terrible...except for the music, which is phenomenal. Although I don't think of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier as terrible, just a flawed, average movie; with a fantastic score.

John Williams is outstanding for coming up with some of the most memorable themes in modern movie history. Yet I find the more situational musical accompaniment less enjoyable to listen to...except for when he relies on thematic musical cues. Unfortunately, later soundtracks he seemed to be trying to get away from relying on theme, which is a laudable goal, but the situational music still didn't work as well for listening in isolation. Not as well as Goldsmith's material, IMO.

Partly I guess that's because Goldsmith does not have that iconic score like Williams does.

But like you noted, Goldsmith does a great job with not only his main score, but all that incidental music throughout a film. He always hit the right note.

Perhaps another reason people sometimes forget Goldsmith is the seemingly large number of movies that he scored that didn't do all that well. The Illustrated Man comes to mind. The movie was ok, I won't say it was terrible, but the music was well done. And I agree about TFF, I never hated the film, but it has it's flaws. But the music was the one thing that was excellently done.

I loved Goldsmith's score for not only Star Trek, but Planet of the Apes, Poltergeist, Twilight Zone (the episodes he did and the 1983 movie), and so many others. I just recently watched Explorers and that's another film where he got the score just right. He had a phenomenal ear for the right music at the right scene. I'd argue he's ever bit as good as someone like John Williams. While he doesn't have that iconic score like Williams, he met every other standard for a great composer, not the least of which knowing the right music for the right scene, right down to the right arrangement of instruments to use.

 

[Desert Kris]

Vulcan Academy Murders

Opening Credits

Relying on the timeline information, this book is one of a few from this collection of books that takes place sometime during the original show, between episodes. So, the original shows opening for this book.

Suggested Prerequisites

This is one of the books that I think of as entry level. You could start a read through with this or The Wounded Sky or The Entropy Effect if you aren't being strict about publication order.

The Needs of the One

So here we have a homecoming to the planet Vulcan. The Enterprise needs repairs for a month or so; Kirk, Spock and McCoy are on leave, and an injured crewman can only be saved by a new medical procedure that Spock's mother is also having to undergo at the same time. The stars have aligned for the set up of this story!

It's a good thing the book is titled Vulcan Academy Murders, because the first kill really does look accidental, a product of faulty equipment. The characters only start speculating that what continues to happen is a series of murders pretty far along into the book. For readers who hate the feeling of waiting for the characters to catch up, this book might be frustrating.

Fortunately, there's a lot of fun to be had with the domestic stuff. This felt like the perfect vacation novel, if you don't mind having a parallel vacation alongside a couple favorite fictional characters. This probably makes the book sound boring. But no, there's definitely some good stuff; for readers who are interested in Vulcans and the planet Vulcan, Jean Lorrah has plenty to offer; she is in-tune with what the television show establishes in Amok Time, Journey to Babel, and Yesteryear (!) from the animated show.

Lorrah seems like an author who is kind to her readership, the way she eases into the story. We get a opening scene on the Enterprise, resolving a combat situation, then establishes that the characters are heading to Vulcan with an injured crewman. The we transition to Sarek, slightly less familiar yet still known to us, to look in on his situation. Sarek is waiting as Amanda undergoes a procedure that has her trapped in stasis. Sarek is separated from Amanda for the time being, and I have to wonder if that is why he is the way he is in this book, more mellow, self-reflective, kindly. While Sarek visits the unconscious Amanda, we meet her doctors, Sorel and Daniel Corrigan, who occupy quite a significant share of narrative space in the book. I quite like Sorel and Corrigan, sometimes I wanted the book to stay with them longer.

What's really surprising, after finishing the novel, is how little focus Spock himself gets in this novel. In the original television series the planet Vulcan and all it's occupants exist to tell us more about Spock. It's fun to see it take on a life of it's own, in subsequent novels and television stories.

In Vulcan Academy Murders we get a small cross section of the population of Vulcan. There are quite a lot of humans on Vulcan, but then, we are looking in on the Vulcan Science Academy (erm...The Vulcan Academy of Science, as it is called in this book). There are a lot of offworld students here.

We are given a sense in this book that Vulcan is a place that didn't have as many offworlders until very recently, but now is reaching a point where there is a self-sustaining population of humans. There are doctors who specialize in human medicine, and there are human doctors who specialize in the same; there are human imports that include human food, and dirt from the planet Earth (for gardening purposes).

As I was reading, it seemed to me that I was seeing Vulcans at their very best. It's common enough to see Vulcans depicted as bigoted, bullying, supercilious and standoffish; and I've always been surprised by more and more negative representations of Vulcans' general disposition in their interactions with others; at least, until it seemed to become the norm to show them this way. I did respect and laugh about the whole Vulcan “Hello” to Klingons in the first episode of Discovery. However, this book gave me the Vulcans I feel like I've wanted to see more of for a long time. It makes sense for them to practice their IDIC philosophy by being generous, accomodating, dignified and non-judgemental. The inclusion of a sect of follows of T'Vet are regarded as a minority of outliers whose logic has gone wonky.

Given what's ostensibly at the heart of the book, it makes sense that a larger population of non-Vulcans on the planet might be a source of paranoia about off-worlders eroding societal norms. There was no murder on Vulcan for a long time. And now sudden there have been two. Is the murderer human? Or a Vulcan who wants to discredit the presence of offworlders for ruining the “paradise” that Vulcan once was?

Well, it's not exactly a hard-boiled crime novel. If you want a good conspiracy in a Star Trek mystery novel, this book won't let you down, but it's not going to connect to the murders the way you might think. Vulcan Academy Murders strikes me as more of what is being called a “cozy” mystery these days. Often, though, I found myself thinking the book wanted to be more of a slice-of-life kind of novel, but threw in a murder mystery to keep it interesting for the readers.

I think I could have coped with a version of this book that didn't have the murder mystery, but preoccupied itself with follow up drama within Spock's family, as Spock and Sarek establish a new status quo for their relationship after breaking the ice in Journey to Babel. There's good drama in the situation between Daniel Corrigan and Sorel, and Sorel's family; and how other Vulcans react with to culture clash.

Why am I dismissive of the murder mystery? Am I being dismissive? The identity of the murderer was easy, I think. Yet, I wonder if the author wants it to be that much of a mystery? I found myself more interested in why the murders were being committed, and the book didn't run out of steam for me on that front. How large or small is the motive for the killings, and who is that actual intended victim. The book did good about providing at least one really compelling red herring. However, unfolding of the unofficial investigation run by Captain James T. Kirk is madness. This is no way to run an investigation! A major problem is how Kirk and other characters run through the list of suspects and seem to go out of their way to ignore a character who needs to be looked at more closely. Every other character gets too much scrutiny, by comparison, and this is were Jean Lorrah's writing gets thinly stretched in attempts to make “logical” speculations.

In earlier days I might have been a bit wary of the fun, daft tagline for the novel: “Captain Kirk becomes an interplanetary homicide detective!” It's all in good fun, but I was glad that I had read Crisis on Centaurus, which shows Kirk under orders to run an investigation and place an individual or individuals under arrest as an official of Star Fleet and the Federation. This enhances the sense that Kirk is a legitimate authority to initiate an inquiry into the suspected murder of a Star Fleet officer. At least, it works from the standpoint of story logic (I'm sure a more complicated real-world comparable procedure that could happen instead).

I felt disorientated a couple of times while reading this book. For one thing I have this weird prejudice that it would be a bit more disconnected than other books in this collection of novels; I have no idea why. I also had a moment of panic about Spock's Kahs-wan ordeal. I made the same mistake Spock makes in Yesteryear; I forgot that he did a trial run of the Kahs-wan on his own to test himself before doing the official rite-of-passage. Wow. I briefly thought it was the original version of the Kahs-wan, where I-Chaya wasn't killed. It shouldn't have distracted me, because the story of Spock's real Kahs-wan as shown in this book is an interesting and worthy one. I was also confused about Doctor M'Benga set up as having been stationed on Vulcan for quite an extended period of time; and is only first meeting members of the Enterprise's senior staff. A quick check on Memory Beta and the rough chronological timeline of the 80's novel continuity books helped me understand better that Vulcan Academy Murders is presenting a version of how M'Benga career path leads him to assignment aboard the Enterprise. It's not an explanation we ever needed, but it's kind of fun to have it (once I got past the confusion of it). But man, the confusion!


The Needs of the Many--An overview of my impressions of Vulcan (planet and culture) so far.

Is T'Kuht called Delta Vega in an alternative reality? This may seem like a non-sequitur, when looking at the whole picture of all Star Trek, or just the various realities of the 80's novels shuffling around to fit into. It totally is, a bit. In a slightly synergistic way, I transitioned out of my watch through of TOS live action show into the animated series (an echo of the TOR re-watch of the original generation of Star Trek). Only a week or two after reading Vulcan Academy Murders, I followed up with a re-visit of the Yesteryear episode. For fun I like to look at Keith R.A. DeCandido rewatch of TOS, TAS and the original movies, and read through the entry and comments of the episode I finished watching for the day; and so some of the back and forth about Spock being able to physically see his homeworld swallowed by a black hole was was an issue brought up in the comments about the Yesteryear animated episode.

There are continuity discrepancies that I care about less than others, and whether Vulcan has a moon or not based on one line of dialogue that might have been contradicted by two later sources is something that I'll find interesting in a detached kind of way. It's fun to see if a fan or author (or myself) can come up with a clever explanation for a seeming continuity error.

I laughed out loud to read about Dorthy Fontana and Gene Roddenberry's insistence that there is no moon in the Trivia section of Yesteryear; underneath a still image from the episode: the sight of a large celestial something looming large in the sky over Vulcan. A few years later The Motion Picture doubles down on that image, and it's beautiful imagery, IMO.

However...okay, so in the introduction Jean Lorrah writes for Vulcan Academy Murders; before she's even started her story, she comes up with a clever explanation to justify the imagery, and preserve one random line spoken offhand in one episode of TOS.

Hey, okay; so Vulcan has a twin planet, in this book it's called T'Kuht. That's pretty clever, I like that. And then watching a mild debate in the commentary section below for the write-up of Yesteryear, there's a back and forth about how Spock could have physically witnessed Vulcan collapse and get swallowed up by a black hole, when he could have been standing on a planet that corresponds to T'Kuht in the alternative timeline; a reality/timeline that Simon Pegg says any detail could have changed, because Nero's emergence/incursion resulted in a changed universe from its beginning to its end.

I have two thoughts about the order in which I read this book and others, off the top of my head. One is that I'm glad that I read Mindshadow before this one. My other thought is that it might have been worthwhile if I had read Vulcan Academy Murders before Mindshadow. Right now, though, I exist in a timeline where I chose to read Mindshadow first, and all in all I am at peace with that decision.

Why the indecision, though? Vulcan Academy Murders establishes within it's narrative that Spock has a higher Psi-rating than Sarek, his father. The book indicates that Sarek surprisingly has a psi-rating on a lower end of the spectrum, and goes further to say that this was a factor in Sarek's chosen profession. Mindshadow doesn't contradict this, to my recollection; but consider the impact of establishing this in Academy Murders, and follow it with the story of Spock returning home with a brain injury whose long-term effects are not immediately clear. It's a very warm and friendly homecoming in Academy Murders, but Spock returns home terribly vulnerable, and emotionally volatile in Mindshadow's slightly less welcoming depiction of Vulcan.

These books are leaving me with different impressions of Vulcan culture and the homeworld. Academy Murders shows Spock as driven to out-Vulcan the average Vulcan, which leaves Sarek in despair that Spock has misunderstood the cultural heritage he aspires to by trying too hard. Yet, progress to Mindshadow, where Spock is vulnerable and might need a more positive, affirming environment. As I was reading through Academy Murders, I pondered on how different stories show Vulcans along a spectrum as friendly, neutral, or cold. Academy Murders' depiction is the friendliest I've seen them, while in Mindshadow it's more neutral/slightly frosty. Maybe part of that impression is down to how many characters there are. Academy Murders leads with Sarek in a reflective mood about how easily he could lose Amanda, and the very warm family of Sorel. In Mindshadow it's mostly Sarek; or Stalik, somewhat stern character trying to help rehabilitate Spock's mental capabilities, or T'Pala a guest student staying with Amanda and Sarek. Admittedly, Stalik and T'Pala are characters of extremes, Stalik is someone of the Kohlinar persuasion, and T'Pala has been immersed in Vulcan culture during her formative years.

Maybe I'm overthinking how Vulcan as a whole (planet and culture) is different, between books. There are some obvious difference. There's the touch-sensitivity that Vonda McIntyre uses to give Spock an extra excuse to be put out when enduring breaches of social etiquette—it seems like McIntyre really goes for moments where characters are touchy, overly-sensitive, and preoccupied with saving face in her books. McIntyre's version of Trek has this subtle thing that really doesn't match with the TV series, where Spock isn't overly concerned with unexpected physical contact causing mental intrusions between himself and the person he is in contact with. There is no physical defensiveness in Leonard Nimoy's performance that I might have expected to see, if he was as touch-sensitive as The Entropy Effect suggests. Academy Murders and Mindshadow don't seem in tune with that idea, either.

Another book that has a brief return visit to Vulcan is Yesterday's Son. Spock visits Vulcan to, uh, make confession (to actions he didn't have control over) and request for help. Actually, I physically stopped tying in the middle of my last sentence to revisit the scene, which was short and quickly re-read. I remembered it as one of the colder depictions of Vulcan, but it seems to me in retrospect that Spock's anxieties create an unnecessary impression of dread when in conversation with T'Pau, when it turns out that T'Pau readily agrees to sponser Spock's request (to casually make use of the Guardian of Forever!), and helpfully provides guidance and suggestions that Spock maybe should have listened more closely to.

What's really great about reading many of these books is that I can see the words spoken in a television series spelled out on a page. Koon-ut Kali-fi. Sehlat. Lematya. ShiKar. Seeing the words frozen on the page makes the names more concrete, more “real”. ShiKar is a more real place (even if the details of it are always different from book to book, or between books and the series.

One interesting thing is how a visual that built up in my head of Spock's childhood home emerged when I read Mindshadow. Familiarity with the look established in the Yesteryear episode didn't really factor into it. That location returned to my mind's eye when reading Academy Murders, but it manifested like a location set that had been redressed between movies. Amanda's bookshelf of antiquities were hiding from me, while a set extension of the exterior now includes a greenhouse for Earth plants, protected from the Vulcan summer. No roses, though, not even in the protection of the greenhouse.

I really enjoyed Jean Lorrah's ideas about Vulcan culture and history. Sometimes I played a little guessing game about what details are more or less likely to get picked up on or ignored by other books. For Academy Murders we get a version of Surak who begins his philosophical revolution in pre-industrial and pre-agricultural times. His writing and dwelling place has been preserved from 5,000 years before TOS, and those writings are on ancient scrolls. Yet I think I've gathered the impression that there are other novels that show Surak as a philosopher who existed in a much more technological era. Totally at random I revisited a scene from My Enemy, My Ally; where Ael admires Spock's S'harien sword, one of several that where possessed by both Vulcans and Rihannsu, swords that also were forged five thousand years ago...

Spock's Possessions, Spock's Harp. Spock has a lot of really interesting stuff. I was fascinated to learn about the ancient sword he has. I'm wondering about his harp, though. In Academy Murders Sarek gifts to Spock a family heirloom, a harp made by Sarek's grandfather. Sarek urges him to take it with him on board the Enterprise. It's hardly necessary, though, given that Spock already has one, seen in the show (unless these are different musical instruments that are both generically referred to as harps). Later on Mindshadow shows Spock lose control of his emotions, and damage his harp; when he returns home he borrows Sarek's harp (which is still at home) to play on. And he feels a twinge of regret over the damage done to his own harp. I'm not expecting anything, but it should be interesting to see if JM Dillard or Jean Lorrah do anything else with these harps (repair, change hands, ect) or if they are left to readers to fill in the blanks. The simplest explanation is that Spock politely declined to take Sareks harp with him back into space, because he has one already and logically doesn't need a spare (until after the events of Mindshadow, which leave him in need of a spare if he wants to play). Well, I have the IDIC Epidemic to look forward to...

Next Mission

From what I gather, IDIC Epidemic is a direct sequel to Vulcan Academy Murders. I'm glad that Academy Murders read well, hopeful that Epidemic will be similarly readable. There are other books I will read before then, so Epidemic will wait for a little bit.

 

[Christopher]

As I was reading, it seemed to me that I was seeing Vulcans at their very best. It's common enough to see Vulcans depicted as bigoted, bullying, supercilious and standoffish; and I've always been surprised by more and more negative representations of Vulcans' general disposition in their interactions with others; at least, until it seemed to become the norm to show them this way.

"Become" the norm? It was always the norm. The first time we saw Vulcans other than Spock, they included a conniving woman willing to force Spock to murder Kirk so she could continue having an affair, and a matriarch who held humanity in icy contempt and didn't want offworlders in her ceremony. Plus, of course, there's the whole fact that this supposedly enlightened, peace-loving race still has duels to the death. Then the next time we meet a Vulcan other than Spock, it's his cold, aloof father who disowned him for joining Starfleet and goes around casually hurling racial slurs at other ambassadors, and Spock happens to mention that Vulcans can calmly, logically kill if they had a reason. This idea that TOS portrayed Vulcans as the kind of cuddly space elves Lorrah wrote in TVAM is totally counterfactual. It's fans' wishful thinking and idealization of Vulcans, which they confuse for the actual facts on the ground.

I did respect and laugh about the whole Vulcan “Hello” to Klingons in the first episode of Discovery.

I'll never get why people think the so-called "Vulcan hello" was about Vulcan values, when it was explicitly about the Vulcans' willingness to understand Klingon values and adjust to interact with them on Klingon terms. The only Vulcan value it illustrates is IDIC, the respect for other cultures' differences. Although it happened during the time of the Vulcan High Command, a century or so before ENT, so the Vulcans back then would've been somewhat more militaristic anyway.

I was also confused about Doctor M'Benga set up as having been stationed on Vulcan for quite an extended period of time; and is only first meeting members of the Enterprise's senior staff.

The chronology really doesn't work there at all, because M'Benga's debut episode is literally the very next one after "Journey to Babel" (or 9 episodes later in broadcast order), but Murders is supposedly set a couple of years after "Babel." I never understood why Lorrah chose to do it that way, when it didn't fit TOS continuity at all.

Is T'Kuht called Delta Vega in an alternative reality?

T'Kuht is portrayed as a barren, volcanic world, and it's unlikely that a planet sharing an orbit with a hot desert world like Vulcan, and therefore receiving a comparable amount of heat from the primary star, could be a totally frozen-over ice planet. It would have to be someplace farther out in 40 Eridani's orbit if it were in-system.

and so some of the back and forth about Spock being able to physically see his homeworld swallowed by a black hole was was an issue brought up in the comments about the Yesteryear animated episode.

I think people take that scene too literally. Since it was seen during a mind meld sequence, it's quite easy to interpret it as figurative, a symbolic representation of what Spock sensed (a la "The Immunity Syndrome" where he sensed the deaths of the Intrepid crew over light-years).

a reality/timeline that Simon Pegg says any detail could have changed, because Nero's emergence/incursion resulted in a changed universe from its beginning to its end.

One more time: Though Pegg was the first person to popularize that notion, it undoubtedly originated with Michael & Denise Okuda. It was seen in the text of the revised Star Trek Encyclopedia mere weeks or months after Pegg first talked about it, and it probably took a year or more to put that book together, so the Okudas must have written it in the book long before Pegg talked about it to the public. So the credit should be given to the Okudas. (Whom I recently met at Shore Leave and are very nice people.)

And the assertion was never that the universe was changed from beginning to end, just that it potentially might have had a few things pre-Nero altered by backward-propagating time ripples, as a handwave to explain any minor discrepancies that might show up in the movies. The core assumption is still that the Kelvin timeline is basically the same as Prime prior to Nero's arrival; the Okuda/Pegg premise was introduced merely to allow/account for occasional exceptions to that, not to sweep it away altogether.

It's a very warm and friendly homecoming in Academy Murders, but Spock returns home terribly vulnerable, and emotionally volatile in Mindshadow's slightly less welcoming depiction of Vulcan.

Don't Mindshadow and the other Dillard novels conflict with the Lorrah novels by portraying Vulcan's capital as ShanaiKahr rather than ShiKahr itself? Which actually makes more sense than the usual tendency to treat ShiKahr as the capital, since "Yesteryear" portrayed it as a smallish border city.

 

[Stevil2001]

I was also confused about Doctor M'Benga set up as having been stationed on Vulcan for quite an extended period of time; and is only first meeting members of the Enterprise's senior staff. A quick check on Memory Beta and the rough chronological timeline of the 80's novel continuity books helped me understand better that Vulcan Academy Murders is presenting a version of how M'Benga career path leads him to assignment aboard the Enterprise. It's not an explanation we ever needed, but it's kind of fun to have it (once I got past the confusion of it). But man, the confusion!

This is outside your 1980s continuity remit, but weirdly, the Vanguard novels draw on Vulcan Academy Murders in depicting M'Benga's backstory, but also totally misremember them. They place Vulcan Academy Murders before "Journey to Babel" and thus provide an explanation of why M'Benga didn't help with the Vulcan surgeries in that episode... but there is 100% no way Vulcan Academy Murders could ever go before "Journey to Babel," so I'm not sure why that needed explaining. (Sometimes retcons cause more problems than they solve.)

 

[Christopher]

This is outside your 1980s continuity remit, but weirdly, the Vanguard novels draw on Vulcan Academy Murders in depicting M'Benga's backstory, but also totally misremember them. They place Vulcan Academy Murders before "Journey to Babel" and thus provide an explanation of why M'Benga didn't help with the Vulcan surgeries in that episode... but there is 100% no way Vulcan Academy Murders could ever go before "Journey to Babel," so I'm not sure why that needed explaining. (Sometimes retcons cause more problems than they solve.)

Well, maybe it wasn't "misremembering" so much as homage -- suggesting that something similar happened, or just borrowing bits and pieces of the story as a tribute (like Star Wars canon often does when it borrows an element from the old tie-ins but does its own different thing with it).

 

[Stevil2001]

Well, maybe it wasn't "misremembering" so much as homage -- suggesting that something similar happened, or just borrowing bits and pieces of the story as a tribute (like Star Wars canon often does when it borrows an element from the old tie-ins but does its own different thing with it).

The story stops for a two-page letter that explains it in meticulous detail. If it was just an homage, it could have been much more elegantly.

 

[Jinn]

The story stops for a two-page letter that explains it in meticulous detail. If it was just an homage, it could have been much more elegantly.

Well, to be fair, the two page letter is about M'Benga's life (who was a main character up to the previous book) and there is only a line or two about how he teamed-up with the Enterprise in June while those murders at the Vulcan Science Academy were happening, of which he's sure that Fisher heard, as they were quite a big deal.

 

[Desert Kris]

"Become" the norm? It was always the norm. The first time we saw Vulcans other than Spock, they included a conniving woman willing to force Spock to murder Kirk so she could continue having an affair, and a matriarch who held humanity in icy contempt and didn't want offworlders in her ceremony. Plus, of course, there's the whole fact that this supposedly enlightened, peace-loving race still has duels to the death. Then the next time we meet a Vulcan other than Spock, it's his cold, aloof father who disowned him for joining Starfleet and goes around casually hurling racial slurs at other ambassadors, and Spock happens to mention that Vulcans can calmly, logically kill if they had a reason. This idea that TOS portrayed Vulcans as the kind of cuddly space elves Lorrah wrote in TVAM is totally counterfactual. It's fans' wishful thinking and idealization of Vulcans, which they confuse for the actual facts on the ground.

I guess I'm not immune to the tendency, either. I read too much in the characters of VAM, and gave it more credence as representative of Vulcan culture in broad strokes. VAM talks about T'Pau as the embodiment of all of Vulcan culture in a single individual, or something to that effect, which seemed to encourage an impression of Vulcan culture in broad strokes. I skimmed Mindshadow and VAM back and forth, and took into account how Sarek is portrayed in the movies and the original series, and one thing that did seem out of step was Sarek addressing others with more familiarity. Mindshadow seemed more consistent with Sarek calling James T. Kirk by his surname or by his Star Fleet rank. Sarek calling him "Jim" really felt outside the norm.

I'll never get why people think the so-called "Vulcan hello" was about Vulcan values, when it was explicitly about the Vulcans' willingness to understand Klingon values and adjust to interact with them on Klingon terms. The only Vulcan value it illustrates is IDIC, the respect for other cultures' differences. Although it happened during the time of the Vulcan High Command, a century or so before ENT, so the Vulcans back then would've been somewhat more militaristic anyway.

I unintentionally misunderstand or misinterpret many things; I wish I didn't fall into those tendencies yet it often happens anyway. The Vulcan Hello thing is funny in the sense that the Klingons don't like being treated the way they themselves treat others they encounter.

The chronology really doesn't work there at all, because M'Benga's debut episode is literally the very next one after "Journey to Babel" (or 9 episodes later in broadcast order), but Murders is supposedly set a couple of years after "Babel." I never understood why Lorrah chose to do it that way, when it didn't fit TOS continuity at all.

Interesting, thanks for pointing that out. Having fairly recently run through those stories in production order, I didn't even notice. I double checked and VAM says 2 years have passed since the Amok Time incident, but I couldn't pin down the timing since Journey to Babel. Maybe Lorrah favored broadcast order, or an alternative order of her own...?

One more time: Though Pegg was the first person to popularize that notion, it undoubtedly originated with Michael & Denise Okuda. It was seen in the text of the revised Star Trek Encyclopedia mere weeks or months after Pegg first talked about it, and it probably took a year or more to put that book together, so the Okudas must have written it in the book long before Pegg talked about it to the public. So the credit should be given to the Okudas. (Whom I recently met at Shore Leave and are very nice people.)

Thank you for the reminder. I think I remember reading you mention that. Unfortunately I am very forgetful; I am certainly in favor of the Okudas getting due credit for a clever, fun idea that allows for narrative breathing room if writers need it for the newer movies.

Don't Mindshadow and the other Dillard novels conflict with the Lorrah novels by portraying Vulcan's capital as ShanaiKahr rather than ShiKahr itself? Which actually makes more sense than the usual tendency to treat ShiKahr as the capital, since "Yesteryear" portrayed it as a smallish border city.

I checked through them again, and I couldn't find reference to ShanaiKahr in Academy Murders. Mindshadow definitely does mention ShanaiKahr as where Spock arrives at the capital's space port, and makes a hazardous late-night walk home to ShiKahr. I just realized, too, that your spelling is consistent with the way it is spelled in both of these novels, not sure why I was favoring the ShiKar spelling.

This is outside your 1980s continuity remit, but weirdly, the Vanguard novels draw on Vulcan Academy Murders in depicting M'Benga's backstory, but also totally misremember them. They place Vulcan Academy Murders before "Journey to Babel" and thus provide an explanation of why M'Benga didn't help with the Vulcan surgeries in that episode... but there is 100% no way Vulcan Academy Murders could ever go before "Journey to Babel," so I'm not sure why that needed explaining. (Sometimes retcons cause more problems than they solve.)

That's terrific, I definitely welcome that kind of information! The process of reading, writing, and discussing with others the details of this book continuity is to help make it more concrete; but there's the added potential of them becoming a springboard to further reading. The Vulcan's Noun trilogy is on my radar to see how the novels continue to draw on older continuity, for example; this makes a case for considering the Vanguard novels. It helps me weigh my reading options and prioritize which books I want to read beyond this collection of books.

 

[Christopher]

VAM talks about T'Pau as the embodiment of all of Vulcan culture in a single individual, or something to that effect, which seemed to encourage an impression of Vulcan culture in broad strokes.

But it was "Amok Time" that first described T'Pau as "All Vulcan in one package," and it portrayed her as cold, imperious, and unwelcoming to humans.

The Vulcan Hello thing is funny in the sense that the Klingons don't like being treated the way they themselves treat others they encounter.

But that's just it -- they do respond well to being treated that way. As Sarek explained, when the Vulcans tried approaching the Klingons peacefully, it just got their ships attacked. It was only when they learned to initiate encounters with a show of strength by firing first (presumably just enough to shake up the opposing ship, not destroy it) that they earned enough of the Klingons' respect for diplomacy to be possible. I don't understand why so many fans have trouble with that concept, since it's a pretty common trope when it comes to fighters and warriors, the idea that you have to prove yourself their equal before they'll respect you (see the first meeting of Robin Hood and Little John, for instance, or Gilgamesh and Enkidu).

I checked through them again, and I couldn't find reference to ShanaiKahr in Academy Murders.

No, that's my point -- that ShanaiKahr is unique to J.M. Dillard's novels. She portrayed it as Vulcan's capital and ShiKahr as a secondary city, while everyone else ever has defaulted to making ShiKahr the capital.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

. . . casually hurling racial slurs at other ambassadors . . . . cuddly space elves

Truth is never slanderous, and it has since been established that both arguing without reason and casually hurling insults is an inherent part of Tellarite culture. And "cuddly space elves"?!? The only way I would regard Vulcans (whether as portrayed in TOS, or TNG, or DS9, or VOY, or ENT, or novels by JL, DD, JMD, S&S, DCF, or even KS) as "space elves" would be "elves" in the sense of Tolkien's Eldar: wise, generally benign, but hardly "cuddly."