Spoilers TOS #5 The Prometheus Design by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath Review Thread

[Csalem]

As promised in another thread, I have bought this book and am 33% of the way in. It is a slightly odd read so far - Spock is extremely logical and cold. He seems closer to Zachary Quinto's version of the character in the first two films than he does to Leonard Nimoy's. Although early on in the book he pushes his way single-handedly through a mob to rescue Kirk, the rest of the time he seems cold and aloof, and not someone who has a close and deep friendship with Kirk.

Favourite line so far is about Uhura who:

followed the full Vulcan's catlike movement with a certain intentness that struck him as female perception of the Vulcan as exceedingly male.

Not quite sure what 'exceedingly male' means...

I have also passed the scene that takes place in the changing room which has Spock being naked and Kirk in a loincloth.

Hopefully the plot starts to pick up soon and they move past the chess competitions and wrestling / martial art matches.

 

[tomswift2002]

@Csalem as I said years ago, the book feels like you are reading a movie script and are missing the “beef” of the plot, because that comes from seeing the actors performing. All the book is is a skeleton‍ (Sorry, can’t find a skeleton emoji, so a zombie will stand in for it!)

 

[Csalem]

Finally finished this book. Overall my feeling of it being odd went all the way through. The main purpose of the book seems to be to create conflict between Spock and Kirk, and Spock did feel out of character all the way through. He really didn't feel like the Spock after TMP.
I did like the idea of the older Vulcan admiral who came from a pre-Federation Vulcan and his transition into Starfleet. However he did seem to spend most of the book pouring poison into Spock's ear and turning him against Kirk.
It was also an interesting idea of running a starship by Vulcan rules though I am not sure how much that idea holds up if you really dig into it.
The main plot and threat did seem a bit slight or underdeveloped.

 

[Damian]

I just completed my re-read of this novel and surprisingly there is already a review thread for this novel .

So this novel was originally released in 1982, before TWOK came out. I believe it's the first novel to explicitly take place after TMP and what makes this novel a bit more interesting is since it was written before TWOK came out, the writers wrote the first sequel to that story without knowing what would come next.

Now that being said this is a subpar entry IMO. It was written by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath and I have yet to read a novel by them that was of even average quality. This novel is a little better than their Phoenix novels from the 1970s during the Bantam days. The story is more or less coherent at least, even if it's not a very good story. It's basically about a highly evolved race that is experimenting on species in our galaxy to prevent some end of the universe cataclysm. M&C seem to take some perverse pleasure in bringing Kirk down low and making Spock dominant over him. Now I will say their slash fiction tendencies are more subdued here, unlike Price of the Phoenix. The authors have also seemed to have ignored Spock's new awakening at the end of TMP and here he is back to his cold, stiff self as seen at the beginning of the film (it's interesting to note that is one element that seemed to have carried forward into TWOK from TMP--that is Spock seems more comfortable with his human half in TWOK). A Vulcan admiral who is aware of these higher beings comes on board and soon puts Spock in command of the Enterprise over Kirk because Kirk's judgment is called into question after events on a planet called Helva. And Spock goes into some uber-Vulcan command mode and almost constantly tries to humiliate, er, I mean restrain Kirk from taking action in a severe manner. Eventually Spock, the admiral, Kirk and McCoy go to the planet to confront the aliens and are treated almost like animals in a cage, a contest of wills ensues, and eventually they convince the aliens of the errors of their ways, Spock gets ready to punish Kirk for some of his actions but instead returns command to Kirk and end of story.

That's a rough summary but it's just not a very good book. Like the Phoenix novels, the authors do start to touch on interesting topics but because of their annoying habit of subjugating Kirk before Spock it kind of gets lost. I rated it below average instead of poor only because it's at least more coherent. But I kind of just lost interest in the story and was just meh.

 

[Christopher]

So this novel was originally released in 1982, before TWOK came out. I believe it's the first novel to explicitly take place after TMP and what makes this novel a bit more interesting is since it was written before TWOK came out, the writers wrote the first sequel to that story without knowing what would come next.

It's actually the second novel written to take place after TMP; Howard Weinstein's The Covenant of the Crown was the first.

The authors have also seemed to have ignored Spock's new awakening at the end of TMP and here he is back to his cold, stiff self as seen at the beginning of the film

I feel they did worse than ignore Spock's awakening -- they made a point of explicitly reversing it, having him become even more rigidly unemotional in reaction against it. Which just doesn't make any sense.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I'm re-reading it now. About a third of the way in. (Am I showing just a bit of a masochistic tendency here?)

It's not nearly as long-winded or confusing as their Bantam novels. It's one of M&C's better works, although that is kind of a low bar. And I've certainly read worse from other authors as well.

CLB is spot-on about M&C "explicitly reversing" Spock's awakening. Rather makes one wonder if he was compromised without knowing it, too.

And no, "Csalem," I don't see a lot of Zachary Quinto's Abramsverse Spock here. M&C's Spock wouldn't be having an affair with Uhura.

 

[Christopher]

And no, "Csalem," I don't see a lot of Zachary Quinto's Abramsverse Spock here. M&C's Spock wouldn't be having an affair with Uhura.

M&C barely acknowledged the existence of Uhura, Sulu, or Chekov, and didn't do much with Scotty either.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

M&C barely acknowledged the existence of Uhura, Sulu, or Chekov, and didn't do much with Scotty either.

*****

I will note two things about the book:
1. The theme of "callousness so profound it fails to recognize itself as callousness" seems to be common to much of M&C's work. If memory serves correctly, it had previously shown up (in so many words!) in their short story, "The Procrustean Petard."

2. I'm far from certain, but this may be the opus (and is certainly an opus) that first brought up the idea that the Enterprise senior officers and bridge crew have a uniquely profound rapport with each other, that makes them unusually good at recognizing when one of them is acting under outside influence.

*****

The last 50 pages or so are starting to make the book seem worth the first 130 or so pages.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I just finished it last night. I gave it a "Below Average." If the first 130-odd pages had been even remotely as good as the last 50-odd pages, I'd have given it an "Average." Because the last 50-odd pages of this opus may be the best 50-odd pages M&C ever wrote.

There was an old Beetle Bailey comic strip about how Lt. Fuzz could talk longer in five minutes than anybody else could in an hour. When I was younger, I knew professors like that (not to mention a few high school teachers).

M&C can talk longer in 180 pages than CLB or GC can in 400.

 

[Christopher]

There was an old Beetle Bailey comic strip about how Lt. Fuzz could talk longer in five minutes than anybody else could in an hour. When I was younger, I knew professors like that (not to mention a few high school teachers).

M&C can talk longer in 180 pages than CLB or GC can in 400.

Hold on, wouldn't that be a good thing? Saying more in a shorter time?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Fuzz talks a lot without saying much. Like M&C.

 

[Christopher]

Fuzz talks a lot without saying much. Like M&C.

But that still sounds to me like it should be phrased the other way around. "Talks longer in five minutes than anyone else in an hour" implies that he says more per unit of time, not less. It should be something like "says less in an hour of talking than anyone else would say in five minutes."

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

The line is about the individual being long-winded and boring, not about the individual having a lot to say. This is starting to look like the current thread in the Get Fuzzy comic strip: Bucky Katt wants to open a fish restaurant, and Satchel Pooch thinks he means a restaurant for fish as customers.

"Talk longer in 5 minutes than anybody else can in an hour" ≠ "Says more in 5 minutes than anybody else can in an hour."

 

[Christopher]

The line is about the individual being long-winded and boring, not about the individual having a lot to say.

Yes, I'm not stupid, of course I know what it's trying to say, obviously. I'm saying that it said it badly. I mean, it's from Beetle Bailey. It's not exactly great literature. It's not even a particularly good comic strip.

"Talk longer in 5 minutes than anybody else can in an hour" ≠ "Says more in 5 minutes than anybody else can in an hour."

That's the intent, but it doesn't make sense if you actually parse the words.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

It's not even a particularly good comic strip.

I submit that the longevity of Beetle Bailey (over 71 years, the first 67 under direct control of its creator, Mort Walker; the remainder under direct control of his sons), and the honors the strip has received (including earning Walker the 1953 Reuben, among other awards) would speak against that assertion.

 

[captainmkb]

there's an old adage about judging books by their covers, so i don't think this will sway the bad reviews in the poll... but that's a wicked cool horned alien guy on the cover!
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/f/fd/Helvan.jpg

 

[Avro Arrow]

there's an old adage about judging books by their covers, so i don't think this will sway the bad reviews in the poll... but that's a wicked cool horned alien guy on the cover!
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/f/fd/Helvan.jpg

All along we have been enforcing the "no hotlinking" rule to Wikia. As such, for consistency, I have converted your image to a link. It is my understanding, though, that you are an admin at Memory Beta, so if you can point me to a Wikia policy that allows hotlinking, please feel free to do so.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

but that's a wicked cool horned alien guy on the cover!

So? There are five horned (and apparently naked) humanoids on the cover of Gordon Eklund's ever-popular Devil World, but that doesn't make it any good. As ST, as SF, or as literature. Hell, I'd rate DW a step down from M&C at their worst. Was Fred Pohl still running Bantam's ST operation at the time? If so, what possessed him to greenlight DW?

 

[captainmkb]

So? There are five horned (and apparently naked) humanoids on the cover of Gordon Eklund's ever-popular Devil World, but that doesn't make it any good. As ST, as SF, or as literature. Hell, I'd rate DW a step down from M&C at their worst. Was Fred Pohl still running Bantam's ST operation at the time? If so, what possessed him to greenlight DW?

Devil World is another case that proves the rule about judging books by their covers. each one is cool as heck (i think there are 4 or 5 Devil World covers)

 

[Daddy Todd]

So? There are five horned (and apparently naked) humanoids on the cover of Gordon Eklund's ever-popular Devil World, but that doesn't make it any good. As ST, as SF, or as literature. Hell, I'd rate DW a step down from M&C at their worst. Was Fred Pohl still running Bantam's ST operation at the time? If so, what possessed him to greenlight DW?

Sydny Weinberg edited some of M&C’s later Bantam offerings, so she may have edited Eklund as well. I think Pohl was writing his own stuff by then (Jem, Man Plus and Gateway, for example) and winning Hugos and Nebulas for it.