TOS: Ishmael by Barbara Hambly [LEFT]Blurb: The U.S.S. Enterprise™ is on a peaceful mission at Starbase 12 when a bizarre cosmic phenomenon causes a Klingon ship to suddenly vanish -- with Spock aboard for the ride. Spock's last message from the Klingon ship is cryptic and frightening. The Klingons are traveling into the past, searching for the one man who holds the key to the furure. If they can kill that man, the course of history will be changed -- and the Federation will be destroyed! ________________________ One of my absolute favorites among the TOS novels, and probably my favorite one of the early ones. Seeing Spock in this fish-out-of-water story is just great. The 23rd century framework isn't quite on par, but doesn't hurt the novel too much. [/LEFT]
I loved this book, and I've never seen Here Come the Brides. HERE is a detailed list of the crossovers in the novel (hint: LOTS more than you think) as well as the story of a phone call Barbara Hambly got from the Simon and Schuster legal department a year after the novel went on sale.
Haven't read this in ages, but I remember it fondly. And, having grown up in Seattle, there was no way I wasn't familiar with Here Come the Brides . . .
I really liked this one when it came out and the couple of times that I reread it later on. I had no idea it was a crossover with Here Come the Brides until I read something about it years later. It does have some interesting plot parallels with both "Mind-Sifter," a story in the first New Voyages book from about a decade earlier and Killing Time, the very next Pocket Trek novel. Of Barbara Hambly's three Trek books, my favorite was the last one, Crossroads.
Loved it. I actually saw part of Here Come the Brides years later, but I didn't really see the connection at the time. Or if I did thought it was a coincidence.
When I was growing up, you couldn't attend a parade or school concert without hearing the theme song: "The bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle, and the hills the greenest green . . . . "
I learned about Ishmael's connection to HCTB many years ago -- maybe when I read about HCTB in Bjo Trimble's book On the Good Ship Enterprise -- but in all that time, I've still never managed to see an episode of the show.
Honestly, I haven't seen it since its original run. But it is chock full of TOS guest-stars. Not just Mark Lenard, but also David Soul ("The Apple") and the guy who played Lazarus in "The Alternative Factor" (whose name escapes me at the moment).
Like others, I'd never heard of Brides until I read this book (and still haven't seen an episode - it may never have been run in the UK), but I like the book, as it was different but good. And to a large extent, it was Wrath of Khan and some of the 80s Trek books that got me (a Who and Blake fan) into Trek, as while I appreciate it now, I never liked TOS as a kid (probably because I wondered why the BBC repeated it so much, but didn't do the same for Who and Blake. [I now know about the copyright legalities that explain that issue)
Netflix has the first season of HCTB on DVD, if anyone's interested. Guest stars of note include William Schallert, Stefanianna Christopherson (the original voice of Daphne Blake on Scooby-Doo), Jack Albertson, Michael Bell, Hagan Beggs, Monte Markham, Ed Asner, Susan Howard, Michael Ansara, Michael Forest, Kathryn Hays, Logan Ramsey, Lew Ayres, Will Geer, Henry Jones, John Anderson, Alan Oppenheimer, and Bruce Lee! I'm kinda tempted. The second season is also available on DVD, but not on Netflix.
For me the thing that had me racing for the phone, as I was reading it when it first came out, was the sudden cameo appearance of Hoss and Little Joe Cartwright, who immediately start a bar fight. My friend is a huge "Bonanza" fan, and I needed to ask her if she wanted me to pick her up a copy. As I read her the blurb over the phone, and described the opening chapters, it was she who realised it was essentially a crossover with "Here Come the Brides", and pointed out the major in-joke about the two Mark Lenard characters and their connections to Spock. Then I started finding the other cameos, such as by Maverick, Paladin, Doctor Who, etc., myself. A wonderful story which, had the editor or Paramount been more vigilant, would probably never have happened.
I watched HCTB as a kid so when I read the book I got it right away. My father would tease my younger sister by calling her "Biddy" after a character on the show.
In all honesty, it wasn't one of my favorite shows at the time, probably because it didn't have any spaceships, monsters, spies, or vampires in it. As I recall, it was an odd mixture of frontier drama and romance. Think "Bonanza" with mail-order brides. I watched it because, hey, it was set in my hometown, but I wasn't obsessed with it the way I was, say, Star Trek or Dark Shadows. On other hand, I pretty much remember all the characters and the basic setup, so it must have made some impression on me. I'll be damned if I can remember any specific episodes or storylines, though.
Watching a large number of episodes of Here Comes the Brides helps put a special meaning to The Alternate Factor.
Oh, yes. Antenna TV aired it on a weekend not long ago and it's first half was pretty well done (considering the show's premise, the setting of the show, and the era it was produced in) but it falls apart in the second half. Add it to the list of disappointing Bigfoot episodes that have sprung from American TV series in the last fifty years.