Nice. I love Pike books. Excited for this one.
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- Thread starter Jarrod
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The only book to even touch on Kirk as a captain pre-Enterprise was Enterprise: The First Adventure; it's pretty surprising that in 52 years of filling in every continuity hole, no one has ever gone for this before. (What was Kirk up to in S. D. Perry's Inception? I don't remember.)
I assume that Gary Mitchell will be a character, though I suppose a literal reading of Dehner's line could allow for the interpretation that Kirk asked for Gary but didn't get him.
I'm (re)reading the Horatio Hornblower novels right now, and he was one of Roddenberry's inspirations for Kirk. In the first novel Hornblower commands the Lydia, a frigate, but later novels delved into his backstory, and his first command was the Retribution when he was ranked commander. He commander three sloops-of-war before being entrusted with the Lydia, a frigate. So this seems to fit.
I assume that Gary Mitchell will be a character, though I suppose a literal reading of Dehner's line could allow for the interpretation that Kirk asked for Gary but didn't get him.
I'm (re)reading the Horatio Hornblower novels right now, and he was one of Roddenberry's inspirations for Kirk. In the first novel Hornblower commands the Lydia, a frigate, but later novels delved into his backstory, and his first command was the Retribution when he was ranked commander. He commander three sloops-of-war before being entrusted with the Lydia, a frigate. So this seems to fit.
As Christopher noted, that era has been covered. I'd recommend the "My Brother's Keeper" trilogy for that. It centers around Kirk and Mitchells friendship, how they became friends, and their service together. But it has a lot of good stories about his time on the Republic, Farragut, Constitution and the early days on the Enterprise as well.
It is both — an Enterprise adventure, but one completely interlocking with the events of Discovery. This book would not have existed without the Discovery connection, and that fact was part of what got me interested in it.
Having just reread this one, I can tell you: in 2261, Kirk was the First Officer of the U.S.S. Mizuki (holding the rank of Commander) under a Captain Olia and dating Dr. Carol Marcus, head of a civilian corporate-funded science team working on a terraforming project on Mars (and who during the novel found out she was pregnant). When Dr. Marcus' experiment was sabotaged by 23rd century eco-terrorists, Cmdr. Kirk was given temporary command of the U.S.S. Aloia, a brand-new Miranda-class ship in drydock at Utopia Planitia with less than a skeleton crew in order to fulfill Carol's request for Starfleet backup (after she realized nothing she and her fellow civilians could do on their own). When the crisis was resolved, Jim and Carol went their separate ways - Kirk on a deep space mission and eventually to the Enterprise and Carol on her way to creating the Genesis device (with a stop-over on Starbase 47/Vanguard in a few years).
DC Comics touched on it twice -- Vol. 1 Annual 1 by Mike W. Barr showed Kirk leaving his command of the Saladin (named for the destroyer class in the Star Fleet Technical Manual but drawn as a Baton Rouge-class ship from the Spaceflight Chronology) to take command of the Enterprise from Pike, and Howard Weinstein's "Star-Crossed, Part 2" in Vol. 2 showed Kirk getting promoted to captain from first officer of the Eagle and heading out at the end on the Miranda-class Oxford.
Also, David A. Goodman's The Autobiography of James T. Kirk shows Kirk's first command as the Hotspur, and depicts events like the Dimorus incident and Kirk's breakup with Carol Marcus as taking place during that time. As for the poster who said they'd like to see Kirk take command after his captain is killed, they might like Goodman's version. (Although isn't that exactly how Picard got his first command?)
This was answered above, but TCO's timeline is not consistent with Inception's version of Kirk's career.
The full line is "Gary told me that you've been best friends since he joined the service, that you asked for him aboard your first command." That implies they've been pretty much inseparable, and that's the assumption most pre-"Where No Man" fiction has followed. It honestly never occurred to me not to include Mitchell in the book. After all, he's one of the few familiar faces in that era of Kirk's career, although you will see the beginnings of some of Kirk's relationships with characters he was shown to have a history with in TOS.
Also, Vonda McIntyre's Enterprise: The First Adventure posited the name "Lydia Sutherland" as being Kirk's previous starship command, a tie-in to C.S. Forester and Hornblower.
According to the TOS Writer's Guide, he did have a command before the Enterprise. And, regardless of how much of a prodigy he was, it's unrealistic that a young untested captain would be given one of the fleet's twelve most advanced starships as his first command.
Thanks!
Most of DC's comics outside of the ones reprinted by Titan are unknown to me, so thanks. (Hm, maybe I should add them to my list of comics to track down as single issues...)
Yeah, this makes sense. Lose Gary and you have a book with almost no familiar characters beside Kirk, I reckon.
Oh yes! And I see from Christopher's post above, that Goodman was similarly inspired by calling Kirk's first command the Hotspur. Both choices seem a little on-the-nose.
Ugh, I've got to disagree, the some of the last few books before the break had some of the worst covers I've seen in a long time. I really didn't like the last Rise of the Federation book, and Prey Book 3 covers. I really like these two covers though, they're the best we've gotten in a while.
It also sounds like the Klingon War will play a role in it, and that is entirely a creation of Discovery.
I think you forgot about some of it, I just saw it a couple weekends ago so the QT pilot is pretty fresh for me. It actually starts with Al in a car with a girl and they see a light in the distance, which it turns out is from the QT machine, and then he gets a call from Gooshi and they show Sam in the machine. They don't explain exactly what is going on, but we do see how Sam ended up starting to leap.
Ok, yeah, I wasn't thrilled with the Prey covers all that much either. I was ok with the Enterprise ones mostly since the 2nd Romulan War book. I love book covers featuring ships, at least a ship, with some cool background. I didn't care for most of the Typhon Pact covers because they were like 2 people in front of some vague picture of a planet. But they started getting better after that, though some weren't the best.
The German covers are designed by Martin Frei. Unfortunately this page is in German, but at least you can see how Martin Frei looks like.
https://www.cross-cult.de/autoren/martin-frei.html
https://www.cross-cult.de/autoren/martin-frei.html
For me, it would be very interesting to find out, what Picard did in the eight years between losing the Stargazer and becoming Captain of the Enterprise.
There is NO canon information about this time. Is there anything about it in any novel?
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Buried_Age
I have read it, it is very good. No chance for a German translation I fear.
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