ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoilers!)

Rate Star Trek Into Darkness.

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    Votes: 5 31.3%
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    Votes: 4 25.0%
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    Votes: 6 37.5%
  • Below Average

    Votes: 1 6.3%
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Sho

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain

As was the case with the first feature release of J.J. Abram's Trek reboot, the official novelization of Star Trek Into Darkness has been penned by Alan Dean Foster. It's scheduled for release on May 21st.

The blurb already provides some bits of information not in the movie AFAIR (dating the story relative to the 2009 movie's, hinting at the backstory of Kronos):

Months after the dramatic events seen in the 2009 blockbuster film Star Trek, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise—including Captain James T. Kirk, First Officer Spock, Doctor Leonard McCoy, Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, and Ensign Pavel Chekov—is called back home. But an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has declared all-out war on Starfleet and everything it stands for, leaving Earth in a state of crisis. Now with a personal score to settle as a result, Kirk must lead a covert manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one-man weapon of mass destruction. As these valiant heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Captain Kirk has left: his crew.
Simon & Schuster seems to no longer provide excerpts since their website redesign went live, but Amazon.com has a "Click to look inside" feature for this one already: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/147671648X/

Side note: I've chosen to go with "ALT" as the label for alternate reality releases for now.
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Is "ALT" really necessary? I can't imagine anyone on this board that doesn't know the Star Trek 2009/Star Trek Into Darkness background?
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

^ Well, it's not exactly "TOS"... "ALT" works as well as anything else, I think. "NST" for "New Star Trek" maybe?

Eh, I think "ALT" is fine.
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Is "ALT" really necessary? I can't imagine anyone on this board that doesn't know the Star Trek 2009/Star Trek Into Darkness background?

It's probably not really necessary in this case, but all the other standard review threads (literally all of them, because we went through the backlog and renamed them) carry a label like that, and we might well see non-novelization novels set in the alternate reality at some point. It also means you can easily get a list of review threads ordered by the branch of the franchise they pertain to by sorting my little ranking table alphabetically by the title column.

Chalk it up to a slightly obsessive sense of order maybe? :)
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

I'll probably wait until this hits the library. The last movie book was pretty bleh...
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Wow, its £13 - nearly $20 !

Pretty much every movie adaptation ends up remaindered in 'The Works' after a month or so. I'll pick one up for £1.50 then...
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Is "ALT" really necessary? I can't imagine anyone on this board that doesn't know the Star Trek 2009/Star Trek Into Darkness background?

It's probably not really necessary in this case, but all the other standard review threads (literally all of them, because we went through the backlog and renamed them) carry a label like that, and we might well see non-novelization novels set in the alternate reality at some point. It also means you can easily get a list of review threads ordered by the branch of the franchise they pertain to by sorting my little ranking table alphabetically by the title column.

Chalk it up to a slightly obsessive sense of order maybe? :)



Kinda reminds me of that scene from Planet of the Apes where the astronaut is erecting a small United States flag.
:guffaw:
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

I was just able to download this onto my Kindle. :techman:
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Just posted my review. My analysis kind of devolves into a discussion of novelizations in general rather than this one in particular, just so you're forewarned!
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Is there anything 'extra' in it, or don't adaptations do that anymore ?
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Is there anything 'extra' in it, or don't adaptations do that anymore ?

Maybe a couple of lines of dialogue here and there, but not really. There were no extra "scenes" that I could discern, at any rate. Others, please feel free to correct me on this if I'm wrong.
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Maybe a couple of lines of dialogue here and there, but not really. There were no extra "scenes" that I could discern, at any rate. Others, please feel free to correct me on this if I'm wrong.
More than a few extra lines of dialogue - for example, the novelization "explained" that Harrison really beamed up to a ship in orbit with the portable device, then went to Qo'noS. I noticed a number of other expansions as well, that seemed to be "made for the page" rather than cut material.

But yes, I don't remember there being any extra scenes.
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Maybe a couple of lines of dialogue here and there, but not really. There were no extra "scenes" that I could discern, at any rate. Others, please feel free to correct me on this if I'm wrong.
More than a few extra lines of dialogue - for example, the novelization "explained" that Harrison really beamed up to a ship in orbit with the portable device, then went to Qo'noS. I noticed a number of other expansions as well, that seemed to be "made for the page" rather than cut material.

But yes, I don't remember there being any extra scenes.

Ah, right! I forgot about that one. Although it still indicated that he used transwarp beaming from the ship, but that it used all of the power of that ship if I recall correctly. That made more sense to me than what we saw in the film.
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Just posted my review. My analysis kind of devolves into a discussion of novelizations in general rather than this one in particular, just so you're forewarned!

From your review:
Because the vast majority of readers will have seen the film, Foster doesn't spend a great deal of time on descriptive prose, instead launching the reader into the action and presenting the story in a fast-paced manner. After all, we've already seen the sets, characters, and action sequences; why waste time describing every minute detail over again?

It's more likely that Foster just didn't know what things would look like, just what was described in the script. Maybe he could've gotten some reference photos for certain things upon request, but given how secretive Bad Robot is about its movies, a lot might have been off-limits.

As for the idea that most readers of the novelization would've already seen the film, that might be true today, but I think the original reason for novelizations was to make the story available to people who hadn't seen the film. Back in the days before home video and Netflix, many people might never have gotten to see a movie if they missed it in the theater, unless they caught it rerun on TV sometime. That's also probably why past novelizations were freer to take liberties with the films' stories: because they were designed to work as standalone books for readers who had nothing else to compare them to, and thus the writers' decisions were based on what would make the best book rather than what would be faithful to the screen version.

Then again, I grew up in the days when movies tended to stay in theatrical release for months, even a year or more. And novelizations often came out before the movies they were based on, as for instance with the Star Wars novelization (also by Foster, though published under Lucas's name). I think the idea was that if people liked the novel, it might make them want to see the movie version. (Or maybe it was to blur the line between original movies and movies based on books, since the latter might have had more prestige.) And we were more a family of readers than moviegoers. So it was pretty normal for me to read the novelization first, sometimes more than once, before I finally got around to seeing the actual movie, whether in the theater or when it eventually showed up on TV.
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Just posted my review. My analysis kind of devolves into a discussion of novelizations in general rather than this one in particular, just so you're forewarned!

From your review:
Because the vast majority of readers will have seen the film, Foster doesn't spend a great deal of time on descriptive prose, instead launching the reader into the action and presenting the story in a fast-paced manner. After all, we've already seen the sets, characters, and action sequences; why waste time describing every minute detail over again?

It's more likely that Foster just didn't know what things would look like, just what was described in the script. Maybe he could've gotten some reference photos for certain things upon request, but given how secretive Bad Robot is about its movies, a lot might have been off-limits.

Actually,

I always start with the script. Also, in the case of this one and the previous films, I was fortunate enough to be able to see the film as it was being made and edited. That, of course, is an enormous help, which I’d almost never previously had when doing novelizations. I was very grateful for that. I had a long chat with Bob in his office at Universal. I expressed some thoughts and he came back (with his thoughts). It was a very unusual project. Usually, the people making the film have either very little interest in the book version or the interest they have is solely critical. And, in this case, there was considerably more back and forth than you usually get, which I think results in a better book.

The above is from Startrek.com's interview with Alan Dean Foster, found here.
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

^Ahh, okay. Interesting. As he says, that's pretty unusual for novelizations.
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

^Ahh, okay. Interesting. As he says, that's pretty unusual for novelizations.

It's more than unusual. It's practically unheard-of.

I've written or edited over a dozen movie novelizations and the author never saw the movie first, aside from maybe an advance peek at trailer.
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

The extra bits also include an explanation of Carol Marcus' accent, why McCoy didn't just draw blood from one of the other augments, a completely different "super ice cube" solution for the super volcano, extra info on how their torpedo switcheroo actually worked, and a wildly different take (in my opinion) of the private scene between A. Marcus and Kirk in the first half of the movie.

What we didn't get in the book was any new information on the aliens or new crew members*. I think a crew member is identified as Bradley and some of the Captains and ships are IDed in the emergency meeting at Starfleet HQ, but that's about it. Also still no reason given why Carol Marcus needed to change her clothes in a shuttle craft while speaking with Kirk.

I think Foster did a much better job with this novelization than the previous film's. It felt much more substantial and polished.


*Keenser is identified as a Roylan, but I couldn't remember if this information was given in the previous novelization or revealed here. Also unsure if it matches the name given in his origin story in the comic series either.
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Also still no reason given why Carol Marcus needed to change her clothes in a shuttle craft while speaking with Kirk.

I felt the reason was clear enough in the film; she was changing into a flight suit and time was of the essence. Maybe not the best reason, but I understood what the reason was supposed to be.


*Keenser is identified as a Roylan, but I couldn't remember if this information was given in the previous novelization or revealed here. Also unsure if it matches the name given in his origin story in the comic series either.

The name of the Roylan species was first established in Star Trek Ongoing issue 14, which tells Keenser's origins in flashback.
 
Re: ALT: Star Trek Into Darkness by A. D. Foster Review Thread (Spoile

Maybe a couple of lines of dialogue here and there, but not really. There were no extra "scenes" that I could discern, at any rate. Others, please feel free to correct me on this if I'm wrong.
More than a few extra lines of dialogue - for example, the novelization "explained" that Harrison really beamed up to a ship in orbit with the portable device, then went to Qo'noS. I noticed a number of other expansions as well, that seemed to be "made for the page" rather than cut material.

But yes, I don't remember there being any extra scenes.

There might not be any extra scenes, but this book does let every scene in the film breathe more. Each conversation has much more too it and therefore provides the reader with a richer and fuller story understanding than what you get in the very fast paced movie. I love the film, but Foster's work here shows us that there are times when a little more conversation in key plot-point scenes adds to the movie immensely. JJ could learn to let the characters have more time to talk and scenes breathe so the plot makes sense more easily. Star Trek works best when characters have time to interact with each other and talk. :bolian:
 
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