ELEEN.
Are the Blish novelizations canon?
- Thread starter Neopeius
- Start date
I'm from Strayla - thats how we speak matee 
I've been there. No you don't.I'm from Strayla - thats how we speak matee
Then too, if it is such a danger, I might want eyes on it to prevent a haywire situation.
I have this idea of a skin tight field on the ship where—if there is any “leaks” things run down the pylons to these pods used for other things as well.
That might explain why the saucer is safe from the nacelles even if the domes almost touch the saucer—the radiation still has to take the long way around.
Dale Sams asked specifically "why it was so dangerous."
Well, sure, of course. It's probably something like a gunner's turret on a WWII bomber, a bubble protruding out the side. TOS Remastered interpreted it as one of the big running lights on the side of the secondary hull near the shuttlebay:
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x20hd/courtmartialhd049.jpg
Doug Drexler and Geoffrey Mandel's fan-published Enterprise Officer's Manual interpreted it as the little nub sticking out from the bottom of the saucer's lower sensor dome, and their schematic shows how it was entered:
https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lca...l/USS-Enterprise-Officers-Manual_Page_041.jpg
I've always pictured something along the lines (but not necessarily exactly like - no guns, maybe a bit roomier) of the ball turret on a B-17 bomber.
The puny hole below the hangar doesn't look big enough to be the pod, even with the bigger scale Enterprise in those scenes. Besides, if we assume symmetry, there should be another one on the other side of the ship, so, how come that one wasn't affected, too. I could buy the probe thingy in the bottom of the sensor dome, but it too seems too small. I envisioned from the dialog that the ion probe was lowered on a hard connection mount out the bottom of the engineering hull through one of the bottom hatches (I favor the small red square hatch under the warp pylons). This way, it can deploy particle collect panels (or "plates") to expand the detection surface area and "hang in the wind" so to speak. Spock says, "Attention, Commander Finney, report to pod for reading on ion plates." The pod needed to be jettisoned because the pod was under severe stresses and possibly they couldn't retract the extended plates quick enough, and the Enterprise needed to seal the hatch closed to keep the ship safe. YMMV 
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I envisioned from the dialog that the ion probe was lowered on a hard connection mount out the bottom of the engineering hull through one of the bottom hatches (I favor the small red square hatch under the warp pylons). This way, it can deploy particle collect panels (or "plates") to expand the detection surface area and "hang in the wind" so to speak. Spock says, "Attention, Commander Finney, report to pod for reading on ion plates." The pod needed to be jettisoned because the pod was under severe stresses and possibly they couldn't retract the extended plates quick enough, and the Enterprise needed to seal the hatch closed to keep the ship safe. YMMV
I like most of that idea, but the "severe stresses" part is implausible, because it's a space storm, not an atmospheric storm. Despite the often-fanciful depiction onscreen, an "ion storm" would be basically an intense solar flare or coronal mass ejection, a relatively dense concentration of hot plasma (ionized gas) engulfing the ship -- keeping in mind that "dense" in space terms is still practically vacuum compared to air or water. It doesn't endanger a ship by physically pushing it around; the hazards would be the radiation and electrical charge. Blish's extrapolation was on the nose scientifically, as usual; a ship passing through a radiation belt or hit by a solar flare can pick up a dangerously strong static charge on its surface, with no easy way to dissipate it since it's in vacuum:
https://www.nasa.gov/offices/nesc/a...-the-potential-dangers-of-spacecraft-charging
Presumably the Enterprise hull has some kind of shielding against that sort of charge buildup, but as Blish explained it, the pod couldn't be shielded from the very thing it was intended to measure, so it would be susceptible to the sort of static charge hazard that primitive 20th- and 21st-century spacecraft were vulnerable to. And if the charge propagated from the pod into the ship's interior, it could damage shipboard systems or possibly endanger the crew.
There is more info from the episode that counters only charge buildup. The on-sceen scene showed the ship being banged around by some sort of external forces:
Maybe the ship was hitting sever magnetic forces in addition to plasma and electrical charges, or the ship was buffeted by huge lightning bolt discharges. The ship juddered even before entering the ion storm suggesting some sort of field around it. Once in the ion storm proper, Hanson mentions "natural vibrations" which sounds like stresses on the ship or more likely on the exposed ion pod hanging in the wind. My preferred theory: the natural vibrations were on the pod mounting system threatening to break it off the ship (like the Tacoma Bridge collapse).
(The ship suddenly judders)
KIRK: Stand by on alert status, Mister Spock.
SPOCK: Acknowledged.
HANSON: Approaching ion storm, sir.
KIRK: Warp factor one, Mister Hanson.
HANSON: Warp one, sir.
(There's another sharp jerk, and Kirk presses a button on his chair panel.)
Dialog: KIRK: Stand by on alert status, Mister Spock.
SPOCK: Acknowledged.
HANSON: Approaching ion storm, sir.
KIRK: Warp factor one, Mister Hanson.
HANSON: Warp one, sir.
(There's another sharp jerk, and Kirk presses a button on his chair panel.)
HANSON: Aye, aye, sir. Natural vibrations, force two, Captain. Force three.
Later it hits force five, then the ion pod is jettisoned.Maybe the ship was hitting sever magnetic forces in addition to plasma and electrical charges, or the ship was buffeted by huge lightning bolt discharges. The ship juddered even before entering the ion storm suggesting some sort of field around it. Once in the ion storm proper, Hanson mentions "natural vibrations" which sounds like stresses on the ship or more likely on the exposed ion pod hanging in the wind. My preferred theory: the natural vibrations were on the pod mounting system threatening to break it off the ship (like the Tacoma Bridge collapse).
Well, naturally they made it seem more like an Earthbound storm for dramatic effect. Blish's take is more realistic, is what I'm saying. I'm less interested in exactly matching the fiction than I am in figuring out how it should work, on the theory that the fiction is a dramatic interpretation with some liberties taken.
I can't buy that physical vibrations threatening to break off the pod were the only danger, because that's only a danger to the pod, not a good enough reason to sacrifice a crew member's life. It has to be a danger to the whole ship. Blish's theory accounts for that in a way that makes scientific sense. Where the episode dialogue says "we began encountering pressure, variant stress," Blish substitutes "field-variance." (The actual log playback is skipped over.)
You make a good point that the phrase "natural vibrations" suggests a resonance effect induced in the ship akin to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Is it possible, I wonder, for a static charge buildup to induce a resonant vibration in some way? Maybe the charge collected by the pod spreads out under the hull plates and there's some kind of repulsion effect or thermal expansion that induces vibrations.
I can't buy that physical vibrations threatening to break off the pod were the only danger, because that's only a danger to the pod, not a good enough reason to sacrifice a crew member's life. It has to be a danger to the whole ship. Blish's theory accounts for that in a way that makes scientific sense. Where the episode dialogue says "we began encountering pressure, variant stress," Blish substitutes "field-variance." (The actual log playback is skipped over.)
You make a good point that the phrase "natural vibrations" suggests a resonance effect induced in the ship akin to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Is it possible, I wonder, for a static charge buildup to induce a resonant vibration in some way? Maybe the charge collected by the pod spreads out under the hull plates and there's some kind of repulsion effect or thermal expansion that induces vibrations.
I was a big fan of the Blish books back in the 70’s, but what left a lasting impression on me was the cover art of the Bantam paperbacks. The artwork does a great job imagining the mystery of space exploration and the final frontier that was so foundational to the original series.
Agreed! Those covers caught my eye when I saw them in the library when I was in 1st grade. I checked out a couple of the books and was hooked. When our local station started airing the show M-F at 5pm, I was already a fan because of Blish's adaptations.
Back in those dark days when there was little hope of more Trek, maybe they were considered canon.(waits for the reflexive onslaught of "NOOOOOOOs!"
I don't mean canon canon -- obviously, the definition of canon is what appeared on screen.
And yet, the Blish (and Foster) novelizations were "official". They were the actual episodes in books that said Star Trek by a real science fiction author.
So, at least back in the day, how influential were these stories? Did concepts get incorporated into official Trek canon? Did some become official fanon if nothing else?
At a time when no new Trek was being made, how much were these adaptations slurped up and the concepts introduced, such as they weren't in the original episodes, accepted as official?
In the sense of continuity, no, because they clearly differed from the aired episodes they adapted. But in the broader usage of "canon" to mean the body of artistic works from a certain creator or genre that are considered essential for a thorough experience (as in, say, "the canon of English literature" or "the canon of film noir"), I'd say the Blish adaptations would certainly have been on that list of must-have books, since there wasn't that much else, and since the episodes weren't yet available on home video.
In the sense Neopeius was asking, whether concepts from the Blish collections were adopted in later canon, I think that was addressed earlier in the thread, but the main things I can think of are the 23rd-century setting (though I'd say it was The Making of Star Trek that established that definitively in fans' minds) and Vulcan being 40 Eridani.
Makes sense. Thank you.
Blush never saw
BLISH never saw any of the TOS episodes. He was living in England and worked from film scripts. I read his episode abstracts when they came out in the 1970s.
BLISH never saw any of the TOS episodes. He was living in England and worked from film scripts. I read his episode abstracts when they came out in the 1970s.
BLISH never saw any of the TOS episodes. He was living in England and worked from film scripts. I read his episode abstracts when they came out in the 1970s.
Blish lived in the United States for the vast majority of the show’s run.
Thank you. I didn’t know that.
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