Books with the TOS feel

[Jsplinis]

Occasionally I hear certain TOS books described as feeling like the show or era. Would anyone like to list some of these TOS style books and tell why they feel like they belong in that era or why they feel as if they read like a "missing" episode of the show so to speak. Maybe it's the dialogue, the pacing, the set descriptions, all of these or something else entirely.

Have fun,
Jsplinis

 

[Nightowl1701]

That is a good question. What constitutes the TOS 'feel'? There was a different feel every season.

Season 1 - Twilight Zone/Outer Limits noirish feel, Rand only in first half, pacing picks up in second half
Season 2 - Chekov joins, snappy/humorous dialogue, Sulu gone most of the season, heavy on morality plays
Season 3 - Almost always stuck on the Enterprise, cast put through the emotional wringer, occasional venture into Lost in Space stupidity
The Animated Series - No Chekov, Arex/M'Ress, more exotic aliens, methamphetamine pace

 

[Jarvisimo]

Is Sulu missing most of season 2? I didn't remember that.

 

[Paris]

Is Sulu missing most of season 2? I didn't remember that.

He did. He was filming Green Berets, with John Wayne, and was absent from several episodes.

 

[Christopher]

Sulu was missing from 11 of season 2's 26 episodes, mainly the block of 9 consecutive episodes (in production order) from "The Trouble With Tribbles" to "By Any Other Name" (as well as "The Apple" and "Patterns of Force"). So it wasn't "most of" the season, just a large chunk of it.

 

[js]

LOL I seem to recall my editor's comment/criticism of the story I turned in for Constellations was that it was too much of the TV show era feel rather than how contemporary TOS Trek lit was being written.

Which I took as mission accomplished since I'd re-marathoned a bunch of TOS eps to try to get that tone/sound/feeling to the story I was writing.

Think my story got a mixed reaction because of that too. Too old-fashioned preachy maybe rather than cool and contemporary. I understand the response but my heart was in trying to write something that fit in with the show rather than the lit, if that makes sense?

 

[Greg Cox]

It can be a bit of a balancing act sometimes, trying to write "modern" novels based on a 1960s TV show. I usually lean toward mimicking the feel of the original episodes (minus the casual sexism, of course), but that's often a judgment call.

 

[Jarvisimo]

Interesting thoughts, Greg and JS. I remember also Harbringer with its notes on fashion especially catching the 'feel' of TOS very effectively. How much does the wider cultural setting of the shows you write about affect your world-building? Do you guys study the wider visual, musical and aesthetic culture of the 60s when writing TOS, or the 70s for TMP and 80s for later movies?

 

[Greg Cox]

Interesting thoughts, Greg and JS. I remember also Harbringer with its notes on fashion especially catching the 'feel' of TOS very effectively. How much does the wider cultural setting of the shows you write about affect your world-building? Do you guys study the wider visual, musical and aesthetic culture of the 60s when writing TOS, or the 70s for TMP and 80s for later movies?

I can't speak for others, but I was deliberately going for a Sixties spy-fi feel in parts of my EUGENICS WARS books, to the extent that I often had the soundtrack to "Our Man Flint" playing in the background while writing the Gary Seven scenes.

But it can be tricky. The human characters in TOS are basically speaking colloquial English, circa 1966 or so. I have to be careful that my dialogue doesn't feel too dated--or, on the flip side, too jarringly contemporary. And is "on the flip side" a dated reference these days? Could you use it in a TOS novel? I wonder . . . .

Case in point: there's an ep where Kirk jokes about little boys dipping little girls' pigtail in inkwells. That bit was already anachronistic back in the sixties, but would be ridiculously out-of-date today. I doubt you could get away with that in a modern TOS novel.

This is not just a Trek thing, btw. I run into the same issues when writing vintage heroes like The Green Hornet or The Phantom. Recently, when writing the old pulp hero, The Avenger, I went a little overboard on the "Geez, get a load of that big palooka!" dialogue to the extent that my editor had to rein me in a bit . . .

 

[ATimson]

I have to be careful that my dialogue doesn't feel too dated--or, on the flip side, too jarringly contemporary. And is "on the flip side" a dated reference these days? Could you use it in a TOS novel? I wonder . . . .

It's anachronistic on a literal level, but I think that phrase has already outlasted double-sided DVDs - err, vinyl records - as a cultural artifact. (I was raised on CDs and yet I still use it. ) I know there's other examples, but they maddeningly refuse to come to mind right now!

 

[js]

Since my writing has been about 97% non-fic vs. fic, I can't really add much of anything to what the experienced pros like Greg Cox say. I'm just a dabbler in fic by comparison. But for my own two Trek short stories and for my Andromeda story that was made into an episode, I definitely wanted the feeling of what I saw onscreen rather than what I may read elsewhere. Yes, including what may seem outdated today in the case of TOS.

But as I said, I don't really consider myself a fiction writer - I'm more comfortable writing/analyzing/compiling in the non-fic arena - but I'm just glad I had the chance to contribute when I did.

I can note my observations though about how much fun the DS9 writers had when they got to write for Vic Fontaine and the 60s era holosuite eps. They really wanted that particular vibe which is why they cast someone so specific to that era (James Darren).

 

[Commishsleer]

The only Star Trek novels I read are TOS and I'm so old school (ie old) that I actually read a lot of the original TOS novels as they made it into my local bookshop (when they had local bookshops here).

Authors probably hate my type as I want books that have the feel of TOS and more importantly get the relationship between the three main characters right.
I've probably read about a third of the TOS novels and have been largely disappointed especially by the early efforts.

I've never read a novel that is just like an episode as an episode is too short to novelise. But the good ones (IMO) are like an expanded TOS movie (or double episode) set in the TOS era.
In TOS basically all the action revolved around Kirk, Spock and McCoy but the novels usually include contributions from the other members of the main crew (which is great IMO).

My favourite TOS novels that I believe have the 'feel' of the show that I can remember are Entropy Effect, Enterprise: First Adventure, Dreams of the Ravens, the Federation (a bit of a crossover),The Weight of Worlds, Troublesome Minds, A Choice of Catastrophes.
And possibly my favorite TOS novel is Planet of Judgement which I'll admit breaks my unwritten rules of TOS novels which is going into detail about 'other characters' and turning into a proper science fiction story. But I 'forgive it these crimes' because I love the story and all the characters in it.

I've just finished reading some post TOS novels "Mind Meld" and "The Rift". These and Sarek still have a TOS feel to them in a good way IMO.

 

[Jarvisimo]

Interesting thoughts, Greg and JS. I remember also Harbringer with its notes on fashion especially catching the 'feel' of TOS very effectively. How much does the wider cultural setting of the shows you write about affect your world-building? Do you guys study the wider visual, musical and aesthetic culture of the 60s when writing TOS, or the 70s for TMP and 80s for later movies?

I can't speak for others, but I was deliberately going for a Sixties spy-fi feel in parts of my EUGENICS WARS books, to the extent that I often had the soundtrack to "Our Man Flint" playing in the background while writing the Gary Seven scenes.

But it can be tricky. The human characters in TOS are basically speaking colloquial English, circa 1966 or so. I have to be careful that my dialogue doesn't feel too dated--or, on the flip side, too jarringly contemporary. And is "on the flip side" a dated reference these days? Could you use it in a TOS novel? I wonder . . . .

Case in point: there's an ep where Kirk jokes about little boys dipping little girls' pigtail in inkwells. That bit was already anachronistic back in the sixties, but would be ridiculously out-of-date today. I doubt you could get away with that in a modern TOS novel.

This is not just a Trek thing, btw. I run into the same issues when writing vintage heroes like The Green Hornet or The Phantom. Recently, when writing the old pulp hero, The Avenger, I went a little overboard on the "Geez, get a load of that big palooka!" dialogue to the extent that my editor had to rein me in a bit . . .

Very interesting! That's rather linguistic-focused, other than your Khan books which were of course set in the past. What about fashion, design and architecture in TOS books? Or would faithfully Mad Men-ing TOS lit become too much a case of Space-60s (or 70s/80s for the movies)?

 

[Greg Cox]

Interesting thoughts, Greg and JS. I remember also Harbringer with its notes on fashion especially catching the 'feel' of TOS very effectively. How much does the wider cultural setting of the shows you write about affect your world-building? Do you guys study the wider visual, musical and aesthetic culture of the 60s when writing TOS, or the 70s for TMP and 80s for later movies?

I can't speak for others, but I was deliberately going for a Sixties spy-fi feel in parts of my EUGENICS WARS books, to the extent that I often had the soundtrack to "Our Man Flint" playing in the background while writing the Gary Seven scenes.

But it can be tricky. The human characters in TOS are basically speaking colloquial English, circa 1966 or so. I have to be careful that my dialogue doesn't feel too dated--or, on the flip side, too jarringly contemporary. And is "on the flip side" a dated reference these days? Could you use it in a TOS novel? I wonder . . . .

Case in point: there's an ep where Kirk jokes about little boys dipping little girls' pigtail in inkwells. That bit was already anachronistic back in the sixties, but would be ridiculously out-of-date today. I doubt you could get away with that in a modern TOS novel.

This is not just a Trek thing, btw. I run into the same issues when writing vintage heroes like The Green Hornet or The Phantom. Recently, when writing the old pulp hero, The Avenger, I went a little overboard on the "Geez, get a load of that big palooka!" dialogue to the extent that my editor had to rein me in a bit . . .

Very interesting! That's rather linguistic-focused, other than your Khan books which were of course set in the past. What about fashion, design and architecture in TOS books? Or would faithfully Mad Men-ing TOS lit become too much a case of Space-60s (or 70s/80s for the movies)?

Not much of a fashion maven, but I'm still proud of a line I snuck into "Assignment: Eternity," where Roberta Lincoln visits the Starship Enterprise and is surprised to see that mini-skirts and go-go boots are still in fashion in the future . . .

Can't believe I got away with that!

 

[Ronald Held]

I can't speak for others, but I was deliberately going for a Sixties spy-fi feel in parts of my EUGENICS WARS books, to the extent that I often had the soundtrack to "Our Man Flint" playing in the background while writing the Gary Seven scenes.

But it can be tricky. The human characters in TOS are basically speaking colloquial English, circa 1966 or so. I have to be careful that my dialogue doesn't feel too dated--or, on the flip side, too jarringly contemporary. And is "on the flip side" a dated reference these days? Could you use it in a TOS novel? I wonder . . . .

Case in point: there's an ep where Kirk jokes about little boys dipping little girls' pigtail in inkwells. That bit was already anachronistic back in the sixties, but would be ridiculously out-of-date today. I doubt you could get away with that in a modern TOS novel.

This is not just a Trek thing, btw. I run into the same issues when writing vintage heroes like The Green Hornet or The Phantom. Recently, when writing the old pulp hero, The Avenger, I went a little overboard on the "Geez, get a load of that big palooka!" dialogue to the extent that my editor had to rein me in a bit . . .

Very interesting! That's rather linguistic-focused, other than your Khan books which were of course set in the past. What about fashion, design and architecture in TOS books? Or would faithfully Mad Men-ing TOS lit become too much a case of Space-60s (or 70s/80s for the movies)?

Not much of a fashion maven, but I'm still proud of a line I snuck into "Assignment: Eternity," where Roberta Lincoln visits the Starship Enterprise and is surprised to see that mini-skirts and go-go boots are still in fashion in the future . . .

Can't believe I got away with that!

Why wouldn't you be able to write that?

 

[F. King Daniel]

I remember thinking that, despite the more epic scope, Chain of Attack and The Final Nexus felt incredibly like the TOS TV series. I think it was the reactions of the characters, the descriptions of movements etc.

 

[Christopher]

I've been tempted lately to track down copies of Chain of Attack and The Final Nexus and read them again. I came upon TFN in a used-book store yesterday, and if they'd had CoA as well, I probably would've gotten them. (Instead I got The Three-Minute Universe, another oldie I decided was worth another look.)

 

[Commishsleer]

I remember thinking that, despite the more epic scope, Chain of Attack and The Final Nexus felt incredibly like the TOS TV series. I think it was the reactions of the characters, the descriptions of movements etc.

Just finished "Chain of Attack" last week. I also felt it what TOS Kirk would do. And it gave a 3rd person look at the guys - which I like on occasion.
I was put off by the title of "The Final Nexus" but I gather it has nothing to do with GEN Nexus so I might give it a try.

 

[Christopher]

^Right. "Nexus" just means a connection or link (in fact, it's from the same Latin root as "connect"), so it can be used for any number of things.

Plus, of course, The Final Nexus was published in 1988, six years before Generations came out.