Spoilers KEL: More Beautiful Than Death by David Mack Review Thread

Riveting in spots, but not riveting enough to excuse the moments in which McCoy seemed wildly out of character even for the Abramsverse McCoy, and those in which Sarek seemed wildly out of character especially for the Abramsverse Sarek.

 

/\Yep,I thought everybody seemed a little snippy especially Bones.And Jim did seem a little high-handed.
I did have a little trouble picturing the aliens as giant talking mice but there you go..

 

It was written before the latter two movies. McCoy did come off as a lot more of a chicken in '09 than when he was defusing bombs in STID or hijacking space-fighters in STB.

Spoiler: Ending Revisions

IIRC, Mack mentioned in another thread that one of the changes he had to make to fit with the later movies was Kirk bragging to Pike at the beginning of STID that no one had died on the Enterprise since he took command, and it's pretty clear when red shirts originally died and were revised to being rendered comatose because humans were less vulnerable to the negative-energy creatures, especially the perfunctory mention at the beginning of the last chapter that McCoy figured out how to revive them (though, isn't there a rumored(?) deleted scene from "Obsession" where McCoy cures the "dead" victims of the cloud-creature that's pretty much the same thing?).

 

I've never heard of any such deleted scene from "Obsession." Drained of hemoglobin is drained of hemoglobin. You'd have about as much luck curing somebody who'd been eaten by the Salt Vampire.

(Suddenly thinking about a no-smoking sign advertised in a catalog from one of the dealers in SpaceCon 4, back in the 1970s: "Smokers will be introduced to the Salt Vampire")

 

My memory failed me, not "deleted" but "unfilmed." It would've accounted for how Leslie doesn't just continue being a background crewmember in later episodes after being killed by the cloud creature, but why he's later walking around in that very episode.

It feels very post-hoc, make-something-up-for-the-convention-circuit to me, but, hey, it's still a piece of Trek folklore.

 

Bruce and I had David Mack on the Positively Trek Book Club podcast, the episode just came out today. Here's the link if you're interested in checking it out: Positively Trek 30: Book Club: More Beautiful than Death.

We had a great conversation about the book. We also took some time to talk about his work as a consultant on Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Prodigy. He's always a blast!

 

Of course, Leslie could be twins. Or triplets: Ryan, Frank, and Ed, which would explain the inconsistencies noted in the Memory Alpha article.

Suddenly thinking of the Zathras Brothers, from B5. All nine of them.

 

Kertrats I listened to your podcast I really enjoyed listening to your interview with David about his book finally being published .I'm so glad David Mack is going to have another star Trek book coming out next year.

 

Just heard the podcast. Interesting as usual. Mr. Mack, was T'Pring going to put Spock's katra in the Katric ark after Stonn's katra was placed in Spock's body?

 

I ordered this at Waterstones but am still waiting for my copy

 

I'm still waiting for my book to come too.I hope other people will be able to get their books in the mail also.

 

My assumption was "no."

 

Finished! Now that was, uh, a bit crazier than the usual stuff! :-)

At times, with all the brutality, squirting blood etc., I thought I was in the middle of a B slasher / gore movie script... but maybe it was how my imagination reacted to Mr. Petkoff's interpretation. I was surprised that one of the Starfleet officials openly advocated xenocide as an answer to a problem (I would expect that for such a person no problem would be big enough for this to seem to be the only solution). I really liked the Vulcan-related thread of the story (that is, it really seemed to be an important issue that needed to be tackled), apart from one thing: the final message of the book being what it is, how come apparently nobody cares about the fate of

Spoiler

the poor, innocent Stonn, whose Katra got destroyed and whose only fault was being in love with the wrong person

?

I chuckled at the

Spoiler

"hey, let's bring all the 'dead' back at the end"

bit, reminded me of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang :-)


I really hope more Kelvin-universe books will come out. It's the only part of the franchise a newcomer can get really acquainted with without spending years of their time. And here, you watch 3 movies, read some comics and you're set. For completionists this situation has some advantages...

 

I got my book in the mail today. I'm looking forward to reading this story about the Vulcans and what they've been up to with Sarek and Spock after the first Kelvin timeline movie.

 

Disconcerting dialogue on page 198. Kirk says “Bullshit”. What is this, a Bukowski novel?

 

He’s one of the better writers. My favourites are Margaret Wander Bonnano (related to the Mob Boss?) and Diane Duane.

 

Still waiting for my copy. Pretty sure these books are cursed with me.

He says it in the 2009 movie the book is based upon?

 

They seem to have some really dirty mouths there in the Kelvin Universe Iowa. This would never happen in TOS :-)

 

Because of the people or because of the network standards Trek had to adhere to in the 1960's? Just look at the language used in Picard vs. The Next Generation.

 

I know, I know, I was just surprised anyone would be surprised :-)