Kirk's Second Five Year Mission - Lack of Books about it?

[Christopher]

There's also the issue of what is unique about that era that justifies setting a story there? Decker and Ilia are gone, Saavik isn't on the scene yet, and everybody else (except, okay, Chapel) is back in their usual chairs.

Except for Chekov, who's become the security chief. L.A. Graf's post-TMP novels focus heavily on Chekov's security work.

Also, Spock is profoundly changed, because he's no longer denying his emotional side but learning to integrate emotion and logic, moving toward the serene, self-assured person we see in TWOK and afterward. To me, that was the most compelling thing that made the post-TMP period worth exploring, and it always bewildered me that nobody bothered to build on it until I wrote Ex Machina. I mean, it's the single most transformative event in Spock's entire adult life -- including his death, since he bounced back from that without any major personality changes that I could see.

Not to mention that you've got that delightfully rich multispecies crew that TMP just gave us the barest glimpse of. That's so much more interesting than a crew that's all humans except for Spock, Arex, and M'Ress.

In theory, any post-TMP story ought to be set there for some plot-specific reason as well . . . and not just because there's a gap in the timeline.

Now, that I agree with. Another reason I was so eager to do Ex Machina is that so few of the post-TMP books (other than the Graf ones) really felt like they took advantage of the setting. Most of them could've worked as 5-year mission novels with only a few tweaks. The Marshak/Culbreath novels tried to take advantage of the post-TMP setting; The Prometheus Design featured elements like the clothing replicators in the sonic showers as plot points, and Triangle built on the reference to "New Humans" in the TMP novelization (although it also depicted Zaranites as looking like humans for some reason). But TPD dealt with Spock's emotional epiphany by arbitrarily undoing it, having Spock actually become more emotionlessly Vulcan for no clearly explained reason. So I never felt they really took advantage of the potential of the setting either (leaving aside their other problems).

 

[Greg Cox]

Except for Chekov, who's become the security chief. L.A. Graf's post-TMP novels focus heavily on Chekov's security work..

Shameless plug: I'm also milking that very heavily in Foul Deeds Will Rise.

And you have a point about all the extra aliens in the crew. Although it's never said outright, TOS seemed pretty clear about the fact that Spock was the only exotic alien crew member aboard, whereas you can more comfortably add new alien crew members in the movie era.

Of course, you can also do that in the later movie era as well.

 

[Christopher]

Of course, you can also do that in the later movie era as well.

Except that the later movies mostly gave the E an entirely human crew aside from Spock, Saavik, and Valeris. Although there was that Crewman Dax with the weird feet in TUC.

Anyway, TAS added Arex and M'Ress to the crew, so it's possible to assume other aliens served on the crew for at least part of the 5YM. I believe A Choice of Catastrophes featured several alien crewmembers.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Actually Ex Machina came out before the latest version of the Pocket Timeline.

Sorry, my mistake.

The Timeline does not pretend that all of the books it lists are in continuity with one another, since very many of them are mutually contradictory. It's just placing each book at the most likely point in the chronology where it would fall if it did happen.

I know, I'm simply saying that Rihannsu is that way in relation to Vulcan's Soul.

It's been a long time since I've read the "New Earth" books (like since they were published) but they were shortly after TMP, I believe.

Yeah, that's what the historian's notes said, but for some reason almost every historian's note for a post-TMP novel puts it "shortly after" TMP. There are a number of things in those books that make more sense if they're significantly closer to TWOK, like Chekov leaving for Reliant. That's why the Pocket Timeline put them in 2279-80 instead.

So does New Earth mention a second 5 year mission?

And everyone in Starfleet looked like a member of the British army circa 1776.

Haha. I never thought of it that way. Personally. TWOK uniforms are my 2nd favorite. The first being First Contact/late DS9 uniforms.

 

[tomswift2002]

Anyway, TAS added Arex and M'Ress to the crew, so it's possible to assume other aliens served on the crew for at least part of the 5YM. I believe A Choice of Catastrophes featured several alien crewmembers.

No Time Like The Past has an Andorian nurse (Ugfy?)

But in terms of the time between The Counter-Clock Incident and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I've got the DE of TMP on right now, and I've heard the time points, but there is nothing really definite in the dialog to indicate that TMP actually occurs within 2-3 years of TCCI (or Turnabout Intruder, whichever one you prefer to go by). There is Kirk's line where he says that 2.5 years as head of Starfleet Operations may have made him a little "stale", and the 5 year line, it could mean anything from the Kirk referring to his "famous" 5-year mission as seen in TOS and TAS, to it being Starfleet wanted someone with a minimum of 5 years space experience (from what I could tell by dialog, Decker had only been a Captain for 18 months at most, and only in drydock; remember the Commodore from the episode where Kirk, McCoy, Spock and Scotty all aged, it was mentioned there that while the guy had been a Commodore for quite a few years, he really did not have the required space experience for the Romulan encounter). So, I don't really see anything in the movie directly saying that TMP takes place within that 2-3 year time period.

 

[Greg Cox]

Anyway, TAS added Arex and M'Ress to the crew, so it's possible to assume other aliens served on the crew for at least part of the 5YM. I believe A Choice of Catastrophes featured several alien crewmembers.

No Time Like The Past has an Andorian nurse (Ugfy?)

Yeah, I cheat sometimes, but it always feels a little wrong.

But even if we didn't see many alien crew members in the later movies, TMP definitely opened a window there. You've got a lot more elbow room to add (unseen) alien crew members . . ..

 

[Christopher]

So does New Earth mention a second 5 year mission?

No. As I recall, it's set during a special mission that Kirk and the crew have reassembled for, after Kirk returned to the admiralty sometime after TMP. As I said, the books themselves (or at least their historian's notes) imply that this is not very long after TMP, precluding a second 5YM. But because some things about the books make more sense if they happen years later, the Pocket Timeline reinterprets them to begin in 2279, about a year after a post-TMP 5-year mission would have ended.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Anyway, TAS added Arex and M'Ress to the crew, so it's possible to assume other aliens served on the crew for at least part of the 5YM. I believe A Choice of Catastrophes featured several alien crewmembers.

An Arkenite, a Saurian, and (I think) a Deltan, to be precise.

The Shocks of Adversity mentions Spock, M'Ress, Arex and an unnamed Efrosian as the ship's current non-Human complement (note that this is, as far as I can tell, the chronologically earliest mention of an Efrosian).

Spock and later M'Ress and Arex are the only permanent non-Humans, it seems, though a minute number of others pass through on short-term assignments, apparently...

 

[tomswift2002]

.

The Shocks of Adversity mentions Spock, M'Ress, Arex and an unnamed Efrosian as the ship's current non-Human complement (note that this is, as far as I can tell, the chronologically earliest mention of an Efrosian).

Uhura's Song, as I recall, has a number of feline crewmembers aboard, and I just looked it up on Memory Beta, and it apparently takes place in 2268, the same year as The Shocks Of Adversity.

 

[Stevil2001]

There's also a whole litter of Caitians on board, according to Foster's Logs. And that's not getting into the Enterprise's exotic alien compliment in the Duaneverse.

I agree with Greg that aliens in the five-year mission era feels like cheating a little bit, but it's also nice to show a little more diversity than the series did. (Though the original Star Trek featured a much more diverse human crew than the sequel series, as I was surprised to discover when I was plucking crewmembers from obscurity to feature in A Choice of Catastrophes.)

Also, good memory, Nasat; I just had to search the manuscript of the book to see where this alleged Saurian was. (He was in a scene I wrote!)

 

[Enterprise1701]

On the other hand. the 29th century timeship Relativity seems to be almost completely human. Though if the time pod pilot in "Future Tense" had multispecies ancestry and temporal agent Daniels was "more or less" human, then maybe the 29th century human Starfleet officers seen were in fact, multispecies.

 

[tomswift2002]

I was just thinking of something else as well, that a lot of people seem to overlook. According to TMP, there was about a year prior to when the Enterprise was in drydock where Kirk was not even in command of the Enterprise. Again, in TMP, it is stated (by Decker during the scene in Kirk's quarters/office) that Kirk had not logged a single star hour in "two-and-a-half-years", and yet Scotty had mentioned during the shuttle drive to the Enterprise that the ship had been in drydock getting overhauled for "18 months" (or a year-and-a-half).

As I look back at all the books that have been written about the post-Counter Clock Incident and the pre-TMP era (i.e. The Lost Years, Prime Directive), a lot of authors seem to have assumed that Kirk's promotion to the Admiralty and the start of the Enterprise's drydock refit seemed to have occurred at the same time, when the actual dialog in TMP seems to indicate that the pre-refit Enterprise was still out in space for at least a year prior to it's 18-month refit, without Kirk in command.

 

[Pauln6]

The only novels I've bought are the movie era ones and I have a fondness for TMP like Christopher because the crew seemed more diverse and the recurring characters (except possibly Chapel) have a reasonable niche to get into.

I did a Babylon5/Star Trek photo-novel type series uploaded to Youtube set in the TMP era because TOS and the later movies were just too human-centric. The principle downside being that it is very hard to do action scenes using stills from an actionless movie (so if anybody has any action screenshots of characters in TMP uniforms from Star Trek online, let me know!).

I stopped buying novels years ago but with a list of all the TMP era ones, I'd probably go out and get them to fill in the gaps of my collection.

 

[F. King Daniel]

No Time Like The Past has an Andorian nurse (Ugfy?)

Yeah, I cheat sometimes, but it always feels a little wrong.

But even if we didn't see many alien crew members in the later movies, TMP definitely opened a window there. You've got a lot more elbow room to add (unseen) alien crew members . . ..

Since the cool aliens only come out when the budget allows, I've always liked to think the aliens from TMP and ST'09 were always there, but just off-camera during TOS.

 

[FredH]

Both, apparently.There's just not as much audience interest in the post-TMP timeframe, and the sales people don't consider it as marketable as the TV era or the later movie era.

Unfortunate. With a visual aesthetic I find more believable and (hypothetically) a continuation of the relatively more cerebral approach of the first film--plus the simple convenience of all that unfilled time--the TMP is my favorite era of Trek, and I've always wished there had been significantly more of it.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

I was just thinking of something else as well, that a lot of people seem to overlook. According to TMP, there was about a year prior to when the Enterprise was in drydock where Kirk was not even in command of the Enterprise. Again, in TMP, it is stated (by Decker during the scene in Kirk's quarters/office) that Kirk had not logged a single star hour in "two-and-a-half-years", and yet Scotty had mentioned during the shuttle drive to the Enterprise that the ship had been in drydock getting overhauled for "18 months" (or a year-and-a-half).

As I look back at all the books that have been written about the post-Counter Clock Incident and the pre-TMP era (i.e. The Lost Years, Prime Directive), a lot of authors seem to have assumed that Kirk's promotion to the Admiralty and the start of the Enterprise's drydock refit seemed to have occurred at the same time, when the actual dialog in TMP seems to indicate that the pre-refit Enterprise was still out in space for at least a year prior to it's 18-month refit, without Kirk in command.

Wow, you may be on to something here. A year of the Enterprise zooming around WITHOUT Kirk as captain opens the door to so many possibilities and offers so many questions. Nice deductive work, tomswift!

 

[Christopher]

In Forgotten History I provided another explanation for why the ship's refit was postponed for a year. But I suppose it is conceivable that the ship could've been active during that time.

 

[Enterprise1701]

If only Pocket Books could publish a new timeline book and re-issue 2270s-era novels with edits to all the dating details within so that for the 50th anniversary of Star Trek in 2016, they could cleanly start a new novel series/miniseries for a second five-year mission in 2274/2275.

 

[JD]

Have any of you guys who are fans of the TMP era read the Untold Voyages comic book series. It was a five part miniseries that Marvel put out in the '90s, the same era that gave us Starfleet Academy and Early Voyages. I have it on the Comics DVD, but I haven't check it out yet.

 

[ryan123450]

I have. They aren't amazing or anything, but definitely worth reading.