Do you know where I can find this audio? I know that the promotion scene was filmed. I just didn't know that Excelsior was named.
I've reread TMP, TWOK, and TSFS many times over the years. The funny thing about TWOK and TSFS is that the very best parts are not from the film. Then she gets to what was on screen and it kind of slows the book down!
Saavik is amazing in both novels.
She has a couple of quirks to her writing. She refuses to capitalize "Earth", everyone is a polytheist (reading it now, it sounds like nuBSG), and she will not write the astronomically inaccurate Ceti Alpha. She insists on Alpha Ceti.
TVH had almost none of the pop and sizzle of the other two novels. I read it once in 1986. There is some good stuff about the trial. She also does a common novelization trick of trying to make a dumb scene make sense. Scotty explains to McCoy that he was just pulling Bones' leg: Of course he knows who invented transparent aluminum: It was this guy. So it's all fine. There is a subplot of a conspiracy theorist hounding our Heroes, which now that I think of it may have been left over from Eddie Murphy's character.
There is some very good stuff on Vulcan. Another happy coincidence: In TSFS VM explained Amanda's absense by saying that she was an adept at whatever order it was that ran Mt. Seleya so she could not be involved with the Fal Tor Pan. Then we get to TVH and there she is!
I started to read TFF. There is a lot of good character stuff. Sadly I never finished it, though I did finish the novelization of Batman that summer. So sad. I did read The Lost Years, also by J.M. Dillard, which seemed to follow some of her threads on Vulcan society.
Her TUC was alright. As mentioned, it has a subplot that the cloaked Bird of Prey had been causing mayhem on Federation worlds. It nearly kills Carol Marcus, who Kirk has reunited with as he neared retirement.
She does re-write the mind meld scene to make it far more consensual. "Spock would never cross that line!" I think he would. If it were logical.
Yes. 1) I too thought it was ADF.
2) I feel very foolish that I ever thought so, because as you said, it's mainline Roddenberry, for all the reasons you mentioned. I first read it when I was eleven. I read it now and I realize that only GR could have come up with the Deltans. The man had issues.
It gives Roddenberry the chance to make a pretty good reconciliation between his advanced future society and why his characters on TV acted like they walked out of Gunsmoke. Kirk and the men and women of the frontier are throwbacks and not really in step with what is going on in "civilized" parts of the Federation.
It's adorable how he has an Officer's Lounge where anybody may enter because we don't discriminate on rank. But nobody does out of respect for the officers. So it isn't discrimination if it's voluntary? I have always wondered what would happen to the crewman who said "Hey, there's a helluva view up there. I'm gonna go chill."
I do wish he had written more. I wonder if I would love TMP as much as I do without this novel.
