Star Trek: Death's Angel by Kathleen Sky (1981)

[Damian]

Oh, for pity's sake. I posted a clip of the actual scene above. Watch it. McCoy does not gesture toward his head at any point in it.

I do seem to recall in one part of that scene he sort of moves his head, I believe when he's asking for permission to come aboard or something after he's already complained to Kirk. But I honestly never read anything into that. To me it seemed he was moving his head in the direction of the intercom or something along that line.

But I interpreted the scene literally. He even said, in simpler language they drafted him. I wouldn't read anything more into it than that. Why would Starfleet resort to something else?

In Spock's Case I believe it's clear what's calling him is the consciousness from space, V'Ger. Not Starfleet. And Spock wasn't 'drafted' like McCoy. And in that early scene on Vulcan that is before Sonak is killed, so Starfleet wasn't even aware yet they would need a Vulcan Science Officer (as Kirk preferred)

 

[Damian]

Anyway, I'm about 90% done with "Death's Angel" and it definitely feels more like a crime solving novel. The crews unusual behavior has been largely explained as a result of the earlier landing party at the beginning of the book, so I'll give Sky credit for at least presenting an explanation for the various crew member's 'altered' states and it's a bit more understandable now.

The mystique of Death's Angel is now gone though. Early on there was a creepy aspect about it, even something a bit supernatural. But now Elizabeth is on the hunt for an actual perpetrator who she believes was a member of that early landing party reacting to something they were exposed to.

Her current husband has angered her by lifting the quarantine. He says so he and the rest of the SSD at the station can assist her--but she believes, probably with merit, that it's a gambit to get her to him quicker. McCoy tries to explain to her that love makes us do strange things. However, they are both SSD agents, top of the line spies/arbiters of justice basically. And her husband, like her, is a top agent. Hardly the type you think would succumb to such impulses. And at times he's petulant, very uncharacteristic for a top spy.

The crew and ambassadors, now that they understand better what they are facing, generally oppose the lifting of the quarantine now. But it will take about a day or so to get to the base so Elizabeth still has some time to solve the case. And that's basically where I'm at now.

 

[Damian]

I finished the book a few days ago. I won't belabor my prior points again. Overall I found the book below average. I was a bit surprised at who "Death's Angel" ended up being, though a few clues were sprinkled in the book in retrospect.

Basically it's a murder mystery. At first Sky indicates some supernatural force, but as happens in Star Trek there is a scientific explanation, basically telepathic spores they encountered early in the book on a landing party. She also provides that as a clue to some of the unusual behavior of the crew, at least those in the landing party, esp. Kirk.

I've heard some say this is a Mary Sue style book and I can't really disagree. Though unlike "Vulcan!" Sky at least provides an excuse for the crew's aberrant behavior, they are still made to look unfavorable compared to Elizabeth. This is basically a show starring Elizabeth with the main characters as 'also starring' characters. She solves the problem despite the rest of the crew, with only marginal help from Kirk and McCoy, and forced help by Spock.

Sarek appears in the novel but is wasted. He hardly appears and when he does he is brooding. And he wasn't on the landing party so what's his excuse? Most of the ambassadors are a menagerie of anthropomorphized Earth creatures and have traits similar to their Earth counterparts.

And she touches on détente with the Romulans, but this ends up being a poorly conceived MacGuffin, and it is not resolved by the end of the book.

It's not as bad as the Phoenix novels. If you like murder mysteries it's not terrible. It at least held my interest enough to read it through in a few weeks (unlike say "Fate of the Phoenix" which took me months to slog through). And Elizabeth does have potential. If it portrayed the characters more in line with their TV show version she could have been a good 'also starring' character. She's just misused and becomes the star of the story at the expense of the normal characters. I noted before Diane Carey showed a right way to handle such an 'also starring character' in her Dreadnought/Battlestations! novels (and in fact Lt. Piper is basically the star of those books--but the important distinction being that it was NOT at the expense of the usual main characters).

Two main interesting points I found as I noted before are that the SSD does remind me a bit of Section 31, though in this case they are out in the open and not an extralegal organization.

And the 2nd that Sarek was contemplating retirement but wanted one more diplomatic triumph, which reminded me a bit of TNG episode "Sarek".

And only interesting in the sense of coincidences. That sometimes you can have two differing writers come up with a similar idea.

 

[Steve Roby]

I wasn’t terribly impressed with Death’s Angel when it first came out, and the aliens were a big part of why. The rest has been hashed out pretty well here. If anyone remembers the 80s magazine Enterprise Incidents, which started basically a Trek fanzine and became a Starlog wannabe with distribution to comic shops, they ran a review that was a pages-long evisceration of the book. I remember being really entertained by just how much the reviewer hated it.

As for the Gerrold sidetrack a few posts back, for my long dead Trek books website, I did a sort of feature article on the history of Yesterday’s Children, Galactic Whirlpool, and how they led up to his novelization of his unfilmed Blood and Fire, at https://web.archive.org/web/20100826124008/http://Www.well.com/~sjroby/lcars/starwolf/index.html.

 

[Daddy Todd]

I still miss your website. It was a wonderful reference!

 

[Steve Roby]

Thanks, but a bunch of things happened around the same time that made it a pain to keep it going. Computer problems, the sudden increase in unauthorized Trek POD and ebook publications, wikis and other websites swiping content, etc. It was a lot of fun for a few years, though.

 

[Daddy Todd]

Oh, no criticism intended! Just wanted to tell you how much I liked it!

I used to have a website chronicling A. Bertram Chandler’s “John Grimes” stories. But then my ISP (which was a server in a friend’s basement) went belly up, and I lost my URL. And I wasn’t interested in paying $500 to ransom it back. So, it’s permanently gone, apart from the back-up on a hard drive. I couldn’t update it if I wanted to, because my ancient copy of Dreamweaver doesn’t run on Win10. Alas!

 

[Steve Roby]

Not to worry, I didn’t read it as criticism. Was your site pre-Internet Archive? The Wayback Machine is one of my favourite things.

 

[Daddy Todd]

Not to worry, I didn’t read it as criticism. Was your site pre-Internet Archive? The Wayback Machine is one of my favourite things.

You know, it never occurred to me to check until you suggested it. I'll look into that.