Strangers from the Sky

[nightwind1]

What's the Spock's World reference? I don't remember that.

In the briefing room scene in the chapter titled "Enterprise: One," Spock mentions the official story that the first human-Vulcan contact occurred in 2065, and he, Kirk, and McCoy exchange furtive looks due to their mutual knowledge that the true history was different. It's on p. 46 in the paperback edition.

And it's based on an entry in STAR TREK Spaceflight Chronology. The Bellero reference was culled from Sally Kellerman's credits in Allan Asherman's Star Trek Compendium.

Both books were absolutely essential resources in that pre-IMDb/pre-Memory Alpha/Beta era.

There would be time travel involved, then- since "Strangers from the Sky" was published in 1987 and "Star Trek Compendium" was published in 1993.

 

[Christopher]

^You must be thinking of one of the later revised editions. The original Compendium, which I have right here with me in my bookcase, came out in 1981. I also have a "20th Anniversary Edition" from 1986, revised and updated with info about TWOK and TSFS and a cursory TAS section, but missing a lot of the good stuff from the '81 edition (which is why I kept that one -- though the copy of it I now have is a replacement for the original one, which fell apart from overuse).

Ahh... according to the Complete Starfleet Library site, the '93 edition was actually the fourth and final one; it and the previous '89 edition were basically identical to the '86 edition but with added pages for the intervening movies.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The original Compendium, which I have right here with me in my bookcase, came out in 1981.

Correct. The first one includes TMP. There was then a quickie UK/international edition that updated that first version by adding a few chapters from Asherman's "The Making of Star Trek II" at the back.

Each new US edition added information on the then-most-recent ST movie. I bought each US edition, but didn't bother getting the UK one, since I already had the ST II info in the US edition of "The Making of Star Trek II".

 

[nightwind1]

^You must be thinking of one of the later revised editions. The original Compendium, which I have right here with me in my bookcase, came out in 1981. I also have a "20th Anniversary Edition" from 1986, revised and updated with info about TWOK and TSFS and a cursory TAS section, but missing a lot of the good stuff from the '81 edition (which is why I kept that one -- though the copy of it I now have is a replacement for the original one, which fell apart from overuse).

Ahh... according to the Complete Starfleet Library site, the '93 edition was actually the fourth and final one; it and the previous '89 edition were basically identical to the '86 edition but with added pages for the intervening movies.

Sorry, my mistake. I looked for the Compendium online because I thought it was later, and the first one that popped up on Google was '93.

 

[garamet]

Christopher and Therin have it right. I've got the original with the blue cover (falling apart because I've used it so often) and the updated one with the red cover.

 

[Christopher]

I have three Trek reference books that have fallen apart and been replaced with more intact copies of the same editions: The Making of Star Trek (the first Trek reference book I ever bought), the Ballantine Concordance with the spinny-wheel cover, and the original Compendium. Actually I think my replacement TMoST is a later edition, since it has a white cover instead of a silver one, but only the cover color is different.

 

[tomswift2002]

Well I'm surprised that Takei was asked too do the audio book version, since Sulu's hardly been in the novel. Sulu basically made a quick cameo and that's it. It would've been better had the audio book featured Shatner with Nimoy or even Kellerman or the actors that playd Kelso and Mitchell.

But I'm finding that the story of Book 2 is reminiscent of "The City On THe Edge Of Forever", with Kirk and party being on a planet in the middle of a time vortex, and then the Enterprise disappears because of something that occurred in the past.

 

[Christopher]

^Takei did most of the early audiobooks, I think. So it wasn't about his suitability for any single one. And it probably had a lot to do with his willingness, availability, and affordability. It would've probably been a lot harder to afford Shatner.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Well I'm surprised that Takei was asked too do the audio book version, since Sulu's hardly been in the novel. Sulu basically made a quick cameo and that's it. It would've been better had the audio book featured Shatner with Nimoy or even Kellerman or the actors that playd Kelso and Mitchell.

The idea of the early ST audios was to produce them as financially viable as possible. Nimoy's participation was only secured by promising him that his part would be minimal, presented as "Science Officer Logs", scattered through the main narrative. Shatner was way too expensive and too busy. The "T.J. Hooker" years.

The first five audios were:

"Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" by Vonda N. McIntyre, read by Leonard Nimoy and George Takei, 1986, 90 min.

"Strangers from the Sky" by Margaret Wander Bonanno, read by Leonard Nimoy and George Takei, 1987, 90 min.

"Enterprise: The First Adventure" by Vonda N. McIntyre, read by Leonard Nimoy and George Takei, 1988, 90 min.

"Web of the Romulans" by M.S. Murdock, read by Leonard Nimoy and George Takei, 1988, 90 min.

"The Entropy Effect" by Vonda N. McIntyre, read by Leonard Nimoy and George Takei, 1988, 90 min.

"The Entropy Effect" was the most unusual, in that the audio uses the Kirk/Spock cover art from the novel "Triangle". Sulu's subplot (and his new mustache) had been abridged right out of the audio, so it was unwise to use the original artwork. So Takei narrates, but his character isn't even mentioned.

George Takei had been the actor approached to do that first one, and possibly his contract gave him first refusal on new ones. Nimoy got top billing, but participated less. I recall fans asking (in "Starlog"?) why James Doohan, more renowned for voiceover work than Takei (eg, Doohan's many accents and characters in Filmation's TAS) and, sure enough, Doohan and Nimoy did the next three:

"Yesterday's Son" by A.C. Crispin, read by Leonard Nimoy and James Doohan, 1988, 90 min.

"Final Frontier" by Diane Carey, read by Leonard Nimoy and James Doohan, 1989, 90 min.

"Time for Yesterday" by A.C. Crispin, read by Leonard Nimoy and James Doohan, 1989, 90 min.

Takei and Doohan then alternated on the next few. Then Doohan went solo (with "Prime Directive") when Nimoy stopped doing them and the audios doubled their length to 180 mins. Participation from William Shatner finally occurred with a "25th Anniversary Audio Collection" (1991) of best-selling rereleases; it was a brief new introduction.

The first audio to focus on a guest ST artist was "Faces of Fire" by Michael Jan Friedman, read by Bibi Besch in 1992. Walter Koenig was asked to do a Chekov-heavy novel ("Windows on a Lost World") in 1993. And so on...

 

[Captaindemotion]

^Hooker ran from 1982 - 86, so I suspect it was price (and possibly The Shat's reluctance to do things like audiobooks) that led to him not doing them, rather than his unavailability.

 

[Therin of Andor]

^Hooker ran from 1982 - 86, so I suspect it was price (and possibly The Shat's reluctance to do things like audiobooks) that led to him not doing them, rather than his unavailability.

As I said, "Shatner was way too expensive and too busy." Since the first audio was for the ST IV novelization, and Shatner's notoriety/popularity was riding high from writing, directing and acting in "Hooker", plus acting in ST IV, and then lobbying to direct ST V, I'd say that his agent would have put untried ST audios waaaay down the bottom of desired projects. Until a decade later, when Shatner had ST novels of his own he wanted to do as audios.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ I wasn't contradicting you, just narrowing down the possible reasons for him not doing the books.

 

[Therin of Andor]

^ I wasn't contradicting you, just narrowing down the possible reasons for him not doing the books.

Shatner is infamous for being "too busy", hence his absence from the roll-out of the NASA space shuttle Enterprise, the Hollywood Walk-of-Fame star ceremonies of Takei, Kelley, Nichols, Doohan and Koenig, and Takei's wedding.

 

[Stevil2001]

What's the Spock's World reference? I don't remember that.

In the briefing room scene in the chapter titled "Enterprise: One," Spock mentions the official story that the first human-Vulcan contact occurred in 2065, and he, Kirk, and McCoy exchange furtive looks due to their mutual knowledge that the true history was different. It's on p. 46 in the paperback edition.

Oh, right. Thanks. For some reason, it had never occurred to me that that reference couldn't possibly make sense.

 

[JD]

^ I wasn't contradicting you, just narrowing down the possible reasons for him not doing the books.

Shatner is infamous for being "too busy", hence his absence from the roll-out of the NASA space shuttle Enterprise, the Hollywood Walk-of-Fame star ceremonies of Takei, Kelley, Nichols, Doohan and Koenig, and Takei's wedding.

I was honestly kind of shocked when I saw that he actually did do the Futurama Trek episode.

 

[Brikar99]

^ I wasn't contradicting you, just narrowing down the possible reasons for him not doing the books.

Shatner is infamous for being "too busy", hence his absence from the roll-out of the NASA space shuttle Enterprise, the Hollywood Walk-of-Fame star ceremonies of Takei, Kelley, Nichols, Doohan and Koenig, and Takei's wedding.

I was honestly kind of shocked when I saw that he actually did do the Futurama Trek episode.

He almost didn't, but the writers threw in a dump truck full of Slurm and who can say no to a goldmine like that?

 

[BillJ]

I never made it thru the 2nd half of this book. I totally lost interest when they went back in time.

I made it through... but it was tough.

 

[Timo]

In the briefing room scene in the chapter titled "Enterprise: One," Spock mentions the official story that the first human-Vulcan contact occurred in 2065, and he, Kirk, and McCoy exchange furtive looks due to their mutual knowledge that the true history was different. It's on p. 46 in the paperback edition.

Of course, we can now read the paragraph in the reverse of the original intention: Spock and Kirk share conspiratorial looks because their "differing" memories of the encounter establish the Amity/Sparon meeting that Spock is describing, now consigned to an alternate timeline, whereas the rest of the universe at that time "knows" the meeting in fact was between Cochrane and Skon in 2063.

That interpretation also removes the contradiction with the Strangers from the Sky fact that our heroes don't remember that book's version of the first encounter yet. There are actually three possible realities there, and Kirk, Spock and McCoy are keepers of the secret of two of them... Only, the Amity version of the story, or rather the story of why the Amity version no longer is part of the timeline, has never been told.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[tomswift2002]

I'm just finishing up the second-half now, and I think the firs half was the tough part.

 

[Timo]

I readily gobbled up anything I could get on the "Where No Man" version of Star Trek, so the start was pretty attractive to me. Dehner, Mitchell, Kelso etc. don't feel "off" here or anything.

In contrast, while the TOS heroes are enjoyable company as usual, the 21st century characters just don't strike me as particularly interesting. I guess the second half was a bit of a letdown for me.

Timo Saloniemi