I need help identifying the creature on the cover of "The Vulcan Academy Murders" perched on a large rock. Throughout the book the only animals mentioned that correlate with the story are the sehlats and the le-matya, both of which have previously been illustrated as mammals while the animal in question is somewhat reptilian. From the extensive research I've done it has to be a shatarr or a nightclaw if it's native to Vulcan. It may be a non-canon creature and whoever had drawn the cover was given the artistic license to add his own imaginary beasts. Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated as I plan to get it tattooed but I would like some background data on it before I go through with it.
I always figured it was a le-matya. Looks like the creatures here: http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Le-matya roughly enough, just with added fin-thing.
Yup, I always figured it was a le-matya as interpreted by a cover artist who hadn't seen "Yesteryear." While generally felinoid, the le-matya has some reptilian attributes including a leathery green hide and poison claws.
Yep, I'm fairly sure it's a Boris Vallejo cover, and he played fast and loose with his interpretations. My Toon Trek site assumed it was a le-matya, too.
It's worth keeping in mind that in the '80s, a lot of people had simply never seen the animated series, since it wasn't in syndication much. Even before the infamous '89 memo declared TAS apocryphal (at the time), there were novelists who ignored or were simply unaware of it; for instance, Yesterday's Son disregarded both the visit to the Guardian planet in "Yesteryear" and Robert Wesley's retirement from Starfleet in "One of Our Planets is Missing."
If it is a le-matya it must be a very loose interpretation. I definitely find it more aesthetically pleasing than the TAS le-matya.
Considering that the show only had 22 episodes, that's not really a surprise, as not too many stations would license a show that they could only air for a little over 4 weeks (5 days a week, 1 episode per day) before repeating the series. I never saw TAS till the DVD's came out, even though I had picked up the novelizations.
Do you have a sketch already what it will look like? Do you take only the creature itself or will it have the same posture?
It will have the same posture and be perched on stone silhouetted by the moon that doesn't exist. It might be the neighboring planet Andoria.
^Andoria was said to be in a neighboring star system. It certainly wouldn't be visible from the surface of Vulcan, any more than we can see Alpha Centauri Bb from the surface of Earth. Heck, we can't even see Venus or Mars as more than a point of light. It's generally assumed in fandom that the giant "moon" seen in the sky in "Yesteryear" and the theatrical edition of ST:TMP is actually a companion planet, called variously T'Kuht, T'Khut, and T'Rukh depending on the text. That would preserve the letter of Spock's line in the "The Man Trap" that Vulcan has no moon, since a companion planet is astrophysically distinct from a moon (in that the common center of mass that the the two planets orbit is in space between them rather than inside one of them).