Poll TOS #12 Mutiny On The Enterprise by Robert E. Vardeman Review Thread (42nd Anniversary Review)

[tomswift2002]

Published: October 1983 (Physical, US/Canada) / March 1991 (Titan UK) / September 22, 2000 (Digital)
Publisher: Timescape Books/Paperjacks (Titan Books in the UK)
Titan Books Number: 45
Story Arc: Klingon Gambit Arc (sequel to S&S TOS novel pilot, TOS #3 The Klingon Gambit published October 1981 but written by Vardeman in the late 1970's and was the first original Trek fiction novel purchased by Simon & Schuster)

Plot: (from cover) On A Mission of Peace, A Bewitching Woman Sets The Enterprise At War---With Itself!

The Ship is crippled in orbit around a dangerous, living, breathing planet, and a desperate peace mission to the Orion Arm is stalled. Kirk has never needed his crew more. But a lithe, alien woman is casting a spell of pacifism---and now mutiny---over the crew.

Suddenly Captain Kirk's journey for peace has turned into a terrifying war---to retake command of his ship!

HAVE YOU READ THESE OTHER STAR TREK NOVELS? The Prometheus Design. The Abode of Life. Triangle. The Covenant of the Crown. The Entropy Effect. The Klingon Gambit. Web of the Romulans. Black Fire. Yesterday's Son.

Review: It's been 13 years since I read The Klingon Gambit and I still remember the chapter of the book, imagining the Klingon farmers being drawn in my mind like the Klingons from TAS where they had that flat 1-dimensional look of the animation (or maybe cardboard cutouts on some play mat), riding tractors plowing fields over Alnath. So here is the sequel to that book, Mutiny On the Enterprise----which I already know @Therin of Andor first read when it first came out 42 years ago this month and he got it from Space Age Books in Melbourne.

First things first, I assume the woman on the cover of the book is the "Bewitching Woman" that this story is centered around.

Second, Kirk's uniform, at first glance looks like the TMP uniform, but his sleeve is orange, and I do not recall seeing him wear in TMP (maybe an ensign or that). And is that woman on fire? It seems that her orange top is reflecting it's orange coloring on both Kirk and Spock. However, it's an odd cover, because all three are apparently standing on the TOS bridge. As far as I'm aware, both The Klingon Gambit & Mutiny On The Enterprise are set possible around By Any Other Name or somewhere in Season 3. I don't think the books were meant to be part of the 1980's second five-year-mission stories.

Also, an interesting thing is that, aside from the cover, Enterprise is underlined all the way through the book in the title on the top of every page, as well as the splash page and the title page and even the "Look for Star Trek fiction" page. Not too sure why it's done like that. I guess it was cheaper to set up the presses to just underline rather than italicize Enterprise.

 

[Christopher]

Story Arc: Klingon Gambit Arc (sequel to S&S TOS novel pilot, TOS #3 The Klingon Gambit published October 1981 but written by Vardeman in the late 1970's and was the first original Trek fiction novel purchased by Simon & Schuster)

Two standalone books by the same author do not constitute a "story arc." There's a bit of character continuity between them, as I recall, but totally unconnected plots.

Really, the main continuity I recall is that McCoy was equally out of character in both, his traditionalism exaggerated into full-blown technophobia as his dominant character trait. In The Klingon Gambit, I assumed it was the result of the alien influence affecting the crew's minds, but McCoy was written the same way here.

Second, Kirk's uniform, at first glance looks like the TMP uniform, but his sleeve is orange, and I do not recall seeing him wear in TMP (maybe an ensign or that). And is that woman on fire? It seems that her orange top is reflecting it's orange coloring on both Kirk and Spock. However, it's an odd cover, because all three are apparently standing on the TOS bridge. As far as I'm aware, both The Klingon Gambit & Mutiny On The Enterprise are set possible around By Any Other Name or somewhere in Season 3. I don't think the books were meant to be part of the 1980's second five-year-mission stories.

Hardly any books did posit a "second 5-year mission," and only vaguely at best; it was more like they were set during the TOS era but asserted that more than a few years had passed since season 3. The "second mission" is more of a fan invention to rationalize that.

Mutiny was just set in the TOS era, but the cover artists back then often had limited photo references (in fact, several Boris Vallejo covers are evidently based on the same photos of Kirk and Spock) and didn't necessarily know the difference between the TV and movie eras, so we got a bunch of mix-and-match covers.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I don't think there is a single detail of @Christopher's post with which I would have the slightest disagreement.

I think I've read it maybe 2-3 times, but I don't remember it well enough to venture an opinion (although from what little I remember, I'd put it no higher than "average." And no, it's not green; The IDIC Epidemic, Black Fire, Ishmael, and Black Fire are green, but this opus is red.)

And as to the typography, I don't remember any underscores, but no, at best, underscores are no less trouble than italics/obliques (and there are obliques that don't have true italic letterforms, and even a few true italics that are upright, rather than oblique), and if you're doing letterpress, from any form of hot metal, underscores are a royal pain in the ass, because you have to cut and fit pieces of rule, and you might even have to cut them into type or slug bodies. (I speak from experience: for over a decade, I've been spending my Saturdays docenting at the International Printing Museum, in Carson, CA.) More likely, if it has underscores instead of italics, the book was simply typeset by a yutz.