Just finished this one today. (Sorry I'm late to the party... my current eye issues have me reading much less than I'd prefer.)
I must say, I really liked this one. I don't know why, but I really enjoy the Pike era. Maybe it's because it's still TOS, but somewhat different than what we usually see? Perhaps its relative rarity makes it more unique and special? I don't know, but I do know I really like visiting this era whenever we get the chance.
I found the story itself well done, although to be honest, I couldn't help thinking of it as a 23rd-century version of "Suddenly Human" (as others have already mentioned in this thread). This version probably had a stronger emotional resonance, though, due to the presence of Elzura's/Merata's mother and siblings actually on the ship.
It was nice to see Mohindas and Carlotti from
Early Voyages make appearances! (And this might be grasping at straws, but was Nurse Olsen intended to be Primeverse's version of Chief Engineer Olsen in NuTrek? Or is that reading too much into the name?)
The only real "complaint" I have is that I seemed to notice a lot more typos than usual with this one. I obviously don't remember them all, but I do recall that Number One was referred to as just "Number" at one point!
All in all, an enjoyable story set in a timeframe that we don't get to see too much of.
As for the ears, I was imagining something like Doctor Sevrin in "Way to Eden," but less prominent.
When it was mentioned that Cypria was a colony, and they had a cordial relationship with the homeworld, I thought the homeworld's identity would come into play at some point, but it didn't. But based on the Cyprians' description, I made the assumption that you were hinting that the homeworld was Tiburon. But based on the above quote, I guess that's not the case. Did you have a pre-existing species in mind, or are they just an entirely new creation?
I remember one article that claimed that tricorders didn't exist in Pike's time (since we didn't see them in "The Cage"), but that didn't seem practical to me. Plus, we'd seen them on ENTERPRISE, so . . .
It's hardly conclusive, but the
Enterprise geologist in "The Cage" carries a piece of equipment for both landing party assignments that could be a Pike-era tricorder, or at least some kind of scanner. (Interestingly, he seems to watch it intently *during the beaming process*, so I don't know what that means....)
With regard to the clustering of most stories around "The Cage", it might be nice to see Pike's last mission, maybe with tech terms from WNMHGB?
Something in my mind was thinking we've already seen that in comic form, but I did some searching, and it looks like I was probably thinking of "All Those Years Ago...", which actually details Kirk's first mission, but which is to actually transport Pike to his next assignment, so he does figure in the story.
That's interesting; I thought you had another intention with that reference.
I took the Starship-class thing as faulty intel on the Klingon's part. The general boasted about the Empire's accurate intelligence about Starfleet and, through his "identification" of the Starship-class, the reader can infer that his information is less than perfect. At least, that
was my take on the scene before reading this post.
I knew about the dedication plaque, so I just assumed the Klingons were using a technically correct term, but one that wasn't really used in Starfleet regularly. The
Intrepid had already been identified as Constitution class at the beginning of the book, IIRC, so Starfleet itself was already using that classification. I assume "Starship class" is more akin to a type class, much as Star Trek III referred to a "scout class vessel", that Kirk thought might be
Grissom.
The "Star Fleet" rendering was being used into the '70s in things like the Star Fleet Technical Manual and Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual, as well as being the spelling used in The Star Trek Concordance. I think Blish used "Starfleet" (assuming the later editions I have didn't change it), and Foster did as well. I don't think the one-word spelling was standardized onscreen until TMP, though.
I don't know about "standardized", but it did appear as one word in TOS itself: once on
the cover of the Talos IV report, and three times
within the report itself. I don't know how visible those would have been on 1960s-era televisions, but it was there.
Although it's also appeared onscreen as two words
as late as Nemesis!
There have been multiple different backstories for Number One over the years, so I realized quickly that there was no way to incorporate them all. I pretty much cherry-picked what worked for the new books and came up with a composite version of Number One, while leaving Morgan Primus to Peter David to do with as he will, since NEW FRONTIER is his baby after all.
I do kind of wish that TOS had given us a little more background on Number One, or at least an actual name! Now we have Lefler, Robbins, "Number One" as her actual name(!), and in this book, she has an actual name, but it's apparently one that non-Illyrians have trouble with, so we don't get to hear it. I like having her appear in stories, but the contortions that the authors have to go through to avoid mentioning a name sometimes get frustrating. Pocket should just pick a name as her "Litverse" name, and just run with it. (But please, not Lefler!
) (I wonder, if Star Trek had gone to series based on "The Cage", would we have eventually got a name for Number One, or would they have just played that out as a running gag for the whole show?)
Oh, and
Greg, I know this is probably not your department, but... I really like the font the title is written in on the cover. Do you happen to know what it is? I'll try finding it with What the Font, but I figured if you might happen to know, it wouldn't hurt to ask!
)
), it looks like this might be one of the weights in the Briem Akademi family. The title appears to be Std Semibold, with Greg's name in Std Regular, with perhaps a slight compression along the horizontal axis in both cases. (Or perhaps another font based on Briem Akademi, at any rate.)
