Spoilers TOS: Lost to Eternity by Greg Cox Review Thread

[daveyjones]

Star Trek is not historical fiction. It's an attempt to approximate the future in a way that's accessible to its contemporary audience. That meant that in the '60s, it was written with the vocabulary used by '60s writers and viewers, but now it's the 2020s and it would be pointless to present a 2020s audience with 23rd-century characters who sound like they're from the 1960s.

Gene Roddenberry himself saw ST as a dramatic recreation of the "actual" events in Kirk's logs, and he was the first to say that any change in a new version (like giving the Klingons ridges in TMP) was just a refinement in how the events were dramatized for the audience, rather than an actual in-universe change. He believed that later versions of ST should be updated for their contemporary audience's taste and understanding, because he was trying to evoke the future, not the past.

Incidentally, I can find no reason to believe that "good call" is a term of recent vintage. The term originally comes from sports, referring to the call made by a referee or umpire, and an Ngram search shows its use in writing peaking in the 1920s with a lesser peak in the late 1950s, though declining by the later '60s. Older documents seem to use the phrase in a different sense, but I found one document from 1970 that used the phrase to convey approval of someone's decision.

i suppose agree to disagree. i really like trek novels that hew to how the dialog was written in each era of show / movie. to me that provides an extra level of immersion when reading fiction based on existing media properties. when reading a TOS novel feels like watching the show.

still, there's no excuse for The Mission District.

 

[D Man]

Wow, that blurb for the 2024 portion of the book is both the coolest and cleverest idea for a Trek story I've heard of in a long time! I've been out of the TrekLit loop for way too long plus I'm usually not a TOS novel guy...but I think I'll grab this one. I've always enjoyed Greg's work in the past. Looking forward to seeing how all the plots converge.

Well I'm a little late to the party, but I finally had time to pick this up and I loved it!

As I was expecting, the 2024 story was probably my favorite. It's just such a fun idea to see a years-later investigation into the absurdity of a comedy movie's plot through a believable "real" person's eyes. The planet-based adventure in 2268 was terrific too. The TOS Klingons were pitch-perfect, the locals were fun ("O Captain!" ,) the monster battles were cool, it was just generally a good time. I would have loved to see it on screen in an imaginary world where TOS was given Marvel movie budgets for an episode. I also liked how it all converged in the end, but I did miss the fun momentum of the every-third-chapter-A-B-C storytelling when we stopped visiting 2292 as often in the second half of the book. To be fair though, plot-wise that made sense since the story kind of had to resolve in the "future" so the narrative stepped back from that timeline for a bit while the other 2 stories took the lead. Great use of Saavik too.

Overall this was an awesome way to get back into TrekLit after way too much time away. I grew up on TNG with a dash of the 80s movies, so I've never been super attached to TOS. That said, I'm inspired to pick up some of @Greg Cox's other TOS books after this one - when the classic characters are written so authentically I find myself getting into TOS prose way more than the show. Plenty to choose from I know. Thanks for a great read!

 

[Zarm]

I enjoyed this fairly well, particularly the extrapolation of what people would have deduced post-Voyage Home.

However, points deducted because I automatically loathe any character who says "Okay, boomer" in a non-ironic manner, soured me on the final pages. ;-)

 

[Zarm]

Medicine in TOS definitely had its limits. See Spock limping in "The Cage," Sarek needing heart surgery in "Journey to Babel," Pike's infirmity in "The Menagerie," Thomas Leighton's facial scars in "Conscience of the King."

I figured Hampararian's work was a game-changer between the TV show and the movie . . . or so I rather strongly hinted in the book.

I greatly appreciate the amount of thought you put into this!

 

[Zarm]

just picked up lost to eternity and i really enjoyed it! always liked greg's books, especially the eugenics wars ones. some small observations...

• there are indeed some mistakes. melinda is called gillian at one point. an alien is mis-pronouned. klingon weapon called a romulan one. also some basic typos (repeated words, wrong declarative, subcommander is both capitalized and not, etc). but you see these all the time in mass market paperbacks. hopefully they will be corrected in future additions.
• melinda and dennis live in san francisco, but they don't talk like it. i lived in the city for several years. for the benefit of a national and even global audience, gillian says "that's in the mission district" of mercy hospital in ST IV. but. no one in the city ever, ever, ever says that. it's just "the mission" like you would say "the castro" or "the haight." our two podcasters would know this, in dialog or as narrator. simply say to the reader, "a neighborhood know as The Mission" and then the characters can say "the mission" later and everyone knows what they mean. IIRC, "the lower haight" is even mentioned in the text. same thing.
• melinda and dennis live in san francisco, but they don't act like it. the two took a rental car to oakland to interview that dude on his backyard deck. then they stopped for a bite at a "roadside diner" on the way back. first, rental car? to oakland? you'd hop on BART to the east bay and then grab an uber or lyft if you were headed further afield, into the hills or something. second, roadside diner? that implies a highway, probably along a rural stretch. there is nothing roadside on the freeways between oakland and the city. just freeways. no diner. i could see if they stopped for a bite somewhere in oakland. but roadside diner is absolutely the wrong connotation. they'd just be downtown.
• different characters repeat the same pet phrases. "i'd be lying if i..." comes to mind. this was a distraction.
• TOS and movie characters both use present-day wordplay. both eras are mostly very immersively written. the action feels right. spock, in particular, feels very right in both. saavik acts and talks like robin curtis. but the use of 21st century contemporary slang doesn't work well. it's like when they drop F-bombs on discovery or picard. if anything, the TOS characters should use 1960s phrasing, and the movie era late 80s / early 90s speak. no one in the 1960s, certainly not on television, would say "good call" when they agree with a course of action. and that's the world the TOS characters live in.

extremely, extremely small bones to pick, i know! but i did really enjoy the book, and look forward to greg's next one coming late this year.

Bravo on this analysis!

 

[Damian]

Just completed this novel and I rated it Outstanding, which isn't common for me. If there was one fault I would find is it did take a little bit to get going. I was having a hard time seeing how all 3 of the separate stories tied together. But that is by necessity so I won't ding my rating for that.

I especially liked the portion of the story that takes place in 2024, and of course the 2292 portion as I love stories that take place on the Enterprise-A between TFF and TUC. Greg Cox has been doing a good job lately of telling at least portions of his stories during that part of the movie era. That's not to say the 2268 part wasn't a good read either, and obviously a critical part of his story as well. But I admit I did favor the other 2 eras.

I have to be honest I hadn't give much though to the impact of Gillian's disappearance in the 20th century TVH. Greg, as always, leaves no stone unturned, even exploring Milly's 'magic kidney' a bit. I recall him doing that in his 3rd Khan book, exploring everything that went down on Ceti Alpha V between "Space Seed" and TWOK, right down to why Khan was wearing a glove in TWOK. I know our resident authors frequently say that we fans sometimes can get a bit too obsessed with continuity (guilty as charged ) but it seems sometimes they enjoy finding ways to make a round ball fit in a square whole, like a puzzle I suppose. But I found myself fascinated by how he addressed even the smallest plot point of TVH without distracting from the main story. Somehow each step, no matter how seemingly minor, still fed the ultimate plot.

He also gave a nod to Enterprise I noted and the Klingon Augment Virus, and to his own Khan trilogy with the Chrysalis project.

I was also happy to see the 'cameo' appearance by Gillian at the end. I don't recall too many novels talking about her life in the 23rd century. The only one I can think of offhand was the novelization to TFF that had a brief mention about what she was up to. And I'm glad Melinda finally got to meet her.

I did note also a bit of that animosity Kirk has for Klingons, as well as the rest of the crew, in line with what we will see about a year later in TUC (and was also noted by Kirk in TFF as well--one of the few things that carried over between the 2 films). And there were hints towards Spock's future work towards unification and even peace with Klingons.

I just bought Greg's latest novel....finally, and am happy to see part of that also takes place after TFF (this one appears to be a bit earlier). Though I'll probably read one of the 2 SNW novels I haven't read yet first.

 

[Greg Cox]

Just completed this novel and I rated it Outstanding, which isn't common for me. If there was one fault I would find is it did take a little bit to get going. I was having a hard time seeing how all 3 of the separate stories tied together. But that is by necessity so I won't ding my rating for that.

I especially liked the portion of the story that takes place in 2024, and of course the 2292 portion as I love stories that take place on the Enterprise-A between TFF and TUC. Greg Cox has been doing a good job lately of telling at least portions of his stories during that part of the movie era. That's not to say the 2268 part wasn't a good read either, and obviously a critical part of his story as well. But I admit I did favor the other 2 eras.

I have to be honest I hadn't give much though to the impact of Gillian's disappearance in the 20th century TVH. Greg, as always, leaves no stone unturned, even exploring Milly's 'magic kidney' a bit. I recall him doing that in his 3rd Khan book, exploring everything that went down on Ceti Alpha V between "Space Seed" and TWOK, right down to why Khan was wearing a glove in TWOK. I know our resident authors frequently say that we fans sometimes can get a bit too obsessed with continuity (guilty as charged ) but it seems sometimes they enjoy finding ways to make a round ball fit in a square whole, like a puzzle I suppose. But I found myself fascinated by how he addressed even the smallest plot point of TVH without distracting from the main story. Somehow each step, no matter how seemingly minor, still fed the ultimate plot.

He also gave a nod to Enterprise I noted and the Klingon Augment Virus, and to his own Khan trilogy with the Chrysalis project.

I was also happy to see the 'cameo' appearance by Gillian at the end. I don't recall too many novels talking about her life in the 23rd century. The only one I can think of offhand was the novelization to TFF that had a brief mention about what she was up to. And I'm glad Melinda finally got to meet her.

I did note also a bit of that animosity Kirk has for Klingons, as well as the rest of the crew, in line with what we will see about a year later in TUC (and was also noted by Kirk in TFF as well--one of the few things that carried over between the 2 films). And there were hints towards Spock's future work towards unification and even peace with Klingons.

I just bought Greg's latest novel....finally, and am happy to see part of that also takes place after TFF (this one appears to be a bit earlier). Though I'll probably read one of the 2 SNW novels I haven't read yet first.

Thanks for all the kind words!

FYI: Gillian can also be found in Debt of Honor, a graphic novel by Chris Claremont & Adam Hughes, which helped to inspire the Gillian scene in my book.

 

[daveyjones]

Thanks for all the kind words!

FYI: Gillian can also be found in Debt of Honor, a graphic novel by Chris Claremont & Adam Hughes, which helped to inspire the Gillian scene in my book.

that's a great comic, and the likeness of gillian in it is first rate. i can see how her portrayal informed your take on the character, which was terrific.

 

[CT_Phipps]

A fun adventure with an interesting premise: someone making a podcast out of the events of Star Trek IV that brings up Russian spies, whalers, UFO sightings, and the disappearance of Gillian Taylor. I was hoping for the plot to be more focused on Gillian (who only shows up at the end) because I am always fond of minor characters getting expanded on. I keep hoping for Sybok to show up in SNW for example.

However, most of the book has the protagonists up against a mad scientist in the TOS era and the movie one. We get some new alien races introduced this time around and a particularly snooty one that I wish had gotten its comeuppance. One of the things TNG got right that TOS didn't was that the evolved higher beings often were forced to eat their words.

I really enjoyed the villain of this one and tended to agree with his arguments even if he went about them the worst way.

 

[Nardole]

Just finished this and really enjoyed it. My favorite storyline was with the podcasters investigating Gillian Taylors death but I also really like the movie storyline trio of the federation, romulans, and klingons attempting first contact with this species only to end up in a hostage situation (and was great to see Saavik again). My least favorite was the original series storyline but even it became more interesting when it crossed over with the others. The Eugenic Wars links were also very fun

 

[veritech]

I also enjoyed this novel. The 2024 podcast story line made the book feel "out of the box" for a Star Trek novel . . . almost like taking a real-world look at the events of Star Trek IV. What would be the actual repercussions of a Doctor from the future giving a patient an advanced, life saving drug? What would happen if a spaceship showed up over the ocean to save whales from hunters?

I also liked that the 2024 segments reflected a society basically the same as ours but with subtle differences in technology and references to secret conspiracies. Very cool.

 

[Procutus]

I also liked that the 2024 segments reflected a society basically the same as ours but with subtle differences in technology and references to secret conspiracies. Very cool.

Gotta love those secret conspiracies!