Chapter By Chapter> Star Trek: The IDIC Epidemic chapter 9

Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as a read-along book club.

We were on the plague ridden science colony, and now we’re back on the Enterprise.

I hope this story gets to Nisus soon so I can start having some discussion material for these homepage intros. Maybe because this is a continuation of sorts to a book I’ve already gone all the way through, but right now I’m running out of spoilerless things to talk about way too early. That’s not the book’s fault, it’s just me versus the format for this series.

At least the background material we’re getting on new characters are important to understand the characters’ motivations. Compare it to the Op-Center novels reviewed thus far.  The backstory there barely mattered to any of the proceedings. It didn’t affect motivation, it didn’t tie into the plot. Most of the time it was just showing off worldbuilding and history, then blending the two as those books took place slightly into the future of when they were released. That felt more like padding and strutting while the info we’ve gotten here feels more like potentially important information to understand the people involved.

With that in mind, we move to chapter nine and see how things are progressing. Hopefully we’re picking up our passengers now.

This chapter is from T’Pina’s point of view, her first time aboard a Federation starship, and one so big. A lot of this is to get us to know the younger Vulcan. She still has some emotion control to work with. At one point she even struggles to maintain her composure by biting her bottom lip when a rather handsome Vulcan male shows up and begins talking to her at the party.

Too bad that person is Sendet. You know, the guy who once tried to forcibly break a psionic bond between the girl he wanted to marry because of the houses they were born into, and his rival who was a human. The same human we see in the room talking to other doctors. She listens in to McCoy, Sorel, Corrigan, and a black human, most likely M’Benga, though I didn’t think they used racial terms back then. It’s probably the best way Lorrah could tell us he was there when he’s not as famous so T’Pina wouldn’t know who he is, having just recently graduated the Academy in biometrics. Though that listening in, we learn there’s new, potentially controversial information that came in. Maybe they did figure out at least part of what Thoren noticed before the plague took him out? We know it involves children.

That’s when Sendet shows up, making conversation. Various Vulcans wearing symbols of their house, except for Spock wearing the IDIC symbol, are noted, as Sendet’s wearing his. Reminder again that Sendet is part of a group that combines the old ways with some level of Surak’s teachings in logic, letting a bit more of their emotions out than your average Vulcan. Like forcibly trying to separate your love interest and rival. Her mother, T’Kar, doesn’t seem to disapprove. Either she doesn’t know what he did or she’s at least favorable to his group. She clearly sees their symbol, unless he’s just wearing the symbol of his house. Royal politics haven’t dies on Vulcan, I guess. Given his history, he’s not my first choice to let take her obviously smitten daughter to go see warp space through the observation deck, but she’s not my daughter.

I seem to recall that there is a scene where this new romance does play a part in the story, but I don’t remember the specifics beyond he wasn’t supposed to be there. This is my second readthrough, so I’m sure it will come up in due course. This chapter is more about setting up this subplot while still moving the main story ahead slightly. So at least the story isn’t stalling for useless information. Good luck, T’Pina. You might need it given who you’re in to, but if that means Sendet has moved on, at least something positive came of this. We’ll see how this goes as the story continues.