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.
Because we apparently can’t have enough trouble, last chapter two of our book heroes are in big trouble. This chapter, however, it’s back to the Enterprise to see what’s happening with the main party.
I was in maybe middle school when I first read this book. Nowadays I have a stronger concept of storytelling, which I’m sure doing reviews for a couple decades plays a part in. So I’m noticing all of these disasters and potential disasters going on. Without spoiling too much on the homepage, we have so far…
- The main plot of a viral plague
- Sendet finding a new woman to hone in on
- his almost cultish group running around the ship
- damage to the water turbines and nobody healthy enough to help fix it
- our heroes trapped in the mountains
- the potential social disorder coming from all of that save the poor saps in the mountains
I’m a little more wery about too many subplots in a story. I’d probably be less interested in soap operas now than I was as a kid. Back then I enjoyed the book enough to track down the previous book despite not needing it to follow anything here. I am still enjoying the book, but we aren’t quite halfway through it yet. I’ve just seen too many subplots at one time going wrong and taking away from the main issue, the plague in this case. As we head into the next chapter my concerns and memories are trying to balance each other. Let’s see what wins out.
There are two scenes in this chapter and it didn’t need to be split into two chapters to do it. In the first Spock is letting Kirk know what they found out about the plague incubating in mixed species people. Kirk decides the information should be need to know, medical staff only. Kirk is also not going to be allowed to go down…and I don’t know why. Even if you follow Earth notions of race that would have been outdated in the Trek timeline were it not for Kurtzman Trek and an earlier notice by Korsal that the head of the dam that called for him was black. If Kirk were of mixed Earth races, he’s still full Earthling. Spock is half human and half Vulcan, which counts for what we know about the plague, two different worlds rather than two different countries.
The scene also includes notice that Kirk was hoping to personally congratulate someone who broke his record of being the youngest cadet into Starfleet. That person is Kevin, who right now is one of our mountain heroes. We also get his last name of Katasi, which Spock notes is also Korsal’s last name. I didn’t even know Klingons HAD last names. I thought my earlier statement of his mother being on the Enterprise was going to turn out to be prophetic, and with Korsal already having a wife that would be awkward. Come to think of it, why not have Korsal’s kid be half Orion and just skip the human mother altogether? I guess it would be easier for a half-human to get into Starfleet, given the Orions are as much a threat as the Klingons.
Kirk thinks it’s a coincidence because they wouldn’t let a Klingon into Starfleet. I should remind you that this is set in the TV period. Kirk’s hatred of Klingons due to what happened to David in the second movie hadn’t shown up until Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Meanwhile the DC comics had him unofficially welcoming a pacifist Klingon named Konom possibly around the time of the novel, set after the fourth movie aboard the NCC-1701-A. We wouldn’t get a full-blooded Klingon officer in official canon until The Next Generation with Worf, and wouldn’t get it again until the miserable excuse for a Starfleet Academy series that thought making the Klingon a gay bird-watching pacifist with worse shyness than I have and two dads to one mom. (They really didn’t care, did they? And there’s still another short “season” in the coffers ready to go despite Kurtzman already gone. CNN has nothing to worry about.) Still, this is classic Trek and the idea of a Klingon in Starfleet is way too ridiculous, which is what made Worf so interesting a century later and eventually got him to main cast member.
The other scene has Spock in the mess hall with his parents and our first re-appearance of Daniel Corrigan and T’Mir from the first book. There’s some banter that goes over my head because I don’t speak Latin or know who Chaucer is. I’m not doing the homework just to get a joke that matters more to Sarek, Amanda, and the Corrigans than to me. Spock does note that Corrigan probably translated the Latin wrong, meaning only he and Amanda got Sarek’s joke. Then Sendet shows up, and thankfully doesn’t go near Daniel and T’Mir…though there’s no recognition that the now married couple should have had some reaction to him just being there, especially Daniel given their previous encounter in The Vulcan Academy Murders. Instead, his “target” is T’Pina, but she wants nothing to do with him. Smart girl.
Unfortunately, and here’s where the T’Vet followers are going to add to the personal drama, Sadat (in case you forgot, he’s the leader of the Followers Of T’Vet) pops in and openly forces Kirk’s hand into admitting in public the virus’ penchant for mixed species kids. Then Sadat says to call it what it “really is”, the IDIC Epidemic. It’s not just a title drop. It’s Sadat so insistent that Vulcans mating with anyone other than Vulcans are a bad thing he’s cause trouble by forcing it into the open. Monitoring incoming info is bad enough, but with that he just did what he said he wouldn’t: interfering in ship’s operations. If the goal is to turn everyone against interspecies relationships he picked a rather wicked time to do so. I know they don’t follow logic, but apparently compassion is out the door, too. I’m prepared to hate Sadat even more than Sendet. Words can kill more than any lirpa, and we already know they’re willing to use those. Sendet was a personal threat, but now this minor issue from the first book is as much a problem as the Epidemic. That’s xenophobia for you.
I hope this book explores race relations with a lot more subtly and tact than anything that has Kurtzman’s name slapped onto it. Audiences, especially Star Trek audiences, are smart enough to pick up on the subtleties without having the message shoved through their noses. It’s what Trek used to be good at but nowadays subtlety is for suckers in the eyes of those who think themselves smarter than you. We’ll see what happens as the story unfolds. We’re going back to the mountains next chapter to see how our newest Starfleet cadet and his dad are doing.
