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Star Trek 8

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First published in 1972, these short stories are Blish's adaptations of the screenplays of various episodes from the original series. The episodes aren't sorted into books according to either chronological order or identity of screenwriter.

"Spock's Brain" (episode 61, season 3, screenplay Gene L. Coon, who ought to be ashamed. Since he wrote this as "Lee Cronin", maybe he was; the only first-rate episode produced under that name was "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield".) A woman from a culture experiencing a literal, centuries-long war between the sexes steals Spock's brain to implant as the new controller for the life-support machinery of her underground city. There's even a gadget acting in a D&D magic paradigm: it imparts sophisticated knowledge, which for plot/play balance purposes wears off quickly. There are so many things wrong with this episode that it oughtn't to be first in this collection's line-up; Blish just doesn't have good stuff to work with here.

"The Enemy Within" (episode 5, season 1, screenplay Richard Matheson). One of season 1's character-development episodes. Kirk beams up from an expedition to Alfa 177 feeling sick; tests run with an animal on the transporter result in two animals, one aggressive, one docile. Spock realizes that Kirk's 'gentle' and 'aggressive' aspects have been split into two separate physical bodies, which can't survive long separately - and the 'evil' Kirk resists the recombination. Interesting points made here: Kirk *needs* his mean side, which contains his decisive aspects that let him function as a commanding officer.

"Catspaw" (episode 30, season 2, screenplay by horror-writer Robert Bloch, originally aired around Halloween) On Pyris VII, the ENTERPRISE makes contact with Korob and Sylvia, a mysterious humanlike couple with many of the trappings of magic, including a castle and something like a magic wand - a transmitter for their peculiar power. Unfortunately, Sylvia in particular is inclined to treat humans as toys, and not only in her alternate shape as a black cat. [Frankly, I never thought highly of this episode, which colours my perception of Blish's adaptation; see "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" for a better sample of Bloch's efforts.]

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" (episode 2, season 1, screenplay Samuel A. Peeples) While investigating the 'energy barrier' at the edge of the galaxy, several ENTERPRISE crew members are seriously injured, all but two of whom die: Kirk's old friend Gary Mitchell, and psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Dehner. Mitchell begins intermittently displaying ESP, seems to be increasing in intelligence, and his eyes begin turning silver - but far more disturbing are his emotional changes. (For instance, he callously reveals to Kirk that while they were in the Academy, he subtly sabotaged Kirk by arranging for a girl to distract him, giving her pointers on how to do it effectively - a very cruel revelation, as Kirk, stunned, reveals that he nearly married her.) As Mitchell's abilities grow, he becomes more and more detached from humanity - all except Dehner, and in her case, Mitchell forces her to realize that she too is undergoing these changes, only at a slower rate. How can the rest of the ENTERPRISE crew protect themselves from people who can read their minds at will?

"Wolf in the Fold" (episode 36, season 2, screenplay Robert Bloch) McCoy and Kirk are out for a little R&R with Scotty on Argelius II - they've been worried about him lately, since a recent incident seemed to have made him unnaturally wary around women. He seems back to normal as the trio are watching a belly dancer perform - but when he's found standing over her murdered body after walking out with her, they must defend him from a murder charge that even he can't refute, having suffered a blackout. A local dignitary's wife volunteers to use her empathic powers to help determine the truth (very seance-type feel to that) and is herself murdered after crying out the names of many murderers from history. What is the connection between serial killers spread out over many light-years and centuries?

"For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" (episode 65, season 3, screenplay Rik Vollaerts) One of several episodes in which one of the trio Spock/Kirk/McCoy is presumed dead or dying. Chapel, learning that McCoy is suffering from a rare condition leaving him only a year to live, reveals his secret to Kirk, as her duties as a nurse and an officer of the ENTERPRISE must come before anything else with her. Consequently, when the ENTERPRISE soon afterward encounters a generation ship built from a hollowed-out asteroid, McCoy is willing to spend his last days among the generation ship's inhabitants - who have long since forgotten that they're aboard a ship. The high priestess Natira, for her part, would rather have a year's happiness with a man she loves than no life with him at all, and arranges to have him adopted among her people. McCoy, however, is more knowledgeable than any native-born Yonadan, and gains information that must be communicated back to his old comrades, whatever the cost.

The James Blish "Star Trek" series is a twelve book series of adaptations of the stories from the original "Star Trek" television series. Frankly, Blish didn't do a very good job of it, and most of the series is pretty weak, even for a longtime fan of the series. As far as the writing itself is concerned, this book is no exception; Blish embellishes very little on the basic plots he was given, which to an extent is a good thing; the stories are all pretty well what we saw onscreen. But he takes it to an extreme; there is little description beyond what is absolutely necessary, and little insight into character beyond what is demonstrated by action and dialogue. Further, the editing is as sloppy as one might expect from 1960s dime-store paperbacks; simple arithmetic, apparently, is beyond both Blish and his editors, as is evidenced by the following exchange, found in the first story, on page 21 (at least, in the edition that I have):

Spock: Captain, how much time since my brain was removed?

Kirk: Forty-eight hours.

Spock: Sir, Dr. McCoy must have told you that seventy-two hours is the maximum that my body can be...

Kirk: I know, Spock. That leaves us fourteen hours.

But beyond the sloppy editing and poor writing, this book actually DOES have something to recommend it; the first and last of the six episodes may be among the worst in the entire run of the original "Star Trek" series ("Spock's Brain", in which said brain is removed by an alien for the purpose of being used as an organic computer to run her world's life support systems, which gives us the immortally bad lines "Brain and brain! What is 'brain'?" and "Where is this place?" "This place is...here." and "For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky", which just isn't interesting enough to summarize, respectively) but the four episodes sandwiched between those two turkeys are four of the very best episodes from the series: "The Enemy Within", in which Kirk is confronted with a double that embodies all the evil that every person keeps carefully hidden within themselves, "Catspaw", one of the better examples of the crossover between horror and Science fiction, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the "second pilot episode", in which Kirk's longtime friend Gary Mitchell has the extrasensory part of his brain stimulated, giving him godlike powers and driving him insane, and "Wolf In The Fold", another horror crossover in which the Enterprise crew meet the being behind the "Jack The Ripper" crimes.

I can't say that I recommend this book in general, nor even specifically to someone who liked those episodes. Better by far to get the videotapes of the episodes. But if you want to read any of those stories, this is where to find them.

"Star Trek 8" was originally published in 1972 as science fiction author James Blish continued to adapt the screenplays of various episodes from the original series. You have to remember that way back when the original "Star Trek" was in syndication in your market, if you were lucky, and videotapes were way in the future. So the only way to really enjoy the episodes was to collect the paperbacks with these "novelizations" ("shortstorizations"?) by Blish. The chief attraction is that Blish manages to remain faithful to the original scripts while also taking into account the changes made in the actual filming of the episodes, while using his own talents as an author to flesh out the details and make these stories stand on their own. In terms of adapating television shows, Blish set the standard.

Included in Volume 8 are the following episodes: "Spock's Brain," the rather odd little story of how a woman steals Spock's brain so it can be the new controller for her underground city's life support system. This was not one of the finest moments in the series, although Spock talking Bones through the last stages of the surgery to reconnect his brain has its moments, such as they are. "The Enemy Within" is based on a Richard Matheson script and has Kirk split in two when he beams back to the "Enterprise," his aggressive and docile halves now running around in their own bodies. Blish does a nice job of reinforcing the episode's point about how Kirk needs both halves to be a great starship captain. "Catspaw" is a "Star Trek" Halloween episode with a script by Robert "Psycho" Bloch that has Kirk and the crew running around a castle with strange creatures in what must have seemed a good idea at the time.

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the first episode of "Star Trek" aired, where Kirk's old friend Gary Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner are injured on an away mission and end up with strange new powers, apparently a preview of human evolution. Blish works out the details of Mitchell's disturbing changes as he turns on Kirk and becomes something more, and less, than human. Robert Bloch's "Wolf in the Fold" brings one of his recurring subjects, Jack the Ripper, into the "Star Trek" universe as the "Enterprise" crew discovers a connection between various strings of serial killings stretching across the galaxy back through the centuries. "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" is the one where McCoy learns he is suffering from a rare and untreatable condition and will have less than a year to live. When the "Enterprise" encounters a generation ship that is build inside an asteroid and the high priestess Natira, Bones decides this is where he wants to live out the rest of his life on what the inhabitants think is the world Yonada. But then McCoy learns the truth about what is happening and that changes everything.

I would not say there any of these half-dozen stories constitutes a classic "Star Trek" episode, although "Where No Man Has Gone Before" comes close, and a couple of these are less than stellar, but at least half of them are solid offerings. You also have half of the six being adapated from works by a pair of major writing talents in the field of horror. Even if a world where the original series is available on DVD and VHS, those of us who fondly remember these Blish collections are going to contend that once again it is time for these books to be reprinted.

The cultural phenomenon of Star Trek was initially slow to grow after the cancellation of the original series. The set of adaptations of the episodes of that series by James Blish was one of the initial and major events driving the growth of the phenomenon. In those books, Blish describes several of the episodes, making slight changes in the dialog and plot but keeping the basic story intact.
The episodes adapted in this book are:

*) Spock's Brain
*) The Enemy Within
*) Catspaw
*) Where No Man Has Gone Before
*) Wolf in the Fold
*) For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

As followers of the series will know, the episodes are not sequential. "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is one of the very first episodes and "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" is one of the last. "Spock's Brain" is generally conceded to have been one of the worst episodes in the series and "Wolf in the Fold" one of the best.
As is the case in the other adaptations, Blish makes some alterations in the plot in an attempt to make a better story. If you are a stickler for detail, then those changes may bother you but if you are interested in a good story, then those changes will be considered an improvement.

The cultural phenomenon of Star Trek was initially slow to grow after the cancellation of the original series. The set of adaptations of the episodes of that series by James Blish was one of the initial and major events driving the growth of the phenomenon. In those books, Blish describes several of the episodes, making slight changes in the dialog and plot but keeping the basic story intact.
The episodes adapted in this book are:

*) Spock's Brain
*) The Enemy Within
*) Catspaw
*) Where No Man Has Gone Before
*) Wolf in the Fold
*) For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

As followers of the series will know, the episodes are not sequential. "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is one of the very first episodes and "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" is one of the last. "Spock's Brain" is generally conceded to have been one of the worst episodes in the series and "Wolf in the Fold" one of the best.
As is the case in the other adaptations, Blish makes some alterations in the plot in an attempt to make a better story. If you are a stickler for detail, then those changes may bother you but if you are interested in a good story, then those changes will be considered an improvement.

This book, consisting of adaptations of six episodes of the classic TV series including "Where No Man has Gone Before." It is really a must have.