Customer Reviews

Star Trek Adventures 11: Vulcan (Star Trek Adventures S)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Suprised to see such negative reactions. I thought all women in the Star Trek universe were a) gorgeous or b) in love with Spock, Kirk or McCoy.

Anyhow, I found it a fairly readable entry into the original Star Trek book series. I like how it tackled the idea of intolerance (although it may feel a little bit dated now) and found the issue with the planet to fit well into the Trekkie universe.

This was the first Trek entry of Kathleen Sky.

Not as bad as some of the other reviews make it out to be as it easily could have been a third season episode! This is a easy book to get into and explores an area of Star Trek that really has not been explored before. Yes, Dr. McCoy is a man who is interested in a exotic woman (how many times did McCoy get the girl?), and yes this woman has some major problems that only Spock can solve. The planet/Romulan/alien angle is a interesting backdrop for all of the human emotions that are explored. Pick it up and have some fun!

This book is the worst Star Trek novel that I have ever read.Kathleen Sky is obsessed with indulging in her adolescent sexualfantasies and subjecting the reader to her preoccupation with meaningless, imbecilic verbal exchanges between a very unprofessional Doctor McCoy and a childish Doctor Tremain. It is ridiculous that a woman who is supposed to be one of the great scientific brains of the galaxy exhibits the intelligence and maturity of a sorority girl who struggles to pass her sociology classes. Kathleen Sky should have written novels about teenage girls who spend their days trading gossip about the twerp actors and musicians covered in Tiger Beat magazine. "Vulcan!" is a joke and a waste of paper and ink. END

Speaking as someone who has read quite a lot of Star Trek books so far, I have to say that this one's probably the worst of all. The story about the Arachnae (what a surprising name for a spider people) just doesn't make any sense, and the story about a scientist hating Vulcans is even worse. The way McCoy behaves in the story really made me doubt his qualifications as a doctor. The solution to the "I hate Vulcans" problem is as ridiculous as anything else in the book. The best part, not to say the only good part, is the introduction at the beginning, which is definitely wittier than anything that comes after it.

It does not take long before you realize that this is not one of the better Star Trek novels. That realization begins when Spock is depicted as being emotionally excited over the opportunity of working with Dr. Tremain, a brilliant exo-biologist. The seed of doubt then germinates and goes to full fruition when Dr. Tremain immediately expresses extreme bigotry against Spock's Vulcan race and demands that either he or she leaves the Enterprise. This deep level of open racial hatred would not be tolerated by anyone in Star Fleet, especially Captain Kirk and that plot flaw is further opened when some Enterprise crewmembers attempt to make common cause with Dr. Tremain. Instead of reacting with disgust to Dr. Tremain's bigotry, Dr. McCoy openly tries to develop a personal relationship with her, another point of glaring weakness in the plot. For all his outward hostility towards Spock, McCoy has always been a strong defender of Spock and would not tolerate such a destructive attitude.

Ion storms are moving the magnetic field lines used to demarcate the Federation border with the Romulans and in a short time the planet of Arachne IV will be in Romulan space. The mission of the Enterprise is to examine the animal inhabitants to determine if they are sentient. Spock and Dr. Tremain are co-leaders of an away team and shortly after they arrive the large antlike creatures attack and kill most of the team. Since a Romulan warship has arrived, Kirk cannot drop his shields to beam the surviving members of the away team up from the surface, leaving Spock and Dr. Tremain to fend for themselves. While the predictable happens and they learn to get along, Spock makes some rather un-Vulcan like comments about Dr. Tremain's breasts.

When Spock mind-melds with one of the creatures and is unable to break loose from the animal qualities, it is necessary for Dr. Tremain to instigate a mind-meld and we learn the source of her hatred of Vulcans, it is a previous love affair she had with a Vulcan commander. This is no surprise, although it is shocking that Dr. McCoy was unable to discern that fact when he was carrying out his standard battery of psychiatric tests on Dr. Tremain.

A final point of plot weakness is that the Romulan commander is depicted as being a pathetic weakling, unable to make command decisions. To my knowledge, this is the only time in the entire Star Trek genre that this was done. Weak all around, this is one of the poorest Star Trek stories ever created.

There's something about the old Bantam books such as Vulcan . . . . It is often difficult to remember that they were written before the movies, before the spin-offs, even before VHS! The Bantam readers did not have the luxury of popping in a tape or referring to endless reference books; they had to rely on memory or James Blish's adaptations to keep the feel of the characters. It was a different world then, in the distant, dark '70s.

Because of the comparative dearth of material, the Bantam writers, it seems, were able to keep their novels focused and tight. Vulcan is a fine example; the criticisms of it are valid, but overlook that the story is finely paced with little wasted space (compare that to almost any Voyager episode, which drag on and on and on . . . .) The underlying story - about shifting ion clouds and Romulan expansion - is contrived; but, then, that's true of most episodes, isn't it?

What is most enjoyable here is a chance to see different sides of McCoy and Spock, sides that have been lost through the years. Here we see the McCoy of "For the World is Hollow," or "Shore Leave," where a chance to get the girl interferes with his professional judgment. We also see Spock the pervert; pay attention to the first several episodes of Star Trek and you'll see that Spock was very much into sexual innuendo, with an occassional leer at Janice Rand. As Spock grew (really, as Nimoy began to flesh him out)that aspect of Spock was lost; that Sky brings it back redounds to her credit, as it forces us to look at Spock in a different light.

A Star Trek is almost never going to be great literature, or even great science fiction. We should expect a book that amuses and diverts, and Vulcan fits the bill.

The main conflict of this story is between a respected female scientist (named Dr. Tremain) with an aversion to Vulcans and, our favorite hero, Spock. Sounds great, doesn't it? Unfortunately, Spock seems to play only a peripheral role, occasionally raising his eyebrow. And, though she has the credentials, the female scientist is by no means respected. The bulk of the prose is used to describe how "hysterical" and/or sexy the female scientist is. A woman who is supposed to be a professional and is hailed as the pre-eminent expert on sentience in the Federation is treated with zero respect by her friends, colleagues, Dr. McCoy and the author. Dr. Tremain is given the motivation of an overgrown Veruca Salt. But the greatest irony is that all who come into contact with the female science officer are appalled by her BIGOTRY. I, too, was appalled by all the bigotry this shabby narrative had to offer. I like sex and romance as much as the next person, but not at the expense of plot and human dignity. While reading, I kept picturing the author as this gangly teenaged boy popping zits in front of a mirror. I just can't believe this story was written by a woman.

This is a rare book to find. The story has all the angles of a classic Star Trek book. It shows a rarely seen side of Mr. Spock. He is pitted against a woman doctor with a love/hate relationship with Vulcans, who is called upon to determine if a group of aliens on a world have intelligence or not. That coupled with the fact that since the Neutral Zone is shifting, the Romulans want to claim the planet as their own. The end is truly exciting and I would highly recommend it to any true Trek fan. The only problem is that it is a very hard book to find. I lost my copy several years ago and have yet to find a replacement. I hope it is printed again soon.

What the hell was Kathleen Sky thinking when she wrote this book. Does she not know about vulcan psychology. How do you mix human emotions with Mr. Spock? The plot was pretty decent I'll give her that, but she needs to seriously go back to the original episodes and try to absorb what makes Spock tick.

Stoic, stoic, stoic. Do you understand Kathleen?

I guess it's hard to sound Vulcan all the time, as evidenced by the occasional lapse in Spock's success in doing so in this book. It's kind of a fun idea, this scientist who hates Vulcans, and there are some good parts. But every third conversation is about sex, and half of all conversations at least mention it. :-\ Also the title is...silly. It's more about Tremain (the Vulcan-hating scientist) than Spock, and there is nothing here about Vulcans that we haven't already learned from the TV show. Spock rules! This book does not. At least it's short.