Alan Dean Foster Star Trek Log One (1974)
While I've never been a massive unreserved fan of Trek, I've enjoyed some of it, and some of it I've enjoyed a lot. I watched the animated version at the time - around four-ish on a Saturday afternoon as I recall - but have never had any burning desire to revisit the thing beyond vague curiosity about the guy with the three arms who made the cut because they couldn't afford Walter Koenig. Naturally I had no idea anyone had novelised the series in those days before VHS, but they did and so my curiosity achieved the necessary critical mass because it's Alan Dean Foster - who can generally be relied upon to do a decent job in cases such as we have here.
This one rather tidily adapts the first three episodes of the first series, the first of which is oddly familiar, so I guess I must have revisited that debut episode at some point fairly recently, unless they recycled the story for Enterprise or one of the other variations. On the subject of recycling, Beyond the Farthest Star has our cartoon Kirk and pals investigating an alien derelict of several million years vintage, formerly inhabited by massive aliens who were seemingly killed off by the thing which duly wakes up and tries to knacker the Enterprise. It's probably a coincidence that it so strongly foreshadows the half of Ridley Scott's Alien which didn't so strongly resemble A.E. van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle that the father of the iconic Hovis advert ended up settling out of court.
Yes, a coincidence. That'll be it. I'm sure of it.
Still talking of recycling, a fair chunk of One of Our Planets is Missing later turned up in the 1979 movie, it could be argued.
Anyway, Log One comprises three decent and generally engaging stories, all with the inevitably modular quality of Trek episodes, but which nevertheless manage to work some pleasing flashes of imagination into the formula. Alan Dean Foster has the reputation of being something of a hack, having written about a million of these things; but you can't really tell from this one which reads more like kin to the aforementioned Voyage of the Space Beagle - itself an obvious precursor to Star Trek - than words copied from a screen with linking material. Indeed, Foster's retelling crackles with character and jazzy asides and observations, possibly more so than most of what we saw on the telly. This isn't Terrance bleeding Dicks rearranging the usual phrases and expressions in a slightly different order to the last one.
I'm probably not massively likely to start hunting down the other nine volumes, but neither am I averse to the idea. Being what amounts to apple-polishing boy scouts having wholesome adventures in space, Star Trek succeeds mainly when it does something weird or spontaneous, and Alan Dean Foster really brings out the best in the mythology*.
*: I refuse point fucking blank to refer to it, or indeed to anything as a franchise.
Having read all of these as a child (as well as the earlier Blish series covering the live action show now known as TOS) I'm comfortable recommending trying the rest of Foster's Captain's Logs. He's known as an adaptation hack because he's good at it, consistently delivering readable stories that generally improve on the source material rather than simply copying it.
ReplyDeleteThat said, this series radically changes format between the first six volumes (each of which adapted three TV episodes) and the last four (which adapted a single episode each). The earlier books are (for better or worse) more faithful to the original scripts and have less room for Foster to add his own details. That's fine with the better scripts, and not so good with the more ridiculous ones, of which there are a few. The animated series was erratic in terms of writing quality to put it mildly.
The latter four volumes are largely Foster's own work, with actual episode content making up a small portion of the book as a whole and in some cases becoming an adjunct to a very different story - something that met with mixed receptions from the Trek fans.
The "mostly Foster" part of the series adapts (depending on how you feel about them) one or two of the most absurd episodes of the show, and Foster uses the extra space and free hand to write what he wants to render both the Counterclock Incident (Volume 7) and BEM (Volume 9) considerably less ridiculous, although he's forced to resort to a deus ex machina cliche of his own to accomplish it with the notorious bad Counterclock. Volume 10 is an adaptation of the Slaver Weapon episode, itself adapted from Larry Niven's short story, and is arguably the worst of the lot since the added material is really not helping any and just takes it farther from Niven's tightly-written original.
Volume 8 covers Eye of the Beholder, which was one of the better original episodes to start with. Foster expands on the story considerably, with a fairly compelling expedition into intergalactic space that brings in epic scale technology and astrofauna that evoke the over-the-top feel of Smith's Lensmen while also having what feels like a nod to Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep.
If you just try one other book in the run Volume 8 would be my rec, followed by any of the first six. You might also try Volume 7 if you enjoy punishing yourself - even with Foster practically re-writing it wholesale it's still very, very dumb.