And back to the fan fiction. The success of the enjoyable first New Voyages collection clearly left its editors feeling they had a mandate, and that they could do no wrong. At least that is my takeaway from this lesser collection, which has even more of an indulgent fanfic feel. I do have to read some more modern fanfic, because reading this one has left me with a sour attitude about it.
It bears repeating that fans and fanfic are part of what kept Trek alive during these early years. That said, this collection has not aged well, except as an artifact of the times.
So, in sum, this volume offers more glimpses into fandom of a certain period, but with a couple of exceptions, they just aren’t very good, and are not good representations of the Trek story.
I will go through the pieces one by one.
‘”Surprise'” by Nichelle Nichols, Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
I love Nichelle Nichols. I adore her. She is one of the classiest ambassadors of the franchise, and her personal story is an inspiration. This story, about Uhura and Spock arranging a surprise birthday party for Kirk, generally feels like the creation of someone who knows the characters, partly. That’s the part I will attribute to Nichols. There’s a slashy subtext which I can completely attribute to the infamous editors. All in all, it’s one of those stories about below decks, off shift Enterprise that is just a little too cute, but may still appeal to some fans.
‘”Snake Pit” by Connie Faddis
We don’t get to see much of Nurse Christine Chapel in the series or movies, but we get to “see” everything in this action-based story, in which Chapel takes on a pit full of alien snakes, armed only with a knife, to save Kirk, who’s been bitten by one in some native ritual. Did I mention she does this naked? Yeah, she naked.
It’s actually a pretty good story, one of the more enjoyable ones in the volume. Well written, though it does meander into some racist tropes about indigenous people. We get to learn a little bit more about Chapel’s past with Roger Corby, which gets “authenticated” in a footnote as having come from Majel Barrett herself. Oh, you tricky canon. Oh, and we learn that Chapel is actually already a doctor, and it’s still some time before that gets a nod in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
“The Patient Parasites” by Russell Bates
Offered in script form, this is a story that Bates wrote for the animated Star Trek series. Bates would later go on to co-author the animated series episode “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth,” which netted the series an Emmy Award. That episode featured crewman Dawson Walking Bear, a Native American, who actually first appeared in this story. This story was rejected as being too generic, apparently, and for the Bantam collection Dawson Walking Bear was changed to Sulu, and it’s not even noticeable.
This story comes off as something that could have been a filmed episode, but a particularly bland one. It involves a race of aliens, probably long dead, which steal the intelligences of aliens to make use of technology it did not invent. It comes across as a mix of elements from “Spock’s Brain,” “Return of the Archons,” and maybe a dash of “The Empath.”
It possibly would have been a so-so episode, but as a story it lacks suspense, or even a point to make.
“In the Maze” by Jennifer Guttridge
This one was kind of close in story to “The Patient Parasites.” A little better, involving weird aliens doing experiments on Enterprise crew in a setting that reminded me even more of “The Empath” than the last one. I like the thoroughly weird aliens, but it suffers an abrupt resolution of the “whoops we didn’t realize you were sentient, sorry, bye” variety.
“Cave-In” by Jane Peyton
A confusing piece written as a stream of consciousness monologue/dialogue that just didn’t hold my interest long enough to figure out what was going on.
“Marginal Existence” by Connie Faddis
This one actually feels like an episode of TOS and is fairly well-written. It’s possible there’s a message in it about drug abuse or the more generalized pitfalls of seeking pleasure without a mind to the consequences, seen here in a society that keeps people in a “pleasurable” suspended animation that may actually be torture. There’s elements that are very close to “Miri” at play here. Not the best in the collection, but up there.
“The Procrustean Petard” by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
Oh dear. So the concept of the story is, Kirk, McCoy, Uhura and a number of the rest of the Enterprise crew switch genders. Even putting aside current ideas about gender being more than binary, this story is a train wreck a la The Price of the Phoenix. Like that book, this is a story that isn’t very interested in plot setup, conflict or resolution. Once again, there is a lot of flirty wink-winking about slashy unmentionables. But while Phoenix manages to be dull, this one manages to be truly offensive. You see, femme Kirk is apparently too pretty to command, and then there’s this whole bit where Spock protects Kirk from the unwelcome advances of Kang from “Day of the Dove.” The whole premise of how this gender-swap happens is then dismissed in as off-screen and desultory a fashion as it was introduced, amid much satisfied laughter. It makes no sense to any era’s ideas of Klingon culture, and it manages to be oddly sexist, for a story written by two women.
“The Sleeping God” by Jesco von Puttkamer
And from an aerospace engineer and NASA program manager, who would eventually be technical advisor for the first Star Trek movie, a novella-length story that is actual science fiction. While the resolution of the conflict is a little muddled for me, this may be my favorite piece in this collection. Dealing with a Borg/V-ger-like ancient computer and a superbrained mutant kept in suspended animation, this reads, frankly, like a better story concept for the movie that von Puttkamer was eventually involved with. A little slow but worth the read.
“Elegy For Charlie” by Antonia Vallario and “Soliloquy” by Marguerite B. Thompson
The book ends with a cutesy wrap-up referencing the first story, but not before we get a couple examples of fan doggerel.
The first poem, while not great poetry in my opinion, still manages to be a emotive look at “Charlie X”and it consequences.
The latter poem, told from Spock’s perspective, ends with the lines, “What will they find when I am ripped apart? ‘I love you, Captain,’ written on my heart,” and that’s all you need to know.
Bunging a Rock at It 