I have to raise my flag, as I have many times, to my status as a lover of 'Star Trek'. It's a guilty pleasure, yes, but still one not to be sneezed at. Specifically, the original series is the one to watch, and it's also the one to read. Before the advent of the spin-off series, the original run was the base for a massive expanded universe of novels, some wonderful and some dreadful, some clashing dreadfully with each other, but all written by the fans. It was the one example of a television series blowing up into a massive book series that you could point at categorically as a creative miracle, an unprecedented creative phenomenon that was only really curtailed when the added series and accumulated material choked the whole endeavour into a continuity choke hold after twenty five years! They still make 'Star Trek' novels now, but without the licence to really go non-canonical and instead living in the niches left unexplored by the screen versions. The original 'Star Trek' novels just let it rip as there was nothing left to compare too!
Anyway, I'm bringing this all up because I just finished re-reading one of my favourite 'Star Trek' novels, a historical epic in fact, the legendary 'Final Frontier' by Diane Carey. Carey was one of the few authors to capture the nautical elements of the series, its true spirit of exploration, and the sheer drama of being in command. 'Final Frontier', on top of all that, is a historical within 'Star Trek', a tale of James Kirk's father George Kirk, his friend Captain Robert April, and the true first adventure of the Starship Enterprise, even before it was named. The concept of a 'Star Trek' historical seems audacious even now, especially one that partly establishes the chain of events that leads into early episodes of the series, tying in directly to the classic 'The City On The Edge Of Forever', and especially audacious in its own success. It succeeds by quality of writing, and that's the key. You can convey so much by exchanging looks in the written word, and by cracking jokes where they're warranted.
Carey wrote a number of great 'Star Trek' novels including 'Dreadnought', 'Battlestations', 'Final Frontier', 'Best Destiny' and 'The Great Starship Race', and some following stories. They are all steeped in something I referred to before: Space nauticality. It literally does become a separate version of 'Horatio Hornblower in outer space', a slightly other parallel dimension to the series, but one with lots of added detail. 'Final Frontier' has its main strength in the twinned narratives of George Kirk's main story, his letters to his kids, and the framing story of James Kirk in the wake of 'City on the Edge of Forever'. It works brilliantly! The second strength is in the rich definition of the characters set up in the historical portion. George Kirk and Robert April are pen sketched thoroughly almost immediately, and then put through the ringer as sabotage lands the still-new and unnamed starship Enterprise deep in Romulan space instead of the ion storm that was the focus of their rescue mission, all with a crew of technicians. It all rings true to both its own reality of a fledgeling Starfleet, and the original series itself.
Two of the most beneficial and novel aspects of 'Star Trek' is the positive view of the future, and the linked aspirational view of exploring the universe. It really was a great fusion and rebuttal of most previous screen science fiction. 'Final Frontier' helps set up that positive future even more, with Robert April being the effective spear carrier for diplomacy and exploration, fusing his strengths with the more militaristic viewpoints of George Kirk into the mindset that informs the Starfleet of the television show. In between those two ideals lies James Kirk, the mightiest captain of them all. In our era where manned exploration has very much faded out to nothing, it's fascinating to see how different everything could be. One day we could all be out there, sailing amongst the stars. Wouldn't it be wonderful? That's what 'Star Trek' was always meant to be!
O.
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