Theodore R. Cogswell & Charles
A. Spano, JR.
1976
Grade: D
The overall writing style is stronger here than in Spock Must Die! both in description and characterization [See “Outnumbered though they were...scenes out of Dante’s Inferno” (87)]. The scientific premise of using a device that telepathically pairs a Starfleet surveyor with a native for the purposes of allowing the surveyor to speak and behave as a native member of that society is, if morally abhorrent, an interesting frame with which to tell the story, and it works well as a means to discuss a foundational story device for Star Trek, the Prime Directive, which is referred to here as General Order one.
The “B” plot is a radiation storm that acts as a ticking clock for the story and does the heavy lifting about why the Enterprise doesn’t call for help and does this unappealing work serviceably.
The characters, of Bones and Kirk particularly, are more clearly drawn here. However, like before, there are several instances of character bleed. For example, Kirk’s wondering, “Why does nearly every woman on the Enterprise set her cap for that walking computer?”(10) seems to fit much more comfortably in the mouth of the good doctor than the ship’s captain. These moments are few, and despite the fact that characters like Scotty and Chekov are defined almost exclusively by cultural stereotypes, it’s still a move in the right direction from Spock Must Die!
The pacing, the climax, and the sexism in this novel all detract from the novel’s overall effect. It moves along admirably at first, establishing how Spock, infected by the personality of the religious zealot Chag Gara, was driven to begin a holy war with the hooded Hillmen who live in the mountains beyond the city of Andros. The process of Kirk and the crew discovering what happened, planning to capture the new religious figurehead, and the ensuing brawl all work well and gallop along like a quality episode of the show. Then, after the failed attempt to capture Spock at a rally, the whole novel comes to a screeching halt. The new plan becomes a gambit to portray themselves as Beshwa traders and infiltrate Spock’s camp armed with a device that will nullify his telepathic link with Chag Gara. This leads to an unnecessarily long slog of watching the Enterprise crew roleplay a Conan the barbarian quest where they befriend a local chief by saving his dying son, fight a challenge over the sexual ownership of a woman (more on this later), and use disguise and intrigue to gain an audience with the “messiah”. The author tries to explain why the caravan isn’t simply teleported to its ultimate destination, but that explanation seems to exist solely to explain the chapters of travel leading up to the climax.
There is a half-decent faux-climax when it appears that the crew will succeed in getting the nullifier near enough to Spock by pretending to be Beshwa musicians for Ensign Sara George’s dance (again more on this to come). Spock’s discovery of this plot is a little blatantly foreshadowed by the sneaky behavior of Tram Bir’s [local chief] son but very much in the spirit of the show. Frustratingly, the actual climax happens the next morning when the crew are scheduled to be burned alive. Ultimately Sara free’s Spock and the two of them rescue Kirk and the others, but the reader only finds that out retrospectively. The reader experiences the climax through Captain Kirk’s perspective...which consists of being thrown into the back of the caravan and listening to events beyond his control or understanding going on outside. Having your point of view character not only fail to participate in the climax, but going so far as to prevent them from witnessing it is a travesty of the highest order.
Ensign Sara George...the only consolation for this character’s abysmal treatment is the fact that she is solely responsible for the ultimate success of the mission. Unfortunately, it was her curiosity about what it would feel like to be telepathically linked with a nymphomaniac that created the mission in the first place. This character, whose voluptuousness the reader is never for a moment permitted to forget, is simply tossed at plot hurdles like a battering ram. “We use the only weapon we have- Sara”(153) seems to be the motto of the entire journey. When Tram doesn’t want to bring Sara to the gathering, Sara does a dance and the whole tribe gets so aroused that they give up on the prohibition against women riding with the warriors (145). When Kirk can’t find a way to get the nullifier within three feet of Spock, Sara does a dance and the “messiah’s” mandate that all strangers be killed goes out the window.
What’s perhaps even worse is that when she is not being used to batter her way through the plot, she is actively hindering it. There is a completely gratuitous scene where she, apparently on a whim and while the rest of the crew prepares to float the caravan across a lake(which would not have been an issue in the first place if they had simply teleported down on the other side), decides to go skinny dipping. A small consolation is that all of the men in the novel are similarly victims of this type of sexual stereotype in their reactions, but that really pales in comparison to poor Ensign Sara whose sexuality causes and cures all the novel's problems.
Comments