Crappy Tie-In Novels: Star Trek 'Timetrap'
Dec. 5th, 2007 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenIt used to be practically every novel I bought was a media tie-in. Since I'm loath to ever chuck out a book, I've still got tons of them... all the Bantam Star Wars EU novels, about half the New Jedi Order series, ridiculous numbers of Star Trek novels, most of the Babylon 5 novels - I've even got a couple of Doctor Who novelisations, which confuses me since I've never seen an episode of Doctor Who...
Now, I'm not embarrassed to be reading media tie-ins. The Star Wars EU has its moments, and some damn good authors wrote Star Trek novels - I'd never have heard of Barbara Hambly or Diane Duane if it wasn't for their Trek novels. Still, they do take up a lot of space, and a lot of them aren't that good. So, a few months back, I implemented a new rule: any book I re-read that doesn't have any particular redeeming value goes in a stack. Every so often, I take all the books in the stack to a second hand bookshop or opportunity shop, where some new undiscriminating reader can enjoy them - and I get more free shelf space to fill with books I actually like. Goodbye, The Crystal Star! Get out of here, Bounty Hunter Wars! Sayonara, Price of the Pheonix!
Since it's always fun to tear crap apart, I thought it'd be entertaining to write a little bit on some of these books before I consign them to oblivion - or at least, get them off my bookshelves.
Today's entry is David Dvorkin's Star Trek TOS novel "Timetrap"
Basic plot: The Enterprise is cruising space when it runs into a damaged Klingon warship. While trying to evacuate the crew, the Klingon ship disappears - with Kirk still onboard! Oh, and some redshirts, but nobody cares about them. (Seriously, they're never mentioned again. I guess it's true to the source material.)
Kirk finds himself on a Klingon starbase, and is told he's a hundred years in the future, in a time when the Klingons and Federation are allies. I assume this was more surprising before The Next Generation was made, a show set a hundred years after TOS, in a time where the Klingons and Federation are allies...
The future Klingons tell Kirk that they're 'New Klingons', a peaceful faction of Klingons who rose to power after Kirk led a fleet of them to Earth to negotiate a peace treaty. They then tell him that to preserve the timeline, he has to go back to his own time to ensure that happens. Also, they're sending a fleet back with him to play the role of the New Klingons who negotiated the peace treaty.
So they all go back in time and run into the Enterprise again. Kirk tells Spock about the New Klingons, but Spock's still skeptical. Kirk beams back to the Enterprise with one of the New Klingons (A woman, who he's fallen in love with. Of course.), at which point the shocking truth comes out! There are no New Klingons, and he never travelled in time at all! He was just being tricked by regular old Klingons after all! Wow, I didn't see that coming!
There's also a subplot about Klingons infiltrating Starfleet, but that doesn't go anywhere or impact anything important.
Now, I'm not embarrassed to be reading media tie-ins. The Star Wars EU has its moments, and some damn good authors wrote Star Trek novels - I'd never have heard of Barbara Hambly or Diane Duane if it wasn't for their Trek novels. Still, they do take up a lot of space, and a lot of them aren't that good. So, a few months back, I implemented a new rule: any book I re-read that doesn't have any particular redeeming value goes in a stack. Every so often, I take all the books in the stack to a second hand bookshop or opportunity shop, where some new undiscriminating reader can enjoy them - and I get more free shelf space to fill with books I actually like. Goodbye, The Crystal Star! Get out of here, Bounty Hunter Wars! Sayonara, Price of the Pheonix!
Since it's always fun to tear crap apart, I thought it'd be entertaining to write a little bit on some of these books before I consign them to oblivion - or at least, get them off my bookshelves.
Today's entry is David Dvorkin's Star Trek TOS novel "Timetrap"
Basic plot: The Enterprise is cruising space when it runs into a damaged Klingon warship. While trying to evacuate the crew, the Klingon ship disappears - with Kirk still onboard! Oh, and some redshirts, but nobody cares about them. (Seriously, they're never mentioned again. I guess it's true to the source material.)
Kirk finds himself on a Klingon starbase, and is told he's a hundred years in the future, in a time when the Klingons and Federation are allies. I assume this was more surprising before The Next Generation was made, a show set a hundred years after TOS, in a time where the Klingons and Federation are allies...
The future Klingons tell Kirk that they're 'New Klingons', a peaceful faction of Klingons who rose to power after Kirk led a fleet of them to Earth to negotiate a peace treaty. They then tell him that to preserve the timeline, he has to go back to his own time to ensure that happens. Also, they're sending a fleet back with him to play the role of the New Klingons who negotiated the peace treaty.
So they all go back in time and run into the Enterprise again. Kirk tells Spock about the New Klingons, but Spock's still skeptical. Kirk beams back to the Enterprise with one of the New Klingons (A woman, who he's fallen in love with. Of course.), at which point the shocking truth comes out! There are no New Klingons, and he never travelled in time at all! He was just being tricked by regular old Klingons after all! Wow, I didn't see that coming!
There's also a subplot about Klingons infiltrating Starfleet, but that doesn't go anywhere or impact anything important.
Problems: Ignoring the fact that the twist is pretty obvious, the book doesn't do much with the concept of Kirk thinking he's in the future. He never tries to get in contact with the future Federation, never asks what became of his crew, never tries to find out if Spock is still alive in the future. Not only does it make it very obvious that the 'future' Klingons are lying, since they never give anything but the vaguest details about anything, it also makes Kirk seem a bit dim, in that he seems to have no interest in trying to catch up on things.
Kirk also doesn't seem to think through the implications of the story the 'New Klingons' tell him - if they were telling the truth, their scenario would result in a predestination paradox: The New Klingons, to ensure the alliance occurs, go back in time and make the alliance with the Federation so that in the future there will be New Klingons to go back in time and ally with the Federation... and so on. But Kirk doesn't seem to realise the paradox, so again comes across as a bit dim. This might have worked if the twist had been that Kirk knew all along the Klingons were lying, and was just playing along to see what they're up to...
There's a few other minor problems: the whole book is set on the border of Tholian space - the Klingons make it look like Kirk's disappeared in an interspace phase, like in "The Tholian Web", to cover up their abduction of him. But, oddly, the Tholians never shop up to investiate all the Klingon ships wandering around their border. A shame, I've always liked the Tholians. Also, Kirk's Klingon girlfriend... well, to call her two dimensional is crediting her with two dimensions too many. Kirk's entire attraction to her seems to be "She's female."
But all these problems are overshadowed by the main flaw of this book: the portrayal of the Klingons. Basically, the 'New Klingons' are exposed because - according to this book - to behave peacefully, Klingons have to constantly take special drugs that keep them peaceful. Kirk's Klingon girlfriend is caught taking the same drugs that a captured Klingon spy was taking, and deprived of them reverts to an aggressive savage.
I have to ask, has the author ever seen a Klingon episode of Star Trek? Sure, he's writing before TNG premiered - but TOS Klingons weren't implacable savages either. "Errand of Mercy" sees Kor and Kirk forced to recognise their similarities, as they both insist to the Organians that they have the right to make war with each other, no matter the cost. Kang, in "Day of the Dove", is willing to cooperate with the Enterprise to stop the alien entity trying to force them to fight. It is not Koloth's crew in "The Trouble with Tribbles" that throws the first punch.
At the end of this novel, Kirk muses that "They'll probably never understand how the minds of free men work..." Apparently in Dvorkin's version of Star Trek, aliens don't exist to hold a mirror to humanity, to act as alegories for aspects of our own culture and society. No, in his version, aliens exist as the unreasoning other, who cannot be negotated with, cannot be integrated into society, who exist only to be defeated by the white men heroes. Warfare, conquest, and brutality aren't something 'we' do - it's something 'they' do - those aliens, those others, those people over there. We're just fighting to defend ourselves from those wily orientals communists Klingons!
Well, that's not the Star Trek - or the Captain Kirk - I enjoy. And that, more than any of the other flaws in this novel, is why Timetrap isn't staying on my bookshelves.
Kirk also doesn't seem to think through the implications of the story the 'New Klingons' tell him - if they were telling the truth, their scenario would result in a predestination paradox: The New Klingons, to ensure the alliance occurs, go back in time and make the alliance with the Federation so that in the future there will be New Klingons to go back in time and ally with the Federation... and so on. But Kirk doesn't seem to realise the paradox, so again comes across as a bit dim. This might have worked if the twist had been that Kirk knew all along the Klingons were lying, and was just playing along to see what they're up to...
There's a few other minor problems: the whole book is set on the border of Tholian space - the Klingons make it look like Kirk's disappeared in an interspace phase, like in "The Tholian Web", to cover up their abduction of him. But, oddly, the Tholians never shop up to investiate all the Klingon ships wandering around their border. A shame, I've always liked the Tholians. Also, Kirk's Klingon girlfriend... well, to call her two dimensional is crediting her with two dimensions too many. Kirk's entire attraction to her seems to be "She's female."
But all these problems are overshadowed by the main flaw of this book: the portrayal of the Klingons. Basically, the 'New Klingons' are exposed because - according to this book - to behave peacefully, Klingons have to constantly take special drugs that keep them peaceful. Kirk's Klingon girlfriend is caught taking the same drugs that a captured Klingon spy was taking, and deprived of them reverts to an aggressive savage.
I have to ask, has the author ever seen a Klingon episode of Star Trek? Sure, he's writing before TNG premiered - but TOS Klingons weren't implacable savages either. "Errand of Mercy" sees Kor and Kirk forced to recognise their similarities, as they both insist to the Organians that they have the right to make war with each other, no matter the cost. Kang, in "Day of the Dove", is willing to cooperate with the Enterprise to stop the alien entity trying to force them to fight. It is not Koloth's crew in "The Trouble with Tribbles" that throws the first punch.
At the end of this novel, Kirk muses that "They'll probably never understand how the minds of free men work..." Apparently in Dvorkin's version of Star Trek, aliens don't exist to hold a mirror to humanity, to act as alegories for aspects of our own culture and society. No, in his version, aliens exist as the unreasoning other, who cannot be negotated with, cannot be integrated into society, who exist only to be defeated by the white men heroes. Warfare, conquest, and brutality aren't something 'we' do - it's something 'they' do - those aliens, those others, those people over there. We're just fighting to defend ourselves from those wily orientals communists Klingons!
Well, that's not the Star Trek - or the Captain Kirk - I enjoy. And that, more than any of the other flaws in this novel, is why Timetrap isn't staying on my bookshelves.