Reviews

In 1967, James Blish was contracted to narrativize various episodes of the 1966 Star Trek television series, launching a small effort to bring Star Trek from screen to page. Blish agreed, despite his dislike for tie-in novels, since at least the money was good. Quite famously, though, Blish had never seen the series; instead of basing the first several of his novelization efforts on the actual television series, he wrote from early draft scripts provided to him by Desilu productions.

This first compendium novel features episodes "Charlie's Law" ("Charlie X," ep. 1x02), "Dagger of the Mind" (ep. 1x09), "The Unreal McCoy" ("The Man Trap," ep. 1x01), "Balance of Terror" (ep. 1x14), "The Naked Time" (ep. 1x04), "Miri" (ep. 1x08), and "The Conscience of the King" (ep. 1x13). Because the episodes of this volume is based on early drafts of the series, the discrepancies between what is written on the page and what appears on the screen supply an interesting insight to the production of the show, as well as to the development of each of the show's principle characters through the first season.

Unfortunately, it's also clear that Blish really just did not care to do much more than what the scripts do. His prose, as a result, is a stripped down version of the show, offering heavy dialogue and virtually no other development. As a supplementary guide to the show itself, it's an interesting diversion. As a proper novel, or even short stories, in its own right, it downright fails to establish a convincing character arc for many of the main characters. It retains some of the philosophical brilliance of the show, but only because it's based on scripts that were already working toward that end.

Fans of Star Trek might enjoy the insight this book provides to the early drafts of the show, but this volume is hardly cohesive and offers little to those who had never seen the show before. The book essentially serves as long-form summaries of the show's earlier episodes, and while that can sometimes serve a purpose, it does nothing to open Star Trek up to its utopian potential.