A review by octavia_cade
Star Trek 6 by James Blish

2.0

Blish does his best as always, but the episodes of Star Trek he adapts in this volume are indifferent at best - I remember watching those episodes and being largely unmoved, so I'm disinclined to make him shoulder the blame here. "The Apple" is particularly dire, with its magic moving village (initially 17 kilometres distant, shifting to a few thousand metres away the next time they mention it). Both "The Savage Curtain" and "The Cloud Minders" had elements that I enjoyed when watching (Surak and Vanna, for instance) but one successful element does not a successful episode make, and the compelling gravitas of Surak doesn't really come across in the adaptation. I can't help but think that a sub-par episode might make an average novel, if that novel were allowed to really explore the issues at hand, but it doesn't make for particularly good short stories.