I like the Star Trek movies (some more than others), but I would have liked them more if they had hewed closer to the novelizations, which delved deeper into the characterizations and backstories of Sulu, Scott, Saavik, etc. Unique among them is the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture the only one written by by Gene Roddenberry (who often relied on footnotes to expand upon plot points). I've got a wild hair to re-read that one, and I may go beyond that, we'll see. In the meantime, I intend to use this thread as a repository for notes on plot points someone familiar only with the movies would have been unaware of.
Chapter One
As was the custom in Starfleet -- indeed, it was a requirement -- [Kirk] had been implanted with a senceiver on receiving his first command. It was the ultimate signal device, reserved for use in only the gravest of emergencies -- and this was only the second time that Starfleet Command had ever intruded into his mind in this fashion.*
*Editor's note: At the time of these events, Starfleet Command's senceiver implants were still being kept secret. Undoubtedly, the admiralty was concerned that the public might mistakenly believe them to be some sort of mind-control device. Clearly, public respect for Starfleet would have been seriously imperiled by anything reminiscent of the horrors that grew out of the politicalizing of behavior-contro implants and which led to the bloody Mind control Revolts of 2043-47.
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But I can't recall off hand anyone ever saying when the FIRST instance was.
Back when I used to care about Star Trek, I actually read the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I also appreciated how the novelization went beyond what was shown on screen. I remember one bit where Spock was perturbed that he overheard a couple of crewmembers hooking up; the cabin walls on the S.S. Enterprise apparently weren't soundproofed enough to overcome sensitive Vulcan hearing. The book also helped me understand why the crew was so exercised about Ilia coming aboard; apparently, her people have a scent that makes everyone around become insanely horny.
Are novelizations still a thing? Back when the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was published, we didn't have widely available movie channels like HBO, nobody had thought of streaming, and even video stores were in their infancy. So novelizations came about, an additional way to enjoy the story after the movie had completed its theatrical run and before it was bowdlerized for network television.
The better novelizations were like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, expanding on the story. Mediocre ones, like the one of one of my favorite films, ... And Justice for All, just recounted what happened in the script in a "first this happened, then that happened" kind of way. One of the best ones I read was Fort Apache, The Bronx, based on the movie starring Paul Newman as a burned out NYPD patrolman with a pre-Wiseguy Ken Wahl as his wide-eyed rookie partner, also starring Ed Asner as the precinct commander; Danny Aiello as a lazy, crooked cop; and Pam Grier as a drugged-out hooker randomly wandering around the neighborhood who murdered two rookies in their patrol car --
... a mystery that is never solved, as she herself is killed without anyone learning what she did. The novelization of Fort Apache, The Bronx read like an actual novel. You would be forgiven for thinking writer Heywood Gould wrote the novel first and then a studio optioned it for a film.
I've also read some of the novelizations James Blish wrote based on Star Trek TV episodes, and one or two of the ones Alan Dean Foster wrote from the Star Trek: The Animated Series episodes (including one that was a sequel to "Amok Time"), but that was so long ago I barely remember them. I expect the discussion will mention those.
But I can't recall off hand anyone ever saying when the FIRST instance was.
I think that was something Gene Roddenberry just threw out there.
I remember one bit where Spock was perturbed that he overheard a couple of crewmembers hooking up
I don't remember that, and I haven't gotten to the part where Spock is even aboard yet, but I will keep an eye out.
The book also helped me understand why the crew was so exercised about Ilia coming aboard
That's from Chapter Nine:
"Kirk knew that the compelling attraction which Deltans exercised on anyone of the opposite sex went further than mere physical appearance; it was, literally, chemistry. Subliminal scents called pheremones were released by both Deltan males and females, triggering hormonal responses in most humanoid life forms of the opposite sex. It was especially troubling to humans since the scents were outside their normal olfactory range -- just as a dog whistle is outside human hearing range. But the effects of these Deltan pheremones were still felt by them, and an unsuspecting human was likelyto find himself in considerable sexual excitement without understanding why. It could be tropublesome aboard a vessel, but it was usually worth since Deltans were superb navigatiors."
Roddenberry goes on to describe Sulu's errection in some detail, but explains that the effect would lessen considerably once Ilia became accustomed to her surroundings. "Her secreting pheremones now was merely an automatic reaction to the presence of unfamiliar males." Come to think of it, this was probably the first time I read the word "pheremones" in context.
Are novelizations still a thing?
Oh, heavens no! I used to read quite a few of them while waiting for movies not to be "Held Over" in St. Louis cinemas. I agree that some are good and some are not. [I recently posted my thoughts on the three "Star Wars" novelizations HERE (pp. 174-175).] The novelization of Rocky was written by Julia Sorel, but Rocky II was written first person from Rocky's POV by Sylvester Stallone and was particularly good.
I've also read... one or two of the ones Alan Dean Foster wrote from the Star Trek: The Animated Series episodes...
I've got a whole thread on those HERE, which I continue to update from time-to-time.
...(including one that was a sequel to "Amok Time"), but that was so long ago I barely remember them.
The episode you're thinking of is "Yesteryear," which is a sequel (of sorts) to "City of the Edge of Forever" and/or "Journey to Babel."
Jeff of Earth-J said:
See? I said I barely remember it!
Chapter Two
Jim! Good-bye my... t'hy'la.* This is the last time I will permit myself to think of you or even your name again.
*Editor's note: The human concept of friend is most nearly duplicated in Vulcan thought by the term t'hy'la, which can also mean brother and lover. Spock's recollection (from which this chapter has drawn) is that it was a most difficult moment for him since since he did indeed consider Kirk to have become his brother. However, because t'hy'la can be used to mean lover, and since Kirk and Spock's friendship was unusually close, this has led to some speculation over whether they had actually indeed become lovers. At our request, Admiral Kirk supplied the following comment on this subject:
"I was never aware of this lovers rumor, although I have been told that Spock encountered it several times. Apparently he had always dismissed it with his characteristic lifting of his right eyebrow which usually connoted some combination of surprise, disbelief, and/or annoyance. As for myself, although I have no moral or other objections to physical love in any of its many Earthly, alien, and mixed forms, I have always found my best gratification in that creature woman. Also, I would dislike being thought of as so foolish that I would select a love partner who came into sexual heat only once every seven years."
Roddenberry is riffing here on a certain small but very real segment of the fan community. One of my former roommates owned a self-published [not by him] collection of gay Star Trek fan-fic. I must admit I coverted that book. It was a hoot.
I remember being a little weirded out by that bit when I was a kid. (I was 16.) "That creature woman" sounded odd to me, like a "woman" was something not human to Kirk.
While I've always thought of Kirk and Spock more like family (brothers) than just friends, I never thought of them as potential lovers. Not that I have anything against anyone wanting to persue a same gender relationship, just that I've never perceived the Captain and his First Officer in that light.
However, I was a bit taken aback at Kirk's comments concerning Spock and Pon Farr. It still sounds like a slight against Vulcans to me, especially considering that it has since been established that while a Vulcan MUST mate once every seven years, there is nothing to prevent them from pursuing physical relations with another being the rest of the time.
Part of the reason I stopped caring about Star Trek was that it came across as non-stop slights against Vulcans to me. I couldn't get through any given episode without someone nagging Spock about ignoring his human side. Admittedly, I have not seen them all (not even the ones featuring Khan or Harry Mudd), so maybe they laid off that jazz some of the time.
And I found McCoy's "you inhuman, green-blooded half-breed" rants particularly grating. Three hundred years into the future, a supposed utopia of brotherhood and sisterhood, and we still have bigots from Atlanta? No thanks.
Chapter Three
"Kirk had shuttled immediately across the Med basin to the massive old hydroelectric complex at Gibraltar... He was standing at the top of the massive ramparts which towered high above Gibraltar. Well over twenty kilometers away he could see identical ramparts att the Africa side, and between them the mighty wall separating the atlantic Ocean from what had once been the Mediterranean Sea... the fabled Mediterranean Sea was now hardly more than a long, slender lake which trailed off into the hazy blue distance in the direction from which he had just come. He wondered if the Mediterranean Alliance had done the right thing in so drastically altering the character of this old sea and the region surrounding it. The Mediterranean had played a siginificant role in humanity's climb to civilization -- did humanity really have the right to meddle to this extent with their past and the nature of planet Earth? As alwaysm, Kirk was forced to admit that the answer was, of course, yes.... the skillful engineered climate alterations had not only made the entire Med Basin ito a virtual garden, it had profoundly improved the climate and the character of the entire northern half of Africa -- and this had canributed greatly to that continent's having become an island of human progress and tranquility during the savagery which had wracked much of the rest of the world during the twenty-first century."
Vice Admiral Lori Ciani plays a much larger role in the novelization than she did on screen. In the movie, she was the woman who died alongside Commander Sonak in the transporter acciddent, but in the book she was the zeno-psychologist in charge of Starfleet Command's relaationships with non-human species, and also Admiral Nogura's personal representative to the new human groups on Earth. She also had a much closer relationship with Kirk than was shown in the movie.
"They had lived the simple and basic one-year arrangement together -- but those months had been memorable ones. He had not been aware, at least not consciously, that during that time she had been something of a surrogate Enterprise to him."
Chapter Four
"Commanding Admiral Heihachiro Nogura." I don't recall Nogura's first name ever being mentioned. Kirk's meeting with Nogura, left out of the movie, is presented in its entierty here.
"... in this world where so much of the clutter of our lives has been placed underground. Just under two hours ago, Kirk had taken the tube from Gibraltar to Los Angeles Island..."
"Alcatraz Children's Park..."
"The new humans among Earth's population had be come increasingly critical of Starfleet's cost, of Starfleet's aims, and of its value."
Chapter Six
"Kirk remembered hearing that Chekov had recently returned from weapons-defense command school."
Chapter Seven
"...these engines were six times as powerful as anything ever carried into space before"
Chapter Eight
"He could not recall that any starship captain had ever assembled a full crew as he planned to do. There would not have been adequate space for it in earlier design vessels, anyway... the great mulitlevel Rec Deck, the largest single interior ever designed into a starship."
Chapter Ten
"Not even the memory of his own famous father, Commodore Matt Decker, could change the fact that Kirk was likely the finest ship commander in Starfleet's history"
(It is widely known among fans that Captain Willard Decker is the son of Commodore Matt Decker, but that point is not made in the film; it is made explicit here.)
Chapter Eleven
MEDICAL PERSCAN DEVICE:
"The medical perscan device had become routine in starships -- it was a tiny scanner-tranceiverwhich was now worn by all crew members, permitting the body's vital signs to be monitored from sickbay at all times. (In the new full dress and duty uniforms, it was part of the belt ornamentthis center-abdomen position being the ideal location for a medical scanner.) This information, of course, was kept as confidential as all other medical records,* but it did have the considerable advantage of providing the ship's medical department with a continuous, all-conditions physical satus report on everyone aboard the starship."
*The perscan device transmits its readings code-scrambled and directly into the medical computer, where a previously authorized voiceprint is necessary for any unscrambled readout. Any such data concerning the ship's captain can be obtained only by the ship's doctor.
WHY McCOY LEFT STARFLEET:
"after all, McCoy's resignation from the service had concerned this very subject. Upon learning that Admiral's stars were to be offered to Kirk, McCoy had protested vehemently and had secured the backing of other prominent medical officers in the fight. It was not that McCoy had any objection to his friend being promoted and honored -- his was a medical protest over the fact that Kirk's psychological profiles were being ignored by the Admiralty in offering the promotion. When McCoy's protests were neglected by Nogura, callously rejected in McCoy's opinion, he had angrilly resigned from Starfleet. McCoy had grown to know Kirk too well to have any hopes that he could adjust at this point in his life to an Earthbound existance -- or for that matter to any existance that did not offer at least some challenges and freedoms that Kirk had known in starship command."
TIES TO ARTHUR C. CLARKE? (...OR TO THE KREE EMPIRE?):
The moon Io had held some shocks for the first Earth scientists to land there, although not nearly as shattering as the earlier discovery that Earth's own moon had once served as a base for space voyagers (their identity still a mystery) who had conducted genetic experiments with Earth's early life forms a million or more years before human history had begun."
WARP SPEED EXPLAINED:
"Almost a century ago, the first successful quantum leap of a starship into warp drive made hash of all those theories based on too narrow or unimaginative interpretation of Einstein's work. That first starship and those aboard her did not become pure energy. What happened, of course, was that when the starship reached the threshold of light speed, it also reached that boundry between 'normal' space and hyperspace. That boundry was time, making it appear to those first travelers into hyperspace that the universe around their starship had suddenly begun to shrink in size. Beginning with warp one and increasing geometrically, the higher the warp speed the 'smaller' the uiniverse and the closer together the points within it become."
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