Star Trek the New Voyages #2

The first story is written by Nichelle Nichols, better known as Uhura. Titled "Surprise," the story is minor trifle about Uhura and other crew members attempting to throw Captain Kirk a surprise birthday party. The characters are not well portrayed here, although a certain camaraderie among the crew is observed.

The second story is "Snake Pit!" by Connie Faddis, and focuses on Christine Chapel being thrown into a situation (involving a snake pit, of course) where she must rescue an unconcious Captain Kirk from poisonous snakes on a hostile planet. The story itself is interesting, but involves Chapel acting significantly out of character. Another character acting in this position would have made for a more believable story.

"The Patient Parasites" by Russell Bates, who wrote on of the animated episodes, is a script that was turned down for that series, but makes for an interesting study on what a TV script looks like. The story itself works as well, involving an encounter with a machine built by an alien race, with a technology far beyond our own. It is unfortunate that the story echoes many similar ones in the original TV show, but there is some new ground here.

"In the Maze" by Jennifer Guttridge (also represented in the first collection) involves a sighting of a castle on a world where such technology should not exist. While investigating, Kirk, Spock and McCoy enter the door only to be transported to another place entirely, where Kirk is held captive and Spock and McCoy undergo a series of trials that seem designed to ellicit a response. The resolution, as with Guttridge's story in the first book, involves contact with a very alien species.

"Cave-In" by Jane Peyton is an interesting prose piece of dialogue between Spock and another character (McCoy?) while trapped together after a cave-in (of course). The piece is short, and not particularly shocking, but the form is an interesting departure for Star Trek and may interest readers on that count.

"Marginal Existence" by Connie Faddis is a quite short story about a planet where the Enterprise crew find a number of "sleepers," hooked up to large numbers of IV tubes (a bit outdated there) which continually pump drugs into them. The real science here is very lacking, but the idea proposed is an interesting one, about a society that becomes dependent on such injections.

"The Procrustean Petard" by Marshak and Culbreath is another of their riffs on the "alpha male" theme, this time as the Enterprise comes into contact with a society where the dominant (alpha) male is given an extra male chromosome, and the other crew members are sex-changed. So, Kirk and McCoy become women, while Uhura becomes a man, for instance. This story takes a look at male and female roles in a way that often seemed important in the 1970s, but seems awfully dated now. Like much of these authors' work.

"The Sleeping God" by Jesco von Puttkamer is an interesting story by an actual NASA rocket scientist, and onetime German science fiction writer, his first fiction work in English. The plot involves a mutant, with vast mental powers, revived from suspended animation to tackle a problem far too big for a normal starship, and thus quite a problem indeed, involving a sentient computer from another plane of existence, attempting to take over this plane. Again, this may be Star Trek's (or at least Gene Roddenberry's) favorite plot, but it is handled well here, and this is certainly the volume's best story, even if it actually uses the Enterprise crew only in a limited way.

Also included are two poems, "Elegy for Charlie" and "Soliloquy." The book is interesting, but again, not as good as the first.

SURPRISE!

Written by: Nichelle Nichols, with Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath

Rating: * */ * * * * *

A fun little story about Kirk's birthday, that doesn't really offer anything interesting.

SNAKE PIT

Written by: Connie Faddis

Rating: * / * * * * *

A plotless character story with extremely bad characterization. Need I say more?

THE PATIENT PARASITES

Written by: Russel Bates

Rating: * / * * * * *

An original script for the animated star trek series, that was turned down with a good reason. The writer stated in his introduction that the reasons behind the rejections didn't concern the quality of the story, but, in my opinion, they should have.

The plot is 100 per cent scince fiction cliché, and doesn't contain any original, thought provoking, or entertaining aspects. It was hard to believe the writer was part of the team behind "How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth", one of the very best episodes of the animated series that earned an Emmy for the show.

IN THE MAZE

Written by: Jennifer Guttridge

Rating: * */ * * * * *

Good characterization doesn't save this predictable and utterly unoriginal piece of writing

CAVE-IN

Written by: Jane Payton

Rating: */ * * * * *

A semi-artistic little "talking heads" dialoque that anyone could write.

MARGINAL EXISTANCE

Written by: Connie Faddis

Rating: */ * * * * *

Based on a very promising concept, but is executed poorly.

THE PROCRUSTEAN PETARD

Written by: Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath

Rating: */ * * * * *

Imagine Spock with a YY-chromosome syndrome, and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise undergoing a sex-change operation.

A bad fan fiction story attempting to be a parody?

Unfortunately it's possibly the worst ever officially published star trek story.

It's a story that has a strong message: Women are weak, men are intelligent and strong. I couldn't believe it was written in the 20th century by two women. All female-turned-male officers notice that they are many times better than they were before, and the male-turned-female officers notice that they can't do anything anymore, repeating again and again that women shouldn't have important positions in starfleet.

The plot is simplistic, and the reader knows the solution to the problem long before the characters do.

Definitely outdated by now, if it wasn't then.

THE SLEEPING GOD

Written by: Jesco Von Puttkamer

Rating: * */ * * * * *

An ambtious story stumbles miserably on horrible characterization, bad pacing and unintended comedy.

ELEGY FOR CHARLIE

Written by: Antonia Vallario

Rating: */ * * * * *

A bad poem.

SOLILOGUY

Written by: Marguerite B. Thompson

Rating: */ * * * * *

A bad poem.

I'll have to mention that there was a truly good epiloque in the end by Nichelle Nichols, wich made the anthology look much more dignified than the stories permit.