So here's a weird progression, 'Star Trek the motion picture a novel' is a Gene Roddenberry written book based on a screenplay by Alan Dean Foster and Harold Livingstone who's script were based off the original Gene Roddenberry TV show.
Creating this weird circular progression that comes back on itself.
It doesn't affect the quality of the book I just thought it's interesting. Anyways we have here an oddball in Star Trek written literature. As it's actually written by Gene Roddenberry who wasn't known for writing much Star Trek.
I could be wrong, but I believe this to be his only Star Trek novel.
With all that is Gene roddenberry's Star Trek novel adaptation of a film any good?
Well it's okay, it adapts the story of the film surprisingly well and if you've seen the movie that it's really easy to visualize everything.
That could be considered a negative though, if you haven't seen the Motion Picture film than the book might come off as incredibly dis interesting and lackluster.
As a lot of it depends on your internal view of the special effects of the movie.
We get plenty of monologues about the surroundings of the Starship Enterprise and the spaceship it will eventually spend the vast amount of its own time within. A lot of detailed colour analysis and altering shapes are being expressed to us.
You might think that a book would be able to rely more on character involvement as we can get the internal monologues of everyone within the story.
But with the exception of Captain Kirk we don't really get any of that. We have a couple of moments of Spock's inward thoughts as he tries to make sense of this weird alien being or of his own Humanity of which he's missed placed throughout the years.
But otherwise everyone else is about as well developed here as they were in the film. So if you were expecting to get a lot of Scotty and Chekov backstory then you might want to look for a different book.
And some of Kirk's internal monologue try to make him seem a little nicer than he really was. Half of my amusement from the original film was how much of a jerk Captain Kirk was in the first half of the movie. He stepped over people he screwed up Federation procedures and nearly got his entire ship destroyed because of his own arrogance all in the name of reclaiming a lost Glory from his past. And unfortunately you just don't get that with the book. Because his internal monologue makes it out that he's really upset about what he's doing and then he starts to consider himself problematic when dealing with former Captain Decker. Where is in the movie he's just being an arrogant jerk. Pushing the guy around and asserting himself as the new captain simply because he wants to be.
However it might be better off that we don't get anyone else's internal thoughts, as the ones we get with Captain Kirk are kind of odd.
There's a lot in the book that Captain Kirk thinks about that wasn't expressed in the movie.
Such as his opinions towards certain high-ranking members of Starfleet or even how he perceives his friendship with Spock* and his whole mindset towards various women is a bit unsettling.
To such a point that I was wondering if Gene Roddenberry had a problem or two.
I know there's an easy joke there;
''The inventor of Star Trek as awkward writings about women! That's unheard of.''
This does Express to me theimportance of the actors within the Star Trek show. Just looking at Captain Kirk as an idea within Roddenberry's head he's a very different guy from how William Shatner played him.
Say what you will about William Shatner but he has a very unique way of playing a character and his overall body language and facial features can turn ordinarily weird, silly or even creepy lines into exciting, interesting and understanding lines. Which is a great contrast to Leonard Nimoy Spock who's so Played Down and basic.
All that atmosphere and good actor chemistry just isn't present in the book. And that's not a problem in itself if you've already seen the film or if you're a fan of Star Trek to begin with you can fill in the blanks. But if you know nothing about Star Trek and you just read this random book you might think these characters were nuts or at the very least socially awkward.
So in an odd way as an adaptation of a movie goes it's technically a decent novel but as a stand-alone book it's a bit lacking.
Whatever problems you have in the original Star Trek movie transfer over here as well. The only part that works out better are some of the awkward transition scene from the film's where you wonder ''Why in God's name did they do that to begin with.'' Such as the Wormhole scene involving untested warp drives that nearly destroyed the entire ship.
In the book it's a couple of paragraphs and then we move on our way. Where is in the movie it's this weird slow motion events that really comes out of left field.
I spent a lot of time ranting about all these little problems I had in the book, even though I had no real issue with it at all. Overall I found it enjoyable enough and I got through reading it in a week and a half. Which is about Lightspeed for me. The only problem is that talking about it here just isn't worth it. Whenever I like about the book I also like about the movie. So my opinions can be found Elsewhere on that.
There's this monologue about medical centres on all of the staff of the Federation and how their Vital Signs and other information can be sent to Medical computers throughout the day to ensure that everybody remains healthy and mentally stable while on space flight. But it becomes problematic when you have a scene later on in the book where Spock knocks a guy out so we can sneak into a pod to escape the ship and nothing about that previous scene was brought up.
If all this information is backed up on computers then why wasn't the Enterprise immediately alerted to an unconscious guard?
And for that matter what about Generations?
There are so many people in that show who just fall down or die from some weird disease or whose vital signs are getting screwed up by a pollen in the air.
You think all those medical computers would start reporting on that stuff immediately especially several years into the future where the technology gets even better. Obviously it's not a real problem as it's not addressed in the movie nor the show. But it is something that exist in this book.
There's this weird little promo at the beginning of the book where Gene Roddenberry is writing from the perspective of a novelist within the Star Trek universe and that everything he says and knows came from the mouths of Captain Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise crew. And it's this whole weird thing where he's pretty much writing himself into the story but he still the author of said story, and I thought they might go somewhere fun with that maybe at the end of the book where he's talking to Kirk again and trying to get the real ideas of what happened in the story. Especially because we can compare it to the movie which I would guess is the real-life occurrence of the story. But the whole thing gets droped. So I don't know why they bothered with it to begin with. Maybe Gene had an idea and then just decided ''nah it's not worth it.''
*They couldn't just write a heartfelt scene in the book. Where Spock is about to lose his humanity and become one with his Vulcan self in this weird logic ritual that'll essentially make him robotic in nature. He's about to go through with it he has this last fleeting memory of Captain Kirk who he considers to be his 'T'hy'la'.
A Vulcan word for friend.
And it's a really nice heartfelt little scene. But they put an asterisk there to go on this whole big interlude about how Kirk and Spock are totally just friends and there's nothing sexual in nature ''not that there's anything wrong with that. says Kirk'' that's literally how they wrote it in the story.
But I just dislike that you have to have it at all.
You can't have two male characters be close friends without them having some sort of romantic chemistry.
It's a problem that always pops up in stories like this, and now we're seeing it with a lot of women too.
Nobody's allowed to be close friends, everyone must be distance less they have some sort of sex desire for each other.
Rant over.
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