Book Review: Collision Course
Posted on | April 27, 2010 | No Comments
Collision Course (Star Trek Academy)
William Shatner, Judith Reeves-Stevens, Garfield Reeves-Stevens
http://www.williamshatner.com
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Now, I know what you’re thinking, but William Shatner is funny. You can’t say he isn’t. Have you seen Boston Legal? Shatner reading Palin’s poetry on Conan O’Brian’s show? Yeah. I haven’t read his autobiographies, but I’m informed they are hilarious. Intentionally! So I started reading this book with fairly high expectations.
The story follows young Kirk and young Spock’s first adventure together, back when they were both teenagers in San Francisco, Spock staying at the Vulcan embassy and Kirk living with his brother doing who-knows-what for a living. The two brothers are on the lam from their father, who wants them back on the farm, while Spock is having raging fights with his father. Vulcan fights, of course, which means they politely voice doubts regarding the soundness of each other’s logic.
The way the book opens up can only be summed up as: fangirl-bait. It also makes it seem highly likely that J.J. Abrams, the director of the recent Star Trek reboot film, or the script-writers Robert Orci & co., have read this book. In Chapter 1, Kirk steals a car. In Chapter 2, Spock visits a strip joints. Few more chapters in and they’ve started a barfight and end up exchanging their names at the back of a police car. Oh and Spock has long flowing hair.
Now, my uncritical fangirl mind is full of glee. It’s like a smorgasbord of delight. More delights follow, though the mood is sort of brought down by constant flashblacks to the Tarsus IV massacre and, you know, piles of dead children. It turns out that the reason Kirk hates Starfleet (!) and is living a life of dubious morals in San Fran instead of working at the family farm is PTSD. The reason his brother Sam is doing the same is that he’s a symbol of human weakness on a greater scale than a hero like Kirk can be allowed to be – drug-addicted and bumbling, apparently unable to get off his ass to fix his life, depending on Kirk even for feeding the fish. For Kirk, the real story turns out to be getting back on his feet, so to speak, through adventure, heroics and joining the military. For Spock, it’s a process of liberating himself from a confined life of an ambassador’s son and his father’s stern influence via – well, adventure, heroics and joining the military. And crime. Let’s not forget the few dozen laws they break to get their way. But that’s just how these guys do it. (Sam manages it via fish, by the way.)
In the end, though, the novel failed to deliver its promise, even for a fangirl. I mean, I never went into it expecting high art. It’s a Star Trek novel, which can be all sorts of things, but which mostly boil down into sci-fi adventure. That’s what I got! There was something in the way it was written, in how little I took it seriously, that even the massacre seemed like light reading. It’s probably only so, though, because I never had to live through such atrocity in real life. It could have been awesome, entertaining, high-flying, legendary sort of sci-fi adventure, though, such as Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Warrior’s Apprentice was, but nope. It’s okay. We can’t all be LMB. It was a fairly entertaining novel, and kind of just worth it for the police car anecdote and the occasionally hilarious Vulcan/human interaction.
A few more observations:
- Kirk’s girlfriend Elissa is coded as uptight but a good person. The bad guy Griffyn’s two evil girlfriends, however, are coded as H-O-T-T. I’m just saying I notice.
- Elissa gets points for dumping Kirk’s ass by the end of the book.
- Surprisingly little homoerotic subtext, but maybe I was just hoping for more from the raging Kirk/Spock ‘shipper Shatner.
- Kirk reverses the “show some leg” trope by seducing one of the evil girlfriends. Oh Kirk.
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