Star Trek

The Star Trek phenomena grew slowly at first; in the beginning there was not enough general interest to keep the series alive. However, that was not due to the quality of the series but the fickleness of network television. If it is cerebral instead of physical, it is very difficult for any series to attract enough viewers to stay on the air. Furthermore, the NBC executives never really understood what they had in the original series, moving it around and cutting the budget. This combination of actions doomed the series to lower quality and eventual cancellation. A few years after the cancellation, the movement began to swell. One of the initial driving forces in the movement was the series of episode adaptations done by James Blish. The books (re)introduced Star Trek to many and helped generate interest in the next half-generation. Once the series went into syndication, it became a cultural icon, becoming one of the most watched shows in the United States and the world. In this book, Blish has developed adaptations of the following episodes of the original series: *) Who Mourns for Adonais? *) The Changeling *) The Paradise Syndrome *) Metamorphosis *) The Deadly Years *) Elaan of Troyius The adaptations are a bit longer than some of the others, a feature that makes them much better. The Star Trek episodes tell both a visual and verbal story, so it is not possible to impart the entire story in only a few pages. That reason combined with some of Blish's better writing of episode adaptations makes this one of the best of the series.

First published in 1972, these short stories are Blish's adaptations of the screenplays of various episodes from the original series. The episodes aren't sorted into books according to either chronological order or identity of screenwriter. "Who Mourns for Adonais?" (episode 33, season 2, screenplay Gilbert A. Ralston and Gene L. Coon) (Title quote is from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Adonais, an elegy on the death of the poet Keats.) On Pollux IV, the away team encounters Apollo - an alien who is the last of those known on Earth as Greek gods, who wants to reestablish the old system rather than killing himself in lonely despair as others of his kind did when humans grew away from them. Blish added a coda for this story that's *very* interesting and is consistent with the story, although he never followed it up, to my knowledge. "The Changeling" (episode 37, season 2, screenplay John Meredyth Lucas, who directed a few episodes) Not to be confused with "Charlie X". ENTERPRISE, sent to investigate the destruction of life in the Malurian system, encounters a powerful AI that appears to be the 21st-century Earth space probe Nomad, created by one Jackson Roykirk for the purpose of seeking out - not destroying - life. Mistakenly believing Kirk to be its creator, it allows the ENTERPRISE crew to interact with it (not always safely). They learn that at some point, the damaged probe encountered an alien probe, Tan Ru, with a different mission, to collect and sterilize samples; the two AIs, joining forces and repairing each other as best they could, now have a corrupted mission: to seek out and 'sterilize' life. Unfortunately, the ENTERPRISE crew lacks the firepower to combat Nomad's destructive capability, so brains rather than brawn are needed. "The Paradise Syndrome" (episode 58, season 3, screenplay Margaret Armen) Despite the title, the planet featured *isn't* afflicted with lotus-eating stagnation. This episode introduced the notion of 'the Preservers', a mysterious race who 'seeded' various planets with similar life-forms - a theory that makes a lot of observed Star Trek cultures more palatable. The planet herein is in a dangerous region, but somehow has been spared from the asteroid strikes that should have wiped out its inhabitants, a Native American-type culture who apparently have minimal technology. While checking out a Preserver artifact on the planet's surface, Kirk accidentally triggers a mechanism that causes him to suffer amnesia - and since ENTERPRISE must protect the planet from an incoming asteroid, the crew cannot delay to search for him. Unusual experience for Kirk, as his amnesia gives him a chance to try to make a less driven life for himself among the people of the planet. [For a story with some similar aspects, see "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky".] "Metamorphosis" (episode 31, season 2, screenplay Gene L. Coon) A meet-famous-person-who-vanished-mysteriously episode, in this case Zefram Cochrane, the invent

This has great adaptions of episodes from the classic TV series such as: "Who Mourns for Adonais?," "The Changeling," "The Paradise Syndrome," "Metamorphasis," "The Deadly Years," and "Elaan of Troyius." Please note that these are just the titles in the book. The titles may be different from the episode of the show, but some are the same.