Star Trek Log Eight

This book, which seems to be multiple episodes of the cartoon show tied together by the author, is what I believe is the best of the Star Trek Log series. I suggest this for any fan of Star Trek - it's well paced and has some good ideas in it.

The "Star Trek Log..." series is a series of adaptations of episodes from the animated Star Trek series; through volume six, each book had contained three separate, if related, episodes, each with its own title and occupying roughly a third of the book. In volume seven, this pattern changed slightly; it was possible to see three distinct sections to the story, but only one episode title was given, and it was treated as one continuous story. That pattern was continued in volume eight, but the story was good enough that I find I don't object as strenuously. For what it's worth, the episode title given is "The Eye Of The Beholder", and the book is unquestionably the best of the series so far. I have only one quibble with it, which is that in the second third of the book, the Enterprise crew meet a race of beings whose biology is based on silicon, rather than carbon, and are shocked that such a thing is possible. As any connoisseur of the original Star Trek television show can tell you, they met such a creature in the episode "Devil In The Dark", and were surprised to find such a creature possible. If that episode predated the events in this story, they should not have been so surprised at the concept here; conversely, if the events here supposedly predate those in that episode, they should have been less surprised then. In either case, we have a case of a failure of internal consistency.This is a small quibble, however, as is the fact that in the original series, whenever they attempted to leave the confines of our galaxy, they met with a powerful forcefield ("Where No Man Has Gone Before", "Is There In Truth No Beauty"), yet in this story, they are able to do so easily, without incident. Perhaps the forcefield does not extend all the way around the galaxy, but is a comparatively "local" phenomenon. In any case, the existence of such a field is implausible enough that I'm more inclined to pick nits with the original series stories than I am with the story in this book.In the first part of this story, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are captured by aliens with the appearance of elephant-sized slugs (more or less) who are sufficiently more intelligent than humans that it takes a good bit of persuasion to convince them that humans (or even vulcans) are sentient enough not to be kept as zoo specimens. Later, the aforementioned silicon-based life forms are encountered, followed by a life form ranging upward from continent-sized that roams the wilds of the space between galaxies.The story is fast-moving, well thought out (unlike many of the stories in this series) and maintains the characterizations of the known characters well. It is interesting and spurs some worthwhile philosophical thoughts (the concept of Kirk & co being seen as merely interesting zoo specimens, for instance) and is generally well worth reading.