laurir (06/15/82)
Some interesting details of Star Trek (r) The Wrath of Khan are explained in the book by the same name. Fortunately the powers that be discharged Alan Dean Foster, who butchered the novels for most of the recent space opera movies, and assigned the task to Vonda McIntyre, a Nebula award winner (and resident of the Pacific NorthWest). The result is well worth reading. The reason that Saavik does not have a proper Vulcan female name is that she is not a proper Vulcan. She is a half-Vulcan, half-*Romulan*, conceived in rape and raised on a Romulan colony as a half-breed untouchable. The book gives her a lot of interesting character development. Peter Preston, the young engineer who died in the first attack because he stayed at his post, was the son of Scotty's sister. When Scot appeared on the bridge with Preston in his arms, it was because the turbo-lift tubes to sick bay were jammed and he couldn't get through. Cause of death was exposure to the warp engine equivalent of freon gas from ruptured pipes. Peter was fourteen years old and had a big crush on Saavik, his tutor in n-dimensional geometries. The book purposefully sheds no light on the cause of Scotty's ailment during "shore leave", as did the dialog in the movie. My personal opinion is excessive inebriation; surely VD and the common cold will have been eliminated by then. The book presents a completely different set of enigmas surrounding Spock's death which might later be used to resurrect him. There is no "remember" mind meld with McCoy, but Saavik, who in the book is Spock's protoge, spends the night with his coffin and experiences Obi-Wan Kenobi -like twinges in the Force. She carefully plots the course for his coffin, for reasons left unexplained. Other details ... the book does a better job of making credible the science behind the Genesis wave. While the movie implies that life "just forms", in the book it's obvious that life forms in accordance with a carefully written computer program which lays out the new matrix. The reason you didn't see Chekov in the Star Trek episode which introduced Khan is because he was on the night shift at the time. The creature left Chekov's brain because McCoy injected him with something that did the job. It was the nebula, not the planet Regulus I, which was transformed by the final Genesis wave. I still have no idea why Kirk had to use a shuttle to board the Enterprise in Earth orbit again, rather than use transporters, except of course that it allowed for shots of the Enterprise model. -- Andrew Klossner