Alan Dean Foster’s adept Adaptation of the 2009 Film hits Mass Market Paperback finally
By Carl Lawrence
Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 Stars
This is a broad overview of Alan Dean Foster’s Novel Adaptation of last year’s Star Trek movie in which the focus will be how well the book matches up to the film, or deviates from it, and also takes into account statements related to plot points made by screenwriter Roberto Orci just after the release of the film to theaters last year. (Orci and co-writer Alex Kurtzman wrote the screenplay for the 2009 film and share writing credit for the novel adaptation as well.)
There are a few noteworthy discrepancies that quickly caught my attention while reading this book that I shall cite.
To help illustrate my initial point, I would ask that you first read the following excerpt from the Foster novelization . . .
The fence was not particularly high, but it was strongly charged. The invisible energy beams that hummed through the traditional metal latticework and rose higher than his head could not be interdicted without setting off multiple alarms. Vertically aimed beams meant that a would-be intruder could not simply soar over it. Kirk made no attempt to do so. Instead, he pulled up just outside the perimeter. Within, wrapped in a web of metal and composite scaffolding, a starship was under construction.
Its presence was no secret. Starfleet had chosen central Iowa as the site of this particular construction yard not only because of its proximity to Mississippi shipping and the industrial-commercial hubs of the Midwest but because if something blew, few people outside the yard itself would be at risk. There was ample room to work, plenty of territory for subsidiary firms and support industries to set up shop, and the ground was flat and tectonically stable.
(Pages 55, trade paperback edition)
I felt it necessary to provide that excerpt so you the reader can more fully appreciate the significance of what isn’t there. More specifically, Roberto Orci stated shortly after the release of the movie that the Enterprise was being built in Iowa for the purpose of honoring George Kirk, Jim Kirk’s father. Yet nowhere in the novel adaptation does this supposed fact appear.
Likewise, it would have also been easy to mention that what occurs on Vulcan is happening during the spring season, hence, a blue sky rather than the red sky longtime fans would have naturally expected instead. If either of those points were addressed in the book, it would have been easier to take what Orci has had to say more seriously even if some viewers of the film felt inclined to disagree on either front anyway. (What is also bothersome about the appearance of Vulcan is how easily CGI could have been utilized to change the sky from blue to red in the movie if the producers were interested in being consistent with how the planet was depicted in prior stories centered around the original cast of characters.) This lack of supporting evidence in the novel leads one to question the veracity of Orci’s statements all the more concerning such matters.
Beyond that, Foster’s novel differs from the movie mostly in small ways. Instead of it opening with the Kelvin and her crew seeing the Narada emerging from the singularity, it starts with Spock’s birth, which is short and runs only a few pages, but that change was not an unreasonable decision on the part of the author. There are also some minor modifications in terms of character dialogue, such as where Kirk and McCoy meet on the transport ship. In the film, McCoy remarks that he ended up there as a result of a recent divorce, with his wife having pretty much left him with only his bones, and his being fortunate that he still had those once she was done with him. (That’s very different from the way in which he had acquired the nickname “Bones” in the original series by the way, where it was a term of affection apparently assigned to him by Kirk as a reference to his old country Southern American roots). In the novel in contrast, McCoy refers only to his “skeleton” rather than his bones upon meeting young Kirk on the transport ship out of Iowa. (I wonder if Alan Dean Foster did that intentionally, having rejected the manner by which the nickname had been assigned to McCoy in the film by its writers.)
The novel deviates a bit more so from the movie a little past the halfway point in the book, where Foster devotes significantly more time to character dialogue in various places, particularly with respect to the timeline issue and its implication for this new cast of characters compared to the original players. The problem is however that despite all that extra effort, one is still left wondering whether the original timeline has actually been overwritten by the events of this story, or whether it remains intact. This novel is well written and an easy read however, and Foster is due credit for at least injecting the possibility that a multiverse scenario is at issue in contrast to the film, which hints at it only very indirectly at best, and if anything leaves the viewer more so with the impression that the original timeline is being rewritten instead (viewers who turned to the Internet and found solace with Roberto Orci’s talking out of both sides of his mouth on the matter notwithstanding).
The book also does a notably better job of delving into and explaining Nero’s motivation than the film does by comparison. The reader is left with a clearer, more concise insight into his thinking concerning his genocidal planet-destroying reign of terror.
One final thought about the films’ writers. It had been reported prior to the release of the movie that Alex Kurtzman was more of an original series and cast fan, whereas his colleague, Orci, had a preference for Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Graphic Novel Comic series prequel to the 2009 film, titled Star Trek: Countdown, appears to indicate that both men are actually TNG fans first and foremost, however. Being an original cast and series fan myself it’s nice to know that one of them had a preference for classic Trek over what followed much later on, but neither of them felt inclined to review episodes of the original series before sitting down to write the script for their first Star Trek movie. I consider that rather unfortunate. They claimed to have read a number of the novels however, none of which are considered canon, and the one book it appears they made no attempt to get their hands on apparently was The Making of Star Trek, which was co-authored by Gene Roddenberry in the late 1960s. Were they in any way required to do that kind of background research? Obviously not, although it would have been welcome, and the kind of movie they produced in the end had an obvious bearing on the form and shape the novel adaptation would take on as well, ultimately. The film fared well with critics and audiences alike nonetheless, however, but it was a very different kind of Star Trek compared to the original. More modern, yes, but the dynamic between the characters, and indeed the characters themselves have taken on a new and different tone in this post-Roddenberry age. Your father’s Star Trek it ain’t, as the early promotional ads boasted prior to the film’s release. For better or for worse, this is now where we are and where things stand.
Bemoaning about what might have been versus what is aside, though, Foster’s book is an enjoyable read, well worth the time if you’re a devoted Trekker, and particularly if you would like more insight than the film itself provides. It’s the same story, following very much the same path, so it’s easy to relive the events of the movie in its pages while reading it, and while it offers relatively little in the way of new or additional material, it leaves the reader with a better and fuller understanding of the film overall, nonetheless by filling in some of the more noticeable gaps.
I read the first edition that was published as a trade Paperback last year to coincide with the release of the movie, which was a New York Times Bestseller. A new edition in Mass Market Pocket Paperback is set for release at the end of this month.
Related:
Movie Review: Star Trek
Comic Book Review: Star Trek: Countdown
Buy the Novel, The Countdown Graphic Novel, and the Movie from Amazon.com:
