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Star Trek: The Animated Series Logs Five And Six by Alan Dean Foster
01/04/2007 . Source: Eamonn Murphy 
pub: Del Rey/Ballantine Books. 388 page enlarged paperback. Price: $13.95 (US), $19.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-345-49583-7. Buy Star Trek: The Animated Series Logs Five And Six in the USA - or Buy Star Trek: The Animated Series Logs Five And Six in the UK  check out website: www.delreybooks.com and www.startrek.com
Here is another bumper collection from the master of film adaptations, Alan Dean Foster. Log Five opens with 'The Ambergis Element', a fishy tale from a screenplay by Margaret Armen. The Enterprise goes to a watery world to observe seismic activity and finds life. Kirk and Spock vanish in a giant squid attack and when found have been turned into water-breathers with scaly skin. It runs along and comes to a conclusion but is sort of daft. It reminded me of a particularly silly 'Next Generation' show where Counsellor Troy turned into a frog, though the fishy conversion is explained here with some reasonably scientific jargon.
'The Pirates Of Orion', script by Howard Weinstein, is better fare but not brilliant. Spock gets a disease deadly to Vulcans. A cargo ship carrying the only drug that can save him gets hijacked by pirates while en route to rendezvous with the Enterprise. Naturally, Kirk chases the pirates. The tension is maintained quite well given that anyone older than four knows Spock isn't going to die.
'Jihad' by Stephen Kandel has Kirk, Spock and a band of companions sent in search of the Soul of Skorr, a priceless religious artefact that has been stolen. The loss of it will plunge the galaxy into war with the aggressive winged race to which it belongs. The mysterious Vedala, a nomadic race, have traced it to one planet but three expeditions to get it have already failed. This one teams our heroes with a dinosaur style alien, a cowardly thief, a slinky huntress (who fancies James T. naturally) and a winged Prince of the Skorr. Together, they chase across a dangerous landscape to a giant cube which holds the Soul of Skorr. These new characters gave the story a different dynamic which made it very enjoyable.
New characters also contribute to 'Albatross', by Dario Fineli, which has Dr. McCoy charged with mass murder, committed nineteen years ago on the first colony world of an expanding race. The tension in this story mostly arises from Kirk and Spock's legal obligation to go along with his indictment contrasted with their belief in his innocence. Can they let the trial and execution of McCoy go ahead simply because all the paperwork is in order and Starfleet says its okay? Luckily they may be able to prove his innocence.
'The Practical Joker' by Chuck Menville is a sort of comedy where the crew, having escaped a Romulan ambush by fleeing into a gaseous energy field, are subject to various practical jokes. This must have been fun for the kiddies in cartoon format but doesn't work so well as text. I keep harping on about the animation but I think worth bearing in mind the original context of the script when criticising. It's probably also worth remembering that both the programmes and the books were issued in the mid-seventies when there was a dearth of new Trek material and we were glad to get anything. Thirty years on, we are all sated by lush live productions costing a million dollars an episode, multiple series and even big Hollywood movies. It wasn't so back then.
In those halcyon days of yore, Gene Rodenberry kept a lot of control and so scripts pleasing to him probably had a better chance of making it to the screen. 'How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth' by Russell Bates and David Wise would have been pleasing to Gene. In it, the crew encounter a super-being who once visited Earth and was known to the Aztecs as the God Kukulkan.
In 'The Magicks Of Megas-Tu' from a script by Larry Brody in Log Three, they encountered a super-being who visited Earth long ago and was known as Pan. And in 'Who Mourns for Adonis' a live William Shatner encountered a super-being who visited Earth long ago and was known as the god Apollo. 'How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth' is a good story, well told and I like the other two as well. But really! Science fiction is meant to be about new ideas, not regurgitating an old one over and over again. Rodenberry's favourite theme was that humans were not meant for paradise, always pronounced '...baradise' by Shatner, with a little hesitation before it. This aliens as gods theme must be a close second.
Oh well. Alan Dean Foster has done a good job again of fleshing out scanty scripts and this collection is of similar quality to the others. If you liked them you'll like it. A word of warning, they are best consumed in small doses, one story at a time. A continuous diet of adapted animations is not good for the soul. Read something different in between.
Eamonn Murphy
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