Apocryphail Phriday: The Return

In 1994 the first Star Trek: The Next Generation movie was released: Star Trek Generations. And while some fans were willing to forgive the movie's glaring flaws in order to celebrate the pairing of Captain Kirk and Captain Picard, the flaws still existed. Perhaps the worst flaw is that Kirk dies by having a bridge dropped on him, while fighting a minor villain who just existed for the movie.

It was a terrible way to send out one of the galaxy's most beloved heroes. William Shatner apparently agreed, because he pitched an idea for the second movie, one which involved Kirk coming back from the dead and getting a far more appropriate send-off. It was doomed to failure, of course. The writing staff, quite rightly, decided that no matter how bad Generations was, the torch was passed to the Next Generation crew now, and they should have their own adventures.

All of the recycled plot. None of the emotional depth.

I mean, who would be foolish enough to keep on stealing plots from an old series while presumably attempting to establish a movie franchise of their own, right?

Since Paramount didn't want his plot William Shatner decided to write a novel of it. This spun off into the "Shatnerverse", an alternate timeline version of Star Trek. By all rights this should have been awesome. The return of one of science fiction's most enduring and beloved heroes, written with the sort of insider's perspective that only William Shatner could provide.

Let's see why it didn't work. This is William Shatner's "The Return".

Let's talk a little bit about the writing. The cover says "A Novel by William Shatner", but it was co written with Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens. If the name sounds familiar, it is because they're the creators of the TV show Primeval: New World. They've got dozens of novels and TV episodes under their belts, and they are really good.

Not Pictured: The desecrated corpse of
Gene Roddenberry.

And it shows. This novel is gripping. It is tightly written. The prose is descriptive and action-packed. There are all sorts of excellent plot twists, and the climax is everything Star Trek Generations should have been, but wasn't.

The technobabble is lovingly Trek-like, and there are all sorts of references to established mythos elements that should keep the average Trekkie breathless with delight. This is clearly a Trek novel done by people who absolutely love the Trek universe, and is shows.

Well... they mostly love the Trek universe. There seems to be one particular aspect of the Trek universe that they do not much care for. We'll get to that.

The novel begins where Star Trek Generations ends. The Enterprise-D is destroyed, Kirk is dead, and crazy rocket guy is more or less completely forgotten. There are some snide comments about the Enterprise-D crashing due to a fluke, an error, and that it was an ignoble death for such a fine ship, and this reads like William Shatner having a go at the writers of Generations. Which, fair enough, I wouldn't mind having a go at them myself. As long as it doesn't become an overwhelming trend, a little sniping from an actor whose character was so horribly wronged by that movie is forgivable.

No, I'm not proud of this one. Why do you ask?

As long as it doesn't become an overwhelming trend. (Ominous Foreshadowing).

Ambassador Spock has arrived from Romulus to pay his respects, assuming great personal risk by smuggling himself out of the Romulan Star Empire. And that's when the planet is attacked, and Kirk's remains are stolen via transporter. Riker does his best to coordinate a defense, but it's all pretty useless.

So who abducted Kirk? Why the Romulans, of course! But not just any Romulans! A rebel faction of Romulans who have entered a tenuous, untrustworthy alliance with the Borg to conquer the Federation.

Now this sounds like bad fanfic, and it would be, if it was not so well written. The Borg remain the Borg. By the end of the novel it is clear that this was nothing more than a ruse to get the Romulans to let their guard down, so the Borg could assimilate both the Federation and the Romulans. The very idea of a Romulan alliance is one of many ideas they pulled from the brain of Captain Picard when he was Locutus of Borg. Picard had often thought that the Romulans would make fine allies if the distrust between their races could be overcome.

And these Borg just happen to have a resurrection machine.

All right, the resurrection machine is... obvious deus ex machina. It's a mysterious machine from an ancient race that brings people back to life and then takes their Katra (i.e., their soul) from an earlier point in time and puts it back in their body. It's mysterious and ancient and one of a kind and it can't be duplicated and the authors are desperately trying to bring Kirk back without breaking death forever.

Why no, I'm not going to let this go anytime soon.

It's ham-handed, but at least it's better than just creating an easily-synthesizable miracle drug that completely breaks death throughout the entire universe.

So they bring back Kirk, with many a reference to his "muscled forearm", or sometimes "iron-muscled forearm", and wait, who were they bringing back?

Even during the original five-year mission Kirk was never someone you would describe as "iron-muscled". But hey, it's Shatner's novel, right? I mean, actors are allowed a little vanity. As long as the characterizations remain true, who cares if the Kirk in his mind had an Apollonian form. Maybe the machine just re-created his body at the peak of potential physical fitness. Maybe that's all it was.

No! Get back foreshadowing! I refuse to acknowledge you!

It turns out that Kirk was brought back by the granddaughter of the Romulan from "Balance of Terror". She hates Kirk for the disgrace he brought upon her family, and she is going to show this hatred of Kirk by having all sorts of kinky sex with him throughout the novel.

But of course the brainwashing involves sex.
How else would you do it?

Okay, she's actually using sex as one of many methods of brainwashing to convince Kirk that the Federation is evil, and that he has to murder Picard, whom the Borg see as the only real threat between them and conquest of the Federation. To do this she constructs an elaborate false past for Kirk, including his marriage to a Romulan, and their bouncing baby Romulatots, who were all murdered by the butcher Picard. This history is, of course, filled with all sorts of things that could be disproven with a simple search of historical records, but she rightly guesses that Kirk never does research on anything.

The primary problem with her plan is that Picard, and Doctor Crusher, have gone missing. In actuality they are on a secret mission from Starfleet's anti-Borg task force, investigating an assimilated Starbase. It turns out that the Borg defeated during The Next Generation were but one tentacle of the many-limbed Borg Collective, and the rest of the Collective is still out there. Without finding the Borg homeworld, there is no way to destroy the Collective entirely. (Barely six months later, Star Trek First Contact would essentially say the same thing, but with a Queen rather than a Homeworld). But I'm going to get back to Picard and Crusher in a moment.

Let's stay with Kirk for now. Rather than send out the highly trained Romulan spy network to find Picard, Kirk's captors send him out alone to find and interrogate the Next Generation crew, who are all on leave until they build another Enterprise.

He starts by going to the Klingon Homeworld and finding Worf, who is spending his vacation on a Klingon hunting preserve, killing dangerous predators with his bare hands. Kirk, in the guise of a mysterious assassin, challenges Worf to a bat'leth duel. Now Worf is no slouch with a bat'leth, but he is amazed by his opponent's skill, using an old style of dueling that was rarely seen anymore. Yet he can tell his opponent is not Klingon, because he shows none of the ritual respect that goes with the style. So far so good.

Sure, Worf gets his ass kicked a lot in the show.
But only to prove the bad guy has superhuman strength.
Kirk does not have superhuman strength.

Then Kirk kicks his ass. Easily. Embarrassingly easily.

And how did Kirk become a master at the Klingon bat'leth? "Know your enemy", he quips.

What? WHAT? This is James T. Kirk. The man whose best move is the two-handed punch. He was a raw strength, military-trained fighter, not a dueling master. The hell is going on here?

But it gets better. He then goes on to the archaeological dig where Geordi and Data and exploring an ancient culture, and he takes them both out with embarrassing ease. Yes, even Data. Because apparently Kirk also knows all about positronic brains, and their weaknesses.

He then proceeds to infiltrate Deep Space 9, and finally falls for Riker's trap... only to reveal that he knew it was a trap all along, and intended to be captured because by this point he had figured out the Romulans were just using him and he wanted to know the truth. How? Because he's James T. Kirk!

I'm going to be honest here. I actually wouldn't mind it if James T. Kirk were just the most awesome thing ever. But they keep proving it by having him beat up the cast of The Next Generation. It was like the authors believed that to make James T. Kirk great, they had to make The Next Generation cast look puny and weak. At every opportunity they focus on the frailty of the crew that I, and many Star Trek fans of my generation, grew up with.

In that asymmetrical outfit that drove OCD fans crazy!
Not that I know anything about that!

Now let's get back to Picard, because this is perhaps the most egregious example. Picard is along on the anti-Borg special op because he was Locutus. Starfleet's anti-Borg division developed an interface based on the implants Locutus had worn that will allow Picard to re-enter the collective, hopefully without being assimilated, and take control. Only Picard can do it, because only Picard is known to the Borg as Locutus. Doctor Crusher is along because of her familiarity de-assimilating Picard. She will be monitoring the situation in case anything goes wrong. Due to the nature of the mission, Picard is understandably concerned, and more than a little fearful.

So far, so good. The Borg have been established as a permanent threat in Picard's mind, and he has a massive guilt complex and recurring trauma over his time as Locutus. Good character development there.

They are being inserted with a Starfleet special forces team. And at every turn, in almost every page of those scenes, the authors have Picard feel old. "For a moment, Picard had felt as if he were withering into doddering antiquity". He is constantly stumbling behind the special forces team, being shown up at every turn. And this is not a team of great Starfleet heroes. These are one-off characters, created solely for this novel. And they are making Picard look like a fool.

I regularly beat a god-like John DeLancie. Borg are nothing.

This is Jean-Luc Picard, who has gone alone deep undercover, and into enemy territory. When terrorists took over his ship, he single-handedly took it back. Barely six months after the publication of this novel, he would go up against the Borg in Star Trek First Contact. And he would kick their ass with a tommy gun in the holodeck.

Meanwhile, Spock is single-handedly infiltrating the Romulan Star Empire to find Kirk, whom he is convinced is still alive. And his plan would have worked, if he had not been captured by the Borg. He and Picard and Crusher end up in the same Borg complex, a massive transwarp base. He sees Picard in disguise as Locutus, and Picard sees Spock put in an assimilation chamber, and then let out with the surprising and shocking revelation that Spock is already part of the collective. Both assume the other are traitors to the Federation, and they escape separately.

So just to be clear. Picard and Crusher's mission amounts to them getting entirely the wrong idea, and being useless.

So everyone meets up, they realize that of course neither Picard nor Spock are the traitors, that the supposedly un-brainwashed Kirk is really the traitor since he's still brainwashed. Kirk escapes the sickbay of a Federation starship, beats up everyone, and takes control. Because the TNG cast is useless.

Finally Spock saves everyone by doing a three-way mind-meld between him, Kirk, and Picard, which lets all three of them realize the truth that no one is really a traitor, and gives Kirk his real memories back. Again, up to this point the TNG cast have been completely useless, easily defeated at every turn.

Now, to be fair, the climax of the novel is one of the most awesome things I have ever read in Star Trek. Kirk, Spock, and even a wheelchair-bound 149-year-old McCoy join the full cast of The Next Generation and Doctor Bashir from Deep Space Nine aboard a Defiant-class vessel (not the actual Defiant, but close enough). And what proceeds is a climactic scene of glorious, unadulterated fan-wank.

The climax is the second-greatest
crossover of all time. This, of course,
is the greatest.

Finally the authors remember that Picard and his crew are heroes in their own right. They brilliantly characterize everyone involved, contrasting Picard's philosophical, reasoning approach against Kirk's gut instinct and action-hero methods, and having each play their role. In a twist, it is revealed that Spock is in the Borg Collective because he mind-melded with V'Ger in The Motion Picture, who of course was rebuilt by the Borg.

Which does not explain how the Borg did not know the difference between a mind-meld echo and actual assimilation, but whatever.

Once Spock realizes this he is able to use his memories of seeing V'Ger's "homeworld" to track down the Borg homeworld, they assault it, and Kirk and Picard beam don and find the central node of the collective which can only be destroyed by hand. The problem is, destroying it will cause an explosion so massive that whomever triggers it will surely die.

Picard begins to reason with Kirk, who simply punches out Picard and has him beamed back up, which would be a brilliant bit that contrasts the methods of the two captains... if I weren't already tired of Picard losing throughout the story. Kirk pulls the switch, and dies again. Until Shatner's next novel, where he brings Kirk back once more.

The novel is almost worth reading for the climax. Almost. But by that point "The Return" had already beat up and put down all my favorite Trek characters, spat upon their memories, and tapdanced on their graves.

Again, this is a well-written novel, technically speaking. The disparate threads of the plot come together beautifully, the dramatic tension is right where it needs to be, and the climax is awesome. But Shatner's ego gets in the way. Kirk has to be the best at everything. He has to be good enough to overcome the Romulan brainwashing. He has to be skilled enough to beat Worf, intelligent enough to beat Data, and cunning enough to beat Riker. He has to be the ultimate hero who sacrifices himself to save everyone.

Even worse, it's not enough that Kirk just be an all-powerful superhuman. The Next Generation crew has to be shown as inferior. Picard is crippled by his past traumas, Data is so analytical that he is useless in practical situations, Worf exists just to get beaten up, and Riker's "cunning" devolves into paranoia and attempts to ferret out a traitor that turns out not to exist in the first place. Until the climax, the Next Generation crew contributes nothing to the novel, and are constantly shown up, even by nameless red-shirts.

In attempting to avoid the ignoble slamming of the Original Series in Generations, "The Return" does the opposite: It champions the old, and denigrates the new. But in truth, neither series should be slamming the other. They should be working together, complementing each other, celebrating their differences and their similarities. Star Trek is a grand whole, a continuity of stories that have inspired generations of people all over the world. One series does not need to be put down in order to raise another series up.

Except for Voyager, of course. And putting that series down would just be merciful.

I am going to have so much fun when "Jeffrey Rewrites Voyager"
finally hits this abomination.