Starfleet Jedi

Star Trek has been written by hundreds of different writers. A great diversity of style and competency exists among these writers. A few have written both episodes and novels.

Who, in your opinion, wrote the best Trek? (If you can't recall who wrote what, Memory Alpha is probably your best quick reference source.)

The late John M. Ford's "The Final Reflection", is one of the handful of ST EU books I ever really enjoyed, even though Ford's concept of the Klingons was inaccurate, it was still an interesting take on how their culture might work, as well as an explanation for why there were bumpy-heads and smooth-heads. It also established very early on, long before TNG ever did, that the Klingons and Romulans had a nasty blood feud going on.
-Mike

I love the Reeve-stephens book Federation, which is probably the first trek novel I ever bothered to read. Made more sense than Ent.

watchdog wrote:I love the Reeve-stephens book Federation, which is probably the first trek novel I ever bothered to read. Made more sense than Ent.

Agreed. That was also one of my very first Trek novels, and still one of my favorites.

I'll also throw in the Star Trek: The Motion Picture novelization in here as well since the novelizations aren't considered actual canon and as such can fall in the catagory of "Expanded Universe" type novels. The book, regardless of whether or not Alan Dean Foster ghost-wrote it, is still IMHO one of the best overall ST novels. It reads very well as a grand-scale science fiction epic which seldom is dupilcated in any other ST story. Kirk's own introduction and annotated commentaries scattered throughout the book help to immerse the reader into the world that the novelization is setting before us is a real one, and that we (the readers) are looking back on all of this as a historical retrospective of some kind.
-Mike

ADF didn't ghost-write TMP. That was claimed by the other side, presumably meant to try to offset Lucas's ADF-ghost-written ANH novelization. (I'd never even heard it suggested that it had been ghost-written before the Lucas thing came out, anyway.)

There's plenty of talk about Roddenberry working on it (not to mention criticism of his style), and ADF IIRC specifically refuted the idea.

Roddenberry probably ought to have gotten another author . . . a professional novel author, at least . . . to polish it for him, but most people seem to think that based on the way it came out, that probably didn't happen.

Oh I don't believe that ADF ghost-wrote the ST:TMP novelization, either. If he did, it's an unusual departure from his typical style of writing. I really should have stated it as "whether or not anyone thinks that Alan Dean Foster ghost-wrote it".

And yes, I do think there are flaws, but the story of ST:TMP makes for a much better science fiction novel than it does a movie, especially since the novelization covers a lot more background that the movie lacks, letting you understand better what has been happening to the characters since the original five-year-mission, and their various motivations for being back on the Enterprise to face the threat of V'Ger (Vejur). For instance, Decker being a much more complicated, interesting, sympathetic character, as well as his being the son of Commodore Matt Decker.

As I said before, it's also the grand scale of everything that really makes the book so facinating to read. Kirk in wonder at what a 12th power energy field really means... e.g. enough energy to stop the sun from rotating!
-Mike

Indeed, that sort of detail helps . . . and is necessary, to a point. Danger can be communicated adequately in a film by way of showing a bignormous gas blob of glowy death balls, but you really have to kick the description a bit higher in a book since you don't get the same sort of immediate visceral "oh crap" reaction.

I could never understand why the movie novelizations were not considered canon seeing as how they simply describe te events of the movies mostly.

I agree with you for the most part on that, Watchdog. With a few exceptions, there's quite a bit of good extra information to be had in the novelizatons. ST5, for instance, makes much better sense when you plug in the information from the novelization, such as Sybok's altering the Enterprise's shields to withstand the intense radiation of the Great Barrier, and the pursuing Klingon vessel studying the shield configuration and copying it.
-Mike

Exactly, it also cleared up a misconception about another scene when the Enterprise fired a torpedo at 'god' the book specifies that the torpedo went down a hole (although the movie screenplay says this as well and the scene in the movie shows a brief delay after the torpedo reached the ground and when it blew up).
The one bit I dont quite take to is Kirks claim in TMP that starfleet captains have some sort of chip inserted into their skulls to alert them to emergencies that starfleet wants them to handle.

The TMP novelization at least acknowledges the issue with the emergency alert implant, and cites a bloody mind-control war that had occured previously in Earth's history.