#kirk was like spock you sure need this book to look up info about that comet & spock was like who do you take me for? the info's in my head

[lenievi]

We’re having a meeting about a destroyed outpost, so I guess I also gotta invite McCoy to listen and chime in.

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

starhearth: episode six

Second Month of Spring, Day 7-Third Month of Spring

After fortifying himself with some berries and a cup of water—I’m sure he’d prefer something stronger but that’s what we got—McCoy successfully harvests the bees. Which is not really a sentence I anticipated typing back when I first started this blog.

[ID: A screenshot of McCoy standing over a bee’s nest next to a tree stump, with single-pixel bees swarming around McCoy and the stump. The information box at the bottom of the screen says that McCoy is “harvesting Bee Nest.”]

With the bees no longer hanging around threatening to sting the workers, the tree-felling can continue once more. While that’s going on, there are some promotions to carry out.

So far, the camp hasn’t been attacked by anything bigger than some tiny mobile tree stumps and rocks, which Kirk has been able to protect everybody from all on his own. But that won’t last forever. As time passes and the settlement gets bigger, more serious foes will start showing up. Kirk’s going to need backup before too long.

McCoy sets to work making a Cleric’s Tome, an item that will allow him to promote from Herbalist to Cleric. Herbalists are a strictly civilian crafting class who can craft healing items, but Clerics are warriors who can cast healing spells which are much more powerful. In other words, McCoy can finally achieve his greatest desire: being able to heal people just by gesturing furiously at them.

[ID: 1. A screenshot of McCoy standing among some items in the stockpile, hands raised and eyes closed with a blue and gold book floating above his head. 2. A screenshot of McCoy standing in the stockpile, now dressed in a white tunic and gold robe and with gold sparkles floating from him, with a message box on the side of the screen reading, “Leonard McCoy has been Promoted!--Leonard McCoy is now a Level 1 Cleric!--Healer Training: A cleric can use Sheep tamed by a Shepherd to practice their magical gestures and earn experience up to Job Level 3. Healing Aura: The cleric’s presence heals everyone around them periodically.”]

Leslie and Chekov also get promotions, both becoming Footmen. As I’ve mentioned before, I intend to make Chekov an Archer eventually, but a Hearthling can only become an Archer after taking a few levels of Footman first.

[ID: Leslie and Chekov standing in the stockpile, Leslie, now wearing a blue and silver tunic, jumping into the air with gold sparkles around him while Chekov crouches on the ground next to him. A message box on the right reads, “Ed Leslie has been Promoted!--Ed Leslie is now a Level 1 Footman!--Combat Training: A footman can use Training Dummies to train their combat techniques and earn experience up to Job Level 3. Damage Up 20%: The footman knows that all combats may have mortal consequences, and attacks with renewed determination.”]

McCoy, Leslie, and Chekov now join Kirk on a patrol around the tavern, vigilantly guarding against the terrors of the night. Not that any have shown up just yet.

[ID: A screenshot of the field behind the tavern at night, with rain falling, as Chapel runs in one direction and Kirk, Chekov, Leslie and McCoy walk in the opposite direction, tightly clustered together.]

We’re not quite done with the job-changing yet. We’ll need another Herbalist to replace McCoy, so Chapel takes up the mantle.

[ID: Chapel standing next to the crates inside the storage room in the tavern, glowing gold as she promotes to Herbalist. A message box on the right reads, “Christine Chapel has been Promoted—Christine Chapel is now a Level 1 Herbalist!--Junior Practitioner: The Herbalist can attend to 2 hurt hearthlings at a time. Natural Regeneration: The Herbalist channels the spirits of the forest and gains natural regeneration. Willpower and Diligence increased.”]

It’s also finally time to get some farming and cooking started. Everyone’s been surviving on jerky, berries, and water, but that’s not much of a life. They’ll be a lot happier with some proper meals. So Sulu and Rand promote into Farmers. The job comes with a nice hat, apparently.

[ID: Sulu standing in the tavern storage area, now wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and labeled in the information box as Hikaru Sulu—Level 1 Farmer. The message box on the right reads, “Hikaru Sulu has been Promoted!--Hikaru Sulu is now a Level 1 Farmer!--Speed Up: Running fresh food from field to table has increased the farmer’s footspeed.”]

I only intend to keep Sulu as a Farmer permanently. Rand’s going to become a Chef. But like with Archers, Hearthlings can’t promote into Chefs directly; they have to promote from a level two Farmer.

Rand and Sulu start plowing a couple of fields by the lake to plant carrots and turnips in. As Farmers level up they gain access to a wider variety of things to plant, but for now, carrots and turnips are all we got.

[ID: Sulu and Rand, who is wearing a straw bonnet to match Sulu’s straw hat, digging rows of upturned soil in two square fields next to the lake.]

Early the next morning, a farmer stops by with some goods to sell. One of those goods is a basket of cherries, which has potential—cherry bushes don’t spawn in this biome naturally, but a Herbalist could use that basket to make seeds and plant bushes from those, giving us an additional food source. (Yes, I know cherries grow on trees. But in this game, they grow on bushes. Don’t ask me why.) We still don’t have much money, but selling all our healing potions (we don’t need them, now that McCoy can heal everyone directly) gets us just enough to buy the cherries.

Only problem is, since Chapel only just became a Herbalist, she’s still level one. She needs to be level two to be able to craft cherry seeds. One wouldn’t think that getting the pits out of cherries would take advanced skill, but apparently it does. Since the basket of cherries counts as a consumable food item, it’s a race against time to get Chapel up to level two before someone decides to eat all the cherries. Exciting, huh?

Meanwhile, we’ve qualified for another villager.

At this point, I was seriously starting to run into a quandary. The inherent problem with trying to play a colony-building sim game with all your villagers named after TOS characters is that there’s just not that dang many recurring characters in TOS. By ten villagers in, we’ve pretty much tapped out the main cast. In desperation to find some more significant TOS characters, I wound up looking outside the actual crew of the Enterprise.

And that’s how Sarek joined the colony.

[ID: Sarek, a Hearthling with pale skin, brown eyes, brown hair, and thick rectangular eyebrows that are floating next to his head, as he runs past some trees towards the village.]

Sarek has 6 Mind, 2 Body, and 6 Spirit, and the Opinionated trait, which means he likes to tell other Hearthlings in no uncertain terms what he thinks about everything...so that’s accurate. You may also notice that his eyebrows are floating next to his head as well. Must be hereditary.

Everyone gets on with their work for a while. Chapel is making potions. Sulu and Rand are harvesting vegetables. Scotty is upgrading the beds to be slightly nicer beds. Uhura has now started a second trapping area, this one for catching bugs. Yes, bugs. There are some remarkably big ones around here, and they can be caught for food. Because the current rations weren’t unappealing enough for everyone as it was.

At some point, while looking around the map, I was very startled to realize that a giant zombie guarding a treasure chest had spawned not that far away.

[ID: A zoomed-out shot from above and behind the tavern, showing a wide field stretching into the distance with tree-covered cliffs on the left and the lake on the right. A very large figure is standing on the other side of a large patch of open dirt from the tavern and is selected in the information box, which reads, “Giant Zombie—Blaarhgh...don’t touch Master’s treasure!!”]

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN THERE

As deeply unnerving as that revelation was, for the moment the zombie seems content to leave us alone. Unfortunately, not everyone shares that outlook.

[ID: A pair of small green figures with beady eyes and pointed ears approaching the camp from across the field. The one in front is wearing a helmet and carrying a serrated sword, while the one behind is bare-chested and carrying a hammer. The goblin in front is selected, and the information box reads, “Nag The Bonesm...(the rest is too large to fit into the text box and is cut off)--Covetous and armed!”]

A pair of goblin thieves try to sneak into camp and steal from our stockpile. Seems a small goblin camp has appeared not too far from our budding little village, and its denizens are keen to try to take our goods for themselves. The warrior crew is able to dispatch them without much trouble, but they’re only the first. More will follow.

Meanwhile, Spock has already gotten into an argument with Sarek.

[ID: Spock’s character info page, which shows that his mood is Glum, and that one of the negative modifiers for his mood is “Had an unpleasant talk -3. I can’t believe Sarek said that!”]

Why am I not surprised.

[anselm0]

Novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture

I knew this was going to be Something, and it sure is.

I’m not the first to remark on it, but that sure is a gay pride flag on the cover of this book/movie. A quick google reveals that the pride flag debuted in 1978, while TMP was released 1979, which by no means proves intent, but those are facts of general interest I’m going to share here.

Two things: 

LOVE INSTRUCTOR???? Her FIRST, no less??? what

Why am I being subjected to Roddenberry’s writing exercise of reviewing his own tv show while in character of one of the characters on said show

One actual thing that we learn from Kirk’s preface is that there are apparently two varieties of humans, the original flavor and then the super cool Crystal Pepsi humans who are wicked smart and pretty insufferable about it. Also not in Crystal Pepsi humans’ favor is that they SUCK at space travel because they can’t “help but be seduced eventually by the higher philosophies, aspirations, and consciousness levels” they encounter in aliens and doing a bunch of disappearances, defections, and mutinies as a result. So the moral of the story is we need humans too stupid or stubborn to want to be better to drive the space planes, I guess. 

I also find this amusing. The editor’s note on this line from “Kirk” is that he’s being modest, because he did a great five year deep space mission. ~~Kirk begs to differ, though: 

I also liked TOS, imaginary editor, but 94 deaths in five years of peaceful exploration is not an amazing statistic. Anyway, Kirk’s annoyed at how he and his five year mission got portrayed by the guy they sent to record it, what does that asshole have to say for himself?

what. is. happening. 

Look. I am all for world-building. But this is ridiculous. What kind of false modesty self-dragging self-insert Bolshevism

We are, by the way, only 11 pages in, and the story hasn’t even started officially. This will be the longest long post.

Chapter One opens with Kirk getting a semi-telepathic message from Starfleet that is the opening scene of TMP in which the space cloud zaps some Klingon ships.

Yeah, I can see where the public concern over this policy would come from, imaginary editor. It is bananas, and I hope consigned to a quiet ‘canon? never heard of her’ retcon. Imagine if this were still the case when the Borg came. Who could have guessed that having technological access to the brains of all the top brass in the Federation’s first and only major defense force might be, like, a bad idea!!!!!

It’s also a POINTLESS idea, because after getting the message, Kirk goes to a signal station to call Starfleet because he can’t reply (a design flaw) and also he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with this information because he didn’t get any instructions (why send classified info to people who don’t need to act on it???), and they just show the same scene to him again when he’s there. 

Before that happens, however, Kirk gets put on hold long enough to think thoughts and feel feelings he “had not permitted himself to admit” to himself. Like all former greats, he hates his desk job. He took it for reasons, despite this amazingly persuasive case against doing so:

We get it, you’re a Real Man. 

Literally the entire medical profession apparently agreed with McCoy that a desk job would be bad for Kirk, but Starfleet wanted him to be their posterchild of awesomeness for all those frickin’ Crystal Pepsi humans wondering if Starfleet is even necessary (why they would care about low intellectual ability Kirk is a mystery left unaddressed), so they made sure Kirk was persuaded to accept against medical advice. 

The way they did this was a combination of his sense of duty and a sexy lady. Of course. Sexy lady (Vice Admiral Lori Ciani, spelled Ciana in all subsequent mentions) is in fact the one Kirk gets connected to once Starfleet takes him off hold. Lori always gets his blood pumping, what with her “unusually large eyes and the slim, youthful angularity in her arms and legs” that “always reminded [Kirk] of a fawn’s wild grace and innocence”, even though he knows she’s actually a freak in the sheets. Oh, and she’s also smart and a great officer or whatever, her lips caress his name whenever she says it, he can almost smell “her body fragrance” and Kirk’s getting hard.

I wish I was exaggerating.

There are a number of concerning things here that I think McCoy should turn his attention to instead of whether Kirk can survive at a desk job. Are relationships one year contracts in the future? That seems like a bad idea.

Kirk has a paranoid fantasy that Admiral Nogura manipulated Lori Ciana into contracting sex/mothering/friendship with him and is pretty sure that Nogura told her to talk to him now to make sure he does what Starfleet wants again. 

I’m tired already.

It is not clear to me if she acts like he expects her to if his paranoid fantasy was real. In any case, the conspiracy theory and THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER was all for nothing because Kirk just goes to Nogura’s office and convinces him to give him command of the Enterprise.

On a more pleasant note, there was a chapter in the middle of all Kirk’s nonsense of Spock’s POV. He’s at Gol trying to achieve Kolinahr and he gets distracted by what seems to be the space cloud momentarily linking his and Kirk’s minds. Spock is shook and “knew in this instant that the human half of him was far from extinguished. That half had simply been capable of human guile and had learned to hide itself even from his own notice. He had foolishly and carelessly underestimated it and believed it to be gone. But like the enemy it had always been, his human half had merely lain in wait in order to assault him while he was defenseless.” 

MY POOR BB

Anyway, Kirk’s on his way to the Enterprise and once again thinking thoughts.

I’m going to guess that Kirk is not a great boyfriend.

There are several things going on here, none of them good or pleasing. 

There are some really uncomfortable descriptors for Sulu and Uhura, which are unnecessary in addition to being offensive because we all know what they look like. We know Sulu is Asian, so you don’t have to call him “the Asian romantic,” or really modify any descriptor of him to remind us that he’s Asian. Uhura initially has “classically lovely features,” which is okay, I guess, but then she has a “fine-boned Bantu face.” Um. 

There are some weird descriptors of Will Decker, too, who Kirk is coming to demote and summarily replace, but the worst one is this one, Scotty’s perspective on Kirk pulling Decker aside to tell him he’s being demoted:

My face is a rictus of horror. 

The description of the transporter accident is quite gruesome and Good. We all know the fate of the unfortunate Commander Sonak, but Roddenberry now reveals that the second person was sexy lady trap Lori Ciana!! Kirk inexplicably took over the transporter controls to try to save them her, but isn’t familiar with their new configuration, and is guilt-stricken by the uncertainty that their deaths might have been prevented by someone like Decker, who really knows the new Enterprise. Also, nobody knows why she was there.

FUCK YOU

I’ve been very negative so far. The novelization actually does a lot better than the movie does in conveying Kirk’s disorientation with the new ship and how much he’s second-guessing his fitness for command, despite his insistence before that he was the only one who could do this. On the other hand, he doesn’t realize that he should PUT DECKER BACK IN COMMAND. 

Oh, he makes Decker the science officer in addition to the executive officer because he won’t accept a different science officer in replacement of Sonak who isn’t Vulcan. Apparently there’s no replacement for a Vulcan science officer.     .   .   .        He immediately begins worrying that he’s overloading Decker with responsibilities. JUST MAKE BETTER CHOICES INSTEAD OF WORRYING ABOUT BAD ONES.

Hey, you know that dumb scene in TMP where all the crew gets together in an empty room to once again watch the Klingon ships get destroyed and since it’s a rehash, everybody spends it wondering why Starfleet has like eighteen different uniform designs in unflattering cuts and colors? Roddenberry knows we all think it’s dumb and has some strong words in response:

lol

Apparently that room is the “rec deck,” which is the largest interior space in a starship ever designed. Some people think it’s wasteful but real space veterans know that the rec deck is where “the most vital of the ship’s mechanisms [are] kept in peak operating efficiency through music, song, games, debate, exercise, competition, friendship, romance, [and] sex.” There were definitely regular public orgies on the five year mission, weren’t there. 

Thirty-one people bail after seeing the Klingon ships bite it, which seems like a thing that they shouldn’t be able to do?? Also, what was the point of all that secrecy with the secret implant for telepathic transmission of classified information if Kirk’s just going to show it to several hundred people who are free to leave if they want to?????

I know TMP gets shit for being The Motionless Picture, but you really have to read the novelization to grasp the complete lack of plot points. It’s EIGHTY pages before Lieutenant Ilia arrives. The book is 250 pages long. 

Uhura has some kind of Tone when she tells the bridge that Ilia is Deltan and Kirk rebukes her, “And there are no finer navigators in Starfleet, Commander.” 

This is a weird species whose major defining features are overwhelming sexual pheromones and a GREAT sense of direction.

Kirk immediately regrets chastising Uhura since she’s “the last one who needed instruction in diversity from him.” IS THE FUTURE RACIST OR NOT, GENE

Sulu seems not to know what a Deltan is, even though all the other TOS officers do, so I don’t know how that happened. I got my hopes up for ONE SECOND when he didn’t seem to care but he is affected by her allure after all. Stand down, gays. 

Kirk clocks the obvious clues that Ilia and Decker were involved before, and starts finding ways to make it his business. 

Sure, Jan.

Anyway, the ship leaves the orbital dock in a looooong and boring chapter, then spends another chapter flying past Jupiter at IMPULSE. Thank Jupiter and Zeus we did not have to sit through the slow ride from hell through the solar system. 

Some random things we learn in the meantime (a lot of meantime!!):

McCoy is a hippie who dislikes surgery and medicine, preferring to just berate people into healing themselves or whatever. I now see why starships would need ship’s counselors but there would be absolutely no Xanax or beta-blockers for the Reg Barclays of the future.

There are body scanners incorporated into all the new uniforms, which constantly transmit biodata to the medical bay. This was always a part of the costume design (it’s in those super ugly belt buckles!) but never mentioned or actually used to my recollection in TMP. It’s also not a thing in future Trek series, presumably because it would be boring to not have medical emergencies.

Chapel went on the five-year mission with a PhD and now has her MD! GIVE HER SOMETHING TO DO

McCoy resigned from Starfleet because Admiral Nogura would not heed his medical opinion that Kirk is a Manly Man who needs to be doing Manly Things out in space instead of working a desk job. 

Immediately after this reveal, Roddenberry reinforces how scientific it is by having Chapel say, “deprivation of [starship command] produced physical and emotional symptoms remarkably like those associated with narcotic withdrawal.” Okay!!

We only refer to Ilia as “the Deltan navigator” now.

“The so-called mutant-farm civilizations of pre-history had known [humans aren’t alone in the universe] of course, but their information had been a gift and not the result of human labor and growth.” W H A T 

What do these words mean

FEELS racist??? idk idk

also this:

What a piece of information to just casually drop with no followup whatsoever!

Roddenberry is basically masturbating himself and Kirk about how great it is that he’s back. Having Kirk command the Enterprise again is

“like Lazarus stepping out into the sunlight” plz

so spiritually moving that Decker is suddenly feeling fine about being inexplicably demoted (couldn’t Kirk have just been an admiral still? and Decker a captain?) and removed from command

By the way, Kirk apparently didn’t officially take command until moments before they left orbital dock, which feels wrong to me?? There were eleven hours where he was giving all the orders but had no official jurisdiction or responsibility for the consequences. Starfleet needs better command protocol.

making Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov ecstatically happy, a fact that Kirk somehow knows from looking at their faces despite not seeing any of them in years and having done nothing but demand the ship be launched before being properly tested or configured for warp and against the advice of his first officer and chief engineer omg you idiot

Kirk then orders them to go to warp agains the advice of his first officer and chief engineer, accidentally creating a wormhole the ship falls into along with an asteroid that nearly destroys them because Kirk doesn’t know how the phasers work on his new ship. Kirk then gets shirty with Decker when Decker factually states that Kirk doesn’t know what he’s doing and Decker does, and knowing things was useful in that it saved the ship being blown up by a series of stupid choices. GREAT FIRST DAY

Again, I do think the book is doing a good job of conveying Kirk’s motivation of scrambling to relive his glory days and his willful blindness to the consequences, but I don’t know how we’re going to get to a point where we’re actually happy this guy gets to be in command of a starship for another five movies. McCoy does call him out on his nonsense, but I don’t see him learning or growing at all yet and can’t foresee it from what I know of what plot is coming next.

Speaking of plot developments

SPOCK!!!

First of all, “severe black robe” is underselling one of the best looks ever served to my undeserving eyes. Second, no sooner has Spock stepped back on the bridge than everyone starts dropping serious hints about his relationship with Kirk. I mean

subtle!!

Spock is not a happy bunny, though. Everyone is happy to see him again - it’s been so long and Scotty’s so excited he apparently forgets that you don’t touch Vulcans? - but Spock’s ignoring them. As soon as he can, he finds a place to meditate.

Roddenberry wants to make absolutely sure we know that the Enterprise is a nonstop fuckfest. Consider me informed!

Spock needs to meditate because he was way too excited to see Kirk again. He’s pretty whatever about everyone else (”humanly human” McCoy and Chapel “with her bizarre and impossible fantasies of one day pleasuring him” ick) but his t’hy’la is a different story.  I MEAN!!!!

He has to go to a meeting with Kirk and McCoy (who’s now monitoring Kirk’s behavior re: his unfitness for command) and we get this little gem about the officer’s lounge:

I know it’s supposed to be a utopia but come on. 

WINK

They’ve established there’s some kind of intelligence in the space cloud that Spock can telepathically link with when the first probe arrives and injures Chekov. Chapel comes to treat him but she can’t do anything for him. Ilia does...something vaguely telepathic that usually happens during Deltan sex to make him feel pleasure instead of pain and you know what, I’m going to choose to not read into this. It does seem weird that Starfleet has extremely strict regulations about allowing Deltans to serve due to their pheromones but telepathy is A-okay. 

We learn during the probe’s visit that the only console hooked into the ship’s main computer and Starfleet databases is the science station’s, which seems pretty unbelievable. There isn’t even an uplink for centralized record keeping about course changes and phaser discharges? 

Ilia disappears and Kirk is surprised how much he cares. They did meet just today but SHE IS YOUR CRACK NAVIGATOR why wouldn’t you be upset! Her replacement comes up as they’re getting pulled into the space cloud and she’s also good; Kirk thinks, “There might be something about her worth remembering.” I’m concerned that Roddenberry doesn’t seem to realize how unlikeable he’s making Kirk. 

See the entire sequence where the Ilia probe arrives:

Gross.

Kirk does spend a lot of time thinking that Deltan pheromones don’t affect Vulcans and that Spock is annoyingly unmoved, but that’s just guys being dudes. 

Probe Ilia remembers Decker, so Kirk tells him to use that to try to establish productive communication with Vger. I know it’s spelled Vejur but that’s dumb. It’s Vger. V’ger if you’re nasty. Anyway, Kirk was making this traumatic assignment about him and his awesome sexual prowess. 

But he’s not done!! How could this sequence possibly end WITHOUT Kirk creeping on his first officer trying to fuck an alien probe!!!!

It’s completely normal! Look, Decker even expects it!

Decker is Manfully frustrated that his Manliness isn’t working on the probe. Kirk and McCoy are armchair quarterbacking this like the fans of weird sexual encounters they are. Chapel comes in to make a good suggestion and McCoy condescends to her, of course. There’s some worldbuilding around Deltan sexuality which seems to be just that there are psychic connections involved that make regular, non-psychic sex boring for humans afterward. Okay? I thought it was going to be something much weirder. Again, I don’t know why THIS makes Deltans have to take celibacy oaths to be in Starfleet but non-sexual telepathic actions are totally fine. 

This is all going on while the Enterprise is in the cloud, so they take a break from creeping on Decker and the Ilia probe to go to the bridge and have Kirk condescend to Uhura about how to do her job. Look, I don’t want to get into a whole thing about Kirk’s virtues as a commander but he is not better at Uhura’s job than she is. PLEASE give her something to do other than be impressed with Kirk.

Around page 209 (out of 250) we finally get a chapter from V’ger’s POV and it is legitimately Good. If Gene Roddenberry was capable of writing science fiction without obsessing over future sexuality, this book would be so much better. 

There are fewer than 40 pages left by the time we get to the iconic sickbay scene. 

This book is so weirdly paced. If you’re going to write about future sex, please let it be between the characters we actually care about!! For example!!!!!! But no, we get Decker and Ilia-probe, which may actually be Ilia’s psyche in a mechanical casing? Unclear, but Decker is pretty convinced.

Gross.

The rest of it is basically exactly the same as the movie: they get to V’ger and figure out it’s Voyager and respond with the correct code, but V’ger refuses to acknowledge it. Decker and Ilia somehow become noncorporeal entities joined with V’ger. It’s not clear how this is possible, but whatever. Kirk is, like, mildly regretful about the absolute shitshow this mission turned into and the fact that he lost two good officers to a space cloud, but he’s not torn up about it. He got his ship back! And he has no fear that it will be taken away again because he caused half the shitshow! In true Star Trek fashion, there is literally ZERO discussion of where V’ger, who is a perambulating cloud as wide across as a small solar system, is going to go now instead of Earth bc that’s a somebody else problem.

The end.