Enterprise: The First Adventure

Vonda McIntyre's Star Trek- Enterprise: The First Adventure proposes a hypothetical first mission for Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise following Captain Christopher Pike's promotion to Commodore. McIntyre's writing captures the spirit of the original series, both in terms of story and tone, but she makes many plot decisions that either ignore or significantly alter the established canon from the original series and the existing films at the time of her writing. Examples of these changes include the backstory between Kirk and Gary Mitchell (previously explored in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the second Star Trek pilot), the inclusion of a young Ensign Pavel Chekov on Kirk's first mission (Chekov first show more appeared in "Amok Time," during the second season of the original series), and Spock's cousin, Stephen, a "pervert" who seeks out emotional experiences (foreshadowing Spock's brother Sybok, who first appeared three years later in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier). Additionally, as Pocket Books published this prior to the beginning of Star Trek: The Next Generation, McIntyre was left to invent her own version of Klingon society, in which the empress is a figurehead in a society controlled by oligarchs. Anyone familiar with the rest of the franchise will find these elements jarring. Even though this long predates J.J. Abrams' 2009 reboot of these characters, McIntyre's Kirk reads more like a performance by Chris Pine than a young William Shatner. With that said, the story may entertain casual readers or those able to keep in mind its date of publication. show less

Unlike many Star Dreck fans (or ex-Star Dreck fans, in my case), I liked this book well enough. Why? Because, this being one of the early books in the second series of novels (Pocket's), the depiction of the characters is not weighted down by their being part of a highly successful, sclerotic corporate franchise. The author depicts the characters as she sees fit: Captain Kirk being a young and probably arrogant new captain (notwithstanding that he remembers a previous command), who overcompensates by behaving harshly and who is disliked by Spock, Scotty, McCoy and Uhura. Sulu doesn't want to be posted to the Enterprise, and tries to transfer.

It is also not weighted down by an obligation to provide the crew a Federation-shattering threat show more as their first adventure. There was some encounter with a giant alien starship, but it was completely overshadowed by the official mission: as absurd as it is, the Enterprise has been assigned to transport a touring circus around the Federation. That makes sense only as the Enterprise's shakedown cruise, but this novel probably is just that., show less

Overly-dramatic, plodding at times, and with less character development than I would have expected for the "first Enterprise adventure", this novel was surprisingly disappointing. More times than not, I found myself skipping some of the really slower parts with the hope that things would pick up. Unfortunately, they really didn't.
I really wanted this book to work because I thought there would be some interesting backstories to the creation of the Star Trek "band" that fans know and love. Well...there wasn't nearly enough of that and way too much of an uninteresting side story weaving together a vaudevillian troupe, a renegade Klingon, and a "first contact" with a group of winged creatures.

As a fan of the show and franchise, maybe I show more expected too much out of this book. I'll leave it to others to judge and add their comments or reviews. show less

Relatively long and complex, and is best enjoyed by fans because it's fun to say oh, so that's why Kirk does these things this way during TOS, and that's what the 'feud' between Spock and McCoy is all about" etc.

But still enjoyable, I think, for naive readers. The idea of having the Enterprise ferrying a vaudeville troupe and then encountering not only Klingons but a new sentient species (note the *literal* world-building explored), is purely entertaining in its own right.

I particularly liked the smaller plots, featuring Uhura, Sulu, Janice Rand, and Spock's distant cousin Stephen.

I liked the little details, like the fact that Kirk didn't know anything about Vulcan mind-melds. And the last 1/2 page - priceless. (oh, but don't skip show more ahead, read the whole book first to get the full benefit :)" show less

Like many of McIntyre's works, this seems to bridge the gap between a very classic and old fashioned Trek story and the modern fanfiction-ish stories that I feel like I usually read. I really valued the interesting twist on the old tired "generation ship" plot, and I liked the character of Stephen, for all that he's not very canonical. A Good Book, is my summary.

I'm a Trekie, but only of the original series. I used to have a crush on Jim Kirk, when I was a pre-teen. JSYK.
In this first book of McIntyre's series, Jim Kirk gets his captain promotion and his first starship. The crew have all served under Capt Pike, who has been promoted to admiral. Spock, Uhura, Scotty, have served on the Enterprise. Kirk is only 29 years old. Janice Rand is 19 years old, and the opposite of the beautiful, assured woman playing on the show. It was fascinating to compare the book's characterization with that of the TV show.
I thoroughly enjoyed this and I will be reading the second book in the series soon.

This book was not a good book. I'm surprised and disappointed. It had a great concept and the overall story was promising.

The problem was the characters. I understand the only source material the author really had to go on was the 3 seasons of the original series. I also understand that this book takes place at the time when Captain Kirk first takes command of the Enterprise. But every character is an asshole. The crew hates and refuses to work with each other.

I find it hard to believe that this group of jerks could ever work together or become the tight knit family we see portrayed on TV. Spock hates Kirk and McCoy. Scotty hates Kirk. Sulu hates everyone. Uhura hates Kirk. Kirk hates Spock. Chekov.... why is Chekov there? He didn't show more join the crew until well after the beginning of its 5 year mission. And why does Janice Rand break down and start crying every time she thinks someone might not like her because they said something or looked at her. How does someone like that get into Starfleet? No one realized she was underage?

Amelinda, is leader of this traveling circus that has ventured off planet for the first time. She's really good at her job. But despite planning on spending weeks or months traveling through space to different Starbases on this ship, she's decided to bring her mutant flying horse and complains that it doesn't have enough room to fly in the shuttlebay. And then when shit is hitting the fan with the Klingons - who don't seem like Klingons of either TOS or TNG era - decides to leave the ship and go off on her merry way to the alien's ship so her horsey can fly. Oh stop being a worry-wart, Jimmy, the Klingons aren't going to shoot me!

Ugh. The basic concept of seeing the crew on their first mission together, of taking a traveling circus to visit starbases for morale boost, USO style, on the frontier of Federation space seemed like a decent idea. The concept of advanced aliens who view the universe and travel entirely differently and live in a really cool ship. All great ideas. But the characters sucked. I don't normally write negative reviews. I really wanted to like this book. I do not recommend reading it though. show less