F/SF

The next in Alan Dean Foster's series of novelizations of Star Trek: The Animated Series, published in August 1974, two months following its predecessor, is Star Trek Log Two, which adapts "The Survivor", "The Lorelei Signal", and "The Infinite Vulcan".



None of the stories in this volume are particularly strong.

In "The Survivor", a shape-shifting alien impersonates Carter Winston, a wealthy trader and sort of gentleman adventurer in space (who is conveniently engaged to a member of Kirk's crew). The deception is discovered and war with the Romulans averted. The blurb for this story on my copy of the book reads "Our old friend Carter Winston is back aboard the Enterprise for a visit--or is he?" which is just comically wrong.

In "The Lorelei Signal", the men of the Enterprise have their youth and strength stolen from them by a group of beautiful, immortal women, until they are eventually rescued by a group of female security officers led by Uhura. The space sirens just want to live normal lives, apparently, so they let bygones be bygones.

"The Infinite Vulcan" is the most absurd of the three: Kirk and company are menaced by sapient plants led by (the clone of) a scientist, Keniclius, who is intent on taking over the galaxy with an army of giant clones of Spock. They talk him out of it, though.

Foster's writing is good, as usual, but that's not enough to save these mediocre stories. Unless, like me, you just want to read every Trek book, I'd give this one a miss. ( )

I thought this was a pretty good trio of stories. I've never watched the Animated Series before, so these are all new to me. I've been watching each episode on Hulu after reading each one. ( )

Collected short story versions of the animated TV show. Standard Star Trek stuff. I like Foster, but the attraction of the story versions of the original scripts was the great collection of authors. ( )

Three Star Trek stories based on the animated series, with echoes of some of the original epidodes. Reasonably good stories, nothing remarkable. ( )