This week, when Sarek and Spock catch a celebrity Uber back to Vulcan, the latter leaves a glowing five-star review, and the feeling’s mutual. But when some customers who aren’t so satisfied with Sarek’s services begin targeting his family, it’s up to Spock to figure out how to make it right for the client. Can Spock win the approval of his peers? Does he want to? Should he want to? And will bigotry actually save his life? All this and more in Crisis on Vulcan, the book with perhaps an even harder sell than Sarek’s.

Crisis on Vulcan
Authors: Brad & Barbara Strickland
Pages: 116
Published: August 1996
Timeline: 15 years before Kirk’s five-year mission
Prerequisites: None

Ambassador Sarek is hammering out a treaty between the various peoples of the planet Marath and its branching colony worlds, hoping to get them to achieve the internal peace required to join the Federation. At last, an accord is reached, but one of the representatives, Karos, is clearly displeased with it. Spock can identify the discontent, but not the exact emotions underpinning it, and his friend Cha (Karos’s son) doesn’t offer much help, evading deeper probing by citing religious taboo and invoking the illegality of adult Marathans to speak of the so-called “True Lore”, even though technically he hasn’t quite come of age yet. Still, it’s good enough for Sarek and Spock to go home and work out the kinks over the subspace phone, so they and the Marathan offworlders hitch a ride back to the respective homes on some Starfleet ship nobody ever heard of called the Enterprise or something like that.

Spock gets a tour of the ship from the first officer, Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Pike, and he likes what he sees—viz., people working and living harmoniously despite the alleged handicaps of emotion and mixed parentage. He learns how to play three-dimensional chess and even works a miracle on the bridge in the middle of an attack, impressing Captain Robert April enough to whisk him past the entire admissions process and offer him instant acceptance to Starfleet Academy. Sarek, however, becomes alarmed by the dust mote–sized speck of happiness Spock lets slip and accelerates his entry to the Vulcan Science Academy to improve his acclimation.

There isn’t much time to worry about his cousin Sirok’s haughty predictions of failure at the Academy, however, because Marathan assailants soon begin to attack the family, starting with Amanda in her garden and next critically injuring Sirok.1 Sarek and Spock go over the treaty with a fine-toothed comb, but nothing about it seems less airtight than Sarek’s usual impeccable standard. Finally, in a desperate final attempt to draw any remaining would-be assassins out of the woodwork, Sarek plans to announce his intention to submit the finalized treaty to the Federation and travel to Earth to ratify it in person. Can Spock crack the case before it comes to that?

After so many TNG and DS9 books aimed at young readers, a swerve to TOS might seem a bit out of left field, though it’s worth pointing out that this came out a month shy of the franchise’s 30th anniversary. I’m thinking with marketing being what it is, we can expect at least some kind of victory lap probably every five years going forward, definitely every ten. Anyway, I think it’s gutsy to try to sell kids on TOS, even during peaks of cultural relevance and/or moments of multiple series running concurrently, like the 1990s and the current decade. Even in its most fallow periods, Star Trek vies for children’s mindshare against dozens, hundreds of other IPs and struggles to emerge on top. The original series has some additional hurdles, significant but not insurmountable, to clear, like the cheesiness and a different set of values. However weird it may look and sound, it’s part of the rich tapestry, and the foundation it laid was vital, and you don’t have to be a grown-up to be able to reckon with it.

On paper, the Stricklands seem like the perfect choice to ease kids into the original series. They’ve had a better-than-average track record in the YA Trek milieu to date, and especially given their work on the outstanding Starfall, it makes total sense to tap them to bring another father/son relationship fraught with disagreement and bitterness to life on the page. Surprisingly, however, there’s far less tension between Sarek and Spock than I expected—some, sure, but nothing major. Most of Spock’s conflict over which Academy to choose, Starfleet or Vulcan Science, is dealt with internally, and what little of it is spoken of aloud is with the much kinder and more sympathetic Amanda Grayson. There was a real opportunity to capture the sort of rift that makes a father and son not speak to each other for over 15 years forming in real time, and I can’t help but feel it’s a major miss.

And it isn’t for lack of trying on their part, but Vulcans can sometimes bet tough to make interesting for kids. Crisis on Vulcan ramps up somewhat once it gets to the stalking and assassination attempts, but the treaty business gave me big-time Phantom Menace Trade Federation flashbacks, where it’s like, “This is supposed to be for children, right? Like, who could possibly be riveted by this?” I certainly appreciate the gamble the Stricklands took in kicking this endeavor off with TOS’s least emotive character, but I fear the dryness overshadows some of the qualities Spock has that might resonate more with a young audience, like his biracial turmoil.

Crisis on Vulcan is not bad—it’s just not terribly exciting, either. I don’t fault the Stricklands for this much, if at all. I was the exact demographic these books were shooting for when this one came out (only a couple months shy of twelve), and even though I had an appreciation for TOS thanks to Interplay’s powerful one-two punch of 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites, cultural awareness of it as something other than a big ball of cheese was in short supply even then. So far I don’t think the TOS Starfleet Academy series offers what it takes to change anyone’s mind about that, but I’d take cheesy over boring eight days a week.

MVP & LVP

  • MVP is going to be Spock this week. Hardly a surprise, I’m sure. He saves the Enterprise basically singlehandedly and is the one to figure out why the Shakir colony is displeased with the treaty. That’s just how the main character rolls in these books.
  • My LVP this week is a collective one, going to the Marathans in general. I’m always somewhat irked by plots where a societal taboo prevents some vital detail from coming to light. It’s arrogant to think no one but you is capable of understanding your history or religion or whatever, and all your problems would be solved so much more painlessly if you just swallowed your pride and laid it all out there. There are, of course, ulterior motives for not doing such things, but I can’t help how I feel about it.

Stray Bits

  • I’m not generally a fan of Todd Cameron Hamilton’s artwork in these books, but this time it feels like he took it a little bit slower and steadier, because there seems to be a little more care and finesse put into the illustrations this time. So, good job, Todd.
  • The timeline at the front of the book has been expanded pretty significantly, it looks like, spanning the Romulan Wars in 2156 all the way to the breakdown of the Federation/Klingon Khitomer treaty after the Klingons attempt to invade Cardassia Prime (2372, end of season three of DS9—right up to the present, as far as this book is concerned). It’s actually a pretty neat general resource. I can certainly see myself referring back to it as needed. (pp. vi–x)
  • On page 58, the book refers to Spock as “Spoke” twice in a row. Sounds like someone’s idle wordplay made it onto the page and past an editor.
  • Spock, on the Vulcan nerve pinch: “I know the technique, though I have never really used it.” — Not to worry! I’m sure it will come as naturally to you as 3D chess did. (p. 71)
  • The book, page 99: “Amber-colored tears brimmed in Cha’s eyes.”
    Me, who has a garbage toddler brain: “he cries peepee lmao”

Final Assessment

Average. Though the Stricklands execute with their usual skill, the task of getting kids into something as different and not so easily approachable as the original series proves a little taller than their latest is up to. In addition to starting off too dry and later developments not fully compensating for that rough start, a major opportunity was missed in not exploring the disagreements between Sarek and Spock at greater depth and intensity. TOS is a tough sell for modern kids, and I’m not so sure this book nails the pitch.

NEXT TIME: Back to the Furies for Time’s Enemy