In today’s episode, when Geordi tags along to the asteroid belt with some upperclassmates, there’s a refreshing lack of locker-stuffing and wedgie-giving. But when he has a tough time understanding a spectral visitor’s point, it might mean getting sifted out by the Academy’s plebe filter. Is the specter a prank? Who would you name an asteroid after? And can Geordi’s VISOR get smudged? All this and more in The Haunted Starship, the book that overestimates the thrill of the word “outstanding”.

The Haunted Starship
Authors: Brad & Kathi Ferguson
Pages: 115
Published: December 1997
Timeline: Ten years before “Encounter at Farpoint”
Prerequisites: One character has a connection to the Enterprise-C, so there are a couple of references to that, but you won’t be at sea if you don’t pick up on them or feel the dramatic weight of them

The penultimate TNG book in the Starfleet Academy line sends our cadets on a survey mission to the asteroid belt—you know, the asteroid belt, the one between Mars and Jupiter. Extremely low-stakes stuff; perfect for a bunch of seniors and one freshman not being directly supervised by any adult officers. Let’s meet our crew:

• Bernardo O’Higgins Sanchez (heckuva name, that), captain of the Benjamin Franklin, so to speak—more like the senior in charge;
• Siobhan McKenna, blond human cadet, first officer/navigator;
• Trennek Sann, Andorian female cadet, pre-med student who’s also running communications;
• Hassan el-Dallal, chief engineer hailing from the northern desert regions of Africa;
• and Geordi, who is referred to as a “plebe”—an odd choice when “freshman” is right there, but whatevs

These are the only characters featured in the whole book, so they all get some solid page time. Most of that time is spent simply talking and/or enjoying each other’s company, but a few things happen in this book. While exploring an unnamed asteroid, a micrometeorite punches through Trennek’s suit and she goes adrift, losing air; her life only gets saved thanks to Geordi, whose VISOR allows him to see her far away where Sanchez’s normie vision doesn’t. Geordi gives an oral report on the history of the Benjamin Franklin. Weird that a senior can assign homework, but not too crazy, I guess. But the main challenge, the thing you pick up a book called The Haunted Starship to see, comes when Geordi believes he’s seen a ghost. Even then, however, Geordi makes it very clear that that is not what he saw; he specifically saw Ike Ikushima, the first captain of the Ben (as it’s commonly shortened to), who died manually shutting down a malfunctioning reactor to keep the rest of his crew from becoming fatally irradiated.

After giving his oral report, Geordi pulls a shift in engineering, then heads to the galley to get some food for himself and Hassan. On the way to the bridge, he sees Ike Ikushima, who points at him, says nothing, and then fades away. Since he called an intruder alert when it happened, it has to be logged and reported, and the review board will bring it up when they get back, so Sanchez offers to cover for Geordi with the review board by saying Geordi was exhausted and seeing things. Geordi, however, doesn’t have it in him to go along with even a small lie, so he declines and says he’ll face the music, even if it means washing out of the Academy. That fear doesn’t last long, however, as soon Hassan sees the dead captain as well, followed shortly by everyone else seeing him at the same time. Why is he pointing at people? Why doesn’t he say anything? Is he in fact a ghost? Or is he something else…?

A better title for this book might be A Few Days on an Old Starship. Some things happen; none of them really have any bearing on the greater story or on each other. One thing Geordi initially doesn’t understand is the word “outstanding” popping up around the ship. Sanchez tells him to make sure he gets that into his oral report, because it’s important. But it’s not: it’s just the motto Ikushima established when he became the Ben’s captain. There’s no history to it. It doesn’t stem from a particular incident. It’s not part of an inside joke. It’s not even, like, his favorite way of saying “good” or anything. Geordi also talks about Ikushima’s first officer, who was his best friend at the Academy and the first person he brought on when he knew he was getting a command. Does that mean it’s going to turn into a juicy tale of betrayal with consequences that are still reverberating in this sector today? No, he’s just a guy. Same for Billy Devil, the outlaw who terrorized Ceresville, the mining town on the belt’s largest asteroid. It may have been the Wild West 2.0, but none of that is felt in the present day. It’s just stuff that happened.

This might make the book sound boring, but I for one kind of like it when books are gutsy enough to include fictional history for its own sake, and anyway, it all lands in more of a nice, homey way rather than an “oops, I forgot to include conflict” kind of way. I’ve complained in the past that these books go too readily to the action well, and now that one is finally sitting back and just letting its characters have a simple mission where the fate of an entire planet doesn’t hinge on their actions, it’d be a little sanctimonious of me to rag on it for that. Overall it drifted along in a way I found pleasant, even as I was asking myself if we were ever going to get to the thing the book said it was about on the back.

The Haunted Starship is also refreshingly free of the nastiness so many mediocre writers seem to assume is native to school hierarchy. Geordi’s capabilities are respected and celebrated, and even when he admits to witnessing something outside the realm of believability, no one thinks he’s delusional or calls him names. After Geordi saves Trennek Sann’s life early in the book, Sanchez has a semi-private moment of self-doubt where he feels he was only capable of bumbling behind like a second banana, and Siobhan reassures him that he showed remarkable presence of mind in getting out of his own way, recognizing that Geordi’s talents were the best fit for the situation, and not bowing up on him in some boneheaded show of senior superiority; it’s an affecting and effective scene. There was one point where I thought the “ghost” was heading toward being a prank—ironically, it was almost the exact moment I felt confident deciding the book was in the free-and-clear—and I was going to be severely disappointed if it did, but thankfully it sidestepped that trap.

Brad’s wife Kathi is also credited on this book, but without having read anything else by her, I don’t know how much of her stamp is evident in the final product. I’m guessing it was significant, however—enough, at least, to keep some of her husband’s goofier bad habits in check, because I didn’t get very much of the things that usually make me roll my eyes when I read his writing. A little of it peeked through, but only in trace amounts. Brad Ferguson’s earlier novels don’t hit my dartboard at all, but his tone scans a little better when directed toward kids and teens. I could have read more young-reader novels written by him with his wife’s balancing influence keeping the ship righted, but sadly, that’ll never happen, because as we’ll see, the YA line is about to come to an end. (We’ve only got two YA books left after this one!)

MVP & LVP

• As is often (though not always) the way of these YA books, the already-established character gets to be the MVP, so today we give it to Geordi. He saves a life. He gives a solid oral report, even supplementing it with a cool holo-campfire effect. He sticks to his guns about the “ghost” instead of taking the easy way out that’s offered to him, and it pays off. Three major things happen in this book, and he nails all three of them. That’s a stone-cold lock if I’ve ever seen it.
• Since there are only five characters in this book, and none of them are complete monsters or incompetent doofuses, there’s no LVP this time. Everybody passes!

Stray Bits

• Part of Geordi’s oral report is devoted to a theory that the asteroid belt was supposed to be a planet, but that Jupiter’s gravitational pull kept that from happening. This is known as the accretion disk theory, which superseded the Phaeton hypothesis in the early 1970s and late 80s. (p. 17)
  • Trennek calls it a “stillborn planet”. Damn, girl, that’s grim!
• Hassan says the Ben’s max speed of warp two would have been impressive when it was launched—except it wouldn’t. It launched in 2179, 28 years after the NX-01, which could make warp five. Not a goof of the time of writing, but should be noted nevertheless, I feel. (p. 20)1Also, this caused me to visualize the Ike “ghost” in the Enterprise astronaut jumper instead of the TOS sweater, which I think is a marginal improvement in terms of cross-series opportunities.
• Before the accident, Trennek christens the asteroid they’re exploring in honor of her mother Malakeh. A sweet moment. (p. 32)
• “With the tips of his fingers, Geordi carefully and thoughtfully stroked the cool metal of the [VISOR], ‘seeing’ it in the only way he could. He took great care not to get finger marks on the sensory pickups under the front grid.” — This seems like the kind of thing that would be so fine or micro and tucked away enough that you would never have a chance to get your fingers on it. Seems to me the bigger worry would be getting the attachment points on his temples dirty. That must be why he finally switched to robot eyes when the E launched. Sick of cleaning those things. (p. 48)
• There’s one brief callback to Atlantis Station (p. 89). I didn’t think they’d reach that far back for continuity, or bother linking them, so that was a mildly interesting surprise.
• Brad revealed in Voyages of Imagination that he and his wife wanted to do another Academy book starring both Geordi and Riker, but that the discontinuation of the YA line put the kibosh on the idea. A pity: it would have been the first time I ever used the sentence “I’m looking forward to the next Brad Ferguson book.”
  • He also wanted to call it The Haunted Spaceship, but Paramount said “nah” and made him use Starship. Which is a good call, because that’s what they’re called in Star Trek. So it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying on Brad’s part that this book turned out all right.

Final Assessment

Good. There are many pieces of lore-building that go nowhere and a few bits of the old Ferguson cornpone that land with a resounding womp womp, but despite their best efforts, this is one of the more pleasant Academy novelettes to come down the pike. It’s a little light on actual eventfulness, but I always say they default to brainless action too quickly in these kiddie romps, so it’d be somewhat hypocritical of me to complain about it. What really puts it in solidly good territory is that there’s none of the hazing bullcrap you . Everyone pulls their weight, respects each other, and works hard, and even though there’s not a lot of real action, it produces a comfortable sensation that carries the book along on a bed of feathers and successfully sweeps the realization that not much is actually happening under the rug.

NEXT TIME: Marooned on a hostile world