Part of what we love so much about Star Trek, and the original series in particular, is the lived-in camaraderie between the senior officers. But it’s rarely considered by fans and authors alike that those relationships took time to develop and endured a heap of growing pains in the process. Enterprise: The First Adventure, the first instance of what we will come to know and recognize as the “event novel”, takes us back to a time before that rapport was locked in, when the crew we know as legendary were almost torn apart by the vagaries of the rumor mill and each other’s baggage before ever having a chance to become the chums we know and love, and imagines that ragtag bunch thrown together for the first time. Published exactly twenty years after Star Trek made its television debut, let’s join Kirk as he learns on a particularly stressful first outing that heavy lies the wrist that wears the command stripes.
