The long history of Star Trek publishing has a number of interesting chapters in it, including several that started out well before franchise owner Paramount Studios began cracking down on what was and wasn't allowed in the official Star Trek universe. In the days before the internet put fan fiction and fan films within reach of just about anyone, only a few early hints of what might have been showed up. Today, they're considered "outside the canon," meaning they don't follow the official chronology offered by the five television series and the various movies. Here are three of those "other visions." They are, in almost every instance, more interesting than the far blander and shallower official version insisted upon by Paramount and series creator Gene Roddenberry.
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That's because it's the story of an earlier unofficial meeting between the two races, which happens when a Vulcan scout ship crashes in the Pacific Ocean in the mid 2040s. Earth, still recovering from a series of wars, revolutions and upheavals, is thought not to be ready for contact with an alien species, especially one so different. But the scout ship fails to self-destruct, leaving its captain T'Lera and her son, the navigator Sorahl, injured but alive. First found by a kelp farming station crew and then by an official naval vessel, they are hidden away until government officials can determine what needs to happen with them.
Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise, very early in their five-year mission, find themselves stuck in the middle of this situation as a powerful being experimenting with time manipulation has unmoored them from their time and cast them into this one. But something's wrong, because a much older Kirk is having memories of these events he shouldn't have, and they might just cause him to lose his mind.
Bonanno does more wandering about in time than is really good for the story, but it flows a little more smoothly when read than when described. She isn't afraid of conflict between her characters, which is something the "everybody gets along in the future" vision pushed by Roddenberry usually didn't allow. She includes a set of terrorists and a set of pacifists who are both very much cartoons, but she also uses three characters TV viewers didn't really get to know, since they died in the second pilot episode. It's nice to see them get some time onstage and to watch the Kirk-Spock friendship take some of its first steps, even if some of the story elements need simplifying and smoothing out.
Bonanno had other Trek novels, although not for many years. She, Pocket Books and Paramount had significant differences of opinion over a manuscript she submitted for a book using the mysterious probe from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and she did not return to the Trek universe until 2004.
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Part of what happened was the absorbing of a small part of the vision of Klingons presented by author John M. Ford, who'd also had a hand in creating some of the Star Trek role-playing games. In his 1984 novel The Final Reflection, he posited the Klingons as an immature race, given spaceflight well before their civilization matured when someone else's starship crash-landed on their planet. Because they are relatively short-lived, they tend to be much more sanguine about death and hold how a life is lived much more important than how long it may continue. The official canon borrowed the idea of the Klingons as honor-driven warriors, but little else of Ford's creation. As a consequence, he had the opportunity for only one other Star Trek novel, in 1987 -- the comedic How Much for Just the Planet?
The planet Direidi may very well have the largest find of dilithium in that part of the galaxy. Both the Federation and the Klingon Empire need the mineral to power their starships, so both would like control of its mining. But the Direidians' presence and the terms of the Organian Peace Treaty mean both governments will have to try to negotiate an agreement. The Klingons send Captain Kaden vestai-Oparai. The Federation sends James T. Kirk. The Direidians send Gilbert and Sullivan.
Ford envisions a world of people who want to be left alone and who stage an elaborate farce to get both of the opposing powers to accept their eventual offer of cooperative mining and ownership. That farce will involve screwball comedy, Gilbert and Sullivan parodies, a golf match that stems from a bar brawl, a cat burglar who isn't (or is he) and a truly apocalyptic pie fight.
It's the most inside baseball of the three novels here -- knowledge of some of Star Trek's common inside jokes and of Trek fandom is essential to knowing more than half of what's going on, and a knowledge of musical theater is probably essential for a lot of the rest. But Ford is funny and writes a funny story that still keeps the characters in character. He also offers a much more intriguing picture of the Klingon race than anything offered in TNG or later television shows and highlights just how limited the supposedly creative genius Roddenberry could be.
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Duane gave the Rihannsu, as she named the Romulans in their own language, a culture not unlike later Rome. Although honor and courage had once been major features of Rihannsu society, they are dwindling as younger politicians seek quick victories. This desire has led to a monstrous plan to kidnap Vulcans and use their brain tissue to give the Rihannsu the Vulcan mental abilities they never developed themselves after their ancestors left Vulcan millennia ago.
Ael t'Rllaillieu, a Romulan commander that has previously dueled with Kirk and the Enterprise crew, is aghast at this plan and knows she can't find any allies among her own people to thwart it. So she will have to rely on her enemies, knowing Kirk, at least, to be an honorable man who will fight at her side if he agrees to her plans. But her own history with the Enterprise and that of her family mean she may have to overcome more than her enemies' reluctance in order for her plan to succeed. As for Kirk, can he trust a woman who has fought against him? Are her concerns and plans legitimate or a part of a canny trap?
Duane offers a lot of slice-of-life details about everyday activities on board the Enterprise, which the limited time of a regular TV episode usually didn't allow. It's interesting color for her story and for Trek fans in general, even if she at times becomes a little more didactic than expository and her exposition itself edges a little close to derailing the story now and again.
She also offers some detail about the Rihannsu culture behind the people the Federation called Romulans, showing a people who are alien in the sense of operating with different understandings, reactions and beliefs, even though those things are not so alien that they prevent common cause with Federation personnel working together with them. Here she goes overboard a bit early, using only Rihannsu dialog with minimal translation. But after this rocky start things smooth out for a top-level adventure story.
Unlike Ford, Duane had the opportunity to write other Trek novels, including one set in the Next Generation era. But her vision of the Romulans was mostly discarded by the time TNG came around in favor of the much more brutal and treacherous culture featured there. She eventually finished out her "Rihannsu cycle" with five total novels, including one written with her husband Peter Morwood. The third and fourth novels waited until October 2000 and the wrap-up until December 2006, well after saturation had trimmed the market for Star Trek fiction. But her vision of this culture remains popular among Trek fans and again, would probably have provided some much more interesting stories than some of the colorless fare served up by the "canonical" vision.
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