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Star Trek: The Animated Series Logs Seven And Eight by Alan Dean Foster
01/07/2007 . Source: Eamonn Murphy 
Pub: Del Rey/Ballantine Books. 358 page enlarged paperback. Price: $13.95 (US), $19.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-345-49584-5. Buy Star Trek: The Animated Series Logs Seven And Eight in the USA - or Buy Star Trek: The Animated Series Logs Seven And Eight in the UK  check out website: www.delreybooks.com and www.startrek.com
In the introduction to this collection author/adaptor Alan Dean Foster informs us - warns us? - that due to the success of the books his editor insisted he make a full novel out of every TV script so as to get four more books from those left. Since a twenty page script cannot be stretched to a 60,000 word novel, Mister Foster had to add new material. I hope he got paid extra for this.
The story in Log 7, 'The Counter-Clock Incident' consists of one third screenplay material by John Culver and two thirds additions by Alan Dean Foster. The new material consists partly of a screenplay Foster wrote for the original TV series. Slotted for series 4, it never got made.
'The Counter-Clock Incident' starts with the Enterprise escorting Robert April and his wife to a retirement ceremony. April was the first captain of the ship. They encounter an alien ship heading into a nova at tremendous speed and snag it with a tractor beam to try and save it. The Enterprise is dragged into the nova along with the other ship but instead of melting they enter a different dimension where time runs backward. As they struggle to return home, aided by the natives, the crew slowly age backwards and become little kids. How the little kids must have loved it on telly!
They get home. There follows a battle with Klingons over a mad scientists super-weapon and an ending that I did not like. I suspect Foster was a bit rushed on finding extra material for this one because, for my taste, he didn't make a very good job of it. Happily, the three succeeding logs worked out much better.
Log 8 adapts 'The Eye Of The Beholder' from a script by David P. Harmon. Lacking the original animated series, I can't tell which part of this is original and which is Foster's but the overall product is good. When the Enterprise is sent looking for a missing survey team the landing party gets captured by the Lactrans, giant slug-like beings so advanced mentally that they believe the humans are simply animals and keep them in a zoo. On becoming convinced that Mister Spock and his friends are intelligent, the Lactrans insist on being taken big game hunting. They want a jawanda for their zoo but these are found only on the edge of the galaxy and the Lactrans have long since given up space travel. Kirk has little choice but to agree and so they cross vast distances to hunt this creature. En route they visit the Boqus, silicon aliens who look like metal tree sculptures. Doctor McCoy treats them for plague while grumbling that he has never encountered a silicon based life form before. Clearly he has forgotten the Horta, the devil in the dark.
After 'The Counter-Clock Incident', I rather dreaded having to read three more 'padded' Logs but this was a very good story and the jawanda turned out to be a fascinating life-form, whoever invented them. Six marks out of ten for the book then. One out of five for the first Log. Five out of five for the second.
Eamonn Murphy
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