Name: Spock Must Die!
Author: James Blish
Publication Date: 2/1970
Publisher: Bantam Books
Page Number: 118
Historian’s Note: I am assuming sometime after season 3. The latest episode mentioned is “Spretre of the Gun.” Events that take place
during the book means it has to take place sometime after “Day of the Dove.”
Cast of Characters: Captain James T. Kirk Commander Spock and another Commander Spock Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones” Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty” Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu Lieutenant Nyota Uhura Nurse Christine Chapel Ensign Pavel Chekov Yeoman First Class Janice Rand Admiral Kor Commander Koloth Ayelborne Claymare Trefayne
Starships and/or Starbases: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, Fleets
of unnamed Klingon K't'inga-class battle cruisers
and support ships
Planets: Organia and Qo'noS
My Spoiler filled summary and review: The book begins
with Captain Kirk walking into a discussion between Dr. McCoy and Mr.
Scott. The two senior officers are
having an argument about the transporter.
In what I think is probably the first time in what will ultimately
become a major Star Trek fan debate: McCoy is wondering if the
transporter kills its users and just makes copies of them. Scotty thinks this is a lot of hogwash and
Kirk mostly agrees.
That is when the horrible news came in. The Enterprise had received word from Starfleet Command that the planet Organia whose powerful non-corporal inhabitants had forced peace between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire, has completely disappeared. Almost if the Klingons were expecting it, a massive invasion begins with the Klingons scoring many victories against Starfleet. To make matters worse the Enterprise was flying through disputed space at the time of the attack, and as a result our favorite starship finds itself behind enemy lines. They brainstorm about what to do and Sulu suggests they use the fact that no one knows where they are to launch some sneak attacks on Klingon depots and supply lines. This would cause damage that Starfleet on the front line should be able to exploit. It has the downside of likely getting them killed but that is looking more likely anyhow.
 |
| The Federation is under siege |
Instead, the Captain decides to
take the starship to where Organia was supposed to be. Once there they discover that the area of
space the planet was supposed to be occupying was covered with a type of
shield. They have no idea what this is
and speculate it might be something that the Organians themselves have created. If they get to close to it, they not only
find themselves physically effected but mentally as well.
They can’t penetrate the shield but
Scotty thinks he has a way around it. He
can rig the transporter to create a temporary tachyon duplicate of whoever is in
the transporter with all the memories of the original that will be sent to
Organia faster than light. There the
duplicate will attempt to make contact with the Organians before returning to
the ship and transferring all its knowledge to the original before vanishing. Since they had been to Organia before, Kirk decides that it has to be him or
Spock. Spock volunteers.
Scotty sets up the main transporter room with the necessary changes. Due to the risk the transporter itself has to be closed up during the operation. Spock climbs in and they begin the procedure. However, something goes wrong and when they open up the transporter, they discover that instead of a temporary tachyon duplicate, the transporter created a full-fledged in the flesh duplicate of Mr. Spock. Both Mr. Spocks however claim that they are the original.
 |
| Kirk must figure out who is the true Spock |
Kirk labels them “Spock One” and
“Spock Two.” He sends Spock One to his (their) quarters and has a meeting with
Spock Two. During the conversation Kirk
is surprised at Spock Two’s violent thoughts toward his counterpart. Spock Two is insistent there cannot be two
and the duplicate has to be destroyed.
When he talks to Spock One, he finds him to be a little more reasonable
and Kirk gives him his class ring so he can tell them apart.
Kirk decides to have the two Spocks work opposite shifts and the only other crewmembers he lets in on this are Yeoman Rand and Nurse Chapel. This however doesn’t work because it appears one of the Spocks commits sabotage that could leave them vulnerable to the Klingons. This causes Kirk to relive both of them, explain the situation to the crew, and make Mr. Sulu the acting first officer. (I thought it was odd that it was Sulu and not Scotty, as Scotty was next in the chain of command. However, Scotty was also trying to unwrap the mystery of the two Spocks with the transporter. So, I assume that Kirk felt that the transporter work would take up too much of Scotty’s time.)
 |
| Scotty must find away to put this all back together, so Sulu rises to Kirk's right hand. |
Shortly thereafter Spock One
barricades himself in one of Dr. McCoy’s labs.
There he demands that the other Spock be destroyed. While dealing with one Spock locked up, Kirk
allows the other to return to limited duty at the science station but does not
restore his command authority. Kirk
decides to get closer to Organia but doing so brings the entire crew under a
type of mental attack. After the
retreat, Spock One also claims that he has information on Organia but will not
share that information until after his demands are met.
Then a fleet of Klingon ships that
consists of a K't'inga-class battle cruiser and a five support ships come into
attack the Enterprise. Using his
superior tactical mind, Captain Kirk outwits and destroys the Klingon
fleet. They then must speculate to why
the Klingons knew they were there. Did
someone tip them off (like one of the Spocks) or were the Klingons responsible
for what happened to Organia and had a fleet there to guard it?
Uhura decides to channel her inner geek and sends messages to Starfleet using James Joyce’s fictional language Eurish. Later in a senior officers meeting Kirk goes over possibilities with his crew and the two Spocks (with Spock One participating by intercom) actually have a rare moment of agreement on the presence of the Klingons. McCoy announces that he has found a way to tell which Spock is the real Spock. Scotty had run tests on some animals to see if he could recreate what happened with Spock and each time he did. McCoy then examined the pairs and noticed that one in each pair died after a few days. It turns out the dead ones were the duplicates, the process that created them made them mirror images and as such couldn’t process normal food without some accommodation. (McCoy has a very complicated explanation about this but I am not going to rehash it all here.) Which ever Spock is the fake has been making modifications to his food. To test they just have to give each Spock unmodified food and see who refuses to eat it. Spock Two says okay while Spock One runs off. Spock One steals a shuttle craft and somehow equipped it with warp drive.
 |
| McCoy solves the mystery of the Spocks |
Scotty becomes convinced that the
shield around Organia is artificial in nature and he is confident that he can
fix the transporter so they can beam through it. Taking all the bonus equipment that caused
the duplication mess, they can now use it as a transporter again. As they approach the planet again the same
dreed feeling came over the crew, however they ignore it long enough to beam
Kirk, the Real Spock, and Scotty down to the surface.
Once they materialize on the surface Kirk and Scotty are instantly helpless as their nightmares come to life and paralyze them with fear. To be fair, they probably should have expected that. Kirk comes to and seems to be in ruins of the town he visited last time he was at the planet. He seems to have found Spock but it’s the wrong one.
 |
| Only one Spock is true Spock! |
We get a showdown between the Spocks, and while I had almost no idea what was going on and neither apparently did Captain Kirk. What the two Spocks seemed to do was to fight with the illusions however it was never clear to me. The true Spock wins and the fake Spock perishes. They meet up with Council of Elders of Organia. Spock and Scotty work together to get the shield off of Organia. Then the three officers are magically sent home to the bridge of the Enterprise. Which is just in the nick of time too. Up to this point Mr. Sulu was leading a ship that was being chased by a Klingon fleet commanded by Koloth, and although he was giving the Klingons a good chase it was inevitable that they were going to be destroyed. However now that the Organians were out of their cage the Klingons were in a lot of trouble. The Organians punish the Klingons by taking away their space flight capabilities for a thousand years.
 |
| Kor and company are in for a shock! |
The book ends with Spock explaining
to his crewmates that he and his duplicate had a semi-telepathic
connection. That connection allowed him
to sense that nature of his thoughts and Spock discover that his duplicate has
no loyalty to the ship and crew and might even do them harm. Spock stated that he could not explain it
however while the connection was enforced.
The book ends with Mr. Spock answering McCoy’s original question about
transporter death and soul transfer as irrelevant sense there is no way to test
it.
Additional thoughts: This book was published one year
after the series came to an end. In his
introduction Blish is clearly outraged at Star Trek’s cancelation and
infuriated with studio executives who caused it. He makes a prediction that this would not be
the end and Star Trek would return.
Unfortunately, save for the cartoon, Blish would not live to see Star
Trek begin its golden age staring with the first film in 1979. Blish got the idea for this novel in the
middle of his write ups for the original series episodes that were released in
a series of books.
I am quite certain that this is the
first written account of Star Trek’s great transporter debate. Does the transporter kill us and then just create a copy of us? What would be the religious implications if this were true? The book gives a conclusive if unsatisfactory
answer, that “a difference with no distinction is no difference.” The strangest part of this episode, and one I
didn’t care for, is they were actually trying to make a sort of transporter
duplicate to begin with, just one made of energy tachyons and not regular
flesh—if I am understanding it correctly, this made me feel really weird. After all, why were they surprised when they
ended up with an actual duplicate in the flesh?
The ethics of making a copy of one of your crew to perform a function
temporarily then die when it is over is at least as worthy for some debate as
the general transporter discussion.
I think the book was very misnamed. “Spock Must Die” is a very misleading title considering that Spock doesn’t need to die. I suppose Blish could have called it “A Spock Must Die.” I am told the reason for the title was to drive up readers. Still, I think my title for the review is better.
 |
| Some ladies like the pointed ears! |
There was one really weird part in
this book and it had to do with an internal thought Kirk had. Now I one of the things I like about the
books is you can really get into the heads of the characters more so than the
log entries that the define the series and franchise. Granted you are often limited to the POV
characters which in this book is primarily Captain Kirk with the occasional
switch to Mr. Sulu when he is left in charge of the ship, and some surprise
appearances by Kor and Koloth give them some short POV time. However, this thought was so bizarre it made
me stop reading for a minute. While
bringing Rand and Chapel into the know about the two Spocks, Kirk starts
wondering what makes Spock so attractive to so many women. It is not that Kirk lacks attention from the
female sex it is just Spock doesn’t seem to have to work at it. He then concludes in his brain that Rand and
Chapel think Spock is hot because of unconscious racism that makes it a social
faux pas to express natural sexual attraction for an “other” can be excused
because he is white. This sounds more
like Blish’s own thoughts about why Spock was popular with female fans and
ridiculous thought for Kirk to possess.
To his credit Blish has McCoy call out this view as stupid when Kirk
shared it with him. However, it is still
a pointless to have Kirk have this thought at all.
I really enjoyed Uhura being such a queen nerd that she was able use such geekdom to full the Klingons with her knowledge of Eurish. In addition to her engineering and music skills our favorite communication officer has no seemingly end to her talent.
 |
| Lt. Uhura getting things done! |
One of the things I enjoyed about the
book is the reference to their pervious on the original series and some other
off-air adventures as well. A good
example is when Koloth is shown to want revenge not just for “The Trouble with Tribbles” but also from a previous unaired conflict between them.
“He had encountered—and been defeated by—James Kirk and his command on two previous occasions: the affair of the Xixobrax Jewelworm, and the dispute over the colonization of Sherman’s Planet.” (pg. 106)
What strikes me as strange is during the entire book at no point is there a mention of the episode “The Enemy Within.” Shouldn’t that have been the first past adventure mentioned after seeing two Spocks?
“It looks like Spock has been made into two! Remember when that happened to me? Can you tell me which one of you is the evil one?”
Now it turns out there was an evil
one but not for the same reason. In fact,
one would assume if Spock were split via a transporter he would turn into a
full human and a full Vulcan instead of just good/evil. Still, the previous “character turn in two”
story should have been referenced.
It was good to see some of the
classic Klingons such as Kor and Koloth get some time in the book even if it
was just to see their reactions to getting their butts kicked by the
Organians. I have to wonder where was
Kang? I think Blish was writing this
during the time of the third season and perhaps Kang didn’t exist as a
character yet.
Should it be canon: Okay so here is the big question
since the books’ canon status has always been strange. Should this book be canon? As much as like the story there is a major
problem with it fitting. That of course
in the end of the book where the Organians shut the Klingon Empire seemingly
for good. Now I am going to break one of
my rules here and discuss the Star Trek franchise beyond when this work came
out. Obviously in order for this book to
fit with the rest of the franchise this problem would have be addressed, for
the Klingons will play a large role in all of the Star Trek incarnations
going forward. You would have to have a
follow up story to explain how the Klingons got out from underneath the
Organians thumb. Maybe the Organians
realized that restraining the Klingons so harshly would mean bad things for the
galaxy long-term so they let them out within a year? Or the Klingons could do something heroic and
worthy to earn their way out. Either way
it would need to be addressed so right now my answer is no. Also remove the
part about Kirk speculating about why women find Spock attractive.
Cover Art: There have been multiple covers in each
printing but I am only commenting on my copy which is the original. The cover is simple and shows Spock with a
mirror image of himself. The heads of
the two are touching. Their hands seem
to pass through one another as if the other isn’t real. Also, the rank insignia on the Spocks is
wrong. The uniform looks like a mix of
his classic and the one from “The Cage.” The later editions’ covers are nicer.
Final Grade: 3 of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment