Star Trek: The Destiny Era Prelude: Elusive Salvation

Mass market paperback, 385 pages
Published 2016
Acquired January 2017
Read September 2017

Star Trek: The Original Series: Elusive Salvation

by Dayton Ward

1845-1996 / 2283
Can't move for all the time travel in this reading marathon so far. Elusive Salvation is a sequel of sorts to From History's Shadow, overlapping somewhat with that book: Wainwright puts in a small appearance, but Mestral and Roberta Lincoln (side characters in From History's Shadow) are the major twentieth-century players here. The twenty-third century is more relevant to this novel, too; about two years before The Wrath of Khan (appropriately, I finished reading it about two days before going to see the Fathom 35th-anniversary theatrical release of the film), Admiral Kirk is tasked with helping a group of aliens who appear in the Sol system, search for long-lost exiles from their planet.

Probably my favorite part of the book is the Star Trek goofiness of it. I mean, upon learning that the aliens' trace vanishes in the twentieth century, Kirk's first instinct is, "Oh, I'll just call my friends who live in the twentieth century and ask if they've seen them." As you do! Unfortunately, like with From History's Shadow, I don't think the book is ever imbued with very much energy. The aliens are too dull to care about, and the narrative-- scattered between lots of time frames and characters-- never really picks up. Like in From History's Shadow, I felt too often characters spent time thinking about interesting things that had happened between chapters instead of in the book I was reading. Or they think a lot about organizational reshuffling!

So in some ways it's a better book than From History's Shadow, because I think it's more structured and focused: Kirk and Spock actually contribute to the story, and the story is easier to grok. But the first book and The Eugenics Wars largely exhausted the twentieth century's known Star Trek data points, meaning there's not very many fan-pleasing callbacks to weave into this one.

Of the four original series novels I read for this marathon, The Rings of Time was time was certainly the best. But now it's time to put the twenty-third century behind us and discover the delights of the twenty-fourth!

Continuity Notes:

• There are a few different references to The Eugenics Wars novels here. Gary Seven is indisposed throughout most of the book because of secret stuff in India in the 1980s. Additionally, Kirk recalls meeting a much older Gary Seven about fifteen years back, which hasn't happened yet for the Gary who appears in this book.
• McCoy's relationship with Tonia Barrows from Crucible: Provenance of Shadows is referenced. Dayton Ward spits at your desire to have neatly organized continuity flowcharts.
• Admiral Nogura is in the book. I had forgot he was around after the Motion Picture era, but Memory Beta indicates he appeared on active duty in some 2280s-set comics and Forged in Fire.
  
• The whole time Kirk was interacting with a 1985 Roberta Lincoln, I kept wondering why if they kept in touch up until 1985/2283, why they wouldn't make contact in 1986/2285, during the events of The Voyage Home, but then the book has an epilogue where Roberta observes the HMS Bounty land in San Francisco, and she goes to investigate. That doesn't tell us why she doesn't intervene, though, or why Kirk never mentions her and Gary in the film. (I assume he did, just when the camera wasn't there.)
  
• The end establishes that Section 31 goes all the way back to 1996, based on a sublevel of the Pentagon where the U.S. co-ordinated its anti-extraterrestrial defense efforts. Not really sure what I think of this; I'll be curious to see if the twenty-fourth-century Section 31 novels pick up on this or not

Other Notes:

• Kirk reflects on the Department of Temporal Investigations: "After the numerous bizarre run-ins he and the Enterprise had experienced with time-related oddities, he would be disappointed to find out no one had been recording such incidents for posterity. Maybe it'll all make for a good book or two someday." Oho, I see what you did there, Dayton.
• Note that on pp. 184-85 it sounds like Kirk has never actually met a DTI agent, but then on p. 354 he mentions running into them a few times over the years. Mid-book timeline change? Or incompletely implemented revision to account for the events of Forgotten History? (which I will get to in due course)
• No joke is so much a groaner that you can't make it twice: Roberta thinks about her and Gary's interactions with Khan's creators: "I could write a book about the trouble some of these people have given us. Maybe two."
  
• Spock says "booger."