PRIME DIRECTIVE

Reviewed 12/28/2012

Prime Directive, by Reeves-Stevens
Cover art by ?
PRIME DIRECTIVE
Judith Reeves-Stevens
Dave Stern (ed.)
Garfield Reeves-Stevens
New York: Pocket Books, September 1991

Rating:

5.0

High

ISBN-13 978-0-671-74466-3
ISBN-10 0-671-74466-6 406pp. SC $4.95

There was a world called Talin IV. Its inhabitants had achieved a level of development equivalent to that of late-twentieth-century Earth, and the Federation judged it would qualify for membership in fifty years. Thus a First Contact Office had been hidden on Talin IV's moon some three years before the story opens.

But recently a crisis had arisen. There were two major powers on that world, both armed with thermonuclear weapons, and political tensions made war seem imminent. The FCO needed more data than it could get by passive monitoring. Intrusive sampling at military bases was called for, and Enterprise had been sent in to support this.

But despite the great care taken by the FCO and the crew of the starship, the tragedy is not averted. The intrusive sampling mission is interrupted before it can gather much information, and Enterprise is almost immediately attacked and disabled. Her crew make it out safely, but the officers judged responsible are cashiered by the Federation, which judges they have grossly violated the holy of holies: Star Fleet General Order Number One, implementing the Prime Directive.

There have been no courts-martial; the ship's senior officers, except for Montgomery Scott, have resigned after concluding they cannot clear their names while remaining in the service they love. As civilians, they take widely varying paths toward the goal of discovering what really happened to Talin IV and proving it to the Federation. But these paths lead them all back to the devastated planet, where a host of relief ships awaits permission to provide aid. If neither the FCO nor Enterprise was responsible for triggering the war on Talin IV, and no other agency could have penetrated Star Fleet's blockade, then perhaps someone was there before the blockade was established. And soon, intriguing clues are discovered.

The authors take some liberties with the Star Trek canon (as they note in a disclaimer.) But they also write in some supporting characters from the TV show — like Carolyn Palamas.1 They provide some very entertaining jeopardy for the various crew members (especially Sulu and Chekov) and an intriguing mystery at the heart of the Federation's harsh judgment of Kirk and the others.

The novel is hard to put down and almost free of typos. I found the early adventures of Sulu and Chekov with the Orion traders a bit too slapstick, references to the rivalry between Spock and McCoy too frequent, and the claimed endurance of "The One"2 unnecessarily overblown. But I can't mark it down for those minor faults. It's no keeper, but I give it full marks.

1 Notable for her appearance in "Who Mourns for Adonis" (STTOS Episode 31), as brought to life by Leslie Parrish.
2 No connection with Babylon 5 is implied here.
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