Star Trek: Enterprise: Broken Bow

Rating:
Summary: Series Development More Interesting
Review: I have not seen the television series this book is based on so, my comments are confined to the electronic version of the book. The book portion is shorter than even the multiple book series that I have read for other Star Trek tales. This is the first I have read of the Enterprise series, and while I will not stop based on this first exposure, the next best be much improved. The more interesting part of this E-Book was the additional material about the creation of the Enterprise as a series, and then the more specific design of various elements. This is included at the end of the book, and accounts for about 15% of all the reading.

The most frustrating information I learned is that time travel is not only a part of this specific book but will be a part of the series for as long as it may remain on television. The phrasing is a bit different, but "temporal alteration room" and "temporal cold war", sound all too familiar. This series is placed fairly close to the film, "First Contact", 100 years after, and 100 years prior to the first Star Trek series. It would seem this would once again allow for all manner of special appearances by familiar faces from other series if that decision is made. It has been done before, and with time travel a cornerstone of the entire Enterprise concept, it seems reasonable to expect such events.

The body of the book contains writing that is painful to read, "came face to face with a - a face", yes, written just like that. What is worse is that the first third of the book is not only littered with typos, there are question marks and other forms of punctuation that take the place of letters. Familiar species cannot even be given one name, for we start with Kling-on, and then move to Klingon, and then back and forth again. I don't understand why spell-checking should be such a task.

What was more interesting were the areas that explained the development of the show as a concept, the ship's design, the engineering section modeled after a submarine, shuttlecrafts designed like the current NASA X-33 concept vehicle, and creating costumes and familiar items like hand-held weapons, and communication devices that would interest an audience that already are walking around with 3 ounce phones in their pockets. The technology of some gadgets from the original series now is very much like what people use today. Some laptop computers have amazing capabilities, and even phones can be activated using only voice.

I hope the show is better than the book. There are countless Star Trek books out there to be read, and I would suggest starting some place other then with this early Enterprise in written form.