Book #102: The Search for Spock by Vonda N. McIntyre

 

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Vonda N. McIntyre

 Released: December 1st, 1979

My 45th book for 2025 was Vonda N. McIntyre’s "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock".  

This is another of the Star Trek novels that I have read in the past and wanted to reread for this blog.  I read it digitally this time.

My first time hearing of “The Search For Spock” came in Rodanthe, OBX, North Carolina.  I was on vacation with my dad’s side of the family, and the house we all stayed in had this movie.  I read the back cover several times but did not watch it until years later.

I don’t recall the first time I read it outside memories from the movie.  This time as I read it, it read as a direct sequel to Wrath of Khan (which honestly, it is).

The Search for Spock follows up right where Wrath of Khan left us.  The Enterprise limps home from Genesis.  Everyone is bittersweet because they are alive at the sacrifice of Captain Spock.  McCoy begins behaving oddly.  Lt. Saavik and David Marcus are reassigned to the U.S.S. Grissom to investigate and survey the Genesis planet.  Once there, some geological abnormalities lead to the discovery that David took a risk with one of the equations causing instability.  Also, they discover Captain Spock’s empty casket tube.  The Klingons get word of the Genesis explosion detonated by Khan.  They seek to get information from the Federation.  Back on Earrh, the U.S.S. Enterprise is set for decommission.  As the depressed crew returns to their normal duties, Spock’s father. Vulcan Ambassador Sarek asks Kirk for Spock’s “katra) or soul essence.  After disappointedly finding out Kirk is absent the katra, Kirk realizes McCoy was the one who harbors is.  After being denied a ship to Genesis, the Enterprise steal the ship, disable the fleet, and race off to Genesis.  After destroying the Grissom, Kirk and company must rescue the surviving party, defeat the Klingons, and get McCoy to Vulcan to refuse the body and soul, all while losing the original Enterprise in the process.

I feel as though the movie tried to become its own while explaining deeper some of the things from the previous story.  The novelization felt like a direct follow-up.  So many elements that were not included in the film featured here.  Carol Marcus going to Vance’s parents home.  More scenes on Genesis, and more featuring the Grissom before its destruction.  We see more of Scotty’s difficult relationship with his family.

I really like the additional scenes of Carol and the follow-up to the victims of Spacelab.  The Wrath of Khan novelization gives the scientists personality.  You feel for each of the characters.  This is in comparison to the movie where the characters are mentioned and briefly seen.  It’s good to have closure to them.  Vonda N. McIntyre was brilliant at this.

The Search for Spock has a really good storyline.  It’s not Wrath of Khan-level, but that’s because Search for Spock is a continuation film.  Wrath of Khan was an original story based on an old villain from the TV series.  Search for Spock simply built off that to create its own story.  Honestly, it plays out more like a classic episode of Star Trek.  The battle with evil Klingon Kruge (epically played in the film by Christopher Lloyd.  Yes.  Doc Brown was a Klingon.  Look at the picture and don’t laugh.  I dare you.

Yes…Doc Brown the Klingon. 😂

Cracks me up every time.

Good story, builds the next chapter without breaking out too hard itself.  

Here is what I learned:

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• The Enterprise’s synthesizer makes really strong Kentucky Bourbon.

• Wormwood is required in Absinthe.

• Bones knows that even with 20 years of friendship, Kirk is still perfectly capable of pulling rank.

• David Marcus inherited his mother’s tolerance for alcohol.

• "David, I want to give you some advice. When we get back to Earth, you and your mother are going to be the center of some very concentrated attention. Some of it will be critical, some of it will be flattering. At first you'll think the abuse is the hardest thing to take. But after a while, you'll see that handling compliments gracefully is an order of magnitude more difficult."

• Saavik never drinks because alcohol has a bad effect on her.  It causes her Vulcan elements to regress.

• McCoy’s actions while inebriated are out-of-character.  Typically he becomes more direct and pithier.

• Carol Marcus can drink everyone under the table and not even show it.

• Everyone assumed Captain Spock's casket would burn up in the outer atmosphere of the Genesis world. So Admiral Kirk had intended. But Saavik had disobeyed his order. Instead, she programmed a course that intersected the last fading resonance of the Genesis effect. When the coffin encountered the edge of the wave, matter had exploded into energy. Within the wave, the energy that had been Spock's body coalesced into sub-quarkian particles, thence, in almost unmeasurable fractions of a second, to normal atomic matter. He was now a part of that distant world. He was gone. She would never see him again.

• Vance and Carol were lovers.

• “Funerals and wakes aren't for the person who is dead, they're for the people left behind."

• David and Saavik both passed all their exams in biocontrol.

• Saavik’s hair smells of evergreens.

• The Genesis Effect destroyed the Mutara Nebula.

• Vulcans and Romulans have body temperatures slightly above humans.

• David and Saavik become lovers.

• Saavik has a Romulan family mark in the form of a scar.

• David has never heard of family marks.

• It is considered bad manners for a Romulan to turn down a challenge of a duel.

• Most Romulans remember their birth due to branding.

• Dr. Christine Chapel had feelings for Spock years prior.

• The U.S.S. Grissom is led by Captain J.T. Esteban.

• Magellan is in Andromeda. It just completed the first close-range observation of a supernova."

• He made a mental note to tell Mr. Sulu the news of Magellan, for Sulu and the galaxy ship's captain, Mandala Flynn, had been the closest of friends for a long time.

• In all the years Jim had known J.T. Esteban, he had never seen him lose his composure.

• “The drive to convert people's minds and hearts has caused more grief, more suffering, more loss of life than any desire for property, riches, or even the necessities of survival."

• "It's hardly productive to ascribe malicious motives to everybody who disagrees with you.”

• Grissom has been ordered to the Mutara sector to make a complete survey of the Genesis world.

• Valkris is on a mission to restore her family’s fortune and honor.

• Her family fell on hard times.

• Her older brother Kiosan had never forgiven the family for choosing her to lead them over himself.

• Kiosan reneged on all the vows he had made when he came of age. 

• Valkris offered him the opportunity to return to the family four times.

• He refused and dared her to break her own word and join him. 

• Valkris disowned her brother with a regret so intense that to this moment she felt the pain. 

• Every member of each of the great families took the vows upon coming of age. 

• Valkris had never fled a duel nor even lost a duel.

• She bore scars from wounds that would have proven her honor even had she yielded to the opponent who inflicted them. 

• Due to her reputation for ferocious tenacity, she had not been challenged in some years. 

• Valkris had buried more opponents than she had permitted to be helped from the field. 

• Saavik volunteers to go with the Grissom in place of Carol.

• David found Vance boring but Del exciting.

• Carol found Vance more calm and stable vs Del’s quick reactions.

• An old Chinese curse says, "May you live in interesting times."

• Jan was a steward on Spacelab.

• He stayed behind after a freighter dropped him off on Spacelab.

• Jan was working his way across the galaxy.

• He wrote poetry but would never let anyone read it.

• Yoshi was the Spacelab cook.

• He was due for leave but stayed to ensure the remaining crew remembered to eat.

• He was fascinated by Genesis and didn’t want to miss Phase 2.

• Delwin March was partners with Vance Madison.

• They practically invented an entire field of physics.

• They called their physics “kindergarten physics” because it dealt with sub-elementary particles.

• They discovered two particles that form the basis of the entire universe.

• They named them “snarks” and “boojums” after a Lewis Carroll poem.

• Del had a streak of pain and fury that frightened Carol.

• Vance was the only one who could calm him down, and that was only by stopping him from hurting himself too badly.

• Zinaida Chitiria-Ra-Payjh was one of the finest mathematicians in the entire Federation.

• Nearly all the young men and some young g women fell in love with her at various points.

• Her partner Jedda died by phaser inside Regulus 1.

• Deltans can will themselves to die.

• If they find themselves in intolerable conditions, they can do it without feeling any pain.

• She was not afraid of pain, but rather embraced it as an experience she had never encountered before.

• Carol used to call Vance Madison and Del “twins” because they were completely different.

• Vines filled the tunnel that the Spacelab team hid the Genesis records.

• “Shake a leg” is an idiom meaning “hurry up”.

• Captain Sulu taught Saavik self-defense.

• “Kotegaeshi” is a circular wrist lock in Japanese martial-arts.

• "I hope you're wrong, David. But I think I understand why you're angry and disappointed. I hope someday you can forgive me, or even accept me. In the meantime let's try at least to be civil to each other. For your mother's sake."

• "Saavikam” is Saavik’s name in Vulcan.

• Captain Esteban and Admiral Kirk make plans to get together again when the Grissom returns in less than 2 months.

• Saavik had never met a Glaeziver before.

• Glaezivers were planned to be extinct within 100 years.

• Their planet had been destroyed in the nova of its star.

• Glaezivers had a reputation for being very formal and stand-offish.

• Starfleet sent another crew to Aloha Ceti V for the stranded survivors of the Reliant.

• The Enterprise will need 8 weeks of retrofitting to fly missions again.

• Scotty multiplies his repair estimates by a factor of four to sustain his reputation as a miracle worker.

• McCoy uses beard repressor to stay clean shaven.

• Valkris gave Commander Kruge the Federation data on Genesis.

• Kruge has a spiny pet named Warrigul.

• Starfleet regulations specifically state: 'Nothing shall be beamed aboard until danger of contamination has been eliminated.'

• The trainee cadets on the Enterprise were returned to Earth aboard the Firenze.

• The cadets were given several weeks leave to process the events that transpired.

• The cadets were presented with the jeweled Gold Star of Valor by Admiral James T. Kirk.

• The U.S.S. Excelsior has transwarp drive.

• Kirk ordered Captain Spock’s quarters to be sealed.

• Spock never locked his room.

• McCoy broke into Spock’s quarters.

• Starfleet Commander Morrow was Kirk’s first commanding officer.

• Scotty is promoted to Captain of Engineering onboard the Excelsior.

• The Enterprise is 20 years old in this story.

• “Some things there be that are more important than starships, and one of them is family, one of them is ties of blood."

• Captain Sulu went on the training exercise as a favor to Kirk.

• Captain Styles replaces Sulu as Captain of the Excelsior.

• Dannon Stuart is Peter’s sister.

• Her mother is a sculpture.

• Peter’s funeral was at 10am.

• Peter described Lt. Saavik vividly in his letters home.

• The last 2 times Kirk got his hands on the Enterprise. The captains died (Decker and Spock).

• The Genesis planet shows signs of instability.

• Peter’s final resting place was among ten generations of his family.

• He is the first of his generation to pass away.

• The family has a tradition of taking the name of one’s parent of the same gender, he was the only Preston in the family.

• Grenni confesses that he ran while Peter stayed.

• He spent all his money and went AWOL to attend Peter’s funeral.

• "What if he melded his mind with someone else?"

• Murphy’s Law states that, “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.”

• The U.S.S. Grissom uses the subspace codes channel 98.8.

• Kruge’s gunner destroyed the Grissom.

• Federation communicators are only local transceivers.

• David was not sure of one of the equations for the Genesis project and did not alert the other scientists.

• The equation dealt with protomatter, a highly volatile substance.

• Using protometer is considered an ethical breach of science.

• All Saavik could think was that if Genesis had been delayed or abandoned, none of the recent events would have happened. Reliant would never have visited the world on which Khan Singh and his people were marooned. Khan would never have obtained a starship. He would never have led his people on his mission of vengeance. The scientists on Spacelab would not have been murdered. The Enterprise and its crew of children never would have been attacked. Peter Preston would still be alive. Genesis would not have existed to be used as a weapon, and Mr. Spock would not have had to sacrifice his existence to save his ship and his crewmates.

• Kirk gives McCoy Lexorin to make him well enough to travel.

• "What the hell do you mean, yellow alert? How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock?"

• Vance’s parents are Aquila Madison, and Terrence Laurier.

• They live in Port Orchard.

• Del was an orphan who made up his entire life.

• "What you had to do, what you've always done: turned death into a fighting chance to live."

• David is murders by Kruge’s men.

• "My son. . . .To thee no star be dark … Both heaven and earth … friend thee forever …'"

• Saavik speaks Kumburan Klingon.

• Kruge’s crew speaks Rumayi Klingon.

• The Vulcan process for fusing a soul and a body is called “Fal tor pan”.

• It has not been performed in millennia.

• Vulcan is a desert world, limited in material resources, yet limitless in the intellectual and philosophical achievements of its inhabitants.

• "If I hadn't tried, the cost would have been my soul."

• "Because the needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many."

• “Jim.  Your name is Jim.”

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Overall, pretty good follow up.  It’s not the greatest Trek tale ever told, but the story is unique, pays homage to the classic Original Series episodes, and is a good read, especially to those who read Wrath of Khan.

Recommended, especially if you’ve read the prior book.

On to Book #103: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home by Vonda N. McIntyre.