“Of course life is precious. That’s why our mission to Ammdon is to prevent a war.” Kirk wasn’t the least bit surprised when both Ross and Kesselmann scoffed at that. This was the single most prevalent opinion he’d ever encountered among his diverse crew. “Have you considered that you did not hold this odd belief until after you spoke with the alien Lorelei?”
You would not believe how much I wanted to read
Mutiny on the Enterprise by Robert E Vardeman (1983) (#12 Pocket, #45 Titan), and that was
before I read
The Klingon Gambit. Unfortunately
Mutiny on the Enterprise is the last Star Trek novel by Vardeman published by Pocket Books,
which I personally feel is a great shame because
he really is an excellent author.
Mutiny on the Enterprise takes place during the original five year mission – ignore older Kirk and Spock in strange uniforms on the front cover. Seriously, why can’t they illustrate the covers with the correct ages / uniforms of the characters?! Was there some sort of Pocket Books edict that all covers must be wholly inaccurate? That being said looks like the right bridge is in the background (red railing) and the alien Lorelei pictured on the front fits with her description. Perhaps making Shatner and Nimoy (especially Nimoy) look 80s hero haggard and old was in vogue?
For once the tagline is accurate (shocking I know):
On a mission of peace, a bewitching woman sets the Enterprise at war – with itself!
I wondered, what would cause the crew of the Enterprise to mutiny? The crew of the Enterprise doesn’t mutiny not with James T Kirk as captain or without some serious alien intervention! Well, it is the latter, serious alien intervention, the funny thing is, it wasn’t until I looked up my review of The Klingon Gambit that I realised that Vardeman definitely has favourite story elements!
- Alien psychic intervention
- Mutiny / Crew disobedience
- James T Kirk & Spock remaining mostly immune
- McCoy definitely not being immune
- Threat of an established villain mixed in with some new aliens
All the above appear in both of his novels, I often notice that some authors revisit a particular story / characters / set of themes in an effort to, I guess, produce the perfect story. It’s like they’re hammering away at this idea in their head that means a lot but can’t ever be happy with it. An author who wrote one of my favourite trilogies as her debut does this, and although there are problems with her first iteration, I think it’s the best. Subsequent iterations never quite capture the magic of her first attempt. It would be interesting to read his other sci-fi works and see if he revisits these again under a different guise!
I kind of get this feeling with
Mutiny on the Enterprise however, although Vardeman revisits the same story elements the story itself has a different overall message / theme. In this way, it is more in keeping with the moralistic bent to the episodes than say the previous novel in the series
Yesterday’s Son. Mutiny on the Enterprise starts in a rather cliched fashion, the Enterprise in on it’s way to a Starbase for some much needed repair work and some R&R for the crew, however a situation has arisen and diplomats will need to be transported to a distant system in order to avoid a war between two hostile planets. Why is this so important? The Romulans are trying to get a foothold in that part of space and are looking to capitalise on the encroaching war to achieve this.
Unfortunately for the Enterprise, it really is in need of repairs and can only make a weak warp two, sometimes three, for short periods of time. Before they get to their destination they pick up a distress call, which is when the milk run turns sour. They pick up a survivor from a very broken ship, she tells Kirk she is a speaker of the ‘Hyla’ a yet uncontacted race by the Federation, and her name is Lorelei. Kirk notices that although she is not pretty she is attractive, he feels she has some sort of effect on him. They continue on their way but Lorelei comes to Kirk, concerned. The Hyla are total pacifists who (it is revealed) will not stand by and let another species go about its own business. Basically they would ignore an idea like the prime directive in a lesser species if it would stop fighting, they would not allow a species to self determine because only their doctrine of pacifism should exist.
You can probably see where this is going to go horribly, horribly wrong.
Lorelei soon gets to work on subverting the crew to her way of thinking, using her own indoctrination techniques to control the crew and undermining Kirk’s authority. Of course, she is never violent but her way of thinking even to the most forgiving of readers is destructive. In a bid to get his crew under control (only Spock seems unaffected) Kirk sets up almost a speaking competition between the Tellarite diplomat and Lorelei. Unfortunately, as good as the Tellarite is, he does not have the strange powers Lorelei has, and Kirk’s plan backfires as the Hyla woman cements her control over the crew.
 |
| How they should look… |
The Enterprise is damaged, most probably sabotaged, and is left without warp power. Left without warp they limp towards a planet which appears to have advanced humanoid life and crucially, a source for the shielding required to repair the warp engines. Spock, Mccoy and a security detachment beam down in order to negotiate with the inhabitants, however, this all goes sour as initiating contact caused an extreme reaction and they are imprisoned in a living prison. The diplomats disobey Kirk and beam down, they also find themselves captured and one of their number is killed by the planet itself. Finally, Kirk finds himself with a need to use the ship’s phasers to fire on the planet in order to break his crew and the diplomats out of their prison, however Lorelei’s pacifistic control of the ship is absolute and she exiles Kirk from Enterprise and beams him down onto the hostile planet.
While looking for the landing party, Kirk observes that even the buildings are alive and appear to grow and, it seemed that as long as he didn’t disturb anything he could wander unimpeded by the planet.
Kirk manages to save Spock, McCoy, the security detachment -1, and the diplomats -1. They notice that there is an Enterprise shuttle going back and forth from the planet to orbit, they surmise that Lorelei has coaxed the planet into giving them some of the much needed shielding. They manage to hijack the shuttle and escape. McCoy gives everyone waxy earplugs in order to preserve them from Lorelei’s effects. Unfortunately, all the diplomats are now well and truly dead.
The final parts of the novel play out as you might expect. I won’t spoil the end, which frankly was a little bit of genius, but it was as satisfying as it was a bad idea (very).
Mutiny on the Enterprise has some interesting points. There’s some talk on what total pacifism means – what does it look like when taken to extremes? Well, like any extreme ideology it appears to have no room for reason and it breaks it’s own ideological ideals in order to maintain it’s status quo. For example, Lorelei would strand Kirk and McCoy, probably Spock too on the hostile planet in order to avoid ‘disruptive influence’ despite the fact it would ultimately directly lead to their death by the planet organism. Her ideology allows her to indirectly kill in order to ensure and propagate her agenda. She also denounces self defense, even when her thralls are being eaten alive the ideology dictates they can’t use violence to defend themselves. As such, this line of thinking extends to the Federation, she does not believe that they should have weapons for defense, despite knowing they have to defend themselves against foes like the Klingons and Romulans.
 |
Probably my most hated character
of all time…. |
She’s a hypocrite. In order to stop Kirk she uses force and violence. In order to keep control she would indirectly kill. She espouses an ideal of total pacifism where you can’t even defend yourself. Absurd. She reminds me of another character dedicated to total pacifism which drove me utterly bonkers – Relena Peacecraft from the anime Gundam Wing (1995). The thing is with this character archetype, they still need other agents to do their dirty work and generally they don’t acknowledge that. People are also expendable as long as it furthers the pacifistic ideal, even if it could mean the preservation of life.
They also tend to be incredibly naive and narrow minded, like most extreme ideologies of this nature, everything is black and white, never grey. In the case of Lorelei, she is privileged in that she can enforce her ideals by brainwashing and eradicating those proven to be uncontrollable. In Relena’s case she was privileged by birth, she had money and prestige and the sheltered environment needed to nurture her naivete. The other children who pilot the war machines from the space colonies had no such privilege and had to develop inline with their abilities and experiences.
Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent then! But Gundam Wing is one of my sci-fi favs and my first corrupting fandom influence!
I actually really liked the idea of the planetoid organism. I didn’t expect that, but then perhaps if I’d thought about The Klingon Gambit perhaps I should have since Vardeman uses the idea of interconnected organisms on a planet in that one too! Moving trees that attack… all the creatures being able to feel each other’s pain etc. Of course in this case it’s slightly different as everything on the planet is one organism and even the humanoid creatures that live in the growing houses are as cells are in our bodies. The unknown creatures such as the Enterprise crew are treated as bacteria or viruses, quarantined or broken down as our cells would to invaders. The planet was able to be at least partially put to sleep by Dr McCoy using an anaesthetic (local) but it could also be wooed by Lorelei’s words. I have to admit that was a little odd, since it was stated that there was no sound made by the beings on the planet and that nothing had ears… so how did she get what she wanted? Perhaps I should let that one slide.
Characterisation is at times very strange, but that is easily explained by the brainwashing effect of Lorelei’s honeyed words! I really enjoy Kirk centric novels (as you might have gathered) and I think Vardeman got his characterisation down pat. Spock’s was also strong, although in one of his more aloof states although there was plenty of banter between him and McCoy. McCoy was also wonderfully… McCoy about the whole drama, plenty of emotion, plenty of snide comments. Keep ’em rolling!
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| A Tellarite from ‘Journey to Babel’. |
I haven’t really touched on the diplomats yet, they were actually an interesting bunch and I kind of expected more to be made of them, I was quite sad when they all died! We were meant to dislike them to a certain extent when compared with the gentle Lorelei but I couldn’t help but think that they could have been so much more. The Tellarite diplomat got some good exposition, but the sentient plant was a really interesting character that didn’t get developed and met a grisly end. The death of the immaculately clean and fashionable human diplomat was a disappointment, we learned he was actually a good man and he got killed by the planet. So unremarkable was his death I actually read the section twice trying to identify when he died… poor fellow.
The last section of the book has Kirk playing diplomat. Lorelei’s prediction of failure and the Enterprise being a catalyst for war was a self fulfilling prophesy. I couldn’t help getting frustrated! Well of course they’ve failed! They were delayed by Lorelei, their diplomats are dead, their ship is currently held together with duct tape and a prayer, what was going to be the outcome? I should think that had they been able to fulfill their mission of peace unhindered they would have succeeded.
I guess we’ll never know.
Again, this is a really strong entry into the series. Not quite 5/5 but a respectable 4/5 on my highly subjective scale. I did have a look at some reviews which bemoaned it as not being a good follow on from Crispin’s Yesterday’s Son, but I think it’s very much it’s equal. Different scope, different style but just as enjoyable. Mutiny on the Enterprise builds on Vardeman’s ideas in The Klingon Gambit and is definitely worth a read.
4/5 – No R&R for you!
StarTrekTales 