Have you seen Star Trek IV: A Voyage Home? It’s easy to remember — it’s the funny one, with whales and Admiral Kirk not recognizing 20th century slang. The Enterprise crew have to go back to 1986 to pick up some humpback whales because there are some aliens who used to talk to the whales, and now that they’re gone the aliens are sad and vaporizing Earth’s oceans. Kirk & company got the whales, but on their exit a cetologist named Gillian Taylor asked for a ride to the Future, because 1986 was dullsville and The Future would need a cetologist. No Gillian, no Cetacean Ops! But whatever became of this transparently obvious violation of the Temporal Prime Directive? Find out…..in the epilogue!

Star Trek: Lost to Eternity is an interesting TOS release, with stories across three different timeframes (2024, series-era TOS, movies-era TOS) developing and converging toward the very end. Greg Cox is no stranger to TOS writing, and as usual, the characterization and dialogue are spot-on, and his prior work playing with the integration of real history and Trek history comes in handy here, especially his authorship of the KHAAAAAAAAAAAN!!! trilogy. The divided timeframes can be a bit confusing on the TOS side, given that Kirk is quarreling with a female Klingon captain in both. The 2024 segment is distinct from the rest, and has the fun premise of a modern-day podcaster named Melinda doing some investigatory journalism into the disappearance of Gillian Taylor: the investigation plays with a lot of the chaos of A Voyage Home, as the Enterprise crew were doing everything from giving people magic kidney pills to covering Golden Gate Park in Bird of Prey-shaped dents. While her investigation is turning up all kinds of weirdness and attracting attention from suspicious quarters, Kirk in two different eras is dealing with crises that will prove interrelated — as will Melinda’s search or the truth. Oddly, Cox doesn’t try to connect Melinda’s 2024 to the 2024 of Star Trek history: Melinda is living in our San Francisco, not the San Francisco of “Past Tense”, with the Sanctuary district and the Bell Riots. Still, I was impresssed by the story Cox created that could connect all the ’86 shenanigans to a full-scale drama centuries later. Cox knows what he’s doing with TOS characters, capturing the chemistry of the power trio especially, and I appreciated his little jokes like having one of the Klingons quote Shakespeare — which, after all, you cannot appreciate until you’ve experienced it in the original Klingon. Given that I signed on for Gillian Taylor, I was disappointed by how utterly marginal a role she plays, but the investigation was fun and I thought the villain of the piece was an interesting character who I could stand to see in more stories.

Highlights:

“Thank heaven for small favors?” Doctor McCoy loitered within the command well, leaning on a railing. “How dicey is this whole get-together if it’s notable that nobody is shooting each other yet? Talk about a low bar.” Saavik had noted that the doctor seldom felt obliged to confine himself to his sickbay if more intriguing happenings were transpiring on the bridge.

Spock nodded. “Your own world’s devastating Eugenics Wars come immediately to mind.”
“Not just ‘our’ world, Spock,” McCoy said. “Need I remind you that half your genes come from Earth as well?”
Spock stiffened. “That is hardly necessary, Doctor, nor appreciated.”

“Sadly,” Plavius replied, “Romulan law and policy do not recognize the validity of… hunches.”
McCoy rolled his eyes. “And they say Vulcans and Romulans have nothing in common anymore.”

Related:
From History’s Shadow, Dayton Ward. Another ST + real history mix.