Sorry, this isn’t Blast from the Past related, but Lower Decks is still two weeks away from airing and Strange New Worlds won’t return until 2025. Had to scratch my Trek itch. Got some Louis Sachar coming!

On Andor, the polar compound of the spiraling-to-extinction Aenar subspecies is attacked and its people savagely murdered, leaving only a few score of the Aenar remaining. The Enterprise is tasked with ensuring the remaining Aenars’ safety, as well as working with planetside authorities to determine who would perpetuate genocide against so peaceful a people. When the Enterprise itself is attacked by a small group of armored warriors, though, Kirk and Spock realize there’s more here than meets the eye: this is no disgruntled Andorian xenophobes trying to eliminate a sub-species they regard as inferior and undesirable, but an unknown party apparently targeting people who are “espers”, or who have some psychic abilities. The Higher Frontier is an early movie-era book, building off of events from The Motion Picture, but before more characters began leaving the Enterprise: Kirk still commands the Big E, Spock is still his right hand, Chekov is still holding down security and hasn’t yet shipped out to The Reliant. Bennett brings back Dr. Miranda Jones, featured in “Is There in Truth No Beauty“, one of the many TOS episodes I had completely forgotten about. Here, she’s a powerful psychic human bound to another intelligence, and she’s not alone in her gifts. Since the V’GR incident, humans who identified as espers are not only growing in number, but they claim their gifts are growing in prowess as well, so much so that they begin to identify as New Humans. There’s a lot in here to make lorists happy, as Bennett includes characters like Commander Thalin, who was the first officer of the Enterprise in that Animated Series alternate-universe story, as well as Xon, who would have been the Spock of Star Trek: Phase II had it ever reached filming. (And Saavik!) The plot also does a fair bit of cleaning and scene-staging to make parts of the red-sweater movies make sense, like why there are manual torpedos on the E and why Kirk is an admiral but apparently has The Enterprise attached to Starfleet Academy. (The two are related: the Academy wants officers trained in manual systems as backups.) Bennett is one of modern Trek’s strongest authors, especially on the science front, so I enjoyed this for the most part, especially the way Bennett deals with the TOS espers who have no presence in later shows, but thought the ending dragged out a bit.

Highlights:

Despite what has been rumored about me among Vulcans, I have not renounced logic or discipline. I have merely come to recognize that emotion is an integral part of the cognitive process, and it is thus logical to accept its presence and employ it—to integrate it with one’s reason rather than existing at odds with a part of one’s own being.”

Spock took a step closer to T’Nalae. “You say that you boarded the Enterprise to learn from me, Specialist. What I have to teach you may not be what you expected to hear … but that is the nature of true learning. I request that you ponder on that until we speak again.”

McCoy shook his head. “Unbelievable. An emotional Vulcan who’s having problems with telepathic humans. Did we cross over into an alternate universe again?

Spock tilted his head skeptically. “In my case, V’Ger provided only a negative example. It revealed to me that an existence of pure logic without emotion was sterile and purposeless. I came to understand that it was better to seek a synthesis of the two.” “And you seem to have succeeded.”
“It is still a work in progress,” Spock demurred. “But so is life,” Kirk ventured to add.

Kirk wondered why Starfleet’s quartermaster corps could never seem to stick with a uniform design for longer than a single five-year duty tour. He kept coming back home to find himself behind the fashion curve.

“Sir!” Chekov called as a detection alarm sounded. “That dimensional rift you wanted? It’s opening nearly on top of us!” Why do I never get service that fast when it’s something good? Terrell wondered.

The auditory ambience of the Enterprise’s bridge had evolved over the decades that Spock had served within its various iterations, as equipment function had advanced and aesthetic tastes in auditory status indicators had evolved. However, one component of that ambience that had remained irritatingly consistent over the majority of the past fourteen years had been the grumblings of Doctor Leonard McCoy. The doctor rarely entered the bridge without promptly making his presence known through distracting and generally uninformative banter.

Related:
As usual, Bennett provides annotations at his blog, Written Worlds, which reveal some of the sly references he works in.