We are back on mission at Star Trek CineMcCollough, going way back to the earliest days of the Pocket Books novels for number four, "The Covenant of the Crown." Written by Howard Weinstein - this is our second book review for Weinstein, who also wrote Deep Domain, after becoming famous for having a story produced for The Animated Series in 1974 when he was just 19 years old (!!!), Weinstein this time delivers us a tale of a dynasty in exile for eighteen years from a critically important planet that is also contested by the Klingons. It has a familiar feel to it, but isn't that what we like about watching reruns of Star Trek?

Tune in to our podcast episode and find out what we though of Weinstein's first novel!

Your friends at CineMcCollough are kicking off our third season of Trek Novel Madness today with the next randomly-selected novel from the pool of the first 50 Pocket Books novels -- what we call "Is That a Trek in Your Pocket?" The only Star Trek novel ever published - heck, the only novel of any kind ever published - by Carolyn Clowes.

"The Pandora Principle" takes place between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan, and Clowes really knows how to fill in the correct details to paint the picture of a new Romulan plot to overcome the Federation... this one involving a secret research base that is the origin story of Saavik, the cinema-only Star Trek character from the three early 1980s movies.

Join Butch and Rob as they discuss this book and see if you agree!

Now, at last, we reach the Season 2 Finale, which finishes off the first half of our FIFTY BOOK mission through the Pocket Books Universe - what we call Is That a Trek in Your Pocket? -- before we begin the cruise through the second half we will take up the lone book by author Sonni Cooper (who was a name of note within the early Star Trek fandom, being part of the community that kept that fandom alive with newsletters and conventions and other such activities). Her contribution is the novel "Black Fire," which was published in January 1983.

If you wondered how everyone's favorite Vulcan, Spock (yes, this IS a Spock-centric novel, as was inevitably the case for someone so involved in early Trek fandom) can go from first officer on the Enterprise to court martialed to prison to escapee from prison to pirate to subcommander in the Romulan Star Empire, all in one single novel, then buckle your seat belts (if your vessel as them) and prepare for quite a journey - albeit one that may strain credulity a bit.

Who WOULDN'T want to see what Spock looks like as a pirate, am I right? Well let's see what Rob and Butch think. Then leave us a review and settle in for some well-deserved down time as they produce more content for your listening pleasure.

One last brief bit of shore leave to take care of before we get to our final mission of Season 2... and that mission takes us back to the Peter Pan Audio and Book collection of stories from the 1970s for the fifth episode of that series, the 1975 short story "To Starve a Fleaver."

Once again written by legendary author Alan Dean Foster, you can probably tell from the title of this one that it is a play on words and provide an implication that someone will be scratching an itch at some point. A potential Federation application rides on this mission to Marpalou, and the denizens of that planet live in a symbiotic relationship with microscopic beings that live on their skin... and, unfortunately, now on the skin of our crew!

Rob and Butch may or may not have gotten a chuckle out of this story - join us for one last bit of shore leave and find out!

The big stop on our final shore leave of Season 2 of our Star Trek novels multi-year mission takes us to Camp Khitomer and the last best chance for galactic peace - aka the 1991 theatrical release "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country."

The final film featuring all of the main cast from the original Star Trek, the cast literally 'signs off' right before the opening credits... but first this is a great allegorical tale of the end of our own Cold War back in the early 1990s, as told through the Klingons coming to grips with the fact that they can no longer maintain the arms race with the Federation. Treachery, assassination, mind-rape, and a Klingon Bird of Prey that can fire while cloaked are the setting for a terrific movie!

Rob and Butch could talk about it all day long, but you probably don't have more than three hours for it, so we will keep it close to that.

One last shore leave before our Season 2 finale, this one is a three-parter, starting with the fourth episode of the Peter Pan Records Star Trek book-and-audio series. Released in 1975 and coming in at a breezy 16 minutes, "The Time Stealer" was written by Cary Bates and Neal Adams.

This short adventure has the crew experiencing time distortions (nothing new there) only to find that the source might be a pair of battling wizards, or it may be a weird structure called a Gola, or it might be something else. All we know is that 16 minutes is not very long to try to find out!

We have revisited many novels in the Pocket Universe of Star Trek about which Rob and Butch remember very little from their first time reading them forty-or-so years ago. But today's novel is one that both Butch and Rob remember pretty well, and found that they still enjoyed it quite a lot. Ah, the bittersweet tinge of nostalgia.

Written by Brad Ferguson (his first of two TOS novels for Pocket Books, though the second falls outside of the first 50), "Crisis on Centaurus" was published in March 1986, so we might have picked it up at the Waldenbooks at the mall on the first time we drove a car to the mall rather than rode our 10-speeds. It tells the story of a terror attack on Earth's closest celestial neighbor, Centaurus, which is part of the Alpha Centauri-Beta Centauri-Proxima Centauri trinary star system. Turns out that is where Kirk and Bones first met, where Kirk owns the property he plans to someday retire to, and is the current assignment of McCoy's daughter, Joanna... a character that (in script form if not on screen) goes back to the TOS television series!

Come listen to Butch and Rob wax nostalgic during today's mission report!

Despite the fact that there are two more movies that released during the run of first 50 Pocket Books Star Trek novels, today's random selection, "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock," is the last we will be visiting in our 50-planet mission, as the ST-IV and ST-V novelizations, while published, are not part of the numbered list of novels.

Written once again by Vonda N. McIntyre, and published June 1984 in conjunction with the release of the film in theaters, Star Trek III provides additional juicy details on subjects touched on by the TWOK novelization, continuing to run with the idea that Saavik was not full Vulcan but rather half-Vulcan and half-Romulan. It also more than intimates that Saavik saved young, resurrected Spock from the ravages of Pon Farr. Plus, if you were wondering what happened with Carol Marcus after TWOK, here is your chance to find out, but don't get too excited about it. We even follow Scotty to Scotland to break the news about his deceased nephew to his sister!

Rob and Butch are DEFINITELY on different sides of the fence on this novel - give us a listen to find out how... and leave a review while you're there!

We finish off Diane Duane's contribution to the first 50 Pocket Books Star Trek novels today with "The Wounded Sky," released in December of 1983. Like a Romulan Sandwich, the fourth novel and the first we reviewed (Doctor's Orders) are not Romulan-centric, while the other two are quintessential Romulan adventures.

You will see echoes of some familiar televised Star Trek adventures, particularly in TNG - as we come across a Federation engineer who is about as alien as a corporeal being can get, one who has developed a new form of travel that will allow instant transport across VAST distances. Question is, what is the cost, and will our heroes be able to get home?

Come join Rob and Butch as they take a journey to 'where no one has gone before!'

Well we were bound to roll #1 at some point and today our mission takes us to the first cinematic Star Trek adventure, "Star Trek the Motion Picture." Released in December 1979, essentially at the same time as the film itself, the book is a fascinating look into the earlier version of what the movie was supposed to be - PLUS it has the added bonus of being a look inside of the mind of the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself - Gene Roddenberry - as the aforementioned Great Bird wrote the book himself!

Roddenberry's novelization fleshes out a great number of things that are introduced in the movie but not adequately explained - such as background on the Deltans, marriage contracts in the 23rd century, and a number of sexual proclivities of our characters. Suffice to say, had THAT all been in the movie it would NOT have been rated G.

But how does one compare a novelization of a cinematic movie to novels made out of whole cloth? And how will it compare to OTHER novelizations of other movies? You know how to find out...