star trek the pandora principle

The Pandora Principle

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The Pandora Principle is a Pocket TOS novel – #49 in the numbered series – written by Carolyn Clowes . Published by Pocket Books , it was first released in April 1990 .

• 1.1 Prologue
• 1.2 Part One
• 2 Memorable quotes
• 3.1 Cover gallery
• 4.1 Canon characters
• 4.2 Original characters
• 5.1 Chronology
• 6 External links

Summary [ ]

Prologue [ ].

While the Enterprise is patrolling the edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone , a rogue ship stumbles across from Romulan space. A single survivor – a Vulcan woman named T'Pren – mind melds with Spock shortly before dying, sharing memories of half-Vulcan children left to die on 872 Trianguli V, a failed colony of the Romulan Star Empire known as "Hellguard."

Spock discreetly shares this information with his father and other Vulcan elders, who make a secret trip into the Neutral Zone and land on Hellguard. Their scans confirm their worst expectations: the children are half-Vulcan, linking Hellguard with the mysterious disappearances of the crews of four Vulcan ships lost during the last ten years. The children themselves, with ages ranging from five to fourteen years, are the results of rape .

Everyone agrees that the children must be rescued, but Spock stuns the elders there by insisting that they must be returned to their Vulcan families, despite their mixed heritage. Sarek coldly dismisses him from the meeting. While wandering on his own in the Hellguard night, Spock is ambushed and nearly killed by a feral boy, who is himself killed by an equally feral girl, no more than nine or ten years old. Spock tries to communicate with her, but she runs away.

The next morning, the team's healer, Salok, wryly informs Spock that his suggestion was grudgingly accepted by the elders. Sarek makes an appeal for the children to appear, promising food and shelter, but the girl Spock saw does not appear until the very last moment. Mistrustful, she refuses to come with the others, until Spock convinces her to hand over her knife, giving her his tricorder as a toy in return.

Part One [ ]

Spock takes a year's leave from Starfleet to educate the young Saavik. He has little choice at first – volatile and mistrustful, Saavik refuses to submit to a genetic scan to determine her Vulcan relatives, and will accept no one but Spock in her life. Yet he is surprised to find that he enjoys the experience. Saavik has no need for sympathy or emotional comfort; the thing she wants more than anything is one thing Spock has in abundance: knowledge. In return, she accepts (and reveres) him just as he is, never judging him by the conflicting standards of his two ancestries (Vulcan and Human ). After a year, they say their goodbyes, Saavik promising that one day she will follow in his footsteps and enlist in Starfleet.

While the Enterprise is, again, patrolling the Romulan Neutral Zone, a Bird-of-Prey drifts across the Neutral Zone. Aboard, the Enterprise away team finds a skeleton crew, killed by a coolant leak , with the ship locked on an automatic course to Starbase 10 . At first it seems foolish for the Romulans to have sent a single ship towards one of the Federation's most heavily defended outposts, but Montgomery Scott reports that the ship is equipped with a prototype cloaking device that enables warp drive and weapons operation while the cloak is in place.

Starfleet Command is so alarmed at this discovery that it orders Enterprise to tow the ship back to Earth , immediately.

In a remote corner of the Empire, Praetor Tahn attends a meeting of "The Ten", a secret military faction engaged in its own private war against the Federation, and the "cowards" in the Romulan government. One member excitedly reports to their leader, the First, that the Federation has taken the bait...

As the Enterprise approaches Earth, James T. Kirk is infuriated to receive a "friendly" lunch invitation from Admiral Nogura , which Kirk sees as a scheme to make Kirk finally give up command of the Enterprise and take his seat at Starfleet Headquarters , as befits his rank.

On the Romulan ship, the away team found a series of simple glass cubes, with a colorful light display inside. No one can guess what the cubes are for; Leonard McCoy jokingly suggests that they might be artworks, if one could expect to find such things aboard a Romulan military vessel. When they reach Earth, Spock decides to send one for analysis at Headquarters.

Despite the seriousness of their mission, many of the Enterprise crew are overjoyed to return home, while Saavik feels a very un-Vulcan excitement at finally visiting her mentor's ship, about which he has told her so many enthralling stories. But while the rest of the crew are enjoying leave, Kirk slips into "The Vault," a Cold War -era bomb shelter underneath San Francisco , converted into a last-resort command center in case of war. This is the only place where Kirk can access, and delete, Nogura's orders assigning him to Headquarters duties, which he plans to do and be back aboard the Enterprise and shipping out within twenty-four hours.

Disaster strikes: under a simple scanning device in Headquarters, the glass box ruptures, releasing a bioweapon into the air that kills everyone in the building in a manner of seconds. Only sheer luck allows the security system to seal the building and prevent the weapon from escaping into Earth's atmosphere. Kirk finds himself sealed into the Vault beneath headquarters, unharmed but trapped.

After their tour of the ship, Spock and Saavik retire to his quarters. When she glimpses an image of the box on his computer terminal, she staggers backward in horror. She thought it was a dream, but now she knows it was not; she has seen those boxes before, in a cave on Hellguard – and they numbered in the thousands.

Memorable quotes [ ]

"Mr. Spock, I would like to ask a question..."

"So you are not afraid. Then come with me and you shall have your stars."

"To you Humans will seem irrational, frivolous, full of contradictions and continually exasperating- – all of which is true. They are also inventive, capable of greatness, and worthy of study."

"...and I would appreciate further discussion of the word 'fun,' which seems to be the underlying basis of Human behavior. On that subject, I have a number of questions..."

"Look, Spock! Rabbits !" "Yes. Introduced for the predators after the drought. Terran , Oryctolagus cuniculus ; family Leporidae, order Lagomorpha, class Mammalia, subphylum-" "What are they doing?" "...mating, Saavik. Subphylum Vertebrata, phylum-" "To make more rabbits? But they have too many already!"

"Why are there too many rabbits, but not too many Vulcans ?" "Rabbits mate as often as every six weeks, whereas Vulcans must mate only once every seven years ." "Must"?

"I am glad you did not die , Spock. You or your captain ." "I too, Saavikam." "She was a bitch!" "That is, among other things, inaccurate. The term refers-" "Oh, I know what it refers – and that's what she was!"

"I wouldn't have missed this for anything. That kid's not giving Spock a minute's peace – and he's as happy as a clam."

"Computer, stick that back up the admiral's... database."

"I also suggested that he contact T'Pau on Vulcan, but for some reason he seemed disinclined to do that." "No doubt."

"That is the subject of our discussion, except for the question of my exact age. Since I... am not certain, he asked who spoke for me in matters of consent. Why?" "A Human technicality. It is of no consequence, except to them. What did you answer?" "That I speak for myself! And if that was insufficient, you would speak for me.

"How does he do it, change expressions like that without moving a muscle in his face?"

"Wait a minute, Spock! Her blood scan shows that she's half-Romulan. Does she know that? And does it have something to do with how she got these injuries?" "Of course she knows, doctor. And it has everything to do with it." "That son of a... now he tells me!"

"It's just all this waiting ! But that's what they say, isn't it, sir – that the waiting's always the worst.'" "Then they're wrong , Michaels. The waiting is not the worst."

"Do you find this interesting?" "Fascinating!"

Background information [ ]

• This is the only Star Trek novel written by Carolyn Clowes .
• The introduction, which presents the Vulcan expedition to Hellguard, is set a few months after Star Trek: The Motion Picture . The main story is set after Saavik enters Starfleet Academy and some years prior to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan .

Cover gallery [ ]

Characters [ ]

Canon characters [ ], original characters [ ], references [ ], chronology [ ], external links [ ].

• The Pandora Principle at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• The Pandora Principle at Wikipedia
• The Pandora Principle at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• 2 Reaction control thruster

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Star Trek – The Pandora Principle by Carolyn Clowes (Review)

This August, to celebrate the upcoming release of Star Trek: Into Darkness on DVD and blu ray, we’re taking a look at the Star Trek movies featuring the original cast. Movie reviews are every Tuesday and Thursday.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the movies with tie-ins around (and related to) the films. We’ll be doing one of these every week day. This is one such article.

It’s amazing to think how much tie-in material the character of Saavik has generated, considering that she only appeared in three Star Trek films. There are regular characters who have never attracted the same degree of attention as Saavik. There’s probably a reason for this. After all, Saavik was introduced as an important character in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . There’s even some speculation that she might have been originally intended as a replacement for Spock, had Leonard Nimoy decided not to return to the franchise. As such, she was introduced as a surprisingly developed character with a background rife with storytelling potential.

It’s a bit of a disappointment, then, that she was first re-cast as Robin Curtis in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and then she was quietly shuffled off-stage at the start of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , never to be seen again. Perhaps that squandered potential is at the root of the fascination with Saavik. The Pandora Principle , the only Star Trek novel from author Carolyn Clowes, offers us an origin and a history for the character, building off hints and character attributes that were never even mentioned on-screen.

A casual viewer might be forgiven for assuming that Saavik is fully Vulcan. After all, it was never directly contradicted on-screen. However, Saavik was originally created as a half-Vulcan, with the script for The Wrath of Khan introducing her as a Romulan/Vulcan hybrid:

LT. SAAVIK is young and beautiful. She is half Vulcan and half Romulan. In appearance she is Vulcan with pointed ears, but her sin is fair and she has none of the expressionless facial immobility of a Vulcan.

This suggests several things. For one thing, it hints at the idea that the Romulans might have played a much larger role in the Star Trek movies. After all, they were the original antagonists of The Search for Spock before Leonard Nimoy favoured the Klingons.

It also suggests that Saavik might be groomed as a replacement for Spock. Like Spock, she is only half-Vulcan. Ensuring that Saavik is only half-Vulcan allows for dramatic character beats and development, similar to Spock’s own internalised identity structures. Given how Spock’s repressed angst was a major ingredient in the success of the character, it would make sense to explore some of the same dramatic angles with his successor.

Swapping out his half-human heritage for her half-Romulan identity allows for some variety – but it also allows the movies to position “human” as a middle point in the scale, a balance between the aggressive Romulan and rational Vulcan halves of her psyche. With Spock, choosing to explore humanity would represent choosing one heritage over another. Saavik learning to embrace some of humanity’s attributes – as hinted in The Wrath of Khan – would instead serve as middle-ground between extremes.

Indeed, a deleted line from The Wrath of Khan acknowledges this, with Spock suggesting that “the mixture makes her more volatile than — me, for example.” In effect, Saavik seems to have been conceived as Spock with the intensity of the extremes increased. It’s also worth noting that her character arc was set up as being closer to that intended for Xon in Star Trek: Phase II or Spock in Star Trek: The Motion Picture than that of Spock in the television show, with her learning to tolerate and appreciate human illogicality, rather than merely temper it.

It’s worth noting that Saavik’s half-Romulan back story was shuffled to the background once Leonard Nimoy’s return to the franchise was secured. It was never mentioned on-screen in The Wrath of Khan . The script to The Search for Spock only allows that Saavik is “half Vulcan” , without identifying the other half. Robin Curtis has stated that she and Leonard Nimoy opted to ignore that aspect of the character :

But in the case of Star Trek III and Saavik, it really didn’t matter. Leonard felt that Saavik was Vulcan. That was his choice, and his choice was my choice. I played Saavik the way he asked me to play her. My job as the actress is to do what my director wants, and that’s what I did.

So Saavik’s unique character background lost focus. Watching the films, there’s no sense that there’s anything especially unique or compelling about Saavik as a character. She just seems like any other character, rather than the new member of the crew teased in The Wrath of Khan , and suggested by the fact that Kirsty Alley joined the crew at that ill-fated “Ultimate Fantasy” Convention shortly after the release of the film.

Perhaps that’s why Saavik has remained so compelling and intriguing a figure for tie-in authors. DC comics published a two-issue origin of the character in 1984, around the release of The Search for Spock . The Pandora Principle was published in 1990, four years after Saavik’s last appearance. However, it prominently features Saavik on the cover. There’s a sense that Saavik was a figure of interest to most fans, an item of curiosity.

Clowes’ only Star Trek novel is a compelling read. It’s set in the considerable gap between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan . Indeed, the novel emphasises the size of this gap by suggesting that Saavik has had the time to grow up from feral child to Starfleet cadet between those adventures. It’s a clear way of delineating the first Star Trek film from those that followed, but also of underscoring the key theme of age and maturity which runs through The Wrath of Khan .

Indeed, Clowes does an excellent job leading into the themes of The Wrath of Khan , creating a strange sense of foreboding by borrowing from the movie’s rich iconography, but in an original way. Most obviously, The Pandora Principle explains how Starfleet managed to wrest Kirk from command of the Enterprise after he clawed his way back into the seat in The Motion Picture . However, some of the imagery can’t help but evoke Kirk’s coming confrontation with Khan.

There’s a weapon of mass destruction here, much like Genesis in The Wrath of Khan . However, the weapon here has no beneficial side-effects, it has no justifiable purchase. It doesn’t create worlds. It destroys them, whole-scale. Kirk and the Enterprise discover the weapon on board a Romulan Bird of Prey, adrift and dead in space. Boarding the ship, McCoy and the team are aghast to discover that the ship is staffed by young officers. “All of them kids.” Given how many children would die when Kirk takes a cadet cruise out, it seems like a glimpse of things to come. (Similarly, Clowes also traps Kirk underground for a considerable length, buried alive.)

It’s a nice way of tying into the film, without ever seeming too clumsy or heavy-handed. The scale and the details of the events depicted in The Pandora Principle are radically different from those which occur over the course of The Wrath of Khan , but there’s a clear sense that the universe is building slowly towards that inevitable confrontation. It’s a shame that Clowes only ever wrote one Star Trek book, because she demonstrates incredible talent here.

In particular, she picks up on the version of Saavik presented in The Wrath of Khan , as distinct from the later iteration played by Robin Curtis. This is a character who is very clearly being groomed as a potential replacement for Spock, ready to fill that gap should it ever become vacant. Of course, the novel was published in 1990, so Clowes knows – as the reader knows – that the position will never become available. However, Clowes ignores what we know of Saavik’s fate, and builds her up as the character heading into The Wrath of Khan , rather than the character abandoned after The Voyage Home .

As such, her similarities to Spock are rather consciously played up. The novel opens with other Vulcans taking exception to Spock’s stubborn behaviour, quietly implying his human half is to blame. Similarly, Saavik has difficulty reconciling her Romulan half, treating it as a disability:

But Saavik was not a real Vulcan. In spite of all her progress and acquired veneer of civilisation, underneath the proud red uniform of Starfleet Academy, she would always be half Romulan. And no amount of progress could ever make up for that.

It makes sense. After all, The Motion Picture featured Spock finally making peace and accepting his Vulcan half. In a way, you could argue that Spock’s character arc was over, and that his death in The Wrath of Khan might have been positioned perfectly.

If that was the case, it would make sense for his replacement to be introduced much earlier, struggling with the same insecurity and identity crisis that we’ve come to expect from Spock, thanks to episodes like The Naked Time or This Side of Paradise . Clowes includes a clever note of irony as Spock reprimands Saavik for her inability to come to terms with her identity. “Your reluctance to reveal this to Starfleet or to Vulcan is somewhat understandable. But your refusal to acknowledge this to yourself is illogical.”

While Spock never lied about – or covered up – his human half, it does seem hypocritical for him to lecture his student about “acknowledging” her non-Vulcan half. Given that Spock only really made peace with who he was in The Motion Picture , Clowes makes it clear that he’s expecting far too much from his young student. It’s a nice way of drawing attention how Saavik’s character arc in The Wrath of Khan was clearly intended to follow the pattern of Spock’s development.

That said, Clowes does offer a hint of criticism of Spock’s character arc in the films, and arguably of the direction intended for Saavik. In the classic television show, Spock was the unerring voice of logic and reason. He represented the rational, with McCoy speaking for the emotional. In the films, Spock became more comfortable with the emotional and the irrational – indeed, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country features him insisting that his treacherous student shoot him before aggressively smacking the phaser from her hand.

Rather pointedly, Clowes suggests that perhaps Saavik shouldn’t aspire to be more human, despite what Spock’s character arc suggests. Perhaps there is a place for emotionless logic. When the crew discuss the Pandora myth, Saavik advocates the approach of reason ahead of fear or irrationality. “And why should curiosity, which is a proper function of intellect, not be considered a good thing?” she asks, after hearing the myth. After all, Star Trek is supposed to be a franchise about exploration and science, questioning the universe around us. Why should Spock aspire to be more human, when being human involves that sort of fear of the unknown?

At the novel’s end, Saavik discusses her thoughts with her teacher, and resolves not to be more human, but to be more Vulcan:

“I know now what it means to be Vulcan. I saw it. And what I saw may be forever beyond my grasp, but I think that is besides the point. I am going to try – and keep trying, Mr. Spock, every moment of my life. Because there is no better thing to be.”

It’s quite a clever a subversive twist on the movie era, when it seemed like the best thing that Spock could do was to become more human. “How do you feel?” becomes a major plot point in The Voyage Home , the climax of which involves Spock learning to trust his “best guess” rather than hard absolutes.

The Pandora Principle is a fantastic piece of work, and one which makes me regret the fact that it’s Carolyn Clowes’ only Star Trek novel.

Check out our reviews of the S tar Trek movies featuring the original cast :

• Supplemental: Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor by John Byrne
• Supplemental: Ex Machina by Christopher L. Bennett
• Supplemental: Crucible – Spock: The Fire and the Rose by David R. George III
• Supplemental: Space Seed
• Supplemental: Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh by Greg Cox
• Supplemental: Star Trek (DC Comics, 1984) #7-8 – Saavik’s Story
• Supplemental: The Pandora Principle by Carolyn Clowes
• Supplemental: Myriad Universes – Echoes and Refractions: The Chimes at Midnight by Geoff Trowbridge
• Supplemental: The Klingons: Starfleet Intelligence Manual (FASA)
• Supplemental: Star Trek (DC Comics, 1984) #28 – The Last Word
• Supplemental: Star Trek Special #1 (DC Comics, 1994) – The Needs of the One
• Supplemental: Unspoken Truth by Margaret Wander Bonanno
• Supplemental: Music of the Spheres by Margaret Wander Bonanno
• Supplemental: The Ashes of Eden by William Shatner et al (DC Comics)
• Supplemental: Dwellers in the Crucible by Margaret Wander Bonanno
• Supplemental: In the Name of Honour by Dayton Ward
• Supplemental: Star Trek Special #2 (DC Comics, 1994) – A Question of Loyalty
• Supplemental: Excelsior – Forged in Fire by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels
• Supplemental: Shadows on the Sun by Michael Jan Friedman
• Supplemental: Cast no Shadow by James Swallow
• Epilogue: Star Trek: Generations

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Darkness , DVD , film , kirk , Leonard Nimoy , Motion Picture - Star Trek , Pandora Principle , Saavik , spock , Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , Star Trek III: The Search For Spock , Star Trek Into Darkness , StarTrek , Thursday , Tuesday |

10 Responses

This sounds like a very good novel. Does this the information in this agree the background for Saavik given in Bonnanno;s more recent book. Or are they different.

About two months ago i did search the author. Not only has she not written any other star trek novels but has no others printed at all. Fiction or non fiction. Unless this is a pen name this is the only book she has ever published.

Hm, that’s weird. It must be a pen name.

Bonanno’s novel fits quite well. It elaborates and adds more detail, but it doesn’t contradict and actively builds on the book.

There was a book called voyages of the imagination which Christopher Bennet has read. Bennet said she was quoted in the book and there is nothing about a pen name.

Back to Bonnano. Does her novel actually reference things from this book?

It does indeed. It references the back story. She adds some new elements and doesn’t go into too much depth, but it’s clear that she’s consistent with The Pandora Principle.

I just finished reading this book. It is interesting but there are some plot holes and scientific inaccuracies. It is surprising that these have not been mentioned in the reviews of the book online. Still the first 190-200 pages were very good. It got weaker near the end. Finally the the whole issue of Saavik going back and disobeying Spock was dealt with very superficially.

I don’t know. I really liked the whole thing, although it is definitely a “movie era book”, in that it’s very loose and out-there concept-wise, in ways that don’t always make strict logical sense. But I generally like that – I’m a big fan of Margaret Wander Bonanno, who is very much queen of this sort of approach. Dwellers in the Crucible is absolutely off the rails, but that’s what makes it so fascinating.

Here are a list of plot holes and inaccuracies that I have listed on another site.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/03/spock-walks-away-from-omelas-the-pandora-principle-by-carolyn-clowes

That’s a fair list. I’ll concede that (in just about all forms of media – but especially in Star Trek) I am quite willing to forgive plot holes and inaccuracies if the story is compelling enough. I suspect that’s probably due to the way I was raised on a diet of trashy horror and science-fiction, genres that are prone to these sorts of errors as a matter of course.

The thing about the story was the way it did not resolve the Saavik Spock issue. I thought there would be some more insightful dialogue in the last chapter about what she had done. In the book Voyages of the Imagination she says she started the outline of this book in 1985 and had to go back and forth with paramount changing things. I wonder if the girl who transported the object,who we found out being alive in that last chapter was a change asked for by paramount. Despite it’s flaws it holds together better than Memory Prime,which was a overrated novel.

Memory Prime is Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, right?

I haven’t read it, but I’m generally lukewarm on the duo. I think they are one of the stronger “continuity spinning” writers to work in tie-ins, but it often seems like their books exist to tidy up or “fix” continuity and to connect various strands of Star Trek together. They do this phenomenally well, but I wouldn’t class them in the same league as Duane or Ford or even Bonanno.

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The Pandora Principle

• View history

• 1 Description
• 3.1 Characters
• 3.2 Starships and vehicles
• 3.3.1 Shipboard locations
• 3.3.2 Planetary locales
• 3.3.3 Outposts and establishments
• 3.3.4 Planets and planetoids
• 3.3.5 Stars and systems
• 3.3.6 Stellar regions
• 3.4 Races and cultures
• 3.5 States and organizations
• 3.6.1 Technology and weapons
• 3.6.2.1 Food and drink
• 3.6.3 Lifeforms
• 3.6.4 Communications and language
• 3.7 Occupations and titles
• 3.8 Other references
• 4 Chronology
• 5.2.1.1.1 Translations
• 5.3 External link

Description [ ]

Summary [ ].

The Enterprise discovers a ship containing a dying Vulcan woman who Spock mind melds with. He secretly leads a group of Vulcan to Hellguard, a world in the Romulan Neutral Zone . This planet is home to a group of half-Vulcan half-Romulan children, the products of rape who were abandoned there. Spock insists they should become integrated into Vulcan society and is given a year's leave from the Enterprise to raise one of them, Saavik. After years of Spock's mentoring, Saavik eventually attends the Academy .

The Enterprise discovers a drifting Romulan ship with all of its crew dead. It is fitted with an unlimited cloaking device and two multi-colored glowing boxes. They are ordered by Starfleet Command to bring the ship back to Earth . Kirk realizes this is part of a scheme to return him to a ground assignment and tries to avoid it by sneaking into Starfleet Headquarters to file a report in secret. However, the glowing boxes in the Romulan ship are discovered to be filled with a molecular weapon that destroys all oxygen molecules in an environment. Everyone in Starfleet Headquarters is killed except for Kirk, sealed in the basement vault at Headquarters. Another glowing box is opened in the sealed Life City , and all its inhabitants are killed.

The Federation prepares for war with the Romulan Star Empire , unaware the molecular weapon was actually created by a secret Romulan cabal, the Twelve . Spock learns from Saavik that she saw the glowing boxes as a child when they were being prepared on Hellguard. He obtains permission to take the Enterprise to Hellguard to investigate. En route, they take onboard a Romulan smuggler, Achernar , who is actually working for Tahn , a disenchanted member of the Twelve.

Spock and Saavik beam down to Hellguard. Saavik uses her memories to lead Spock to the manufacturing complex where she saw the molecular weapon boxes being stored. They encounter the architect of the molecular weapon manufacturing, which was tested on the parents of the Romulan children, but he commits suicide before they can get information from him. Spock plans to detonate a bomb in the store of the boxes, but Saavik incapacitates him with a Vulcan nerve pinch and plants the bomb herself. They are both beamed aboard but not before the boxes are breached by the explosion, which sets off a chain reaction that destroys Hellguard.

After a short confrontation with the Enterprise bridge crew, Achernar starts negotiations with Tahn. The two strike a deal that sees the Twelve exposed while Than slips away. McCoy realizes that Saavik survived exposure to the molecular weapon because of elements in the dust in the cave on Hellguard. Starfleet manufactures this dust and uses it to neutralize the molecular weapon on Earth. Kirk is allowed to remain as captain of the Enterprise .

References [ ]

Characters [ ], starships and vehicles [ ], locations [ ], shipboard locations [ ], planetary locales [ ], outposts and establishments [ ], planets and planetoids [ ], stars and systems [ ], stellar regions [ ], races and cultures [ ], states and organizations [ ], science and classification [ ], technology and weapons [ ], materials and substances [ ], food and drink [ ], lifeforms [ ], communications and language [ ], occupations and titles [ ], other references [ ], chronology [ ], appendices [ ].

Connections [ ]

Timeline [ ], publication history [ ], translations [ ], external link [ ].

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• The Pandora Principle

A Romulan Bird of Prey mysteriously drifts over the neutral zone and into Federation territory. Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise investigate, only to find the ship dead in space. When Starfleet orders the derelict ship brought to Earth for examination, the Enterprise returns home with perhaps her greatest prize.

But the Bird of Prey carries a dangerous cargo, a deadly force that is soon unleashed in the heart of the Federation. Suddenly, the only hope for the Federation's survival lies buried in the tortured memory of Commander Spock's protégé, a cadet named Saavik. Together, Spock and Saavik must return to the nightmare world of Saavik's birth – a planet called Hellguard, to discover the secret behind the Romulans' most deadly threat of all...

• Star Trek: The Original Series (numbered novels)

Star Trek: The Original Series (numbered novels) consists of ninety-seven books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.

Main series Star Trek: The Original Series

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Star Trek: The Pandora Principle

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A Romulan Bird of Prey mysteriously drifts over the neutral zone and into Federation territory. Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise investigate, only to find the ship dead in space. When Starfleet orders the derelict ship brought to Earth for examination, the Enterprise returns home with perhaps her greatest prize. But the Bird of Prey carries a dangerous cargo, a deadly force that is soon unleashed in the heart of the Federation. Suddenly, the only hope for the Federation's survival lies buried in the tortured memory of Commander Spock's protégé, a cadet named Saavik. Together, Spock and Saavik must return to the nightmare world of Saavik's birth -- a planet called Hellguard, to discover the secret behind the Romulans' most deadly threat of all...

The Pandora Principle

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A Romulan bird-of-prey mysteriously drifts over the Romulan Neutral Zone and into Federation territory. Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise investigate, only to find the ship dead in space. When Starfleet orders the derelict ship brought to Earth for examination, the Enterprise returns home with perhaps her greatest prize. But the bird-of-prey carries a dangerous cargo, a deadly force that is soon unleashed in the heart of the Federation. Suddenly, the only hope for the Federation's survival lies buried in the tortured memory of Commander Spock's protégée, a cadet named Saavik. Together, Spock and Saavik must return to the nightmare world of Saavik's birth—a planet called Hellguard, to discover the secret behind the Romulans' most deadly threat of all…

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Wednesday, March 13, 2019

The pandora principle.

A Romulan Bird of Prey mysteriously drifts over the neutral zone and into Federation territory. Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise investigate, only to find the ship dead in space. When Starfleet orders the derelict ship brought to Earth for examination, the Enterprise returns home with perhaps her greatest prize.   

But the Bird of Prey carries a dangerous cargo, a deadly force that is soon unleashed in the heart of the Federation. Suddenly, the only hope for the Federation's survival lies buried in the tortured memory of Commander Spock's protégé, a cadet named Saavik. Together, Spock and Saavik must return to the nightmare world of Saavik's birth -- a planet called Hellguard, to discover the secret behind the Romulans' most deadly threat of all...

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“star trek: 49 the pandora principle” review by deep space spines.

Deep Space Spines has a review up for Carolyn Clowes ‘s “ Star Trek: 49 The Pandora Principle “:

This week, our favorite Romuvulcan (Vulcomulan?) gets a turn in the spotlight, which, unfortunately, she has to share with an extremely irritating CGI mascot. Spock rescues her from a literal kid-eat-kid existence on the aptly named Hellguard, but when a set of complimentary gift boxes proves deadly, they’ll have to sneak back into Romulan territory and work together to bring down the Amazon warehouse that’s shipping out the faulty orders. Who will save the day? The stoic Vulcan and his volatile protégé? The captain trapped in the doomsday bunker? Or the infuriating tiny ocean man? Place your bets! It’s the book that, sadly, never gets around to taking you out to the ballgame.

Author: Adam Selvidge

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The Pandora Principle (Star Trek: The Original Series Book 49) Kindle Edition

• Print length 306 pages
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• Publication date Sept. 22 2000
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000FC0SLY
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pocket Books/Star Trek; 1st edition (Sept. 22 2000)
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9780671658151

Star Trek: The Original

Carolyn Clowes

Pocket Books/Star Trek

22 September 2000

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#068: The Pandora Principle (TOS #49)

On 1 February 2019

This week, our favorite Romuvulcan (Vulcomulan?) gets a turn in the spotlight, which, unfortunately, she has to share with an extremely irritating CGI mascot. Spock rescues her from a literal kid-eat-kid existence on the aptly named Hellguard, but when a set of complimentary gift boxes proves deadly, they’ll have to sneak back into Romulan territory and work together to bring down the Amazon warehouse that’s shipping out the faulty orders. Who will save the day? The stoic Vulcan and his volatile protégé? The captain trapped in the doomsday bunker? Or the infuriating tiny ocean man? Place your bets! It’s the book that, sadly, never gets around to taking you out to the ballgame.

The Pandora Principle Author:  Carolyn Clowes Pages:  273 Published:  April 1990 Timeline:  Four years before Wrath of Khan , right as Saavik enters Starfleet Academy Prerequisites:  Star Trek III: The Search for Spock ( specifically, the novelization , TOS #17)

The Pandora Principle is, at least on the surface, about Spock and Saavik. A team of Vulcans, among them Spock and Sarek, clandestinely take a shuttle across the Romulan Neutral Zone to save whatever survivors of the Romulans’ horrific experiments on Vulcans may still remain on Hellguard, a brutal desert planet on the edge of Romulan space. While studying some phenomena away from the camp, Spock is attacked by a boy, but is saved by a feral teenage girl who turns out to be Saavik. Saavik later shows up at the last minute to board the departing shuttle.

At Spock’s urging (a reminder that the Federation would agree with him notwithstanding), the group reluctantly agrees to attempt a full reintegration of the survivors back into Vulcan society. Of the survivors, Saavik proves the wildest and least manageable, so Spock cashes in a year of comp time to see to her instruction personally, essentially  My Fair Lady -ing her into enough of a state where she can attend Starfleet Academy without flinging feces everywhere.

Fast-forward to the present, and Saavik is visiting Spock aboard the Enterprise while it’s docked at Earth. During her stay, a derelict Romulan Bird of Prey carrying a dead crew drifts across the Neutral Zone border. The ship is found to harbor a cloaking device which can run indefinitely even in warp drive, and also allows the ship to fire weapons while cloaked. This seems like it should be a pretty freakin’ major deal, but the book tables that idea and never gets back around to it. No, it’s the boxes with the pretty lights that end up being the real danger. Spock, mesmerized by the pretty boxes, sends one of them to the exosciences department at Federation HQ for further study. Scanning the box causes it to break open and unleash a contaminant that consumes so much oxygen, it leaves less of it behind than is found in the vacuum of space.

Just one of these boxes by itself could take out an entire planet’s population, but Saavik recognizes them and says there are thousands of them just sitting around in a cave on Hellguard. With Kirk out of the picture by his own hand (more on that below), Spock has to lead another secret voyage across the Romulan Neutral Zone border to destroy the boxes before the two-day Prime shipping deadline. And along the way, maybe they’ll also get some help from some rogue Romulans who think these boxes aren’t such a hot idea.

Although Carolyn Clowes finished writing The Pandora Principle rather quickly, it then languished in editorial purgatory. Clowes was electrified by the idea of Hellguard and set to work almost immediately upon reading Vonda McIntyre’s novelization of The Search for Spock , but the book went through an interminable revision process that delayed its publication for nearly five years. Five years might not seem like a long time in the cosmic scheme, but in the world of Star Trek novels, it’s like night and day, particularly the stretch from 1985 to 1990, during which certain things that were in vogue at the beginning of that span, like focusing heavily on new original characters, gradually became editorial shibboleths. Original characters, like, for instance, Obo.

We need very badly to talk about Obo.

Obo is a Belandrid, from the ocean planet Belandros, and has filaments on his fingers that somehow allow him to fix any circuitry no matter how busted or inflexible (it’s vague enough to be tantamount to magic). He is not an official officer at spacedock—more of an unauthorized mascot that they keep around because of one very useful talent. Responsibility for Obo falls almost entirely on a young lieutenant named Robert Harper. Harper sees to Obo’s care simply because he believes no one else would. That is in fact an astute judgment, because anyone else would bash Obo’s skull in after being around him for five minutes.

The whole Obo business is embarrassingly clownish. We are talking, like,  Voyager -level shenanigans here. Obo is the kind of creature that would have showed up in full CGI in a late-90s family sci-fi movie and been savaged in one or two sentences by every critic who wrote a 1½-star review of it. He constantly shows up in places he’s not allowed to be in and has a tendency to blab secrets, which makes one wonder why no one has learned to not say anything sensitive in his presence. It drove me up a wall watching characters like Spock and Scotty display boundless forbearance for this gibbering goofball that they should be recoiling from like an infected toenail.

Obo is far from the only silly thing in  The Pandora Principle . Some of those silly things are bad, such as the pidgin Saavik speaks at the time that Spock rescues her, which mercifully does not last very long. Some of them are good, like Saavik turning out to be a natural at baseball. I wish the book had been able to devote at least a little bit of time and/or space to exploring her pitching talent in an actual game setting. Good or bad, however, that silliness often threatens to overwhelm the book, on occasion making good on that threat.

When The Pandora Principle focuses on Spock and Saavik getting to know each other, it’s really good, and that dynamic is very skillfully rendered by Clowes. But this is a book that seems hellbent on undermining itself at every turn with an endless procession of boneheaded character decisions. If you’re interested in Spock and Saavik and their mentor/protégé relationship, you’ll find a lot of good meat to chew on here. But just be warned: you’re also going to have to wade through a lot of garbage.

MVP & LVP

• This week is an instructive glimpse into the dark side of being the MVP, because it simply has to go to Obo . It doesn’t take an analytical genius to figure out that the first time Clowes mentions those filamented phalanges, they’re going to end up saving the whole dang day somehow. Does Obo save the day? Does he die in a scene of completely unearned pathos? Is he revealed to be alive two pages later? Does the whole thing make you want to throw the book into a lake? It’s hardly a revelation to tell you these questions all have the same answer. 
• This week’s LVP is none other than good old Captain Kirk . Kirk is out of commission for the duration of the action because he sneaks into a deep underground vault to surreptitiously delete Admiral Nogura’s latest sneaky attempt to chain him to a desk for the rest of his life. Said vault then seals off completely when the box contaminates the Academy building. For one thing, if he hadn’t been so laser-focused on trying to outfox Nogura, he wouldn’t have been down there and he’d have actually been able to help. Secondly—and this is the weird part—Kirk does not handle being alone in a deep underground vault well at all. It’s mentioned that there’s enough food in the vault to last twenty years, and I assume it’s got to be good food if one is planning to be in there for that long. But he doesn’t nourish himself properly (always a problem for a captain who always feels like he has to be “on”, but in a situation where one’s hands are so tied, that doesn’t seem like it should be such a priority), nor does he sleep well, or seem particularly useful in his instruction of the two officers given to him to oversee in the solving of the dilemma.

Ten Forward Toast

This week, we are pouring one out for a civilian couple, El-Idorn Rakir and Janet Goldman , the exoscientists who accidentally release the oxygen-consuming contaminant when they scan the pretty box. These two lovebirds love smooching. At first it seems unprofessional how handsy they are, but overall they end up being kind of sweet. I’m giving them the Toast because for one thing, of the characters that die in this book, they are among the few who remain permanently dead. But also, it’s just a bummer to see two characters that love each other so much die with regret over not taking what turned out to be their last opportunity for a kiss. All you couples and lovers out there: if you’ve got a chance for a quick smooch or an on-the-job make-out sesh, you take it, because you never know when it could be your last one!

Nuggets & Stray Bits

• As this is a Saavik story, despite the cover, I am, per personal SOP, moving forward with Kirstie Alley in mind as my Saavik. Robin Curtis can settle for being  Tallera .
• Spock and Saavik discuss mating on page 69, which seems apropos. Also, nice.
• Big laugh on page 70 as Saavik reacts to the story of T’Pring. (“She was a bitch!”)

Final Assessment

Bad. It would likely have gotten a significantly higher score had it had the discipline to focus primarily on Spock and Saavik, but it regularly trips over its own feet with its self-sabotaging weakness for unchecked silliness. That’s a real shame, because the Spock/Saavik stuff is for the most part really well done. With some tighter focus, this could have been a great book. What’s even worse is that somehow, five years in editorial limbo didn’t manage that to any appreciable degree. It’s better than most books in its scoring range; it’s just dragged down by some relentlessly stupid baggage.

NEXT TIME:  Picard and Troi fall in with some of Gulliver’s Fugitives

Shore Leave #18: The Switch Is Back

#069: gulliver’s fugitives (tng #11).

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Love reading your reviews. Is there a way to get email notifications when you make a new post? Thanks.

Good review. I enjoyed the opening scenes on Hellguard, but man did it ever nosedive after that.

While I enjoyed your review, I do have to take issue with one part of it. In it, you mention that Clowes just “tables that idea” of the special cloaking device aboard the Romulan warbird “and never gets back around to it.” That’s not true: in the final chapter, Nogura receives a communication from the Spacedock after the warbird’s decontamination that when they tested the cloaking device it didn’t work. The whole thing was faked in order to get the Federation to take the ship (and the boxes in it) to Earth, rather than just some starbase.

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ISBN: 0671658158

ISBN13: 9780671658151

Pandora Principle (Classic Star Trek 49)

(part of the star trek: the original series (#49) series and star trek classic (#55) series ).

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A Romulan Bird of Prey mysteriously drifts over the neutral zone and into Federation territory. Captain Kirk and the crew of the "Enterprise investigate, only to find the ship dead in space. When... This description may be from another edition of this product.

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Terrific, one of my two favorite star trek books, wonderful book, saavik forever, one of the best trek novels; good in general, the pandora principle- one of the best star trek books, popular categories.

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The pandora principle (star trek, book 49) - softcover, clowes, carolyn.

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A Romulan Bird of Prey mysteriously drifts over the neutral zone and into Federation territory. Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise investigate, only to find the ship dead in space. When Starfleet orders the derelict ship brought to Earth for examination, the Enterprise returns home with perhaps her greatest prize.

But the Bird of Prey carries a dangerous cargo, a deadly force that is soon unleashed in the heart of the Federation. Suddenly, the only hope for the Federation's survival lies buried in the tortured memory of Commander Spock's prot�g�, a cadet named Saavik. Together, Spock and Saavik must return to the nightmare world of Saavik's birth -- a planet called Hellguard, to discover the secret behind the Romulans' most deadly threat of all...

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Discovery Is Opening Star Trek 's Biggest Pandora's Box

The fifth and final season of star trek: discovery has put a reveal that even the next generation dared not touch at its heart, in some fascinating ways..

This week, Star Trek: Discovery kicked off its final season with a bold adventure—one with intimate ties to a classic Star Trek: The Next Generation story no other show in the franchise has dared to follow up on. In doing so, it’s opening up the kinds of opportunities that only Discovery really can—but it requires a delicate balancing act in the process.

It’s fitting that Discovery ’s fifth season premiere opened on the week of what is known as First Contact Day to Star Trek fans. Just under four decades from today, during the events of, well, Star Trek: First Contact , humankind meets its first alien civilization in the Vulcans, and finds itself thrust into a much bigger galaxy than it could have ever imagined after years of devastating nuclear conflict. What better reveal then, that Discovery ’s last season will build itself around the mystery of the ultimate first contact—a chase for the alien civilization that kickstarted humanoid life across the galaxy in the first place?

This is the twist Michael Burnham discovers at the climax of Discovery season five’s first episode, “Red Directive.” The mysterious mission she’s been kept in the dark about all episode, racing after mysterious pirates and a centuries-old Romulan puzzlebox, involves a species now dubbed “The Progenitors,” an ancient precursor civilization that first became known to Starfleet and other galactic societies during the Next Generation season six episode, “The Chase”.

It’s an episode with fascinating parallels to the season-arching narrative Discovery wants to go out on, though it’s an adventure in just one hour of TV instead of a whole season. After crossing paths with his old archaeology professor, Captain Picard finds himself on a treasure hunt across the galaxy, with rival factions in the Klingons, Cardassians, and eventually the Romulans (leading to Discovery ’s way in, fictional centuries and actual decades later), after it’s discovered that the professor had discovered a secret that could either bind the whole of galactic civilization together—or shatter it to pieces, just as Burnham is warned of her own mission. While his rivals believe they’re on the hunt of an almighty weapon, ultimately what Picard and the other powers at play discover on Vilmor II is truth, and knowledge.

A holographic message from a bald, humanoid being—played beautifully such a short time by Salome Jens, who would go on to play a similar looking but altogether more horrifying Star Trek alien in her role as the Female Changeling heading the Dominion’s invasion of the Alpha Quadrant in Deep Space Nine —reveals that her species, long dead, evolved too soon to meet similar sentient life in the galaxy. So, in the hopes of spreading their legacy across the stars, they seeded life in their image—bipedal, humanoid, smooth-skinned, and (for the most part) hairless—across the galaxy, and left clues so that one day when that life evolved and took to the stars as they had, they could discover their shared origin, and do so together .

“The Chase” concludes on an optimistic, but non-committal note, in spite of the gravity of its reveal that intelligence design doesn’t just exist in Star Trek , but is both a fun metatextual answer to why most aliens in the franchise conveniently look like humans in various color palettes and with extraneous latex bits, and also a piece of worldbuilding that fundamentally reshapes its whole universe. While the Klingons and Cardassians, who’d assumed they were hunting for power and technology, are disgusted by the thought of common ancestry, Captain Picard and his Romulan counterpart express that the revelation could one day bring peace—not just between their own civilizations, but across the entire galaxy.

Star Trek promptly never went there again, boldly or otherwise.

There have been Star Trek stories since that examine the evolution of life across its universe—like Voyager ’s fascinating “Distant Origin,” where a scientist from a Delta quadrant species called the Voth discovers they are descended from Earth’s dinosaurs—but it took three decades for the franchise to pick up directly where “The Chase” left things off as Discovery did this week. It’s already expanded upon the episode, giving the alien species an alternative name in the “Progenitors,” as well as the revelation from Michael’s quest that they did not just leave behind their knowledge, but elements of the actual technology they used to shape life after the decline of their civilization... technology that yes, now, as the Klingons and Cardassians dreamed of in “The Chase,” could be weaponized in certain hands.

It’s already interesting that Discovery would take what was, well, a discovery of knowledge, and turn it into a more tangible, galaxy-threatening object. But it’s also interesting in what Star Trek says about itself only just picking up on the potential of “The Chase” now , not just in terms of the actual, literal decades its been since that TNG episode, but in picking it up in Star Trek: Discovery , a series now set in the furthest point of time any series of the show has regularly taken place in, the 32nd century. We already know that the Progenitors’ dream of unity among its myriad descendants has not happened—just four years after “The Chase,” the Alpha Quadrant is torn apart with Salome Jens’ return as the Female Changeling, and with her the start of the Dominion War . We know further still that, by the time Burnham and her crew have jettisoned themselves into the 32nd century, the galaxy is no more united that in was in their original time—if anything, it’s more divided than it had been in centuries, the Federation and Starfleet shattered into disparate pieces by the impact of “The Burn” and the diminishment of warp travel explored in Discovery season three.

Star Trek is forever in the process of progress toward the utopia it’s always maintained it has attained in the first place— always challenging its ideals to strengthen them, and challenging them through conflict and division. But it says a lot that 30 years ago the franchise laid out the ultimate pathway to peace, and that utopic aim across the stars, and then simply... did not touch it again until now.

And yet, perhaps it’s perfect that it is Star Trek: Discovery that’s decided to pick up the pieces. Time will tell just what happens in Michael and her crew’s adventure across the galaxy to find all the puzzle pieces they need, and just what shape this Progenitor technology will eventually take. But Star Trek: Discovery has, across its lifetime, always championed the power of connection—on individual and galactic scales—in the face of adversity, and come out on top time and time again. In season four , Captain Burnham already achieved the seeming impossibility of peaceful first contact with an extragalactic race unlike anything the shared-ancestry siblings of Star Trek ’s galaxy had ever really known before. After that, exploring the untouched legacy of one of The Next Generation ’s most fascinating episodes—and perhaps finding a way to make that power of connection really tangible across its universe—is definitely something that could be on the cards. For a show that has pushed Star Trek ’s continuity further and further forward across its life, doing so would be a fitting achievement to go out on.

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Star Trek 49 : The Pandora Principle Paperback – Import, January 1, 1990

• Print length 288 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Pocket Books
• Publication date January 1, 1990
• ISBN-10 1852862831
• ISBN-13 978-1852862831
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Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pocket Books; First Edition (January 1, 1990)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1852862831
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1852862831
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.3 ounces
• #103,032 in Science Fiction (Books)

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Carolyn clowes.

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