Star Trek DTI: Forgotten History
{4.5/5} “Teresa remembered the DTI joke that all temporal investigations eventually led to the Enterprise. It was an exaggeration, and was meant to apply to all starships of that name, which tended to have a disproportionate involvement with temporal phenomena. But it mostly applied to the Federation’s first Enterprise, NCC-1701, whose captain — James Tiberius Kirk — was infamous in the DTI for having seventeen separate temporal violations attached to his name, a record unrivaled by any other individual in the DTI’s files.”
Ranjea and Garcia of the DTI are investigating a temporal anomaly. A ship comes out of the anomaly but it’s one that shouldn’t exist. It’s a Federation ship, called Timeship Two, and it has the warp signature of the USS Enterprise, Kirk’s ship. But the ship isn’t from another timeline — it’s from this one. It seems there are things in the past that everyone has forgotten about.
Department of Temporal Investigations: Forgotten History by Christopher L. Bennett was published in 2012. It’s the second Star Trek book in the DTI series, after Watching the Clock.
Forgotten History isn’t really a sequel — it’s another story with the same characters. Dulmur, Lucsly, Ranjea, and Garcia return from the first book. The other part of the book tells the story of the founding of the DTI and the end of Kirk’s five-year mission. Actually, the second storyline makes up the bulk of the book. So even if you’re not interested in the DTI you can read the book for the great story of Kirk and his crew — Spock, McCoy, Scott, and Sulu all have key roles.
In Star Trek books there are often visits from characters who appeared as guest stars on the show. There’s a special guest star* whose rare appearance in this book is at first surprising and in the end very welcome.
The book contains a logical explanation for why Kirk and crew did so much time travelling. It also contains an explanation for the planet of the Onlies (from original series episode “Miri”) — a planet that looked exactly like Earth.
I’ve read six of Bennett’s Star Trek novels and will continue seeking them out.
Spoiler alert
*T’Pring. Not the one who was betrothed to Spock, but one from an alternate timeline.