Star Trek: First Frontier
{4.5/5} “Oya was a thinker and most of her life she had lived with the stigma of that. The Clan could be more brilliant, pound for pound, than Terrans or Romulans or Orions or anyone else, but instinct had always overwhelmed them. Most of their science had been borrowed, kept alive by types such as her, the lower caste, the necessary evils. The most admired were the one with blood-cunning. The superior eat.”
The Enterprise is testing a new type of shielding that will allow them to go very close to a star. But somehow they trigger a time warp — or something. They emerge in a galaxy with no humans in it — even on Earth. The Klingons and Romulans are around, though. And so are some creatures who are the descendants of dinosaurs — when they weren’t wiped out by a meteor, they eventually became sentient.
Star Trek: First Frontier by Diane Carey and Dr. James I. Kirkland was published in 1995.
I love Star Trek and I love dinosaurs, so of course I would read this cross between them — although it’s taken me a while to get to it.
It’s a great book, and would have made an exciting two-part episode or movie.
It’s an Original Series story. The focus is on Kirk, Spock, and McCoy although the other main characters have their moments.
Kirk and Spock have seen many strange new worlds, and gone back to Earth’s past several times, but they’ve never met dinosaurs before. They return to the world of the Guardian of Forever (first seen in the episode “City on the Edge of Forever”).
It has the feel of a classic 1980s or 90s Star Trek novel — when the universe was in peril every other day.
What’s to like? You get to see a unique culture descended from dinosaurs, in which there’s a constant struggle between instinct and thought. You also get to see a Starfleet team in the jungle with minimal modern conveniences.
Kirkland is a paleontologist. Carey has written many Star Trek books — it’s been a while since I read any of the others but probably the most interesting are Final Frontier and Best Destiny.