V. E. Mitchell is consistently one of the better Star Trek authors. I liked that this book really read like an episode, but was ideal for novel form because of how much detail it went into regarding Kirk and Chekov's experiences in alien bodies. Those passages were genuinely interesting and, I felt, provided a truly ALIEN civilization-concept, unlike many Star Trek "aliens" which are just humans in funny outfits.

There is something appealingly basic about Victoria Mitchell's second contribution to the Pocket Books series of Star Trek novels. In it the Enterprise takes a team of archaeologists to a deserted planet. There they uncover evidence of an even older civilization than the one they were sent to investigate, one that left behind mysterious "windows" that are still active and were subsequently buried by their successors. An accident sends Kirk, Chekov, and one of the archaeologists into the window, where they vanish . . . and the Enterprise suddenly detects alien life on a previously uninhabited world.

What struck me about Mitchell's novel as I was reading it was how well her book captures the essential structure of an episode of an original series: the Enterprise explores something, encounters a problem that jeopardizes some of the crew, and then the rest of the crew works together to unravel the mystery and save the crew members in jeopardy. For this comfortingly familiar structure Mitchell provides a story that would have been impossible with the budget and effects of the series, with a refreshingly original alien species unlike any that had been envisioned beforehand. And even if the the the character traits and skill sets of her new characters are a bit too convenient for the story, overall the combination makes for one of the better Original Series novels, one that synthesizes well the best elements of the show and the possibilities of the written page. ( )

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Negativt: Framsidan visar Kirk och Chekov vilket får en att tro att dessa personer är huvudkaraktärerna i boken. Endast Kirk kan ses som en huvudkaraktär, med Spock som bikaraktär. Inget fel med det, kanske, men det är lite fel marknadsföring och väldigt vanligt i pocketbokssammanhang från 1990-talet. ( )

Another in a series of rather standard Star Trek treatments, this one is about an archaeological find on an uninhabited planet that posesses the power to draw the human explorers into its "windows", which are actually still functioning transports to a strange and dangerous world where the Enterprise members are somehow metamorphosed into the buglike creatures of the planet. Interesting but unmemorable. ( )